impacts – Radio Free https://www.radiofree.org Independent Media for People, Not Profits. Fri, 20 Jun 2025 15:43:23 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.radiofree.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/cropped-Radio-Free-Social-Icon-2-32x32.png impacts – Radio Free https://www.radiofree.org 32 32 141331581 Michael Galant on Sanctions & Immigration, LaToya Parker on Budget’s Racial Impacts https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/20/michael-galant-on-sanctions-immigration-latoya-parker-on-budgets-racial-impacts/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/20/michael-galant-on-sanctions-immigration-latoya-parker-on-budgets-racial-impacts/#respond Fri, 20 Jun 2025 15:43:23 +0000 https://fair.org/?p=9046112  

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CEPR: Economic Sanctions: A Root Cause of Migration

CEPR (3/3/25)

This week on CounterSpin: We’ve always heard that racists hate quotas, yet Stephen Miller’s “3000 a day however which way” mandate is terrorizing immigrant communities—brown immigrant communities—around the country. The response from people of conscience can look many ways: linking arms around people in danger, absolutely; vigorously disputing misinformation about immigrants, whether hateful or patronizing, also. But another piece is gaining a deeper, broader understanding of migration. News media could help answer one implied question—“Why is anyone trying to come to the US anyway?”—by grappling with the role of conditions the US has largely created in the places people are driven from. We’ll talk about that largely missing piece from elite media’s immigration coverage with Michael Galant, senior research and outreach associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

 

Inequality: This Federal Budget Will Be a Disaster for Black Workers

Inequality.org (5/29/25)

Also on the show: Anyone who pays attention and cares can see that the Trump budget bill is a brazen transfer of resources from those that are trying to meet basic needs to those that can’t remember how many houses they own. But corporate reporting rarely breaks out economic policy in terms of how it affects different people—especially how it affects communities for whom they show no consistent concern. Economic policy is itself racialized, gendered, regionalized, targeted. Humanistic journalism would help us see that.

LaToya Parker is a senior researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and co-author, with Joint Center president Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, of the recent piece “This Federal Budget Will Be a Disaster for Black Workers.”

 


This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/20/michael-galant-on-sanctions-immigration-latoya-parker-on-budgets-racial-impacts/feed/ 0 540100 Meat Industry Disinformation Misleads Public About Impacts on Health and the Planet https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/07/meat-industry-disinformation-misleads-public-about-impacts-on-health-and-the-planet/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/07/meat-industry-disinformation-misleads-public-about-impacts-on-health-and-the-planet/#respond Mon, 07 Apr 2025 20:36:53 +0000 https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=46189 The meat industry has attempted to rebrand itself, promoting disinformation about the environmental impacts and negative health consequences of meat consumption, Jessica Scott-Reid reported in December 2024 for Sentient, a nonprofit news organization that reports on factory farming and its impacts. “Amidst a climate crisis driven in no small part…

The post Meat Industry Disinformation Misleads Public About Impacts on Health and the Planet appeared first on Project Censored.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/07/meat-industry-disinformation-misleads-public-about-impacts-on-health-and-the-planet/feed/ 0 524276 "Terrifying": Poorest Countries & Global Working Class Face Worst Impacts of Trump’s Tariffs https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/07/terrifying-poorest-countries-global-working-class-face-worst-impacts-of-trumps-tariffs/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/07/terrifying-poorest-countries-global-working-class-face-worst-impacts-of-trumps-tariffs/#respond Mon, 07 Apr 2025 14:28:06 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=babf13e381adf83affe27c6960191f81
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/07/terrifying-poorest-countries-global-working-class-face-worst-impacts-of-trumps-tariffs/feed/ 0 524194 “Terrifying”: Poorest Countries & Global Working Class Face Worst Impacts of Trump’s Tariffs https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/07/terrifying-poorest-countries-global-working-class-face-worst-impacts-of-trumps-tariffs-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/07/terrifying-poorest-countries-global-working-class-face-worst-impacts-of-trumps-tariffs-2/#respond Mon, 07 Apr 2025 12:49:52 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=5d1cd01f49f89e513b1e31d4589a9ced Seg3 tariffs2

Global stocks continue to fall, and fears of a recession are growing, after Donald Trump rejected calls to scale back his order to institute sweeping tariffs on most of the world. The move will be especially perilous for small, heavily indebted countries in the Global South who face punitive tariffs, including rates of 49% for Cambodia, 37% for Bangladesh and 48% for Laos. “What is really striking is not the sheer stupidity of it … but the wanton cruelty of it,” says Jayati Ghosh, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/07/terrifying-poorest-countries-global-working-class-face-worst-impacts-of-trumps-tariffs-2/feed/ 0 524199 Trump funding cuts on media impacts on independent Asia Pacific outlet https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/06/trump-funding-cuts-on-media-impacts-on-independent-asia-pacific-outlet-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/06/trump-funding-cuts-on-media-impacts-on-independent-asia-pacific-outlet-2/#respond Sun, 06 Apr 2025 03:56:44 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=113000 Pacific Media Watch

One of the many casualties of the Trump administration’s crackdown on “soft power” that enabled many democratic media and truth to power global editorial initiatives has been BenarNews, a welcome contribution to the Asia-Pacific region.

BenarNews had been producing a growing range of insightful on powerful articles on the region’s issues, articles that were amplified by other media such as Asia Pacific Report.

Managing editor Kate Beddall and her deputy, Imran Vittachi, announced the suspension of the decade-old BenarNews editorial operation this week, stating in their “Letter from the editors”:

“After 10 years of reporting from across the Asia-Pacific, BenarNews is pausing operations due to matters beyond its control.

“The US administration has withheld the funding that we rely on to bring our readers and viewers the news from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, the Philippines and island-states and territories in the Pacific.

“We have always strived to offer clear and accurate news on security, politics and human rights, to shed light on news that others neglect or suppress, and to cover issues that will shape the future of Asia and the Pacific.

“Only last month, we marked our 10th anniversary with a video showcasing some of the tremendous but risky work done by our journalists.

“Amid uncertainty about the future, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank our readers and viewers for their loyalty and trust in BenarNews.

“And to Benar journalists, cartoonists and commentary writers in Washington, Asia, Australia and the Pacific, thank you for your hard work and passion in serving the public and helping make a difference.

“We hope that our funding is restored and that we will be back online soon.”


BenarNews: A decade of truth in democracies at risk.    Video: BenarNews

One of the BenarNews who has contributed much to the expansion of Pacific coverage is Brisbane-based former SBS Pacific television journalist Stefan Ambruster.

He has also been praising his team in a series of social media postings, such as Papua New Guinea correspondent Harlyne Joku — “from the old school with knowledge of the old ways”. Ambruster writes:

“Way back in December 2022, Harlyne Joku joined Radio Free Asia/BenarNews and the first Pacific correspondent Stephen Wright as the PNG reporter to help kick this Pacific platform off.

“Her first report was Prime Minister James Marape accusing the media of creating a bad perception of the country.

“Almost 90 stories in just over two years carry Harlyne’s byline, covering politics, geopolitics, human and women’s rights, media freedom, police and tribal violence, corruption, Bougainville, and also PNG’s sheep.

“Her contacts allowed BenarNews Pacific to break stories consistently. She travelled to be on-ground to cover massacre aftermaths, natural disasters and the Pope in Vanimo (where she broke another story).

“Particularly, Harlyne — along with colleagues Victor Mambor in Jayapura and Ahmad Panthoni and Dandy Koswaraputra in Jakarta — allowed BenarNews, to cover West Papua like no other news service. From both sides of the border.

“And it was noticed in Indonesia, PNG and the Pacific region.

“Last year, she was barred from covering President Probowo Subianto’s visit to Moresby, a move condemned by the Media Council of Papua New Guinea.

“At press conferences she questioned Marape about the failure to secure a UN human rights mission to West Papua, as a Melanesian Spearhead Group special envoy, which led to an eventual apology by fellow envoy, Fiji’s Prime Minister Rabuka, to Pacific leaders.”

PNG correspondent Harlyne Joku (right) with Stefan Armbruster and Rado Free Asia president Bay Fang in Port Moresby in February 2025
PNG correspondent Harlyne Joku (right) with Stefan Armbruster and Rado Free Asia president Bay Fang in Port Moresby in February 2025. Image: Stefan Armbruster/BN


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/06/trump-funding-cuts-on-media-impacts-on-independent-asia-pacific-outlet-2/feed/ 0 524015 Trump funding cuts on media impacts on independent Asia Pacific outlet https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/06/trump-funding-cuts-on-media-impacts-on-independent-asia-pacific-outlet/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/06/trump-funding-cuts-on-media-impacts-on-independent-asia-pacific-outlet/#respond Sun, 06 Apr 2025 03:56:44 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=113000 Pacific Media Watch

One of the many casualties of the Trump administration’s crackdown on “soft power” that enabled many democratic media and truth to power global editorial initiatives has been BenarNews, a welcome contribution to the Asia-Pacific region.

BenarNews had been producing a growing range of insightful on powerful articles on the region’s issues, articles that were amplified by other media such as Asia Pacific Report.

Managing editor Kate Beddall and her deputy, Imran Vittachi, announced the suspension of the decade-old BenarNews editorial operation this week, stating in their “Letter from the editors”:

“After 10 years of reporting from across the Asia-Pacific, BenarNews is pausing operations due to matters beyond its control.

“The US administration has withheld the funding that we rely on to bring our readers and viewers the news from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, the Philippines and island-states and territories in the Pacific.

“We have always strived to offer clear and accurate news on security, politics and human rights, to shed light on news that others neglect or suppress, and to cover issues that will shape the future of Asia and the Pacific.

“Only last month, we marked our 10th anniversary with a video showcasing some of the tremendous but risky work done by our journalists.

“Amid uncertainty about the future, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank our readers and viewers for their loyalty and trust in BenarNews.

“And to Benar journalists, cartoonists and commentary writers in Washington, Asia, Australia and the Pacific, thank you for your hard work and passion in serving the public and helping make a difference.

“We hope that our funding is restored and that we will be back online soon.”


BenarNews: A decade of truth in democracies at risk.    Video: BenarNews

One of the BenarNews who has contributed much to the expansion of Pacific coverage is Brisbane-based former SBS Pacific television journalist Stefan Ambruster.

He has also been praising his team in a series of social media postings, such as Papua New Guinea correspondent Harlyne Joku — “from the old school with knowledge of the old ways”. Ambruster writes:

“Way back in December 2022, Harlyne Joku joined Radio Free Asia/BenarNews and the first Pacific correspondent Stephen Wright as the PNG reporter to help kick this Pacific platform off.

“Her first report was Prime Minister James Marape accusing the media of creating a bad perception of the country.

“Almost 90 stories in just over two years carry Harlyne’s byline, covering politics, geopolitics, human and women’s rights, media freedom, police and tribal violence, corruption, Bougainville, and also PNG’s sheep.

“Her contacts allowed BenarNews Pacific to break stories consistently. She travelled to be on-ground to cover massacre aftermaths, natural disasters and the Pope in Vanimo (where she broke another story).

“Particularly, Harlyne — along with colleagues Victor Mambor in Jayapura and Ahmad Panthoni and Dandy Koswaraputra in Jakarta — allowed BenarNews, to cover West Papua like no other news service. From both sides of the border.

“And it was noticed in Indonesia, PNG and the Pacific region.

“Last year, she was barred from covering President Probowo Subianto’s visit to Moresby, a move condemned by the Media Council of Papua New Guinea.

“At press conferences she questioned Marape about the failure to secure a UN human rights mission to West Papua, as a Melanesian Spearhead Group special envoy, which led to an eventual apology by fellow envoy, Fiji’s Prime Minister Rabuka, to Pacific leaders.”

PNG correspondent Harlyne Joku (right) with Stefan Armbruster and Rado Free Asia president Bay Fang in Port Moresby in February 2025
PNG correspondent Harlyne Joku (right) with Stefan Armbruster and Rado Free Asia president Bay Fang in Port Moresby in February 2025. Image: Stefan Armbruster/BN


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/06/trump-funding-cuts-on-media-impacts-on-independent-asia-pacific-outlet/feed/ 0 524014 Make Polluters Pay for Climate Impacts https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/28/make-polluters-pay-for-climate-impacts/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/28/make-polluters-pay-for-climate-impacts/#respond Fri, 28 Mar 2025 17:53:00 +0000 https://progressive.org/op-eds/make-polluters-pay-for-climate-impacts-hauter-20250328/
This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Wenonah Hauter.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/28/make-polluters-pay-for-climate-impacts/feed/ 0 522292 Texas Won’t Study How Its Abortion Ban Impacts Women, So We Did https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/27/texas-wont-study-how-its-abortion-ban-impacts-women-so-we-did-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/27/texas-wont-study-how-its-abortion-ban-impacts-women-so-we-did-2/#respond Thu, 27 Feb 2025 22:50:41 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=934e5080258e41e2000c505605d5bc4f
This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by ProPublica.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/27/texas-wont-study-how-its-abortion-ban-impacts-women-so-we-did-2/feed/ 0 515518 Texas Won’t Study How Its Abortion Ban Impacts Women, So We Did https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/20/texas-wont-study-how-its-abortion-ban-impacts-women-so-we-did/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/20/texas-wont-study-how-its-abortion-ban-impacts-women-so-we-did/#respond Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:55:00 +0000 https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-maternal-mortality-analysis-methodology by Andrea Suozzo, Sophie Chou and Lizzie Presser

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

A first-of-its-kind analysis by ProPublica found that the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations increased by more than 50% after Texas’ near-total abortion ban went into effect in September 2021. The analysis also identified at least 120 in-hospital deaths of pregnant or postpartum women in 2022 and 2023 — an increase of dozens of deaths from a comparable period before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Neither the CDC nor states are investigating deaths or severe maternal complications related to abortion bans. And although the federal government and many states track severe complications in birth events using a federally established methodology, far less is known about complications that arise during a pregnancy loss. There is no federal methodology for doing this, so we consulted with experts to craft one.

We acquired Texas hospitalization data from 2017 through 2023, giving us more than two years of data after the implementation of the state’s six-week abortion ban in September 2021, and more than a year of data following its full abortion ban, which went into effect in August 2022.

We spoke with dozens of researchers and clinicians to adapt the federal algorithm for birth complications to focus on severe complications in early pregnancy, before fetal viability.

This methodology lays out the steps we took to complete this analysis, to help experts and interested readers understand our approach and its limitations.

Identifying Second-Trimester Hospitalizations

We purchased seven years of inpatient discharge records for all hospitals from the Texas Department of State Health Services. These records contain de-identified data for all hospital stays longer than a day, with information about the stay, including diagnoses recorded and procedures performed during the stay, as well as some patient demographic information and billing data.

Within this dataset, we opted to focus on second-trimester pregnancy loss, because first-trimester miscarriage management often occurs in an outpatient setting. In the future, we plan to look at outpatient data as well.

To examine outcomes in the second trimester, we first identified hospitalizations where a pregnancy ended. We used a methodology to identify severe complications in birth events developed by the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health, an initiative of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The method is outlined in statistical code published by HRSA, and it first identifies every hospitalization with a live birth, stillbirth or an “abortive outcome” (which refers to an intended or unintended pregnancy loss before 20 weeks). Rather than excluding those abortive outcomes to focus on birth, as the HRSA code directs, we included them to look at all hospitalizations where a pregnancy ended. This narrowed our list of hospitalizations to an average of 370,000 per year.

The HRSA methodology further filters hospitalizations to only patients who are female and between the ages of 12 and 54. Our dataset had five-year age ranges, so we filtered to ages between 10 and 54. This brought our hospitalization list to 364,000 each year, on average.

For each hospitalization where a pregnancy ended, we looked for a diagnosis code recording the gestational age of the fetus. In cases where a long hospitalization had multiple gestational week codes recorded over the course of the stay, we took the latest one.

We excluded pregnancy-end hospitalizations without a gestational week code from our analysis — removing about 49,500 hospitalizations, or 1.9% of our dataset. More than two-thirds had coding that indicated a birth, likely to have occurred after 20 weeks.

Based on conversations with doctors and researchers, we narrowed our focus to hospitalizations where a pregnancy ended in the second trimester before fetal viability, from the start of the 13th week through 21 weeks and six days. While pregnancies that end at 20 and 21 weeks are often coded as births, rather than abortive outcomes, we included those weeks in our definition of pregnancy loss because experts told us it’s extremely unlikely that a baby born at 21 weeks could survive. This brought our list of hospitalizations to 15,188.

The number of second trimester hospitalizations, and characteristics of the women hospitalized, was largely stable from 2017 through 2023, the years of our analysis. In 2023, however, as the number of births in the state increased, the number of hospitalizations in our window declined to 2,036, below the yearly average of 2,169.

The race and ethnicity of patients each year, as well as the proportion of these hospitalizations in which the patients were covered by Medicaid or uninsured, did not change significantly after the state’s 2021 abortion ban, known as SB 8, went into effect.

Determining Sepsis Rates

Within these hospitalizations, we looked for diagnoses of sepsis, a life-threatening complication that can follow delays in emptying the uterus. The CDC defines a list of sepsis codes associated with severe maternal complications, which formed the basis of our definition. However, that list of codes is developed to look at sepsis in birth events, the vast majority of which occur much later in a pregnancy than our hospitalizations. We identified five sepsis codes associated with early pregnancy events like ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage, adding them to the existing list of sepsis codes to develop a definition that more fully captured early pregnancy complications.

To compare rates before and after the implementation of SB 8, we grouped the nine quarters of data we had after the implementation of the ban (October 2021 through December 2023) and compared it with the nine quarters immediately before (July 2019 through September 2021). Our dataset gives us the quarter in which a patient was discharged from the hospital but not the exact date, so the “before” group contains one month of data from after SB 8 went into effect on Sept. 1, 2021.

Identifying Fetal Demise

The standard of care for second-trimester miscarriage or rupture of membranes prior to fetal viability is to offer patients a dilation and evacuation or an induction to end the pregnancy — even if there is still a fetal heartbeat. In our reporting, we’d heard that because of the language of Texas’ abortion law, some hospitals and doctors were waiting for the fetal heartbeat to stop or the mother to develop a life-threatening illness, whichever occurred first. To look into this, we wanted to separate hospitalizations in which doctors would have theoretically been able to offer a termination immediately under the law — ones where the patient had a diagnosis indicating that there was no fetal heartbeat at the time of admission to the hospital — from ones where doctors may have waited to provide care.

We determined that about half of our second-trimester hospitalizations did not have a fetal heartbeat on admission. We identified these cases by focusing on two sets of diagnosis codes: Prior to 20 weeks gestation, a diagnosis of “missed abortion” refers to a miscarriage where the fetus has stopped developing, but the body has not yet expelled the tissue. After 20 weeks, a diagnosis of “intrauterine death” indicates that the fetus has died. For both diagnoses, we included only those that were marked as “present on admission.”

Sepsis Rate Findings

Our analysis found that the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations increased after the state’s ban went into effect, and the surge was most pronounced in cases in which the fetus may still have had a heartbeat when the patient arrived at the hospital.

In the nine quarters before SB 8 went into effect, the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations was 2.9%. In the nine quarters after SB 8 went into effect, the sepsis rate was 4.5%, an increase of 55%.

Since our total number of sepsis cases was relatively small, we measured whether the two groups of data were significantly different using a t-test. We calculated sepsis rates for second-trimester hospitalizations in the nine quarters after SB 8 went into effect and compared that with sepsis rates during the nine quarters immediately prior. We found that increase to be statistically significant (p-value < 0.05).

Sepsis Rate Increased Over 50% for Second-Trimester Pregnancy Loss Hospitalizations After SB 8

We compared the nine quarters after SB 8 went into effect — from October 2021 through December 2023 — to the nine quarters before the ban went into effect — July 2019 to September 2021.

Note: For hospitalizations involving a pregnancy loss between 13 weeks’ gestation and the end of the 21st week.

Sepsis is a reaction to an infection, and the most common additional infection diagnosis in sepsis hospitalizations was chorioamnionitis, an infection of the amniotic fluid that can also cause early rupture of membranes. Rates of chorioamnionitis in sepsis cases remained stable before and after SB 8.

Our analysis also showed that patients admitted while their fetus was still believed to have a heartbeat were far more likely to contract sepsis.

Sepsis Rates Spiked for Patients Whose Initial Diagnosis Didn’t Include Fetal Death

For patients in Texas hospitals who lost a pregnancy, about half were not diagnosed with fetal demise when they were admitted, meaning that their fetus may still have had a heartbeat at that time. Those patients saw a dramatic increase in sepsis after the state banned abortion.

Note: For hospitalizations involving a pregnancy loss between 13 weeks’ gestation and the end of the 21st week. We identified patients whose fetus had no heartbeat when they were admitted by looking for a diagnosis of “intrauterine death” or “missed abortion.” Rates are annual. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica)

In the nine quarters prior to the implementation of SB 8, the rate of sepsis was nearly twice as high for those with no fetal demise diagnosis on admission compared with those with a fetal demise diagnosis on admission. After SB 8, the rate increased in both groups, and the gap between them widened.

Again, since the number of total sepsis cases was relatively small, we used a t-test to see if there was a statistically significant difference before and after SB 8 in both groups. We found the increase in rates to be significant on both counts (p < 0.05).

Sepsis Rates for Hospitalizations With Fetal Demise on Admission Sepsis Rates for Hospitalizations Without Fetal Demise on Admission Notes: For hospitalizations involving a pregnancy loss between 13 weeks’ gestation and the end of the 21st week. We compared the nine quarters after SB 8 went into effect to the nine quarters before the ban went into effect. Sepsis Rate Analysis Limitations

Maternal health experts noted that discharge data offers a limited window into the details of patient care. Changes in the frequency of a diagnosis code can signal a change in patient health but also a change in coding practices. Our analysis can’t isolate changes in outcomes from changes in sepsis coding practices over time or doctors taking additional documentation steps to show they’ve complied with the law. And billing records offer no detail into a patient’s history and medical wishes or the decisions that medical staff make in the course of care.

Our analysis also does not account for changes in health care outside of hospitals. Though births typically take place in a hospital, other early pregnancy care often occurs in an outpatient setting and does not require a hospitalization, so we can only see a small subset of this type of care — specifically, the most severe cases. We also can’t account for how closures of reproductive health care clinics in the wake of Texas’ abortion ban changed the role hospitals play in miscarriage care.

We cannot see when hospitals turn patients away rather than admitting them. And if a patient who is miscarrying has an inpatient stay at one hospital and is then transferred to another hospital for another inpatient stay, that patient would be double-counted in our analysis, since we can’t connect patients across visits. This could potentially inflate the number of hospitalizations in our dataset, artificially pushing the sepsis rate down.

Our dataset is missing a handful of records from the fourth quarter of 2023; in a small number of cases — about 300 per quarter, or 0.04% of records — providers submit data on a hospitalization late, and that record is released in the dataset for the following quarter.

Billing data is widely used by researchers to study maternal health. While it will never tell the whole story, in aggregate, particularly in a state with a large population, it can paint a picture of changing health outcomes. Our analysis gives us a broad view of care at Texas hospitals before and after a major policy change.

More than a dozen maternal health experts reviewed ProPublica’s findings and said our analysis adds to mounting evidence that the state’s abortion ban is likely leading to dangerous delays in care. Many said the ban is the only explanation they could see for the sudden jump in sepsis cases.

Pregnancy-Associated Hospital Deaths

We found 120 women who died while hospitalized during pregnancy or up to six weeks postpartum in 2022 and 2023 in the inpatient billing data. The Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee will not review deaths from these years, stating that they will skip to 2024 in an effort to get a more “contemporary” view of deaths, a choice that faced widespread criticism. (The committee chair said there was “absolutely no nefarious intent” behind the decision.)

To identify inpatient deaths in the Texas hospital discharge data, we included all records with a “patient status” of “expired” and with a diagnosis or procedure code indicating that the patient was pregnant or up to six weeks postpartum, with a specific postpartum complication based on the “Identifying Pregnant and Postpartum Medicaid and CHIP Beneficiaries” code list by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The CDC looks at deaths up to within one year of a pregnancy’s end, but our dataset doesn’t explicitly identify pregnant or recently pregnant patients, so we were limited in the hospitalizations we could identify through codes.

Our tally does not include those who died in a hospitalization that took place separately from the end of a pregnancy, unless the patient was diagnosed with a specific postpartum complication. We did not filter for age and gender for our death records, as that data was less reliably filled out than the diagnosis and procedure codes.

Our count of inpatient deaths does not attempt to determine what role a person’s pregnancy or the state’s abortion ban played in their death. That type of analysis would require access to medical records. Our tally would include, for example, a person who was hospitalized after a car crash but who was also pregnant. Experts advised us to leave these cases in, because without investigation by the maternal mortality committee, it’s impossible to know, for example, if there was any relationship between the patient’s pregnancy and the cause of the accident, or if there were any delays in maternal care after the accident.

We found that deaths increased sharply during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and peaked in 2021, and that many cases in 2020 and afterward included COVID-19 diagnostic codes. More than 60% of the deaths that we analyzed had a diagnosis of COVID-19 in 2021, and 27% had a COVID-19 diagnosis in 2022. The COVID-19 diagnostic code was not introduced until October 2020, several months after the pandemic began, and was updated in January 2021. The coding changes, combined with changes in hospital protocols around identifying COVID-19 cases, make it impossible to filter out all COVID-19 related deaths during this time period.

Texas and National Rates of Maternal Mortality

The hospital billing data only includes information about Texas, so to compare with national rates, we used data from the CDC’s WONDER portal, which is based on birth and death certificates. For this analysis, we used a definition of maternal death recommended by CDC research guidelines for this data source. Our denominator includes all live births. For statewide rates, we use the state of residence of the mother in both the numerator and denominator. Rates are reported per 100,000 births.

Between 2019 and 2023, we found a 33% increase in maternal mortality rates in Texas, compared with a decrease of 7.5% nationally during the same time.

While both nationally and in Texas rates of maternal mortality peaked in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic and have dropped since, rates in Texas remain higher than before the pandemic.

Missing Documents

The federal methodology we used as a basis for our analysis of severe complications in pregnancy hospitalizations was outlined in a document available for download from HRSA’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau. The instructions included statistical code that we adapted to do our own analysis, and they were accompanied by a spreadsheet of maternal and child outcome measures over time for all 50 states and nationally.

As of early February, both the instructions and the spreadsheet had been replaced by documents noting that the files were “currently under construction and not available.”

Lucas Waldron contributed graphics.


This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Andrea Suozzo, Sophie Chou and Lizzie Presser.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/20/texas-wont-study-how-its-abortion-ban-impacts-women-so-we-did/feed/ 0 514467 NZ-Kiribati fallout: Maamau govt minister says ‘impacts to be felt by the people’ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/27/nz-kiribati-fallout-maamau-govt-minister-says-impacts-to-be-felt-by-the-people/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/27/nz-kiribati-fallout-maamau-govt-minister-says-impacts-to-be-felt-by-the-people/#respond Mon, 27 Jan 2025 23:38:07 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=110161 By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific Bulletin editor/presenter

Kiribati President Taneti Maamau was unable to meet New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters because he had “a pre-planned and significant historical event”, a Cabinet minister in Kiribati says.

Alexander Teabo, Education Minister in Maamau’s government, told RNZ Pacific that “it is important for the truth to be conveyed accurately” after the “diplomatic tiff” between the two nations was confirmed by Peters as reported.

Maamau is currently in Fiji for his first state visit to the country.

Peters said New Zealand could not commit to ongoing monetary aid in Kiribati after three cancelled or postponed visits in recent months.

A spokesperson from Peters’ office said the Deputy Prime Minister’s visit to Tarawa was set to be the first in over five years and took a “month-long effort”. However, the NZ government was informed a week prior to the meeting that Maamau was no longer available.

His office announced that, as a result of the “lack of political-level contact”, Aotearoa was reviewing its development programme in Kiribati. It is a move that has been described as “not the best approach” by Victoria University’s professor in comparative politics Dr Jon Fraenkel.

Minister Teabo said that Peters’ visit to Kiribati was cancelled by the NZ government.

“It is correct that the President was unavailable in Tarawa due to a pre-planned and significant historical event hosted on his home island,” he said.

Date set ‘several months prior’
“This important event’s date was established by the Head of the Catholic Church several months prior.”

He said Maamau’s presence and support were required on his home island for this event, and it was not possible for him to be elsewhere.

Teabo pointed out that Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister was happy to meet with Kiribati’s Vice-President in a recent visit.

“The visit by NZ Foreign Minister was cancelled by NZ itself but now the blame is on the President of Kiribati as the reason for all the cuts and the impacts to be felt by the people.

“This is unfair to someone who is doing his best for his people who needed him at any particular time.”

‘Tried several times’ – Luxon
The New Zealand aid programme is worth over NZ$100 million, but increasingly, Kiribati has been receiving money from China after ditching its diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 2019.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the country was keen to meet and work with Kiribati, like other Pacific nations.

Luxon said he did not know whether the lack of communication was due to Kiribati and China getting closer.

“The Foreign Minister has tried several times to make sure that as a new government, we can have a conversation with Kiribati and have a relationship there.

“He’s very keen to meet with them and help them and work with them in a very constructive way but that hasn’t happened.”

New Zealand’s Minister of Defence Judith Collins agrees with Peters’ decision to review aid to Kiribati.

Collins said she would talk to Peters about it today.

“I think we need to be very careful about where our aid goes, how it’s being used and I agree with him. We can’t have a disrespectful relationship.”

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


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/27/nz-kiribati-fallout-maamau-govt-minister-says-impacts-to-be-felt-by-the-people/feed/ 0 511272 Groups Sue CARB Over Environmental Impacts of Flagship Climate Program https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/19/groups-sue-carb-over-environmental-impacts-of-flagship-climate-program/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/19/groups-sue-carb-over-environmental-impacts-of-flagship-climate-program/#respond Thu, 19 Dec 2024 13:37:16 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/groups-sue-carb-over-environmental-impacts-of-flagship-climate-program Today, environmental justice and environmental groups sued Governor Newsom’s California Air Resources Board (CARB) over its failure to adequately address the health and environmental impacts of its recently approved amendments to one of California’s flagship climate programs – the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS).

The LCFS incentivizes pollution in communities across the nation already overburdened with factory farm pollution, including those in California’s San Joaquin Valley, through lavish financial incentives for so-called “biogas” produced from manure. Petitioners seek to force CARB to disclose, analyze, and mitigate the significant environmental impact caused by the LCFS amendments as required by the California Environmental Quality Act. Californians have a right to know how their government’s decisions harm their environment and quality of life.

“CARB must acknowledge the environmental and public health harms caused by its prioritization of pollution-heavy practices over sustainable solutions,” said Defensores del Valle Central para el Aire y Agua Limpio representative María Arévalo. “In the Central Valley, we live near 90% of cows in California and some of the largest dairy operations in the entire world. We raise time and time again that the conditions and impacts in our communities are getting worse as dairies are getting bigger and dairy digesters are installed. Despite our ongoing advocacy from the local to the federal level, but more than anywhere at CARB, our concerns have been ignored.”

“It is more critical than ever that Governor Newsom gets it right on climate, but on the issue of factory farm climate pollution Newsom is prioritizing corporate profits over protecting the health and welfare of Californians,” said Food & Water Watch Staff Attorney Tyler Lobdell. “Governor Newsom’s CARB is taking California in the wrong direction, incentivizing dirty factory farm biogas buildouts to pay factory farms to pollute. Our climate and communities deserve better. CARB must acknowledge and address the environmental and health impacts of factory farm biogas by prioritizing people over profits.”

“CARB’s amendments to the LCFS leave no doubt that the agency is doubling down on its factory farm biogas scheme, further entrenching and greenwashing industrial animal agriculture with publicly funded incentives under the guise of fighting the climate crisis,” said Animal Legal Defense Fund Senior Staff Attorney Christine Ball-Blakely. “In reality, this decision enriches the factory farming industry and factory farm biogas developers at the expense of everyone else. It intensifies the exploitation of farmed animals, fans the flames of the climate crisis, and worsens the already severe environmental and health harms to communities occupied by factory farming, especially in the San Joaquin Valley. This decision is not only unconscionable — it is also unlawful.”

“Increasing data supports what CARB refuses to acknowledge — perverse incentives in the LCFS for fuel derived from manure at factory farms exacerbates severe environmental impacts, causing cascading harm to communities in California and beyond,” said Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability co-director, Phoebe Seaton. “State law requires CARB to analyze, evaluate, and mitigate these impacts, which it has failed to do despite numerous warnings from environmental justice and environmental groups through the LCFS rulemaking process and numerous calls from communities to correct course.”

California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard has been the nation’s primary driver of factory farm biogas development, both in California and beyond. By rewarding methane production on factory farms, the LCFS incentivizes the concentration of animals and animal waste production and exacerbates the negative health impacts of industrial factory farming, including mortality risks, kidney diseases, respiratory conditions, blood pressure elevation, and low birth weight. These impacts disproportionately fall on communities of color and low income communities.

Petitioners are Defensores del Valle Central para el Aire y Agua Limpio, Food & Water Watch, and Animal Legal Defense Fund. Defensores is represented by Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, the Law Office of Brent Newell, and Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP.

An environmental justice organization filed a second, separate lawsuit against CARB on its flawed environmental review that locks in billions of subsidies for biofuels from food crops like soy and corn.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/19/groups-sue-carb-over-environmental-impacts-of-flagship-climate-program/feed/ 0 507197 Palau’s president invites Trump to visit Pacific to see climate crisis impacts https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/06/palaus-president-invites-trump-to-visit-pacific-to-see-climate-crisis-impacts/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/06/palaus-president-invites-trump-to-visit-pacific-to-see-climate-crisis-impacts/#respond Fri, 06 Dec 2024 08:51:28 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=107877 By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific presenter/Bulletin editor

Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr is inviting US President-elect Donald Trump to “visit the Pacific” to see firsthand the impacts of the climate crisis.

Palau is set to host the largest annual Pacific leaders meeting in 2026, and the country’s leader Whipps told RNZ Pacific he would “love” Trump to be there.

He said he might even take the American leader, who is often criticised as a climate change denier, snorkelling in Palau’s pristine waters.

Whipps said he had seen the damage to the marine ecosystem.

“I was out snorkelling on Sunday, and once again, it’s unfortunate, but we had another heat, very warm, warming of the oceans, so I saw a lot of bleached coral,” he said.

“It’s sad to see that it’s happening more frequently and these are just impacts of what is happening around the world because of our addiction to fossil fuel.”

Bleached corals in Palau.
Bleached corals in Palau. Image: Dr Piera Biondi/Palau International Coral Reef Center/RNZ Pacific

“I would very much like to bring [Trump] to Palau if he can. That would be a fantastic opportunity to take him snorkelling and see the impacts. See the islands that are disappearing because of sea level rise, see the taro swamps that are being invaded.”

Americans experiencing the impacts
Whipps said Americans were experiencing the impacts in states such as Florida and North Carolina.

“I mean, that’s something that you need to experience. I mean, they’re experiencing [it] in Florida and North Carolina.

“They just had major disasters recently and I think that’s the rallying call that we all need to take responsibility.”

However, Trump is not necessarily known for his support of climate action. Instead, he has promised to “drill baby drill” to expand oil and gas production in the US.

Palau International Coral Reef Center researcher Christina Muller-Karanasos said surveying of corals in Palau was underway after multiple reports of bleaching.

She said the main cause of coral bleaching was climate change.

“It’s upsetting. There were areas where there were quite a lot of bleaching.

Most beautiful, pristine reef
“The most beautiful and pristine reef and amount of fish and species of fish that I’ve ever seen. It’s so important for the health of the reef. The healthy reef also supports healthy fish populations, and that’s really important for Palau.”

Bleached corals in Palau.
Bleached corals in Palau. Image: Palau International Coral Reef Center/RNZ Pacific

University of Hawai’i Manoa’s Dr Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka suspects Trump will focus on the Pacific, but for geopolitical gains.

“It will be about the militarisation of the climate change issue that you are using climate change to build relationships so that you can ensure you do the counter China issue as well.”

He believed Trump has made his position clear on the climate front.

“He said, and I quote, ‘that it is one of the great scams of all time’. And so he is a climate crisis denier.”

It is exactly the kind of comment President Whipps does not want to hear, especially from a leader of a country which Palau is close to — or from any nation.

“We need the United States, we need China, and we need India and Russia to be the leaders to make sure that we put things on track,” he said.

Bleached corals in Palau.
Bleached corals in Palau. Image: Palau International Coral Reef Center/RNZ Pacific

For the Pacific, the climate crisis is the biggest existential and security threat.

Leaders like Whipps are considering drastic measures, including the nuclear energy option.

“We’ve got to look at alternatives, and one of those is nuclear energy. It’s clean, it’s carbon free,” he told RNZ Pacific.

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


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/06/palaus-president-invites-trump-to-visit-pacific-to-see-climate-crisis-impacts/feed/ 0 504944 Empowering Students To Examine How Historical Redlining Impacts Contemporary Communities https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/13/empowering-students-to-examine-how-historical-redlining-impacts-contemporary-communities/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/13/empowering-students-to-examine-how-historical-redlining-impacts-contemporary-communities/#respond Wed, 13 Nov 2024 21:06:32 +0000 https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=45307 Redlining continues to weave profound injustices, in the form of neighborhood and school segregation, into the fabric of contemporary American society. “During the 1930s and ’40s, racist government-sponsored mortgage loan practices effectively segregated every metropolitan area in the United States,” Carl Faucher, a middle school English teacher from Seattle, reported…

The post Empowering Students To Examine How Historical Redlining Impacts Contemporary Communities appeared first on Project Censored.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/13/empowering-students-to-examine-how-historical-redlining-impacts-contemporary-communities/feed/ 0 501757 ‘Housing Discrimination Is Collective, Cumulative, Continuing’: CounterSpin interview with George Lipsitz on the impacts of housing discrimination https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/18/housing-discrimination-is-collective-cumulative-continuing-counterspin-interview-with-george-lipsitz-on-the-impacts-of-housing-discrimination/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/18/housing-discrimination-is-collective-cumulative-continuing-counterspin-interview-with-george-lipsitz-on-the-impacts-of-housing-discrimination/#respond Fri, 18 Oct 2024 19:21:03 +0000 https://fair.org/?p=9042600  

Janine Jackson interviewed author and UC/Santa Barbara research professor emeritus George Lipsitz about the impacts of housing discrimination for the October 11, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

 

 

Grist: The South Bronx isn’t falling for Fresh Direct’s dirty trucks

Grist (3/10/15)

Janine Jackson: Some 10 years ago, food delivery service FreshDirect got more than $100 million of incentives to place a warehouse in a populated, poor, largely people of color community in the South Bronx, to bring heavy diesel truck traffic to asthma-inflicted neighborhoods already affected by waste treatment plants and high-traffic highways.

Groups like South Bronx Unite, like Good Jobs for NY, opposed these further health harms to the community, as well as the notion that a handful of insecure, poorly waged jobs could serve as compensation. South Bronx Unites’ Mychal Johnson said: “Of course we want jobs, but we should not have to choose between having a job and having clean air. If you can’t breathe, you can’t work.”

Now we understand that folks are working to reclaim pieces of the affected community called the Harlem River Yard, including allowing access to the Harlem River waterfront, access that’s been cut off to the public for a long time.

That’s just one of thousands of stories that exemplify the ways that racism inflects all kinds of decisions, policies, laws, that we’re told are, nowadays anyway, indifferent to race. That’s a mistaken notion that hobbles our ability to respond effectively to the interconnected harms of white supremacy and myriad US institutions that, to be real, harm everyone, and not just Black and brown people.

The Danger Zone Is Everywhere, by George Lipsitz

UC Press (2024)

George Lipsitz is research professor emeritus of Black studies and sociology at the University of California/Santa Barbara. He’s the author of many books, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness and How Racism Takes Place among them.

His most recent book, that we’re here to talk about, is called The Danger Zone Is Everywhere: How Housing Discrimination Harms Health and Steals Wealth. It’s out now from University of California Press.

I will note that George was, for years, the chair of the board of the African American Policy Forum, where I also serve as a board member. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, George Lipsitz.

George Lipsitz: Thank you. So glad to be here.

JJ: Your new book addresses the interconnectedness of laws, policies and practices around housing that, without needing to be overtly coordinated, reinforce one another to produce and reproduce discriminatory outcomes. So we could really pull an opening thread anywhere here.

But when we talk about housing discrimination, I know that many folks’ minds go to redlining, where officially sanctioned protocols meant Black families just couldn’t buy homes in certain neighborhoods, and the thinking is, while certainly that had lasting impacts, it was years ago, and it’s been legally remediated by now.

So while the book talks, importantly, about the inadequacies of the ways that harms have been diagnosed and responded to, maybe we could just start with a breakdown of some of the multiple forms of discrimination in housing that that takes. Why is it that housing is at the center of the spider web of so many other discriminatory dangers?

George Lipsitz

George Lipsitz: “A lot of housing discrimination is enacted through things that don’t overtly appear to be about race, and may not even directly appear to be about housing.”

GL: When I say the “danger zone is everywhere,” housing discrimination raises in peoples’ minds a direct act of discrimination, a refusal to rent or sell to a person of a targeted race, or the long effects of redlining. And these are still in effect, and they have an enormous impact on peoples’ life chances and opportunities. But a lot of housing discrimination is enacted through things that don’t overtly appear to be about race, and may not even directly appear to be about housing.

I talk in the book about the ways in which low-ball home value appraisals of property owned by Black people hurt their ability to sell and refinance. And those same houses have artificially high property tax appraisals, which makes them pay a disproportionate share of taxation, makes them subject to tax lien foreclosures and auctions, which have been a massive transfer of wealth, especially in the last 10 years.

Housing discrimination puts people from aggrieved groups in what Tricia Rose calls “proximity to toxicity,” close to incinerators, toxic waste dumps, diesel fuels, pesticides.

CNN: Policing for profit: How Ferguson’s fines violated rights of African-Americans

CNN (3/6/15)

It also is enacted through a tax system that functions as an engine of racial inequality. Property tax relief in some cities for homeowners has meant that renters—and the city of Ferguson in Missouri is an example of this—are harassed by predatory policing that imposes arbitrary fines, fees and debts on them as a way to raise municipal revenue, to make up for the subsidies that are given to people who’ve been able to profit from housing discrimination.

And there’s also mass incarceration, a disabling process, a disease-spreading practice. It affects people’s nervous systems, and anxiety produces hypertension.

Even something like insurance, which appears to be race-neutral because it’s determined by algorithms, the algorithms are created by humans, and they basically make the success of past discrimination an excuse for continuing and extending it by equating Black people with risk.

I’ll give an example. One of the things that affects your credit score is the kind of loan that you got. And so if you got a subprime loan, even if you qualified for a prime loan, you’re considered to be a credit risk, but there was nothing wrong with your behavior. It was the discrimination of the loan that was given to you.

So I say that the danger zone is everywhere, that housing discrimination harms health and steals wealth. And as you said, it not only harms its direct victims, it also squanders the skills and abilities of the people whose lives are shortened because of it, misallocates resources, and it basically increases costs of insurance and healthcare, policing, for everyone.

JJ: Let’s spell just a couple of things out, first about health: Housing discrimination harming health is not limited to polluters, like I talked about FreshDirect, being placed in aggrieved communities. The impact of housing policy on health—there’s a number of other pieces to that, yes?

GL: You can be in an area that has no medical services. We found that areas that have concentrated poverty, and concentrated populations of people who can’t move elsewhere because of housing discrimination, have more pedestrian accidents. The street lighting is worse.

People who are renters in this age of incredible shortages of housing—and part of that is because of a massive buy-up of homes by private equity firms—can’t really bargain with their landlords. If your landlord is somebody you know, that’s one thing. If it’s a private equity company that has 20,000 or 30,000 residences, you may not even be able to find out the identity of that landlord. And then it becomes very difficult to say, “Repair the furnace, make sure that the electricity is safe, make sure that the water is OK, deal with the pests and rodents that are in this place.” So it creates health hazards inside the houses. It creates hazards outside the houses.

CBS: The evolution of a food desert: How a Detroit neighborhood lost its stores

CBS (9/19/22)

Also, people who live in places where a lot of houses have been torn down—especially in a city like Detroit, where private equity firms have been buying them up and tearing them down—that produces dust, which young children bring into their homes from playing in the street, and it increases their likelihood of asthma and many other deadly diseases.

Farm workers constantly live in housing that is close to pesticides, close to pollution, but they also suffer from being in places that are food deserts, where you can’t get nutritious food, or food swamps, where you can only get non-nutritious food. And they also suffer from the lack of medical insurance, some of that caused by the high cost of housing. It means that rather than be evicted from their homes, they’ll forego necessary medicines and remedies that they would otherwise buy.

JJ: I don’t believe that people understand the interconnectedness of this, and I think that’s part of the way that we talk about things: Healthcare problems are one thing, housing problems are another thing. And if you disconnect those things, then you don’t get what’s happening. And that’s exactly what I think this book is getting at, is the way that these things are immediately connected. They have everything to do with one another.

For example, stealing wealth, which is the other part of the title: People think owning a home is central to the American dream, and it’s not just because you have a roof over your head. It’s because you have hereditary wealth. You now own a thing that you can transfer to your children, and that has everything to do with your sense of confidence in your life, and your ability to provide for folks, and your absence from, your distance from, precarity. All of these things are connected, which I think the book is trying to get at.

GL: Yeah, well, certainly these impediments to being able to inherit assets that appreciate in value, can be passed down across generations, it’s a massive transfer of wealth, and a tremendous injury that goes across generations. But it’s also a matter of: housing and healthcare are talked about separately, but they’re also talked about separately from education, from incarceration, from transportation, and yet they’re mutually constitutive.

Even within some of these fields, when people are trained in law, they focus on the tort model of injury. And this teaches them that discrimination has to be individual, intentional, interpersonal, and that it’s an aberrant practice in an otherwise fair market.

But, actually, this has nothing to do with the way housing discrimination works most of the time. Although there are 4 million instances of intentional, individual, interpersonal injuries every year, housing discrimination is also collective, cumulative, continuing. It produces inequalities that can’t be remedied one at a time.

Guardian: This article is more than 4 years old'It was everywhere': how lead is poisoning America's poorest children

Guardian (2/26/20)

And similarly with health, that we have an individualized model of health that imagines that people’s genetics, and whether they exercise and whether they eat healthy food, is the key thing in determining their health. But there are also collective issues, like sewage management, garbage collection, coal-burning furnaces and incinerators, lead in paint and gasoline.

All of these things have an impact on health, and they not only need to be studied together, but people involved in fair housing law have to think about health justice. People who are dispensing medical care need to think about the neighborhoods that their patients come from and return to, and the impact that those neighborhoods have on their health, and on the relations between parents and children, and on even whether people are considered valued in this society.

You live in a place that tells you you’re everybody’s lowest priority, you may not have a reason to want to be healthy. And then, if you add to that, the lack of physicians, the high cost of healthcare, the way in which pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies jack up the cost of healthcare, you’re basically engaged in a calculated cruelty in the organized abandonment of large numbers of people.

And this harm is most egregious on children, because they can’t defend themselves, because their physical systems are less able to deal with health menaces. And so we’re basically squandering a large part of the next generation in a country that is increasingly made up of people who are not white, and we’re basically setting those children up for failure. It’s like a time bomb that will go off in the future, and there’s a lot of foreseeable harm that could be prevented.

A key theory of pediatric care is that you don’t just remedy illnesses after they happen. You foresee them in advance and prevent them from happening. We could do that with the environment, we could do that with nutrition. We could do that with giving people a safe, affordable living environment. But we don’t do it, because there’s so much money to be made from injustice.

JJ: I do want to put folks onto the book The Danger Zone Is Everywhere, because there’s no way that we can address all of this in the time that we have. But I want to say, the book is enlightening about many things, and one of them is the importance of just the way that we look at, the way we see societal inequities, and the way we talk about them. And what you’re saying is we’re talking about rejecting this approach that addresses individuals as though they were divorced from community. We’re looking at individual actions by individual landlords, and not looking at systems, and that’s part of the problem.

GL: And this is what the law assumes, that an injury interrupts an otherwise just situation. You sue the individual perpetrator, you’re then made whole, and you go back to being fine.

But what if you’re not fine to begin with? What if there isn’t one individual perpetrator? What if it’s a conjuncture of obstacles in your way? Once you punish that one corporation, they declare bankruptcy, and they open up the next day with a different name.

And once the injured person wins a fair housing settlement, they go back into an innately unfair housing market, where they are disadvantaged in getting loans. They’re disadvantaged in getting insurance. They’re disadvantaged in their relations with the police. They’re disadvantaged in relation to the schools that their children are able to go to.

So multi-axis problems need multi-axis and intersectional solutions. And that means we need to work together. It means that there’s a limit to what any one of us can do as an individual to have good health or housing for ourselves, much less for the whole society.

And that’s why I try to stress in the book the emerging active and engaged public sphere constituency for good health and fair housing, and fair housing councils throughout the country, and advocates and attorneys who take on those cases, public health collectives, environmental justice organizing, community gardens, food co-ops, arts-based health projects like Building Healthy Communities in Boyle Heights, a whole series of community land trusts where people pool resources to take speculation out of the market.

And so people are mobilizing precisely because they realize that as an individual, there’s very little you can do. In the courtroom, the boardroom or the banker’s office, there are limits to what can be done.

Now there should be justice in all of those places, and individuals are entitled to good health, good housing, to the full benefits of civil rights law. But we also need to have an understanding that race itself is a political, not a biological, category, that it functions because people see things a certain way. Racism persists because people believe that people are members of different races, and we need to see racism as structural, systemic, collective.

And good health and good housing can’t just be left to be private commodities to be purchased. They’re public resources, and they need to be protected by the public, and nurtured and sustained.

LAT: Profiles of people living in homeless encampments. It’s rarely what you’d expect

LA Times (5/29/22)

JJ: I’ll only ask you one final question about news media, because we do see coverage, sometimes, about the difficulties of homelessness, or the problems of companies like Blackstone buying up homes. We see coverage. It’s just that it’s not connecting the dots. The story about why people are homeless is not connected to the story about venture capitalists buying up homes. It’s not connected.

And so to me, it’s what I call “narrating the nightmare.” Something terrible is happening, and look at these harmed people, but somehow we can’t name who’s behind it, or how it could be stopped. “But,” media say, “you can’t say we’re not acknowledging it because look at this one story where we said how harmful it is.”

And it drives me up a wall, because I know that reporters aren’t stupid, and I know that they’re not incapable of thinking systemically. I know they don’t think structural problems are boring, and I know that they don’t understand that regular people could grasp them.

So I guess what I’m saying is that corporate news media suffer from some of the same ailments that you are diagnosing in healthcare and housing, and could benefit from some of the same medicine, I guess.

NYT: Widespread Racial Bias Found in Home Appraisals

New York Times (11/2/22)

GL: Yeah, and some of this has to do with the demographics of the news media industry, which is similar to the demographics of the legal profession and the medical profession. There aren’t enough people who have experienced discrimination directly.

But it’s also that a good plot has a beginning, a middle and an end. And so last year there were a number of stories about bias in home appraisal, in which Black families got a low appraisal for their home and they then got a white friend to sit in for them, and they took down the Jacob Lawrence paintings and the Toni Morrison books. And when it appeared that the home was owned by a white person, it was as much as $500,000 more.

I’m glad they covered this, and this is a good story. And Fair Housing groups have sued about appraisal discrimination, and the National Fair Housing Alliance has a whole campaign about it.

But nobody connected those instances to the systemic problems in the appraisal industry, which Elizabeth Korver-Glenn has written about in her book Race Brokers. They haven’t related that the low home value appraisals are connected to high property tax appraisals, as Andrew Kahrl points out in his great book The Black Tax. So the information is out there, but it’s just that they end the story too soon, and they assume things are going to be all right.

Lorraine Hansberry wrote this play called A Raisin in the Sun, which is about a Black family moving into a white neighborhood. And at the end of the play, the Black people are in the neighborhood, and critics said, “Oh, this is a happy ending.” And Lorraine Hansberry said, “Well, if you think that’s a happy ending, wait until they wake up the next morning and have bricks and rocks thrown at their house, and the neighbors don’t talk to them, and the police harass them.”

And so you can’t end the story too soon. We have to think about all these interconnections.

JJ: Absolutely. And we could and will continue this conversation much further.

But I just want to tell folks that we’ve been speaking with George Lipsitz. He’s research professor emeritus of Black studies in sociology at the University of California/Santa Barbara. And the book we’re talking about is called The Danger Zone Is Everywhere, and it’s available now from University of California Press. George Lipsitz, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

GL: Thank you, Janine. I really appreciate the conversation.

 


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/18/housing-discrimination-is-collective-cumulative-continuing-counterspin-interview-with-george-lipsitz-on-the-impacts-of-housing-discrimination/feed/ 0 498251 As Helene’s immediate impacts recede, a public health threat rises https://grist.org/health/as-helenes-immediate-impacts-recede-a-public-health-threat-rises/ https://grist.org/health/as-helenes-immediate-impacts-recede-a-public-health-threat-rises/#respond Fri, 18 Oct 2024 08:45:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=651219 Each day at 10 in the morning, more than a dozen people gather outside Gold’s Gym just south of downtown Asheville, North Carolina. After organizing themselves into groups — Spanish speakers in one, for example, and those with medical skills in another — they grab a couple of five-gallon buckets each and climb into trucks. Soon everyone rumbles off to spend the day performing an essential task: Flushing toilets.

Twenty days after Hurricane Helene brought torrential rain and deadly floods to western North Carolina, over 100,000 people still lack potable water. The crisis stretches beyond the city out to nearby mountain communities of Swannanoa and Black Mountain. Federal and state officials have been sending water, but supplies are limited, and as service is restored, locals are being told to boil anything that didn’t come out of a bottle. Even as hundreds of thousands of people continue digging out from the devastation wrought by the storm, the risk of disease is mounting.

That’s how it is with a natural disaster like Helene or Hurricane Milton, which walloped Florida last week: The immediate injuries and loss of life are inevitably followed by longer-term physical and mental impacts. People throughout western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and beyond are beginning to grapple with these secondary consequences, which are compounded by the lack of potable water and the polluted mess the flood washed over the landscape.

“Even after the water recedes, residents may underestimate the potential for contamination by unseen bacteria such as fecal coliform, heavy metals such as lead, and organic and inorganic contaminants such as pesticides,” Jennifer Horney, a disaster epidemiologist at the University of Delaware, warned in the wake of the hurricane.  

The dozen or so toilet flushers who call themselves the “Flush Brigade” comprise one of several informal volunteer efforts that the people of Asheville rely upon to provide a basic level of sanitation. With the city’s water system knocked out by the floods and repairs expected to take weeks or more, residents have found themselves unable to take showers or even flush their toilets. Though municipal water is beginning to trickle back to the city, it’s highly chlorinated and filled with sediment.

Folks from the community nonprofit BeLoved Asheville started the Flush Brigade with help from a largely ad hoc band of water suppliers calling themselves Flush AVL. Everyone is working out of a brew pub downtown, and set to work visiting apartment complexes and mobile home parks almost immediately after the storm began. They’re at it all day, every day, and plan to stick around until the Asheville Water Resources Department is providing safe water again.

Earlier this week, they descended on Aston Park Tower, an 11-story public housing complex not far from downtown. Each carried a bucket sloshing with water as they crowded into elevators. Beyond helping folks with a task most people take for granted, the volunteers check on the well-being of the elderly, those with disabilities, and the homebound. Many of these Good Samaritans are nurses, and they expressed concern that the lack of sanitation could breed diseases like dysentery. For all the good an organization like The Flush Brigade is doing, the need far exceeds anyone’s capacity to meet it. The devastation is simply too great.

“I can’t go in and clean somebody’s room,” said one volunteer, a nurse who identified himself only as Norman. “I’m here to clean a wound. I can help take care of their person, but as far as where they’re living, their health is still at risk. But we’re not equipped to go in and mop somebody’s bathroom.” 

Such limitations become clear in towns along the French Broad River, where residents complain about the foul, landfill-like odor that has come to permeate the air as soil saturated with flood waters containing an unknown combination of chemicals and sewage dries and turns to dust. It doesn’t help that residents feel they’re receiving confusing public health information.

Two men clear mud and debris from their business in Asheville, which was inundated with floodwaters in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
Lucas Ross, left, and Nathan Joudry clear mud from Casablanca Cigar Bar in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on October 1 in Asheville, North Carolina.
Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images

“We got these suits on because the mud is toxic,” said Oren Mcclure, who was wearing a Tyvek suit, goggles, and boots as he headed downtown with his friend Isaiah Embler to help clean up. “There’s like chemicals and human waste in it, and we don’t want that getting all over us.” Local officials are still testing soil samples to determine what might be in it, and official advice is still to treat the mud as hazardous.

Embler, who grew up here, never trusted the river to begin with, mostly because the town is downstream from the Woodfin sewage plant. “My whole life I’ve been told not to swim in the French Broad because of that reason,” he said. “This just ain’t helping it at all.”

He is right to be worried. The state Department of Environmental Quality has received more than 1,000 reports of potentially worrisome incidents in the wake of Helene: — oil drums leaking into ponds, homeowners pumping pooled sewage into creeks, wastewater treatment plans critically damaged by the flood. Weeks after the storm, public health departments across the state continue warning residents to test their wells and to boil or bleach their water. They also have also told people not to drink from rivers and creeks or use that water for cooking, or to even rinse their hands. State and local health departments are providing water testing kits to anyone who asks for one, and urge people to disinfect wells and test them for fecal matter and other contaminants. In some cases, health officials are making it abundantly clear the water is not safe.

“This water is not drinkable, even if you boil it,” the town of Black Mountain, outside of Asheville, says on its website. “It is NOT TO BE USED for anything but flushing toilets.”  

Statewide, the official death toll from Helene stands at 125, with another 92 people missing. More than 2,000 households still don’t have power, and more than 600 roads remain closed. Against that backdrop, state and local officials are still engaged in search and recovery operations and scrambling to provide basic assistance. With all that’s happening, people in Asheville and beyond have said that the public health guidance they’ve received has been hard to parse. 

“We haven’t gotten a whole lot of information from the top down, so we’re just kind of playing it by ear,” said Amos McGregor, who owns a record store in downtown Marshall, which sits 30 minutes north of Asheville, that was flooded. 

When extreme weather brings flooding, the inundation courses into sewage plants, farms, and all manner of industrial operations, washing their contents over the landscape and into wells and water systems. That’s why public health officials in several counties throughout North Carolina and other states wracked by Helene are strongly urging residents not to touch the local waterways.

Flooded sewers always produce some degree of overflow. The sewage mixes into creeks, manholes, and wells, producing a dangerous soup of bacteria. Highly contagious illnesses like cholera, salmonella, and Norovirus can flourish in such conditions; all of these diseases can cause diarrhea, vomiting, and dehydration that can severely sicken and even kill the immunocompromised, elderly, and very young. 

An aerial shot of Asheville, North Carolina shows the extensive damage caused by the flooding that followed Hurricane Helene.
The flooding that followed Hurricane Helene inundated Asheville, North Carolina and surrounding communities with water dirtied by all manner of pollution. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Hurricanes and the flooding that comes with them don’t just stir up gastrointestinal diseases, they produce large quantities of dust, silt and mold that carry a different health risk. “People suffer at higher rates from some physical conditions, including upper respiratory infections, asthma exacerbations and allergies,” said Timothy William Collins, a disaster and health researcher at the University of Utah. 

The medical and public health communities have long known that natural disasters intensified by climate change could continue to claim lives long after the immediate crisis has passed. They’ve seen this in Bangladesh, where flooding earlier this year overwhelmed sewage systems and sent the water-borne bacterial cholera into the water supply. In the Americas, the mosquito-borne illness dengue fever afflicted millions of people in 2022 and 2023, a spike health researchers attribute to flooding exacerbated by climate change. 

Given all of this, Helene’s final tally is sure to rise, though if the past is any indication, even the official count may not reflect the storm’s true cost. When Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico in 2017, the government initially reported 64 deaths. A year later, an analysis that examined how many people would have died in the months after the storm if it hadn’t hit the archipelago found that the Category 4 cyclone actually killed more than 3,000 people. 

Medical volunteers and epidemiologists on the ground in Asheville and the surrounding counties say it’s still too soon to tell what the most worrisome diseases might be, especially since Helene’s impact on communications has blunted data collection. A local doctor who identified herself only as Dr. Alexander has joined Elliott Patterson, a graduate student studying public health at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill volunteering at field clinics around Asheville. They’ve seen a lot of people with irritating skin ailments and chronic respiratory conditions, like asthma, probably exacerbated by dust. That’s on top of things like blisters from yellowjacket stings; poison ivy contracted while slogging through mud, brush, and debris; and communicable diseases like COVID-19 and the flu that often make the rounds in shelters. But it’s hard to say for sure where things are trending, they said. 

State epidemiologist Zach Moore acknowledged that the interruption of services at emergency rooms and health departments due to loss of power and internet, not to mention the disruption to their employees’ lives, is hindering data collection as well. “There are limitations there in terms of data for reportable conditions that we track on the individual case basis,” he said, though the state has been continuing to process lab results and receive physician reports.

At this point, only one thing is certain: The people of Asheville and the communities of the Blue Ridge Mountains will be grappling with the health impacts of this storm long after the floodwaters recede and the taps are running clear.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As Helene’s immediate impacts recede, a public health threat rises on Oct 18, 2024.


This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Katie Myers.

]]> https://grist.org/health/as-helenes-immediate-impacts-recede-a-public-health-threat-rises/feed/ 0 498117 George Lipsitz on the Impacts of Housing Discrimination https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/11/george-lipsitz-on-the-impacts-of-housing-discrimination/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/11/george-lipsitz-on-the-impacts-of-housing-discrimination/#respond Fri, 11 Oct 2024 13:16:43 +0000 https://fair.org/?p=9042518  


 

Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).

 

The Danger Zone Is Everywhere, by George Lipsitz

UC Press (2024)

This week on CounterSpin: For many people and for media, the idea of “racial discrimination in housing” invokes an image of individual landlords refusing to rent or sell homes to Black and brown people. But that understanding is so incomplete as to be harmful. A new book doesn’t just illuminate the thicket of effects of systemic racism as it affects where people live; it reframes the understanding of the role of housing—connecting housing injustice with health inequities and wealth disparities, as well as lifting up work that connects those “mutually constitutive” elements of what the author calls an “unjust, destructive and even deadly racial order.”

George Lipsitz is research professor emeritus of Black studies and sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He’s author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness and How Racism Takes Place, among other titles. He joins us to talk about his new book: The Danger Zone Is Everywhere: How Housing Discrimination Harms Health and Steals Wealth.

 

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent coverage of the port strike.

 


This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by CounterSpin.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/11/george-lipsitz-on-the-impacts-of-housing-discrimination/feed/ 0 497235 Climate impacts put insurance commissioner races in the spotlight https://grist.org/elections/climate-impacts-put-insurance-commissioner-races-in-the-spotlight/ https://grist.org/elections/climate-impacts-put-insurance-commissioner-races-in-the-spotlight/#respond Tue, 24 Sep 2024 08:15:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=648556 This story is part of State of Emergency, a Grist series exploring how climate disasters are impacting voting and politics. It is published with support from the CO2 Foundation.

During the presidential debate earlier this month, Vice President Kamala Harris was asked about her plan to fight climate change. Her response didn’t focus on the dangers of drought or rising sea levels, or unveil an ambitious plan to reign in fossil fuel emissions. Instead, her answer focused on home insurance. “It is very real,” Harris said. “You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or it’s being jacked up.”

Just a few years ago, Harris’ insurance comments may have been considered wonky or boring to voters. But since 2020, the increasing number and severity of natural disasters like wildfires and hurricanes have cast home insurance markets into turmoil, leading to an explosive rise in premiums. 

Unaffordable premiums now represent one of the most tangible ways that climate change is affecting everyday Americans. And this election season, insurance commissioners — the state officials in charge of overseeing these markets — are suddenly in the hot seat. 

These officials have historically operated outside of the spotlight, steeped in financial statements and wonky regulations. In the 11 states that elect their commissioners — the rest appoint them — these races have rarely received much interest. In some elections, incumbents don’t even face a challenger. In others, state data shows that as many as 17 percent of voters simply skip over that section of their ballots. 

“It’s just not something [voters] pay attention to until things go wrong,” said Dave Jones, who served as California’s insurance commissioner from 2011 to 2019. “Right now, things are going wrong.”

In recent years, insurance companies have found themselves increasingly on the hook for homes hit by wildfires and severe storms. In Louisiana, a parade of back-to-back hurricanes and extreme storms in 2020 and 2021 caused insurers to pay out well over twice as much money as they brought in. Similarly, in Colorado, where the state has experienced over 40 billion-dollar disasters in the past decade, insurers lost money in eight of the past 11 years. 

To pay for all this damage, premiums have been skyrocketing nationwide. According to a 2024 study of insurance rates, the average home premium rose 33 percent between 2020 and 2023. In disaster-prone areas like Florida, the Gulf Coast, and California, rates have increased even more, with some insurers pulling out of markets entirely. 

Chart showing the average U.S. homeowners insurance premiums from 2014-2023


“The insurance crisis that people and businesses are experiencing — not just in California, but across the United States — is the price that we’re paying for failure to more aggressively transition from a fossil fuel-based economy,” Jones said.

These rising costs are prompting voters to take a closer look at elected commissioners that regulate the industry in their home states — and it is forcing candidates to more thoroughly consider insurance shifts and climate change in their platforms.

States have been regulating their insurance markets for more than 150 years, with New Hampshire appointing the nation’s first commissioner in 1851. These regulators are tasked with setting reasonable limits on how much insurance companies can charge for home, car, health, and life insurance. They also oversee how insurers manage their money, so they have enough to pay their bills when disaster strikes. For the vast majority of their history, insurance commissioners haven’t thought much about climate change.

“When I came in, climate change was kind of a footnote,” said Mike Kreidler, Washington’s outgoing insurance commissioner, who was first elected to the office in 2000. “That was something that bothered me a lot, because I saw the risks.”

Kreidler’s early attempts at climate action were met with fierce resistance. As an early member of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ climate working group, he recalled some of his peers asking him to remove the word “climate change” from his proposals. “I took a lot of abuse back then on these issues,” Kreidler said. “It’s not something that a number of commissioners wanted to talk about.”

Even in progressive states, climate change was often overshadowed by flashier issues. In California, Jones first ran for office in the wake of the newly passed Affordable Care Act. He and his 2010 opponent both campaigned almost entirely on health care issues. 

But by Jones’ second term, it was clear things were changing. California was starting to see a worrying trend of expensive wildfires: Starting in 2015, California was hit with billion-dollar wildfires every year until 2023. One of the most tragic examples came in 2018, when the Camp Fire devastated the Northern California town of Paradise, leveling entire neighborhoods and displacing more than 50,000 residents. Jones spent his final year in office making sure fire victims received the claims they were owed, and writing recommendations to protect the system against future disasters. 

Former California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones holds up a copy of a report during a news conference about the costs of wildfires in 2018, in San Francisco.
AP Photo/Eric Risberg

Soon, other states joined California in starting to feel the effects of climate change on the insurance market. In 2021, home premiums — which had remained relatively stable until then — dramatically started to spike nationwide. Insurance commissioners could no longer afford to ignore the impacts of worsening extreme weather. Some candidates, like Delaware’s incumbent insurance commissioner Trinidad Navarro, have called climate change one of the most concerning issues going forward. It’s “become a number one issue for insurance regulators across the United States,” Jones said.

It has become an important issue for voters as well. Over the last few years, major insurance companies have started backing out of high-risk parts of the country. California’s largest insurer, State Farm, stopped accepting new customers, and will not renew policies for roughly 30,000 homeowners and renters living in certain risky parts of the state. Meanwhile, in Florida, so many homeowners have been denied coverage that the government-created “last-resort” program is now the largest insurance provider in the state. This trend — of fewer and more expensive options — is leading some frustrated voters to turn their attention toward their elected leaders. 

This year, North Carolina has become the battleground of one of the nation’s first insurance commissioner races centered largely around climate impacts. Coastal storms and hurricanes are taking a worsening toll on the state — like Hurricane Florence, which caused over $16 billion in property damage in 2018. In response, North Carolina insurers requested a 42 percent increase in home insurance rates. In certain coastal neighborhoods, they asked for a rate increase of 99 percent. 

This proposal was met with fury: Insurance commissioner Mike Causey, a Republican, received more than 24,000 emails, and a public comment session held earlier this year was filled with roughly seven hours of angry testimony, from small town mayors to ordinary homeowners. Senior citizens feared that their social security income wouldn’t cover their new premiums, and local military families worried that their housing allowances would also fall short. Realtors worried the new rates would deal a devastating blow to the state’s housing market. Causey eventually rejected the initial proposal, calling them “excessive and unfairly discriminatory,” but has yet to settle on new insurance rates. Causey did not respond to multiple interview requests.

For Natasha Marcus, a Democratic state senator challenging Causey in the election this year, this public outcry has brought a lot of attention to the commissioner race. According to an August poll from the group Carolina Forward, Marcus and Causey are currently neck-and-neck. “It’s the sexiest race on the ballot,” Marcus said, half jokingly. “As soon as people realize how directly it impacts their wallets, they take an interest.”

Marcus is hoping for more transparency in the rate-setting process, to give customers a better sense of whether premium hikes are truly justified. Her vision is for a courtroom-like procedure, where insurers can make their case to the public, and her office can cross-examine their arguments.

Democratic candidate for North Carolina’s Commissioner of Insurance, Natasha Marcus, speaks at a primary election night party in Raleigh on March 5.
AP Photo/Karl B DeBlaker

While Marcus acknowledges the threat of climate change, she feels that North Carolina insurers are using extreme weather as a pretext to ask for unreasonably high rates, pointing to a New York Times investigation that shows the state’s insurers have made profits 10 of the past 11 years. She worries that large insurance companies are seeking easy profits from North Carolina to make up for the money they’re losing in other states.

A 2022 Federal Reserve analysis found that insurers are indeed quicker to ask for rate hikes in states with looser insurance regulations, and more hesitant in highly regulated states like California — even if those states experience frequent disasters. 

However, Ben Keys, an economist and professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, says that this trend does not explain the recent hike in insurance costs. He and a colleague recently analyzed premiums from 47 million homeowners across the country, revealing an unprecedented view into the causes of the insurance crisis.

Over the past 40 years, Americans have been moving to more disaster-prone regions of the U.S. South and West. “A hurricane cutting the Gulf side of Florida now just encounters way more houses, way more businesses, way more roads, way more infrastructure than it did 40 years ago,” Keys said.

At the same time, climate change has been increasing the frequency and severity of extreme storms and wildfires in those fast-growing regions. Finally, when disaster strikes, inflation and labor shortages have driven up the cost of rebuilding. 

All of these factors have made disasters more expensive, and contributed to the rise in premiums. But the biggest factor behind the rise, according to Keys, is the way that climate change is reshaping a fundamental pillar of the insurance industry.

Insurance is built around the assumption that disaster doesn’t strike everyone at the same time. For many types of insurance, that assumption is mostly true — a car insurer, for example, knows that it’s unlikely that every driver will get into a fender bender on the exact same day. But when it comes to home insurance, climate change is causing this assumption to crumble. A major wildfire could easily burn down an entire town, or a hurricane could easily rip the roofs off all the homes in a neighborhood. For this reason, insurance companies in disaster-prone regions end up purchasing their own insurance policies, known as “reinsurance.” 


Reinsurance protects regular insurance companies from going bankrupt from a string of major disasters. Since reinsurance companies cover the epicenters of extreme weather, they’ve recently become extremely sensitive to climate risk. Since 2020, premiums for reinsurance have doubled, and will likely continue to rise. In states that experience frequent extreme weather disasters — like Louisiana, Texas, and Florida — insurance companies end up purchasing a lot of expensive reinsurance, and those costs get passed down to customers. 

This is the biggest factor behind the recent surge in home insurance premiums, and Keys doesn’t expect it to stop anytime soon. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Jacques de Vaucleroy, the chairman of the major reinsurance firm Swiss Re, said that reinsurance premiums will continue to rise until people stop building in dangerous areas. 

This puts candidates like Marcus in a difficult position. Voters may hate high insurance rates, but they also love their state’s beautiful coastline. “It is not a solution to say, ‘Well, there will just be no houses on the coast anymore,’” Marcus said. “Nobody wants that.” 

Mike Pollack searches for a drain in the yard of his flooded waterfront home in Wilmington, North Carolina, a day after Hurricane Florence in 2018.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Keys thinks that insurance commissioners will have to make some difficult and unpopular decisions going forward. He worries that elected commissioners might choose to please voters in the short term, instead of addressing the root causes.

“It’s very fraught to have an elected official in charge of regulating this market,” Keys said. “If you set prices too low, then you make voters happy — but at the cost of not reflecting the true risk. That’s going to encourage people to build more in risky areas.”

While Marcus believes the rate hikes proposed earlier this year in North Carolina were unjustified, she acknowledges that climate change will inevitably cause rates to increase in the future. “I never promise that I will never raise your rates if you elect me,” Marcus said. “It sounds really good on the campaign trail, but I tell the truth. And the truth is, sometimes rates do need to go up.”

Instead, Marcus hopes that more transparency would keep insurers honest, and her campaign pledges to push for more adaptation and resilience. For example, North Carolina’s high-risk insurance program offers grants to policyholders to storm-proof their roofs. Marcus would like to see more resources devoted to that program. “If the hurricane comes through and your roof stays on, you’re going to have a lot less damage,” Marcus said. “That helps reduce insurance costs for everybody.” 

This is something that insurance commissioner candidates in other states are pushing for as well. In Montana, a state that over the past decade has averaged 7.2 million acres burned annually, Republican candidate James Brown has called for insurance incentives for homeowners who implement fire resilience measures to their homes. In Washington, Democratic candidate Patty Kuderer has called for similar plans in her state.

This combination of photos shows a house on a hillside near Cle Elum, Washington, surrounded by wildfire flames on August 14, 2012, top, and a day later, bottom. The house survived because of fire resilience measures, including the placement of the driveway and the lack of trees and brush up against the house.
AP Photo/Elaine Thompson


Jones, now the director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley, has been advocating for similar reforms in California since leaving office. In recent years, the state and local governments have been spending millions on prescribed burning and thinning in order to make forests and communities more resilient to wildfires. Jones has been working with lawmakers to make sure California insurers take those investments into account when writing and pricing policies. 

In this way, insurance could serve as both a carrot and a stick, discouraging people from building in risky areas, and also rewarding people for making their homes and communities more resilient. But Jones also hopes that voters will put the pieces together.

“If the voters are connecting the dots, they should understand that what they’re experiencing — in terms of increased price and lack of availability of insurance — is driven by climate change, ” Jones said. “They should look to elect an insurance commissioner who’s going to be a leader in addressing the underlying driver of the problem, which is climate change.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate impacts put insurance commissioner races in the spotlight on Sep 24, 2024.


This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jesse Nichols.

]]> https://grist.org/elections/climate-impacts-put-insurance-commissioner-races-in-the-spotlight/feed/ 0 494900 The world’s garment workers are on the frontlines of climate impacts https://grist.org/labor/the-worlds-garment-workers-are-on-the-frontlines-of-climate-impacts/ https://grist.org/labor/the-worlds-garment-workers-are-on-the-frontlines-of-climate-impacts/#respond Thu, 02 May 2024 08:45:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=636642 This story is published in partnership with The Fuller Project.

As Nour feeds another half-finished pair of pants through her sewing machine, her arms begin to shake. Amid the whir of fans, her T-shirt sticks to her like skin. She fights to focus, knowing full well her target of up to 100 pieces an hour isn’t going to hit itself. 

“I am completely soaked in sweat,” the 38-year-old says of her work shifts. “The heat makes me exhausted.”

Nour, who asked to use a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal from her employer, works at Yakjin, a South Korean-owned garment factory in Cambodia. More than 2,500 employees here stitch apparel for major U.S. giants like Walmart and Gap. Workers at Yakjin say the heat often leads to near-fainting episodes, fatigue, and dehydration. With no windows, the air feels stifling but their requests for fans are at times ignored. 

Workers at three other factories in Phnom Penh, the country’s capital, producing clothes for brands like Primark, H&M, and Old Navy (owned by Gap Inc.), told similar stories of worsening heat.

Around the world, fashion’s mostly female labor force is grappling with working conditions made increasingly unbearable and unhealthy by climate change. Women picking cotton in India’s sun-baked fields are toiling in temperatures of roughly 113 degrees Fahrenheit, while workers in Ghana’s Kantamanto — one of the world’s largest second-hand markets where clothing discarded by Western consumers is resold — are losing vital wages when flooding prevents trade. Nour is just one of nearly 1 million garment workers in Cambodia, a country that has experienced roughly 1.4 degrees F degrees of warming per decade since the 1960s.

Employees sit at sewing machines at a garment factory in Cambodia
Employees work at a garment factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 2021. Ouyang Kaiyu/China News Service via Getty Images

Fashion has had a devastating impact on the planet, producing more greenhouse gas emissions than aviation and shipping combined. So far, labor experts say, the more than $2.5 trillion industry has mostly focused its climate change efforts on mitigation, such as using more recycled fabrics, while largely ignoring how it impacts workers. 

“[Labor] violations in factories are so gross, as in so widespread, and so awful… that that’s where the attention has been,” said Liz Parker, an associate member of Clean Clothes Campaign, an Amsterdam-based alliance of labor unions and nongovernmental organizations. “But workers are suffering from heat stress, from flooding, from water pollution…and we need to protect [them] from that as well.” 

To expose how climate change is impacting workers throughout fashion’s supply chain, The Fuller Project tracked products from several brands — including Walmart, Primark, H&M, Gap, and Old Navy — across several countries. At each stage, women play a vital role in the global business of fashion yet their livelihoods — and lives — are being increasingly threatened by extreme weather. 

Cotton fields appear outside the car window an hour into the drive from Ahmedabad, capital of Gujarat state on India’s western coast. In every field, a woman in a sari is scooping cotton blossoms into a bag, spots of bright color that punctuate green fields topped with white fluff.  

Roshan Osmanbhai arrives at 7 a.m. daily and ties a strip of cloth around her head to protect it from the sun. By midday, the temperature will hit more than 80 degrees F. The last week of January is supposed to be the height of winter in Gujarat, with average temperatures hovering around 68 degrees F. She hasn’t felt that traditional winter for years. 

India is the world’s biggest grower of cotton after China. Six million farmers make a living from the sector, most of them women, according to Better Cotton, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable production. Cotton’s global supply chain is complex and lacks transparency, but Primark and H&M both confirmed they source from India. Walmart, Gap, and Old Navy didn’t respond to The Fuller Project’s requests for comment, but nonprofits monitoring supply chains said they likely do as well. 

“If you’re in the apparel business…you have to come here,” said Ashis Mondal, former director of Action for Social Advancement, an Indian nonprofit supporting small farmers. “You have no other option.”

Across the region, the farms might be run by women, but few of them own the land they cultivate. The precarious nature of their work is exacerbated further by the changing climate, with summers arriving earlier and monsoon rains delayed or declining, damaging crops. India recorded extreme weather events on nearly 90 percent of the days in the first nine months of 2023, according to The Centre of Science and Environment, a research organization based in New Delhi, killing nearly 3,000 people and ruining almost 5 million acres of crop area.

A woman picks cotton in Maharashtra, India
A woman picks cotton in Maharashtra, India in 2022. Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

In Gujarat last year, summer rolled in before March, say the women. The temperature shot up to roughly 113 degrees F before anybody knew what to do. Women farmers complained the heat was making it hard to carry on. “The heat makes our skin itch,” said Jessuben Jhapra, a 49-year-old farmer. “Heat rash can erupt all over the body. Our eyes are under enormous strain.”

The weather patterns have invited new and unfamiliar pests, requiring pesticides that have created further health problems for the women. Most own protective gear — gloves, boots, goggles — but don’t always use them when it’s hot. Two years ago, Alayben Zilriya, a 55-year-old farmer with sharp cheekbones and thin-rimmed spectacles, sprayed pesticides on the plants using her bare hands. She got such a severe reaction that she had to visit the doctor for treatment. Today, the skin on her hands is still shriveled, her nails grayish.

Excessive temperatures can do serious harm to humans. Heat exhaustion sets in when too much water and salt is lost, usually due to excessive sweating. Symptoms include nausea, dizziness, thirst, and palpitations. It can be hard to think clearly — hot weather is linked to reduced cognitive function, judgement errors, and higher risk of occupational injury.

For Nour, this sounds familiar. Even though drinking water is available at her factory, she feels dehydrated and has little energy to work. When it’s hot she takes more toilet breaks but misses her hourly targets and says her supervisors at Yakjin become verbally abusive. 

“They curse or insult us,” she explained. “They blame us.” 

Workers at Yakjin interviewed by The Fuller Project said they often feel ill or faint. Ry, 38, who has been employed at the factory for over a decade, thinks the heat is getting worse. Climate change is part of the problem, he says, but also fans aren’t maintained or replaced. While the building has fans that blow mist to keep workers cool, they do not reach all employees. For over two years, Ry has asked the factory for more, but says his requests have fallen on deaf ears. 

Only a small handful of Cambodia’s roughly 1,300 garment factories have air conditioning, according to Seang Yot from The Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union, or C-CAWDU. 

At lunchtime, Yakjin employees hang cloth above their heads in the outdoor canteen for extra shade. In heavy rains during the wet season, the area floods, as does the factory, workers tell The Fuller Project. Cambodia is already highly vulnerable to flooding, including flash flooding, but projected climate change trends indicate this is only set to get worse — affecting tens of thousands more people each year by 2030. Workers are concerned about electric shocks as flood water comes in contact with the factory’s electrical systems, said Nour, though no one has been hurt yet.

“Anything involving money is always a problem,” explained Ry, who also asked to use a pseudonym. “The factory managers don’t care about how heat impacts us, only that we speed up and work faster.”

In an email, Yakjin Cambodia’s management said the factory maintains “a comfortable indoor temperature with cooling and ventilation systems,” including fans and air conditioners, but said there was no AC in the sewing line. 

They said there have been no reported cases of fainting in the past two years, and that exhaustion could have many causes including inadequate healthcare, exercise, and lack of sleep, as well as heat.

There are grievance mechanisms in place for workers and no one had reported supervisors becoming verbally abusive when production targets were missed. Yakjin said the factory does not flood during the rainy season and there was no risk of electric shock.

Walmart, which sources from Yakjin, said it “does not tolerate unsafe working conditions” and is looking into the matter. 

While Cambodia has always been hot, extreme heat now presents a major threat to human health. The country’s garment sector is particularly vulnerable to climate change because it emerged largely ad hoc with little oversight, according to a 2022 report led by Laurie Parsons, senior lecturer in geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. 

Textile workers wade through floodwaters in Cambodia.
Workers wade through floodwaters trying to salvage clothes from a factory on the outskirts of Phnom Penh in October 2020. Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP via Getty Images

Many of the factories, for example, are technically warehouses. “They’re not built for humans,” said Parsons. Most are also privately rented, which means factory owners have little power — or incentive — to implement changes, added Yot.

Cambodia’s labor law sets no limit on workplace temperatures, saying only they must be “reasonable for employees.” In neighboring Thailand, with a similar-sized garment industry, the maximum is 93 degrees F wet bulb temperature (a way of measuring heat stress that takes into account factors like temperature and humidity, among others).

Over two days, The Fuller Project asked a garment worker to measure temperatures using a digital thermometer in the sewing section of Jade Sun Garment, a factory producing for brands like Primark, Old Navy, and George, a British clothing line sold widely in Walmart. Recordings taken by a garment worker in February, one of the cooler months, hit 97.7 degrees F. 

During the hottest months, from April to May, the country’s daytime outdoor temperatures can soar above 104 degrees F. Leakhena, a soft-spoken sewer who’s worked at Jade Sun for several years, often feels “nearly unconscious” during this period. “We need more oxygen,” she explained. “I cannot breathe properly.”

The water provided by the factory isn’t clean either, she said. “It smells a lot. When we drink water from that tap it gives us a sore throat.”

In response to inquiries from The Fuller Project about workers’ claims, Gap Inc. said it is opening investigations into Yakjin and Jade Sun Garment and will take appropriate action to remediate any breach of its policies. Primark is aware of the issues raised in connection with Jade Sun Garment and is in the process of “supporting remediation” with its management, adding the safety of workers in their supply chain is “extremely important” to the company. Jade Sun Garment and George did not reply to multiple requests for comment. 

In an email, Heng Sour, Cambodia’s Minister of Labour and Vocational Training, said the government is “deeply concerned” about worker welfare. He said The Fuller Project’s temperature recording at Jade Sun Garment offered a “limited view” because it used a single thermometer but pointed to the need for a “more detailed analysis to accurately assess and respond to temperature conditions.” The government is also in the process of “potentially” establishing maximum workplace temperatures and since being contacted has accelerated the deployment of additional cooling systems to factories. 

Once their shift is over, women return home — yet there is no reprieve from the soaring temperatures. Many live in privately rented dormitories, often single-bedroom dwellings with low, metal roofs and little protection against extreme weather. Several workers described them as virtually unlivable in the heat. 

“I want to see change,” said Leakhena, who also asked to use a pseudonym for fear of reprisals. “The heat is making us more exhausted every day. We don’t know what impact it will have on our health after five or 10 years. And by that point, it’s already too late.”

Inside Accra’s bustling central business district lies Kantamanto. A sprawling complex packed with vendors who sell what’s known locally as obroni wawu or “dead white man’s clothes.”

Ghana was the largest importer of used clothing in 2021, with $214 million worth of garments passing across its borders. When consumers in the United States or United Kingdom donate their old T-shirts, only 10 to 30 percent are resold in stores. The rest disappears into a vast network, often ending up here, West Africa’s hub for used garments from the West. In Kantamanto, stalls sell clothing from Primark, H&M, Walmart, GAP, and Old Navy.

Young women and teenage girls move through the market balancing 120-pound bales of clothing on their heads. Known as kayayei, they transport bales from importers to stalls, storage, and disposal sites, earning 30 cents to $1 per trip. The market’s narrow aisles don’t allow for motorized modes of transport, so the women play a crucial link in the second-hand supply chain. Their work frequently causes neck and spine injuries, said Liz Ricketts, co-founder of The Or Foundation, a Ghana and U.S.-based nonprofit. They also face sexual violence, including rape, and are at high risk of unplanned pregnancies, according to the United Nations.

Many are here because climate change has made farming in their villages unviable, but the cities have proven to be no refuge either. Ghana is experiencing more intense and frequent flooding and storms as global temperatures tick up. In Kantamanto, clothing waste clogs the gutters, which exacerbates the flooding, says Ricketts, and leads to an increased risk of cholera and malaria.

Women sort through secondhand clothes at a market in Ghana
Women sort through secondhand clothes at the Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana in 2023. Nipah Dennis / AFP via Getty Images

The market is open every day but Sunday. When clouds gather, 18-year-old Mariam Karim starts to worry. She earns roughly $14 a week carting bales of second-hand clothes from trucks, which covers her basic needs such as rent and food. During the rainy season, fewer customers show up and the market shuts roughly twice a month from flooding, according to Ricketts, often leaving women without pay.    

A downpour can also mean no sleep. “Flooding at my home is common,” said Karim, who lives near the market in a wooden, makeshift dwelling. “I will usually scoop the water out of my room until it subsides. It is scary because colleagues have even lost their lives and properties.”

West Africa is a climate change hotspot and Accra’s low elevation makes it particularly vulnerable. After more than three decades working at Kantamanto, it’s something Daniel Ampadu, vice chairman of the Kantamanto Used Clothing Association, has seen with his own eyes. 

“I am old enough so I can tell you that these days, so much rain comes…and many places, especially our market, gets flooded,” he said. “This wasn’t the case 30 years ago.”

Of the five brands examined across India, Cambodia and Ghana, only Primark and H&M provided details in response to queries about what they are doing to protect workers in their global supply chain from climate change. Primark said it knows it must “act to mitigate” the causes and effects of climate change and support their supply chain partners in similar efforts, such as educating farmers in their Sustainable Cotton Programme, a training scheme. H&M said it is aware of the impact that climate change has on the people in its supply chains and “constantly review and adapt” the scope of its climate-related risks.

For decades, the fashion industry’s exploitation of workers in low-income countries has been well documented. But a new challenge now presents itself: Who will protect them from a climate crisis that the very same industry helped bring about?  

Better Factories Cambodia, a partnership between the International Labour Organisation, the UN’s labor agency, and the International Finance Corporation, has repeatedly recorded what it says are unacceptable workplace temperatures during inspections. Although some factories have invested in improved lighting and better ventilation, most need to do more, it says. More recently, fashion brands involved in Action, Collaboration, Transformation, or ACT, a global agreement aimed at transforming the garment industry, have begun to discuss ways to solve the heat problem for its workers, said Yot. Unless extreme heat and flooding are addressed, countries vital for fashion production, including Cambodia, risk losing $65 billion in export earnings and 1 million potential jobs by 2030, according to research by Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute. 

“The buck stops always with the brands,” said Parsons. “[But] it’s kind of like pushing an open door… They’re like, yes, we should think about this but they haven’t yet.”

For Nour, she’d simply like to feel cool air on her face. Or the freedom to catch her breath. After work, she showers, washing away the sweat. For a brief moment, she feels alive, before being engulfed by the factory’s heat once more.

Additional reporting by Sineat Yon

The Fuller Project is a non-profit newsroom dedicated to the coverage of women’s issues around the world. Sign up for the Fuller Project’s newsletter, and follow the organization on X or LinkedIn.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The world’s garment workers are on the frontlines of climate impacts on May 2, 2024.


This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Louise Donovan.

]]> https://grist.org/labor/the-worlds-garment-workers-are-on-the-frontlines-of-climate-impacts/feed/ 0 472632 Corporate Climate Coverage a Washout after Storm Ciarán Impacts Tuscany https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/22/corporate-climate-coverage-a-washout-after-storm-ciaran-impacts-tuscany/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/22/corporate-climate-coverage-a-washout-after-storm-ciaran-impacts-tuscany/#respond Fri, 22 Mar 2024 21:04:50 +0000 https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=39058 The historic tourist region of Tuscany in central Italy is world famous for food and wine, agrarian scenery, Renaissance art and architecture (including the Duomo, the Uffizi Gallery, Michelangelo’s David), and its perfect Mediterranean climate. In October-November 2023, however, Tuscany was in the news for torrential, hundred-year rains that killed…

The post Corporate Climate Coverage a Washout after Storm Ciarán Impacts Tuscany appeared first on Project Censored.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/22/corporate-climate-coverage-a-washout-after-storm-ciaran-impacts-tuscany/feed/ 0 465743 Indigenous Leaders and Environmental Groups Deliver Petitions Urging Army Corps of Engineers to Address Line 5 Pipeline Impacts https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/18/indigenous-leaders-and-environmental-groups-deliver-petitions-urging-army-corps-of-engineers-to-address-line-5-pipeline-impacts/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/18/indigenous-leaders-and-environmental-groups-deliver-petitions-urging-army-corps-of-engineers-to-address-line-5-pipeline-impacts/#respond Mon, 18 Mar 2024 20:18:40 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/indigenous-leaders-and-environmental-groups-deliver-petitions-urging-army-corps-of-engineers-to-address-line-5-pipeline-impacts

Last week, the Indigenous Women’s Treaty Alliance and environmental groups delivered a petition with 9,000+ signatures calling on the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a robust environmental review of the Line 5 crude oil pipeline reroute. The petition builds on growing momentum to shut down Line 5 permanently. Two weeks ago, leaders of 30 Tribal Nations in the Great Lakes region sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging the United States to take action against the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline’s trespass on the Bad River Band’s sovereign territories.

The petition delivery comes ahead of the Washington D.C. premiere of the BAD RIVER documentary film, which will be attended by Bad River Tribal leaders, community advocates, environmental groups, and Congressional and government leaders and officials. The film will be released in 15 AMC and local theaters throughout the country on March 15th, many of which will run through the weekend, with 50% of ticket sales going to the Bad River Band.

Enbridge’s Line 5, a 645 mile and 70-year-old oil pipeline, has continued to operate illegally through the Bad River Band’s land in northern Wisconsin and the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan. The existing infrastructure poses a serious threat to the Great Lakes region which holds one-fifth of the world's surface freshwater. Enbridge's proposed reroute will still impact the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa’s sovereign land and watersheds. Despite the Bad River Band’s request that Enbridge immediately shutdown the existing illegal pipeline, the company is moving forward seeking permits for the reroute.

During the petition delivery, the Indigenous Women’s Treaty Alliance brought attention to the cultural and environmental impacts of the Line 5 pipeline, the need for a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Line 5 reroute, and the urgent calls to shutdown and decommission the pipeline permanently. Ahead of the delivery, members of the Indigenous Women’s Treaty Alliance and allies met with the Army Corps and Congressional leaders. See a livestream of the delivery and rally here.

While the unprecedented Great Lakes Tunnel Project in the Straits of Mackinac aims to replace only a small segment of the overall degrading pipeline, four tribes, environmental groups, and numerous Great Lakes advocates continue to object to the high-risk project that would encase the pipeline in concrete beneath the Lake. This unusual pipeline mechanism introduces an entirely new and extremely dangerous set of explosion risks to the Lakes and surrounding communities.

The petition delivery and rally was led by the Indigenous Women’s Treaty Alliance (IWTA) with support from the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) and Sierra Club. Please see quotes below from leaders of the IWTA, which is facilitated by the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network:

Rene Ann Goodrich, Bad River Ojibwe, Native Lives Matter Coalition and Wisconsin Department of Justice MMIW Task Force Member: “Line 5 crosses over tribal treaty territory and one of those ceded territories is my own reservation of Bad River. The dangers that Line 5 brings to the water and environment is a huge and immediate concern. As a Bad River tribal member our way of life, historical homelands, cultural resources, subsistence, wild rice, medicines, fisheries, and water are in direct jeopardy of an imminent catastrophic oil spill. We call for the Line 5 shutdown and decommissioning, not simply re-routed, whereas it would still put the entire Great Lakes ecosystem at great risk and cause irreparable destruction. As sacred water carriers, we stand with the water and are calling for the Army Corps to conduct a proper EIS on Line 5 which will demonstrate that this pipeline is not ecologically feasible and should be immediately decommissioned, and for the Army Corps to reject permits for a re-route of Line 5.”

Aurora Conley, Bad River Ojibwe, Anishinaabe Environmental Protection Alliance: “As a Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe member, I join the calls from tribal leaders to immediately shutdown the existing Line 5 pipeline and conduct a proper EIS on the new Line 5 proposal. Our territories and water are in imminent danger, and we do not want to see irreversible damage to our land, water, and wild rice. We do not want our lifeways destroyed. The Ojibwe people are here in Bad River because of the manoomin, the wild rice. A rupture from this oil spill will irreversibly harm the Great Lakes and wild rice beds. That is unacceptable. That is something we will not stand for. I will continue this call to action until Line 5 is decommissioned and removed from our lands. We object to any reroute. Line 5 should not exist here.”

Gaagigeyaashiik - Dawn Goodwin, Gaawaabaabiganigaag, White Earth-Ojibwe, Co-founder of R.I.S.E. Coalition, Representative of Indigenous Environmental Network: “As a member of the Wolf Clan I have an inherent responsibility to protect the environment and the people. I have seen first hand what happens when the government fails to protect the water as they so unfortunately did with Line 3. Now Enbridge is looking to push through a new re-route for the Line 5 pipeline, and it must be stopped. The Army Corps has an opportunity here and now to protect the Great Lakes before irreparable damage occurs. It is time to honor and respect the treaties as the supreme law of the land, and to listen to Tribes and Indigenous leaders calling for a comprehensive EIS and for the Army Corps to reject permits for a re-route of Line 5.”

Nookomis Debra Topping, Nagajiiwanong, 1854 Treaty Fond du Lac, Co-founder of R.I.S.E. Coalition: “Nibi (water) is sacred. Manoomin is sacred. The wild rice is the reason why my people, the Anishinaabe, are located in the regions we currently reside in. I am inherently a caretaker of these lands and resources. I have said No to line 3 and now to line 5, and will forever say No to the rape of our Mother Earth. No means No. “No” is a full sentence. This work is exhausting and, yet, we don't give up on this. I have my community and grandchildren to answer to. Who do you answer to? Does your family mean enough to you to protect our mother earth and her resources? Or is dirty money, power and oil your priority?”

Alexus Koski, Bad River Ojibwe Youth Leader, Water Protector, Stop Line 5 Advocate:

“As a Bad River Youth Leader, I fear the continued and imminent threats to our sacred water. As a young person, unable to yet vote, it is sometimes difficult to remain hopeful about our future but it is far too important and far too dangerous to remain silent, to allow this pipeline to continue operating another day— my future is at stake, my culture is at stake, our climate is at stake. Please join us to stand in solidarity with Bad River and all other tribes calling for the immediate removal of this pipeline from our lands, to finally shut down line 5 once for all. We do not want a reroute. We want to protect the water. We owe that much to young people and to future generations. Shut down Line 5! Water is Life!”

Since 2022, the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) has been honored to facilitate the Indigenous Women’s Treaty Alliance. In response to the petition delivery and rally, Osprey Orielle Lake, Executive Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) stated: “Not only are we in an escalating climate crisis, we are also facing a water crisis. We cannot risk poisoning the Great Lakes, which hold one-fifth of the world’s surface freshwater. To be climate leaders, it is necessary to listen to Indigenous leadership, protect biodiversity, and end the expansion of fossil fuels. Shutting down Line 5 means being a climate leader. The Army Corps must conduct the most thorough environmental review possible of the proposed reroute, and through this effort, we are calling for Line 5 permits to be rejected and the entire pipeline permanently shut down."

Elizabeth Ward, Sierra Club - Wisconsin Chapter Director: “We’re here today in support of Indigenous sovereignty and to elevate the demands of the Bad River Band and dozens of tribal nations with President Biden – end the trespass of the existing Line 5 pipeline on sovereign land and deny the permits for the proposed reroute upon completion of a full environmental impact statement”


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/18/indigenous-leaders-and-environmental-groups-deliver-petitions-urging-army-corps-of-engineers-to-address-line-5-pipeline-impacts/feed/ 0 464907 Plan to Study Impacts of Offshore Wind Farm on East Coast Ecosystems https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/15/plan-to-study-impacts-of-offshore-wind-farm-on-east-coast-ecosystems/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/15/plan-to-study-impacts-of-offshore-wind-farm-on-east-coast-ecosystems/#respond Fri, 15 Mar 2024 13:34:11 +0000 https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=39008 In a January 2024 article for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Alison Chase reported that the Regional Wildlife Science Collaborative for Offshore Wind (RWSC) announced their plans to research offshore wind farms’ effects on ecosystems of marine wildlife off the East Coast. To reach their clean energy goals, cities…

The post Plan to Study Impacts of Offshore Wind Farm on East Coast Ecosystems appeared first on Project Censored.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/15/plan-to-study-impacts-of-offshore-wind-farm-on-east-coast-ecosystems/feed/ 0 464195 New York Times Minimizes Impacts of Three Mile Island https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/10/new-york-times-minimizes-impacts-of-three-mile-island/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/10/new-york-times-minimizes-impacts-of-three-mile-island/#respond Wed, 10 Jan 2024 06:58:42 +0000 https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=310258 The New York Times minimized the impacts of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in its obituary this week for Joseph Hendrie, the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the time of the accident. Hendrie was removed from the NRC chairmanship eight months after the accident because, as then President Jimmy More

The post New York Times Minimizes Impacts of Three Mile Island appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

]]>

Image courtesy of Exelon.

The New York Times minimized the impacts of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in its obituary this week for Joseph Hendrie, the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the time of the accident. Hendrie was removed from the NRC chairmanship eight months after the accident because, as then President Jimmy Carter put it, under Hendrie’s helm the NRC was “unable to fulfill its responsibility for providing an acceptable level of safety for nuclear power plants.”

The Times reported that in its obituary for Hendrie.

There was a “pull quote” in the middle of The Times piece: “He was fired after the meltdown at the nuclear power plant.”

But a reader would not know exactly what the problem was by reading the obituary Monday, written by Trip Gabriel, a national correspondent of The Times.

Of the Three Mile Island accident, “Minimal radioactivity was released, and there were no immediate deaths,” Gabriel writes in its fourth paragraph. “But official miscommunication and lingering confusion over the severity of the threat inflamed a long-running national debate about nuclear safety. Movie theatres that year were showing ‘The China Syndrome,’ a hit thriller about a nuclear plant disaster. Nearly 200,000 protesters turned out in New York City six months after Three Mile Island for an antinuclear rally.”

Among researchers determining that there were substantial deaths as a result of Three Mile Island radiation releases have been Steven Wing and his colleagues at the University of North Carolina. “Study Links Three Mile Island Radiation Releases to Higher Cancer Rates,” was the 1997 article by Joby Warrick in the Washington Post.

It began: “Researchers have linked radiation releases from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant to higher cancer rates in nearby communities in a study that could reopen debate over the nation’s worst commercial nuclear accident. The report, released today, concludes that increases in lung cancer and leukemia near the Pennsylvania plant suggest a much greater release of radiation during the 1979 accident than had been believed. Previous studies concluded that radiation exposure to humans was minimal. A 1990 Columbia University analysis using the same data as the new study found no clear connection between the accident and cancer rates among residents living near the plant.”

It quoted Wing, an associate professor of epidemiology, saying: “The cancer findings, along with studies of animals, plants and chromosomal damage in Three Mile Island area residents, all point to much higher radiation levels than were previously reported.”

The research was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, the journal of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Science.

Science magazine in a 1997 article reported that “After reexamining the region’s cancer statistics and measured radiation levels, epidemiologist Steven Wing and his colleagues at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, concluded that more radiation may have escaped than was measured and that the risk of some cancers did rise. Wing found that people presumed to have been exposed to the highest doses of radiation were almost twice as likely to develop lung cancer as were those who received the lowest doses. His team also found that the risk of adult leukemia was almost seven times higher for those in the highest exposure group.

The book “Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation” devotes many pages to the Three Mile Island accident including in a chapter titled “People Died at Three Mile Island.” Published in 1982, it was authored by Harvey Wasserman, a journalist who has specialized in nuclear power; Norman Solomon, an investigative reporter and media critic; and Robert Alvarez and Eleanor Walters, director of and associate director of the Environmental Policy Center in Washington, D.C. Alvarez also was senior policy adviser to the U.S. Energy Department secretary and a senior investigator for the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs.

The book presents research done on cancer and the Three Mile Island accident including that of Dr. Ernest Sternglass, long professor of radiation physics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. It quotes Sternglass in 1981 stating: “The Three Mile Island accident will turn out to have produced the largest death toll ever resulting from an industrial accident, with total deaths from all causes likely to reach many thousands over the next 10 to 20 years.”

I wrote and presented a TV documentary in 1993, “Three Mile Island Revisited,” beginning with, standing with the Three Mile Island plant in the background, saying: “The nuclear industry says that nobody died because of the accident back there at Three Mile Island but don’t tell that to the people here in Goldsboro or others living in what’s become a valley of death surrounding Three Mile Island.”

I conducted interviews about how cancer had become widespread in and around Goldsboro and how quietly the owner of Three Mile Island had given cash settlements, some as high a $1 million, to members of families of those who died or were left with health impacts as a result of the accident.

A superb new documentary on Three Mile Island is “Radioactive” which was released last year and is being widely shown throughout the world. Directed, written and produced by Heidi Hutner, a professor of environmental humanities at Stony Brook University, it has received many awards.

In it, resident after resident of the area around Three Mile Island is interviewed and tells of widespread cancer that has ensued in the years that have followed the accident—a cancer rate far beyond what would be normal. Accounts shared in the documentary are heartbreaking.

In “Radioactive,” a whistleblower who had worked at the nuclear plant tells Hutner of the deliberate and comprehensive attempt by General Public Utilities, which owned TMI, to cover up the gravity of the accident and its radioactive releases, especially of cancer-causing Iodine-131 and Xenon 133.

An attorney, Lynne Bernabei, involved in litigation in the wake of the accident, says the Three Mile Island “cover-up was one of the biggest cover-ups in history.”

The Times obituary for Hendrie, a physicist, points out that he was a booster of nuclear power. It relates: “Dr. Hendrie, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 to lead the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the government agency in charge of nuclear power safety, came in as a proponent of nuclear energy, criticized by environmentalists as too supportive of the industry.” It quotes Hendrie as saying when he was appointed: “My biggest challenge will be to keep nuclear power as a viable energy option.” Gabriel writes that Hendrie “pledged to end ‘the tortuous and Kafkaesque hearings’ on proposed nuclear plants.”

And even though Hendrie was bounced from the NRC chairmanship in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident, he “remained one of the five members of the regulatory commission through the end of his four-year term in June 1981,” it adds. And, “in March of that year, President Ronald Reagan reappointed him chairman in an acting capacity.”

Then Hendrie, the obituary continues, “returned to the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., where he had worked for two decades before joining the regulatory commission. In the 1960s, he had helped design and build a type of research reactor, the High Flux Beam Reactor, which provided very intense beams of neutrons.”

There was no mention in The Times obituary about what happened to the High Flux Beam Reactor. It was shut down in 1997 after it was found to be leaking radioactive tritium into the groundwater under Brookhaven National Laboratory—groundwater that flows into the community just south of the laboratory, Shirley. “Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town” was published in 2008, written by Kelly McMasters, a professor at Hofstra University who grew up in Shirley. In the book, she writes of the widespread cancer among people in Shirley which she links to the “nearby leaking nuclear laboratory.” Hendrie’s Brookhaven National Laboratory is a Superfund high-pollution site.

The obituary ends with a paragraph in which Gabriel writes: “Most recently, new interest has arisen in nuclear power as the largest source of non-carbon emitting energy at a time of heightened awareness of the climate crisis.” Not mentioned is how the nuclear fuel cycle—including mining, milling and enrichment—is carbon-intensive, and nuclear power plants, as did that High Flux Beam Reactor, emit carbon, radioactive Carbon-14.

I started writing my first book on nuclear power the day of the news of the Three Mile Island meltdown happening. In the book, first published in 1980, “Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power,” in a chapter with a focus on the press and nuclear power, I quote Alden Whitman, a reporter at The New York Times for 25 years, telling me that “there certainly was never any effort made to do” in-depth or investigative reporting on nuclear power. Why this attitude? “The Times does regard itself as part of the establishment…They get nervous when they attack industry. Certainly when they attack industry that is heavily involved in finance and the banks as nuclear power is, they would get very up tight.” Even in the wake of Three Mile Island, said Whitman, The Times’ stories on nuclear power have been “tucked away, put in the middle of the paper.”

This tradition continues at The New York Times.

The post New York Times Minimizes Impacts of Three Mile Island appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Karl Grossman.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/10/new-york-times-minimizes-impacts-of-three-mile-island/feed/ 0 450728 📰 Revealed: How US Arms Policy Impacts Israel & Gaza #newstoday #shorts https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/14/%f0%9f%93%b0-revealed-how-us-arms-policy-impacts-israel-gaza-newstoday-shorts/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/14/%f0%9f%93%b0-revealed-how-us-arms-policy-impacts-israel-gaza-newstoday-shorts/#respond Tue, 14 Nov 2023 14:00:21 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=6b863fff7400e55920d92c4abdf1dcfd
This content originally appeared on The Laura Flanders Show and was authored by The Laura Flanders Show.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/14/%f0%9f%93%b0-revealed-how-us-arms-policy-impacts-israel-gaza-newstoday-shorts/feed/ 0 438329 Lao officials, villagers in the dark about impacts of new railway https://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/new-railway-10242023173831.html https://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/new-railway-10242023173831.html#respond Tue, 24 Oct 2023 21:49:00 +0000 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/new-railway-10242023173831.html Construction of the Laos-Vietnam high-speed railway is expected to begin in early 2024, but its potential impacts on villagers who live along the planned route through Laos’ Khammouane province have not yet been made public, provincial officials and residents said.

The US$6.3 billion, 555-kilometer (345-mile) railway is being built under a public-private partnership and will connect Laos’ capital Vientiane to the Vietnamese seaport of Vung Ang in Ha Tinh province. The cross-border railway is a joint venture between Petroleum Trading Lao Public Company and Vietnam’s Deo Ca Group Joint Stock Company.

The project is part of a larger plan by the Lao government to build several new railroads to increase trade in the mostly poor, landlocked country.

The 150 kilometers (93 miles) of railway built during the first phase of construction in Laos will run from the Lao-Thai border in Khammouane province’s Thakhek district to the Lao-Vietnamese border. 

During phase two, 313 kilometers (194 miles) will be built from the Laos-Thai border to Vientiane. The project survey and design for this phase has yet to be completed.

The project’s environmental impact assessment and an environmental and social impact assessment have been completed but not disclosed to the public, the sources said.

An official from the province’s Department of Natural Resources and the Environment told Radio Free Asia that he didn’t know how many Lao residents would be affected by the construction because the companies involved have not shared the information with him.

“Everything has to be based on the information from the companies,” he said Monday. “I have not seen any reports about how many families and villages will be affected. The district has not been informed.”

Major infrastructure projects in Laos, such as hydropower dams and other railways, have caused the forced relocation of villagers and the loss of land they use along with their planted crops. Those affected have complained of being shortchanged on monetary compensation offered by the companies involved in the projects.

An official from Khammouane province’s People’s Council told RFA on Monday that he has not seen the assessments either, so he doesn’t know how many villagers will lose their land or be relocated.

Representatives of companies involved in the Laos-Vietnam railway sign the contract for the project in Vientiane, Laos, Aug. 31, 2023. Credit: Vientiane Times
Representatives of companies involved in the Laos-Vietnam railway sign the contract for the project in Vientiane, Laos, Aug. 31, 2023. Credit: Vientiane Times

Villagers express concern

Some residents who believe they may be affected by the project said they have not received any information, and there is no relevant office they can go to for information about the project’s impacts.

A villager in Thakhek district said he has not received any information about the railway construction project and that provincial administrators have not informed villagers because they are afraid that some will oppose the project and demand fair compensation. 

With other development projects in the province, some affected residents complained about receiving low compensation, he said.

The villagers were not happy about receiving compensation that was less than the market value of land they lost, he said. 

“The Lao government rarely reports on this via state media,” the villager added.

Another villager in Mahaxay district said she learned about the railway project via social media, but officials have yet to inform villagers about the potential impacts.

The signing ceremony for the construction took place in Vientiane in late August between Petroleum Trading Lao Public Company, South Korea’s Yooshin Engineering Corporation, and Korea National Railway, which were tasked with conducting a detailed design study of the railway before construction began.

Chanthone Sitthixay, chairman of Petroleum Trading Lao Public Company, told Lao Star Channel on Aug. 31 that phase one of the railways in Laos was expected to take a little over two years to complete.

In Vietnam, the railway will span 103 kilometers (64 miles) from the Laos-Vietnam border to Vung Ang seaport.

The Laos-Vietnam railway is expected to be completed and enter into operation by 2028.

Translated by Phouvong for RFA Lao. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.


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

]]> https://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/new-railway-10242023173831.html/feed/ 0 436404 New Report Highlights the Gendered and Racial Impacts of the Fossil Fuel Industry in North America and Complicit Financial Institutions https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/20/new-report-highlights-the-gendered-and-racial-impacts-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry-in-north-america-and-complicit-financial-institutions/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/20/new-report-highlights-the-gendered-and-racial-impacts-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry-in-north-america-and-complicit-financial-institutions/#respond Wed, 20 Sep 2023 12:15:41 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/new-report-highlights-the-gendered-and-racial-impacts-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry-in-north-america-and-complicit-financial-institutions

With apocalyptic scenes of increasing fires, floods, and heatwaves proliferating, it is clear that the climate crisis is accelerating. As part of national and global efforts to lower carbon emissions, stop fossil fuel expansion, and halt the worst effects of the crisis, the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) has released the third edition of The Gendered and Racial Impacts of the Fossil Fuel Industry in North America and Complicit Financial Institutions in a call for immediate divestment from fossil fuels to protect communities and our global climate.

The third edition spotlights new case studies and data, addressing the disproportionate gender and race-specific health and safety effects as well as Indigenous rights issues of fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure in the United States and selected parts of Canada— interlocking issues that have been sorely neglected in the discourse regarding fossil fuel extraction. The report explicitly exposes the role that financial institutions, including banks, asset managers, and insurance companies, play in preserving and perpetuating negative gender and racial impacts through focusing on 9 regional case studies, from the fracking fields of Kern County in California to the recently approved Willow Project in the Western Arctic.

The report provides ample evidence of the harms women in marginalized communities face, including increased risks of cancers, ovarian diseases, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and mental and emotional distress related to air pollution and water contamination caused by the fossil fuel industry. This report provides scientific evidence highlighting these and many other disproportionate health impacts women experience from fossil fuel pollution including, black carbon, an airborne pollutant released through fracking processes, which has been linked to increased hospitalizations from respiratory and cardiovascular issues and adverse birth outcomes. Health impacts resulting from fossil fuel derived contamination exacerbates women's caretaking roles when sickness and disability amongst children, elders, or other community members occurs, leading mothers to be more exposed to stressors, report greater strain, burden, and distress than their male counterparts.

“Whenever I do my blood work, I get my iron infused in the same place where women get chemotherapy. Every time I'm there, even when I get my iron treatment, I'm always thinking ‘what if the next time I come, I have to get chemotherapy.’ I do live in Cancer Alley, so it’s those things that play on your mind and the reality of it that's really detrimental…We’re also dealing with climate change and being impacted by hurricanes; the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our area alone is massive… it’s a lot of different intersections that come into play. There are ways financial institutions can invest to improve our health and also support our communities instead of contributing to harming them, ” states Jo Banner, Co-founder and Co-director of The Descendants Project, resisting fossil fuel projects in “Cancer Alley”, Louisiana.

This report also acknowledges the crucial role that Indigenous women play as cultural bearers in their communities, while highlighting the imminent threat to cultural lifeways posed by the fossil fuel industry.

Whitney Gravelle (Anishinaabe), President of the Bay Mills Indian Community, resisting the Line 5 pipeline and protecting the Great Lakes states: “When we're getting into these fights over water, and trying to protect water and not having anyone else respect water, it is very frustrating. As an Anishinaabe woman you want to do what you need to do—to know the depth of your teachings and to understand why you need to protect the water…It does have ceremonial impacts not only on myself but on our community. Who would want to go and perform a water ceremony, if the water is surrounded by oil? No one. If that place is destroyed, if the Straits of Mackinac are destroyed, our ceremonies are destroyed, those Waters Spirits are destroyed, those beings, we can no longer communicate with them…and so it becomes a threat to our Indigenous spirituality, our Indigenous lifeway, when we can no longer really be who we are. If the water is destroyed it's also the land—it’s not just nor right.”

The report spotlights Vanguard, BlackRock, Capital Group, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of America, and Liberty Mutual as primary financiers of harmful fossil fuel projects within the regional case studies. All seven of these financial institutions have voiced support of the Paris Agreement and human rights via public statements or by signing various international frameworks, yet, these financial institutions continue to fund companies whose operations are disproportionately harming women and communities of color, while also violating Indigenous rights and furthering the climate crisis.

Patricia Garcia-Nelson, Fossil Fuel Just Transition Advocate with GreenLatinos, resisting fossil fuel expansion in Weld County, Colorado states: “Women are the creators, we give birth to life on this planet and for us women, it's natural to want to protect and to take care. All I can say to the financial institutions making investments in these destructive and extractive industries is that they are investing in the wrong thing.”

The report outlines risks for financial institutions and recommendations for policy changes. Financial institutions are exposed to various risks, including regulatory risks, stranded assets, physical and transition risks of the climate crisis, and reputational risks. The report details a list of 14 recommendations financial institutions need to adopt including robust implementation standards and due diligence on climate and human and Indigenous rights issues. The report also advocates for a just transition to a renewable and regenerative future that uplifts communities most impacted by environmental degradation, pollution, and the climate crisis.

Osprey Orielle Lake, Executive Director of WECAN and co-author of the report states, “The fossil fuel industry, and their financiers, are leading us further down the path of irreparable climate disaster, and we need to understand who is being harmed first and worst by their actions. If we want to truly address the climate crisis we must lead with climate justice and that means understanding the gendered and racial impacts of the fossil fuel industry. Women are rising to stand up and end the violence against the earth and women. Through the report we are calling on financial institutions to be leaders in a Just Transition by taking action to halt the financing of fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure, which is causing egregious harms to frontline women and communities. We want no more sacrifice women, no more sacrifice zones, and no more sacrifice zip codes. The fossil fuel era is over and the time is now to transition to renewable, regenerative energy, and a healthy and equitable future for all.”

If you are interested in learning more about the report, speaking with affected frontline women, please contact Katherine Quaid, katherine@wecaninternational.org

Methodology note:

The report, organized by Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, began with an investigation into fossil fuel extraction, and infrastructure projects across the United States and in a few locations in Canada. Based on the initial collection of research, nine regions with large fossil fuel projects and/or high concentrations of fossil fuel infrastructure were identified. Based on an examination of companies operating in the nine regions, seven financial institutions are identified as prominent financiers, insurers, and investors of these companies. This report is based on the analysis of first-hand women’s accounts, peer-reviewed scientific articles, and other published papers.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/20/new-report-highlights-the-gendered-and-racial-impacts-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry-in-north-america-and-complicit-financial-institutions/feed/ 0 428442 Nationwide Insurance Crisis Sparks Senate Hearing, Focusing on Climate Change Financial Impacts https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/07/nationwide-insurance-crisis-sparks-senate-hearing-focusing-on-climate-change-financial-impacts/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/07/nationwide-insurance-crisis-sparks-senate-hearing-focusing-on-climate-change-financial-impacts/#respond Thu, 07 Sep 2023 15:31:20 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/nationwide-insurance-crisis-sparks-senate-hearing-focusing-on-climate-change-financial-impacts The U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs will take a deep dive into issues plaguing property insurance markets across the country and the impact changes, including from climate change, will impact consumers. Over the past year, several major insurance companies have limited or withdrawn coverage from states dealing with major natural disasters. Carly Fabian, insurance policy advocate with Public Citizen’s Climate Team, issued the following statement:

“Wildfires, hurricanes, thunderstorms, and flash floods have wreaked havoc across the U.S. this year, and after each disaster, homeowners have looked to their insurance providers to defray their losses. More and more often, those companies have packed up and moved on, leaving homeowners fewer and fewer options for insurance.

“The growing insurance crisis illustrates the vital importance of seeing climate change as a risk to the entire financial system. Year-after-year, disasters with multi-billion dollar price tags have struck around the globe.

“While much of today’s hearing will look at the impacts of the climate crisis on insurance, it will be incomplete without looking at the damage these companies have done by insuring and investing in fossil fuels. While these companies flee states at the highest risk for disaster, the insurance industry continues to prop up the companies directly causing climate change. The Senate should hold these companies accountable for profiting from a crisis they so willingly insure.”


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/07/nationwide-insurance-crisis-sparks-senate-hearing-focusing-on-climate-change-financial-impacts/feed/ 0 425497 DOT Should Consider Climate Impacts of Proposed Offshore Export Terminals https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/31/dot-should-consider-climate-impacts-of-proposed-offshore-export-terminals/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/31/dot-should-consider-climate-impacts-of-proposed-offshore-export-terminals/#respond Mon, 31 Jul 2023 16:35:08 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/dot-should-consider-climate-impacts-of-proposed-offshore-export-terminals Today 130 organizations are calling on Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to require his agencies to consider the impacts offshore oil and liquefied methane gas (LNG) export terminals will have on the climate when reviewing their applications.

The letter comes as the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) finalizes best practices for federal agencies to use when evaluating greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts of projects proposed under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Secretary of Transportation can direct the Maritime Administration to apply draft guidelines released earlier this year to six deepwater port applications off the coast of Texas and Louisiana — GulfLink, Blue Marlin, Bluewater, New Fortress Energy Louisiana FLNG, West Delta LNG, and Grand Isle LNG.

“If the Department of Transportation approves another mega-polluting offshore export terminal, it will push the world closer to climate catastrophe,” said Kelsey Crane, Senior Policy Advocate at Earthworks. “This administration’s continued expansion of fossil fuels contradicts the promises Biden made to all of us when he said he would tackle the climate crisis.”

Building and investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure like offshore terminals locks in decades of new sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The federal government approved Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT) last year, the largest oil export terminal in the U.S that will have the capacity of a quarter of all the oil the U.S. currently exports each day. Combined, the four proposed oil terminals would emit three times what the U.S. emits each year.

“Coastal communities in Texas are already worried about our poor public health and hurricanes, yet this administration is pushing to increase these risks,” said Melanie Oldham, Founder and Director of Better Brazoria. “We have shown adamant opposition to more export terminals but no one is listening. Biden and his agencies must address our concerns about air pollution and the effects of greenhouse gasses before it's too late.”

Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that building new fossil fuel infrastructure would make it more difficult to limit warming to 1.5 degrees celsius, and would lock-in high GHG emissions for decades. If the Biden administration goes forward with these six projects, not only would it derail the country’s climate goals, but ensure that the rest of the world suffers the same fate.

“Amidst the challenges posed by rising sea levels and increasingly severe storms, the approval of new offshore oil and gas export terminals compounds our climate crisis and significantly affects communities,” said James Hiatt, Director of For a Better Bayou. “It is crucial for agencies like DOT and MARAD to adhere to CEQ's GHG guidance, meaningfully evaluating greenhouse gas emissions during their reviews. These terminals would contribute massive releases of these harmful gases, and are completely incompatible with our collective best interests.”

“The Department of Transportation must carefully evaluate the impact that offshore oil and LNG terminals have on the Gulf Coast and on the climate as a whole,” said Roishetta Sibley Ozane, Founder of Vessel Project of Louisiana. “We cannot overlook these consequences in the face of the climate crisis. It is time to prioritize the long-term well-being of our environment and communities over short-term gains. Our children’s future depends on it.”

For additional quotes from letter signers, click here.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/31/dot-should-consider-climate-impacts-of-proposed-offshore-export-terminals/feed/ 0 415891 Serbs’ Boycott Impacts Local Elections In Northern Kosovo https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/23/serbs-boycott-impacts-local-elections-in-northern-kosovo/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/23/serbs-boycott-impacts-local-elections-in-northern-kosovo/#respond Sun, 23 Apr 2023 20:53:48 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=53b2bfd767be36afff658486a5047844
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/23/serbs-boycott-impacts-local-elections-in-northern-kosovo/feed/ 0 389845 Extreme weather, extreme impacts: a year of alarming climate records https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/21/extreme-weather-extreme-impacts-a-year-of-alarming-climate-records/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/21/extreme-weather-extreme-impacts-a-year-of-alarming-climate-records/#respond Fri, 21 Apr 2023 11:01:01 +0000 https://news.un.org/feed/view/en/audio/2023/04/1135872 Climate change has continued to drive hunger and displacement in 2022, as ever more frequent extreme weather events – drought, floods, heatwaves – have been threatening the very existence of vulnerable communities.

In a new report, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows that last year, humanity’s “war on nature” – in the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres – has resulted in several alarming records, while the years 2015 to 2022 have been the eight warmest ever.

Omar Baddour, WMO’s head of climate monitoring and policy, has been talking to Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer about the key trends identified in the report.


This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/21/extreme-weather-extreme-impacts-a-year-of-alarming-climate-records/feed/ 0 389365 No Freedom, No Rights: The Impacts on Incarcerated Women of Overturning Roe v. Wade https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/11/no-freedom-no-rights-the-impacts-on-incarcerated-women-of-overturning-roe-v-wade/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/11/no-freedom-no-rights-the-impacts-on-incarcerated-women-of-overturning-roe-v-wade/#respond Tue, 11 Apr 2023 17:25:56 +0000 https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=28292 The Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has placed pregnant incarcerated women in an extremely vulnerable position. In some states, they will…

The post No Freedom, No Rights: The Impacts on Incarcerated Women of Overturning Roe v. Wade appeared first on Project Censored.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/11/no-freedom-no-rights-the-impacts-on-incarcerated-women-of-overturning-roe-v-wade/feed/ 0 390654 ‘Incredibly Disturbing’ Docs Reveal Oil Giant Shell Knew About Climate Impacts Even Earlier https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/03/incredibly-disturbing-docs-reveal-oil-giant-shell-knew-about-climate-impacts-even-earlier/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/03/incredibly-disturbing-docs-reveal-oil-giant-shell-knew-about-climate-impacts-even-earlier/#respond Mon, 03 Apr 2023 21:10:31 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/news/shell-fossil-fuels-climate-1970s

Reporting on a cache of documents published over the weekend shows Shell knew about the impact of fossil fuel even earlier than previously revealed, potentially bolstering legal efforts to hold Big Oil accountable for the global climate emergency.

The reporting from DeSmog and Follow the Money is based on Dirty Pearls: Exposing Shell's hidden legacy of climate change accountability, 1970-1990, a project for which researcher Vatan Hüzeir compiled 201 books, correspondence, documents, scholarship, and other materials.

Hüzeir—a climate activist, Erasmus University Rotterdam Ph.D. candidate, and founder and director of the Dutch think tank Changerism—collected the documents from former Shell staff, people close to the company, and private and public archives from January 2017 and October 2022.

Following explosive revelations about what ExxonMobil knew about fossil fuels driving global heating, investigations in 2017 and 2018 uncovered that Shell's scientists privately warned about the impact of its products in the 1980s.

"These findings add fuel to the flames of efforts to hold oil and gas companies accountable for their decades of climate damages and denial."

However, as Follow the Money detailed, the newly unveiled records show that "Shell already began collecting knowledge about climate change in the 1960s. The company not only kept well abreast of climate science, but also funded research. As a result, Shell already knew in the 1970s that burning fossil fuels could lead to alarming climate change."

Faced with a global oil crisis, rather than using its climate information to publicly sound the alarm and shift to cleaner practices, the company "focused instead on a nonsustainable profit model," launching Shell Coal International in 1974.

The following year, a study Shell was involved with warned that "increases in the CO2 content of the atmosphere could lead to the so-called greenhouse effect... which would be enough to induce major climatic changes." Three years later, another report warned that "the continued burning of fossil fuels will lead to a manifold increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration."

A confidential study from 1989 states that if the global temperature rises more than 1.5°C—the target of the Paris climate agreement that came decades later—then "the potential refugee problem... could be unprecedented. Africans would push into Europe, Chinese into the Soviet Union, Latins into the United States, Indonesians into Australia. Boundaries would count for little—overwhelmed by the numbers. Conflicts would abound. Civilization could prove a fragile thing."

Duncan Meisel, executive director of the campaign Clean Creatives, which targets advertising and public relations firms that work for fossil fuel companies, declared Monday that "what these new documents show is incredibly disturbing."

"In the 1980s, Shell scientists laid out two pathways for the planet: one where energy companies undertook a smooth transition to clean energy and one where fossil fuel demand continued to rise, creating 'more storms, more droughts, more deluges,'" he summarized. "Since the publication of that forecast, Shell has pushed at every turn to create more fossil fuel demand, creating exactly the devastating outcomes they predicted."

The Center for Climate Integrity said the records provide the world "more damning evidence" that the company knew its business model was having disastrous impacts on the world and its people. As the group put it: "They knew. They lied. They need to pay."

Along with the two initial media reports, some of the Shell materials have been published by the Climate Files database.

"Although these first articles refer to only 38 of the many more documents amassed for Dirty Pearls, they tell the story of Shell having engaged in what I call 'climate change uncertaintism' and 'climate change negligence,'" Hüzeir said in a statement. "The former points to Shell's keen willingness to emphasize scientific uncertainty about the potential of global warming in its public reporting, even though scholarly consensus on the future reality of a warmer world was already forming at the time."

"The latter points to Shell's negligence of its own in-house knowledge of potential global warming in public reporting, although express consideration of that knowledge was to be reasonably expected," he added. "Both treatments were political in the sense that they served to push for fossil fuels and especially coal, over renewables, as the culturally preferred sources of energy for the foreseeable future. This is despite Shell's awareness of possibly dangerous climate change associated with unabated fossil fuel combustion. Both treatments were strategic because, by extension, they protected Shell's hydrocarbon-based business model."

Hüzeir stressed that "the exposure of these two early distinct corporate political treatments of climate change repositions Shell's later markedly aggressive response to global warming in the 1990s and 2000s as a second phase in Shell's developing relationship with global warming. First came climate change negligence and uncertaintism, and then, as global warming was entering public consciousness and significant uncertainties about its reality became insignificant in the 1970s and 1980s, then came climate change denialism and doubtism."

A spokesperson for Shell said:

The Shell Group did not have unique knowledge about climate change. The issue of climate change and how to tackle it has long been part of public discussion and scientific research that has evolved over many decades. It has been widely discussed and debated, in public view, among scientists, media, governments, business, and society as a whole. Our position on the issue has been publicly documented for more than 30 years, including in publications such as our Annual Report and Sustainability Report.

Meanwhile, researchers suggested to DeSmog that the documents could help with climate-related litigation against Shell.

"This impressive history shows for just how long climate issues were known by Shell personnel," said Ben Franta, senior research fellow in climate litigation at the University of Oxford. "Despite internal awareness, the company systematically downplayed the problem to the public, instead promoting more and more fossil fuel use despite the dangers. Now, five decades later, Shell continues to dawdle and delay."

University of Miami professor Geoffrey Supran, known for his research into ExxonMobil, similarly said that "this report winds back the clock even further on Shell's long history of climate knowledge and deception."

"It reveals that Shell was ahead of the curve both in terms of its growing understanding, in private and academic circles, of the threat of climate change and unburnable fossil fuels, yet also in terms of its public dismissal of those realities," he added. "These findings add fuel to the flames of efforts to hold oil and gas companies accountable for their decades of climate damages and denial."

During Russia's war in Ukraine, Shell has joined Big Oil peers including Chevron and ExxonMobil in making massive profits. After recording a record $40 billion profit in 2022, Shell announced that its former CEO, Ben van Beurden, took home $11.7 million last year, up from $7.9 million the previous year.

As Bloomberghighlighted in February, "The company's record profits won't significantly accelerate its low-carbon ambitions." After putting about $3.5 billion into renewables along with projects that many climate groups call "false solutions," accounting for about 14% of total capital expenditures in 2022, Shell decided to keep its spending in such areas the same for this year—which, as Voxpointed out, is "less than half of what the company invests in oil and gas exploration and extraction."

The company has chosen not to ramp up clean energy investments despite increasingly urgent warnings from climate scientists and energy experts that humanity must keep fossil fuels in the ground and shift to renewables to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of global heating. As Meisel said Monday, "Shell is still pursuing the exact scenario that they knew would cause global disaster."

Shell is also compelled to act by a May 2021 Dutch court order to cut carbon emissions 45% by 2030, compared with 2019 levels. Later that year, the company announced plans to move its tax residence from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom, and last year, it appealed the historic decision. Follow the Money noted that "in the meantime, Shell must carry out the court's ruling."


This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/03/incredibly-disturbing-docs-reveal-oil-giant-shell-knew-about-climate-impacts-even-earlier/feed/ 0 384757 Researchers Warn of Climate ‘Doom Loop’ as Impacts Forestall Green Energy Transition https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/16/researchers-warn-of-climate-doom-loop-as-impacts-forestall-green-energy-transition/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/16/researchers-warn-of-climate-doom-loop-as-impacts-forestall-green-energy-transition/#respond Thu, 16 Feb 2023 15:53:37 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/news/climate-doom-loop

A new study released Thursday warned that the planet has entered "a new chapter in the climate and ecological crisis," in which communities are forced to direct massive resources to responding to the escalating impacts of the climate emergency, taking focus away from efforts to slash fossil fuel emissions—causing what the report authors called a "doom loop" that will make avoiding the worst effects of planetary heating increasingly difficult.

The report, published by the Institute for Public Policy Research and Chatham House, calls on policymakers to "actively manage" the risk that further global heating poses to a green transition itself.

"It's too late to avoid the climate storm altogether, and the challenge of navigating around a storm is very different to the challenge of navigating through it," said Laurie Laybourn, an associate fellow of IPPR and visiting fellow at Chatham House who co-authored the study. "Our ability to steer out of the storm is frustrated by having to manage the impacts of the storm on the ship."

"This is an analogy for the challenge facing environmentalism as we head closer to 1.5°C of global heating," he added. "The worsening symptoms of the climate and ecological crisis—storms, food price shocks, conflict—will increasingly distract us from realizing action to tackle its root causes."

"It's too late to avoid the climate storm altogether, and the challenge of navigating around a storm is very different to the challenge of navigating through it."

The report notes that the cost of climate disasters—such as catastrophic flooding last year in Pakistan and in 2021 in Europe and prolonged drought in the western United States and parts of Africa—is already expected to reduce global economic output by $23 trillion by 2050, and recovery efforts could cost the U.S. $2 trillion per year by the end of the century.

"Such demands could come at the cost of diverting effort away from the rapid switch now needed to decarbonize the global economy," said the researchers in a statement. "The report argues that this risks creating a vicious circle, or 'doom loop'; the impacts of the climate and nature crises draw focus and resources away from tackling their underlying causes and the urgent steps needed to address them."

The researchers referred to the dynamic that has emerged in the debate over whether limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, the target agreed upon in the Paris climate accords, is still possible and how the global community can meet that goal.

"Some argue that declaring the target to be still in reach remains the most powerful motivator, but others believe that breaching the limit could be the 'wake-up call' that would spur activists and policymakers to step up their efforts," said the authors. "But both stances can be exploited by 'climate delayers' who don't want to see rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and wish to block transformational change."

A failure to move past that debate could lead to policymakers pursuing untested geoengineering methods of limiting planetary heating instead of passing policies to eliminate fossil fuel emissions, as energy experts and climate scientists have clearly stated they must in order to avoid the worst effects of the planetary emergency.

"This is a doom loop: the consequences of the crisis draw focus and resources from tackling its causes, leading to higher temperatures and ecological loss, which then create more severe consequences, diverting even more attention and resources, and so on," reads the report.

The study bolsters the argument made earlier in February by researchers at the University of Hamburg in Germany. As Common Dreams reported, their study said that continued despair over reaching climate "tipping points" such as the melting of sea ice and glaciers risks taking attention away from "the best hope for shaping a positive climate future... the ability of society to make fundamental changes."

Laybourn and his co-author, Chatham House research analyst Henry Throp, likened the "strategic risk" of losing sight of solutions to the danger "facing a ship that sailed too long towards a storm on the horizon without significantly changing course."

"As the storm begins to engulf the ship, making the changes needed to escape it is ever more difficult for the crew, who are distracted by its immediate impacts," they said.

The authors called on policymakers to:

  • Develop narratives that motivate even as the climate and nature crises deepen, focusing on the benefits climate action will brig to societies around the world;
  • Decisively shift the focus of environmental politics toward realizing economic transformation by moving beyond describing the problem and setting climate targets to focusing more strongly on the economic policies needed to transform societies, such as an approach to public finances that enables the required government-led green investment;
  • Better understand the risks to the green transition as the crisis deepens by improving analysis of complex, cascading risks that could feed into the dynamic of the 'doom loop'; and
  • Ensure that younger people are better prepared to lead the green transition despite the distractions and chaos of a world where temperature rises are close to or above 1.5°C or even 2°C.

"As global temperatures tick up ever closer to the 1.5°C threshold, collective narratives are needed that can convey the accelerating, cascading dangers and spur rapid transformative change," said Thorp. "These narratives must challenge actors and assumptions that delay action on climate change and should create the basis, direction, and momentum for a climate transition aligned with nature restoration and opportunities for sustainable development."


This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/16/researchers-warn-of-climate-doom-loop-as-impacts-forestall-green-energy-transition/feed/ 0 373177 2022 Will Be Remembered for Its Brutal Climate Change Impacts https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/02/2022-will-be-remembered-for-its-brutal-climate-change-impacts/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/02/2022-will-be-remembered-for-its-brutal-climate-change-impacts/#respond Mon, 02 Jan 2023 20:08:20 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/impacts-of-climate-change

The year 2022 was a tough year around the world in terms of climate disaster, something that the just exploded "bomb cyclone" seemed to punctuate with an exclamation point as the storm crippled much of the nation in a sub-zero deep freeze and led to the death of at least 40 people in western New York. Fortunately, we were spared the theatrics of misleading statements and snowballs in the halls of Congress as scientists explained how rapid warming of the Arctic may have led to the major disruption of the "polar vortex" allowing the dramatic escape of winter Arctic air to wreak havoc far to the south.

A record-deadly blizzard stands as a bone-chilling paradox in the face of the much more deadly poster child of climate change—record-breaking heat waves supercharged by climate change. And 2022 saw lots of these.

Close to home, summer once again brought record heat across much of the United States, extreme heat that continued to worsen megadrought in the Southwest and wildfire disaster and health risks across a wider swath of the western United States. However, bad as the heat wave impacts in the United States were in 2022, they were dwarfed by the expanse of heat extremes around much of the planet.

As long anticipated by scientists, climate change means the water cycle can produce both more devastating dry and wet extremes.

Brutal record-breaking heat waves hit much of Europe, southern Asia, and China this past year, creating a circum-Northern Hemisphere crisis of searing heat, economic troubles, and human suffering. Further south, Argentina and Paraguay saw record climate change-worsened heat, while record heat waves also continued to scorch Australia and help stoke a growing humanitarian crisis in East Africa.

Even in a year with yet another major "polar vortex" cold event, concern continues to grow that some parts of the world may eventually become largely uninhabitable due to climate-change-aggravated high heat extremes.

Droughts are often exacerbated by record heat because a warmer atmosphere can hold more water, and as a result can demand more moisture from snow, water bodies, vegetation and soil. In 2022, we saw this scenario play out in the United States, Europe, China, and East Africa. Another paradox of climate change is that the global surge in hot drought around the world is happening at the same time the planet is also seeing many more cases of extreme rainfall and associated flooding. In these cases, the greater water-holding capacity of a warming atmosphere also means that when it does rain it can rain more and harder. In the United States, Hurricane Ian provided a costly example of how climate change is not only able to generate bigger, more powerful storms, but also storms that can rain harder with devastating flooding as a result.

Extreme rainfall disasters were even worse globally in 2022. Australia's biggest threat a couple years ago was heat-enhanced unprecedented drought and ruinous "Black Summer" wildfires, but in 2022 record-breaking rainfall, flooding, and increased risk of mosquito-borne disease was the biggest challenge. As long anticipated by scientists, climate change means the water cycle can produce both more devastating dry and wet extremes. Sadly, the worst 2022 example of the latter crippled Pakistan in an almost apocalyptic manner when climate change intensified summer monsoon rains coincided with extreme mountain heat and glacier melting to cause unprecedented flooding that killed thousands and affected tens of millions. Extreme rainfall also killed hundreds and affected millions in West Africa in 2022.

Yet, another climate change paradox went largely unnoticed by the media in 2022. On one hand, media attention did focus on how the ongoing slow yet relentless rate of sea-level rise is already starting to wreak havoc on some coastlines, and how a couple feet of sea-level rise could submerge hundreds of thousands of individual, privately owned coastal properties in the United States by mid-century. Yet, the media hasn't widely reported on a fact that the scientific community also highlighted in one of the most recent reports of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): continued climate change over just a few decades could trigger the irreversible loss of large portions of the massive Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets, and in doing so result in the submergence of innumerable coastal communities—and even whole island nations—around the globe.

In other words, the seemingly small rate of current sea-level rise could paradoxically result in perhaps the most devastating of all climate change impacts. That is, unless we work fast to halt climate change.

The year 2022 brought one more major climate change paradox into clear focus: Many countries of the world that are suffering the most from climate change are countries that did little to cause the climate crisis. The biggest carbon polluting counties—namely the United States, China, and European countries—are suffering too, but they have resources to deal with, and recover from, climate change impacts. At the same time, less affluent counties like Pakistan, African countries, and low-lying island nations such as Tuvalu have generated little carbon pollution and are already getting hit with existential climate change impacts that are worsening fast.

It is no wonder that the most consequential result of the U.N.'s 2022 Sharm el-Sheikh climate change conference (COP 27) was the official recognition that the rich carbon polluters of the world need to finance climate solutions as well as pay for the mounting damages to those less affluent counties who have done little to cause the climate crisis.

The year 2022 will be remembered for its brutal climate change impacts and the growing crisis these impacts make clear. At the same time, 2022 was a breakthrough year of climate action juxtaposed on the increasingly stark evidence that fossil fuels and their producers are the primary cause of the planet's growing peril. Fortunately, 2022 also made clear that fossil fuels are too expensive, too polluting of air and water, and too enabling of petrostate evil to persist in a world of cheaper, more globally equitable, and clean energy sources like wind and solar.


This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jonathan Overpeck.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/02/2022-will-be-remembered-for-its-brutal-climate-change-impacts/feed/ 0 361537 #11 Wealthy Nations Continue to Drive Climate Change with Devastating Impacts on Poorer Countries https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/26/11-wealthy-nations-continue-to-drive-climate-change-with-devastating-impacts-on-poorer-countries/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/26/11-wealthy-nations-continue-to-drive-climate-change-with-devastating-impacts-on-poorer-countries/#respond Sat, 26 Nov 2022 20:22:55 +0000 https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=26924 In a November 2021 article for The Conversation, Sonja Klinsky outlined how and why poorer regions are disproportionately affected by climate change. Wealthier nations, such as the United States, Canada,…

The post #11 Wealthy Nations Continue to Drive Climate Change with Devastating Impacts on Poorer Countries appeared first on Project Censored.

]]> In a November 2021 article for The Conversation, Sonja Klinsky outlined how and why poorer regions are disproportionately affected by climate change. Wealthier nations, such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, release roughly 100 times the per-capita greenhouse gas emissions as many African countries, yet the responsibility for undoing this damage has long fallen on the shoulders of the most vulnerable victims of climate change.

Fossil fuels release carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, where it lingers for hundreds of years. CO2 locks in heat, and its gradual buildup warms the planet, leading to the melting of polar ice caps, rising sea levels, and catastrophic natural disasters such as wildfires and floods. But the primary emitters of carbon are often not the ones bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. As sea levels rise, people in small island countries, such as Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, will struggle to survive. In 2019, according to a Quartz Africa report by Tawanda Karombo in 2021, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Niger all experienced drastic, unpredictable changes in temperature and precipitation, causing food shortages, economic disasters, and hundreds of avoidable fatalities. “Many of these countries and communities bear little responsibility for the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. At the same time, they have the fewest resources available to protect themselves,” Klinsky observed.

Only 5 percent of the world’s population was responsible for 36 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2015. The impoverished half of the global population accounted for less than 6 percent of all emissions in that period. But because greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, it is misleading to consider only a twenty-year window. According to Klinsky, since the 1750s, the United States has emitted 29 percent of all global CO2 emissions, or 457 billion tons, while the entire continent of Africa has emitted only 3 percent, or 43 billion tons.

The 2015 Paris Climate Accords included a lofty promise by the United States to address the needs of low-income countries that suffer the disastrous effects of climate change. The United States guaranteed that industrialized nations would contribute $100 billion a year to tackle climate change, beginning in 2020. However, they missed the mark that year and again in 2021. Even $100 billion, should it ever materialize, would not be sufficient to address the catastrophic impact of climate change in the Global South. According to Karombo, Zimbabwe required $1.1 billion to rebuild from just a single cyclone in 2019. And Mozambique has been experiencing average annual losses of about $440 million from cyclone-related floods.

Corporate outlets such as Time and the New York Times have started reporting on environmental racism in the United States. Missing from this coverage, however, is the US role in speeding up the effects of climate change in the Global South. Last year, Project Censored’s #4 story concerned the outsize contribution of the US and the Global North to the burgeoning climate crisis. This broad topic is on our list once again, because corporate media still are not reporting on the situation in full; in particular, they are not covering adequately the egregious role played by the United States.

Sonja Klinsky, “Climate Change Is a Justice Issue—These 6 Charts Show Why,” The Conversation, November 3, 2021.

Tawanda Karombo, “These African Countries Are Among the World’s Worst Hit by Climate Change,” Quartz Africa, January 27, 2021, updated December 1, 2021.

Student Researcher: Lena Anderson (Diablo Valley College)

Faculty Evaluator: Mickey Huff (Diablo Valley College)

The post #11 Wealthy Nations Continue to Drive Climate Change with Devastating Impacts on Poorer Countries appeared first on Project Censored.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/26/11-wealthy-nations-continue-to-drive-climate-change-with-devastating-impacts-on-poorer-countries/feed/ 0 353690 The Climate Crisis, Its Global Impacts, and What Is To Be Done https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/11/the-climate-crisis-its-global-impacts-and-what-is-to-be-done/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/11/the-climate-crisis-its-global-impacts-and-what-is-to-be-done/#respond Fri, 11 Nov 2022 19:56:26 +0000 https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=26849 This week, Eleanor Goldfield looks at COP, climate, and change with the Minister of State for Environment, Climate Change and Technology of the Republic of Maldives, Khadeeja Naseem. They discuss…

The post The Climate Crisis, Its Global Impacts, and What Is To Be Done appeared first on Project Censored.

]]> This week, Eleanor Goldfield looks at COP, climate, and change with the Minister of State for Environment, Climate Change and Technology of the Republic of Maldives, Khadeeja Naseem. They discuss the dire situation her home is in, a home that has been the vanguard not only of climate chaos but of the movement to push wealthy nations to pay for loss and damages – a hot button topic at this year’s COP27 meeting. Naseem highlights the fight to bridge this inequality gap, the need for financial systems to shift in response to climate change, and what’s at stake beyond just the loss of place – the loss of entire cultures. Eleanor then speaks with professor and activist Rory Varrato about the false solutions and shallow promises of COP meetings, and the need for revolutionary language, and actions. They also dig deeper into transformation of consciousness – the philosophy of change, from within to global systems.

The post The Climate Crisis, Its Global Impacts, and What Is To Be Done appeared first on Project Censored.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/11/the-climate-crisis-its-global-impacts-and-what-is-to-be-done/feed/ 0 350069 New Air Monitors Among Major Impacts of ProPublica Toxic Air Pollution Reporting https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/29/new-air-monitors-among-major-impacts-of-propublica-toxic-air-pollution-reporting/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/29/new-air-monitors-among-major-impacts-of-propublica-toxic-air-pollution-reporting/#respond Thu, 29 Sep 2022 17:20:00 +0000 https://www.propublica.org/article/missouri-epa-air-monitors-louisiana-cancer-alley#1450773 by Lisa Song and Alexandra Zayas

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

Two communities saw major impacts this month stemming from a first-of-its-kind ProPublica endeavor to map toxic industrial air pollution.

The Environmental Protection Agency will start monitoring the air in Verona, Missouri, where a manufacturing plant named BCP Ingredients emits a potent carcinogen called ethylene oxide. The mayor of Verona, Joseph Heck, has fought for air monitoring for nearly a year, since ProPublica’s analysis showed the company’s emissions substantially raised the local cancer risk. In some parts of the small city, the industrial cancer risk was an estimated 27 times what the EPA considers acceptable.

It feels “amazing” to finally see progress, Heck said in an interview. The EPA will install three air monitors in Verona to track ethylene oxide. The agency will also operate a mobile monitoring vehicle that can take additional samples.

Heck said the attention from ProPublica and local TV station KY3, which reported on ProPublica’s findings, helped spur these developments. Those stories have “prompted a lot of things. ... When a company or even EPA gets in the public eye, then they’ve got to look like they’re doing something about it. I couldn’t have done this on my own. There ain’t no way.”

In a statement, the EPA said the monitoring is expected to begin this fall.

BCP Ingredients did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During a surprise inspection in June, the EPA found multiple health and safety violations at the plant. The agency recently issued an administrative order for compliance on consent, which requires the company to update its emergency procedures and take other steps to fix the violations. The order does not include a fine; in a statement, the EPA said it “has reserved the right to seek penalties in a future action.”

Heck said the monitoring alone will not solve everything. He worries about the health effects of living near ethylene oxide and how the EPA might react if the monitoring shows high concentrations. His partner, Crystal Payne, was a breast cancer survivor and in remission when they moved to Verona eight years ago. Within a year, her cancer came back and spread to her brain and her liver. Payne died this month.

“She’s in a better place,” Heck said. “No more tests, no more suffering.”

Crystal Payne, left, and Sue Pikari hug after last December’s EPA meeting in Verona. Payne, the mayor’s partner, was battling breast cancer. She died this month. (Kathleen Flynn, special to ProPublica)

Also this month, residents of St. James, a Louisiana parish on a stretch of the Mississippi River known as “Cancer Alley,” won a yearslong battle to block the building of a $9.4 billion petrochemical complex that would have been one of the largest industrial projects in state history. As reported by Lylla Younes for Grist, a state district judge withdrew the air permits, finding that state officials did not adhere to the Clean Air Act when issuing them.

“The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality’s decision to authorize these potential public health violations, without offering evidence to show it had avoided the risk to the maximum extent possible, was arbitrary and capricious and against the preponderance of evidence under the agency’s public trust duty,” Judge Trudy M. White wrote in her ruling.

ProPublica found in 2019 that the air around the complex proposed by Formosa, a Taiwanese chemical giant, already contained more cancer-causing pollution than 99.6% of industrialized areas in the country. The proposed facility could have caused toxic air levels in some parts of St. James to triple.

“Formosa was wrong to even want to come in here and poison us because we’re already being poisoned,” Sharon Lavigne, a lifelong parish resident, told Grist’s Younes, who previously led ProPublica’s investigation. After Formosa announced its plans for the complex, Lavigne founded the grassroots group Rise St. James, which teamed up with the environmental watchdog Earthjustice to sue the state over its decision to grant the permits.

Formosa and the Louisiana environmental regulator did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment. Janile Parks, the spokesperson for the Formosa unit in charge of the project, told Reuters it disagrees with the court opinion. “We believe the permits issued (by the state) are sound and the agency properly performed its duty to protect the environment in the issuance of those air permits,” she said in a statement, adding that it intends to “construct and operate it to meet all state and federal standards.”


This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Lisa Song and Alexandra Zayas.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/29/new-air-monitors-among-major-impacts-of-propublica-toxic-air-pollution-reporting/feed/ 0 337317 Syria: How a Deadly Conflict Impacts Children with Disabilities #shorts https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/13/syria-how-a-deadly-conflict-impacts-children-with-disabilities-shorts/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/13/syria-how-a-deadly-conflict-impacts-children-with-disabilities-shorts/#respond Tue, 13 Sep 2022 11:45:26 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=5c293527d2ab921f5a0fa8083eac81cc
This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/13/syria-how-a-deadly-conflict-impacts-children-with-disabilities-shorts/feed/ 0 332428 The Lasting Impacts of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Squandered Legacy https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/09/the-lasting-impacts-of-mikhail-gorbachevs-squandered-legacy/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/09/the-lasting-impacts-of-mikhail-gorbachevs-squandered-legacy/#respond Fri, 09 Sep 2022 17:18:07 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/node/339612

Mikhail Gorbachev, who died at the age of 91 on August 30, was "perhaps the most radical thinker about security to ever lead a major power," writes Katrina vanden Heuvel in The Nation, the progressive magazine where the journalist serves as editorial director and publisher. In the deeply moving piece, where vanden Heuvel describes her personal relationship to the man who called both her and her late husband—the unparalleled scholar of Russian history, Stephen Cohen—his "true friends," she considers the former Russian leader's legacy as "a great reformer in his country's tormented history."  Vanden Heuvel, who is not only fluent in Russian and studied Russian history at Princeton University but has lived in the Soviet Union and Russia, joins Robert Scheer on the latest edition of "Scheer Intelligence" to expand on her Nation piece and the consequences of the squandering of Gorbachev's legacy. 

In a wide-ranging conversation where neither of them shy away from the complexities of the Cold War, Scheer and vanden Heuvel recount the time they spent together in Moscow in 1987 as the then-Los Angeles Times correspondent Scheer was on loan to Moskovskie Novosti (Moscow News), where vanden Heuvel also worked in 1989. The country they describe taking shape under Gorbachev's extraordinary vision for a peaceful future for both Russia and the rest of the world is one that, tragically, is no more. As The Nation publisher puts it, his "historic achievements" were undermined not only by Russians like his successors Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, but by U.S. and other Western leaders profoundly disinterested in giving peace a chance. After writing that NATO's eastward expansion was a "stab in Gorbachev's back," vanden Heuvel shares with Scheer her fears that the ongoing war in Ukraine is further confining the former Russian leader's revolutionary work towards nuclear disarmament to the "dustbin of history," to borrow a phrase from Leon Trotsky. 

The brinkmanship in which the U.S., Russia, and other nuclear powers are currently engaged—the kind that Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize for ending—could lead us down an apocalyptic path, the two journalists warn. The antidote, vanden Heuvel argues, is a strong peace movement in the U.S. and around the globe and pro-peace leaders following in the radical footsteps of Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Olof Palme, and others. Listen to the full conversation between vanden Heuvel and Scheer as they consider all the world has lost in losing Gorbachev—both in 1991 and 2022.

Transcript

Robert Scheer:

Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence, where the intelligence comes from my guest, in this case, one of the great figures, actually, in journalism in America, Katrina vanden Heuvel, who for the longest time, has been involved with The Nation magazine as editor in chief. Now she's the executive editor and publisher.

The Nation magazine, for people who don't know it, is the oldest continuously published political journal in the United States. Goes back to Civil War days. Katrina has kept it alive for decades as a vital organ and I've asked her to come today because the two of us crossed paths when Gorbachev, Mikhail Gorbachev had just taken power. I was there in '87, I think, the first time we met there, and he had taken power in 1985. Then, of course, he was kicked out of power six years later.

Katrina wrote a piece for The Nation magazine, which I think we haven't paid enough attention to Gorbachev's significance. But she had a piece this last week where she talks about what a historic opportunity that was and that basically, it was blown and that's one of the reasons why or the main reason why we're now considering, we're in de facto, or in reality a war with Russia with the possibility even of nuclear war.

I'll let you set the stage. You were there. You were a Russian speaker. You studied the subject at Princeton. You were married to a great expert on Russia and on the Soviet Union, Steve Cohen, probably the most important expert we've had, so set the stage.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

The stage, so as your listeners may know, Gorbachev came to power in March 1985, and he came after a series of stagnant leaders. I mean, there was Brezhnev, and then Andropov, and then Chernenko, who literally was working out of his hospital room. It was not clear that Gorbachev would be the leader. He was 53. Gromyko said when he was appointed, Gorbachev was, that he has a nice smile and steel teeth, iron teeth.

It could have been the Romanov, who was the Communist Party secretary in Leningrad, Saint Petersburg, but he had thrown China at the wall at his daughter's wedding a week before the appointment, so he didn't get it, but more important, Gorbachev comes into power. It's not immediate. As you said, Bob, you were there in 1987, but very quickly, you could see this was a different kind of leader.

He was interested in democratization. I don't mean just petty markers along the way, but he wanted to open up a society through two great reforms at home. One, perestroika, the other glasnost. Perestroika restructuring was an attempt to open up a socialist market economy, but it was a very tough, tough move. Gorbachev really cared about glasnost, and opening up the kind of … Ending the censorship, rolling back the censorship. He did care about moving to elections and parliaments, and I think for the first time in 1,000 years of Russian history, you did have the passage of executive power via election, and that too has been squandered.

What I think remains important and shouldn't be consigned to the foreign international field was this was the most committed, not just arms reductionist, but thinker about national security, thinker about abolition of nuclear weapons, understanding a different kind of common security, human security, and speaking out against the militarization of Europe from Russia, Vladivostok, to Lisbon, and Portugal, and seeking after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, that there'd be a peaceful, common European home.

In that context, he was horrified, as you are Bob, in these last years, as the arms race, as he put it, metastasized and it was a colossal loss of sanity as one arms control treaty … Arms control, we're not talking disarmament, was rolled back. De-democratization, and I'll stop here, which many attribute to Putin, de-democratization of Russia is something Gorbachev looked at at his country and really understood that Boris Yeltsin, who was overly-acclaimed in this country, had presided over the looting of a country, a devastation, impoverishment of a country.

He and Yeltsin really disliked each other. Though I don't believe in men make history, you can argue that the liquidation of the Soviet Union, I don't call it the collapse, maybe the abolition, was contributed to by one man, a great reformer for change, and the other, someone who had a will to power, Boris Yeltsin, who would never have appeared if glasnost and perestroika had not been policies.

In any case, there was a triumphalism at the end of the Cold War, which Gorbachev and sane people in Europe and this country understood would take us back as we are now in not simply a cold war, but a hot war. In that context, Gorbachev regretted how the West, in a way, refused to … To be triumphalist and not understand that we either all won with the end of the Cold War, not squandering trillions on weapons, or we all lost and we should find new ways to engage and live.

Robert Scheer:

Yeah. Hopefully, not blow up the world while we're trying to find a way. For people listening to this, we have a short view of history, and I want to assure people, if they have any doubt about the significance of Gorbachev's intentions, of his thinking, they should pick up his book, Perestroika, which I reviewed in The Moscow News, but I also reviewed for the Los Angeles Times, where I was working.

I reviewed it sitting in the old National Hotel, because I'd gotten a copy while I was in Moscow. I was blown away by that book then, back when I wrote that in '87, but I also was blown away rereading it after Gorbachev's death this week at the age, I believe, 91.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

That's right.

Robert Scheer:

I didn't know Gorbachev the way you did. You met with him, you talked with him-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Yes.

Robert Scheer:

… often, and you are a legitimate expert on Russian history.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

No, Yeah.

Robert Scheer:

Don't be modest on me now, and I am not. I've been in Russia a lot of. I first went there in the early '60s. I tried, but as many journalists, I parachuted in, I spent some time. In that case, I spent two months. You've lived your life, ever since your days at Princeton.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

That's right.

Robert Scheer:

You married a key expert, Steve Cohen. I mean, there's no one who could carry that guy's luggage intellectually, and wrote this very famous book on Bukharin, understood the complexity of what was going on. I want to make it clear to people, if you read what Gorbachev laid out for the world to read and his own people, he said the system had failed and could not just be patched up.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

That's right.

Robert Scheer:

The reason he pushed for glasnost, openness, was that the bureaucracy would smother anything less.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Any new ideas, yeah.

Robert Scheer:

So this was, the reason I want to do the interview, very rarely in human history do we get a leader of a powerful nation who has great power and can certainly ensure his survival for some time saying, "You know what? It's not working. We have to fundamentally change it." And what I'd like for you to do is talk about the reaction of the Russian people.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

All right, so let me just …

Robert Scheer:

Many of them didn't like that, and he-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

I know.

Robert Scheer:

… became quite unpopular. Right?

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Of course  he did at home, and there were reasons for it. There are big reasons. I will say, Bob, Perestroika is one of his many books, important book. We have a bookshelf of Gorbachev's writings, and he never deviated or veered from the idea of the importance of reform. He was not … I mean, he is a radical in many ways, but he was a reformist. I want to just locate, for a moment, the end of the Soviet Union, as we were talking about. Steve, my late husband, went through many of what he called the questions of the century about why the Soviet Union ended. As I said, it has not been understood.

Gorbachev, and I've just been rereading his last speech to the Supreme Soviet in August, end of August 1991, after the coup. He fought hard to keep the Union together. He sought for a socialist democracy, a democratic socialism. He was, in so many fundamental ways, a social democrat. If you have one Communist Party, Bob, one party, we see it with the Democratic Party. I don't know what we see with the Republican right now, but there were people who emerged from that party, Gorbachev, Alexander Yakovlev.

Many of the people Steve and I interviewed in Voices of Glasnost: Interviews With Gorbachev's Reformers … Because a great leader has a brain trust, and Gorbachev had a great brain trust, especially on international, and on glasnost issues. The economy, there were many debates, Bob, and you know this, about why didn't Mikhail Gorbachev begin as in China? You begin with the economy. You don't begin with political democracy, opening up a society.

It's a long story, but the roots of how those two countries were collectivized permitted China to begin with the economy. Russia was much more difficult because of the Stalinist collectivization program. There were attempts, they failed. There was anger on the part of people who were lining up, and then there was a bad anti-alcohol campaign.

I will say today, I sat at Novaya Gazeta, which is the independent called New Newspaper, which Gorbachev invested his Nobel Peace Prize money, much of it, in the future of this independent muckraking newspaper. The young journalists, 20s, young, early 20s, who are doing investigative reporting under great threat today, difficulties as in many countries, saw in Gorbachev, who sat at the table talking to them, someone who had allowed them to life a life and to lead a life they now did.

Let me just finish with the economy. Gorbachev found Steve's great biography, Bukharin, Nikolai Bukharin and political revolution … Bukharin was killed in the purge trials, and the purges, Stalin's purges in 1938, but Bukharin offered an alternative, new economic program. Many countries today, smaller countries like Cuba or Vietnam, are looking for how to combine a market below like shoe repair, or restaurants, or small hotels, and the commanding heights, utilities, railroads are more nationalized as in parts of Europe. It was that model that has been suppressed.

It was in the '20s, and Gorbachev found that very important, and he read it before it was ever published in the West or in Russia, in Samizdat. The high polit had their own list of books they could get. He found in that book something of great value. He rehabilitated Bukharin in 1988 with the widow standing next to him. He always admired Steve for thinking about perestroika and in glasnost in ways that he did.

He was a humane man, and he wrote Bob, as you said, of course, this country took a number of years, you're right '87 was still early, to understand who Gorbachev was. There were some who did. I think George Shultz, George H.W., Reagan, in large measure, I think, to save his reputation, but there were many, many who did not. I mean, Al Haig thought he was Stalin in Gucci shoes for two years, three years. Steve went to Camp David before Malta, the Summit in 1989, and he was pitted against Richard Pipes, much more of a conservative, Polish immigrant who taught at Harvard.

The whole high command was there with George H.W. Bush, and Mr. Quayle. Steve, he understood it was probably preplanned, they'd made up their mind, but persuaded of Gorbachev's genuine interest in serious reform, a great reformer in a tormented country.

Robert Scheer:

Well, I would go further than that. I am sorry to single out Perestroika, but I think it was the book that really set the stage.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Okay.

Robert Scheer:

It raised a fundamental question, even in the book. Does the West really want to have peace with a government? Now you face it with China, even more than-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Absolutely.

Robert Scheer:

… with Putin's Russia. Can we abide a multipolar world? The great threat from China is not that they're going to conquer other countries. It's that they're going to out-produce us and become the number one economy. Maybe our currency will not be dominant, and so we are now vilifying China because they want to get into high-tech.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Yes.

Robert Scheer:

They want to make better … They want to make cars, and high-end, and so they can pay their people more. Ironically, Richard Nixon, the American government made peace with a darkly communist China at the very time I was in there at the end of the Cultural Revolution, shortly before Nixon. It was a scary place, yet Nixon was able, and Kissinger, they were able to make peace that has lasted. Hopefully, it will last even through Biden, but we don't know now, because now we're not talking to them.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Bob, let me just say one thing about unipolarity versus multipolar. There was a moment at the end, after the Berlin Wall came down, and Gorbachev played an extraordinary role in Eastern Europe. He basically said to the leaders of East European countries, "You're independent now. I'm not taking Soviet troops out of the barracks."

This didn't happen by alchemy, but he really understood the need for engagement. More than engagement, for countries to work together, and instead at that moment, the United States said, "End of history. We're the winner. Triumphalism. We shall prevail." The damage that did is so extraordinary, it's part of the story. You're right. Today, and then what happened is you get Putin. Putin is welcomed by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The Nation worries about the authoritarian tendencies.

He's appointed by Yeltsin. The first act Putin makes is to give Yeltsin and his family immunity, but the great speech Putin gave, important speech in 1997, wasn't it, Bob? In Munich, at the Munich Security Conference, is essentially a plea for ending a unipolar world at the height of the debacle of Iraq. I think that has always been an important understanding, which the United States, to this day, in its national strategy documents, is calling Russia and China adversaries.

They are not friends. I mean, they're not even partners maybe, but to make them enemies shuts off the possibility of competing, say, economically with China, or holding our own load. I think we're going to see the division of Europe, which so many have said, "Well, look at the unity of Europe in the face of Russian aggression." I think that's dividing. Ironically, it's the division between old and new Europe that Mr. Rumsfeld casually played, but you're right, Bob. There is this sense, and it's not just China. It's the Global South. It's countries which are suffering from hunger and poverty as a result of this focus on this war, which needs to escalate toward some resolution, not toward more weapons.

Let me just say, I was in Moscow when the troops came back, the Russian Soviet troops from Afghanistan. That was not easy. It gets kind of put under the door, as we talk about Gorbachev, but there are Politburo notes which showed how much opposition he faced. That was a courageous decision. We have done a different way, and so I think that it's important to think of lessons Gorbachev brought us and add to our own, but I despair, I have to say.

I mean, I can't sit with humility and say I despair because Gorbachev imagined looking out at the world, and he was in a clinic in his last months, at the situation. He had Ukrainian relatives. His long-beloved wife who died in 1999, Raisa, was part Ukrainian. You look out and you must have questions about what you brought to the world and how it's been both misused and squandered, but he had questions about how he could have led differently. It never goes away. He was a-

Robert Scheer:

Did you talk to him about that?

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Yeah. I mean, he was horrified by … He wasn't horrified, but in the last years … He had hopes for Putin.

Robert Scheer:

When's the last time you saw him?

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

I saw him in 2018. He came to a number of birthday parties for Steve, which were held, it sounds odd, but in the cafeteria, the wonderful buffet of Novaya Gazeta, and he was there, and I had a chance to give him a copy of The Nation's 150, 150th. He sat, and he drank, and he would sing a little. He just was horrified by how things had been squandered.

He was also very affected, as people forget, by the coup of 1991, which propelled the centrifugal tendencies in Russia, Soviet Union, toward the end of … It wasn't an empire, in my view. It was a multi-ethnic country, but it's worth knowing because there's been some sentimental coverage of how Gorbachev wanted to be buried next to his beloved wife, that his family, much of it lived in Germany. His daughter, granddaughters, great-grandchildren.

I think they were angered by how the country had treated their father, but Raisa Gorbacheva, during the coup, they were in Crimea, and she suffered a stroke. This is known. Because she worried that they would be treated like the Romanovs. She came back to Moscow. She never fully recovered, and though she died seven or eight years later, she never fully recovered, and I think that was always a weight on him. The coup plotters were the kind of … They were the KGB, and the National Security Forces, and they were inept, but in the process, it did propel the end, and Yeltsin became the leader.

Robert Scheer:

Yeah. We found a communist we thought we could control. That was Yeltsin, who was no less-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

He misunderstood the power.

Robert Scheer:

Everybody talks about Putin, who was a low-level colonel, actually.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Absolutely. They … Yeah.

Robert Scheer:

He's a product of the system, my god, what was Yeltsin? Yeltsin was right in there.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

No, no. He was in the Politburo.

Robert Scheer:

Yeah.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

No, I mean, listen, you debated in 1989. That's my memory, 1989, because you came back to Moscow a few times. You didn't debate. You had a conversation with Steve, and Claire Shipman, who was then a CNN reporter, about where Russia was heading. You, I think, met Yegor Ligachyov, who was considered the conservative ballast of the Politburo. Very good man.

Robert Scheer:

I met Alexander Yakovlev, who was the liberal-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

He was-

Robert Scheer:

… of the Politburo, and then he took me down the hall to Ligachyov, because he thought I was demonizing him. He said, "We have our differences, but this is not some monster," but Ligachyov was not the-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

You were right. I mean, Steve … We got to know him. I think he's still alive.

Robert Scheer:

Yeah.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Steve wrote the introduction to his memoirs, which appeared in English. He was a conservative!

Robert Scheer:

Katrina, we're going to run out of time. I want to get back to the urgency of peace-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Yes, peace.

Robert Scheer:

… and complexity, and understanding of the societies. Whatever happened to Gorbachev, the fact of the matter is, the U.S. establishment was in a partying mood. They wanted humiliation. They didn't like Gorbachev's idea-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

No, they did not.

Robert Scheer:

… of being able to save the system. Ironically, Richard Nixon did. Richard Nixon-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Let me just say that I've been reading Gorbachev's, one of his memoirs he's written. He went to the airport with George H.W., and this when he was Vice President Bush. Bush explained to him, and Gorbachev kind of accepted it, that only under Reagan, who had called the Soviet Union the Evil Empire, and was tough as nails about any-

Robert Scheer:

Monsters. In my interview with Reagan, he said, "They are monsters, and they will destroy the world." He told me that, yeah.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Right. I mean, and even in 1985, at the first Summit in Geneva, in the fall of 1985, Gorbachev called Reagan a dinosaur, and I don't know, Reagan called him an old Bolshevik, so it's like the dinosaur and the Bolshevik, but they found a way to, for the larger purposes, they abolished an entire class, maybe two classes. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces, and the Conventional Force agreement, and they found a way Of course, the big moment very early on, and it was before Chernobyl, which was a terrible moment where you could see the suppression of voices and the bad information, but in Reykjavík in Iceland, Gorbachev really believed in the abolition of nuclear weapons, a position that Henry Kissinger and who is it? Shalikashvili and a few others have come to in different ways, but Reagan couldn't-

Robert Scheer:

So did Richard Nixon.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

So did Richard Nixon. Yeah, and Kissinger, but Reagan couldn't go that far, partly I think … You've read Frankie FitzGerald's book. I mean, Reagan had delusions from Hollywood about SDI, Strategic Defense Initiative, which you've written all about, but here's the thing. Not many magazines have a peace correspondent. We did in Jonathan Schell who, no longer with us, who did a whole issue on abolition and interviewed Gorbachev, but we need to think of peace. Peace has become a subversive term. There are costs to not having peace, and I think … I'm involved with something called the Quincy Institute, which is, you know, about engagement, dialog, and diplomacy.

Robert Scheer:

I know. I talked to the Colonel, Alexander Bacevich, or something, just yesterday.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Yeah.

Robert Scheer:

Yeah.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

The aversion, and always believing war is the very, very last resort. I think that, we haven't even mentioned the word, I don't think we did in NATO, Bob, but NATO, to this day it's hard to believe it's contested, even with the documents that show Gorbachev was basically stabbed in the back. He was reviled in Russia for many, many years for not having gotten a document, an agreement.

Okay, sure. Maybe you should have gotten an agreement, but you think some of these people, I won't name names, would abide by that agreement? It's very clear there was a promise on hold, not one inch eastward, which was not just upended, but kind of thrust in his face because they'd moved now to the borders of Russia.

Robert Scheer:

Let me say, I want to, because we're going to run out of time.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Okay.

Robert Scheer:

This is not basically about the Ukraine, although we could do another podcast on that, and you know a lot more, again, about that. There's a big idea I want to address here and that is, does the United States want peace? I'm talking about the United States as a culture, as a kind of political entity, despite our agreements. There's an establishment, seems to get frayed at the edge. This is basically a question raised by a writer who, certainly when he was writing this, had no sympathy for communism, George Orwell.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Yeah, I agree.

Robert Scheer:

He had no sympathy for totalitarian, authoritarian rule, and it was George Orwell who, piggybacking on his old French teacher, Aldous Huxley, developed a different model of totalitarianism. Huxley had the one of capitalist corruption, and consumerism, and drugs, and everything. Orwell said, "No." He thought that societies would become more authoritarian and do it in the brutal way of coercion. He said, however, it would be masked, and so forth, by security, and it would be justified by the hunt for an enemy. The challenge that Gorbachev puts down in that classic book, Perestroika, and I will go to my grave thinking it's one of the most important, not influential, but logically important works by any man of power, or woman of power, where he said, and this does get echoed later by Nixon and Kissinger, and certainly in the nuclear age, war is not an option.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Right.

Robert Scheer:

He said everything has to be done to understand that and put this … We are now at a moment where people, in kind of a giddy fashion, are sticking their finger in the eye of the Russian bear, or in China, in the case of Taiwan. After all, it was Richard Nixon who accepted the idea that Taiwan's a part of China. We're not fighting about that anymore. Instead, now there's almost, what did we hear that from the head of our military units, Wester, was it? He said, "No, we have humiliation. We have to defeat them. We have to smash them." We got that from some of the European leaders, and so there's two questions I want to raise. One is whether the United States can live in peace, and particularly, when we no longer have the supreme confidence in our own economy, and we are being defeated, not in the battlefield but economically, and we saw it during the pandemic. We could not have survived without Amazon getting 90% of what we were buying from China, and then when they didn't get it from China, they get it from communist Vietnam, or some other place, and that's one big issue. Is the U.S. capable of, and why are we pushing war? Where is the peace movement? Why aren't we having negotiations? The other is, one of the ironies of this situation is that we are forcing a realignment between Russia and China, but not just Russia, China. If you look at the polling of Soros' institute, I think the Open Society, just The New York Times had a story about it today, that much of the world is rejecting the argument about the Ukraine.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

I agree, yeah. Let me just address very quickly, America has become comfortable with cold war. We've lived with endless wars, but we've lived with cold war.

Robert Scheer:

Drunk on it. Not comfortable, drunk.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Okay, but comfortable for many people, drunk for others. I do think that some of it has to do … Generationally, you're a wise generation. I'm a medium generation, but a new generation has not grown up with leaders, with people in … Well, there are people. I mean, I'm thinking of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, of Gorbachev, of Mandela, of those who have suffered violence and brutality. Gorbachev hated war, and he hated violence. That's not the case with many leaders who build themselves up through use of that. There has to be a new idea of how we remain secure. It's terrifying and tragic as we exit … Who knows if we exit COVID, and pandemics, and all of the climate crisis, existential climate crisis, that we haven't found a way to rethink security. I think that's one of the most important issues on the way to peace and to upholding peace. Yes, we need a peace movement, but I'm stunned by going to gatherings where every issue except peace or finding a way to avoid a nuclear apocalypse is discussed. The linkage to money, look at the money we've been shipping into weapons and the … I mean, it's a grotesque obscenity at this moment, the military industrial complex. They are literally so visible, the idea of a deep state is a joke. Russia and China. Why is it in 2022, we have … I mean, the Ukraine peace needs to be a whole program, but why are we declaring these two countries, prior to the Ukrainian situation, great enemies, adversaries, hostile powers?

By the way, so I think we got people in this country who do believe in peace, whether it's ending guns in their communities, and militarized equipment coming in all the time. The linkages need to be made, and not in glib ways, but there is a question of peace. I would end by saying that Gorbachev, not religiously, but he was a heretic. He was a heretic who was willing to take on the nonconformist, the orthodox views. He was truly someone who could say, without flinching, and believed it, that if we don't try the unimaginable, we face the unthinkable, and there are not many leaders …

He faced terrible opposition. I mean, the idea that it was all Gorbachev the leader, it's ridiculous. He couldn't get decrees fulfilled. He was refereeing between different groups, but he understood what he hoped not only his country, but the world could look like, and not in an arrogant way, which I think colors so much of what we hear these days. I'll end with one thing, which you've done very well, Bob. We live with a time of scrambled politics. The idea that Russia determined Trump's election, the collusion has diverted clear analysis of the real problems, dangers, challenges we face as a nation. I am sad to watch some of my liberal friends talk about intervention as an important event. They compare Ukraine to the Spanish Civil War. There's an article, just the other day, about how we liberals should be very proud of the side we're now on. I think that's not only a disgrace, but a danger to the world we could live in.

Robert Scheer:

First of all, this kind of talk is nuts. I mean-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

I know.

Robert Scheer:

… the people in this country and around the world who wanted to defeat fascism in Spain, defeat Franco, were communists. When they weren't communists, they were called communists. Come on.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

That's right. I know. I'm telling you, but-

Robert Scheer:

Red-baited beyond belief. The whole … Look, we always want to find a logical-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

The enemy. We want to find an enemy to define us.

Robert Scheer:

Yeah, but it's never us.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Right.

Robert Scheer:

Right? It was never us. We're not allowed to say that because there's some intrinsic virtue to anything that our government-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

We do.

Robert Scheer:

… that our system does, but the fact of the matter is, we had a whole policy … Forget about Russia for a moment. We had a whole policy of isolating China. You couldn't do any business with China. You couldn't get a loan with them.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

That's right.

Robert Scheer:

We're doing that again. We are, amazingly enough, trying to punish China because they've been good at capitalism.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Yeah.

Robert Scheer:

It's nuts. I have to use a word like that, okay? I was in the Center for Chinese Studies as a graduate student.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

That's right.

Robert Scheer:

I actually did go there during one of their worst times, maybe their worst time in modern history, certainly, the Cultural Revolution, so I understand the complexities, and I saw, but every war since World War II was fought to contain communism.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

I know.

Robert Scheer:

It all turned out to be wrong. Right now, we want Apple … The New York Times has a story today, oh, Apple is being slow in getting out of China-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Jesus, yeah.

Robert Scheer:

… because China has now a lot of engineers, and supply, and blah, blah, blah. Where do they want them to go? They want them to go to communist Vietnam.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

I studied in college, what I studied was the McCarthy period. Can't draw complete parallels, and there were many factors, but the Vietnam War, in many ways, it's understanding those who presided and were architects of it, did not understand Vietnamese culture, politics, history, and you had people like John Service-

Robert Scheer:

Or Russian culture or Chinese culture.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

That's right.

Robert Scheer:

We don't understand anybody's culture.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

You had people like John Service, who was booted out of the State Department, or I forget which agency, because he was considered too pro-Chinese communist, and this goes on in different names and different-

Robert Scheer:

I'm going to end this, Katrina.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

All right, but we could go on forever, Bob.

Robert Scheer:

No, no, no, but I'm going to end it with pulling rank on you, not only as an old person, but somebody who was singled out as recently as Richard Nixon's presidency-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

You.

Robert Scheer:

… when I was editing Ramparts, and I had all kinds of, you can get the files, and was observed, and terrible things, but I also had the pleasure of talking to Richard Nixon in his time of retirement and disgrace, when he'd written a number of books about the importance of peace.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Yep. Oh, that's interesting.

Robert Scheer:

One thing you have to say about the older, quote, conservatives and warmongers, and they were then, they had a sense of limits and costs, and I would say, as somebody who spent quite a bit of time talking to Ronald Reagan, even before he was governor here in California, again, when he said, "The problem is these people are monsters." When he discovered that Gorbachev was not a monster, Reagan was very open to getting rid of nuclear weapons. What you have now is a memory loss.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

It's what your good friend, my good friend, Gore Vidal, used to call the U.S. of amnesia. There is an amnesia beyond a history loss that doesn't permit an understanding, because there's so much condemnation so quickly of people you're talking about, or ideas that could be retrieved. I think that's important, and there is a kind of lockdown on the kind of history permitted. I'm not talking critical race theory or the madness of DeSantis. I'm just talking generally, what you're not permitted to touch if you're-

Robert Scheer:

You're not permitted to challenge America-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Orthodoxy.

Robert Scheer:

Virtue. America makes mistakes, but America never does wrong, so it all started, maybe we should remember, it started with dropping … We talk about terrorism. It started with dropping-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

I know, the bombs.

Robert Scheer:

Deliberate bombing of civilians in two, basically, nonmilitary seaport cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I mean, it's crazy.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Bob, I'm going to take rank as nothing, but just to say you should do a set of podcasts in mid to late October about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the lessons. Martin Sherwin wrote a brilliant book, Gambling to Armageddon, about the good fortune we've had, I think, as McNamara said, to escape nuclear annihilation.

Robert Scheer:

Right.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

If we're still here, you should do all of the great work you've done.

Robert Scheer:

It was whenever we had a Democratic president. It's something I have to remind the editor of The Nation, and I'll close on this. I'll probably be condemned to an eternity in hell telling the editor of The Nation she should look to Richard Nixon for an example.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

No, no, listen, I've become a realist, a progressive, I hope, humane realist. I don't have a lot of sympathy for liberal interventions. I will say, there was an event at The Century Foundation here in New York a few years ago, and it was a whippersnapper, young, all these guys around a table, and it was, "How do we get out of Iraq?" Everyone had their eight-part partition plan, until they got to Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Ted Sorensen, who said, "Get out." I guess, lesson learned.

Robert Scheer:

Well, or talk to the other side.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

I know.

Robert Scheer:

I mean, if Richard Nixon could talk to Mao Tse Tung, why, if you suggest on this program, sit down with Putin and-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Bob, the failure of … It's too stodgy a word, but talking, just back channels, diplomacy, it's like people are proud that they haven't talked to someone they need to talk to to resolve a conflict. I mean, that is a measure of madness, in my mind, because you have to find-

Robert Scheer:

Well, actually, it's happened. I mean, look at, Roosevelt talked to Stalin. Eisenhower talked to Khrushchev.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

I know, I know.

Robert Scheer:

What is this? Suddenly, it's a-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

It's suddenly dangerous, like you'll be-

Robert Scheer:

That's right.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

… infected or, I don't …

Robert Scheer:

Yeah. All right, well-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

I think we need … All right. We've resolved all the problems of the world. I'm going-

Robert Scheer:

Maybe we'll do part two, but I must say-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

By the way, this is the biggest story. I mean, it's big because it includes the entire world, and the story you cited today about the Global South and how countries are looking. This is just, it needs to find a way, I mean this, but to resolve Ukrainian sovereignty, and independence, but the longer this war goes on … Just look at Afghanistan, how good we are at reconstruction and assisting countries with new leaders.

Robert Scheer:

Now we have the idea that once they cross that border-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

I know.

Robert Scheer:

… because their claim, "Oh, they were going to overthrow a government." What did we do in Iraq? What did we do in Afghanistan? What did we do in Vietnam? We've been the major … As Martin Luther King said, the major purveyor of violence in the world today. Martin Luther King said that. Yet, we now act … Finally, we have our Vietnam. "Oh, we got Putin there and he goes after white people in a civilized country," and blah, blah, blah. There's no complexity. There's no idea of possible negotiation.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

You know what? I'm going to end simply by saying, we should continue this. I would value it, but embrace complexity.

Robert Scheer:

Great.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

We have lost some of that. I mean, it's not the answer fully, but it is a measure of kind of …

Robert Scheer:

I will.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

You do every day, to excess.

Robert Scheer:

I should, by the way, point out that I am a contributing editor to The Nation. Not that anybody-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

An extraordinary-

Robert Scheer:

… there has ever listened to me, but I-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

No, that's not … No, no.

Robert Scheer:

I'm only kidding.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

You've done some extraordinary … From Clinton and welfare deform to Wen Ho Lee.

Robert Scheer:

Yeah, and I've known you forever. I was a close friend of your late mother, who I much admire, and I've got some support for this-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Someone is doing a podcast about her. They're going to be in touch with you, Bob.

Robert Scheer:

Okay.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Anyway-

Robert Scheer:

Well, thank you-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

What you're going into is a very separate show, which … All right.

Robert Scheer:

All right. Let me just, I just want to thank the people at KCRW for-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Thank you.

Robert Scheer:

… posting these podcasts. Christopher Ho, and Laura Kondourajian, Joshua Scheer, our executive producer, Natasha Hakimi Zapata, who writes for The Nation is also-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Absolutely.

Robert Scheer:

… does the introduction to these.

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Award-winning journalist, yeah.

Robert Scheer:

And the JKW Foundation, which in the memory of your mother, Jean Stein, a writer I had great respect for. I want to thank you for support, and that's it for this issue of-

Katrina vanden Heuvel:

Thank you, and thank you to your team.

Robert Scheer:

… Scheer Intelligence. 


This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Robert Scheer, Katrina vanden Heuvel.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/09/the-lasting-impacts-of-mikhail-gorbachevs-squandered-legacy/feed/ 0 331566 Taming the Climate Impacts of Cattle and Sheep https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/26/taming-the-climate-impacts-of-cattle-and-sheep/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/26/taming-the-climate-impacts-of-cattle-and-sheep/#respond Fri, 26 Aug 2022 05:50:26 +0000 https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=253456 A number of recent climatological reports highlight that the livestock industry is a major source of climate problems. In part, this is due to the livestock industry’s heavy reliance on ruminants – herbivores like cattle and sheep that have a four-chambered stomach that enables them to break down cellulose (think paper or cardboard) and turn More

The post Taming the Climate Impacts of Cattle and Sheep appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Erik Molvar.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/26/taming-the-climate-impacts-of-cattle-and-sheep/feed/ 0 326802 Warren Opens Probe Into ‘Shocking and Horrific’ Impacts of GOP Abortion Bans https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/11/warren-opens-probe-into-shocking-and-horrific-impacts-of-gop-abortion-bans/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/11/warren-opens-probe-into-shocking-and-horrific-impacts-of-gop-abortion-bans/#respond Thu, 11 Aug 2022 13:18:44 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/node/338947
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/11/warren-opens-probe-into-shocking-and-horrific-impacts-of-gop-abortion-bans/feed/ 0 322595 "The Viral Underclass": Steven Thrasher on Monkeypox & How Class Impacts Viral Spread https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/02/the-viral-underclass-steven-thrasher-on-monkeypox-how-class-impacts-viral-spread/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/02/the-viral-underclass-steven-thrasher-on-monkeypox-how-class-impacts-viral-spread/#respond Tue, 02 Aug 2022 13:59:24 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=08a02831258bec5b44ae73647fd81a36
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/02/the-viral-underclass-steven-thrasher-on-monkeypox-how-class-impacts-viral-spread/feed/ 0 320049 “The Viral Underclass”: Steven Thrasher on Monkeypox, Biden Failures & How Class Impacts Viral Spread https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/02/the-viral-underclass-steven-thrasher-on-monkeypox-biden-failures-how-class-impacts-viral-spread/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/02/the-viral-underclass-steven-thrasher-on-monkeypox-biden-failures-how-class-impacts-viral-spread/#respond Tue, 02 Aug 2022 12:49:25 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=aceaab1e5f567e7d22422e4a761f93fb Seg3 guest book split

As New York City declares monkeypox a public health emergency, and California and Illinois have also declared states of emergency over the rapid spread of monkeypox, we speak with LGBTQ+ scholar Steven Thrasher, author of the new book, “The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide,” which explores how social determinants impact the health outcomes of different communities. “This disease is one that in theory can infect anyone but has worked its way particularly into communities with men who have sex with men,” says Thrasher. “This does not mean that it’s a 'gay disesase,' and shouldn’t be stigmatized that way, but we shouldn’t be ashamed to think about who it is affecting and how it is affecting people and to deal with it with a great sense of urgency.”


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/02/the-viral-underclass-steven-thrasher-on-monkeypox-biden-failures-how-class-impacts-viral-spread/feed/ 0 320059 The Patriarchal and Militarized Impacts of RIMPAC on Okinawa and Japan https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/01/the-patriarchal-and-militarized-impacts-of-rimpac-on-okinawa-and-japan/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/01/the-patriarchal-and-militarized-impacts-of-rimpac-on-okinawa-and-japan/#respond Mon, 01 Aug 2022 20:32:57 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/node/338725

In its Article 9, the Japanese constitution promulgated in 1946 under the U.S. post-war occupation renounces war as a means of resolving international disputes and proscribes maintaining land, sea and air forces. This article is widely supported by the Japanese people. To those in the countries and areas in Asia that Japan invaded and colonized during the Asia-Pacific War, Article 9 is a pledge by the Japanese people not to repeat colonial and military violence.

RIMPAC 2022 is exacerbating further the hostile environment in the region, imposing more burden on the people of Okinawa.

Yet, in the early period of the Cold War, the U.S. occupation changed its course from disarming Japan to turning it into a bulwark against the communist bloc. Around the time of the Korean War, Japan started to re-arm itself, first with the National Police Reserve, which soon became the Japan Self Defense Forces (JSDF). Despite the persistent argument by peace activists that the JSDF is a breach of Article 9, the Japanese government has won public support for the JSDF through decades of promoting the forces as the disaster rescue organization and an insistence on an “exclusively defense-oriented-policy.” The JSDF have now grown to be one of the world’s largest militaries.

In addition to this fundamental contradiction concerning the possession of an armed force, the Japanese constitution encounters a profound problem because Article 9 was never implemented on Okinawa, the southernmost archipelago of the country that was directly occupied by the U.S. military from 1945 to 1972. Even after Okinawa’s reversion to the Japanese administration, the U.S. military continued to be stationed in Okinawa, which consists of only 0.6% of the entire land mass of Japan yet hosts about 70% of the U.S. military facilities in Japan. These Okinawan facilities have catered to the various needs of the U.S. military in waging wars in Asia and beyond. Meanwhile, for more than seven decades, the U.S. military has violated the basic human rights, safety, and security of the people of Okinawa with virtual impunity. The U.S.-Japan military alliance has caused tremendous negative impacts on the people of the host community, including contamination of the soil and water by toxic materials, unbearable noise caused by military training, and sexual violence committed by the troops and other personnel, to name a few.

The upgraded RIMPAC 2022, with the largest-ever number of participating countries, reinforces the military ties between the United States and Japan. To this year’s RIMPAC 2022, Japan Maritime Self Defense Force is sending its largest vessel, JS Izumo (DDH-18), and other vessels and aircrafts including JS Takanami (DD 110), JS Kirisame (DD 104), P-1 maritime patrol air craft and others as well as about 1,000 troops. Although Izumo is categorized as a helicopter destroyer, it underwent modification in recent years to become effectively an aircraft carrier with increased interoperability with the U.S. military and where fighter jets such as F-35B of the U.S. Marine Corps can land and launch.

The JSDF units participating in RIMPAC 2022 are part of their annual Indo-Pacific deployment, which lasts for several months and involves other joint exercises and calls to various ports in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Under the strategy of “Open and Free Indo-Pacific,” a central framework of Japan’s defense policies laid out in the most recent Defense White Paper, this is part of the intensification of the military alliance against China led by the United States in the Indo-Pacific region.

This ideology of deterrence, involving the competitive exhibit of coercive power, is a deeply masculine and militarized idea. This patriarchal ideology and the structure of the security policies undermine the security and well-being of people, particularly those who are made vulnerable and deprived of their autonomy, as feminist peace activists/scholars have pointed out.

These JSDF activities have already gone beyond the “exclusively self-defense-oriented policy," yet public discussion on the issue is hardly found in Japan. It is partly because there is very little media coverage, and also because the negative impacts of reinforced militarization disproportionately affect only a small portion of the entire Japanese population, most notably the people of Okinawa, which constitutes a racist aspect of the military security of Japan and the United States.

The Japanese government is also moving forward with its plan to construct a new, massive U.S. military facility in Henoko, which the people of Okinawa have long opposed and which even a conservative U.S. think tank believes won’t be completed in a decade. Last year, it was revealed that the JSDF and the U.S. military made a secret agreement in 2015 to station the JSDF’s amphibious unit at the Henoko facility. This planned “replacement” of the U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station has proven to be equipped with more functions than an air station to become a staging area for the display of U.S.-Japan deterrent power in the region around Taiwan against China.

The JSDF has been slowly and carefully increasing and consolidating its presence in Okinawa, which has required overcoming a deep-seated antagonism that goes back to the Japanese Imperial Army’s strategy during the last stage of the Asia-Pacific war to protect the Emperor in Tokyo by prolonging the ground battle in Okinawa. Now, the JDSF, as evident in the secret deal with the U.S. military, is gaining more of a foothold in and around Okinawa, particularly on the small remote islands of Miyakojima and Yonaguni, as it replaces the U.S. deterrent capabilities near the Taiwan Strait. Once again, Okinawa is being made the forefront of the military strategies of Japan and the United States.

The U.S. military stationed in Okinawa continues to be a source of insecurity for the people of Okinawa.  PFOS and PFAS, toxic materials with possible carcinogenicity used for fire extinguishers by the U.S military, was found outside the military bases and even in the drinking water. Troops have been arrested for drunk driving and crimes against the local population. Service member have committed sexual assaults. U.S. military aircraft drop their parts and other materials in civilian residential areas. Stray munitions have damaged civilian homes.

These are not accidents. Rather, they represent a structural problem of militarism, which prioritizes the military activities and values, and of a patriarchal and racialized defense alliance, which fans the flames of military competition. RIMPAC 2022 is exacerbating further the hostile environment in the region, imposing more burden on the people of Okinawa. Article 9 has become an even hollower provision of the constitution. RIMPAC is a giant step in the wrong direction for peace in the region.


This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kozue Akibayashi, Suzuyo Takazato.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/01/the-patriarchal-and-militarized-impacts-of-rimpac-on-okinawa-and-japan/feed/ 0 319912 US Climate Expropriation Impacts all Humanity https://www.radiofree.org/2022/07/15/us-climate-expropriation-impacts-all-humanity/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/07/15/us-climate-expropriation-impacts-all-humanity/#respond Fri, 15 Jul 2022 08:20:10 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=131456 U.S.-attributable climate damages. (a) Ensemble mean GDPpc changes in each country attributable to U.S. emissions, over 1990–2014 with territorial emissions accounting and a short-run (contemporaneous) damage function. Missing data (white countries) denotes countries without continuous GDPpc data from 1990 to 2014. b, c U.S.-attributable damages in the five countries with the greatest GDPpc percent decreases (b) and percent […]

The post US Climate Expropriation Impacts all Humanity first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]>
U.S.-attributable climate damages. (a) Ensemble mean GDPpc changes in each country attributable to U.S. emissions, over 1990–2014 with territorial emissions accounting and a short-run (contemporaneous) damage function. Missing data (white countries) denotes countries without continuous GDPpc data from 1990 to 2014. b, c U.S.-attributable damages in the five countries with the greatest GDPpc percent decreases (b) and percent increases (c). The black lines show the mean, the boxes denote the 95% ensemble range, and the colored portions denote the additive fraction of each 95% range due to each.

With its carbon footprint from 1990 to 2014, the US caused nearly $2 trillion in damages to other countries, finds a new analysis.

How much “aid”, in all forms, the country has provided to other countries? The motive, character, use, implication, beneficiary of the so-called aid are not questioned/discussed here.

This is the face of carbon footprint, actually, climate-plunder/expropriation, which is global and impacting the entire humanity, and all lives. This is expropriation of climate from the entire humanity; and the humanity is paying with life.

The colossal amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) released by the US over the period cited above has led to natural disasters, and economic damages including crop failures in countries, resulting in $1.9 trillion in lost income globally, the report found.

The study by scientists from Dartmouth College and published in the journal Climatic Change on July 12, 2022 (Callahan, C.W., Mankin, J.S. “National attribution of historical climate damages”, Climatic Change 172, 40 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-022-03387-y).

Northerly countries

The study finds:

  • The most northerly countries are reaping tangible benefits from climate change, such as longer growing seasons and fewer cold-related deaths.
  • The disproportionate harm befalling poorer and warmer countries is likely even more skewed.

The scientists calculated resulting damages “using empirical temperature-growth relationship” after combining historical climate data with climate models and economic information.

In poor and poorer countries, the impact of climate expropriation is deadly: hundreds die every year, thousands turn destitute and migrants, and millions face uncertainty in terms of livelihood, shelter, health and education.

The study report said:

  • When emissions created by international trade are taken into account the US is placed even more starkly in the lead regarding climate-induced damages, responsible for 18%.
  • The damages caused by Russia and China correspondingly decrease by 15% and 9%, respectively while those caused by some European countries increase by as much as 20%.

Sue for climate-created harms

The study findings, as the scientists claim, could provide a basis for poorer countries to sue for climate-related harms.

The study report said:

Previous efforts have been hamstrung by a lack of scientific evidence linking individual carbon emitters to “the downstream impacts of warming.” These countries may be able to take legal action. Such methods of placing blame for climate harms can also be applied to individual corporations, the researchers point out.

Veil of deniability lifted

The report said:

  • Quantifying which nations are culpable for the economic impacts of anthropogenic warming is central to informing climate litigation and restitution claims for climate damages. However, for countries seeking legal redress, the magnitude of economic losses from warming attributable to individual emitters is not known, undermining their standing for climate liability claims. Uncertainties compound at each step from emissions to GHG concentrations, GHG concentrations to global temperature changes, global temperature changes to country-level temperature changes, and country-level temperature changes to economic losses, providing emitters with plausible deniability for damage claims.
  • The study lifts the veil of deniability, combining historical data with climate models of varying complexity in an integrated framework to quantify each nation’s culpability for historical temperature-driven income changes in every other country.

The report said:

  • Global income changes attributable to the US and China’s emissions over 1990–2014 each exceed US$1.8 trillion in both losses and benefits; losses and benefits induced by Russia, India, and Brazil each individually exceed US$500 billion. The US$6 trillion in cumulative losses attributable to those five countries alone is comparable both to some 14% of annual world GDP and to the economic losses associated with warming the planet to 2° C rather than 1.5° C.

Disproportionate contributions: The top10

It said:

  • Large emitters make disproportionate contributions to climate damages; the top 10 most damaging countries are together responsible for more than 67% of losses and 70% of benefits. The US contributes the most, responsible for 16.5% of losses and 18% of benefits, followed by China, responsible for 15.8% of losses and 16.8% of benefits; every other country individually contributes less than 10%.

Pakistan and Bolivia: A comparison

The report said:

  • Small differences in emissions can lead to major differences in attributable damages. For example, Pakistan and Bolivia have similar CO2 emissions, with Pakistan emitting an average of 35 MtC year of CO2 over 1990–2014 and Bolivia emitting an average of 32 MtC year. But that slight difference means that while Pakistan can be tied to $130B in statistically significant losses, Bolivia cannot be tied to any. So, while the result that heavy emitters have caused significant attributable damages may seem obvious, it is not possible to perform a quantitative attribution of precisely how much damage and to whom, nor how confident we can be in such estimates, absent an integrated framework that propagates uncertainty from each step in the analysis.

Gap in responsibility

It said:

  • Under consumption-based accounting, attributable damages increase by 1.5% for the US, increase by 10–20% for some European countries, and decrease by 15% for Russia and 9% for China, expanding the gap in responsibility between the US and all other countries.

The report said:

  • Emissions released early in the twentieth century may have more severe effects because of the longer time period over which the growth effects of such emissions accumulate; at the same time, carbon sinks are stronger at lower emissions levels and the growth effects of warming are milder when baseline temperatures are cooler, so the opposite could be true.

Developing countries

The report said:

  • Developing countries’ attributable damages and benefits only increase modestly while many countries in Europe experience > 400% increases, given their large shares of pre-1990 emissions.

Political choice

It said:

  • Damages and thus potential liabilities depend on when emissions accounting begins and on what emissions are considered. These choices are ultimately political.
  • The analysis provides a quantitative grounding to inform these political choices.

Warmer and poorer

It said:

  • Countries that lose income are warmer and poorer than the global average, generally located in the tropics. Countries that gain income are cooler and wealthier than the global average, generally located in the mid-latitudes. Global warming to date has amplified, and will continue to amplify, this extant pattern of global economic inequality.
  • Our results provide an additional dimension to this globally unequal pattern: The cool, relatively wealthy countries that have gained from anthropogenic warming are also those that (1) have emitted the most and (2) caused the most damage to other countries from their emissions. Nearly all the high-emitting nations in North America and Eurasia are in the top two GDP per capita income quintiles over 1990–2014, though China, India, and Indonesia are exceptions. These top several income quintiles have caused income losses in the poorest two quintiles, while they have caused income gains for themselves that exceed those losses in magnitude (Fig.4, according to the study report.).

Income distribution of damages caused and experienced. Bar heights show the average GDPpc change experienced by countries in each income quintile that are attributable to the average emitter in each income quintile (colors). Error bars show + / − one standard deviation of the mean across the distribution of pattern scaling coefficients, FaIR realizations, and damage function parameters (Methods). Inset map shows each country’s income quintile, calculated using 1990–2014 average GDPpc. [Source: The study report]

  • On the other hand, countries in the lowest income quintile, primarily in Africa and central and south Asia, have caused nearly zero effects on other countries while suffering the greatest disadvantages from the emissions of larger economies. While uncertainty is large for the gains experienced by higher income quintiles, uncertainty is relatively low for damages in the bottom two quintiles. As such, the distributional picture of culpability and equity in climate damages is evident, despite the myriad complexities involved in linking individual nations’ emissions to climate impacts.

The results shown in Fig. 4 use territorial emissions accounting over 1990–2014 as in our [the study] baseline analysis, but many high-income, high-emitting countries have also imported additional emissions through their demand for products from the developing world.

At the expense of the poorest people

The report said:

  • These results are consistent with previous work that shows increases in global inequality from historical warming. However, our [the study] findings emphasize that the culpability for warming rests primarily with a handful of major emitters, and that this warming has resulted in the emitters’ enrichment at the expense of the poorest people in the world. Our work [the study] shows that anthropogenic warming constitutes a substantial international wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy.

High-income countries harmed low-income countries

The study report said:

  • GHG emissions from high-emitting countries have caused substantial economic losses in low-income, tropical parts of the world and economic gains in high-income, mid-latitude regions. Critically, these economic changes are attributable to the largest emitters despite the substantial uncertainties at each step in the causal chain from emissions to impact. Our results are robust despite the wide range of carbon cycle parameters and climate sensitivities, global-to-local forcing strengths, and temperature-growth specifications we test.
  • These results have two key implications. Firstly, they illustrate that physical climate uncertainty may constitute the dominant source of uncertainty in losses in tropical countries that are attributable to major emitters. While uncertainty in the relationship between the climate and economy is the dominant uncertainty in global losses from warming, our results demonstrate that this does not hold at the country level. In the low-income tropical countries that are most vulnerable to warming, internal climate variability and differences in model structure can produce a wide range in damages attributable to major emitters like the US. Scientific efforts to narrow uncertainty in regional climate change may therefore pay large dividends for countries seeking legal recourse for climate damages.
  • Secondly, the actions of specific emitters can be tied to the downstream monetary implications of climate change. Emerging discussions about climate liability have been limited to date by a lack of scientific evidence supporting causal linkages between individual countries’ emissions and the consequent local impacts.

The scientists claim their “framework shows that such linkages can be quantified using state-of-the-art climate models and empirical approaches and that we can process-trace exactly who has caused economic losses from their emissions, and how much.”

Firms, and farmers

The report said:

  • While previous studies have illustrated the economic harms of global warming, our work shows that these harms can be assigned to individual emitters in a way that rigorously accounts for the compounding uncertainties at each step of the causal chain from emissions to local impact. Finally, it is worth noting that our approach can be generalized to other actors, such as individual firms, or to other harms, such as the economic losses suffered by farmers due to extreme heat. These results therefore contribute to resolving a key barrier to climate liability efforts and advance these critical emerging discussions.

The findings, etc. of the above mentioned study are significant. The study findings show that climate movement, poor peasants and agricultural labor movement, working class movement, rights movement, anti-imperialism movement, these are parts of democratic movement, even, rich farmers’ movement, have ground to raise climate related demands; and demands are political. The politics of the exploited classes have no scope to ignore the issue of climate, to be exact, climate expropriation.

The issue is also found in many other studies. A 2012 study (Wei T, Yang S, Moore JC, Shi P, Cui X, Duan Q, Xu B, Dai Y, Yuan W, Wei X et al (2012), Developed and developing world responsibilities for historical climate change and CO2 mitigation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109 (32) https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1203282109) said:

  • Negotiations on emission reduction among countries are increasingly fraught with difficulty, partly because of arguments about the responsibility for the ongoing temperature rise. Simulations with two earth-system models demonstrate that developed countries had contributed about 60-80%, developing countries about 20-40%, to the global temperature rise, upper ocean warming, and sea-ice reduction by 2005.

Seven years later, another study (Diffenbaugh NS, Burke M (2019), Global warming has increased global economic inequality, Proc Natl Acad Sci, 116(20) PMID: 31010922, PMCID: PMC6525504, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1816020116) said:

Understanding the causes of economic inequality is critical for achieving equitable economic development.

To investigate whether global warming has affected the recent evolution of inequality, the study combined counterfactual historical temperature trajectories from a suite of global climate models with extensively replicated empirical evidence of the relationship between historical temperature fluctuations and economic growth. Together, these allowed the scientists to generate probabilistic country-level estimates of the influence of anthropogenic climate forcing on historical economic output.

The study found:

  • Very high likelihood that anthropogenic climate forcing has increased economic inequality between countries.

As example, the study cited the following facts:

  • Per capita GDP has been reduced 17-31% at the poorest four deciles of the population-weighted country-level per capita GDP distribution, yielding a ratio between the top and bottom deciles that is 25% larger than in a world without global warming. As a result, although between-country inequality has decreased over the past half century, there is ∼90% likelihood that global warming has slowed that decrease. The primary driver is the parabolic relationship between temperature and economic growth, with warming increasing growth in cool countries and decreasing growth in warm countries. Although there is uncertainty in whether historical warming has benefited some temperate, rich countries, for most poor countries there is >90% likelihood that per capita GDP is lower today than if global warming had not occurred. Thus, our results show that, in addition to not sharing equally in the direct benefits of fossil fuel use, many poor countries have been significantly harmed by the warming arising from wealthy countries’ energy consumption.

This year, a study (Beusch, L., Nauels, A., Gudmundsson, L. et al., Responsibility of major emitters for country-level warming and extreme hot years, Commun Earth Environ 3, 7, January 6, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00320-6) quantified contributions of the five largest emitters – China, US, EU-27, India, Russia – to project 2030 country-level warming and extreme hot years with respect to pre-industrial climate.

The study found:

  • Under current pledges, their cumulated 1991–2030 emissions are expected to result in extreme hot years every second year by 2030 in twice as many countries (92%) as without their influence (46%). If all world nations shared the same fossil CO2 per capita emissions as projected for the US from 2016–2030, global warming in 2030 would be 0.4° C higher than under actual current pledges, and 75% of all countries would exceed 2° C of regional warming instead of 11%.

The study report said:

  • The US is the largest per capita emitter, followed by Russia, China, EU-27, and finally India.
  • The top five emitters — China, US, EU-27, India, and Russia — are playing a major role in driving global and regional warming and are increasing the probability for extreme hot years, both since the first IPCC report of 1990 and even only since the Paris Agreement of 2015. In the context of their current Paris Agreement emissions pledges, the US, Russia, China, and EU-27 would experience even more severe warming by 2030 if the whole world were to follow the same per capita fossil CO2 emissions as them.

There are, according to the report, “small countries with large per capita emissions, such as Switzerland and similar-size countries” also. These countries are, the report said, to “pursue more stringent mitigation efforts”.

There’s no scope to confine the climate crisis issue within the narrow discussion of climate-only, if the findings cited above are considered from people’s, especially the poor, working people’s perspective. The issue is not also to be handled by NGOS only. Rather, the issue should be handled by political organizations/parties, as this issue (i) involves capitals, (ii) capitals’ conflict with people, (iii) is political, and (iv) this involves political decision. These make the issue of climate one of the major and immediate tasks of political organizations, especially, the political organizations of people, especially the poor.

The climate-reality is a reflection of climate plunder. Capitals involved in this climate business, and, to be specific, the world capitalist system is just expropriation and plunder of the climate. This is in addition to appropriation of surplus labor the world around. In the case of climate, it’s not only the labor chained by capital that pays for capitals’ climate plunder, but the entire population, parts of the population don’t always sale their labor power to capital, makes the payment. Even, deterioration of climate harms labor productivity, an issue of concern to related capitals. The findings of the study also help identify contradictions related to climate and the world capitalist system. There are people on one pole and climate-expropriating capital on another. Considering the issues, the new study cited above is significant as climate expropriation by capital has turned out as crime against humanity.

Note: Mostly quoted, directly/indirectly, from the studies.

The post US Climate Expropriation Impacts all Humanity first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Farooque Chowdhury.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/07/15/us-climate-expropriation-impacts-all-humanity/feed/ 0 315467 The Supreme Court’s Anti-Climate Decision in West Virginia v. EPA Impacts All of Us https://www.radiofree.org/2022/07/06/the-supreme-courts-anti-climate-decision-in-west-virginia-v-epa-impacts-all-of-us/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/07/06/the-supreme-courts-anti-climate-decision-in-west-virginia-v-epa-impacts-all-of-us/#respond Wed, 06 Jul 2022 15:08:38 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/node/338124

It’s no secret that the US Supreme Court has issued a number of rulings this year that will hurt working families today and in the future. As a registered nurse living in Miami, the court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA—which undermines the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate power plants under the Clean Air Act—is yet another ruling that has me worried about my patients and my coworkers.

Make no mistake: climate change is a public health emergency. Climate change is linked to conditions as diverse as mosquito-borne illnesses like Zika, water-related conditions such as cholera, and mental health problems like post-traumatic stress disorder. A critical tool in fighting air pollution and climate change, the Clean Air Act has saved millions of lives and spared millions of people a trip to the emergency room. 

If Covid-19 has shown us anything, it is that public health is necessary for us to lead full lives and have a functioning economy.

At work, I take care of patients who receive kidney transplants. When they leave the hospital, we gift them with a water bottle emblazoned with the hospital logo. We tell them to take care of themselves not only by taking their medications, but by staying hydrated. Heat and dehydration stress the kidneys and could put their new organ at risk of failing. Doctors and researchers around the world have observed epidemics of heat-related kidney disease, a phenomenon known as “climate-sensitive disease.”  As carbon emissions continue to warm the planet and cause extreme heat waves, simply taking a walk outdoors will be increasingly dangerous for my patients and many others.

In sunny South Florida where many people work outside in construction or agriculture, climate change will bring growing numbers of people to our hospital with heat illness. We’re not alone. Although the most vulnerable among us will feel the greatest impact, everyone—regardless of their race, zip code, occupation, or political party—is affected by harmful pollution, global warming, and climate disasters.

The last two and a half years of life in a pandemic have brought health care workers and the institutions we work for to the brink. Are we prepared for more emergencies—floods, wildfires, Category 5 hurricanes? Can we handle a dramatic increase of people walking through our doors daily with climate-sensitive diseases such as asthma flare-ups, heart failure exacerbations, and heat stroke? Dealing with one crisis has been disruptive enough, but climate change promises to bring dozens of health crises simultaneously, and I fear it will put us over the edge. 

Fighting climate change is a form of preventative health care. Although the Supreme Court ruling will hamper the federal government’s ability to protect our wellbeing, Congress and the White House can take life-saving action by making bold investments in green infrastructure and programs that will decarbonize our economy.  They should also take immediate action to reduce pollution and other causes of climate change. If Covid-19 has shown us anything, it is that public health is necessary for us to lead full lives and have a functioning economy. Our elected leaders must act now to safeguard our future before it’s too late.


This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Caitlin MacLaren.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/07/06/the-supreme-courts-anti-climate-decision-in-west-virginia-v-epa-impacts-all-of-us/feed/ 0 313070 The Key Impacts of Livestock Production Upon the Land https://www.radiofree.org/2022/07/04/the-key-impacts-of-livestock-production-upon-the-land/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/07/04/the-key-impacts-of-livestock-production-upon-the-land/#respond Mon, 04 Jul 2022 08:24:10 +0000 https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=248124 Livestock is responsible for more ecological damage to the western landscape than any other human activity. However, few accounting of these impacts is ever compiled. One source is my book Welfare Ranching–the Subsidized Destruction of the West. Remember that all ecological science is based on statistical averages, not absolutes. Therefore, not all livestock operations have More

The post The Key Impacts of Livestock Production Upon the Land appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Wuerthner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/07/04/the-key-impacts-of-livestock-production-upon-the-land/feed/ 0 312446 How a Supreme Court Ruling Impacts the Tohono O’odham Nation https://www.radiofree.org/2022/06/24/how-a-supreme-court-ruling-impacts-the-tohono-oodham-nation/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/06/24/how-a-supreme-court-ruling-impacts-the-tohono-oodham-nation/#respond Fri, 24 Jun 2022 08:54:27 +0000 https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=247294

Photograph Source: Gerald L. Nino, CBP, U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security – Public Domain

In 2017, when I was interviewing people at Customs and Border Protection headquarters in Washington, DC, one official told me point-black, “We’re exempted from the Fourth Amendment.” The Border Patrol, according to him, can circumvent the Constitution and conduct unwarranted searches and seizures. I suppose I didn’t hide my look of surprise too well (he said it so authoritatively and casually!), because the officer immediately followed that up with a quick “the Supreme Court ruled that many decades ago.”

On June 8, the U.S. Supreme Court again validated this “exemption” and strengthened it. In Egbert v. Boule the court ruled to protect federal agents, particularly Border Patrol agents, from civil rights lawsuits (by making it much more difficult to do so). Central to the case was a Fourth Amendment claim. U.S. Border Patrol agent Erik Egbert entered innkeeper Robert Boule’s property in Blaine, Washington, without a warrant to check the immigration status of some recently arrived guests. When Boule protested Egbert’s presence, Egbert threw him against a vehicle and then to the ground. In its ruling in favor of Egbert, the Supreme Court wrote that “regulating the conduct of agents at the border has national security implications,” and that there would be a “risk in undermining border security.”

As SCOTUSblog contributing writer Howard Wasserman told NPR, “Considerations of national security and foreign affairs that are endemic to immigration enforcement and immigration issues are always going to make it improper for a damages action to go forward.” As has been the case since 9/11, the broad yet ill-defined notion of national security trumps all else.

But there is a longer history to this, as the CBP official alluded to at the beginning. Geographer Reece Jones, author of the forthcoming Nobody Is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States, told me that this was “the latest example of the continued evisceration of Fourth Amendment protections. … The Supreme Court had previously ruled that Border Patrol agents needed lower standards of evidence to stop vehicles, could operate permanent checkpoints deep inside the U.S., and could use racial profiling in all of their work. Now, even when citizens are subjected to egregious abuses of authority, there is no mechanism to hold Border Patrol agents accountable.”

“I Feel Like I Have No Civil Rights”


This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Todd Miller.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/06/24/how-a-supreme-court-ruling-impacts-the-tohono-oodham-nation/feed/ 0 309677 ‘Absolutely Terrifying’: Criminal Defense Attorneys Warn About Impacts of Roe Reversal https://www.radiofree.org/2022/06/16/absolutely-terrifying-criminal-defense-attorneys-warn-about-impacts-of-roe-reversal/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/06/16/absolutely-terrifying-criminal-defense-attorneys-warn-about-impacts-of-roe-reversal/#respond Thu, 16 Jun 2022 22:08:03 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/node/337666

With the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority expected to overturn Roe v. Wade any day now, criminal defense attorneys are preparing to defend a flood of clients facing abortion-related charges—and warning about the looming decision's likely consequences.

"We're not talking about just fines like a traffic ticket."

That's according to an NPR report from Thursday, which includes an interview with Lisa Wayne, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), that aired earlier this week.

While the NACDL does not take a political position on abortion, Wayne said that "our legal concern is to make sure that we are sounding an alarm bell about the wave of expansive prosecutions that we are certain will follow any significant curtailment or reversal of Roe v. Wade."

Referencing recently enacted laws in states like Texas and Oklahoma that target people who aid and abet abortions, and the potential for similar legislation elsewhere in the future, Wayne warned that "we're talking about the doctors performing them, the friends, the parents, the boyfriends. All of those people will be exposed to criminal penalties, which opens up the floodgates to overcriminalization and mass incarceration."

In response to that warning, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who has publicly shared her own abortion story, said that "this is absolutely terrifying—and further underscores that efforts to ban abortion are solely about controlling our bodies."

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The NACDL leader explained that people who have or assist with abortions could prison time with mandatory minimum—and possibly even life—sentences. As she put it: "We're not talking about just fines like a traffic ticket. We're talking about serious consequences in this country."

Comparing attacks on abortion rights to the U.S. War on Drugs, Wayne told NPR that "people were looking at life sentences and still remain incarcerated to this day. You have to ask yourself, what lessons did we really learn?"

Noting that comparison in a tweet about the NPR report, U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) said that "abortion isn't just a reproductive health issue—it's a civil rights issue and a racial justice issue."

Wayne also acknowledged how the anticipated surge in demand for attorneys—if or when Roe falls and GOP lawmakers ramp up legislative attacks on reproductive freedom—will disproportionately impact low-income people.

"Whenever you have laws that lead to rampant overcriminalization, you stretch your resources," she said. "So rich people will always be able to lawyer up. They will always have access to attorneys. They will always be able to have that advice that you should have at the front end."

"Poor people will be left behind. I don't get a lawyer if I'm poor until I'm actually charged with a crime in this country in most jurisdictions, so I have to wait to that moment until I get charged," she continued. "If I have money, if I have access to counsel, I get advice on the front end of being able to perhaps avoid the consequences that I would face if I didn't have money."

Wayne's remarks echo an August 2021 report from her organization which says that reversing the landmark 1973 high court decision "will lead to rampant overcriminalization through regulatory enforcement and to mass incarceration on an unprecedented scale."

"If Roe v. Wade is overturned it will result in a near-complete ban on abortion in several states, vastly expanding the potential for criminal charges to be brought against those participating in or performing abortions in those states," the NACDL report notes.

According to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, at least 26 states "are certain or likely to ban abortion without Roe" through existing so-called trigger laws and other measures.

The NACDL document also highlights that "proposed anti-abortion legislation disproportionately impacts poor women, Black women, and other women of color, highlighting the deeply sexist, racist, and classist nature of the recent and proposed new anti-abortion laws, and the manner in which such laws will contribute to the problem of systemic racism and classism within the criminal legal system."

"The future is clear, should Roe v. Wade be overturned," the report warns, "states across the nation are prepared to arrest and prosecute women, their friends, their providers, and all those who assist them obtain what is presently a legal medical procedure."

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Since Politico broke the news of a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would reverse Roe, demands have mounted for federal action to protect reproductive freedom. However, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) last month partnered with the GOP—yet again—to block the Women's Health Protection Act, which would affirm the right to abortion nationwide.

The New York Times reported Thursday that U.S. President Joe Biden is considering executive action to protect reproductive rights, including "declaring a national public health emergency, readying the Justice Department to fight any attempt by states to criminalize travel for the purpose of obtaining an abortion, and asserting that Food and Drug Administration regulations granting approval to abortion medications preempt any state bans."

In a letter to Biden last week, over two dozen senators offered six specific recommendations for executive action and asserted that "the entirety of the federal government must be engaged in the administration's efforts and must act as swiftly as possible."


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/06/16/absolutely-terrifying-criminal-defense-attorneys-warn-about-impacts-of-roe-reversal/feed/ 0 307626 Biden: Federal agencies must consider climate impacts of infrastructure projects https://grist.org/regulation/biden-federal-agencies-must-consider-climate-impacts-of-infrastructure-projects/ https://grist.org/regulation/biden-federal-agencies-must-consider-climate-impacts-of-infrastructure-projects/#respond Tue, 19 Apr 2022 20:00:29 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=567544 The Biden administration is restoring parts of a key environmental law, reversing Trump-era rollbacks that limited community input and prevented federal agencies from considering climate change when approving infrastructure projects, from roads to oil pipelines. 

On Tuesday, the White House Council on Environmental Quality announced that it had finalized changes to the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a more than 50-year-old law that requires the federal government to consider the environmental impact of major projects. Under Trump, agencies stopped considering the “indirect” impacts of proposed infrastructure and limited when groups opposed to the projects could weigh in with objections. 

Now, federal agencies will once again be required to consider all the impacts of an infrastructure project, including those that are part of a chain reaction or build over time. That would allow environmental reviews to fully account for climate impacts, the council’s announcement states, as well as prevent the release of “additional pollution in communities that are already overburdened by polluted air or dirty water.” 

“Restoring these basic community safeguards will provide regulatory certainty, reduce conflict, and help ensure that projects get built right the first time,” Brenda Mallory, chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ, said in a statement. “Patching these holes in the environmental review process will help projects get built faster, be more resilient, and provide greater benefits to people who live nearby.”

Enacted in 1969, NEPA has served as a key tool for environmental activists and community groups to oppose infrastructure that would damage the environment or expose vulnerable populations to toxic pollution. It was used to drag out the approval process for the Keystone XL pipeline – activists argued the project would lock in U.S. dependence on fossil fuels and drive up carbon emissions, as well as increase the possibility of oil spills in an aquifer vital for drinking water and agriculture. Keystone XL was eventually blocked by Biden on his first day in office. But NEPA has long been criticized by industry groups and conservative lawmakers, including the Trump administration, which viewed the environmental rule as an obstacle to development, particularly of fossil fuel infrastructure. 

Broader changes to NEPA could be in store as the government enters the second phase of its rulemaking process. But Tuesday’s actions, which were first proposed in October, were applauded by environmental groups. 

“Good NEPA process requires robust community engagement, rigorous analysis, and public disclosure, which leads to government accountability, better projects with more community buy-in, and less litigation,” Abigail Dillen, president of the environmental law nonprofit Earthjustice, said in a statement. “As we transition to a clean energy future, following NEPA can and must help us to advance equitable solutions, including resilient and innovative new infrastructure.” 

President Joe Biden speaks following a tour of the New Hampshire Port Authority in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on April 19, 2022.
President Joe Biden highlighted his new infrastructure law on a visit to New Hampshire on April 19. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

But other rollbacks enacted as part of last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law, which shorten the timeline for environmental reviews and exclude certain categories of infrastructure from the process, remain on the books. Changes made to NEPA at that time listed certain kinds of natural gas pipelines, as well as any surface transportation projects costing up to $6 million (or $35 million if federal funding is provided), as “categorical exclusions,” meaning they have no “significant effect on the human environment” and don’t need to go through environmental review. The updates also limited environmental impact statements to 200 pages and, in most cases, required that they be completed within two years. Other laws enacted in 2005, 2012, and 2015 contained more than 60 provisions intended to chip away at NEPA protections, environmental activists told Grist when the changes in the infrastructure law were first proposed last year. 

Tuesday’s announcement comes amid a flurry of climate-related actions from the White House this week, as the Biden administration aims to demonstrate its commitment to environmental protection ahead of Earth Day. On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to provide an update on its efforts to limit the production of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, a class of highly potent planet-warming gases, under a 2020 law. On Wednesday, the White House plans to promote its “clean energy accomplishments,” The Hill reported, while Biden will travel to Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington on Thursday and Friday to highlight emissions reductions in transportation, infrastructure, and climate resilience. 

The push is part of an effort to prove Biden’s climate agenda is alive and well, despite legislative setbacks to the president’s Build Back Better bill and criticism aimed at his response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and rising gas prices, a strategy that has largely centered on increasing domestic fossil fuel production. Build Back Better, which would have injected billions in funding for green energy infrastructure, has been stalled in Congress since Senator Joe Manchin announced his opposition, exposing rifts within the Democratic Party. And environmental advocates sharply criticized the administration’s decision to restart oil and gas leases on federal lands, which officials say they were required to do to comply with a court ruling, and to allow increased ethanol sales. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden: Federal agencies must consider climate impacts of infrastructure projects on Apr 19, 2022.


This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Diana Kruzman.

]]> https://grist.org/regulation/biden-federal-agencies-must-consider-climate-impacts-of-infrastructure-projects/feed/ 0 291983 Impacts of Racism on White Americans in the Age of Trump https://www.radiofree.org/2022/04/15/impacts-of-racism-on-white-americans-in-the-age-of-trump/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/04/15/impacts-of-racism-on-white-americans-in-the-age-of-trump/#respond Fri, 15 Apr 2022 08:50:38 +0000 https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=239851 The Trump presidency is over, but it is apparent that the Trump era isn’t. His racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic attitudes have found an appalling level of acceptability within the Republican Party. And isn’t limited to some extreme right-wing base of the party; these attitudes are firmly embraced by many members of both the House More

The post Impacts of Racism on White Americans in the Age of Trump appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/04/15/impacts-of-racism-on-white-americans-in-the-age-of-trump/feed/ 0 291009 How Mask-Wearing to Prevent Spread of COVID-19 Impacts Children in Speech Therapy https://www.radiofree.org/2022/04/05/how-mask-wearing-to-prevent-spread-of-covid-19-impacts-children-in-speech-therapy/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/04/05/how-mask-wearing-to-prevent-spread-of-covid-19-impacts-children-in-speech-therapy/#respond Tue, 05 Apr 2022 22:47:22 +0000 https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=25534 In a March 2022 Atlantic article, Stephanie Murray discussed how mask mandates have impacted children with speech or language disorders. When the pandemic began in March 2020, many speech pathologists…

The post How Mask-Wearing to Prevent Spread of COVID-19 Impacts Children in Speech Therapy appeared first on Project Censored.

]]> In a March 2022 Atlantic article, Stephanie Murray discussed how mask mandates have impacted children with speech or language disorders. When the pandemic began in March 2020, many speech pathologists pivoted to teletherapy, which, while useful to slow the spread of a deadly virus, was not always as constructive for little kids. Additionally, many parents’ new work-from-home routine prevented them from being able to facilitate the weekly virtual appointments.

“He would just completely disengage, lie on the floor, start playing with the toys, literally turn his back to the computer, try to close it,” said mother Julia Toof of her son, who, at the time, was just shy of 3-years-old. “It just didn’t work.”

Parents of children with speech or language disorders agree this pandemic poses a classic catch-22. Experts say delaying therapy early in a child’s development can lead to long-term behavioral and social obstacles but going maskless may leave their child, and others, vulnerable to contracting COVID-19.

While transitioning back to in-person sessions, speech pathologists realized just how difficult it was for both them and the children to wear masks and still achieve the goals of traditional speech therapy. Face shields and clear-paneled masks, which allow the speaker’s mouth movements to remain visible, were not always provided to therapists in schools or therapy practices. When accessible, therapists utilized these tools along with demonstration videos to make their in-person sessions as safe and helpful as possible, but these workarounds often posed additional challenges. Tactile cues, such as straws and tongue depressors that help with proper tongue placement or bite plates to maintain jaw alignment, are simply impossible to recreate in a COVID-safe manner.

“There is just a lot of interference on so many levels that I think there are certainly kids whose care was impacted negatively and whose progress probably was slowed,” said Alex Levine, a speech-language pathologist at the Learning and Development Center at the Child Mind Institute.

At the onset of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) granted mask exemptions to children with certain qualifying disabilities. However, children with speech and language disorders did not meet those requirements.

The debate over requiring children to wear masks has been a common topic in mainstream media since the beginning of the pandemic, but most articles focus on staunch, politically-charged anti-masking, rather than parents’ general curiosity about possible solutions to a relatively new problem. In September 2020, the Washington Post covered the potential for developmental delays in children due to mask mandates but emphasized that risks associated with contracting COVID-19 outweigh any other concerns. The Post published a similar article in March 2022 but did not provide information on children with preexisting conditions. In January 2022, Anya Kamenetz reported for NPR on school mask mandates and how such mandates may inhibit students’ social, emotional, and cognitive development. As of April 2022, no outlet outside of The Atlantic appears to have focused on the impact mask-wearing has had on children undergoing speech therapy.

Source: Stephanie H Murray, “Speech Therapy Shows the Difficult Trade-Offs of Wearing Masks,” The Atlantic, March 2, 2022.

Student Researchers: Alexander Moore, Emily Kenyon, Kathleen Boulton, and Ryan Shea (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Faculty Evaluator: Allison Butler (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

The post How Mask-Wearing to Prevent Spread of COVID-19 Impacts Children in Speech Therapy appeared first on Project Censored.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/04/05/how-mask-wearing-to-prevent-spread-of-covid-19-impacts-children-in-speech-therapy/feed/ 0 349164 Climate Groups Say Planetary Impacts of Crypto Mining Could Be Reduced by 99% https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/29/climate-groups-say-planetary-impacts-of-crypto-mining-could-be-reduced-by-99/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/29/climate-groups-say-planetary-impacts-of-crypto-mining-could-be-reduced-by-99/#respond Tue, 29 Mar 2022 15:56:24 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/node/335735

A simple switch in the way bitcoin is coded could reduce the power-hungry cryptocurrency's energy use by 99%, dramatically reducing its environmental impact.

"The 'currency of the future' is dragging us into the past when it comes to the urgent battle to save the climate."

That's according to a new campaign launched Tuesday by a coalition of billionaire-backed green groups aiming to "Change the Code, Not the Climate."

"The science is clear: To prevent runaway climate change, we need to start phasing out fossil fuels and investing in the clean energy economy," Greenpeace USA chief program officer Tefere Gebre said in a statement.

"No matter how you feel about bitcoin, pushing those with the power to ensure a code change will make our planet and communities safer from the destructive impacts of climate change," he added. "What we do have is a solution: Change the Code. Not the Climate."

The new effort is backed by Chris Larsen, the co-founder and executive chairman of ripple, a cryptocurrency and digital payment network for financial transactions. Larsen has contributed $5 million to fund the campaign's ads, which will appear on Facebook as well as in publications including MarketWatch, The New York Times, Politico, and The Wall Street Journal.

The campaign notes that bitcoin's software code—called "proof of work" (PoW)—requires massive computer arrays that use as much electricity annually as entire nations such as Sweden and the Netherlands. In order meet this ever-increasing demand for electricity, bitcoin miners are buying U.S. coal plants and striking deals with fossil fuel corporations to purchase flare gas, which is normally burned off, to power their operations.

The activists cite a 2018 study published in the journal Nature Climate Change that found continued wide adoption of bitcoin could alone produce enough carbon dioxide emissions to push planetary warming past 2°C within less than three decades. The landmark Paris climate agreement seeks to limit warming below 2°C and, ideally, no higher than 1.5°C.

Experts say that switching from PoW to "proof of stake" (PoS) or other more efficient means of validating cryptocurrency transactions would dramatically reduce energy consumption and greenhouse emissions. Bitcoin rival ethereum's blockchain network—where most non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are traded—is switching to proof of stake, a move expected to reduce energy use by 99%.

Larsen, whose ripple runs on neither PoW nor PoS, insists he is not targeting bitcoin, but noted in an interview with Bloomberg that "now with Ethereum changing, bitcoin really is the outlier."

Michael Brune, campaign adviser and former executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement that "we are calling on the bitcoin community to change to a low-energy code. This could mean switching to proof of stake, federated consensus, or even changing proof of work to use far less energy. We won't prescribe the exact solution, but we demand urgent action to save our climate and future."

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said that "the 'currency of the future' is dragging us into the past when it comes to the urgent battle to save the climate. Our planet can't afford bitcoin's excessive and unnecessary energy use and associated pollution."


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/29/climate-groups-say-planetary-impacts-of-crypto-mining-could-be-reduced-by-99/feed/ 0 286192 The Impacts of Green New Deals on Latin America https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/16/the-impacts-of-green-new-deals-on-latin-america/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/16/the-impacts-of-green-new-deals-on-latin-america/#respond Wed, 16 Mar 2022 08:58:03 +0000 https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=237044 A transition away from fossil fuels currently requires a vast amount of minerals to build the infrastructure of renewable energy. According to the World Bank, the extraction and refining of minerals such as lithium, graphite, and cobalt will increase by 500 percent by 2050. More than 50 percent of the world’s supply of lithium, a key component in solar panels and the batteries in electric cars, can be found in the Lithium Triangle, a vast area of salt flats spanning Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. Meanwhile, nearly 40 percent of the world’s copper, another key component in “sustainable” energy infrastructure, can be found in Peru and Chile. More

The post The Impacts of Green New Deals on Latin America appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John Feffer.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/16/the-impacts-of-green-new-deals-on-latin-america/feed/ 0 282294 IPCC Report Reveals How Inequality Makes Climate Change Impacts Worse—And What We Can Do About It https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/04/ipcc-report-reveals-how-inequality-makes-climate-change-impacts-worse-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/04/ipcc-report-reveals-how-inequality-makes-climate-change-impacts-worse-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/#respond Fri, 04 Mar 2022 17:42:54 +0000 /node/335084
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Harpreet Kaur Paul.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/04/ipcc-report-reveals-how-inequality-makes-climate-change-impacts-worse-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/feed/ 0 279165 IPCC Report Reveals How Inequality Makes Climate Change Impacts Worse—And What We Can Do About It https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/04/ipcc-report-reveals-how-inequality-makes-climate-change-impacts-worse-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/04/ipcc-report-reveals-how-inequality-makes-climate-change-impacts-worse-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-2/#respond Fri, 04 Mar 2022 17:42:54 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/node/335084
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Harpreet Kaur Paul.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/04/ipcc-report-reveals-how-inequality-makes-climate-change-impacts-worse-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-2/feed/ 0 281625 Wealthy Nations Continue to Drive Climate Change with Devastating Impacts for Poorer Countries https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/03/wealthy-nations-continue-to-drive-climate-change-with-devastating-impacts-for-poorer-countries/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/03/wealthy-nations-continue-to-drive-climate-change-with-devastating-impacts-for-poorer-countries/#respond Thu, 03 Mar 2022 20:44:47 +0000 https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=25459 In a November 2021 article for The Conversation, Sonja Klinsky outlined how and why poorer countries and regions are disproportionately affected by climate change. Wealthier nations, such as the US,…

The post Wealthy Nations Continue to Drive Climate Change with Devastating Impacts for Poorer Countries appeared first on Project Censored.

]]> In a November 2021 article for The Conversation, Sonja Klinsky outlined how and why poorer countries and regions are disproportionately affected by climate change. Wealthier nations, such as the US, Canada and Australia, all have roughly 100 times the per capita greenhouse gas emissions of several African countries largely due to reckless burning of fossil fuels to power industries, build infrastructure, and mass-produce goods. The responsibility to turn things around has long fallen on the shoulders of those who have been directly impacted by climate change, but developing nations cannot afford to reduce their comparatively small emissions without also negatively impacting their own populations’ well-being.

“As a country’s emissions get higher, they are less tied to essentials for human well-being. Measures of human well-being increase very rapidly with relatively small increases in emissions, but then level off,” writes Klinsky. “That means high-emitting countries could reduce their emissions significantly without reducing the well-being of their populations.”

Fossil fuels release carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, where it lingers for hundreds of years. CO2 locks in heat and its gradual build-up warms the planet, causing catastrophic natural disasters, like wildfires, severe storms, and floods. But the greatest emitters are often not the ones bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. As sea levels rise, people in small island countries, like Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, will struggle to survive. In 2019, according to a 2021 report by Quartz Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, South Sudan, and Niger all experienced unpredictable and drastic changes in temperature and precipitation, which led to food shortages, loss of key infrastructure, economic disasters, and hundreds of fatalities.

“Processes that marginalize people, such as racial injustice and colonialism, mean that some people in a country or community are more likely than others to be able to protect themselves from climate harms,” writes Klinsky.

Unsurprisingly, only 5 percent of the world’s population is responsible for 36 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions from 1990-2015. The impoverished half of the population account for less than 6 percent of all emissions.

The 2015 Paris Accord included a lofty promise made by the United States meant to address the needs of low-income countries who are suffering from the disastrous effects of climate change. The United States guaranteed that industrialized nations would help contribute to a goal of $100 billion a year to tackle climate change beginning in 2020. However, they missed the mark that year. And then did so again in 2021. Shortly before the United Nations’ Glasgow climate conference in 2021, Canadian and German diplomats released a joint statement, which said they anticipated “significant progress toward the US $100 billion goal in 2022 and express(ed) confidence that it would be met in 2023.” By now, though, $100 billion would simply not suffice. The damage is so great that the price of adapting to climate change will only continue to rise.

Fortunately, corporate outlets such as Time and the New York Times have started reporting on environmental racism in the United States. In June 2020, the Washington Post highlighted a 2019 study by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences which revealed that “Black and Hispanic communities in the US are exposed to far more air pollution than they produce through actions like driving and using electricity.” Missing from this coverage, however, is the US’s role in speeding up the effects of climate change in the global south.

Sources:

Sonja Klinsky, “Climate Change Is a Justice Issue – These 6 Charts Show Why,” The Conversation, November 3, 2021.

Tawanda Karombo, “These African Countries Are among the World’s Worst Hit by Climate Change,” Quartz Africa, January 27, 2021.

Student Researcher: Lena Anderson (Diablo Valley College)

Faculty Evaluator: Mickey Huff (Diablo Valley College)

The post Wealthy Nations Continue to Drive Climate Change with Devastating Impacts for Poorer Countries appeared first on Project Censored.


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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/03/wealthy-nations-continue-to-drive-climate-change-with-devastating-impacts-for-poorer-countries/feed/ 0 349248 Climate change impacts ‘fall strongly on disadvantaged and poor people’ around the globe https://www.radiofree.org/2022/02/28/climate-change-impacts-fall-strongly-on-disadvantaged-and-poor-people-around-the-globe/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/02/28/climate-change-impacts-fall-strongly-on-disadvantaged-and-poor-people-around-the-globe/#respond Mon, 28 Feb 2022 15:23:35 +0000 https://news.un.org/feed/view/en/audio/2022/02/1112862 UN scientists on Monday delivered a dire warning about the impact of climate change on people and planet.

The report launched by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows how climate change is affecting every continent.

Although it is a global issue, its “negative impacts fall particularly strongly on disadvantaged and poor people across the globe, who have the least ability to adapt”.

The comment is from Professor Mark Howden, Director of the Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions, at the Australian National University, and one of the authors of the report.

Professor Howden spoke to Julia Dean from the UN Country Team in Australia, explaining to her how nature can play a part in the solution, and what other actions are needed.


This content originally appeared on UN News and was authored by Julia Dean / UN Australia.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/02/28/climate-change-impacts-fall-strongly-on-disadvantaged-and-poor-people-around-the-globe/feed/ 0 277640 Texas Families Feel Impacts of Cold Case Crisis https://www.radiofree.org/2021/04/19/texas-families-feel-impacts-of-cold-case-crisis-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/04/19/texas-families-feel-impacts-of-cold-case-crisis-2/#respond Mon, 19 Apr 2021 21:41:22 +0000 https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=24164 In the January/ February 2021 issue of the Texas Observer, reporter Lise Olsen investigated the growing backlog of homicide cases in Texas and its impact on the state’s communities. This…

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

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