The state attorney general’s office had emphasized the need for state and local law enforcement to step up because of a void left by federal authorities in the Bush administration who were busy rolling back environmental protections. “One of the best tools out there to go after polluters is to go after them on a criminal basis,” a spokesperson for then–State Attorney General Bill Lockyer told SFGate in 2005. Across the country, communities burdened by pollution and contamination have been calling for that type of accountability at the federal level for decades.

Now, even as the Trump administration continues to aggressively roll back environmental regulations, that dream has a better chance of materializing. Harris, as California’s junior senator, is fighting for a comprehensive piece of legislation that will give vulnerable communities the tools they need to address environmental disparities. On Thursday, Harris plans to introduce a companion bill in the Senate to the Environmental Justice for All Act introduced earlier this year in the House of Representatives by Democrats A. Donald McEachin of Virginia and Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona.

“Environmental justice is interconnected with every aspect of our fight for justice. From racial justice and economic justice, to housing justice and educational justice, we cannot disentangle the environment people live in from the lives they live,” Harris told Grist in an email. “These crises we are experiencing have exposed injustices in our nation that many of us have known and fought our entire lives.”

The Senate bill, whose lead cosponsors are Democrats Cory Booker of New Jersey and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, acknowledges how factors such as segregation and racist zoning codes have rendered communities of color more vulnerable to the effects of climate change and left them with limited resources to address ongoing environmental health disparities. To address this, the act aims broadly to meaningfully engage impacted communities in government decision-making processes, such as federal permitting decisions for infrastructure projects, the creation of climate resiliency plans, and the transition to clean energy.

For more than two years, Grijalva and McEachin have worked alongside environmental justice advocates to address these inequities during the drafting of the act. That work was underway well before the COVID-19 pandemic struck and before the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd at the hands of a police officer this spring, which unleashed massive protests calling for the country to reckon with systemic racism. While the health crisis and movement for racial justice has put vulnerable communities in the spotlight, Grijalva told Grist that their aim was always to deliver a comprehensive environmental justice bill that could help these communities.

“The premise was … that we were going to deal with the systemic root causes, with the systemic solutions, not just cover up the problem or change one little thing or create another task force,” said Grijalva, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee. “There had to be codified into law a systemic response to that systemic racism that created the situation.”

The Environmental Justice for All Act would amend the Civil Rights Act to allow private citizens and organizations that experience discrimination to seek legal remedies when a program, policy, or practice causes a disparate impact. It would also require federal agencies to consider health effects that might compound over time when making permitting decisions under the federal Clean Air and Clean Water acts. In addition, it would fund research on and programs to reduce health disparities and improve public health in disadvantaged communities. Under the act, new fees on oil, gas, and coal companies would go toward a fund to support workers and communities transitioning away from fossil fuel jobs. Finally, the act also intends to codify and make enforceable a longstanding executive order on environmental justice that then–President Bill Clinton signed in 1994.

McEachin told Grist that the House and Senate bills acknowledge the racist roots of environmental burdens in low-income communities and communities of color. “This is a moment in time that does not just focus on police brutality, does not just focus on confederate memorabilia. The focus is on 401 years of racial injustice in this nation, and part of that has to be environmental justice,” said McEachin. “If we’re going to achieve a clean energy future, climate justice, and relief for those communities, the frontline community has to be the very centerpiece of that plan.”

The Black Lives Matter movement has helped the act gain momentum toward passage in the House — Grijalva is optimistic that he’ll be able to bring the bill to the floor of the House for a vote by September. Some of the act has also been incorporated into other Democratic proposals, like the 538-page climate plan recently released by the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Some of the act’s proposals are also reflected in the environmental justice plan released by presumed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, said Grijalva.

For example, Biden plans to revise and reinvigorate Clinton’s executive order that directs federal agencies to review programs that may have disproportionately high or adverse health and environmental effects. Historically, the agencies have been inconsistent in addressing environmental justice within their strategic plans.

Environmental advocates who were involved in the creation of the House bill expressed enthusiasm for Harris’ sponsorship of the bill in the Senate and said that the legislation could be a game-changer for frontline communities. Kerene Nicole Tayloe, director of federal legislative affairs for the New York City–based nonprofit WE ACT for Environmental Justice, said that the consideration of cumulative health impacts during permitting processes would be particularly important, especially in states like Louisiana that don’t have meaningful environmental legislation on the books.

“Having something like the EJ for All bill, to consider cumulative effects in Cancer Alley and all of those kinds of places that have long been a dumping ground for companies and industry, I think would start to give communities the legal protections they need and put the tools in place,” said Tayloe.

Angelo Logan, who is the campaign director of the Los-Angeles-based Moving Forward Network and who was also involved in crafting the House bill, told Grist that he hopes the act sets the stage for more community involvement in creating legislation at the local, state, and federal levels. “I think there’ll be a dramatic change, a complete positive impact on communities that are the most impacted by environmental racism,” said Logan. “And the multiplying effects that it would have on communities is tremendous.”

As a presidential candidate, Harris made acting on climate change a top priority. Last year, while running for president, she unveiled a climate equity plan with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and created a climate agenda that would address the climate crisis and environmental injustices while building a clean economy with well-paying jobs. As California’s attorney general, she defended the state’s landmark climate laws in court and sued Chevron U.S.A. Inc. for damaging the environment. Holding polluters accountable will be critical moving forward, and the Environmental Justice for All Act will help communities do just that, Harris told Grist via email.

Race, she noted, is the No. 1 predictor of where polluting facilities in America are located. And 70 percent of Americans who live in the highest air pollution areas of our country are people of color. “These disparities were in part intentionally created and so we must intentionally address them,” said Harris. “That’s what this bill does.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Exclusive: Kamala Harris to introduce comprehensive environmental justice bill in Senate on Jul 30, 2020.

Aside from scuba-diving boredom, what will a world without coral reefs look like and how will it affect my day-to-day life?

— Does Indifference Void Environmental Responsibility?

A. Dear DIVER,

I’ve never seen a coral reef. It’s not because I’m uninterested in them. I am completely captivated by ocean ecosystems because they look so bizarre and alien but are, in reality, more natural than most things I see on a daily basis as a city-dweller. An underwater visit just hasn’t happened for me yet, and if U.S. COVID-19 infection rates or global emissions levels keep up their current trajectories, it very well may never happen!

While I certainly hope coral continues to exist in the future, never seeing those impressive underwater edifices in person is OK with me, because I think it’s an important exercise to appreciate the beauty and value of something from afar. For example, I appreciate Irish actor Cillian Murphy’s artistic and aesthetic offerings, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea (or legal) for me to chase him down at his home in Dublin. And no offense to Mr. Murphy, but I think coral reefs provide a bit more for my daily life than his cheekbones.

I’m a little bit allergic to the often saccharine phrase “everything is connected,” but unfortunately it’s the best way to begin to describe the role that coral reefs play in the life of someone who might never, ever come into close proximity to them. When scientists or activists try to communicate the importance of ocean ecosystems, there’s usually a lot of explanation of food chains and the crucial role of the algae and microorganisms you can’t see that create half the oxygen in the world. Yes, really!

But for coral reefs it’s not even that abstract, frankly. An estimated half a billion humans — roughly one and a half times the population of the United States, just to put that hard-to-fathom figure into context — are directly dependent on coral reefs for income and/or sustenance. That estimate is about 20 years old, so it’s probably even higher today. Perhaps you are not one of those 500 million individuals. Even so, should coral reefs collapse, that means a significant proportion of the global population will be forced to migrate away from their homes to survive, and that kind of upheaval will probably touch your life in some way.

Assigning monetary value to ecological systems gives me a headache, but there are several estimates out there of the economic value that reefs provide to humans, in the form of flood protection, medicine, food, etc. You get the picture, I hope. Coral reefs represent very tangible benefits to many, many humans. But I’m a writer, and I have a penchant for looking at the symbolic value of things. And the ways that coral reefs handle environmental stress is a fairly representative preview of what the world as a whole might experience if we continue to plow through climate tipping points.

Coral reefs are, of course, endangered by warming seas, but they’re also regularly fielding all kinds of other threats: overfishing, plastic and chemical pollution, and even poaching for purposes ranging from bone grafts (both coral and bone are made of calcium carbonate) to jewelry (I, unfortunately, own a vintage coral necklace inherited from my grandmother — yikes!). Reefs are pretty beat up at this point, particularly in more fragile marine basins like the Caribbean. Fun fact: Pacific reefs tend to be more resilient because they’re geologically older.

I talked to Stephanie Wear, a marine ecologist with the Nature Conservancy, about how coral reefs are kind of an ecological mood ring. “They’re a sensitive system that visibly shows the stress they’re experiencing,” she said. (I’m sure plenty of readers can relate!!!) “You talk about coral bleaching, well, I liken that to an SOS signal: ‘There is a problem, we are stressed, this is not good.’ They are an early indicator of what we can expect in all ecosystems, because all ecosystems have thresholds that we can at some point breach.”

Imagine the Earth as a human body, and the coral reef is its epidermis — when something is awry, the first warning can arrive via your skin. Stressed or hormonal? Breakouts. Dehydrated? Itchy and inelastic! Fever? Flushed and clammy. Liver problems? Yellow! Coral bleaching works the same way: A shift in the microecology of their environments, a change in the temperature or pH balance of the water (which are influenced by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), or even the presence of microplastics can cause the most vibrant coral to freak out and turn bone-white.

Going back to the dermatology metaphor, imagine your skin is a wreck — you’ve just gone on a weeklong, PMS-inspired bender and your nightly face washing routine consists of wiping ice cream off your chin with a Kleenex — and then on top of all that, you get a sunburn. That’s like climate change hitting polluted and overexploited coral reefs. And then say it’s a really terrible sunburn, and you get skin cancer and die. That’s the coral reef’s fate under 3 or 4 degrees Celsius of warming.

The thing is that coral reefs can come back from major bleaching events when they’re properly protected and cared for. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, coral resilience to climate change can be greatly improved when we deal with local stressors like pollution. That gives healthy coral a chance to take over and reefs to bounce back. But coral bleaching is also a sign that something is seriously wrong; according to a 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, if we don’t do something to turn the tide of oceanic warming, coral reefs could be dying en masse, never to come back, as soon as 2040.

But it’s not the utility, symbolism, nor outlook of coral reefs that are the thrust of your question, I think. It’s not even coral reefs at all, necessarily; it’s about how elements of the world that aren’t right in front of you — be they ecosystems, creatures, or people — can still matter to you.

I actually posed your question to my dear friend and coral enthusiast Amelia Urry, and she had the following response, which, even as a professional advice columnist, I can’t really improve upon: “I think the answer has to be about empathy, or something like it,” she said. “Yes, reefs play a vital role in regulating all kinds of global systems that you undoubtedly benefit from. And yes, you can learn about those if it helps you to care a little bit more. But so much of climate change, and ecological damage more broadly, happens to people and places that will never directly intersect with your life. There may be indirect consequences for you later on, sure, but the brunt of the loss is borne by someone else. And finding ways to care about THAT is the real trick.”

I think that’s what they call a mic drop?

But I hope you won’t take any of this to be too critical. You’re expressing a sentiment that many many many people struggle with, based on the number of “but how does this far-off thing affect me?” emails that end up in my Umbra inbox alone. Back in February, I, myself, brushed off the threat of coronavirus as a distant disaster that wouldn’t really affect my life! I was wrong.

Well. At the risk of getting too dark, I guess disasters are never quite as distant as we want to believe.

Ominously,

Umbra

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline I’m not a fish. Why should coral reefs matter to me? on Jul 30, 2020.

A comprehensive new report from the human rights and environmental watchdog Global Witness found that about 212 land and environmental defenders were killed in 2019 worldwide — a nearly 30 percent rise over 2018 data. The Philippines and Colombia were two of the deadliest countries for environmental activists. More than half of the total reported killings last year took place in those two countries. More than two-thirds of the killings took place in Latin America, which has consistently ranked as the deadliest region overall. The countries with the highest number of killings per capita were Honduras, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and the Philippines. About 40 percent of victims were from Indigenous communities, while over 10 percent of defenders killed were women.

The mining industry continues to drive most of the deadliest attacks on environmental activists like Bontolan — about 50 defenders were killed in mining-related conflicts in 2019. Agribusiness and logging were also major sources of conflict. While Global Witness has been documenting environmental attacks since 2012, the group noted that their data almost certainly doesn’t capture the full scope of the problem, because many parts of the world are restricted and difficult to monitor.

When Francia Márquez was meeting with other environmental activists in the Colombian town of Lomitas in May 2019, they were attacked by armed military men. Although a grenade went off, her group managed to escape. Last year, 64 defenders were killed in Colombia, a total that accounts for 30 percent of killings globally. In addition, the United Nations documented a roughly 50 percent surge in the killings of female activists between 2018 and 2019. According to the report, women are more likely to face violent and abusive tactics than men.

“The attack that we leaders were victim to yesterday in the afternoon invites us to continue working towards peace in our territory,” Márquez said on Twitter the day after her attack, according to the report. “There has already been too much bloodshed.”

The Philippines appears to be the deadliest place in Asia when it comes to attacks against environmental activists. For years, Filipinos have suffered rising temperatures, landslides, and deadly typhoons. No one feels the impacts of these climate disasters more than the country’s Indigenous peoples, including the Talaingod-Manobo tribe. On top of extreme weather events, the country’s rainforests are being razed for mineral extraction and private profit, destroying biodiversity and fueling climate change. The country’s president, Rodrigo Duterte, has called environmental activists “terrorists.”

The Philippine island of Mindanao has always been a military hotspot. According to the report, almost half of all Filipino environmental defenders killed last year lived on Mindanao, a trend that escalated under Duterte’s presidency. As violence against defenders in the Philippines intensifies, Indigenous schools — which are teaching children to protect their culture and their ancestral land — are under attack from the government. In October 2019, the country’s education department ordered some of these schools to shutter, alleging that the schools are linked with “rebels and terrorists.”

“For all Indigenous people around the world, our culture is rooted in our land,” Rius Valle, a spokesperson for Save Our Schools Network, a nonprofit working to defend Indigenous children’s right to education, told Global Witness. “If these lands are taken away from us, it will not just hurt our tribe and culture, but also our future. That is why the creation of our Indigenous schools is an expression to defend our ancestral land and the environment.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council recently published a report that concluded that the Duterte regime’s “overarching focus on public order and national security” — which includes his unending war on drugs and terrorism — has come “often at the expense of human rights.” A new anti-terror bill, which Duterte signed into law earlier this month, is one of the most controversial examples due to the law’s vague and expansive definitions of terrorism. Filipinos worry that the new legislation could be used to target and arrest government critics, especially environmental activists and journalists who are holding power to account.

When it comes to protecting the land and resources that stand between the world and climate catastrophe, environmental defenders — many of them Indigenous — have been the first line of defense for decades. As climate change accelerates, it looks like these activists will continue to face greater and greater risks.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 2019: The deadliest year yet for environmental activists on Jul 30, 2020.

Here, Reames explains why the near future looks rough for so many households. He also details how a Green New Deal focused on energy equity could function in the same way that, say, preventative healthcare does, whereby everyone saves money in the long run. The added bonus: It’d also get people back to work again.

His remarks have been edited for length and clarity.

Looking to the last crisis

The 2008 economic crisis hit Black, brown, and poor communities harder than others. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, which was a response to the crisis, was part of a time of innovation in the distribution of government resources. For example, the Weatherization Assistance Program, which has been around since the 1970s, got a $5 billion windfall to improve energy efficiency in low-income homes. But once that was over, we kind of went back to doing things the way we always did, which I think is really unfortunate.

For my dissertation, in 2016, I researched Kansas City’s Green Impact Zone to assess an effort to concentrate funding in one area. The energy piece of it was very interesting to me because it has a connection to housing stability. I started thinking about how improving the efficiency of people’s homes could be a mechanism for them to be able to afford their other bills.

Taking a more efficient (and equitable) approach

The federal government spends several hundred million dollars a year to help weatherize houses in low-income communities. But is that money being spent and distributed as effectively and equitably as possible? White households consume more energy than Black, Asian, or Latino households, which is why they are often beneficiaries of energy-efficiency measures.

Our research shows that Black households spend about 7.6 percent of their income on energy as compared to 5 percent for white households. Black and Latino households use more energy to heat and cool their homes as compared to white and Asian households — which means that, on average, Black and Latino families are living in less efficient homes.

One way for these households to benefit from energy-efficiency programs is for utilities to promote awareness of them. If utilities only target the biggest consumers, they’ll typically target higher-income and white households. Lower-income, African American, and Latino households typically live in smaller homes.

Closing the energy-efficiency gap

We recently published a study that discovered that one in eight Michigan households falls into what we call an “energy-efficiency funding gap.” Basically, these households make too much money to qualify for government assistance with their energy bills and weatherization costs, but they don’t have solid enough credit to qualify for loans that target energy-efficiency improvements. So they miss out on opportunities on both fronts.

I think we’re definitely heading into a crisis period. Because so many people are unemployed, many utilities agreed to suspend disconnections. But those agreements are starting to expire, at the height of summer. People are also facing evictions. Most cities have cooling centers, but can you go sit in a cooling center and also socially distance in the middle of a pandemic? Access to renewables, especially solar, might have been one way for people to be more resilient during this period, because it could’ve helped offset energy costs at a time when so many people are running their air conditioners.

Making the case for a grand(er) plan

A lot of my experience is based off of what we did in ’09. I saw a lot of innovation during that period, but we didn’t go as far as we probably needed to go.

But we’ve learned a lot over the last 10 years. With a new economic stimulus package like the Green New Deal, we could direct funding to retrofit houses to make them more energy efficient, and also create jobs. Green jobs aren’t always located in the places where people actually need work, but retrofitting is very place-based — you can hire people to work in the communities in which they live. We can only hope that our response to this crisis will be viewed as proactive by future generations.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This prof is shedding light on energy injustice — and how to fix it on Jul 30, 2020.

Carbon-wise, it’s proven to be a big success: By 2017, RGGI had already surpassed its 2020 goal of reducing emissions 45 percent below 2005 levels. A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives on Wednesday shows the program has been a boon to public health, too.

While RGGI is designed to reduce CO2 emissions, it inevitably leads to reductions in other pollutants from power plants, like nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. These gases react with other compounds in the atmosphere to form tiny, inhalable particles that are dangerous to human health.

For the new study, the researchers looked specifically at the health benefits for children and babies of reducing this “fine particulate matter,” as it’s called. They estimated that from 2009 to 2014, RGGI prevented more than 500 cases of childhood asthma, 112 preterm births, 98 cases of autism spectrum disorder, and 56 incidences of low birthweight. They also found that the amount of money saved by avoiding these and other childhood health impacts amounts to between $191 and $350 million. Even better, these benefits were not limited to participating states but were spread across neighboring states as well.

The new study builds on past research looking at the impact of RGGI primarily on adult health. A 2017 analysis by Abt Associates, a research firm, found that the reduction in particulate matter over the first five years RGGI was in effect prevented 300 to 830 premature deaths and saved between $3 and $8 billion in healthcare costs related to those deaths and a range of illnesses, including heart attacks, bronchitis, asthma, and drops in productivity such as lost work days due to poor air quality. But since 2017, new research on fine particulate matter has linked it to health burdens that were not investigated in the 2017 RGGI study. The new study aims to paint a more comprehensive picture of how RGGI has boosted public health, especially for children.

“As impressive as they are, these estimated benefits for children do not take into account their potential life-long consequences, so they are likely underestimates of the true benefits of this policy,” lead author Frederica Perera, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, said in a statement. On top of that, the study does not take into account the health benefits of mitigating climate change, such as fewer heat-related illnesses. One area the authors identify for further research would be to see how these benefits are distributed across socioeconomic or racial groups, to evaluate whether RGGI is an effective policy response to environmental justice issues.

These benefits could easily be spread across the whole country if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tightened its standards on particulate matter pollution under the Clean Air Act. But right now, the Trump administration is in the process of finalizing new standards that are … exactly the same as the old standards. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is supposed to review the science to make sure the standards protect public health, but the scientific advisory council tasked with doing this was fired by EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler. The council decided to meet and review the standards anyway, which were last updated in 2012. The council ultimately issued a letter last fall urging the EPA to enact stricter standards, which the agency ignored. The agency is currently going through 66,000 public comments submitted on the “new” rule, but it’s clearly on the list of items the Trump administration intends to push through by the end of the year.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A northeast law limited carbon emissions. It also helped kids breathe. on Jul 29, 2020.

Luz Ángela Uriana’s voice trembled as she described the Covid-19 situation in her region. “We are really scared,” she said in a phone call. “There are many cases in our neighboring town.” Worried in particular about her son, who has lung issues, she added that she and others “want Cerrejón to stop activities while this illness is around. And the people working in the mine come from elsewhere, that is a risk too. Cerrejón is not protecting us.”

Uriana is an activist and member of the Wayuu, an Indigenous people of northern Colombia and Venezuela. A group of them have called upon the United Nations to intervene in their struggle against the owners of one of the biggest coal mines in the world, called Cerrejón, which is located on the Guajira Peninsula near the Venezuelan border — and smack in the middle of Wayuu ancestral territory. The region has long been wracked by grinding poverty, drought, and, since the advent of large-scale production at Cerrejón, critics say, noxious pollution.

Now, as the global Covid-19 pandemic bears down on Colombia, the Wayuu are facing a new threat — one made exponentially worse, Uriana and others say, by the pervasive coal dust and drought. They have appealed to numerous U.N. officials, including the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, in a quest to have some of Cerrejón’s mining activities suspended. “The Covid-19 emergency is exacerbating the situation itself,” said Monica Feria-Tinta, a U.K.-based attorney for the law firm Twenty Essex, which is assisting in the Wayuu’s appeal. According to data, she said, air pollution is worsening the situation. The shortage of water for hand washing also makes it difficult to prevent disease spread.

“That is the reason that pushed the Wayuu to appeal to the U.N.”, she added. “It is a matter of survival — of not being wiped out.”

The battle pits members of the Wayuu — the largest Indigenous group in Colombia — against the owners of one of the largest coal mines in the world, and at over 270 square miles, the largest open-pit coal mine in all of Latin America. The mine — owned jointly by global giants BHP (Britain-Australia), Anglo American (South Africa), and Glencore (Britain) — employs more than as 5,800 people, according to the facility’s own figures, and it has done much to support education and health services in the region over the years. But conflict with the local community, arising from both the pollution as well as infrastructure decisions that, the Wayuu say, have favored Cerrejón’s water needs over their own, have become more pitched with the arrival of Covid-19.

Cerrejón, which vigorously disputes the water-usage and environmental charges, had earlier slowed operations during Colombia’s nationwide quarantine, but resumed normal operations in May. The appeal on behalf of the Wayuu to human rights officials at the U.N. was filed last month.

Whether the U.N. will have any standing to intervene in the case remains unclear. But with large percentages of the Wayuu already struggling with poor health and malnutrition, activists for the community — including Uriana — say the persistent risk of Covid-19 infections amid so many other environmental insults is one threat too many.

“We breathe polluted air 24 hours a day,” Uriana said. With coal dust all around, she said, “we eat it, we sleep with it.”

The La Guajira region now has 1,578 confirmed cases of Covid-19, and rates are rising quickly. Eighty-one people with Covid-19 have died in La Guajira. Speaking to the Colombian media earlier this month, Nemesio Roys Garzón, the governor of the region, appealed to federal officials in Bogotá. “Everything has been carried out with the government’s own resources and those of the various mayors,” he said. “For this reason, we cannot continue waiting, because we are putting the lives of Los Guajiros at risk.”

The connection between air pollution and greater risk of death due to Covid-19 has received some empirical analysis. Several studies, including one from Harvard University researchers and released as a pre-print in April, ahead of peer review, suggested that people living in U.S. regions with high exposure levels to air pollution from cars, refineries, and power plants — particularly microscopic airborne particles known as PM2.5 — may have a higher risk of death from Covid-19 infections than people living in areas with comparatively cleaner air. It is also widely understood that people with pre-existing health conditions, including lung and heart ailments, face a greater risk from the pandemic.

The Wayuu, meanwhile, are already famously impoverished, with high rates of malnutrition and disease. Out of one million people in La Guajira, some 53 percent live in poverty, with the rate rising to more than 80 percent in rural areas. Nearly 30 percent of people over 15 are illiterate — the highest rate in the country. In a December judgment, the Constitutional Court of Colombia cited clinical records showing many Wayuu suffer from a host of illnesses, including bronchial asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bacterial pneumonia, lower respiratory infections, and acute obstructive laryngitis.

Just how much of this can be attributed to mining activity is a matter of fierce debate. A comprehensive environmental study by the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), a non-governmental organization based in Bogotá, for example, found high levels of heavy metal contamination in local soil and water samples, as well as high levels of airborne particulate matter around the area of Cerrejón. While the study determined that the mine was a contributor to local pollution and should be better regulated, however, it could not conclusively link the high contamination levels to mining activities, and acknowledged that industrial, agricultural, and urban activities in the region were also contributing to pollution. In a response to the report, included as an annex, Cerrejón officials called into question, among other things, the group’s testing methodologies and equipment.

Still, the mine has been censured repeatedly, including in December, when the Constitutional Court concluded that mining activity was directly affecting the health of the Indigenous people and the surrounding environment. The court also cited research, spearheaded by Colombia’s Sinú University and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, that found the air around Cerrejón to be measurably contaminated with coal dust and blood tests of the local population to have high concentrations of several heavy metals.

As reported by El Espectator, Colombia’s oldest newspaper, the court ordered Cerrejón “to control the levels of particulate matter which their activities emit and which contaminate the air; to clean up the houses in the community of all the coal dust, a residual that is part of mining; to reduce the levels of noise produced at the site; to prevent the contamination of water sources, and to increase their efforts at fire prevention, along with other measures.” The court was responding to a suit filed by Indigenous representatives against Cerrejón, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, the National Environmental Licensing Authority, the National Mining Agency, and the Autonomous Regional Corporation of La Guajira.

The mine has been sanctioned at least 17 times for its impact on the Wayuu, according to El Espectator.

Government officials did not respond to repeated requests to discuss the case with Undark, nor to comment on the recent complaint filed with the U.N. Representatives of Cerrejón also declined to comment directly, but in a prepared statement, issued on June 18, the company said it was “ready and willing to offer information to the different United Nations agencies to whom the report was directed to provide details about the company’s social and environmental performance.”

The statement also pointed to the company’s efforts to support neighboring ethnic communities — both before and during the Covid-19 crisis. While characterizing the complaint to the U.N. as based on “inaccurate and biased information about Cerrejón’s social and environmental performance, including completely false data on the company´s water use and air quality,” the company said it “shares concerns about the wellbeing of the Wayuu Indigenous communities,” and that it has spent millions of dollars in recent years supporting educational initiatives, job training, infrastructure projects, and bottled water distribution initiatives in the region.

Amid the Covid-19 crisis, Cerrejón “has redirected its voluntary social investment of nearly $2.4 million to the health system in La Guajira,” the company said in its statement. “We have donated more than 100,000 medical supplies to local hospitals, including three ventilators and a laboratory to process [polymerase chain reaction] molecular tests … [and] we have been able to significantly scale up our water distribution program resulting in the delivery of more than 12 million liters of potable water to communities.”

“We refute strongly the allegations and the insinuation that we have acted inappropriately,” the statement added, “both in general and during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

As it stands, much of the coal from Cerrejón is destined for markets in the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Americas. But the Wayuu are divided over the impact of mine’s operations. It is, after all, an enormous economic driver for La Guajira — accounting for as much as 44 percent of regional GDP, according to the company’s own figures — and many Wayuu rely on the mine for employment.

“The statements and complaints mentioned by the foreign lawyers only represent the position of two families and not of the entire community or its duly elected authorities representing the members of the community,” reads an official letter signed by, among others, the Indigenous leader Oscar Guariyu Uriana. (Luz Ángela said he is a distant relative of hers, and Uriana is a common surname among the Wayuu.) The statement adds: “The Provincial Community authorities have preferred to maintain direct dialogue with the company to resolve existing concerns about the effects of the mine’s proximity.”

But Luz Ángela Uriana blames the mine for discord among the Wayuu, too. “Cerrejón has all the time created this division between us,” she said. “But we should focus on the big White enemy instead of being enemies among our own people, our own family.Uriana added that while she is not against development, “the money from Cerrejón cannot make my son’s lungs healthy again.”

Feria-Tinta, the attorney representing the Wayuu at the U.N., says that whatever the economic value of the Cerrejón mine, it hasn’t amounted to aggregate positive change for Indigenous communities in Colombia. As part of the U.N. complaint, Feria-Tinta and the Wayuu community members she represents say the Cerrejón mine uses as much as 24 million liters, or more than 6.3 million gallons, of water each day. Amid shortages of bottled drinking water due to the pandemic, the company has also contaminated local drinking water supplies, which are already under stress, the advocates say — charges that Cerrejón representatives and government officials have repeatedly said are baseless.

Whatever the reality, Feria-Tinta says the presence of the mine over the past few decades has done little to improve the lot of those most living closest to it. “The mine has not benefitted the Wayuu people. They are dying and affected by disease,” she said. “Guajira is the second poorest region in the country, and Cerrejón hasn’t changed that.”

Rosa Maria Mateus, a member of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective of Colombia (CAJAR), which is assisting in the U.N. case, agreed. “The company has sold itself as a benefactor that supports the region. But reality shows something else.”

La Guajira, she added, is “a region of sacrifice.”

The arrival of Covid-19, advocates for the Wayuu say, is now making that doubly true. “We presented the petition to the U.N. in this Covid-19 context because we feel a deep and serious fear,” Mateus said. “Scientific reports point out how there are populations more vulnerable and prone to a higher mortality, for the virus to kill them.

“If it spreads widely in Guajira,” she added, “we are very scared, because a large percentage of the population already have existing diseases, especially lung diseases.”

The U.N. complaint is asking for the closure of the two pits nearest to the Wayuu village of Provincial. David R. Boyd, a U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Environment, confirmed that the U.N. had received the complaint, but said he could not comment further. Attorneys for the Wayuu say they expect a response from the U.N. sometime this month.

Uriana, meanwhile, has little positive to say about the most important multinational company operating in her region. “I am not against mining or that the country progresses. But they should respect the rights of the Indigenous communities.

“We are like ants against the big and powerful Cerrejón,” she added. “But we have dignity.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In a fight over a Colombian coal mine, COVID-19 raises the stakes on Jul 29, 2020.

When lockdown hit, I found myself suddenly with more free time than I’d had since childhood. To fill it, I started to take walks. As soon as the weather finally became warm enough to tolerate the outdoors in Minneapolis, I would leave my parent’s house for three, sometimes four hours without my phone or wallet, walking the same route past landmarks from my childhood: through the parking lot behind my high school, across the highway overpass, past a park where I used to loiter with childhood friends. Finally, I would arrive at a small nature preserve where, sandwiched between the highway and the suburban sprawl, patches of tallgrass prairie and wetland are being restored.

Access to any slice of the outdoors, no matter how small, is a privilege at any time, but felt especially precious under quarantine. Free of the usual distractions, I got the chance to really pay attention to the living things we share this land with.

Like most city dwellers, I’ve always suffered from some level of species blindness — to me, birds have always just looked like birds, and plants have always just looked like plants. I had never bothered to learn their names. But, over time, these long and meandering walks gave me a new sense of place — natural landmarks to accompany my social ones. Slowly, the prairies and wetlands, and all their patterns and languages, brought a new kind of comfort in their familiarity. There’s the beaver dam near the entrance of the preserve; nearby, I can usually spot a couple of painted turtles sunning themselves on the rocks. Further along the path, red-winged blackbirds perch territorially on switchgrass and sorghastrum. Honeybees and monarchs visit milkweed and thistle. Invisible, the chorus frogs call their daily rhythms from the marshy ponds.

It’s tempting to interpret this time in nature as a silver lining, but the truth is there’s no silver lining to be found in this pandemic. We are surrounded by preventable suffering that is hitting the most vulnerable among us the hardest, widening the injustices of an already unjust country. Day after day, in Minneapolis and beyond, we are witnessing the neglect of a government that does not care about the lives of its people, of police departments that brutalize communities of color and protestors, of an economic system that sacrifices workers at the altar of consumption.

What are we to make of this? I have no clue, but often I find myself returning to the words of Ross Gay, a poet who wrote a book of essays about a thing that delighted him every day for a year. To Gay, joy is not a privilege, but a muscle. “Joy has nothing to do with ease,” he said in a 2019 interview. “It is not at all puzzling to me that joy is possible in the midst of difficulty.” In other words, it is precisely because times are hard that joy is necessary. Joy sustains us, allows us to continue to care for one another and work for a better world, even when the unrelenting cruelty of the news resists reason and language.

Since March, I’ve left my parents’ house. I’ve found myself without as much time for long walks. But I’m grateful every day for the little patches of nature near my new apartment, the music of the sedge wren and the percussive woodpecker.

To me, they sound like joy.

Alexandria Herr is an intern at Grist. To see more examples of her original art, follow her on Instagram here.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Practicing joy (and social distancing) in nature on Jul 29, 2020.

The report from the Public Accountability Initiative and LittleSis, a nonprofit corporate and government accountability research institute, details how oil and gas companies are funding police foundations around the country, from New Orleans to Detroit. In some states, the fossil fuel industry has also supported laws to criminalize pipeline protests.

According to the report, the oil giant Chevron is a “Corporate Partner of the Police” for the New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation and a board member of police foundations in Houston and Salt Lake City. Meanwhile, community members in Richmond, California, a city that is disproportionately Black, have been fighting against pollution produced by one of Chevron’s biggest refineries.

It’s not just oil and gas companies; the report also looks into private utilities and financial institutions with fossil fuel investments. Exelon, the country’s largest utility company, which in 2019 settled a pollution lawsuit in the Chesapeake Bay for $200 million, has donated to police foundations in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. JPMorgan Chase, the top global bank financing fossil fuels, is also a corporate partner for the New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation, and in 2011 donated $4.6 million to the NYC Police Foundation. Wells Fargo, the second biggest financier of fossil fuels, has ties to police foundations in Charlotte, Seattle, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City.

Chevron told the Guardian that the firm is a “good neighbor” and invests money into various community programs and partnerships. Meanwhile, Exelon told HuffPost that just “a fraction” of its overall donations to nonprofits went to police foundations.

These police foundations raise money to buy weapons, equipment, and surveillance technology for police departments. That funding comes on top of the $100 billion spent nationally on policing every year; major cities in America typically spend 20 to 47 percent of their general budgets on police departments. Because they’re nonprofits, police foundations generally receive less scrutiny — the lack of transparency around these donations makes it hard to tell exactly which companies are giving to police foundations and how much. The new report is based on information from companies’ charitable giving reports, press releases, tax forms, and materials from police foundations.

The report comes as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic exacts a disproportionate toll on Black, Latino, and Native communities, fueled in part by environmental racism and disparities in pollution exposure. The authors state that “divesting from fossil fuels and fighting to end environmental racism goes hand in hand with defunding the police in the fight for racial justice and reinvestment in Black and Brown communities.”

As the protest movement against anti-Black racism and police brutality continues, activists are pointing out more of the connections between policing, pollution, and climate change. “From policing to financial violence, the road to solving the climate crisis includes addressing connected predatory systems,” Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, the North America director of the climate group 350.org, told the Guardian. “We support the demand to defund and divest from the police and fossil fuels, and to reinvest in the resilience of people and planet for a just recovery.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How the fossil fuel industry drives climate change and police brutality on Jul 28, 2020.

“It’s a very hollow feeling,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, told journalists after giving his 200th speech on climate change on the Senate floor in 2018. He felt like he was talking to an “empty chamber.” His addresses, detailing the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the climbing costs of floods and wildfires, and the flow of “dark money” to block climate legislation, had become a weekly tradition, but there wasn’t much evidence that the hundreds of hours he spent on them had changed his fellow senators’ minds.

While only a sixth of Americans dismiss the scientific consensus that the planet is heating up, a larger chunk — one-third — still doubt that humans are responsible. Two new studies dig into the reasons why so many people resist accepting the facts on climate change and offer some insight into how to talk to them about our overheating planet in a way that might be more compelling. The takeaway: Evidence alone isn’t enough.

“People routinely ignore facts on a whole host of issues, including climate change,” said Deborah Lynn Guber, an associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont. “So if Democrats base their strategy on facts, then that’s a problem.”

The underlying reason people dismiss climate science, it turns out, has more to do with political identity than logic. In fact, the more intelligent people are, the more polarized they tend to be on climate change. When they’re challenged, Democrats and Republicans alike simply use their smarts to justify their beliefs. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing.

It’s not just that Democrats and Republicans in Congress have different priorities when it comes to the climate crisis — they also use different styles of persuasion. A study published in the journal Environmental Politics earlier this month breaks down the differences along partisan lines. With the help of machine learning, Guber and her colleagues analyzed millions upon millions of words from Congressional floor speeches from 1996 until 2015.

They found that Democrats tend to make arguments about climate change backed up by facts and evidence, while Republicans tend to tell stories, using imagery, emotional appeals, and humor to sway people to their side. According to Guber, Republicans are “communicating in ways that may ultimately be more effective.”

One chilly day in February 2015, Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, unwrapped a snowball on the Senate floor. After noting that he kept hearing the previous year was the hottest on record, he held it up, asking “You know what this is? It’s a snowball, just from outside here. So it’s very, very, cold out. Very unseasonable.” Then he threw it at the Senate president. “Catch this!”

Inhofe’s speech was widely ridiculed. The Daily Show’s host Jon Stewart mocked Inhofe by saying, “Clearly if global warming was a problem, I would only be able to grab lava balls.”

Sure, Inhofe was conflating weather with climate. But it’s hard to contradict the existence of a snowball, Guber said. It was ridiculous, but it got a lot of attention.

“That’s a prime example of using that vivid imagery to communicate something about climate change that certainly isn’t true,” she said, “but the truth of it doesn’t really matter to the audience.”

Republicans these days take a softer approach to climate change, not outright dismissing the evidence, but framing the issues in terms of personal stories, analogies, and anecdotes. Representative John Carter, a Republican from Texas, once told the House a story about going golfing with his buddies in Texas back in the 1960s, according to Guber’s study. All in one day, they were hit with a dust storm, raining mud, and a wild temperature swing from a sweltering 90 degrees down to a frigid 20. “That certainly was the most spectacular climate change I have ever seen in my entire life,” he said.

Some research suggests that liberals and conservatives react differently when confronted with new evidence that contradicts their beliefs. A working paper by four Canadian psychologists argues that many liberals are more willing to change their minds (associated with the value liberals tend to place on science and skepticism), while conservatives are more likely to stick to their guns (linked with a respect for tradition and religious beliefs).

Democrats have long been criticized for overlooking emotional appeals, Guber said, but they seem to be moving in a direction that would appeal to a broader swath of the public, framing the climate crisis as a threat to public health and national security, invoking religious stewardship, and explaining that taking on climate change creates jobs.

“The hope is if Democrats can find a way of being emotionally engaging on climate change while avoiding some of the triggers that speak to partisanship, then they’ll do well,” Guber said.

The hundreds of hours Whitehouse spent on those speeches wasn’t wasted. While it may seem like no one watches C-SPAN, journalists do — and they report on what these elected officials say. Speeches like Whitehouse’s are “a vital catalyst for maintaining the attention of the news media,” Guber said. “So the more people in Congress that speak about climate change, the more attention the subject gets.”

Whether or not his dogged speeches played a role, some of Whitehouse’s Republican colleagues are slowly coming around on climate change. He was joined by a Republican, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, during one of his climate speeches for the first time last year. “I think there are at least a dozen Republican senators who would like to participate in that discussion and do something positive that actually solves the problem,” he told E&E News last July. And it only took 250 speeches.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The surprising reasons why people ignore the facts about climate change on Jul 28, 2020.

“Opponents of climate action have been given an outsize opportunity to sway this debate,” said Rachel Wetts, the author of the study. Her results were published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Wetts analyzed 1,768 press releases from business, government, and social advocacy organizations from 1985 to 2013, categorizing them by their stance on climate action. She then ran the press releases through plagiarism detection software to see how often they were featured in the country’s largest-circulation newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

She found that even though 10 percent of the press releases contained messaging against climate action — arguments like, “It would be too expensive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” — 14 percent of them wound up in print. By contrast, the more prevalent press releases arguing for personal, corporate, or political action to tackle climate change were only covered 7 percent of the time. And the least-covered press releases came from groups with the most expertise on science and technology, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and IBM.

Edward Mailbach, director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communications, called these conclusions unsettling. “Rather than marginalize self-interested voices and give prominence to expert voices, these papers did just the opposite,” he said.

How to explain the results? Wetts said one reason for the imbalance might be tied to journalistic norms of objectivity, which reporters and editors often interpret as a need to give at least two sides to every story, no matter the science. She called this “false balance,” because it can put unsubstantiated opinions on the same footing as well-established facts. In the case of climate change, she said that the practice has lent legitimacy to those who deny climate change, leading readers to believe that denial is “more than a fringe stance.”

Previous research has suggested that this practice — also known as “bothsidesism” — began to decline in the mid-2000s. But Wetts’ analysis found no statistically significant change in coverage over the 30-year period of the study. She also said that the trend couldn’t be explained by excessive coverage of anti-climate press releases in the business-friendly Wall Street Journal. Claims that steps to curb carbon emissions would be too costly or undermine U.S. energy independence, for instance, also found favor in the liberal-leaning New York Times.

As climate denial falls out of fashion, what’s been called “climate delay” has taken some of its space. This is when people acknowledge the reality of climate change but seek to put off large-scale efforts to address it, sometimes redirecting responsibility for the climate crisis to consumers and emphasizing the downsides of urgent action.

Wetts scanned press releases for both climate denial and delay — anything that argued against climate action — regardless of whether they accepted the science.

“Maybe people are covering climate deniers somewhat less,” Wetts said, “but then they’re substituting in other conservative voices instead. They’re talking about people who are opposed to climate action for some other reason besides denying the science.”

Jennifer Marlon, a senior researcher at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, acknowledged that the media environment has changed since the mid-2010s — The New York Times in particular has ramped up its climate coverage — but she suspects that false balance continues to influence the national conversation. For instance, newspapers might be better at contextualizing opponents of climate action, explaining that their views are outside the mainstream. “But those arguments are still out there and are very much in play,” Marlon said.

Wetts called on researchers to investigate the effects of media skew on public policy. The messages amplified by the media “can dampen political will to act on climate change,” she said in a statement, “with potentially serious consequences for how we as a society address — or fail to address — this issue.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The curse of ‘both-sidesism’: How climate denial skewed media coverage for 30 years on Jul 28, 2020.

But just because coronavirus has axed our crowded backyard BBQ plans doesn’t mean we have to marinate in our own doom and gloom. We asked four of our Grist Fixers for their ideas about (safely!) getting outside, broadening cultural horizons, and practicing self care in the midst of all that is wrong with the world.

Here are their recommended routes for fixing one helluva f*cked up summer.

If you’re craving an outdoor adventure

“It helps to rethink the idea of what the outdoors are,” says 2016 Fixer José González, founder of the advocacy organization Latino Outdoors. “You can find adventure in local parks, through art, through play, through a spectrum of engagement rather than a pyramid that prioritizes and values some activities (at the peak) more than others. Simply being in nature with an intention of being in it, rather than completing a distance, summit, or the like, can help you with mindfulness.”

González also suggests journaling as a way to be more present and attentive while spending time in nature. “And if you are going to hit the trail,” he says, “then choose those with the least full parking lots, perhaps some with fire roads or wider trails to be able to socially distance. Have your mask so you can model to others the importance of it. And of course, always #RecreateResponsibly.”

If you’re itching to travel abroad, but can’t (but still want to)

From a pro-climate perspective, we’re not lamenting the COVID-driven dip in international flights. But we do recognize that wanderlust is real — and traveling abroad can be a life-changing opportunity that comes with a lot of personal and societal-level benefits. But don’t despair if you had to cancel your summer plans to visit another country; here are some tips from 2016 Fixer Julia Stewart, associate director of the international travel company Global Routes.

“There’s always buying [or renting] an RV and traveling around the U.S.,” Stewart suggests. Or, you could consider channelling your passion for travel into a different form of self-enrichment, such as training for a race or learning a new language. Another public health–approved hack? Spice up your stay-at-home routine with a global-inspired soundtrack. Stewart shared her all-international “Explore” Spotify playlist with us. So what are you waiting for? Press play, close your eyes, and drift off to Paris, Ghana, Ecuador, Italy … are you there yet?

If you love sightseeing in the city

Thinking about new ways to be a tourist in your own city? A bike tour can give you some fresh air and a fresh perspective on your surroundings. 2017 Fixer, consultant, and New Yorker Sean A. Watkins has found bike rides to be a great way to get out responsibly during the pandemic.

“I like to get on my bike and just let my sights take me,” Watkins says. “Since I’m in New York, I usually eventually make it to some body of water. And oftentimes, just following the bike lane brings me somewhere new — without the worry of getting hit by a car!”

For newbies, Watkins also recommends some must-have products: comfy biking shorts, a hydration pack (like a CamelBak or a Vibrelli), good bike lights, and a phone holder. Planning on making a stop? Don’t forget a bike lock and a face mask!

If you want to bring the ocean home with you

As temperatures climb, plenty of folks are dreaming of a seaside vacay. To bring the ocean into your landlocked quarantine, 2018 Fixer Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist and the founder and CEO of Ocean Collectiv, recommends, “Solo, living room dance parties in a bathing suit — snorkel mask optional. You could even throw a towel down for good measure!”

Now, if you feel you must venture out to a beach near you, be sure to follow local guidelines, and use your best judgment to stay safe. Maintain the recommended distance from others, minimize time in restrooms and other communal areas, and try to keep your visit on the short side.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Summer vacation is broke. We’re fixing it. on Jul 28, 2020.

“We are in a climate emergency. We do not have the luxury of time,” Guterres said in a video announcing the formation of the seven-member advisory group. “We have seen young people on the front lines of climate action, showing us what bold leadership looks like.”

The new group includes young activists from Brazil, Fiji, France, India, Moldova, Sudan, and the United States. “Our ancestors have been protecting the forest and nature over the ages through their traditional knowledge and practices,” said Archana Soreng, an activist and researcher from India chosen for the advisory group, in a statement. “Now it is on us to be the front runners in combating the climate crisis.”

The announcement comes 10 months after then-16-year-old Greta Thunberg famously shamed world leaders at last year’s U.N. Climate Summit for not acting sooner on climate change. “You are still not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal,” Thunberg told the group. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”

It is unclear how much power the Youth Advisory Group will actually have in shaping U.N. climate recommendations, but the establishment of the group marks the first time young people will have a formal role in advising the secretary-general. The U.N. is sending a clear message that the youth voices on climate change matter — and has finally given them a seat at the table.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Meet UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ new youth climate advisors on Jul 27, 2020.

Police use force against Black residents of Minneapolis at a rate seven times higher than against white residents, and kill Black people at a rate 13 times higher than white people. In response to the protests over Floyd’s killing, the Minneapolis city council passed a resolution to transform public safety in the city, and has proposed an amendment to the city charter that would allow the council to potentially disband the police department entirely and replace it with a new community safety department. But that change wouldn’t affect the Minneapolis park police.

The Minneapolis parks system maintains its own police force in part because of its unique status as a semi-autonomous unit of government. Instead of falling under the purview of the city council, the parks system is governed by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, which is composed of nine commissioners who are elected every four years. Rated No. 1 in the country by the Trust for Public Land in 2020, the parks system comprises about 15 percent of the land in Minneapolis — one of the highest ratios of park land in the country.

But Minneapolis is also home to some of the nation’s widest racial gaps in homeownership, income, incarceration, wealth, and life expectancy, stemming from a history of structural racism, including racialized housing covenants and discriminatory lending, and the city’s wider racial disparities are reflected in the parks system. The former president of the Minneapolis NAACP once called it “the best parks system for white people” in the country. During the mid-20th century, the most desirable Minneapolis parks were encircled by neighborhoods with racial covenants that excluded anyone nonwhite, and the park board is currently working to close a historical racial and economic gap in parks funding by neighborhood.

“When we’re looking at the parks system it becomes a question of who gets to access the land, and the water, and take up space, who gets to congregate, and who gets to decide,” said Molly Glasgow, a local activist with police abolitionist organization MPD 150.

The park police are technically separate from the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), but there are plenty of similarities between the two agencies. Like MPD officers, Minneapolis Park Police officers are armed. They train with the MPD and belong to the same union. Accordingly, they are represented by the same union head, Bob Kroll, who has been praised by President Trump and called protesters against police violence “terrorists.” Until recently, park police officers wore similar uniforms and responded to MPD calls for backup, which is why a member of the Minneapolis Park Police was present at Floyd’s killing. In 2018, park police held four Somali-American teens at gunpoint after a bogus 911 call, forcing them to lie face down on the ground. The families lodged a human rights complaint with the city, which resulted in a $160,000 settlement.

“There’s no way to separate park police from the history of policing,” said Glasgow, who pointed out that formalized policing in America “began with slave patrols and local militias capturing Black people who were liberating themselves to freedom.” According to Yordanose Solomone, an environmental justice organizer who has worked with the Black liberation group Black Visions Collective, the park police threaten safety and access for communities of color. “There is a lot of conversation around placemaking and designing equitably … As of right now, our parks are not equitable, are not welcoming for Black and brown people,” said Solomone. “The park is supposed to be a space of leisure and relaxation where you feel like you are infused in green spaces. If the park is providing a different type of feel for brown and Black people, it’s not doing its work. The park police doesn’t need to be there.”

Parks and Power, a local grassroots organization that advocates for racial justice in Minneapolis parks, has been organizing around defunding park police for 12 years. “We’ve talked about the reality of policing and police violence since the inception of Parks and Power,” said Jake Virden, who’s been organizing with Parks and Power since 2009. “It’s such a reality in the lives of Black and brown and working-class people in Minneapolis, and we experience police brutality and surveillance in the parks.”

The park board has recently taken steps that it says will change that. The board voted unanimously on June 3 to end parts of its relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department, blocking MPD from staffing park events and barring park police officers from responding to nonviolent MPD calls. The changes also instituted a new park police uniform, to distinguish them further from the MPD.

Members of the park board described these changes as a meaningful new direction for Minneapolis parks. “It’s become abundantly clear — not only from the actions that the Minneapolis Police Department have perpetrated on communities here in Minneapolis, but that police departments across the country have perpetrated on their citizens — that having police in our parks systems, unless totally necessary, makes a lot of our communities feel unsafe,” Jono Cowgill, president of the park board, told Grist. Al Bangoura, the first Black man to serve as superintendent of the park board, stated in a press release, “I stand in solidarity with those seeking justice as does the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. We denounce racism in all forms, and we support and promote justice.”

Activists have applauded the park board vote while also calling for stronger action. Glasgow praised the decision to bar MPD from park events and to prevent park police from responding to MPD calls. “The Minneapolis police has a very racist and dangerous history, so limiting contact with people in our communities at any level, including the level of separating what police respond to what areas, is important,” she said.

Parks and Power wants the park board to go further by hitting the park police where it hurts: the budget. “We need to see them cut money away from park police and move that to things that we need in the parks,” said Shruthi Kamisetty, who has been an organizer with Parks and Power for two years. “Our organizing right now is going to focus on defunding the park police and really propping up community-based alternatives to policing in the parks.”

The 2020-2021 Minneapolis park board budget allocates $6.5 million to park police and only $4.7 million to youth development. Parks and Power is calling on the board to take progressive steps to remove money and power from the park police over the next five years: first by freezing the park police budget, then by reallocating money from park police into community and youth programs, then by disarming the park police, and finally by disbanding the park police. Some of these ideas have been discussed at recent meetings of the park board. Cowgill proposed a resolution to study different changes to the park police, including changing their training regimen to focus on ecosystem conservation, and to evaluate disbanding the police. The motion did not get a second.

A proposal to rename the park police “park rangers” was voted down at the June 3 meeting. Cowgill, who voted against the proposal, explained, “The idea that we would just rebrand our police to differentiate ourselves is a nice step, but just calling ourselves rangers doesn’t mean that suddenly our trained police officers are rangers.”

Virden is also skeptical of such a change. “I’m not into the cosmetic changes,” he said. The underlying issues, Virden said, are “the underlying structures of this armed force that’s legally authorized to use violence against us, and conditions of poverty and oppression and white supremacy … it’s not the color of the uniform or what you call them.”

Like a future without police in general, a future without park police will require a shift in the way Minneapolis residents think about public safety. For Kamisetty, it’s an exciting opportunity. “We all now need to be a part of building, resourcing, and reimagining community-based and community-rooted programs and initiatives that focus on meeting people’s needs and responding with care, de-escalation, and accountability,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 6,000 acres of Minneapolis parks have their own police force on Jul 27, 2020.

In a 538-page tome released last month on what the country should do to mitigate climate change, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis called on the government to reduce the nation’s 80-billion-pound, $161 billion food waste footprint. The group cited data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, explaining that food waste causes 8 percent of the world’s CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. That’s four times as much carbon pollution as the aviation industry. And wasted food squanders other resources too, including 21 percent of the world’s freshwater.

The House Committee didn’t propose any solutions to the problem, instead pointing to ongoing efforts led by the federal government to reduce food waste. Most significantly, they endorsed an interagency initiative launched in 2015 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency called the U.S. Food Loss and Waste Reduction Goal, which aims to reduce the country’s food waste by 50 percent by 2030, relative to 2010 numbers. The Food and Drug Administration joined the effort in 2019. The committee also highlighted a slate of bills co-sponsored by House Representative Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine, the aims of which include educating consumers and incentivizing food waste reduction in schools and grocery stores. (None of the bills have passed the House or the Senate yet.)

The committee’s action plan was intentionally open-ended. But a 50 percent reduction in food waste is a lofty goal, and some activists say that with only nine years left to meet the 2030 deadline, the government’s current initiatives aren’t ambitious enough. Specifically, they say an outsize focus on consumer education and communication efforts is sapping attention away from more systemic interventions.

“Food waste is seen as this consumer-based issue that can only be addressed by individual behavior change,” said Austin Bryniarski, a writer and former researcher at the Yale Sustainable Food Program. He says that focusing on individual responsibility (such as the EPA’s food waste reduction directive to “freeze taco meat” and be more deliberate when dining at all-you-can-eat buffets) absolves the federal government of responsibility for a glut of food that originates on the farm. It’s as if they think reducing waste at the consumer level would send a demand signal all the way up the supply chain, he said. It’s“wishful thinking.” .

That’s not to say that individuals shouldn’t educate themselves on food waste. In wealthier regions like North America and Europe, Food and Agriculture Organization data suggests that more than half of food waste occurs at the consumer level. This includes food that people buy but never eat, perfectly good food that people throw out due to arbitrary “best by” dates, and food that restaurants over-order and end up trashing instead of serving to customers.

But food waste is complicated. Dana Gunders, executive director of the nonprofit Rethink Food Waste Through Economics and Data, or ReFED, which has been advising the government on its food waste initiative, says we need a whole menu of solutions — including but not limited to individual action — to address various contributors to the issue. “We talk about food loss and waste as if it’s one problem,” she said, “but it actually means fixing the efficiency of the whole food system.”

ReFED splits food waste solutions into three categories: prevention, recovery (such as donating to hungry people), and recycling (mostly through centralized composting and other programs to break down food into soil or fertilizer). Prevention is an obvious winner — stopping food waste from happening in the first place eliminates the need to deal with it.

Prevention also makes a lot of sense from a climate perspective. Although food waste rotting in landfills is a well known source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, Gunders says 80 percent or more of the emissions associated with food waste actually stems from upstream processes: transport, cooling, cooking, storage, etc. — in other words, the same steps that make all food so carbon-intensive. To mitigate climate change, Gunders explained, “the most powerful impacts are upstream when you can prevent [food waste]. That’s really the best bang for your buck.”

But while prevention and recovery programs are cost-effective and often come with the added benefit of alleviating hunger, they are complex and are difficult to scale up. As those efforts are evolving, some experts say it may be worthwhile to develop recycling infrastructure, like centralized composting and anaerobic digestion. These measures are more expensive, but compared to all of the prevention strategies analyzed by ReFED, they can divert more than double the amount of food waste from going to the landfill. And centralized composting alone has the potential to eliminate 2.5 million tons of greenhouse gases per year — more than any other single intervention strategy to reduce U.S. food waste emissions.

To its credit, the government hasn’t put all of its eggs in the metaphorical basket of individual behavior change. Besides consumer education, the committee behind the Food Loss and Waste Reduction Goal identified five other priority areas, such as improving waste measurement and making it easier to donate to food banks.

The group has also been collaborating with private industry to reduce food loss across the supply chain. The USDA and EPA recently welcomed new members into its 2016 “Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions” program, which highlights companies that have “made a public commitment” to meet the 2030 goals. Current members include Walmart, General Mills, Conagra, Aramark, and other giants of the food industry.

Still, some people say that even these efforts lack teeth and fail to get at the root of the problem, advocating for a more comprehensive overhaul of the food system in alignment with principles of “food justice.” According to agroecologist and food author Eric Holt-Giménez, curbing food waste requires confronting a farming system that incentivizes overproduction starting on the farm. “The way to stop wasting food is to first stop producing it,” he said. One way of doing that would be to implement supply management measures, such as creating grain reserves and setting a price floor for commodities. It’s an idea that both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have floated, arguing that it could guarantee farmers a higher price for their goods, neutralize the incentive to overproduce, and encourage conservation.

Without such fundamental changes to the entire food system, advocates like Erik Hazard, communications director for the nonprofit Food First, say the government’s goal to slash food waste in half by 2030 is a pipe dream. “I think it’s just like the Millennium Development Goals,” he said, referring to a slate of ambitious humanitarian goals that the United Nations pursued between 2000 and 2015, nearly all of which were missed by enormous margins. “Even with the plan they have laid out, it’s going to fall woefully short.”

ReFED’s comprehensive analysis of 27 of the most promising food waste solutions discovered that, even if all of them were fully implemented by the federal government, it would only yield a 20 percent reduction in the amount of food waste that ends up in a U.S. landfill. And the pandemic hasn’t helped — supply chain disruptions and labor shortages have forced farmers to destroy millions of pounds of meat, dairy, and produce, increasing the country’s burden of food waste.

“We’ve let [food waste] get out of control,” Representative Pingree told Grist, but added that the pandemic has helpfully opened people’s eyes to the fragility of our supply chains and started new conversations about reforming the food system. “[COVID] has put a lot of topics out in the open,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Does the government’s food waste reduction plan pass the sniff test? on Jul 27, 2020.

The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a sweeping public lands package to fix crumbling national park infrastructure and permanently fund a decades-old conservation program, sending the legislation to President Donald Trump for final approval.

The overwhelming 310-107 vote by the House comes just over a month after the Senate passed the bill. Trump has promised to sign it into law.

The bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act has been hailed as the most significant conservation legislation in a generation and combines two bills that might otherwise not have passed on their own. One sets aside $9.5 billion to address the estimated $12 billion maintenance backlog at national parks, which has been a priority of the Trump administration. The other permanently supports the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which was established in 1964 and uses offshore fossil fuel revenue to protect natural areas and water resources, at the maximum $900 million per year.

The program, which has existed for over 50 years, has been plagued by funding shortfalls and has only twice received the full $900 million.

“We have a generational opportunity to ensure America’s crown jewels are protected,” Representative Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona and chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in speech on the House floor ahead of the vote. “We have a unique chance to ensure that every tool is available to help us respond to the climate crisis, [to] protect those landscapes that best protect clean water, clean air, and healthy green spaces. This bill is a major win for the American people, decades in the making.”

The legislative push featured some serious election-year politicking. For years, Trump and his team proposed gutting LWCF funding while continuing to claim it was a priority. The president suddenly changed his tune in March, giving full credit to Colorado Senator Cory Gardner and Montana Senator Steve Daines, two of the most vulnerable Republican lawmakers — neither of whom have particularly notable environmental records.

“ALL thanks to @SenCoryGardner and @SteveDaines, two GREAT Conservative Leaders!” Trump tweeted at the time.

Immediately after the Senate passed the bill in June, Trump’s Interior Secretary, David Bernhardt, tweeted a testy letter to Grijalva that suggested the Arizona lawmaker and other Democrats would stand in the way of passing a clean bill.

“Failure to move with dispatch to get this legislation enacted would be unconscionable,” Bernhardt wrote.

But it was the GOP, including Utah Representative Rob Bishop, the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, that tried to stymie its passage and demanded a chance to introduce significant amendments.

Bernhardt issued an equally partisan statement following Wednesday’s vote, saying Trump “accomplished what previous presidents have failed to do for decades, despite their lip service commitment to funding public land improvements.”

Although Trump’s reversal on LWCF appears aimed as securing wins for two Senate allies, environmentalists, public land advocates, and outdoor sporting groups have embraced the opportunity.

“Today, we the people made history,” Land Tawney, president of the Montana-based nonprofit Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, said in a statement. “The Great American Outdoors Act is a momentous achievement in the name of our most prized American landscapes and outdoors legacy. It’s a once in a generation piece of conservation and public access legislation that will have impacts for generations to come.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Congress passes the Great American Outdoors Act, a ‘once in a generation’ conservation bill on Jul 26, 2020.

A year ago, the Ohio legislature rammed through a law to save four unprofitable nuclear and coal-fired power plants from retirement, while it rolled back energy efficiency and renewable targets and passed on the $1.3 billion cost to customers. Opponents of the HB6 law, which included an unlikely alliance of environmentalists and the natural gas industry, began to organize a referendum to repeal it, saying it amounted to a corporate bailout for the utility player FirstEnergy.

What ensued was an aggressive and bizarre counter-campaign launched by a set of mysterious actors that didn’t disclose their donors, all singularly focused on preventing the referendum from gathering enough signatures before its deadline. One single-issue group began running ads with false claims that the Chinese government had orchestrated the referendum. Another group, Generation Now, hired the Democratic firm Fieldworks to deploy “petition blockers” who stood near signature gatherers and tried to discourage people from signing the referendum. At one point there was a physical confrontation between a referendum staffer and a petition blocker, and police responded.

By October, it was clear the referendum failed to gather enough signatures, and the debate over the corporate bailout seemed settled — until Tuesday, when federal agents arrested the main architect of the law, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, for a racketeering conspiracy. The FBI charged that Householder, his aide, a former Ohio GOP chair, two lobbyists, and Generation Now of a “conspiracy to participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of an enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity.” The 82-page complaint outlines an enterprise that steered $61 million into campaign contributions to ensure Republicans gained control of the House, bribes, and shadowy groups all to pass and protect the controversial bailout.

The complaint never mentions by name the companies that drove this conspiracy. They are only Company A, B, and C, because of other ongoing investigations. But the identity of Company A, the primary actor that spent $60 million, is obvious enough for U.S. Attorney David DeVillers to say, “Everyone in this room knows who ‘Company A’ is,” in a press conference. It is FirstEnergy, the utility in the state that was the primary benefactor of the law.

The charges describe some especially egregious examples of quid-pro-quo politics, like a payoff for Householder’s Florida home and campaign financing for 21 Republican candidates. More importantly, we get a rare glimpse of how easy it is for corporations to subvert democracy simply by throwing tons of money at blocking ballot initiatives. When they do their work right, they can prevent an initiative from ever reaching a vote — without the public even realizing it could have been a choice.

Most of the $60 million from Company A did not go to bribes or to get the bill through the House and Senate, but was routed through Generation Now — which, because it’s a 501(c)(4),doesn’t have to disclose its donors. That group, the same one that orchestrated the counter-campaign to block the referendum from gathering enough signatures, used a fascinating tactic: There are only so many companies specialized in ballot signature-collecting in the country, and Generation Now bought out 15 of them so the referendum’s organizers couldn’t find any top-tier firms to work for them.

The complaint says: “Generation Now subverted the Ballot Campaign by hiring signature collection firms in an effort to conflict them from working for the Ballot Campaign.” Neil Clark, Householder’s staffer, “advised his clients that if they would retain as many of the signature collection firms as possible, then those firms could not work for their opposition, which would decrease the likelihood that the referendum would collect the requisite number oof signatures for a ballot initiative.” In one meeting the FBI recorded, he wired $450,000 to a firm repeating he had “hired them not to work.”

“The money really went to staging a coup of the Ohio state government,” says David Pomerantz, executive director of the utilities watchdog Energy and Policy Institute. That’s only one example of how hard utilities fight to block environmental initiatives at the ballot. In 2018, Arizona Public Service funded a campaign for town administrators to pass resolutions against Prop 127, which would have required APS generate half of its electricity from renewables. And in 2016, Florida Power and Light spearheaded a confusing ballot initiative that used deceptive language implying it would promote solar power — but really hindered the spread of rooftop solar.

“These tactics are fairly typical of what we see monopoly utilities do around the country,” he says. They have “limitless money and a captive customer base that has no choice but to pay what regulators say they have to pay every month.”

Ohio’s FirstEnergy bailout was so unpopular that in one part of the complaint, Householder’s aide Jeff Lonstreth texted his boss, “Polling shows the more we explain it, the worse it does.” The federal case means an unusual spotlight on common bad-faith tactics. And now there might be some justice: Many of the original backers of the law, including Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican from Ohio who signed it last year, reversed course this week and called for its repeal.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline They spent millions to protect polluters. Then they got busted by the FBI. on Jul 25, 2020.

“It was surreal,” Owen said.

On Thursday, Owen, along with, Alison Van Eenennaam, an animal geneticist at U.C. Davis, and a team of seven other scientists, revealed Cosmo’s existence. It’s the first time anyone has produced a bull-calf that could sire 75 percent male calves — rather than the normal 50 percent. It could also be a win for the environment, with fewer cattle needed to produce the same amount of beef. Bulls have fewer methane belches per hamburger patty. They simply grow more efficiently, requiring less water, less feed, and less land than females to bulk up. “They are more like a Prius than a Hummer,” Van Eenennaam said.

This comes at a time when the livestock industry is searching for ways to fix up its image as a climate villain. Burger King recently tried to do some brand PR with a yodeling kid acknowledging the problem. Ranchers are investigating more climate-friendly management techniques. And big companies are partnering with environmentalists to keep forests from turning into pastureland (with mixed results). But the biggest value in creating Cosmo might be in the breakthrough he represents in the field of gene editing.

Back in 2015, Van Eenennaam asked Owen if he wanted to try his hand at genome editing a bull so all its offspring grew like males. No one had ever done anything like this before, and Owen said he figured the chances of success were slim to none. “OK,” he said, “let’s do it.”

Van Eenennaam planned to take a gene that initiates the development of male physiology from the Y chromosome and add it to the X chromosome. (Reminder: male is XY; female is XX) That way, even genetically female cows with two X chromosomes should develop as males.

The scientists chose a location on the X chromosome that didn’t seem chockablock with important genes, one where they might add a gene without messing anything up. It appeared to be a blank spot on the map of the bovine genome. But it was only blank because it was unexplored: As soon as Owen edited this spot, the embryos died.

After a lot more hard work and experimentation, the scientists discovered the techniques necessary to add a gene to a cow zygote, which might be the most revolutionary element of this research, Owen said. Now other scientists have much better knowledge of hot to add genes to protect animals from getting all sorts of gruesome diseases.

“This opens up the possibility of tackling a lot of issues related to livestock,” he said.

It will also help scientists understand what happens when gene editing gets a little messy. After Cosmo was born, Van Eenennaam took some of the calf’s blood so that he could look closely at the spot where the new gene had entered the DNA. It was in just the right place, but instead of one copy of the gene, there were seven. There was also a bit of DNA wedged in there, left over from the genetic delivery mechanism the scientists had used.

These scrambled genes may conjure images of monstrous mutants, but it’s likely they won’t cause problems. Gene duplication and mixing happens all the time during normal reproduction. And Cosmo seems, well, strong as a bull.

“He’s a really cute calf,” Van Eenennaam said.

Still, the fact that the genes are untidy could mean that the early vision of gene editing as an easy, typo-free tool were overly optimistic. Van Eenennaam said that a major thrust of the research was meant to identify and fix potential problems like this. That’s why the U.S. Department of Agriculture paid for the research as part of its biotechnology risk assessment program. She only hopes that she can keep tinkering to fix these issues.

“You get a result and say ‘Hmm, well, that’s not what we wanted, but I think we can learn from this and try a different approach,’” Van Eenennaam said. “That’s science! If any little unexpected thing shuts down the entire field of investigation forever onwards we wouldn’t get anything done.”

Get the science nailed down, and then there’s regulation and public opinion to contend with, which are likely more imposing barriers than the gene editing. A lot of things will have to fall into place before gene-edited cattle roam the range, let alone the butcher counter.

As for Cosmo, no one is allowed to eat him. He’s a science experiment, not a steak.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The future of beef might be a sausage fest on Jul 24, 2020.

The world enjoyed cleaner air and clearer skies earlier this year as streets and highways largely emptied during coronavirus-related lockdowns. The sharp decline of oil-burning vehicles gave a glimpse into a world without pollution-spewing tailpipes and fewer growling 18-wheelers, school buses, and other large vehicles.

There is suddenly hope those changes can be cemented for the long haul, even as traffic activity resumes. This month, 15 states — including California, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania — as well as the District of Columbia joined forces to accelerate the electrification of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. Private investors have poured billions of dollars into startups specializing in all-electric delivery vans, pickup trucks, and SUVs. And despite the pandemic, freight companies and cities have continued pilot-testing electric trucks and purchasing e-buses.

Such steps give a big boost to a sector that’s been slower to electrify than passenger cars, which are generally less expensive and technically complex to make. Interestingly, the push for cleaner, more efficient medium- and heavy-duty vehicles arrives just as the Trump administration weakens federal standards for vehicle emissions and fuel efficiency.

Cleaning up these vehicle classes would have an outsized impact on the climate, experts say. Although trucks and buses comprise just 4 percent of vehicles on the road, they account for nearly 25 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. And they are particularly noxious for the low-income neighborhoods and communities of color that often surround busy trucking corridors, bus depots, distribution hubs, and seaports. Long-term exposure to the soot and smog spewed by these diesel-burning machines threatens people’s health. Recently, Harvard researchers have linked poor air quality to increased death rates from COVID-19.

“Electrifying those fleets can have greater benefits for a lot of people,” said Emily Green, a senior attorney and clean mobility specialist at Conservation Law Foundation — one of a dozen environmental groups suing the Trump administration to stop the rollback of Obama-era clean car rules. “We need to clean up our trucks and buses so they stop poisoning communities.”

Green praised the 15-state electric-truck pact, which she said shows how governors are forging ahead to curb road pollution despite reversals at the federal level. Signees to the July 14 compact agreed that, by 2050, all medium- and heavy-duty vehicles sold within those states’ borders will be fully electric. The states also set an interim goal of having 30 percent of new truck and bus sales be of emissions-free vehicles by 2030. The bipartisan initiative builds on existing efforts to promote electric passenger cars and install public charging stations across Northeastern states and Washington, D.C.

“We cannot afford to miss this opportunity to place clean transportation technology and infrastructure at the center of the nation’s economic recovery,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said in a statement last week.

While the new memorandum isn’t legally binding, it conveys a sense of urgency to manufacturers and fleet managers, Green said: “It sends a message that electric trucks and buses aren’t just a thing of the future.”

In order for states and private companies to clean up their fleets, automakers will need to produce dramatically more electricity-powered vans, trucks, buses, and big-rigs. And the recent jolt of private investment could help accelerate that production.

Earlier this month, the electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian raised $2.5 billion ahead of the 2021 launch of its pickup truck and SUV. The Michigan-based company is also building 100,000 electric delivery vans for the e-commerce giant Amazon; the first of the fleet is slated to hit the road next year. Fisker, a startup focused on electric SUVs, reached a $2.9 billion deal to go public following a merger backed by a private equity firm. Tesla competitor Nikola Motors, which is developing electric semi-trucks, saw its stock price soar in June after becoming a publicly traded company. (Last year, Anheuser-Busch — which plans to buy 800 of Nikola’s hydrogen-electric hybrids — completed a “zero-emission beer delivery” in St. Louis.)

Although more than 1 million electric vehicles have sold in the U.S. market since 2011, the vast majority of them are passenger cars.

Globally, more than 500,000 e-buses and nearly 400,000 electric delivery vans and trucks are on the road today, according to the energy research firm BloombergNEF. Yet many of those vehicles are in China, where government policies aimed at boosting manufacturing and improving air quality are driving the industry.

Nikolas Soulopoulos, an analyst for BloombergNEF in London, said that supply has been slow to meet what appears to be a higher demand, especially for vehicles like electric delivery vans. “Having said that,” he added, “things seem to be changing relatively fast.”

A key reason for the lag is that commercial electric vehicles tend to be costly and complicated to build and operate. Tractor-trailers traveling hundreds of miles a day need large batteries or fuel-cell systems to go the distance, but components can eat into cargo space or weigh vehicles down. School buses, garbage trucks, and delivery vans must be able to run their normal routes without making extra stops to recharge batteries. Fleet operators often must install their own charging stations, which requires further investment.

“The largest difference between the commercial vehicle world and the passenger car world is that commercial vehicles are a tool for a job,” said Michael Scheib, head of e-mobility for Daimler Trucks North America. When commercial customers expand their fleets, he said, they also factor in profit margins, total operating costs, and any new protocols for driver training or maintenance.

Expensive lithium-ion batteries have traditionally canceled out the fuel-cost savings of ditching diesel engines. But battery prices — which topped $1,110 per kilowatt-hour in 2010 — have plunged 87 percent to about $156 per kilowatt-hour today, according to BloombergNEF. Analysts project prices will continue to slide in coming years and, in some cases, like within cities, the economics already favor battery-powered delivery vans over their diesel-chugging competitors, Soulopoulos said.

Technology developers are also starting to iron out engineering kinks and operational hurdles with electric commercial vehicles through pilot programs. At the University of Texas at Austin, researchers solved the riddle of a fuel cell-battery hybrid van for UPS, finding components big enough to power a cargo van while still fitting within the brown delivery vehicles. Daimler is currently testing 20 of its eCascadia semi-trucks and 10 of its eM2 medium-duty vehicles — all powered by batteries — in southern California with the trucking firms NFI Industries and Penske. According to news site FreightWaves, NFI helped identify early bugs with the semis, including high-voltage issues in the electrical system that caused some downtime during initial runs.

Daimler will soon add six eCascadias and two eM2s to its prototype fleet, which 14 companies will test in North America. The auto manufacturer wouldn’t disclose specifics about its pre-series models. But as planned, the final eCascadia and eM2 will have a range of up to 250 miles and 230 miles, respectively. Scheib said Daimler plans to start producing a final version of its trucks in late 2021.

Adoption of electric trucks and cars is expected to drive a sizable dent in road-related pollution. By 2040, BloombergNEF forecasts that about 20 percent of heavy-duty vehicles and 32 percent of medium-duty vehicles sold in the U.S. each year will be powered by batteries or fuel cells — matching similar figures for Europe, China, and Japan. The shift could reduce total carbon dioxide emissions by 2.57 gigatons a year — or roughly one-third of the world’s transportation-related emissions in 2016.

Yet those predictions won’t become reality unless national governments, local leaders, and major corporations adopt stricter fuel-economy standards and sales targets for commercial vehicles, in particular. Conservation Law Foundation’s Green noted that the 15 states pledging to support electric trucks and buses will likewise need to set enforceable regulations to ensure their memorandum is more than “lip service.” Otherwise, she said, “The goals may well fall short of what they need to be for states to actually achieve their climate change objectives.”

While the initiative is a positive step, Green added, “What comes next is even more important.”

This post has been updated to replace the featured image which was originally of a traditional semi manufactured by Daimler Trucks.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Amid Trump’s rollbacks, 15 states rev up plans for electric trucks and vans on Jul 24, 2020.

Earlier this week, a report from Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research institution, and Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy asked whether there might be a joint solution to the economic crisis wrought by the pandemic and the ballooning problem of abandoned wells: a federally-funded jobs program that would put oil and gas workers back to work plugging up the holes. The program would be administered by the state-level regulatory bodies that currently oversee well-plugging.

It’s an attractive idea, and the authors are not the first to present it. Similar schemes have been simmering among state leaders, environmental groups, and liberal think tanks over the last few months; a version was proposed in an infrastructure bill that was passed by the House of Representatives in early July; and Canada recently dedicated $1.7 billion to such a program. But it’s not as simple as it sounds. The scale of the abandoned wells problem and the cost of doing something about it are wildly uncertain. The new report attempts to work within that uncertainty to show what a jobs program could reasonably accomplish, while also warning of the risks of having taxpayers pay to clean up the oil industry’s mess.

We know for certain there are at least 56,600 unplugged “orphaned” wells, those with no clear owner or responsible party, in the country. That’s the number that’s been reported to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC), an organization that represents oil and gas regulators, by its 31 member states. But many states also reported that they likely have hundreds of thousands more that were abandoned before any regulations were in place to account for them. Some date back to the 19th century.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates there are more than 2 million unplugged abandoned wells, but they’re counting things a little differently. That number includes wells that are dormant and not yet sealed but have a clear owner. Today, oil and gas companies are responsible for plugging wells after they’re done using them under state and federal law. Governments typically collect a fee from the companies up front, a bond, to ensure there will be money on standby to cover the costs if the company goes bust. But states only collect a fraction of the necessary funds and have allowed companies to put off cleanup by “idling” their wells — putting them out of production, but not officially closing them up — indefinitely. In theory, the owner could start pumping them again or sell them off. In practice, they are holes in the ground, serving no purpose, and spewing methane.

The drop in oil demand due to the pandemic has exacerbated that pattern, with companies idling tens of thousands of wells in recent months. According to the financial think tank Carbon Tracker, the energy transition “may destroy any chance for the reactivation of these and hundreds of thousands more idle wells.”

While the problem seems to be at risk of spinning further out of control, the authors of the new report focus their proposed jobs program on tackling the known knowns — the 56,600 confirmed orphaned wells. States have reported plugging and remediation costs ranging from $4,000 to over $100,000 per well to the IOGCC. From that data, they estimated a total program cost of $1.4 billion to $2.7 billion — which would represent just a small slice of the several trillion dollar stimulus packages that have been coming out of Congress. They found that a program of that size could support about 13,500 jobs for one year (or fewer over several years). If instead lawmakers wanted to find and plug 500,000 wells, the report extrapolates a cost of $12 to $24 billion and a resulting 119,000 jobs.

If that sounds like a no-brainer, I regret to remind you that these cost estimates are wrought with doubt. The report notes that as demand for labor and equipment increases, costs could go up. Alternatively, they could come down as crews learn to plug wells more efficiently. Depending on which wells the program focuses on, the cost per well could be exponentially greater. Carbon Tracker found that the cost of plugging a newer shale well, which is typically thousands of feet deeper than older wells, could be anywhere from $300,000 to more than $1 million. Aside from costs, there’s concern that state regulatory offices don’t have the capacity to oversee a larger plugging program.

Perhaps worst of all, once taxpayers start spending billions to counteract the industry’s broken promises, why would an oil company expect to have to foot the bill ever again? The authors of the report recommend that any federal effort to plug abandoned wells focus on those older, truly orphaned wells to avoid this moral hazard problem, and potentially come with strings attached requiring states to figure out a way to make sure future plugging costs are fully covered by the industry.

But the merits of a smaller federal program would likely lie in the value of getting people back to work, with some positive side effects for the environment. The EPA estimates that unplugged wells emit about 280,000 metric tons of methane per year. Plugging 56,600 of the 2 million wells the EPA is accounting for would have immediate air quality benefits for nearby communities, but it would only eliminate about 7,400 metric tons of methane, or 3 percent of the problem. But since current estimates of the methane leaking from abandoned wells are also highly uncertain, it’s hard to say! If we’ve learned anything from this exercise, it’s that we need better data on all aspects of this problem.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A jobs program to plug abandoned oil wells sounds like a win-win. Is it? on Jul 24, 2020.

As a policy analyst with the D.C. think tank Data for Progress, Julian Brave NoiseCat has a wonk’s gift for analyzing data. But he’s also a writer, which means that he’s good at explaining what the numbers actually mean. In this conversation, the 2020 Grist 50 Fixer explores the reasons behind Joe Biden’s shift to the left and offers a few predictions about what might be coming next. He sheds light on Biden’s new climate plan, the role of Black Lives Matter in reshaping racial politics, and why there’s a chance for hope and prosperity at the end of the coronavirus tunnel.

His remarks have been edited for length and clarity.

Why Joe’s going left

It is incredibly unusual, and perhaps historically unprecedented, for a Democratic presidential campaign to move left in the approach to a general election, like Biden is doing. But we have a young, progressive part of the party that really wants to see bold efforts on the part of political figures.

Public-opinion data and surveys show that this moment of national reckoning regarding police brutality — with a historic 15 to 26 million people participating in the Black Lives Matter uprising — has transformed views around race in this country. And we face an economy that requires New Deal–scale action. There’s significant precedent for pandemics playing an important role in shifts in global history, and COVID-19 has made the need for a robust government role and a social safety net incredibly clear. This gives Biden both the space and a push to move in that direction.

A climate platform FTW

Via polling and surveys, Data for Progress has seen support for a number of different social programs jump up by 10 points or more; programs like the Green New Deal jump up by 10 points, green jobs jump up by 10 points. We’ve also seen that both young and persuadable voters can be mobilized around a climate-change message. Climate change has become an incredibly favorable general-election issue for Democrats — it allows them to draw a very favorable comparison with Republicans, which has been the party of denial and of fossil-fuel henchmen for many decades. And those messages really do resonate with the electorate, in ways that give us a very strong advantage if we run on a strong climate message in November.

Data for Progress published research that helped inform some of Biden’s climate plan. Some things we advocated for, such as a $2 trillion investment over four years, also ended up in the plan, which is very encouraging. We would’ve liked to see more, but it’s a start. The transition to a clean-energy economy cannot happen without a robust public-sector role. One other big thing that we advocated for that ended up in the plan is for 40 percent of climate investments going toward frontline communities.

A new New Deal

I see parallels between current events and the original New Deal. The Great Depression led to the New Deal, which essentially led to creation of the American middle class, though primarily for white people. The hope this time is that we would not revive the welfare state in a way that would exclude people of color, like the New Deal did.

The hope, from my perspective, is that the Black Lives Matter movement is reshaping racial politics in this country, and that we will have a Democratic party that feels like it bears some responsibility to voters of color. And that’s why the 40 percent piece of the Biden plan seems so important to me: that we will invest in public goods, social services, health infrastructure, environmental infrastructure, solar panels, clean energy — all of those things in communities of color, when it’s time to rebuild from this pandemic. In my view, that would mark a significant shift in favor of social democracy and a more multiracial society — something that we’ve never really been able to achieve.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Are we at the dawn of a new welfare state? This policy analyst thinks so. on Jul 24, 2020.