Category: “Dead Skunk in The Middle of The Road”

Issues and events that stink to high heaven

We’re watching the implosion of the Supreme Court in real time

We’re watching the implosion of the Supreme Court in real time

Michael Gordon                      
Supreme Court
  • The reputation of the Supreme Court is sinking.
  • After decisions like the Texas abortion case, the impartiality of the Court is in doubt.
  • The hyper-partisanship both at and around the Court is to blame.
  • Michael Gordon is a longtime Democratic strategist, a former spokesman for the Justice Department, and the principal for the strategic-communications firm Group Gordon.
  • This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett admitted that the Supreme Court is crumbling as an institution.

Earlier this month, the newest justice gave a speech lamenting how the Court is viewed as partisan and warning that her fellow justices must be “hyper vigilant to make sure they’re not letting personal biases creep into their decisions.” She must know something we don’t.

These remarks may seem like a surprise. After all, Barrett was confirmed to the Court in a hyper-partisan process and gave the aforementioned speech at an event celebrating Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the architect of the judicial system’s rightward turn. Despite the hypocrisy, or perhaps because of it, the comments struck a chord.

In an age of Republicans challenging legitimate election results because they lose or might lose, the credibility of the Court is the next hammer to fall in our democracy, the last bastion of hope for nonpartisan decision making.

But now the Court is rightfully losing public support as the veneer of impartiality slips, and the hyper-partisanship both at and around the Court is to blame.

Partisan justice

Even as recently as a few years ago, the Supreme Court wasn’t as partisan as it is now. Support certainly started eroding when McConnell and Senate Republicans refused to seat President Obama’s final nominee, current Attorney General Merrick Garland.

But there have been recent decisions that were, for lack of a better term, bipartisan. Justice Gorsuch joined four liberal justices to support Native American land claims in Oklahoma. In a 7-2 opinion, the Supreme Court kept the Affordable Care Act intact.

As recently as a few months ago, Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts helped keep the eviction moratorium in place in a 5-4 ruling (though this was overturned a few months later in a separate case). Roberts, the Chief Justice who many believe is trying to keep the court as nonpartisan as possible, has often found himself siding with the liberal justices.

But, on issues important to many Americans, this facade of bipartisanship seems to be disappearing. First, the Supreme Court threw out the eviction moratorium they had so recently upheld, throwing millions of struggling Americans into uncertainty.

Then the death knell came a few weeks ago, when the Supreme Court blatantly signaled a willingness to overturn Roe vs. Wade by allowing a strict Texas anti-abortion law to go into effect. Though Roberts voted with the liberals in this decision, the other Republican-appointed justices essentially overturned nearly 50 years of legal precedent.

Given the 6-3 Republican majority, it’s safe to assume we will see more decisions like this in the coming years. Though Roberts can play nonpartisan as much as he wants, the conservatives have a five-justice majority even without him and can rule on cases as they wish.

Votes, not words

The Republican strategy over many decades to focus on the court has paid off. They have turned to the court to legitimize gerrymandering and gut the Voting Rights Act, and justices like Barrett and Roberts have supported them.

Both of those justices are right to worry about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. They just need to realize they’re part of the problem of the legitimacy crisis.

Democrats have proposed many solutions to this problem, from expanding the court to adding term limits. But with those ideas stalled, once unthinkable national changes emanating from the Court are very much in play.

The Texas abortion decision is just the beginning. Roe could be overturned in full later this year. Even if Democrats passed many of the landmark bills they are currently debating, there is nothing stopping the conservative court from simply striking them down, declaring them “unconstitutional” under the pretenses of their choice.

Maybe Barrett will join Roberts in making a real effort to strike a more bipartisan tone. If she’s truly worried about the perception of the Court and how some of her colleagues consider matters, she has the opportunity to do something about it. But she needs to follow Roberts with her actions and join him in crossing party lines.

It’s her votes, not her words, that count. I’m not holding my breath.

California firefighters scramble to protect sequoia groves

California firefighters scramble to protect sequoia groves

Noah Berger                         

 

THREE RIVERS, Calif. (AP) — Flames on Sunday reached a grove of sequoia trees in California as firefighters battled to keep fire from driving further into another grove, where the base of the world’s largest tree has been wrapped in protective foil.

Fire officials warned that hot, dry weather and stronger winds were contributing to “critical fire conditions” in the area of the KNP Complex, two lightning-sparked blazes that merged on the western side of Sequoia National Park in the Sierra Nevada.

The fire reached Long Meadow Grove, where the Trail of 100 Giant Sequoias is a national monument. Fire officials haven’t yet been able to determine how much damage was done to the groves, which are in remote and hard-to-reach areas. However, an Associated Press photographer saw active flames burning up a trunk, with the forest floor ablaze below.

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning through Sunday, saying gusts and lower humidity could create conditions for rapid wildfire spread.

The fires forced the evacuation of the park last week, along with parts of Three Rivers, a foothill town of about 2,500 people. Firefighters using bulldozers expanded a line between the fire and the community, fire spokesperson Rebecca Paterson said Sunday.

More than 34 square miles (88 square kilometers) of forest land have been blackened.

The National Park Service said Friday that fire had reached the westernmost tip of the Giant Forest, where it scorched a grouping of sequoias known as the “Four Guardsmen” that mark the entrance to the grove of 2,000 sequoias.

Since then crews have managed to keep the flames from encroaching further into the area.

“The fire perimeter kind of wraps around the Giant Forest at this point,” Paterson said.

Firefighters swaddled the base of the General Sherman Tree, along with other trees in the Giant Forest, in a type of aluminum that can withstand high heat.

The General Sherman Tree is the largest in the world by volume, at 52,508 cubic feet (1,487 cubic meters), according to the National Park Service. It towers 275 feet (84 meters) high and has a circumference of 103 feet (31 meters) at ground level.

Firefighters who were wrapping the base of the sequoias in foil and sweeping leaves and needles from the forest floor around the trees had to flee from the danger, fire spokesperson Katy Hooper said Saturday. They returned when conditions improved to continue the work and start a strategic fire along Generals Highway to protect the Giant Forest grove, she said.

Giant sequoias are adapted to fire, which can help them thrive by releasing seeds from their cones and creating clearings that allow young sequoias to grow. But the extraordinary intensity of fires — fueled by climate change — can overwhelm the trees.

“Once you get fire burning inside the tree, that will result in mortality,” said Jon Wallace, the operations section chief for the KNP Complex.

The fires already have burned into several groves containing trees as tall as 200 feet (61 meters) feet tall and 2,000 years old.

To the south, the Windy Fire grew to 28 square miles (72 square kilometers) on the Tule River Indian Reservation and in Giant Sequoia National Monument, where it has burned into the Peyrone grove of sequoias and threatens others.

Historic drought tied to climate change is making wildfires harder to fight. It has killed millions of trees in California alone. Scientists say climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

More than 7,000 wildfires in California this year have damaged or destroyed more than 3,000 homes and other buildings and torched well over 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) of land, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

This story has corrected a reference to the General Sherman tree, which is the world’s largest by volume, not tallest.

‘They screwed up our lake’: tar sands pipeline is sucking water from Minnesota watersheds

‘They screwed up our lake’: tar sands pipeline is sucking water from Minnesota watersheds

Will Parrish                     
Low water levels mean rice harvesters can’t paddle their canoes to their traditional harvesting areas.
Photograph: Kerem Yucel/AFP/Getty Images

 

Along the eastern boundary of the White Earth Indian Reservation in north-western Minnesota, Indigenous Anishinaabe wild rice harvesters Jerry and Jim Libby set down a row of wooden pallets into the mud just beyond the dock of Upper Wild Rice Lake. It was a clear day, and tight, lush clumps of green rice heads were visible across the lake’s horizon.

In a typical year, the entrance to this – one of a long necklace of wild rice lakes in northern Minnesota to which the region’s Indigenous people flock every year in the late summer – would be covered in at least two feet of water. But now it is composed of suspended sediment as solid as chocolate pudding, through which the Libbys need to create a makeshift ramp simply to carry their canoe out to the waterline.

Minnesota is weathering an historic drought, but there is another problem beyond the weather: Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline has taken a substantial toll on watersheds in the region, including through a permit to pump five billion gallons of water for construction. In the case of Upper Wild Rice Lake, a road construction contractor named Knife River Construction stuck a pump directly in the lake this past June, sucking out an unknown quantity of water, which locals suspect was related to the use of heavy trucks for the pipeline.

“As far as I’m concerned, Enbridge screwed up our lake, and they’re taking money directly away from our families,” Jerry Libby says. “It makes us feel anguished – this is our staple food, you know.”

The Indigenous-led struggle against Line 3, which seeks to move 930,000 barrels of tar sands bitumen daily from Alberta to a shipping and refinery hub in Superior, Wisconsin, has been the biggest environmental and Indigenous land protection campaign in the US this summer. More than 900 people have been arrested opposing the pipeline, including nearly 70 who were kettled in late August during protests outside Minnesota governor Tim Walz’s residence in Minneapolis.

Branded as a “replacement” project, the new pipeline would double the old Line 3’s capacity to carry tar sands bitumen. Enbridge, a Canada-based energy company, has announced it will begin sending oil through the pipeline next month.

The processing and combustion of bitumen for the pipeline would release greenhouse gases equivalent to 50 coal plants, according to analysis by the nonprofit Oil Change International, thereby significantly contributing to the global climate crisis. But one of the pipeline’s most immediate impacts is on wild rice harvesters such as the Libbys, for whom the annual harvesting season began in late August and runs through much of September.

Wild rice – known to many Anishinaabe people as “manoomin,” or “the food that grows on water” – is a dense, nutritional grain that grows naturally in the abundant lakes and rivers in Minnesota, Wisconsin and parts of Canada. Thousands of Anishinaabe people continue to harvest it with the same traditional methods used for generations, by propelling a canoe or small boat through the rice beds with a long pole.

Indigenous people of the region believe they have a sacred covenant to protect manoomin and numerous other nonhuman beings, without which they would cease to exist as distinct peoples, notes longtime Anishinaabe rice harvester Bob Shimek. “During any kind of ceremony we do here, wild rice is involved,” Shimek says. “It’s kind of like the Anishinaabe soul food.”

Line 3 runs across more than 200 bodies of water, including the headwaters of the Mississippi River and some of the region’s most important wild rice waters, streams, rivers, lakes and aquifers. The state Department of Natural Resources permitted Enbridge to draw nearly five billion gallons from these water bodies absent public notice or consultation with the White Earth Indian Reservation.

Christy Dolph, a University of Minnesota research scientist focused on the state’s water resources, notes that the pipeline’s impacts on water and the species that depend on it are numerous. In the course of excavating trenches to lay pipe, Enbridge pumps out any groundwater that still seeps into the trench, inevitably leading water to evaporate.

“These activities have a major impact, especially because these wetlands are already under severe stress from the drought,” she says.

Opponents also fear leaks and spills from the tar sands pipeline, particularly since the thick substance is nearly impossible to clean up.

As with other wetland plant species, wild rice is highly sensitive to fluctuations in water levels, which damage its ability both to grow and reseed. For rice harvesters, low water levels mean they are unable to paddle their canoes out to their usual rice grounds, depriving them of a major source of physical and spiritual sustenance, as well as a significant source of income.

During a typical year, the Libby brothers say, they make up to $9,000 from rice harvesting, which they use for basic necessities like home repairs, school supplies for their grandchildren and vehicle maintenance. But since this year’s harvesting season began in late August, many harvesters have had to resort to unorthodox methods such as trekking through the muddy, dried-out lakes in snow shoes with burlap sacks slung around their shoulders, a technique that yields one-third to one-fourth the amount they could harvest with canoes.

Enbridge disputes the notion that they bear any responsibility for the dry conditions in rice beds near the pipeline route or that the pipeline has a detrimental impact on watersheds. “Line 3’s permit conditions protect the environment during construction, and specifically wild rice,” Enbridge spokersperson Juli Kelner wrote via email. “Enbridge pipelines have coexisted with Minnesota’s most sacred and productive wild rice stands for seven decades.”

In response to a request for comment, a Department of Natural Resources spokesperson wrote that “Minnesota DNR has worked consistently to minimize the impacts of the Line 3 replacement project on wild rice and other Minnesota resources. These efforts date back to our original comments to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) regarding project routing, where we strongly advocated for route alternatives that would minimize crossings in or near wild rice waters.”

The effects of Line 3 construction on wild rice are at the center of a first of its kind lawsuit brought by the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in which wild rice is itself the plaintiff. Under a series of treaties that Chippewa Anishinaabe people signed with the US government during the mid-19th century, the lawsuit asserts, wild rice “possesses inherent rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve, as well as inherent rights to restoration, recovery, and preservation.” The suit seeks an injunction against the Department of Natural Resources to void Enbridge’s water permit, though the case may not be decided until after construction is completed.

Beyond the direct effects of the Line 3 pipeline, wild rice faces numerous other threats – including from the climate crisis. According to a 2018 report by the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC), an intertribal agency that seeks to protect Anishinaabe treaty rights, climate change will wreak devastation on virtually all the plant and animal species on which they rely. Wild rice is the most endangered of these species because of its sensitivity to flooding, drought, and disease outbreaks, the report says.

Stopping Line 3 is imperative to fighting the climate crisis, opponents note, because tar sands are one of the most intensive fossil fuels in terms of carbon dioxide emissions and because the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure locks in emissions for decades to come. For the past several months, activists have called on the Biden administration to stop the pipeline by directing the Army Corps of Engineers to revoke the permit it granted the project under the Trump administration.

According to Anishinaabe wild rice harvester Angel Stevens, a member of the anti-pipeline Manoomin Camp, the struggle against Line 3 is still going strong despite the project’s imminent completion. “We’re continuing to do everything we can to stop this pipeline,” she says.

Guess what the three Democrats blocking lower medication prices have in common?

Guess what the three Democrats blocking lower medication prices have in common?

David Sirota and Andrew Perez                       
Photograph: Daniel Knighton/Getty Images

 

The three conservative Democratic lawmakers threatening to kill their party’s drug pricing legislation have raked in roughly $1.6m of campaign cash from donors in the pharmaceutical and health products industries. One of the lawmakers is the House’s single largest recipient of pharmaceutical industry campaign cash this election cycle, and another lawmaker’s immediate past chief of staff is now lobbying for drugmakers.

The threat from Democratic representatives Kurt Schrader (Oregon), Scott Peters (California) and Kathleen Rice (New York) comes just as the pharmaceutical industry’s top lobbying group announced a seven-figure ad campaign to vilify the Democratic legislation, which aims to lower the cost of medicines for Americans now facing the world’s highest prescription drug prices.

Schrader and Peters are among the two biggest recent Democratic recipients of pharmaceutical industry donations

At issue is House Democrats’ initiative to let Medicare use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices. That power – which is used by other industrialized countries to protect their citizens from exorbitant prices – has been promised by Democrats for years, and party leaders have been planning to include it as part of their sprawling $3.5tn infrastructure reconciliation effort.

On Wednesday, Schrader, Peters and Rice helped vote the measure down in the powerful energy and commerce committee, blocking the legislation before it could come to the House floor for a vote. Even if the bill were to ultimately make it to the floor through another committee – which remains a possibility – Democrats have only a four-seat majority that allows them to pass legislation, so they can’t afford to lose any more votes.

“I understand that the pharmaceutical industry owns the Republican party and that no Republican voted for this bill, but there is no excuse for every Democrat not supporting it,” said the Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders after the vote.

The trio of Big Pharma Democrats are jeopardizing a plan based on HR 3, the Elijah E Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act. The Congressional Budget Office has said the drug pricing legislation, named for the late Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, would save the government $456bn and “reduce prices by 57% to 75%, relative to current prices” for various medicines.

The measure would direct federal health regulators to negotiate prices of 25 high-priced drugs in the first year of implementation and 50 drugs in subsequent years, and the new negotiated prices would be available to both Medicare and private insurers.

Polls show that the idea of allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices is wildly popular – to the point where swing-state Republicans and swing-district Democrats, and even former President Donald Trump, have expressed support for it.

Schrader and Peters are among the two biggest recent Democratic recipients of pharmaceutical industry donations, according to OpenSecrets. The pharmaceutical and health products industries are collectively the second biggest donor to both lawmakers over the course of their careers, giving them almost $1.5m in total. Peters is the House’s top recipient of pharmaceutical industry donations in the 2022 election cycle.

Related: Big Pharma doesn’t want us to expand Medicare. We have to fight them | Bernie Sanders

Peters and his family were worth an estimated $60m in 2018, making him one of the wealthiest lawmakers in Congress, according to OpenSecrets. His wife is the president and CEO of Cameron Holdings, an investment firm whose portfolio company provides manufacturing and packaging for pharmaceutical companies.

Schrader’s net worth, meanwhile, was pegged at nearly $8m. The Oregonian reported in 2008 that he received “a quite large inheritance” from his grandfather, who was “vice president and director of biochemical research and development at Pfizer” – the drugmaker whose political action committee is now Schrader’s third largest career donor.

The congressmen on Tuesday offered their own drug pricing proposal, which would allow Medicare to negotiate prices only under limited conditions, such as when a company no longer has exclusive marketing rights on an older drug but there are no competitors. That proposal was also backed by the Democratic representative Stephanie Murphy (Florida), the co-chair of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, who is the House’s fifth largest recipient of donations from the pharmaceutical and health products industries.

Earlier this year, Peters’ campaign saw a surge in donations from pharmaceutical company executives after he organized a letter with nine other Democratic lawmakers informing the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that they opposed HR 3. Schrader and Rice co-signed the letter.

It’s worth noting that Peters, Schrader and Rice all voted in favor of HR 3 in the previous Congress. Politico wrote in May that Peters “said he cast that vote knowing it had no chance of becoming law at the time. He said he supported it only to ‘start a conversation about lowering the cost of prescription drugs’.”

Rice, Schrader and Peters have seats on the House energy and commerce committee, which is writing the party’s prescription drug plan, and they used those positions to help block the measure there on Wednesday, preventing it from moving to the floor.

Last December, House Democrats’ steering committee voted to put Rice on the energy and commerce panel instead of the progressive New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

On Tuesday, Rice explained that she opposes the drug pricing measure because “I do not support advancing policies that are not fiscally responsible and jeopardize the bill’s final passage.”

Schrader’s longtime top aide, Paul Gage, left the congressman’s office earlier this year, according to Legistorm, and quickly started lobbying for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the powerful Washington drug lobby.

Gage has been lobbying Congress on drug pricing issues and HR 3, according to ethics records. PhRMA raised more than $500m in 2019, and the organization is one of the top lobbying spenders in DC.

On Wednesday, PhRMA announced it is launching an ad campaign against House Democrats’ drug pricing efforts. “Politicians say they want to negotiate medicine prices in Medicare,” one ad warns. “But make no mistake: What politicians mean is they’ll decide which medicines you can and can’t get.”

The Blue Dog Coalition’s political action committee has been making monthly payments to a consulting firm led by the coalition’s former communications director, Kristen Hawn.

Hawn is also a partner at the bipartisan public affairs firm ROKK Solutions, which has worked for PhRMA.

  • David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor-at-large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter
  • Andrew Perez is a senior editor at the Daily Poster and a cofounder of the Democratic Policy Center
  • This article was originally published in the Daily Poster, a grassroots-funded investigative news outlet

Milley took action because gutless GOP wouldn’t stand up to mentally unbalanced Trump | Opinion

Milley took action because gutless GOP wouldn’t stand up to mentally unbalanced Trump | Opinion

Leonard Pitts Jr.                           

What do you do when a president is crazy?

That’s essentially the question Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, faced in the twilight days of the Trump administration. His answer, as reported by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their forthcoming book, “Peril,” has some people up in arms.

It seems that Milley, according to published accounts from those who have read the book, became convinced his tantrum-throwing, spittle-spewing, reality-denying commander-in-chief was in a state of mental collapse and, as such, was an immediate threat to world peace. So the general went around him, twice reaching out via back channels to his Chinese counterpart, General Li Zuocheng.

The first call was last October. Milley had reportedly seen intelligence suggesting that China, rattled by U.S. military exercises in the South China Sea and by President Trump’s bellicose rhetoric, believed an American attack was imminent. He assured Zuocheng that this was not the case and went so far as to issue an extraordinary promise: “If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time.”

Milley’s second call is said to have come in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. He reportedly felt it necessary to assure China the U.S. government was stable, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Milley also warned military officers against obeying any presidential orders to launch nuclear weapons unless he, Milley, was involved.

The propriety of Milley’s actions has come under heavy scrutiny. Trump-era National Security Adviser John Bolton defended him and vouched for his patriotism. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that reassuring a nervous adversary is “not only common, it’s expected.”

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, on the other hand, expressed “grave concern” and demanded that President Biden fire Milley “immediately.” Nor was the condemnation limited to morally limber political actors. Former Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who famously testified against Trump in his first impeachment and paid for his temerity with his career, said Milley must resign, having “violated the sacrosanct principle of civilian control over the military,” which he saw as “an extremely dangerous precedent.”

But the Trump years set extremely dangerous precedents on a daily basis. It is at least conceivable that this one averted war. And none of this Sturm und Drang addresses what would seem to be the obvious issue. Namely, that the question of how to manage a mentally unbalanced president should never have devolved to Milley to begin with, should never have become his responsibility.

That it did speaks to the unadulterated cowardice of the political party that protected Trump, made excuses for him, lied for him, at every step of the way. As his precarious mental state became ever more obvious, the GOP’s pusillanimous refusal to do its patriotic duty became ever more glaring.

Impeach him? Invoke the 25th Amendment? Simply stand up on hind legs and object?

Nope, nope and nope. Instead, the Gutless Old Party behaved like Mikey’s brothers in the old Life cereal commercial: “I’m not gonna try it. You try it.”

Now we’re supposed to dump opprobrium upon a soldier who was required to answer a question that never should’ve come to his desk and never would’ve, had these people exhibited a molecule of courage? No. The most troubling thing here is not what Milley chose to do.

It’s that he had to make a choice at all.

General Sherman, the world’s largest tree, is in the path of raging California wildfires, prompting a desperate effort to save it

General Sherman, the world’s largest tree, is in the path of raging California wildfires, prompting a desperate effort to save it

Marianne Guenot                           

 

General Sherman, the world’s largest tree, is in the path of raging California wildfires, prompting a desperate effort to save it
A sign reading 'GENERAL SHERMAN' is in front of the tree's base, which continues out of frame. A man wearing hiking gear, a backpack and sunglasses is in front of the tree
A tourist in front of the General Sherman tree at the Sequoia Kings Canyon National Parks, California. MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images 

  • The KNP Complex fire in California is closing in on Sequoia National Park.
  • The park is preparing by wrapping General Sherman, the world’s largest tree in volume, in fire-resistant material.
  • Sequoias usually withstand fire, but wildfires have been getting more intense, a park official said.

Park officials are rushing to protect General Sherman, the world’s largest tree by volume, from oncoming California wildfires.

General Sherman is standing in the path of the KNP Complex fire, which is made up of the Colony Fire, the Paradise Fire, and the Cabin Fire, according to the National Park Service (NPS).

The tree measures 36 feet in diameter at its base and is 275 feet tall, giving it a total volume if 52,508 cubic feet, per the NPS. It is estimated to be about 2,200 years old. It’s located in the Giant Forest, a grove that’s home to more than 2,000 giant sequoias at the Sequoia Kings Canyon National Parks in California.

Park officials are now removing brush and wrapping “some of the iconic monarch sequoias” ahead of the fire’s arrival, the park said in a press release Thursday.

Sequoias are well adapted to survive fires, which help them release seeds and make clearings for young sequoias to grow.

But the climate crisis has driven hotter droughts, which has contributed to “fires that are burning hotter with taller flame lengths,” said Christy Brigham, chief of resource management and science at Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, The Mercury News reported.

As a result, park crews are taking “extraordinary measures” to protect the trees from the flames, Brigham said.

The bases of the trees have been wrapped in aluminized fire-resistant material called structure wrap that can withstand intense heat for short periods of time, the Associated Press reported.

arrows on a map point to the location of the Colony and Paradise fires, and the location of General Sherman
An annotated version of the KNP Complex Map as of Thursday. The brown represents sequoia groves, the yellow shading are areas where an evacuation warning are in effect. National Parks Service/Insider

 

As of Wednesday, the Cabin Fire has been completely controlled, the NPS reported.

But the Colony and Paradise fires have been growing: As of Thursday, they have covered 2,013 and 7,352 acres respectively, for a combined total for the KNP Complex of over 9,300 acres with 0% containment, the NPS said.

The NPS reported at 1:40 a.m. local time Friday that the two fires were expected to reach the Giant Forest within 48 hours.

An evacuation order is also in place for part of the nearby community of Three Rivers, California.

In 2020, the Castle Fire destroyed thousands of giant sequoia trees.

What Is the Environmental Cost of Bottled Water?

EcoWatch – Drinking Water

What Is the Environmental Cost of Bottled Water?

Olivia Rosane                                   September 16, 2021

​Two men drink bottled water on a beach in Barcelona, Spain.
Two men drink bottled water on a beach in Barcelona, Spain. Cavan Images / Getty Images

 

Is it better for your health and the environment to drink water from a plastic bottle or from a tap?

A recent study published in Science of the Total Environment has the answer for this question, at least in the Spanish city of Barcelona. It found that the environmental toll of bottled water was 1,400 to 3,500 times higher than that of tap water, while drinking only tap water would only take an average of two hours off a resident’s life.

“Our findings suggest that the sustainability gain from consuming water from public supply relative to bottled water far exceeds the human health gain from consuming bottled water in Barcelona,” the study authors wrote.

A Tale of Two Assessments

The study is notable for being the “first attempt” to integrate two kinds of assessment for evaluating the health and environmental impacts of drinking water choices, study co-author and postdoctoral research at the Technical University of Catalonia Marianna Garfi told EcoWatch in an email.

The first is a health impact assessment (HIA).

“HIA provides a framework and procedure for estimating the impact of an intervention on a selected environmental health issue for a defined population,” Garfi explained.

In this case, the researchers considered the risk of exposure to trihalomethane (THM), a by-product of the water disinfection process that is present in tap water and has been linked to bladder cancer. They then calculated years of life lost, years lived with disability and disability adjusted life years based on this exposure.

The second assessment is a life cycle assessment (LCA), which identifies the environmental impacts of a product from manufacture to disposal. In this case, the researchers focused on materials and energy used and waste generated.

They then used these assessments to consider the health and environmental impacts of four scenarios:

  1. Current drinking water patterns in Barcelona.
  2. What would happen if everyone switched to tap water.
  3. What would happen if everyone switched to bottled water.
  4. What would happen if everyone switched to filtered tap water.

The researchers focused on Barcelona because they were based there and had the data available. It also has THM levels and bottled-water consumption habits that are similar to those of other countries in Europe, which makes it a useful point of comparison.

Environmental Harms

The results indicate that bottled water is much worse for the planet than tap water. As of 2016, bottled water was the primary source of drinking water for 60 percent of Barcelona’s population. The current state of affairs costs the planet around $50 million in resource extraction and 0.852 species a year. If everyone in Barcelona were to shift to bottled water, these costs would jump to $83.9 million and 1.43 species per year. However, in the scenario in which everyone drank only tap water or filtered tap water, the environmental costs were negligible. When compared to the all tap-water scenario, the all-bottled water scenario had 1,400 times more impact on ecosystems and cost 3,500 times more in terms of resource extraction.

The all-bottled water scenario did have a slight advantage for the health of Barcelona residents only. Currently, about 93.9 years of life across the city are lost due to tap water consumption. In the all-tap water scenario, this would jump to 309 years total, which equates to two hours of life lost per person. It would fall to 35.6 years lost if the city switched exclusively to filtered water and even further to 2.2 years lost if everyone drank bottled water.

However, the health outlook changed when the researchers considered how bottled-water production would affect people living outside Barcelona.

“The production of bottled water to meet the drinking water needs of [the] Barcelona population was estimated to result in 625 DALYs (disability-adjusted life years) per year in the global population,” the study authors wrote. “This burden would be reduced to 0.5 DALYs if only tap water, or filtered tap water were consumed.”

The reason that bottled water is so costly for the environment, Garfi said, came down to the making of the bottles themselves.

“Indeed, raw materials and energy required for bottle manufacturing accounted for the majority of the impact of bottled water use,” she said. It was responsible for as much as 90 percent of the bottles’ impact.

This resource-intensive production process worsens several environmental problems including the climate crisis, ocean acidification and nutrient pollution.

While this particular study found less impacts in terms of plastic waste, Barcelona’s drinking habits are already harming its beaches and coastline. César Sánchez, communications director of recycling organization Retoma told EcoWatch in an email. He said that plastic bottles of all types accounted for 80 percent of the volume and 35 percent of the weight of litter gathered from the city’s beaches. Farther out to sea, there are as many as nine million bits of waste floating per every square kilometer along the coast.

“Beyond that, in my personal experience sailing with fishermen of the area, I have had the chance of corroborat[ing] this situation,” he said. “They say they already live in 2050 because they are getting more waste than fish out of the sea right now.”

Next Steps?

Both Sánchez and Garfi argued that the city of Barcelona should take steps to promote tap water over bottled water.

On a city-wide level, Garfi said that Barcelona could promote tap water through public information campaigns, as well as take steps to improve tap water quality and keep pollution out of local water sources. Sánchez further suggested setting up more public fountains and obliging bars and restaurants to offer free tap water to customers.

Individual consumers also have a role to play, Garfi said.

“Be aware of the impacts caused by the use of bottled water and try to find another solution,” she advised, such as using a home filter to improve the taste of tap water.

Finally, to address the waste issue, Sánchez recommended a bottle deposit scheme.

“In all countries with deposit and return systems in Europe, more than 90% of beverage containers are reused or recycled, so it is the most effective tool to end… the littering problem,” he said.

Exxon helped cause the climate crisis. It’s time they owned up

Exxon helped cause the climate crisis. It’s time they owned up

Mark Hertsgaard                          

 

Fossil fuel companies bear as much responsibility as governments do for humanity’s climate predicament – and for finding a way out. Our planetary house is on fire, and these companies have literally supplied the fuel. Worse, they lied about it for decades to blunt public awareness and policy reform.

There’s no better time for ExxonMobil and other petroleum giants to be held accountable than at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in November. The Glasgow summit is more than just another international meeting. It is the last chance for world leaders to limit future temperature rise to an amount that civilization can survive. Doing so, scientists say, will require a rapid, global decline in oil, gas and coal burning.

Fossil fuel companies have fiercely resisted this imperative for years, lobbying governments, often behind the scenes, to maintain the status quo. Cop26 is an ideal setting to bring the companies’ resistance to the world’s attention and put it on trial, at least in the court of public opinion.

Courts of law around the world are already leading the way. As of year end 2020, at least 1,550 climate change lawsuits have been filed worldwide against governments and companies, according to data collected by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

Dozens of these lawsuits seek financial compensation from fossil fuel companies for the loss and damage caused by the burning of the companies’ products. Some lawsuits – for example, those brought by New York City and the state of Minnesota – point out that oil and gas companies have known privately for decades that their products would cause catastrophic temperature rise and extreme weather. Nevertheless, these companies lied about what they knew, telling the outside world that human-made climate change was unproven.

An internal Exxon document dated 16 October 1979 and stamped “Proprietary Information” stated that increasing fossil fuel combustion “will cause a warming of the earth’s surface … and dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050”. Royal Dutch Shell even anticipated the current wave of lawsuits: an internal study in 1998 forecast a scenario in which environmental groups would band together to file “a class action lawsuit on the grounds of neglecting what scientists, including [the industry’s] own, have been saying for years”.

Indeed, last May the Netherlands branch of the advocacy group Friends of the Earth won a landmark case against Shell. A Dutch court ordered Shell to bring its global operations in line with the Paris agreement goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. This will require Shell to reduce both its own and its customers’ emissions by a staggering 45% from 2019 levels by 2030. Shell is appealing the ruling.

Such large, rapid emissions reductions happen to be exactly what the latest science says the Glasgow summit must achieve. Only by slashing heat-trapping emissions in half by 2030 can humanity plausibly achieve the larger imperative of ending emissions entirely by 2050.

Fossil fuel companies cannot be put on trial in Glasgow: the Cop26 summit is a diplomatic meeting, not a court of law. But wrongdoing can also be alleged and adjudicated in courts of public opinion. Cop26, as a high-profile gathering of thousands of government officials and civil society representatives that will receive extensive media coverage, could have a powerful impact on public narratives throughout the world.

The formal Cop26 proceedings also offer an opportunity to make fossil fuel companies a constructive part of the solution to the climate emergency. Governments and climate activists in the global south have long demanded compensation for the loss and damage poor countries suffer from extreme weather events that are worsened by the climate crisis, such as heat, drought, storms and rising seas. They justify this demand on two grounds: these climate impacts fall disproportionately on poor countries, even though they have emitted exponentially less heat-trapping gases than rich countries have.

Rich countries accept this logic: in the Paris agreement, they pledged to provide $100bn a year in climate aid to poor countries. They have yet to honor that pledge, however, and experts calculate that poor countries actually need at least twice that much money to adapt to climate impacts while also shifting their economies to clean energy.

Whatever the actual amount, taxpayers in rich countries are the ones currently slated to cover the cost of such climate aid. But why shouldn’t that burden fall instead on the true authors of the climate emergency?

Fossil fuel companies have known for decades that they were driving civilization to ruin. They didn’t care. Indeed, they lied to keep the profits rolling in. Isn’t it time for them to start paying for the trouble and suffering they’ve caused?

This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story. Mark Hertsgaard is Covering Climate Now’s executive director

Letters: ‘Shameless.’ ‘Cowards.’ Readers react to KY legislators’ actions on COVID.

Letters: ‘Shameless.’ ‘Cowards.’ Readers react to KY legislators’ actions on COVID.

Herald-Leader readers                  

 

Policy over politics

Republican legislators are wrong to approve a bill that lets local school boards set district rules for mask wearing. Debates are going on in these districts between those who resist wearing masks and those who support masks. The resisters say any government action that requires them to do so is against personal freedoms. The other side contends those who won’t wear masks go against the common good — threatening the freedom of every person’s life. The pandemic is worse. COVID hospitalizations are up and deaths from the virus are increasing. Studies show masks help slow spreading of the coronavirus.

We need our legislators to make laws based on fact instead of relying on a patchwork of school boards to decide if freedom is being violated. A statewide law to wear masks in schools will help lower the risk to our vulnerable school kids — our future — and to further the common good.

This isn’t a political matter. It’s a matter of public policy to stop COVID. No matter where one stands on who should resolve the friction between liberty and the greater good; it puts a modern spin on what Patrick Henry said: “Give me liberty or give me death.”

Jim Kurz, Lexington

Face the truth

We’re at a point with the COVID Delta variant that words don’t need to be fashioned into summarizing everything bad and good that’s happened in our lives the past 18-plus months. We need to discuss our current situation and immediately take action with the brutally honest display of truth that is playing out in front of us every day. I hope at the end of each day we not only take action to protect those who can’t protect themselves, our children, but we also live our lives through our own Scriptural purpose to love thy neighbor as thyself.

Here are the TRUE news headlines from across Kentucky: 15 year old student dies of COVID in Shelby County; coach dies of COVID in Greenup County; teacher’s assistant dies of COVID in Lee County; 40-plus school districts out of 171 in the state have had to shut down in the first four weeks of in-person school.

I hope and pray that our local officials, community leaders, superintendents, school board members, and others have the courage to stand up for our children, and keep the masking requirements in place at our local districts. Let’s work together, stand united, and show our children and students what role models we all can be.

Craig Miller, Augusta

Nice going, GOP

Six of our counties are in the national top 10 for new virus cases including Senate President Robert Stivers’ Clay County. I’m old enough to remember back in May when the state’s positivity rate was about 3%. Of course that was because we had an evil, wicked, mean, and nasty governor who made us wear those awful masks because he cared about protecting us. But now we have our freedom. In case Senator Stivers’ pizza plan doesn’t work out, maybe he can induce funeral homes to offer discounts for COVID related deaths. Funeral directors don’t need to worry. With our legislators’ public health expertise, which is clearly shown by prohibiting statewide mask mandates, they’ll be doing land office business for quite some time.

Jay Hopkins, Frankfort

So much worse

“No good deed goes unpunished” is a good description of how the General Assembly rewarded Gov. Andy Beshear’s efforts to contain the COVID pandemic in Kentucky. His efforts helped to protect the people from the rampant spread of the virus. Since his emergency powers were removed, the numbers of people infected have spiked. ICU beds are full of COVID patients. Elective surgeries have been cancelled. COVID infections in children have skyrocketed. Good job, legislators! For science deniers, it brings to question what was their goal? Was it Darwinian survival of the fittest or more appropriately culling of the stupid?

Cheryl Keenan, Lexington

Behind the masks

The masks are off. Senate Bill 1 passed the Senate, then the House of Representatives approved the bill. While I was confident that Governor Andy Beshear would veto the bill, as he did, the super majority in the General Assembly overrode the veto. In this case, taking a mask off reveals a lot more than deadly germs that are easier to spread. Let me explain. Two years ago, another Senate Bill 1 strengthened the guidelines for safer schools that improved conditions to make schools safe. By approving the School Safety and Resiliency Act of 2019, Republican leaders believed it was more important for the state to have uniform standards rather than let school districts do their own thing.

In this special session, another Senate Bill 1 sought to deal with important health and safety issues. Instead of looking out for the best interests and the health of all Kentuckians, Republicans in Frankfort have only cared about asserting their power. If they had been concerned about protecting the life of the citizens of this state, reason would have guided decisions. The masks of Republican leaders are off, and it’s easy to see who’s playing politics.

Todd Steenbergen, Glasgow

Basic sense

Where have we gone so wrong in teaching basic common sense? Ignorance is the only explanation I can think of for people calling themselves “patriots” while trying to overthrow our government (the word is traitor, not patriot). Looking at over 600,000 people dead from COVID-19 and virtually no one dead from the vaccine and still refusing to get it to protect themselves (math error). Getting medical information from politicians, Facebook, and talking heads on TV and radio instead of medical professionals. Believing in conspiracy theories that could only be true if many thousands of people could keep a secret and mainstream news organizations weren’t motivated to compete for viewers and criticize each other for inaccurate reporting. Politicians who are willing to let their own constituents die with bad information and decisions just to further their own ambitions (Hint: if your constituents are dying you are losing votes). This seems, by definition, to be a “death cult”. This past year has been a period fraught with changes and uncertainty, but that is when sane, educated people should seek information sources which take pride in a reputation for accuracy rather than deceitful lies designed to boost ratings.

Mark S. Freeman, Lexington

‘Hyenas’

Shameless, just shameless — the Republican Party of the United States, particularly when it comes to public health. They ignore and argue against proven methods to combat a deadly infectious disease. A political gain is more attractive to that pack than mitigating suffering or forestalling death.

Here in Kentucky, we have clear examples of that ravenous behavior in the persons of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, Congressman Thomas Massie and Attorney General Daniel Cameron, along with the GOP state legislature. One could easily construct a substantial list of shortcomings but a few lines from a Rudyard Kipling poem go precisely to the heart of the matter.

His piece “The Hyenas” describes a burial party leaving a grave, with the animals coming out at night to dig it up. The hyenas:

“Who, being soulless, are free from shame,

Whatever meat they may find.”

Robert Louis Hetzel, Louisville

Children pay price

The ancient Ammonites worshiped a deity called Molech. This worship included the sacrifice of children and others as burnt offerings. Today we are witnessing a modern-day “Molech” in the form of COVID virus in which children are being deliberately exposed to conditions conducive to them becoming victims of the virus. The parents of these children may believe that they are doing what is right, just as the parents who sacrificed their children to Molech in ancient times probably believed they were doing the right thing. First responders, medical workers, military, and others (Christ was the ultimate example) sacrifice themselves for others. Molech worshipers sacrificed children and others in their control for the benefit of the deity or to receive a favor from the deity. Today’s sacrifice of children to the COVID Molech is of this latter type and is for free choice, supported by some elected officials apparently serving as Molech priests, perhaps for political gain. A primary responsibility of the government is to provide and promote the welfare and safety of the citizenry. Many officials are failing miserably in this duty. Children deserve the greatest love and protection possible from their parents, community and leaders.

Henry R. Wilson, Gravel Switch

Where are lawmakers?

I am appalled at the decisions being made concerning the most frightening epidemic in our lifetime. The lack of leadership to require FDA approved vaccinations and masks is intolerable. Recent headlines were so depressing, I almost cried. Who are these people caring so little for a child’s life, who cannot be inconvenienced to wear a mask to prevent killing someone else?

I was required to be vaccinated against smallpox, polio, diphtheria, typhoid, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella. I was vaccinated for COVID. The COVID vaccine is proven, free, and the only answer to end this pandemic.

I voted for Democrats and Republicans. I contributed to both parties for candidates I believed would have the intelligence to serve the best outcomes for the majority and the independence to stand up if the majority repressed the less fortunate or minorities in need. This is not about party; this is about common sense, freedom, liberty, and true democracy.

Where are the intelligent legislators who understand science? Where are the legislators who are brave enough to lead us out of this pandemic? Who will represent those who cannot protect themselves? The legislature is busy playing politics, hence won’t support our governor.

Carol Brooks, Lexington

Merchants of death

The GOP in Kentucky is mandating the death of Kentuckians. Their lies about the reliability of science is demonstrated in their use of it everyday in nearly every function they carry out, in the computers they use, the cars they drive, the glasses they wear, the cell phones they use. If science is so “unreliable” then they need to stop relying on it altogether.

The GOP cowards are failing and fearing to lead their constituency from the darkness of ignorance. They are sycophants trading the lives of their constituents for not anything having to do with the falsehood of freedom they promote, but a selfish perception of political gain. Kentucky children will die for this, Kentucky parents will die for this, and Kentucky teachers and laborers will die for this, and they know it.

People who are among those who are brainwashed into dubiousness, that dubiousness will end once they are intubated and placed in a coma in a final attempt to save their life, or when they watch their child go through that trial, or when that child cries, wondering if they will ever see their mother and father again, after they are admitted to the hospital.

Robert Moreland, Lexington

In the Louisiana Bayou, Dolphin Victims of Hurricane Ida Set the Stage for a Political Fight Over Coastal Restoration

DeSmog

In the Louisiana Bayou, Dolphin Victims of Hurricane Ida Set the Stage for a Political Fight Over Coastal Restoration

Dolphins killed during Ida’s storm surge are a reminder of how vulnerable Louisiana’s marine life is to climate change. And locals worry a controversial river diversion project to increase the state’s marshland could make things even worse.
By Rocky Kistner                              
Dolphins killed by Hurricane Ida raise fear among locals for what the future holds. Credit: Capt. Kevin Coleman, Plaquemines Parish Fire Department

Days after Hurricane Ida roared through coastal Louisiana, sending a 12-foot storm surge rushing across the marshlands south of New Orleans, Plaquemines Parish Fire Department Capt. Kevin Coleman was driving on a coastal road trying to reach his isolated fire station near Myrtle Grove, Louisiana.

As he drove toward Barataria Bay, he saw in the distance what looked like black plastic garbage bags littering the road. But as he drove closer his curiosity turned to horror. “What the hell,” he said to himself as he slammed on the brakes. Scattered along the road were the remains of four dead bottlenose dolphins, lying on the drying asphalt with mouths agape, a decaying pile of flesh that revealed their agonizing deaths.

Coleman jumped out of his vehicle and took a few pictures to capture the morbid moment he had just witnessed. The fire department captain didn’t have much time to reflect on what he had seen, but later he couldn’t shake the thought of what might be in store for the region’s dolphins. He says he worries that the future is not a bright one for the dolphins, as well as the oysters, shrimp, and salt-water fish that make the bay one of the most productive in the nation.

That’s because, he says, about six miles from where he found the dolphins dead in the middle of the road, the state of Louisiana plans to build an unprecedented multi-billion river diversion project. The goal is to build up marshland in Barataria Bay in order to mitigate coastal erosion. The plan is currently under federal environmental review.

  • Credit: Capt. Kevin Coleman, Plaquemines Parish Fire Department
  • Credit: Capt. Kevin Coleman, Plaquemines Parish Fire Department

The project’s supporters, including major environmental nonprofits like the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Audubon Society, say large river diversions are the most effective way to send land-building sediment streaming into the bayou from the Mississippi River to fight land subsidence and sea-level rise. Losing land at an alarming rate, Louisiana is one of the states most threatened by the impacts of climate change in the U.S.

The diversion project is part of a 50-year coastal restoration plan by the state, boosted by major funding from the Walton Family Foundation, which has supported a multi-million dollar PR and media campaign to promote the plan. The foundation also has funded local media coastal reporting efforts, which, along with national media stories, has largely been positive about the state’s diversion plan.

But that’s not how some locals and other marine mammal experts see it. The massive river diversions planned for Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes has run into a buzzsaw of opposition, as local fishing communities worry that the diversions will pour polluted Mississippi River water into the bay. The fear is that upstream chemicals, pesticides, and other toxins will change the salinity levels of the water and destroy one of the most productive fisheries in the country.

A study earlier this year found that the Barataria Bay diversion project could result in local dolphin populations becoming “functionally extinct.”

But in 2018 a Congressional lobbying effort successfully managed to insert an exemption to remove protections under the Marine Mammal Protection Act in order to allow the project to move forward.

Dolphin expert Moby Solangi, president and executive director of the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Mississippi, says finding four stranded dolphins on a road is unusual, but it’s not surprising given that climate change is contributing to bigger and more destructive storms. “The climate predictions of increased hurricanes and tropical storms in the region, and the proposed diversion of polluted Mississippi River in the Louisiana estuaries, will have a devastating effect on dolphins, turtles, fish and shellfish,” Solangi said.

Solangi and other marine mammal experts say dolphins are territorial and will not move, even if their habitat is threatened, and they will suffer deadly skin lesions disease caused by the planned massive inflows of river water.

Dolphin expert Moby Solangi, at the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies. Credit: Julie Dermansky

 

Dolphin populations are already stressed in the area, having been severely damaged by the historic BP oil disaster in 2010, which still impacts the dolphin populations in Barataria Bay today. Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report that deadly dolphin strandings in Texas, western Louisiana, and coastal Florida are on the rise this year as well. Still, they haven’t approached the dangerous 2019 levels when record flooding pumped river runoff into the Gulf and contributed to the death of more than 300 hundred dolphins. Scientists say impacts of red tide and the toxic impacts of yearly “dead zones” caused by inflows of toxins and oxygen-killing algal blooms may be contributing too.

Meanwhile, Louisiana faces challenges to find all the dolphins that may be dying in its marshes, a major task considering the state essentially abandoned its stranding effort, a program to identify and recover marine mammals in distress, in the years following the 2010 BP disaster. Experts say many dolphins likely have died unidentified.

Gabriella Harlamert, coordinator of the Audubon Nature Institute’s wildlife stranding network, says the organization is trying to build up its resources, and that it now has its first boat on order. She says they were able to help rescue seven dolphins last year after Hurricane Laura slammed into the Louisiana coast, and they participated in a recent multi-agency rescue of a young dolphin trapped in Ida’s floodwaters in Slidell, Louisiana.

But Harlamert was too late to help save the four dolphins recently found in Plaquemines. Her small team responded to the stranding report, but she says the animals were too decomposed to do a proper necropsy. “I’ve never gotten dolphins like this that were so fragmented,” she says. She blames storm surge for trapping the animals, who likely got caught in a containment area by the road as the surging water rushed back into the bay.

Dolphins killed by Hurricane Ida. Credit: Capt. Kevin Coleman, Plaquemines Parish Fire Department

Public officials, however, like Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser, former president of Plaquemines Parish during the BP oil disaster, say the dolphins killed during Hurricane Ida are symbolic of a state’s coastal restoration plan gone awry.

Nungesser, who is in charge of Louisiana’s seafood promotion board, has made opposing the massive river diversion projects central to his likely run for governor in 2023. He said earlier this year that the future of Louisiana lies in protecting its fisheries, not the oil and gas industry, which he famously said “was going down.” He argues that the state should be focusing on more immediate, short-term projects they know work, such as more dredging and berms to help land areas which act as a buffer between storm surges and the coastline, instead of working on 50-year programs when it’s challenging to predict that far into the future.

“The dolphins on that road is a wake-up call,” Nungesser told Desmog. “How do they think they can dump all this polluted river water in there and not kill everything?”

Political leaders and residents in coastal areas that will be impacted by these diversions largely agree with the Lt. Governor. They say there are other ways to try to build coastal land that won’t destroy the fisheries in the process.

Dredging, for instance, also works to build land — but requires constant maintenance. The state says diversions can build land naturally. The question for many is: at what cost? Is it worth impacting dolphin populations and jeopardizing the fisheries? The state says it will compensate local communities for their losses, but locals say that is impossible. They say it will kill their livelihoods.

“There are more than two thousand dolphins in this area,” says Coleman. “The diversions will kill them … we need to stick with dredging.”