Parts of Middle East at breaking point with power cuts and water supplies running out
Abbie Cheeseman
A Lebanese man smokes a cigarette by candlelight in the capital Beirut on July 10, 2021 – ANWAR AMRO/AFP
Record temperatures have plunged parts of the Middle East into an energy crisis marked by 23-hour power cuts, failing healthcare systems and fuel-related protests.
Years of warnings being ignored, resource mismanagement, corruption and climate change – combined with destabilizing economic crises – have led to collapsing power grids and fuel shortages that are leaving businesses, hospitals and citizens in despair.
Lebanon has been dealing with a minimum of three-hour power cuts a day since the end of the civil war in 1990. But now, in the midst of economic collapse and unable to afford fuel to power the electricity network, the power cuts from the national grid can last up to 23 hours a day.
Food that people can already barely afford is spoiling in fridges, the lights have gone off in the airport and hospitals are rationing air-conditioning.
The whole country is now effectively run by back-up generators, whose owners are struggling to find black market diesel. Increased rationing of generator use has left residents living outside of affluent neighborhoods with little more than a few hours of power a day.
Temperatures have been soaring
Lengthy blackouts have also become common across much of Iraq, where temperatures have already surpassed 50C this year, with parts of Syria also facing increasing cuts due to fuel shortages.
Between sanctions, attacks on power grids, chronic mismanagement and a lack of investment in renewable energy, first and foremost, “it’s a lack of energy planning” across the region, said Marc Ayoub, an energy and security expert at the American University of Beirut.
“They didn’t believe the impact of climate change would be this fast-tracked. If you look around the region, each [affected country] has its own story of demand mismanagement and resource mismanagement.”
Iraq and Lebanon appeared to try to exchange their crises on Saturday, signing a deal that allowed Iraq to sell Lebanon one million tons of fuel oil for its power plants in return for healthcare services. The Iraqi oil is incompatible with Lebanese power stations, so it will be used to purchase usable fuel, Lebanon’s energy minister said.
Both countries are struggling to provide enough fuel to power their healthcare facilities.
According to Mr Ayoub, sanctions on Iran have heavily impacted both Iran and Iraq’s electricity supply, with the former not having access to the fresh funds needed to maintain existing power plants and the latter having relied on Iranian gas for years.
“There is an 11,000 megawatt shortage in Iran this summer,” Mr Ayoub said.
“While they have invested in solar and wind heavily, they can’t create a new source overnight,” he added.
Water supply may run out
Over the weekend Unicef warned that with the failure of the Lebanese power grid, the country’s water supply could collapse within a month, highlighting how tightly entwined the water and fuel sectors are in energy demand without investment in renewable energy for water pumping.
“Unicef estimates that most water pumping will gradually cease across the country in the next four to six weeks”, said Yukie Mokuo, a Unicef representative in Lebanon, adding that four million people, including one million refugees, are at immediate risk of losing access to safe water.
A man walks near a burning fire blocking a road during a protest against mounting economic hardships in Beirut last mont – Issam Abdallah/Reuters
With climbing temperatures and years of over-extraction, severe water shortages have led to droughts in eastern Syria and Iran, with experts now claiming the latter is “water bankrupt”. Iraq’s marshes in the south of the country are also starting to dry out.
Protests have spread across Iran over the last week with demonstrators taking to the streets to cry “I’m thirsty” over severe droughts that have caused electricity blackouts and devastated agriculture and farming.
Florida tops the nation in new COVID cases. As they spike in its rural Big Bend, many still fear the vaccine more.
Nada Hassanein, USA TODAY
BRISTOL, Florida – The calls haven’t stopped.
For the last week, paramedic Melissa Peddie has fielded them back-to-back for cases of COVID-19.
Peddie runs the only ambulance in Liberty County, a sprawling, sparsely populated community in Florida’s rural Big Bend, where as of last week just 23.9% of residents were fully vaccinated. The county has seen a dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases during July, mirroring other communities across the nation where many people have not gotten the shot.
Peddie, 51, is among the small minority. For her, vaccination was a “no-brainer.”
“I knew I would get the vaccine,” she said. “Every day I climb in the back of that truck is a risk.”
With the lowest population of all 67 Florida counties according to Census Bureau estimates, Liberty’s rate of new COVID-19 cases during the week ending Thursday is in the state’s top 15 highest, alongside four other rural Big Bend counties, Florida Department of Health reports show.
That includes neighboring Calhoun County, where vaccination rates last week were similarly low, at 23.6%. It’s seeing an even bigger surge, with the fourth highest rate of new cases in the state. With two ambulances and a population of about 14,000, the county saw its number of new COVID cases jump in three weeks from four to 19 to 62.
“This mess is crazy,” Peddie said. “It’s not if – it’s going to spread.”
Melissa Peddie, Liberty County, director of emergency medical services in Liberty County, Florida, stands in front of the county’s only active ambulance to transport patients Wednesday, July 21, 2021.
Peddie and other paramedics often must transport patients to larger, better equipped hospitals. The closest is an hour-drive away, in the state capital, Tallahassee. A worsening or prolonged surge could further strap the counties’ one small hospital and emergency staff.
“I am concerned with the resources and what we’re going to do if it continues in the route it’s heading now,” she said.
The ambulance director hasn’t had time to replenish essential supplies amid the nonstop calls. On Wednesday afternoon, a rare day off, Peddie was at the office ordering airway kits and disinfectant when her daughter-in-law texted. The unvaccinated mother of three was exposed to the virus by a cousin at a gathering.
“This surge is bringing back a lot of fear in people,” Peddie said. “And it should.”
‘Turn a blind eye’
Low vaccination rates aren’t the only thing putting the counties’ residents in danger of COVID-19. Widespread chronic conditions threaten severe complications from the virus that causes the disease.
Bristol, Liberty’s county seat, has one grocery store, the Piggly Wiggly. Between Liberty and Calhoun, there are only three groceries, making nutritious food hard to access in the vast rural counties. A new Dollar General is under construction.
State health department data shows more than a third of Liberty and Calhoun residents suffer from obesity, a major risk factor for COVID-19 complications.
Cars pass by as American flags that line the highway in Blountstown, Florida fly in the wind Wednesday, July 21, 2021.
Dr. Laura Davis is a fifth-generation resident of Blountstown, Calhoun’s county seat. She grew up in the country town and returned to practice there as a family physician at a Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare Physician Partners clinic.
Many of her patients have chronic kidney disease, which often accompanies high blood pressure and diabetes, making them vulnerable to the virus and complications.
Davis has dealt first-hand with the frustration of people avoiding the shot, and seen the consequences.
“We’re a small community. We all know people who passed away from COVID. When someone passes away, it’s people we know,” Davis said. “But I still don’t feel like that overrides what people have seen on social media.”
Davis has heard it all – from the myths that the vaccine will turn people magnetic to the virus being a hoax. She ties to quell fears, countering the false claims with research and data but patients often shut the conversation down.
She recalled one who was angry staff tested for the virus, upset the health department would “have his information” and he’d have to quarantine.
“It’s frustrating when sometimes people don’t seem like they care, and not that getting the vaccine is them caring, it’s just the, ‘We’re going to turn a blind eye,'” Davis said. “In some aspects, it feels like we’re exactly where we were a year ago.”
The county’s numbers are on par with those of last summer, before vaccines were available.
Edna Francois, 42, of Bristol, was one of those infected before. Last week, she again tested positive for COVID-19. This time she and her whole family fell ill. She said they’re all having trouble breathing, and it “knocked” her out.
“I feel terrible because I do think I gave it to my mom,” Francois said by phone, her voice raspy and breathless. “The elderly are so vulnerable. It’s really hard to know that I possibly gave it to my mom.”
Her mom has chronic health problems and on Thursday remained hospitalized but Francois said the unvaccinated woman is expected to be “fine.” Only about 58% of seniors in Calhoun and 63% in Liberty were fully vaccinated as of last week.
Francois said her family – mother, sister, brother, boyfriend – are all “on the same team” and still don’t want the shot.
“I don’t regret not getting the vaccine,” Francois said, pausing to calm her fussing 4-year-old grandson, who isn’t eligible for a shot. “The vaccine hasn’t been around long enough and I don’t know what they put in it and everything. I want to know more about it.”
Health care workers wary of shot
On Burns Avenue in Blountstown, Calhoun Liberty Hospital is the only hospital serving both counties, where about one in five residents live in poverty, and about 80% voted for Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election.
The small 10-bed facility is tucked off a curving road lined by once dense forest decimated by Category 5 Hurricane Michael in 2018. It’s a few miles past the Trammell Bridge, which stretches over the winding Apalachicola River that separates the two counties where many livelihoods are linked to the nearby state prison and area psychiatric hospital, as well as agriculture, timber, retail and construction.
The emergency room entrance at the Calhoun Liberty Hospital located in Blountstown, Florida on Wednesday, July 21, 2021.
Housed in a 60-year-old building that’s seen few improvements over the years, the hospital almost closed after a controversial patient death in 2015, embezzling by its former CEO a few years later, then severe damage from the hurricane. It had just begun to turn things around when the pandemic hit.
The lone hospital is one of the counties’ few health resources. It had one ventilator at the start of the pandemic. Recently, it received two more.
On Wednesday morning, chief nurse Paige Tolley received a call from the clinic across the street, where Davis works, about rising COVID-19 cases.
“Are y’all seeing multiple daily, too?” Tolley said on the phone. “Keep sending them if y’all need to. We’ll be here.”
Tolley said cases have “really picked up in the past couple weeks,” mostly among unvaccinated people.
“I hate to see the infection rate like it is,” she said.
Paige Tolley, chief nursing officer at Calhoun Liberty Hospital, stands outside the emergency entrance at the hospital Wednesday, July 22, 2021.
She and her staff print information on the vaccine from the CDC to give to patients. She encourages them, especially those with health conditions, to get vaccinated “if they think it’s the right thing to do.”
She empathizes with those who refuse. “I’m not going to push anything on anybody,” said Tolley, who hasn’t been vaccinated.
“I don’t know what the virus would do to me, I don’t know how it would affect me, because everybody’s different,” she said. “I also don’t know what the vaccine would do.”
Her coworker, risk control nurse Janna Martin, a mother of three, also hasn’t gotten a COVID-19 vaccine. She’s afraid of unforeseen fertility ramifications. While experts say such claims are unfounded, Martin said her doctor suggested she hold off.
Tolley said she knows the pros and cons of the vaccines authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration but considers them “just experimental right now.”
“And I don’t know that I’m comfortable with that yet,” she said. “But I think it’s great, and it (the vaccine) does make a difference.”
‘I just want it to go away’
A mile across town at Fiddler’s Oyster Bar, where the heads of two alligators caught in nearby rivers decorated the counter, unmasked diners, including health care workers in scrubs and local law enforcement officers, filled the booths during the lunchtime rush.
Sitting at a table in the bar area, owner Randal Martina recalled how one of his kitchen workers almost died from COVID-19 last year. But he too remains leery of the shot.
“I’m not vaccinated. I’m not getting the vaccine,” he said. “It was made too quick.”
Randall Martina, owner of Fiddler’s Oyster Bar & Steamhouse located in Blountstown, Florida, shares his views on the COVID-19 vaccine and his experiences of living through a pandemic Wednesday, July 21, 2021.
Martina said his wife, a nurse for 14 years, told him the vaccines hadn’t been studied enough. “She hasn’t taken it either.”
Patti Brake, 58, is manager of the Calhoun Liberty Ministry Center thrift store. She’s had several family members and friends infected with the virus who’ve “pulled through it.”
“Some barely. Some OK,” she said, hanging up colorful second-hand women’s clothes on wire racks. “I just want it to go away.”
Brake, who hasn’t gotten a shot, said she read about the increasing cases and the area’s low vaccination rates in the morning’s newspaper but remained skeptical of vaccine’s effectiveness. She and others pointed to recent reports of breakthrough infections among the vaccinated as another reason to avoid the shot.
“There’s just so much misinformation out there that you really don’t know what to think,” she said. “They tell you one thing, they tell you something else.”
Even as COVID-19 cases rise, Brake has no plans to be vaccinated.
“I’m a fairly healthy person,” she said.
Her husband, Billy Beck, 59, and her 18-year-old daughter, also aren’t vaccinated. Beck said the barcode detector on the phone of his stepdaughter’s friend lit up after the friend got a shot.
His wife called across the store asking if was true that they knew older folks who’d gotten vaccinated.
“Yep,” Beck replied. “I say, ‘In a few years from now y’all going to be dead.’ And they say, ‘No, you’re the one going to be dead.’ ”
Beck said he prays, and remains optimistic the virus won’t hurt him.
Patti Brake, 58, store manager at the Calhoun Liberty Ministry Center thrift store, wipes away tears Wednesday, July 21, 2021 as she says her faith has held her up during hardships.
Brake, who started volunteering at the thrift store shortly after her former husband died in 2007, said faith is her anchor.
“Not too much scares me,” Brake said, her eyes brimming with tears. Crying, she recited the 27th Psalm.
“‘He is my strength and my rock. Of whom shall I be afraid?'”
The virus included, she said.
Data editor Mike Stucka contributed to this report.
Scientists have warned of these horrendous outcomes. But, like the doubters of the COVID-19 vaccine’s safety and efficacy, climate change deniers, many of whom are elected to leadership positions in this country, ignore facts and science as proof stares them in the face.
Hearing the regrets of many unvaccinated hospitalized COVID patients — now gasping for breath — makes for an ominous analogy. Will climate change deniers come around before civilization takes its last gasp in a man-made hostile environment?
Vaccine mandates may be coming, and so should stiffer mandates to end fossil fuel burning.
Gloria Sefton, Trabuco Canyon
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To the editor: Thank you for another insightful article on climate change. However, one primary driver of climate change conspicuously absent from the article was human overpopulation, something that scientists have been warning us about for years.
Earlier this month, the group Scientists Warning Europe stated unequivocally that climate change is being driven by both overconsumption and overpopulation, and that there is no hope of assuaging the ravages of climate change, let alone our planet’s nascent mass extinction event, unless we can reverse our 220,000-person-per-day growth. The group says this planet should have no more than 3 billion people on it; now, it has almost 7.9 billion.
If we are serious about mitigating climate change, we will soon need to break the taboo that prevents us from addressing overpopulation.
Robert Johnson, Santa Barbara
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To the editor: We have wildfires, floods, pandemics and rising homicides with more and more guns available —and yet there are billionaires having fun and escaping to space.
What is wrong with this picture? It’s like “The Twilight Zone” of my youth come to life.
I want to feel hopeful for the future, for my granddaughters. My family and I do our best in conserving. When will the tide turn and deniers wake up and come back to Earth?
‘The air is toxic’: how an idyllic California lake became a nightmare
Maanvi Singh in Calipatria and Salton City
Just to be safe, Noemí Vázquez keeps inhalers in almost every room of her house. She stashes them in her kitchen cupboard, a couple in her purse, one in the bathroom, and, of course, by her bedside.
And then there’s the large, black Puma knapsack where she keeps her nebulizer, several inhalers, and the montelukast pills she takes to treat her wheezing. Her four-year-old granddaughter has her own asthma kit – a neon pink and purple Trolls-themed lunch box that holds a small, child-sized nebulizer and a few inhalers. “She’s smart! She knows: this is her bag,” Vázquez said.
Asthma and allergies are a part of life here in Imperial county, California. A way of life, even, in a region shrouded by a grey-beige dust that haunts Vázquez’s days and nightmares. A few years ago, when the air was particularly thick, she awoke in the night unable to speak or breathe. Her skin was purple. “If my husband wasn’t sleeping next to me that night, I would have passed away,” she said. “I think about all those people who don’t have anyone sleeping next to them. About the kids who don’t know how to talk yet.”
Here, in California’s far south-east, there’s no escaping the noxious air. The haze that hovers over Imperial is a peculiar blend – incorporating pesticide plumes, exhaust fumes, factory emissions, and something curious: vaporized dust rising from the nearby Salton Sea.
The glimmering blue basin that stretches across the desert is either starkly beautiful or grotesque – depending on whom you ask. Formed more than a century ago by a breached canal, the Salton Sea is many things. It is California’s largest lake, an ecological oasis, a former mecca for famous vacationers, and a muddy sink for agricultural runoff. For decades, it has been shrinking, exposing a powdery arsenic-, selenium- and DDT-laced shoreline that wafts into the atmosphere.
Near the sea, hospitalization rates for children with asthma are double the state average, and one in five kids have the condition. Many of the mostly Mexican American farm workers and outdoor laborers who live and work in Imperial, one of the state’s poorest counties, breathe in a dangerous mix of Salton Sea dust and pesticide on a daily basis as well. In Calipatria, Brawley and Westmorland and other towns around the lake, adult asthma rates are among the highest in the state.
It can be a punishing place to live, said Amor García, 31, who moved to the area four years ago. “No one warned us it would be so bad for our health,” she said. On muggy mid-summer days, temperatures here creep up to 120F and the desert streams with a brown vapor. The hot, grimy air clings to hair and creeps under fingernails. The sea steams up a sulfurous stench.
García worries that in the coming years, if nothing is done to address the pollution crisis, the area will become almost unlivable. An unprecedented drought amplified by the climate crisis and growing demand for water in southern California are both hastening the Salton Sea’s decline. Researchers predict that the sea could lose nearly three-quarters of its volume by 2030. By some estimates, the declining water level could expose an additional 1000,000 acres of playa.
“All that dust that gets exposed would mean even more breathing problems and more allergies and asthma for the people who live here,” said Shohreh Farzan, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Southern California who has been analyzing how the dust around the Salton Sea is affecting children.
A resort for celebrities and presidents
The Salton Sea was formed in 1905 when the Colorado River breached an irrigation canal and filled up an ancient basin in the desert, creating an oasis for migratory shorebirds and, by the middle of the 20th century, for celebrities and dignitaries. Developers dotted the shores with palm trees and built up luxury resorts around its perimeter, and the area became a destination for Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and the Beach Boys. President Dwight Eisenhower used to come by the golf course.
Working-class families like Steve Johnson’s would also come and visit. His grandfather bought a small property by the beach, and as a kid Johnson would fish and swim in the lake during his summer vacations. “We didn’t really mingle with the celebrities – though Zeppo Marx, of the Marx Brothers, I did meet once,” Johnson, 59, recalls, as he nurses a Miller High Life at the Ski Inn, the best – and only – dive bar in Bombay Beach, a once-bustling vacation community by the sea that now houses a handful of mostly artists and anarchists. He moved here two decades ago. “It is just beautiful,” he said. And then he paused. “Well. It’s complicated.”
Johnson still swims in the lake sometimes – but nowadays he’s an exception. After the breached canal that created the lake was mended, it was mostly sustained by runoff water from nearby farms – water that was full of pesticides and nitrates, which blended with salt deposits in the lake bed to create an increasingly salty sea. By the 1990s, the sea had started getting even smaller, and saltier, killing off masses of fish and birthing noxious algal blooms. Over the past few decades, tens of thousands of migratory birds around the lake have died of either starvation or poisoning.
“And then came the odor,” said Miriam Juárez, 37, who has lived near the sea for most of her life. “It’s repugnant.” Her parents used to take her and her brothers to fish in the sea as well, she said. But her kids have only ever known the lake as a toxic void that periodically spews up fish bones and poison dust. On a searing summer day, as the mercury crept past 120F (48.9C), Juárez’s kids huddled into their air-conditioned bedrooms, her eight-year-old son occasionally popping out to grab a popsicle from the freezer. It’s often too hot and too dusty to play outside – so many local kids opt to get their exercise at the Crossfit gym nearby.
For many families – including Juárez’s – the pandemic has been especially traumatizing. Imperial county has been one of the hardest-hit regions in California, and the residents’ high rates of respiratory issues has made them especially vulnerable to complications from Covid-19. But it has come with a small silver lining for some: staying indoors and wearing masks for the past year and a half has ameliorated asthma and allergies. “We’re probably going to keep our masks on, even after the pandemic,” Juárez said. “To wear against the dust.”
The masks will be one more addition to the elaborate rituals the Juárez and others have adopted to survive in this dusty valley. She never opens her windows and stuffs towels under the doors of her home in Salton City, just west of the lake. Her kids’ schools have a system of raising green, yellow and red flags to indicate how bad the air pollution is on a given day – but even on so-called good days, many of the kids at her youngest daughter’s schools stay indoors for recess, to avoid aggravating their asthma.
Vázquez, 52, who runs her daycare out of her home, switches out her air filters every week, mops a few times a day, and requests that visitors wear disposable shoe covers – the kind they use in sterile operating rooms – to avoid tracking in dust. Out of the 10 or so kids currently under Vázquez’s charge, five use inhalers for asthma. Over the years she’s seen some really severe cases: kids that could hardly go outside without getting winded, two- or three-year-olds who couldn’t stop wheezing. Most children come to daycare carrying their own medical bags stocked with inhalers, creams and pills for allergies, saline nasal sprays for perpetually blocked noses and a change of clothes in case of nosebleeds, which kids in this neighborhood get constantly.
Seven-year-old Derek, whom Vázquez watched when he was a toddler, had it so bad he was constantly in and out of the hospital and urgent care. He was born prematurely, his lungs a bit underdeveloped, his mother, Melissa Fischer, said. She still has videos on her cellphone from the various times he was hospitalized as a baby and toddler – he’d be hooked up to an IV, and she’d sing to him to keep him calm and cheer him up. He’s doing better these days; he still wheezes on windy days, but his inhaler usually fixes him up.
“I don’t think he remembers being in the hospital,” said Fischer. “But I think it was traumatic.” He’s always exceptionally cautious about new places and experiences, Fischer said, looking over as her son played on the couch. “I think it instilled a fear in him.”
Generations have been harmed and traumatized by the pollution, Vázquez said. She, her 27-year-old-daughter and her four-year-old granddaughter all have severe asthma. The dust has been making generation after generation sick, she said. “And hardly anything has changed.”
A string of broken promises
In 2003, the local water authority in the region signed the largest agriculture-to-urban water transfer agreement in US history with San Diego. Imperial Irrigation District (IID) agreed to start selling much of its massive allotment of water from the Colorado River to city-dwellers and suburbanites along the coast. As part of the deal, IID agreed to send some water to the Salton Sea for 15 more years, buying it and other local authorities time to find a solution for the shrinking lake.
“And for 15 years, everyone just sat there and did a lot of nothing,” said Luis Olmedo, executive director of Comité Cívico Del Valle, a health and social services organization in Brawley, just south of the Salton Sea. A $8.9bn proposal in 2007 to rehabilitate the lake fell through as the Great Recession took hold. In 2015, local authorities broke ground on a project at Red Hill Bay, intending to flood the desiccated lakebed to the south of the lake with water from the sea and the nearby Alamo River, to keep down the dust and create wetlands for birds. Today, it remains flat, dry and dusty – the project has been derailed by budget issues, local politics and “just a lack of will”, said Olmedo. “They keep doing these ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and nothing happens.”
A dust-coated sign staked at the Red Hill site still optimistically promises: “Estimated construction in 2016.”
And still, consulting companies, advocacy groups and local officials have been dreaming up bigger, more creative plans to solve the problem. One idea was to pipe in water from the Sea of Cortez, desalinate it and pump it into the lake. Some local residents have wondered: why not pipe in water from the Pacific? “I mean, maybe that’s wild, but why not?” said Johnson. “We have to try something.”
In recent years, the state’s energy commission has become increasingly interested in the prospect of investing in lithium extraction from the area. It has doled out millions to energy companies to explore mining the element used in the batteries that power cellphones and electric cars. If one small-scale demonstration plant being developed by a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy goes well, the company envisions that the Salton Sea region could produce a third of the world’s lithium, revive the region’s stalling economy and rev up the country’s ambitious plans to decarbonize transportation.
“It’s all just speculation,” sighs Olmedo, shaking his head at the oozing mud pots near one of the region’s existing geothermal energy plants. “While various companies are biding their time waiting for this lithium thing to take off, where does it leave the community? We’re still breathing the toxic air.”
Robert Schettler, a spokesperson for the irrigation district, said: “At IID, we, too, are frustrated with the progress at the Salton Sea, but we continue to work on things there.” The water agency’s leaders have pointed to various dust suppression projects they’ve undertaken in recent years, including planting vegetation to tamp the soil down and “surface roughening” – basically, digging ridges in the dried mud to break the wind and keep the playa from flying up.
The state has also started up a $206m project to restore habitat for fish and birds at the south-west edge of the lake. “Make no mistake, this is a challenging endeavor,” said Arturo Delgado, the assistant secretary for Salton Sea policy at the California Natural Resources Agency. But, he said in a statement to the Guardian, “progress is happening”.
Nancy del Castillo, 42, who lives with her husband and two kids in Salton City, said she had trouble trusting such reassurances. She’s been trying to save up for years to move to a different neighborhood, with better air. There’s still pollution from pesticides, and from diesel fumes up in Riverside and Coachella, to the north – but it’s not as bad.
“The earth has been raising toxic dust for years,” she said. “It seems ugly to me that officials keep deceiving people, telling us they’re going to fix it.”
Castillo and a group of her neighbors have been faithfully attending community meetings, local hearings and even bigger meetings on how to improve the Salton Sea situation for years, she said, and have grown increasingly frustrated.
Once, after she spoke about the air pollution in Imperial county at a meeting in Sacramento, California’s capital, Castillo said, she overheard a man dismiss the crisis: “Yeah, but there’s just a few people living there.” Many families in the region are Mexican immigrants, she said, people who work in the fields or in construction, who can’t afford to move somewhere else, who breathe the toxic air because they have no other choice. But to this man, she said, “it’s like we don’t even count”.
Meanwhile, many local residents worry that time is running out. “With more climate change and more desertification and drought,” the environmental and health issues are going to keep getting worse, said Ryan Sinclair, a professor of public health at Loma Linda University who has been mapping the sea’s decline. The current, unprecedented drought gripping the western US has only put more pressure on the shrinking Colorado River, which feeds 30 farms and cities up and down the region, further complicating the calculus and politics of how and where to send its waning waters. By 2045, researchers estimate that the sea could someday become 10 times as salty as the Pacific Ocean, making it completely uninhabitable for fish. Its receding shores could expose nearby communities to as much as 100 tons of dust each day.
Versions of the same apocalyptic vision are unfolding across the world. Utah’s Great Salt Lake has been shrinking and spitting up arsenic as well. Iran’s Lake Urmia is just about 10% of its original size. The ecological crisis at Kazakhstan’s diminished Aral Sea has become a perverse tourist attraction.
“Still, I don’t want to leave here,” said Juárez. “I want to stay. I want to fight.” Her kids do, as well. She brings out a folder full of drawings and letters that her younger kids and their friends made at school. Her daughter Lisette’s appeal to local officials included a drawing of a stick figure in goggles swimming in the lake, while another stick figure lounges by the shore, under a striped umbrella, sipping a cold beverage. “Dear Sir or Madam, please help us save the Salton Sea,” she wrote above the picture. “Thank you!”
Cherries have roasted on trees. Fields of canola and wheat have withered brown. On the shores, shellfish have popped open, broiling by the millions
A wildfire burns in the mountains north of Lytton, B.C., on Thursday, July 1, 2021.PHOTO BY DARRYL DYCK /The Canadian Press
As devastating heat waves sweep swaths of the globe, farmers in Canada are facing a crippling phenomenon: crops are baking in fields.
Cherries have roasted on trees. Fields of canola and wheat have withered brown. And as feed and safe water for animals grow scarce, ranchers may have no choice but to sell off their livestock.
“It will totally upend Canadian food production if this becomes a regular thing,” said Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia.
A heat dome roasted Canada in late June, leading to hundreds of “sudden and unexpected” deaths, according to officials, and sparking fear among Canadian farmers and climate experts. A village in British Columbia claimed the nation’s highest recorded temperature, clocking in just shy of 46 degrees. This weekend, another scorching wave is expected return to the nation.
Newman said farmers are resilient and have been planning for slow, constant climate change. But no model predicted this summer’s spike, which she characterized as a “thousand-year” event that cannot become the norm.
“We can’t farm like this, where there’s a giant disruption every year,” she said. “Or we’re going to have to really rethink how we produce food.”
The climate stress is especially unwelcome at a time when the pandemic has put pressure on supply chains and food production. Floods, early freezes, droughts, pests and other emergencies have also strained Canada’s farming industry over the past several years. Multiple municipalities have declared states of agricultural disaster because of the heat and drought.
On the shores, shellfish have popped open, broiling by the millions. “You could smell the destruction,” Newman said.
Early this month at a news conference about the heat wave, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the nation needs to reduce emissions and be a global leader on climate change.
“Extreme weather events are getting more frequent, and climate change has a significant role to play in that,” he said.
The heat waves are challenging all aspects of farm life.
Laborers can’t stay out in the fields when temperatures get so oppressive. Peak blueberry and cherry season should be approaching, but some farmers are already pulling workers from the fields for the season, Newman said. Others are turning livestock loose into growing fields, hoping to make some use of the toasted grains.
Farmers speak to a crop insurance field inspector (left) during a drought on a grain farm near Osler, Saskatchewan, on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.PHOTO BY KAYLE NEIS /Bloomberg
The outlook seems especially grim to many livestock farmers facing feed and clean water shortages for their animals.
“The damage is done,” Manitoba farmer Jason Bednarek told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. “The only solution is to stop the bleeding and slaughter the cows.”
Some cattle ranchers are asking grain farmers whose crops have been devalued by the heat to consider using some of their yield as cow feed.
“The cow herd is in jeopardy in Manitoba for this winter,” Andre Steppler, a district director for a nonprofit that represents beef producers across Manitoba province, said in a video posted to Twitter.
One of Canada’s main agricultural provinces, Saskatchewan, recently changed its crop insurance regulations to encourage growers to give unsellable crops for use as livestock feed.
“I want to encourage grain producers to work with neighboring livestock producers to make feed available,” Saskatchewan Agriculture Minister David Marit said in a statement.
You could smell the destruction
LENORE NEWMAN
Steppler told The Washington Post it’s the first time in his farm’s century-long history that wells and springs have dried up. He considers himself lucky because his farm also grows grain, so he’s less concerned about his herd than many other ranchers. But feeding his cattle that grain will be economically damaging, and he anticipates having to sell off a quarter to 30 per cent of the herd.
“For us, this is historic,” he said of the heat wave.
As a livestock producer, Steppler said it’s upsetting to have to sell cows whose genetics his family has been fine-tuning for decades. But Steppler’s main concern, he said, is the mental health of other producers. He said it’s crucial for federal and municipal governments to act swiftly to help farmers avoid financial ruin.
“We’re just coming out of COVID, people are already stressed, and now this is just another blow to their gut,” he said.
On the crop front, losses are especially tough on farmers working with perennials who have spent years nurturing them to ensure they will bear fruit summer after summer.
Jocelyn Zurevinsky, president of Canadian Cherry Producers, said in an email that while her cherries in Saskatchewan saw rain in June, one of her orchards has been dry since May.
“The cherries bloomed well and the fruit set was fair, but the cherries are not filling,” she said. “We expect our entire harvest will go to juicing rather than the ingredient market for pies, spreads and syrups.”
While Newman doesn’t anticipate massive food shortages from the heat, she said consumers should expect a short-term spike in food prices.
Even as the heat has waned slightly, other threats have risen; most notably, wildfires ravaging parts of the nation.
Wildfire burns above the Fraser River Valley near Lytton, British Columbia, Canada, on Friday, July 2, 2021.PHOTO BY JAMES MACDONALD/BLOOMBERG
“Fire is the great enemy of farming,” Newman said. “It’s the last thing you ever want to see on the horizon.”
Smoke can damage crops, and wildfires can burn out slow-to-recover pasturelands, making it even more difficult for ranchers to bounce back. Fires are an especially frightening prospect in the prairies, where the land is checkered with farms.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said in a statement Thursday she’s monitoring the drought drying out some of the nation’s farmland.
“My heart goes out to those farmers and ranchers feeling the impacts of the extreme heat wave and drought conditions,” she said. “Our Government is ready to assist and we will do what we can to make sure our programs are adequately responding to the crisis.
Bibeau promised to leverage government programs to support producers affected by extreme weather and droughts. One program, called AgriStability, functions like an income insurance program to protect farmers who are about to see a large dip in income after years of even averages.
Bibeau is also encouraging provinces to trigger the agricultural sector’s disaster relief program to help farmers with additional costs caused by the extreme heat and wildfires.
In Newman’s view, the only thin silver lining to the apocalyptic feel of this summer is that for some, it’s fast-forwarded the discussion on addressing climate change to preserve the food system. Even more conservative voices are now sounding the alarm, she said.
After the seemingly perpetual drought, Newman saw reason for a sliver of hope Saturday morning: A drizzle of rain was falling.
The biggest win for the working class in generations is within reach
Bernie Sanders
If our budget passes, it would be one of the most important pieces of legislation since the New Deal. But we must fight for it.
‘This legislation will create millions of good paying jobs as we address the long-neglected needs of working families and the planet.’ Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA.
Now is the time.
At a time when the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider, when two people now own more wealth than the bottom 40% and when some of the wealthiest people and biggest businesses in the world pay nothing in federal income taxes, the billionaire class and large profitable corporations must finally start paying their fair share of taxes.
Now is the time.
At a time when real wages for workers have not gone up in almost 50 years, when over half our people live paycheck to paycheck, when over 90 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, when working families cannot afford childcare or higher education for their kids, when many Americans no longer believe their government represents their interests, the US Congress must finally have the courage to represent the needs of working families and not just the 1% and their lobbyists.
Now is the time.
At a time of unprecedented heatwaves, drought, flooding, extreme weather disturbances and the acidification of the oceans, now is the time for the US government to make certain that the planet we leave our children and future generations is healthy and habitable. We must stand up to the greed of the fossil fuel industry, transform our energy system and lead the world in combating climate change.
As chairman of the US Senate budget committee I fought hard for a $6tn budget which would address these and other long-neglected needs. Not everyone in the Democratic caucus agreed with me and, after a lot of discussion and compromise within the budget committee, an agreement was reached on a smaller number. (Needless to say, no Republicans will support legislation which taxes the rich and protects working families.)
While this budget is less than I had wanted, let us be clear. This proposal, if passed, will be the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor since FDR and the New Deal of the 1930s. It will also put the US in a global leadership position as we combat climate change. Further, and importantly, this legislation will create millions of good-paying jobs as we address the long-neglected needs of working families and the planet.
Why is this proposal so significant?
We will end the days of billionaires not paying a nickel in federal income taxes by making sure the wealthy and large corporations do not use their accountants and lawyers to avoid paying the massive amounts that they owe. This proposal will also raise the individual tax rate on the wealthiest Americans and the corporate tax rate for the most profitable companies in our country. Under this proposal, no family making under $400,000 a year will pay a nickel more in taxes and will, in fact, receive one of the largest tax cuts in American history.
We will aggressively reduce our childhood poverty rate by expanding the child tax credit so that families continue to receive monthly direct payments of up to $300 per child.
We will address the crisis in childcare by fighting to make sure that no working family pays more than 7% of their income on this basic need. Making childcare more accessible and affordable will also strengthen our economy by allowing millions more Americans (mostly women) to join the workforce.
We will provide universal pre-kindergarten to every three- and four-year-old.
We will end the international disgrace of the United States being the only major country on Earth not to guarantee paid family and medical leave as a right.
We will begin to address the crisis in higher education by making community colleges in America tuition-free.
We will address the disgrace of widespread homelessness in the United States and the reality that nearly 18m households are paying over 50% of their incomes for housing by an unprecedented investment in affordable housing.
We will ensure that people in an ageing society can receive the home healthcare they need and that the workers who provide that care aren’t forced to live on starvation wages.
We will save taxpayers hundreds of billions by having Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry and use those savings to cover the dental care, hearing aids and eyeglasses that many seniors desperately need.
We will rebuild our crumbling roads, bridges, water systems, wastewater treatment plants, broadband and other aspects of our physical infrastructure.
We will take on the existential threat of climate change by transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy.
This effort will include a nationwide clean energy standard that moves our transportation system, electrical generation, buildings and housing and agriculture sector toward clean energy.
Through a Civilian Climate Corps we will give hundreds of thousands of young people good-paying jobs and educational benefits as they help us combat climate change.
We will fight to bring undocumented people out of the shadows and provide them with a pathway to citizenship, including those who courageously kept our economy running in the middle of a deadly pandemic.
In the midst of the many long-ignored crises that this legislation is attempting to address, we will not have one Republican senator voting for it. Tragically, many Republican leaders in Congress and around the country are just too busy continuing to lie about the 2020 presidential election, undermining democracy by suppressing voting rights, denying the reality of climate change and casting doubts about the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccines.
That means that the 50 Democrats in the US Senate, plus the vice-president, will have to pass this most consequential piece of legislation alone. And that’s what we will do. The future of working families is at stake. The future of our democracy is at stake. The future of our planet is at stake.
Now is the time.
Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and the ranking member of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress
Climate, Not Conflict. Madagascar’s Famine is the First in Modern History to be Solely Caused by Global Warming
Aryn Baker
Cropland is covered by sand in Betsimeda, Maroalomainty commune, Ambovombe district. Cropland is covered by sand in Betsimeda, Maroalomainty commune, Ambovombe district, Madagascar May 2, 2021. Credit – Viviane Rakotoarivony/United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs/Reuters.
Heatwaves, wildfires, floods. If there’s still any doubt that the summer of 2021 is a turning point for a global awakening over the looming climate crisis, you can add one more plague of biblical proportions to the list: famine.
The southern part of the island nation of Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa, is experiencing its worst drought in four decades, with the World Food Program (WFP) warning recently that 1.14 million people are food-insecure and 400,000 people are headed for famine. Hunger is already driving people to eat raw cactus, wild leaves and locusts, a food source of last resort. The WFP, which is on the ground helping with food distribution, describes scenes of unimaginable suffering, with families bartering everything they have—even cooking pots and spoons—for the paltry tomatoes, scrawny chickens and few bags of rice still available in the markets. “The next planting season is less than two months away and the forecast for food production is bleak,” writes WFP spokesperson Shelley Thakral in a dispatch from the most affected area. “The land is covered by sand; there is no water and little chance of rain.”
The WFP warns that the number of locals facing phase 5 catastrophic food insecurity—development speak for famine—could double by October. And the group has the responsible party squarely in their sight. “This is not because of war or conflict, this is because of climate change,” says WFP Executive Director David Beasley.
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Historically, famines resulted from crop failure, disaster or pest invasion; modern famines are largely considered to be man-made—sparked by conflict combined with natural disasters or incompetence and political interference. Madagascar is facing none of those, making it the first famine in modern history to be caused solely by climate change alone. It’s unlikely to be the last, says Landry Ninteretse, the Africa director for climate advocacy organization 350.org. “In recent years we’ve seen climate calamities hitting one country after another. Before it was the horn of Africa, and now it is Madagascar. Tomorrow the cycle will go on, maybe in the northern part of Africa—the Sahel—or the west. And unfortunately, it is likely to continue happening because of climate change.”
Increasing temperatures are disrupting global weather patterns that farmers, particularly those in the developing world, have relied upon for centuries. Monsoons have become increasingly unpredictable, starting later than usual, showing up in the wrong place, or sometimes not showing up at all. This is wreaking havoc in places that depend on rain for agriculture. The southern part of Madagascar, a lush, largely tropical island famous for its biodiversity, has experienced below average rainfall for the past five years. Most people in the south depend on rain-fed, small-scale agriculture for survival, but because of the drought, rivers and irrigation dams have dried up.
The WFP says it needs $78.6 million dollars to provide lifesaving food for the next lean season in Madagascar, but it is going to take a lot more than that to help the countries most affected by climate change able to adapt in ways that prevent future famines. Southern Madagascar, for example, will probably need irrigation systems, along with more drought-tolerant crops and hardier breeds of cattle. Madagascar, one of the poorest nations in the world, is unlikely to be able to afford such innovations on its own.
As part of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, wealthy nations agreed to set aside $100 billion a year in climate financing to help developing nations adapt, but they have yet to meet that goal. In 2018, the latest year for which data are available, donors were still short $20 billion. But investing in climate change adaptation and mitigation plays dividends in the long run. The World Bank estimates that climate change could cause more than 140 million people to move within their countries’ borders by 2050 in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America, with severe consequences on economic development. Many others will seek to leave their countries entirely. “We used to see our brothers and sisters in the Sahel leaving because of conflict and looking for better economic opportunities, but now it is climate change that is becoming one of the major drivers, pushing out people who can no longer cultivate their land,” says Ninteretse. “This is not only going to impact Africa, but also Europe, Asia, and America as well, as people seek safer places where they can live.”
Madagascar may seem far away, but the issues should feel close to home, wherever “home” might be. “This famine in Madagascar, the heat wave in America, the floods in Germany, this is an indicator that climate change needs to be taken seriously,” says Ninteretse. “In the same way the world reacted the pandemic and were able to get vaccines in less than a year—If the world would have reacted in the same way when we started sending the first warning signals of climate change, the situation would be much better than what it is now.”
With Tampa Bay in grip of Red Tide, shrimpers turn their nets toward death
Zachary T. Sampson, Tampa Bay Times
ST. PETERSBURG — Toliver and Jessica Tucker are used to the dark, oily water, the bulging eyes, the gray flesh decaying to a pulp in the city’s bayous.
They have even become accustomed to the smell — God, the smell — of all the rotting fish in gruesome flotillas, victims of a toxic Red Tide in Tampa Bay.
But the maggots? The maggots are new. White and wriggling, they circle the scales of rotting sheepshead. They climb seawalls at the water’s edge.
The other day, Toliver saw one inching up the cockpit of the shrimp boat he and his wife sail as contractors in the urgent effort to drag millions of pounds of dead fish from Tampa Bay.
“These canals are sick,” said Toliver, 43. “It’s devastating. I’ve thought about crying.”
Pinellas County has hired an ad hoc armada of shrimp boats like the Tuckers’ to comb local waters with nets. About 30 boats have helped; in total, the county has collected more than 1,440 tons of dead sea life and debris from the beaches to the bay. And the work continues.
The boats are the most effective tool for keeping fish off land, where they are not only a grisly sight but harder to pick up once they become entangled in sand, trees and rocks. Cleaning the bay is not just a matter of vanity. The dead fish, if left to degrade, could supply more nutrients to fuel Red Tide.
Most days, the Tuckers wake up about 4:30 a.m. to drive south from their home in Spring Hill, sometimes with their son. They stripped the livewell from the center of their 25-foot boat, Southbound, to make room for all the dead fish they pick up. They start work just after dawn and don’t finish until dusk.
In that, they know, they are not alone.
• • •
The Tuckers’ first job gathering dead fish was in 2018, when a Red Tide bloom in the Gulf of Mexico cratered their bait shrimp business. No one was fishing near shore, and no one wanted to buy their shrimp.
The timing was awful. Married for nearly two decades, they were about to buy a house.
“We were broke and had nothing in the bank, and they wanted closing costs,” Jessica recalled. She was sure they would lose the property. Then the contracting gig came, giving them a steady paycheck.
So far, this year’s bloom hasn’t been as bad for Tuckers Flats Fishing. The couple works out of Hudson and was still running one boat and crew there to catch enough shrimp for continuing orders.
But if the bloom endures, sales could bottom out again.
The Tuckers sell shrimp for $60 per thousand. The boat they left behind hauled in 14,500 the other day.
In Pinellas, they make $170 an hour, Toliver said. They pay for their own gas and expenses and drive an hour or more to reach the boat launch each day. They trailer the Southbound every night. Another one of their boats, Westbound, was helping with Red Tide, but they recently sent it back to shrimping — typically an overnight job — because the crew struggled with the heat.
The pay is solid, Toliver said, but the work is brutal. “You’ve got to understand what we’re touching.”
Toliver grew up in Tarpon Springs and has long fished around Tampa Bay. The couple trawls for shrimp here each fall and winter.
The Tuckers know how life on Florida’s west coast rests on a ripple, always spreading from the water. It’s why people live here and why they visit, spending money on seaside hotel rooms and rum punches at tiki bars.
If there were no gulf, no Tampa Bay, this would just be another chunk of flat land.
The Southbound shoves off from a ramp at Demens Landing, passing Doc Ford’s Rum Bar & Grille on the St. Pete Pier, where the Tuckers like to grab lunch.
Sometimes, at the end of the day, Toliver lines up the boat and angles the motor so the wake hits the breakwater by the restaurant just right, freeing dead fish from the rocks so they can be netted.
• • •
The shrimp boats pass each other on a course entering and exiting Demens Landing, where a forklift hoists the loads of dead fish they collect into a series of dumpsters. While underway, outriggers stretched wide, the boats look like hulking birds. Each carries a couple of people to manage the nets cast over the edge.
Once the nets are full — and it doesn’t take long — the shrimpers gather them to release plumes of dead fish in the middle of the boats, filling green bags with long handles. In an hour or so, maybe even less, the Tuckers can haul away up to 3,000 pounds.
When they finish, spindly fish bones remain, piercing the Southbound’s nets.
Toliver and Jessica stretch dishwashing gloves over their hands, but inevitably, their bare skin ends up touching dead fish or Red Tide anyway. It feels like an alcohol burn. They carry a 5-gallon bucket of bleach water, in addition to hand sanitizer, wipes and antibiotic ointment.
The GPS screen plots their days in a spiderweb of green lines, past the Vinoy, a string of waterfront parks, around the Historic Old Northeast and up Coffee Pot Bayou.
This arm of the bay was a hotspot recently, Toliver says, swaths almost entirely covered in dead fish. Where the die-offs are most severe, rotting carcasses drift so close together they look like pavers. It’s as though someone could hop off a seawall and walk around without getting wet. The sour air smells like a hundred refrigerators packed with tuna were left unplugged to rot in a parking lot.
The stench gives Toliver a headache. They don’t often wear masks, they say, because the boat has an open cockpit that allows for a breeze when they’re moving.
He and Jessica leave their rubber boots outside the house when their day is done. On one long drive back to Spring Hill, Toliver felt like he could smell death the whole way home.
They take turns at the wheel of the Southbound, and Jessica pulls out her phone in hopes of capturing some sense of what they are witnessing. Like when fish swim in spastic circles before suddenly turning belly up, dying in front of their eyes.
Toliver wishes Gov. Ron DeSantis would come for a ride on the Southbound, to see what they see.
• • •
The outboard motor makes the Tuckers’ boat maneuverable. Jay Gunter, the man running contractors like them in Pinellas, calls it a mini shrimp boat.
They can pull right up to the seawall by Straub Park, where city workers extend pool skimmers to scoop fish from the tideline.
The job is worse on land. It’s slow but necessary work. The Tuckers look on in pity from under the shade of a bimini top.
“They’re dying,” Toliver says of the crews. “There’s no breeze.”
Occasionally, city employees will call out, directing boats toward fish kills they cannot reach. In especially tight spaces, under docks and lifted boats, operators use Weedoos — essentially small, floating front-end loaders — to cart debris to the deck of an idling pontoon.
Toliver cuts the Southbound northeast, out of sight of downtown toward Venetian Isles. The shoreline is fully developed with luxury homes, touting panoramic views of Tampa Bay and bayside pools adorned by statues. Toliver scans the manicured lawns, trim and green as country club fairways.
Like others who work on the water, the Tuckers blame the April wastewater dump from the Piney Point fertilizer plant for polluting the bay and helping feed this bloom. But they know the release is only one source of contamination.
All the lush lawns around them likely use fertilizer, Toliver thinks, and the runoff puts more nutrients into the bay. He knows the unbroken line of manmade seawalls is not good, either, long ago crowding out mangroves and oyster beds that helped keep the bay clean and balanced.
The Tuckers pass other shrimpers and a woman on a center console cleaning out dead fish with a teenaged deckhand.
Toliver yells to them all, saying thank you.
He steers the Southbound through a marina by Smacks Bayou, where a day earlier they removed thousands of pounds of rotting fish. Toward the back, where the water meets Snell Isle Boulevard, the Tuckers find hundreds of dead fish in a shallow bend.
“Oh my God, it’s wretched,” Toliver says. “It’s just rotting corpses.”
The water is cloudy and lifeless. They know oxygen levels have plummeted so much that nothing can survive. For all the carcasses the couple removes, tides and winds blow in more each day.
Toliver thinks about how many families could have been fed with all this seafood, and how long the bigger fish might have lived.
“That’s a snook,” Jessica says.
“No,” Toliver says, peering down. “That was a grouper at one time.”
The cove would be too narrow for outriggers, so the Tuckers call for a Weedoo and head off, finding another putrid clot around Cordova Boulevard.
“This is horrible,” Tolliver says. He spots an eel, a few feet long, that he thinks was some kind of moray. It may be the biggest he’s seen. It floats upside down near an empty Four Loko can.
This also bothers the Tuckers, how there is always garbage mixed in with all the death.
Onshore, a woman spots their boat and steps out to a patio, letting two dogs run along the seawall above the Southbound.
Toliver looks up and yells.
“We got help on the way, hon.”
About this story: Times reporters went out for a few hours on the Southbound on Friday, July 16, with Toliver and Jessica Tucker. The couple gave reporters a tour of the area they have been working and spoke about the process of picking up dead fish. The bloom’s worst effects have since moved toward the gulf beaches.
• Florida Poison Control Centers have a toll-free 24/7 hotline to report illnesses, including from exposure to Red Tide: 1-800-222-1222
• To report dead fish for clean-up in Tampa Bay, call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at 1-800-636-0511 or file a fish kill report online.
• In St. Petersburg, call the Mayor’s Action Center at 727-893-7111 or use St. Petersburg’s seeclickfix website.
• Visit St. Pete/Clearwater, the county’s tourism wing, runs an online beach dashboard at www.beachesupdate.com.
How to stay safe near the water
• Do not swim around dead fish.
• Those with chronic respiratory problems should be careful and stay away from places with a Red Tide bloom. Leave if you think Red Tide is affecting you.
• Do not harvest or eat mollusks or distressed and dead fish from the area. Fillets of healthy fish should be rinsed with clean water, and the guts thrown out.
• Pet owners should keep their animals away from the water and from dead fish.
• Residents living near the beach should close their windows and run air conditioners with proper filters.
• Beachgoers can protect themselves by wearing masks.
Source: Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County
Red Tide may recede in Tampa Bay but worsen off Pinellas beaches
Zachary T. Sampson, Tampa Bay Times
Red Tide may recede in Tampa Bay but worsen off Pinellas beaches.
ST. PETERSBURG — The latest Red Tide monitoring shows some improvement within Tampa Bay, officials say, but conditions are worsening for several gulf beaches.
“Our aerial imagery is showing that the bloom has kind of transported out of the mouth over the last few days. Within the bay … it’s night and day from a week ago,” said Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Executive Director Eric Sutton. “However the bloom has now moved, it’s off the coast, and it’s expanded, and we’ve seen high bloom concentrations from Longboat Key up essentially to Dunedin and that area.”
Red Tide is “pretty extensive” off the beaches, Sutton told the Tampa Bay Times on Tuesday. It is atypical for a toxic bloom to reach as far into the bay as it did this month, but more common in the gulf. In some spots on the western shore, Sutton said, the Red Tide has reached all the way up to the beach, while in other places it may be drifting a mile or so offshore. The bloom is not one unbroken block of algae but pockets that move according to winds, tides and other environmental factors.
The toxic algae have devastated waters around Tampa Bay, killing immense numbers of fish and other sea life. Sutton said the state has found multiple manatees — likely numbering in the single digits — that appear to have been affected by Red Tide, though the cause of their deaths will not be confirmed until researchers further study the animals’ bodies.
This has been a record year for manatee deaths, with 850 dying as of July 9, according to the state. That is largely attributed to the loss of sea-grasses on the east coast, where manatees have starved around wintering zones along their Atlantic migration route. Now Red Tide threatens them on the west coast.
The last time Florida saw a bloom like this, so far into Tampa Bay at this time of summer, was in 1971, according to a Conservation Commission researcher.
Pinellas County as of Monday had picked up more than 1,270 tons of dead marine life and debris. Workers were finding dead fish on beaches from Indian Shores to the south. On Tuesday, they saw a major fish kill by the Dunedin Causeway, said county spokesman Tony Fabrizio.
The bloom seems to have been carried out of the bay by standard forces, including currents and wind, Sutton said. Persistent rainfall has helped freshen the waters of Tampa Bay, he said, lowering salinity levels that had been high weeks ago. The salinity may have made the estuary conducive to growth of the organism behind Red Tide.
But the algae have not left the area entirely, and scientists cannot be certain the bloom will continue to decline in the bay.
“The trend looks like it’s going down,” Sutton said, “but we’re not out of the woods.”
St. Petersburg officials and environmental organizations have made repeated calls for Gov. Ron DeSantis to declare a state of emergency. As of early this week, the state has agreed to provide $2.1 million to Pinellas for clean-up costs incurred by the county and city of St. Petersburg.
The governor’s office has said the Florida Department of Environmental Protection holds a fund to use in the response, so there’s no need to initiate a state of emergency, which is what happened during a bad Red Tide bloom in 2018.
The agency’s interim secretary, Shawn Hamilton, said that money is available specifically to help reimburse local governments for the cost of cleaning up fish kills. He said the agency has enough funding to surpass the aid it provided in 2018.
Pinellas alone picked up about 1,800 tons of dead sea life and debris that year.
“Those are the types of levels we’re ready to support if needed,” Hamilton said.
If the region suffers other damages, like business foundering due to a decline in tourism, Hamilton said the state tourism agency Visit Florida and the Department of Economic Opportunity, which administers state and federal aid programs, could step in to help.
Death for some, sunbaked cookies for others. We must get serious about the climate crisis.
Dr. Thomas K. Lew
Parking at the Northern California hospital where I work, I quickly break into a sweat during the 80-foot walk to the entrance. It’s 100 degrees outside, and it’s only 8 a.m. Outdoors, I can feel the intense sunlight on my skin, but inside the cool wards of the hospital, I experience the effects of the recent heat wave in my soul: My first patient of the day is gravely sick from severe heat stroke.
A healthy athlete, he became severely lightheaded, disoriented and unable to put together a coherent sentence. He had only spent 15 minutes in a car driving without air conditioning, but these effects were lasting hours. At one point, we thought he was developing a true stroke in his brain and not just heat stroke.
He’s not the only one suffering. I am seeing more and more people experiencing adverse health consequences of a warming environment. Put more bluntly, more people are getting sick from climate change. I am seeing them today. Not years in the future. Right now. For our health and survival, we need to be brave enough to stop and even reverse climate change by supporting state and national policies that strive to do this.
A burnt car after a wildfire in Alpine County, Calif., on July 17, 2021.
People have found fun in the extreme temperatures, cooking breakfast or baking cookies using just the sunlight. But the heat can be deadly for our most vulnerable. At least 150 deaths have been attributed to the heat in the Pacific Northwest during this recent unprecedented heat wave. If British Columbia, Canada, is counted, then that number nears 1,000 people. In my hospital, we are seeing more heat strokes and dehydration cases, especially among our elderly and homeless population.
The health consequences are palpable. Last year, our medical wards filled with the sounds of wheezing lungs from struggling patients, both from COVID-19 and also pulmonary damage from wildfire smoke. Climate change continues to make these fires all the more frequent.
No time left for political bickering
President Joe Biden has argued that fighting global warming is a key priority in American infrastructure – but it’s more than that, it’s a priority for humanity’s infrastructure.
We cannot turn this battle into more political bickering; we don’t have the time. We need to push our elected officials to support policies curbing carbon emissions and promoting clean energy. We need to invest in the science. We need to believe the science.
Aside from rising sea levels, destruction of animal habitats, melting polar caps, increased flooding and the other myriad existential hazards, we are still at grave direct health risks with worsening climate change. And those dangers are now. Nowhere is this more evident than inside a hospital, filled with patients suffering from the increasing heat and smoke. More than just causing an unpleasantly hot walk across a parking lot, climate change will certainly lead to more death and suffering unless we pull together across the political spectrum and act before it’s too late.
Thomas K. Lew, MD, is an assistant clinical professor of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and an attending physician of Hospital Medicine at Stanford Health Care – ValleyCare. All opinions are solely his own.
