Category: Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, MLK jr

Stories of injustice and justice

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

Three Weeks After Hurricane Ida, Parts of Southeast Louisiana Are Still Dark

Three Weeks After Hurricane Ida, Parts of Southeast Louisiana Are Still Dark

Sophie Kasakove                       
Downed power lines in Luling, La. on Sept. 11, 2021. (Emily Kask/The New York Times)
Downed power lines in Luling, La. on Sept. 11, 2021. (Emily Kask/The New York Times)

 

NEW ORLEANS — For Tiffany Brown, the drive home from New Orleans begins as usual: She can see the lights on in the city’s central business district and people gathering in bars and restaurants. But as she drives west along Interstate 10, signs of Hurricane Ida’s destruction emerge. Trees with missing limbs fill the swamp on either side of the highway. With each passing mile, more blue tarps appear on rooftops and more electric poles lay fallen by the road, some snapped in half.

By the time Brown gets to her exit in Destrehan 30 minutes later, the lights illuminating the highway have disappeared, and another night of total darkness has fallen on her suburban subdivision.

For Brown, who works as an office manager at a pediatric clinic, life at work can feel nearly normal. But at home, with no electricity, it is anything but. “I keep hoping every day that I’m going to go home and it’ll be on,” she said. “But every day it’s not.”

Three weeks have passed since Hurricane Ida knocked down electric wires, poles and transmission towers serving more than 1 million people in southeast Louisiana. In New Orleans, power was almost entirely restored by Sept. 10, and businesses and schools have reopened. But outside the city, more than 100,000 customers were without lights through this past Monday. As of Friday evening, there were still about 38,000 customers without power, and many people remained displaced from damaged homes.

As intensifying storms driven by climate change reveal the weakness of electric grids across the United States, severe power outages are becoming an increasingly regular long-term aftershock.

“It so quickly pivots from the disaster itself — the hurricane, the wildfire, the floods,” said Julie McNamara, an energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “So much of the consequences of these extreme weather events are because of those long-lasting power outages.”

For many, like Brown, getting the lights back on could still be more than a week away: Entergy, the state’s largest utility, estimates that power will be fully restored in the state by Sept. 29, a full month after Ida made landfall. Linemen are scattered across the coast replacing downed wires and poles, but in some areas hit by sustained winds as high as 150 mph, electrical systems will need to be completely rebuilt.

The challenges of weeks without power are wearing on residents. Kelly Walker, who lives in Luling, Louisiana, went almost three weeks with no electricity before the lights were finally restored Friday. Her mother’s small three-bedroom house became a crowded home base to eight people, with a generator tempering the sweltering heat at a cost of often $80 per day in gasoline. With no hot water to take a shower, the grocery stores still poorly stocked, her 14-year-old son’s school closed indefinitely, and little to do for entertainment, the family saw tensions run high.

“It seems in the big picture things are coming together,” said Walker. “But it feels like the outskirts, little towns and communities, are getting left behind.”

Everywhere from St. Charles Parish, where Walker lives, to Thibodaux more than 30 miles west, and 50 miles south to Grand Isle — an expanse that includes bedroom communities, fishing towns and small cities of oil and gas workers — power outages have led to a cascade of challenges.

Jobs, schools and daily routines remain on hold across the region. Workers on cherry pickers string new power lines along roads as drivers wait their turn at dead traffic lights. On some residential streets, power lines hang so low that cars just barely scrape under them.

The Terrebonne Parish school district, where just over a dozen of 34 schools had power as of Friday, has been closed for weeks. The district is “not even contemplating” reopening school buildings until they have electricity, said Philip Martin, the school superintendent. Schools farther north with power and less damage will temporarily house students from the southern reaches of the parish starting Sept. 27. But without the lights on, it has been challenging to even assess the wind damage to school buildings to determine how long that fix will be necessary.

Medical facilities are struggling, too. The urgent care clinic that Alicia Doucet manages in Cut Off, a small fishing town along the bayou southwest of New Orleans, reopened a week after the storm hit, when the staff finally secured a generator. But a week later, the gasoline costs to run it were adding up. Supplies including medications and crutches were slow to arrive as delivery trucks struggled to make it through the debris to reach the clinic.

“We’re just praying that each one that comes in, we’re able to treat,” Doucet said. The hospital will be shut down for months after losing its roof in the storm, according to Lafourche Parish President Archie Chaisson, forcing the clinic to send those in need of more acute care to the hospital in Thibodaux, an hour away.

The enduring blackout has stalled the rebuilding process in communities like Pointe-Aux-Chenes, a small community of homes, many raised on stilts, across the marsh from Doucet’s clinic that is home to the Pointe-au-Chien tribe.

“No water, no electricity, so you can’t do nothing,” Charles Verdin, the tribal chair, said. Most residents have yet to return to the community, where the intense winds rendered most homes uninhabitable.

And with every passing day, the already immense task of rebuilding becomes more daunting as rain falls through holes in rooftops and mold spreads.

Verdin said it was not until Sept. 13, more than two weeks after the storm, that he first saw workers make their way down the bayou to start repairing the power lines. He understands the obstacles they face: Piles of debris and downed wires make the already lengthy drive from the community to any population center far longer. Many downed poles were planted in soft, swampy soil, making them difficult to fix.

But he also believes that restoring power to his community was low on the list of priorities of the utility company.

“We don’t like it, but we’re used to it. They’ll take care of where the most population is,” said Verdin.

Entergy spokesperson Jerry Nappi confirmed that the company prioritizes getting the greatest number of customers’ power back the fastest, with lines that serve fewer people restored later.

The immense challenge of repairing more than 30,000 poles, 36,000 spans of wire and nearly 6,000 transformers brought down by the storm has left many wondering whether Entergy should have invested more in strengthening this infrastructure to be able to withstand the heavy winds that wallop the Gulf Coast with increasing regularity.

State regulators asked that question in 2019, when the Louisiana Public Utilities Commission opened an inquiry into grid reliability. But the proceeding remains open, and regulators have done little to compel Entergy to answer for outages, even as long-term blackouts become more frequent.

After Hurricane Laura tore through the southwest part of the state last August, causing more than 400,000 outages in Louisiana, it took more than a month for the utility to restore power to all customers, at an estimated cost of up to $1.4 billion. A month later, it took two weeks for Entergy to fully restore power after Hurricane Zeta knocked out power to nearly a half-million customers in the state.

For many, getting power back after Hurricane Ida is just the beginning.

Last weekend, Anthony Griffith and Brittany Dufrene surveyed their house in LaPlace after a demolition crew had gutted it, two weeks after Hurricane Ida brought a surge of floodwater from nearby Lake Pontchartrain into their subdivision.

Their plan “for now” is to rebuild, Dufrene said, and she expects that many of her neighbors will, too. But with storms hitting the area more often, the longer-term solution is less clear. “How many times can you do that?” she asked.

From down the driveway, a neighbor called out that he had gotten power. Griffith flicked a switch on the fuse box, and sure enough, for the first time in nearly two weeks, it turned on.

Maybe now they could stay at home, Griffith suggested, instead of bouncing between relatives’ houses over an hour apart.

Dufrene laughed, looking at the mattresses stacked in the garage and at the walls with the bottom few feet removed.

“Where are we going to stay?” Dufrene asked. “Where are we going to sleep?

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

Climate change and drought threaten a way of life for Arizona farmers

Climate change and drought threaten a way of life for Arizona farmers

Miranda Green, Contributor            September 16, 2021

 

Nancy Caywood recalls the days when the white tufts on the cotton plants on her family’s 255-acre farm popped out against the stark blue desert sky, and their alfalfa fields were a sea of green yielding eight to 10 cuttings a year.

“To walk out and smell the fresh hay, there’s nothing like it,” the third-generation Casa Grande, Ariz., farmer told Yahoo News.

This year, thanks to the extreme drought that experts say is exacerbated by climate change, all they’ve been able to grow successfully is weeds.

“My grandfather may have experienced rough times, but never a mega-drought. He’s never had to tear out his entire farm,” said Caywood. “We’re scared to death.”

A irrigation canal dried out due to water shortages at farm in Casa Grande, Ariz., in August.
An irrigation canal dried out due to water shortages at a farm in Casa Grande, Ariz., in August. (Cassidy Araiza/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

 

The water situation is dire in the state of Arizona, which is facing its 22nd year of drought. Despite some relief from the annual monsoons, daily temperatures in the state are still hitting record highs, and local rivers are running dry. In mid-August, the federal government announced its first-ever water shortage declaration for the Colorado River, triggering cuts in the amount of water Arizona will be allowed to draw from it, starting in January.

It’s a reality that scientists say is a result of a warming planet caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and Arizona’s farmers are facing what could be a make-or-break moment for their industry. But while agriculture is well represented in the state’s Republican-majority Legislature, many in the party have refused to acknowledge a link to climate change or pass bills to address it.

“They talk about drought, but don’t talk about the fact that climate change is intensifying the drought. They don’t acknowledge it relative to fires and the fact that fires are larger relative to climate change,” said Sandy Bahr, Grand Canyon chapter director for the Sierra Club. “They are just not in touch with science at all. Or any of the reports that come out that point to climate change as exacerbating many of these issues.”

Arizona was once a national environmental leader. In 2006, then-Gov. Janet Napolitano signed an executive order to create a climate action plan, making it one of the first states to do so. But there’s been a strong reversal since then. In 2010, the next governor, Jan Brewer, signed a law that forbade any state agencies from monitoring greenhouse gas emissions, and it remains on the books today. In 2015, Arizona’s Legislature prohibited cities from requiring any energy benchmarking in commercial structures. And in 2019, it passed a bill that prevents Arizona’s cities and towns from banning any natural gas or other fossil fuel hookups in buildings.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey meets President Donald Trump in the White House in August last year.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey with President Donald Trump in the White House in August 2020. (Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)

 

The state’s current governor, Doug Ducey, came close to acknowledging climate change in 2019, nearly four years into his term, saying: “Nobody knows better than the governor of a state like Arizona, that has such an arid climate and has had to make so many plans and sacrifices to have the rich and abundant water resources that we have, that we have to pay attention to our environment.”

Despite its “arid climate,” agriculture is one of Arizona’s biggest industries. Yuma County, near the southern border, is often referred to as the country’s “salad bowl,” due to its output of leafy greens in the winter. But the impact of the drought is likely to hurt farming in an outsized way.

Politicians in the state are considering desperate measures to help aid the industry, including an expensive water-desalination alternative, as well as a proposal to build a cross-state pipeline to drain water from the ever-flooding Mississippi River.

But agriculture is also a top consumer of water, using nearly 74 percent of the water in the state, according to a 2018 University of Arizona economic impact study, and that fact has created tension between municipalities and environmentalists who believe water conservation, not growing crops, should be the state’s main focus.

State Sen. Juan Mendez, a Democrat, said the bills that have so far been considered by the Legislature focus on conserving the “status quo,” instead of on a true solution. That’s because, he believes, the only real solution to Arizona’s problem is to restrict water allocation. Mendez himself has introduced and co-sponsored a number of bills on climate change in the state.

Minerals deposited on previously submerged surfaces marked the shoreline of the Colorado River during low water levels in Arizona, Nev., in August.
Minerals deposited on previously submerged surfaces marked the shoreline of the Colorado River during low water levels in August. (Roger Kisby/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

 

“No one wants to consider the idea of using less water. They want to throw money at a desalination plant. Now they are honestly considering moving water from another state,” Mendez said. “They are just keeping Pinal County farmers happy. There’s not going to be one answer that solves the drought problem or climate change — or all of these environmental disasters.”

Agriculture nets Pinal County $2.4 billion in annual profits, according to Chelsea McGuire, the Arizona Farm Bureau’s government relations director. It’s anticipated to be one of the first regions in Arizona to see its access to Colorado River water cut off, and instead will have to rely on limited groundwater supply and rain. Water shortage is expected to create a $66 million loss in crop sales there, and it’s causing farmers in the area to think deeply about the industry’s future. But there is also no obvious solution to their plight, says McGuire.

“No one is seeing this as temporary. We are seeing a dryer future. … I think everything is going to have to change, from what I’m growing, to how I’m growing it, to where I’m growing it,” she said.

Paul Ollerton grew up farming in Pinal County. His father, uncle and grandfather were also farmers. He said he’s facing a tough decision this year: He doesn’t have enough Colorado River water to grow all of his crops, nor the capacity to pump enough of it from the ground.

A worker moves irrigation tubes on a farm in Pinal County at Minal, Ariz.
A worker moves irrigation tubes on a farm in Pinal County, Ariz. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

 

“We knew for a long time that this day was probably coming, and we just didn’t know when,” he said.

A partner and owner of Tierra Verde Farms in Casa Grande, Ollerton estimates he’ll have to leave nearly 25 percent of his fields fallow this year due to lack of water.

“Without really sounding negative and a Debby Downer, I don’t see a lot of future — it’s a tough battle here,” he said.

Many farmers’ frustration lies largely with the local municipalities, which get first choice of the water and then allocate the remaining surface water to farmers. But not all farmers lay the larger blame on climate change.

“I think there might be some things related to it, but I’m not saying climate change is the way to address all of these issues,” Ollerton said. “I don’t think it’s totally responsible for what’s happening. I don’t think I buy some of the theories or science. I think it’s just weather patterns. I think we’re just in a dry cycle.”

Caywood finds it equally hard to know where to place blame, though she says many in her town have pointed a finger at farmers.

“People don’t respect where their food is coming from. This growing in the desert has been done for decades, and we have ideal growing conditions,” she said. “Everybody asks if it’s climate change. I believe it’s cyclical. I believe it’s like climate change. … Whatever is happening, it’s happening fast. I thought something like this would happen over 100 years — this is happening over 20.”

Cattle feed on an abandoned orchard as drought worsens near Red Lake, north of Kingman, Ariz. in June.
Cattle feed on an abandoned orchard as drought worsens near Red Lake, north of Kingman, Ariz., in June. (David McNew/Getty Images)

 

Caywood says her family doesn’t expect to make any profits this year, and as that uncertainty plays out, she’s watched the worry lines grow on the face of her 40-year-old son Travis, also a farmer. She’s not sure what her family will ultimately do with their acreage, but many neighbors have already sold their land to a new growing industry in the state: solar.

“I’m losing my toughness over this. I want to be resilient and bounce back from this, but unfortunately, I am becoming an island surrounded by solar panels,” Caywood said.

She said there’s a chance her farm could be the next sale.

“My dad passed away in January. I was on my way to the farm in April. I drove over the canal and there was low water in it, and I just burst into tears, knowing that that was my livelihood drying up,” she said.

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

‘Despondent’: Battered Louisiana city gets more rain from Nicholas; 100,000 without power in Texas

‘Despondent’: Battered Louisiana city gets more rain from Nicholas; 100,000 without power in Texas

John Bacon, USA TODAY                     

 

More than 100,000 Texas homes and businesses remained without power for a second day Wednesday as the remnants of Hurricane Nicholas slid across the Gulf Coast from the Lone Star State into Louisiana, drenching a region still staggering from Hurricane Ida’s wrath less than three weeks ago.

Nicholas, downgraded to a tropical depression with sustained winds of 30 mph, was centered about 30 miles northeast of Lake Charles, Louisiana, early Wednesday. The storm was inching east-northeast at 5 mph.

“Much of South & Central Louisiana are under flood watch today as #Nicholas moves through the state,” Gov. John Bel Edwards tweeted Wednesday. “Stay aware of conditions in your local area.”

Earlier, Edwards warned the state’s residents to “take this storm seriously and put yourself in a position to weather it safely.”

Almost 80,000 utility customers remained without power in the state, where the lights went out for more than 1 million homes and businesses during Ida’s peak fury.

Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter said city crews had scoured the drainage system to keep it free from debris that might cause clogs and flooding. Hurricane Laura struck the city a little more than a year ago. Then came Hurricane Delta, then a January freeze that shattered pipes across the city of nearly 80,000 residents just 60 miles east of Beaumont, Texas. A rainstorm in May swamped houses and businesses yet again.

“With what people have gone through over the last 16 months here in Lake Charles, they are very, understandably despondent, emotional,” Hunter said. “Any time we have even a hint of a weather event approaching, people get scared.”

In Pointe-aux-Chenes, 70 miles southwest of New Orleans, Ida tore the tin roof off Terry and Patti Dardar’s home, leaving them without power and water. Rains from Nicholas have now soaked the top floor of their home – but it also provided badly needed water their family collected in jugs. They poured the water into a large plastic container through a strainer, and a pump powered by a generator brought the water inside.

“We ain’t got no other place,” Patti Dardar said. “This is our home.”

The National Weather Center warned that Nicholas, which already dumped more than a foot of rain on parts of Texas and several inches on areas of Louisiana, was expected to generate an additional 3 to 6 inches across the central Gulf Coast in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle through Friday, with isolated totals of 10 more inches possible in some areas.

“Life-threatening flash flooding impacts, especially in urban areas, are possible across these regions,” said Alex Lamers, a National Weather Service warning coordination meteorologist.

Nicholas hits Texas coast, but weakens in strength: ‘Life-threatening’ flash flooding likely across the South

Tornado warnings were issued in parts of southern Louisiana early Wednesday. The storm was forecast to gradually dissipate over central Louisiana on Thursday.

Hurricane Nicholas made landfall early Tuesday along the Matagorda Peninsula with torrential rains and storm surge. The cleanup was in full swing in Texas, where more than 14 inches of rain fell on parts of the Galveston area. Houston was hit with 6 inches, and the city set up cooling and phone charging centers in areas where power outages dragged on.

Earlier, first responders joined with members of the National Guard in rescuing people from flooded homes.

“Texas has deployed swift-water boats, helicopters and high profile vehicles to help local authorities with rescue efforts arising from flooding and high winds,” Gov. Greg Abbot said Tuesday. “Emergency shelters have been set up for residents who might be displaced.”

Contributing: The Associated Press

A historically Black town stood in the way of a pipeline – so developers claimed it was mostly white

A historically Black town stood in the way of a pipeline – so developers claimed it was mostly white

Ben Paviour, VPM and Abi Cole, Floodlight      
<span>Photograph: Steve Helber/AP</span>
Photograph: Steve Helber/AP

 

As fracked gas fields in West Virginia boomed over the past decade, energy companies jumped at the chance to build massive new pipelines to move the fuel to neighboring east coast markets. The 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline would have been the crown jewel.

But Union Hill, Virginia – a community settled by formerly enslaved people after the civil war on farm land they had once tilled – stood in the way. Residents fought against a planned compressor station meant to help the gas move through the pipeline, arguing that because Union Hill is a historic Black community, the resulting air pollution would be an environmental injustice.

But Dominion Energy, one of the pipeline’s two developers, kept pushing. It pledged to invest $5.1m in community services in exchange for the imposition. The company hired a former member of the governor’s cabinet, who grew up in Union Hill, to drum up support from church leaders to landowners. They flew local leaders on a helicopter to Pennsylvania to tour a compressor station there.

Dominion’s campaign split the Union Hill community, dividing church congregations, and in some instances, families. While some residents were for the investment, others saw their resolve to fight the pipeline deepen. In response to mounting opposition, Dominion took an unexpected tack: the company hired outside help to argue that the community around the site was, in actuality, mostly white.

“No environmental justice community is disproportionately impacted,” the pipeline project told state officials January 2019, arguing that the communities around the project were “not majority minority or low income”. Dominion did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

The locals who took on Dominion eventually became the linchpin of a campaign that helped to get the pipeline canceled. But the fight against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is a familiar story now playing out around the country as gas companies expand a sprawling web of pipelines. Even when minority communities say no, the fossil fuel industry keeps saying yes.

Even when minority communities say no, the fossil fuel industry keeps saying yes

In Minnesota, Indigenous-led environmental groups are fighting the hundreds of miles of crude oil pipeline Enbridge is constructing for its Line 3 project from Canada to Wisconsin. In North Brooklyn, New York, community groups are alleging a civil rights violation against Black and Latinx residents over National Grid’s plans to build a seven-mile natural gas pipeline through the area. In North Carolina and Virginia, tribal advocates are opposing a 70-mile extension of the Mountain Valley Pipeline that would cut through Indigenous and Black burial sites and put a large compressor station near a largely rural Black and Native American population.

In many cases, energy companies have succeeded against the wishes of residents, winning local government support by pledging opportunities of economic growth. Environmentalists are growing frustrated with the Biden administration, considering its environmental justice agenda to be full of false promises, as it has been reluctant to fight specific fossil fuel projects.

“Union Hill was unique and not unique. The patterns are quite widespread,” said Mary Finley-Brook, who served on the Virginia governor’s advisory council on environmental justice at the time of the Union Hill battle. Historically, “infrastructure was definitively put through Black communities. We [saw] that with the interstate and with power lines and it continues to develop that way.”

Some residents believe Union Hill wouldn’t have been eyed by developers if different people lived there. “If it had been all millionaires living in that area, it would never have been considered,” said Paul Wilson, a Baptist pastor of a historic Black church near Union Hill.

Had the community been less effective in battling Dominion, he said, “all of the destructive forces from that pipeline were going to rest on a Black community”.

Formed in the chaotic aftermath of the civil war, Union Hill is one of the few historically Black communities in Virginia that retained its identity and history.

Formerly enslaved African Americans bought land in the area – in some cases, the fields they’d toiled in under slavery – and formed a small “freedman community”. In 1869, the Buckingham county courthouse burned down, possibly from arson, taking with it records that could have been used for restitution for the formerly enslaved.

Today, some locals are fifth-generation descendants of that initial settlement. Community surveys suggest the area contains burial grounds of the enslaved laborers and freedmen. When Dominion bought land for the compressor station in 2015, some residents worried about the effect development would have on the community, potentially uprooting historic grave sites, polluting the nearby water and air, and lowering the value of land.

Dominion argued the compressor station – a facility which pressurizes natural gas to transport it from one location to another – would be among the cleanest in the country and have a negligible impact on the Union Hill community. Locals were skeptical of the science, but were entirely unprepared for the next argument Dominion put forward in support of the pipeline.

Protesters turn their backs on a meeting of the Virginia state air quality control board in Richmond, Virginia, in January 2019.
Protesters turn their backs on a meeting of the Virginia state air quality control board in Richmond, Virginia, in January 2019. Photograph: Steve Helber/AP

 

Utilizing a 2017 report from federal regulators, the company used census data to claim that the facility wouldn’t disproportionately impact Black, low-income areas.

That finding contradicted the lived experience of most locals. As Chad Oba, who is white and the head of local environmental group Friends of Buckingham county, put it: “I’ve lived here for 35 years […] I know who my neighbors are. I know that I live in a mostly African American community.”

Dr Lakshmi Fjord, a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia’s anthropology department, organized a door-to-door survey in Union Hill, reaching three-quarters of households within a mile of the compressor’s proposed site. Fjord’s survey found that just 17% of residents self-identified as white, while nearly two-thirds were Black.

The question of whether or not to build out oil and gas infrastructure in Union Hill had real consequences for the community there. In the US, Black communities face higher rates of asthma and greater risk of premature death compared to white communities. African Americans are 75% more likely than whites to live in communities next to industrial facilities, according to a 2017 report from the NAACP and Clean Air Task Force.

The Virginia air board took up the issue in November 2018, in a meeting over whether to grant the facility a key permit. Several members raised questions about the competing claims about Union Hill’s racial makeup, and how the board should resolve them. The group decided to delay a decision. A few days later though, Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D) who has accepted nearly $400,000 from Dominion over his career – replaced two board members who’d raised questions, reportedly saying that their terms had already expired. His office denied it had anything to do with the pipeline issue.

‘Environmental justice is not merely a box to be checked,’ the court wrote, vacating the pipeline’s construction permit

To bolster their case before the board, Dominion hired PC Analytics to conduct an analysis of the demographics of the population. Its owner, researcher and Richmond professor Paolo Catasti, has a history of working with the tobacco industry. Catasti’s findings, which became one of the main arguments used by Dominion to support the pipeline, was that the residents in Union Hill were not Black, but instead representative of the county and state they resided in: majority white.

Catasti’s analysis for Dominion drew from forecasts built using 2010 census data and concluded that African Americans make up just 22% to 25% of the population surrounding the proposed site.

In January 2019, the reconstituted board approved the permits. Environmental and community groups sued, arguing the state air board failed to scrutinize Dominion’s methodology in assessing Union Hill’s racial makeup when Fjord’s study was much more detailed.

“They were given evidence that there was a deeper story, and they disregarded it in the favor of the applicant,” said Stephen Metts, an analyst at New York’s New School who focuses on gas infrastructure projects.

The battle came to a close in January 2020, when the fourth circuit of the US court of appeals found the state air board never resolved conflicting claims about the demographic makeup of Union Hill residents, and criticized the board for its “flawed analysis”.

“Environmental justice is not merely a box to be checked,” the court wrote, vacating the pipeline’s construction permit.

The Virginia department of environmental Quality said it “is considering” the Union Hill ruling as it grows its environmental justice efforts, pointing to its recently established environmental justice office this year.

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline was ultimately canceled on 5 July 2020. Dominion’s then CEO, Tom Farrell, cited “increasing legal uncertainty” that large scale energy infrastructure projects faced in the US.

Metts said the verdict was a welcome precedent for communities fighting pipeline ventures. Federal and state regulators are “coming to a reckoning” over the scale of community pushback to big gas projects,” he said.

In Virginia, a law passed in 2020 inspired by Union Hill now requires state officials to consider environmental justice concerns when examining proposals.

“That era of just accepting it – I think it’s really over,” Metts said.

More than a year after the pipeline was called off, the effects of that conflict are still playing out in Union Hill.

There’s a question of what’s to be done with the 31 miles of pipeline built and 83 miles of trees cut prior to the pipeline’s cancellation. Federal energy regulators like July recommended leaving the infrastructure and felled trees in place. Additionally, many residents who had signed deals with the pipeline to allow the project to use portions of their property for construction now want the easements rescinded so that Dominion can no longer access their land. Dominion has said it has no plans to return the easements in the short-term, but will negotiate their return on a case-by-case basis after it completes restoration efforts – a process that could take years.

Despite the pipeline’s cancellation, Dominion announced in February it was donating $3.5m toward community services in Buckingham county. Over half of that money went to a local foundation chaired by Basil Gooden, the former Virginia secretary of agriculture who’d lobbied on Dominion’s behalf in 2018.

Union Hill residents are already facing another industry that would like to do business just a few miles away – gold mining.

After gold was found near Union Hill, state lawmakers agreed to fund a study on the effects of its mining, declining to institute a moratorium demanded by activists.

Elsewhere in the region, other community fights against pipeline projects continue, including a 14.5-mile intrastate pipeline in eastern South Carolina proposed to cross the Great Pee Dee River, and a compressor station being constructed in Northampton county, North Carolina, whose census block is 79% Black.

While the Union Hill fight was a victory, residents and anti-pipeline activists acknowledge it’s just one of a few.

“It’s an incomplete success story and it’s definitely a cautionary tale,” said Finnley-Brook. “The community is still divided, the community still lacks investment. It is still in a situation of desperation….We still need to recognize that the [pipeline’s investments] did not improve the standards of living for that community.”

  • Miranda Green contributed to this report.