‘The harm to children is irreparable’: Ruth Etzel speaks out ahead of EPA whistleblower hearing

The Guardian

‘The harm to children is irreparable’: Ruth Etzel speaks out ahead of EPA whistleblower hearing

Carey Gillam September 12, 2021

<span>Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters</span> — Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

The US Environmental Protection Agency is failing to protect children by ignoring poisons in the environment and focusing on corporate interests, according to a top children’s health official who will testify this week that the agency tried to silence her because of her insistence on stronger preventions against lead poisoning.

“The people of the United States expect the EPA to protect the health of their children, but the EPA is more concerned with protecting the interests of polluting industries,” said Ruth Etzel, former director of the EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection (OCHP). The harm being done to children is “irreparable”, she said.

A hearing will be held on 13 September in which several internal EPA communications will be presented as evidence, including an email in which EPA personnel discuss using press inquiries about Etzel as “an opportunity to strike” out against her. Among many witnesses to be called to testify are several former high-level EPA officials.

“I want this to be seen and heard,” Etzel said. “I think we should let some light shine on these dirty tricks.”

Etzel is among five current or former EPA scientists who have recently come forward with allegations that the agency, which is charged with regulating chemicals and other substances that may harm public and environmental health, has become deeply corrupted by corporate and political influence. That outside influence pushes agency scientists to make important assessments in ways that will protect their jobs, rather than protect the public, Etzel said.

The whistleblowers have alleged a range of wrongdoing by the EPA, including using intimidation tactics against the agency’s own scientists to protect the interests of certain industries, even when doing so puts the public at risk. The problems have continued into the Biden administration, according to the allegations.

‘Destroy the scientist’

Etzel is a pediatrician and epidemiologist who joined the EPA in 2015 after serving as senior officer in the department of public health and environment at the World Health Organization in Switzerland. She also previously worked for the US Centers for Disease Control and the US Department of Agriculture, and is well known as a global expert on children’s health issues.

In her role at the EPA, Etzel helped launch an initiative to accelerate the reduction of childhood exposure to lead from sources in air, water, soil, paint and food. The federal lead strategy stalled, Etzel alleges, after the 2016 election of Donald Trump when the EPA came under the direction of administrator Andrew Wheeler.

Etzel filed her whistleblower complaint against the EPA in November 2018 alleging that her determination to push the initiative forward, including publicly complaining about EPA delays, triggered retaliation.

The EPA placed her on leave, demoted her, cut her pay, fabricated complaints against her, and conducted a smear campaign aimed at “humiliating” her and “undermining her career and professional stature”, according to her complaint. The EPA also blocked opportunities for her to speak at professional conferences, she alleges.

Internal EPA email communications included as evidence in the case shows that initial questions from media about Etzel’s administrative leave drew curt responses declining to comment on “personnel matters”. But as media inquiries about Etzel mounted, on 28 September 2018, a top EPA public affairs official wrote to the EPA press secretary and other public affairs officers: “This is our opportunity to strike.”

Then, in an email thread with the subject line “Push this around ASAP please,” public affairs officials agreed to a “stronger updated” statement about Etzel that said she was placed on administrative leave because of “serious reports made against her by staff … ” that were “very concerning”.

“The old playbook was attack the science,” Etzel told the Guardian. “The new playbook is destroy the scientist.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics and more than 100 other public health-oriented organizations and institutions sent a letter in 2018 to the EPA protesting the removal of Etzel, who has received multiple national and international awards for scientific integrity and advocacy in recent years.

‘Right the wrongs of the past’

In a pre-hearing statement, the EPA denied taking retaliatory actions against Etzel and said the federal lead action plan was issued in December 2018 and was a “major focus and significant accomplishment”.

“While appellant Ruth Etzel has alleged that EPA’s former administration delayed implementation of the action plan with the premise that it did not care about children and lead exposure issues, the profuse record and witness testimony will illustrate that appellant’s allegations are grossly unfounded,” the EPA said in the filing with the MSPB.

The EPA said there were numerous complaints about Etzel’s management, including complaints that she used “explicit language”, “failed to follow agency HR policy”, was unable “to control her emotions”, and often would “bully others”.

In a statement to The Guardian the EPA said: “This administration is committed to ensuring all EPA decisions are informed by rigorous scientific information and standards. Retaliation against employees who report alleged violations is not tolerated at EPA.”

Paula Dinerstein, a lawyer with the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which is representing Etzel, said the EPA still has not taken action to implement the lead protection strategy, and has acknowledged the “libelous claims” against Etzel were not substantiated.

The Biden administration should not only reinstate Etzel to her previous position, but should also take steps to address the deeper problems revealed by whistleblowers, Dinerstein said.

“Etzel and other recent EPA whistleblowers have exposed EPA’s timidity and industry capture,” she said. “The Biden administration has said a lot of the right things, and has taken some good steps, but it will take a lot of effort and pressure to ensure they right the wrongs of the past.”

The case of Etzel v EPA is set for a hearing in front of the US Merit Systems Protection Board on 13-15 September. The proceedings are open to the public, and scheduled to be held via Zoom due to fears about the spread of Covid-19.

How Midwesterners are handling constant flooding caused by climate change

Yahoo – News

How Midwesterners are handling constant flooding caused by climate change

Ben Adler, Senior Climate Editor September 12, 2021

Colin Moulder-McComb might seem an unlikely climate change refugee. The middle-aged video game developer is a middle-class Midwesterner, not an impoverished resident of a small island nation threatened by sea-level rise. But the resident of Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., an affluent, inner-ring suburb of Detroit where he lives with his wife and two kids, says global warming is destroying his family’s quality of life.

In 2016, heavy rains caused their basement to fill with 36 inches of water. “We thought it was a one-and-done, so we refurnished the basement,” he recalled. After all, they had been living in southeast Michigan for years, and the massive rainfall that caused the flood wasn’t a regular occurrence — or, at least, not yet.

The basement in Colin McComb's home in Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., as he first looked down the stairs after it flooded on June 26. (Colin Moulder-McComb) — Colin McComb’s first look down the stairs to his basement in Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., after it flooded on June 26. (Colin Moulder-McComb)

He was wrong. This June, Moulder-McComb got 42 inches of water in his basement after the sewer backed up again, under pressure from more than 6 inches of rain. And then it flooded again, around 8 inches, in July. “My wife had her old band memorabilia down there; we had financial records down there,” Moulder-McComb recalled. “Basically everything got trashed. We are estimating around $40,000 of damage.”

When New York City basements flooded, to deadly effect, from Hurricane Ida earlier this month, the news made national headlines. But the underlying causes in the Big Apple — increasingly heavy rains, aging public and private infrastructure and a combined sewer and stormwater system — are just as prevalent, if not more so, in many poorer parts of the Northeast and Midwest.

It’s not just the financial or sentimental value of what’s lost, but the unpleasant hassle of dealing with the damage that has McComb’s family considering giving up on their home. Pulling out soaked couches, books, electronics and children’s toys, drilling holes to prevent mold and bleaching and sanitizing what was left has forced McComb to take two weeks off work.

Worst of all is the reason the basement flooded in the first place: The local sewer system backed up. “The second flood was actually the worst, because I actually found human feces in my basement,” said Moulder-McComb.

This problem is not unique to Moulder-McComb’s house. His entire neighborhood has been deluged. “Everybody got it. The streets were just lined with [belongings from] people’s basements,” said Moulder-McComb. “Everybody’s got PTSD now.” The engines of many of his neighbors’ cars were flooded, rendering them inoperable.

Water floods Hanover Street in Dearborn Heights, Mich., leaving residents unable to leave their homes after heavy rains in July. (Emily Elconin/Reuters)

“This summer alone, we’ve had three major flooding events,” said Christy McGillivray, a neighbor of Moulder-McComb’s who works for the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club. “I was driving my daughter, and we were actually caught on a freeway in a flash flood. It’s a climate issue that’s hitting very close to home personally.”

While the climate in the Midwest has always been relatively wet, the frequency and severity of downpours has gotten notably worse in recent decades, due to climate change. Warmer temperatures have led to more evaporation and precipitation. Between 1951 and 2017, the Great Lakes region’s average temperature increased 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, its annual rainfall has risen 17% and it has 35% more heavy rain events, according to a study by Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments, a collaboration between the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The flooding is worst in the areas with the oldest and most underfunded infrastructure. And that’s what has Moulder-McComb searching for somewhere with newer public water infrastructure.

In the context of greater Detroit, Moulder-McComb is actually one of the luckier people, in that he can afford to keep his house well-maintained, and to move if he must. Areas with decaying public infrastructure, or private homes with leaky roofs, disproportionately include lower-income neighborhoods in the inner city.

Detroit residents on June 28 observe a stretch of I-94 that is still under several feet of water following heavy weekend rains which flooded parts of Metro Detroit. (Matthew Hatcher/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) — Detroit residents on June 28 observe a stretch of I-94 under several feet of water after heavy rains that flooded parts of Metro Detroit. (Matthew Hatcher/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Between 2012 and 2020, 43 percent of homes in Detroit suffered flooding from rain, according to a recent survey of residents. Conditions like deteriorating roofs and cracks in basement walls made flooding more likely, and African American neighborhoods were more likely to flood than white areas.

There are also ways of living with regular flooding, including elevating electronic and mechanical appliances several feet off the basement floor. “As a homeowner, you have to stop thinking, ‘I will fix this by building back like it was originally,’” said Richard Rood, a professor of climate and space sciences and engineering at the University of Michigan. “You have to stop thinking of the flood as a one-off event.” Instead, Rood said, a homeowner must ask, “ What if I am in a chronic state of flood? Rather than just fixing the problem at hand, what are the things I can do more systematically to anticipate and leave me better prepared?”

Cities and towns, Rood said, can also better prepare for heavy rains by adopting new building codes that require flood-resilient designs and increasing spaces like parks that can absorb rainwater.

For individuals and families, there may be no perfect solutions to the crises caused by climate change. Asked why he isn’t looking to just leave southeast Michigan altogether, Moulder-McComb pointed out that anywhere he might go will contend with some form of climate change-induced extreme weather.

Residents in Grosse Pointe, Mich., try to clear out the damage on July 10, weeks after the first flooding. (Aimee Fluitt)

“Global warming is screwing up everywhere,” Moulder-McComb observed. “I come from Utah and lived in California before that, and I’m watching the aridification of those areas,” he said, referring to the droughts, heat waves and ensuing wildfires that have plagued the West in recent years.

At least, he notes, Michigan will have one advantage in the gathering climate apocalypse: plenty of water.

John Fetterman wants Democrats to stop wasting time and eliminate the filibuster

CNN – Politics

John Fetterman wants Democrats to stop wasting time and eliminate the filibuster

By Clare Foran, CNN September 10, 2021

(CNN)John Fetterman thinks Senate Democrats are making a big mistake.

The party has a rare opportunity with a majority in Congress and control of the White House. But Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor who is running for Senate, fears Democrats are wasting that opportunity by not eliminating the filibuster and failing to enact key priorities.

“Stop apologizing for the space we take up as a party and ram some stuff through and get it done,” Fetterman said in an interview with CNN. “As a Democrat, I would just hate to be in a position of only being able to accomplish what Mitch McConnell allows us to.”

Fetterman, who stands at a towering height of 6-foot-8 inches tall and has tattoos down his arms, identifies as a populist and said during the interview that he is running as a “get sh*t done Democrat.” He argues the party is not delivering on promises to voters and warns the stakes are too high for inaction as bills to protect voting rights and prevent gun violence hit a wall in the Senate as a result of the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation.

“When you have the kind of extreme measures that are being used by the Republicans, now is the time to stand together. These are dangerous times,” he said. “I guarantee the Republicans, given the chance, would be far more ruthless.”

The fight over the filibuster has created a major dilemma for Democrats: Should the party shatter precedent and go it alone to lock down major legislation or focus instead on across-the-aisle cooperation? With key moderates opposed, there are no signs that Senate Democrats, who control only 50 seats, will eliminate the 60-vote threshold, but pressure continues to build and either choice risks a backlash. Whatever happens will be a major part of the legacy Democrats leave behind.

“When you really put together a core list of the things that are wildly popular and desperately needed by our country that we could accomplish by simply putting this rule aside to get it done, it’s astonishing,” Fetterman said. “To me, it’s a no-brainer.”

The Democratic Senate candidate has a message for anyone in his party who won’t support policies like a $15 dollar minimum wage, voting legislation and safeguarding access to abortion.

“I don’t know why you’re a Democrat if any one of those issues isn’t something (where) you can say, ‘Yes, we need to protect universal voting access rights. Yes, you can’t live on anything less than $15 an hour. Yes, this is settled case law, Roe v. Wade,'” he said. “There’s a party for you if you don’t support all of those kind of basic, fundamental populist things.”

Not a typical purple state politician

Pennsylvania is a political battleground that went for Joe Biden in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2016, but Fetterman doesn’t fit the mold of the kind of play-it-safe centrist candidate the Democratic party often runs in swing states.

The state will have an open Senate seat in 2022 since Republican Sen. Pat Toomey is not running for reelection. The contest has quickly become one of the most high-profile Senate races in the country and is widely viewed as Democrats’ best chance to pick up a Senate seat in the upcoming midterms.

Fetterman mounted an unsuccessful Senate bid in 2016, before he became lieutenant governor. This time around, as a statewide elected official who’s leading the fundraising race, he has been talked about as an early front-runner in the Democratic field. He has so far raised the most of any candidate in the race, Democrat or Republican, at a total of over $6.5 million.

He faces a crowded Democratic primary field and a high-profile opponent in Conor Lamb, a Democratic congressman who represents the state’s 17th congressional district and became nationally known in 2018 when he flipped a House seat from red to blue in a special election. Lamb is a recent entry to the field, having announced his campaign in August, and has so far raised over $1.4 million.

The race will put to the test whether a Democrat like Fetterman can win a Senate seat in a purple state like Pennsylvania in the current era of bitterly-divided partisan politics.

He has long championed marijuana legalization and officiated same-sex marriages before it was legal in his home state. He has defiantly flown pro-legalization and LGBTQ pride flags outside his office at the state capitol after Republicans in the state legislature pushed to take them down. He once called Trump “no different than any other random internet troll,” and endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary as the Vermont independent ran on a progressive platform.

Asked if he has spoken with Bernie Sanders recently, he said, “No, I haven’t. I also endorsed and campaigned heavily for Hillary Clinton too, and I also campaigned strongly for Joe Biden too. It’s always been about what’s best for Pennsylvania.” (Fetterman stayed neutral in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary and backed Biden during the general election.)

On Fetterman’s left arm is a tattoo of the zip code for Braddock, the struggling steel town where he served as mayor until 2019. On his right arm are the dates of violent deaths that took place in Braddock while he was mayor. He proudly proclaims that he only owns one suit, and chose not to live in the lieutenant governor’s mansion. Instead, he lives with his family in a converted car dealership in Braddock, while he and his wife, Gisele, opened up the pool at the mansion to the public.

“The people of Pennsylvania don’t owe me a mansion with a chef and a gardener,” he said. “I’m proud that my family and I live across the street from a steel mill and a union hall. This is where my wife and I want to raise our family, not in a mansion … and we’ve opened up the swimming pool to kids across Pennsylvania.”

A tattoo on the arm of then-Braddock, Pennsylvania mayor John Fetterman from 2015.

A contrast with Manchin and Sinema

As he campaigns across the state of Pennsylvania, Fetterman has asked crowds of voters what they think of how Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are voting, and if that’s what they want in their senator. Manchin and Sinema, two influential moderate Senate Democrats, have both been outspoken in saying they oppose eliminating the filibuster.

“It’s like boo, no, no no,” Fetterman said, describing the reaction he has gotten from voters when he asks the question. “At no point does anyone ever raise their hand and say ‘no, I think that’s the right way forward.'”

Asked if he’s picking up on voter frustration when he gets that kind of response, he said, “Frustration is a generous word. It’s more than that. It’s anger. It’s exasperation. Why are we squandering this opportunity?”

Manchin and Sinema have also recently indicated they do not support spending $3.5 trillion on a massive economic package that Democrats hope to soon pass in Congress without Republican support to address health care, the climate crisis and a range of other priorities.

“If you, as a Democrat, are pleased with the way they are voting, or not voting, then I am not that kind of Democrat,” Fetterman said, referring to Manchin and Sinema. “It’s not so much a criticism as just making a statement and differentiating between myself and that.”

Manchin represents the deep red state of West Virginia, while Sinema represents Arizona, a longtime conservative stronghold that voted for Biden in 2020.

Both have argued the filibuster helps facilitate bipartisanship and protects the country from extreme swings in policymaking as control of government moves from one party to the next. They have also argued the filibuster is a critical tool that ensures the minority party still has a seat at the table and Democrats can use it to defend and uphold their priorities when they do not control the majority.

The recent negotiation and passage in the Senate of a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package with funding for roads, bridges, rail and transit is evidence that collaboration between the two parties can yield results.

But Fetterman argues that if Democrats make bipartisanship the overarching goal, they will cede important issues to Republicans, and he warns the GOP is already enacting extreme policies.

“Look at what they’ve already done to voting rights,” he said. “Look at what they’ve already done to abortion rights. Look at what they’ve already done to just basic truth, the way they talk about the election in my state and all these other states.”

There is one way, though, that Fetterman thinks Democrats should emulate Republicans to get things done.

“Republicans have demonstrated time and time again of being ruthless. Look at what they did with Merrick Garland. Look at how they exploited the death of Justice Ginsburg and they rammed Amy Coney Barrett through. They move with efficiency when they need to and this is a time when Democrats should emulate that and enact these things,” he said.

“We’re clutching our own pearls over saying, ‘Hey let’s drop this antiquated rule and pass this fundamentally and immensely popular and beneficial and transformative legislation for the American people who voted us into control of the White House, the Senate and the House.'”

Challenges ahead

A number of Democrats are competing in the Senate primary. In addition to Lamb, other candidates include state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta and Val Arkoosh, who serves as chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners.

Asked why he thinks he’s the best candidate in the Democratic primary, Fetterman replied, “I’ve never said that I am. That’s up to the people of Pennsylvania to decide.”

The candidates and their records are now under scrutiny as they fight to make it to the general election.

While Fetterman supports a wide range of liberal policies, he opposes an immediate ban on fracking, an industry central to the local economy in parts of Pennsylvania. He argues that Democrats can’t abandon workers employed by the industry and dismissively tell them to “go learn how to code,” and says the party must acknowledge that powering the country with renewable energy won’t happen overnight.

“I’ve never taken a dime in money from the industry and I never will,” Fetterman said. “Two things are true at the same time. Republicans have to be honest and acknowledge our climate crisis. Democrats also must acknowledge the reality of our energy grid, our energy sources and the needs of energy security for our nation.”

“We should transition away from carbon-based fuels, but that is not something that you can just flip a switch metaphorically, no pun intended, and start immediately like banning fracking,” he said. “It’s a transition.”

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman speaks at a news conference in January 2019 the governor’s Capitol reception room in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

He has also faced questions over a 2013 incident in which he left his home armed with a shotgun after hearing what he believed to be gunshots and confronted a man who turned out to be an unarmed Black jogger.

Fetterman has said the man was wearing a face mask and he was not aware he was Black, and that race played no part in his actions. He has noted the man was running toward an elementary school and the incident took place in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

“I made the decision at that point to intervene to stop him from going any further until the first responders could arrive,” he says in a video released by his Senate campaign. Fetterman told CNN he didn’t have anything further to add on the subject beyond what he has already said publicly when asked about the incident.

If he makes it to the general election, there will be more challenges, including whether a Democrat like Fetterman can win over conservatives and Trump voters in a purple state. Trump recently endorsed Sean Parnell, an Army veteran and former congressional candidate, in the competitive Republican primary.

Fetterman has a track record of success at the state level having won a statewide Democratic primary for lieutenant governor and then a statewide general election when he was on the ticket with Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf in 2018.

“There are enough reachable people in our Commonwealth that just want stuff to work. They want things to run,” he said.

“This isn’t about saying we’re going to turn these deep red counties blue. This is about acknowledging there are enough people in Pennsylvania that are open to a message of, ‘you want infrastructure? Hey how’s your internet service, how’s your cell phone service? Well, It sucks. Let’s change that,’ … We don’t have to agree on everything to agree on enough things.”

But Fetterman knows there are some voters that will never be reachable.

“If you believe that horse dewormer is the way to go with Covid, hey, you need to know I don’t. I’m vaccinated. I believe in masking. If that means I don’t get your vote well then I’m sorry about that, but at least you know the truth.”

CNN’s Ted Barrett, Greg Krieg, Eric Bradner and Samira Said contributed to this report.

Hurricane Ida aftermath will worsen supply chain bottlenecks and lead to even more shortages and price hikes, experts warn

Business Insider

Hurricane Ida aftermath will worsen supply chain bottlenecks and lead to even more shortages and price hikes, experts warn

Grace Kay September 11, 2021

hurricane ida damage — A bent stop sign in a storm damaged neighborhood after Hurricane Ida on September 4, 2021 in Grand Isle, Louisiana. Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Hurricane Ida’s damage will pile on to an already overwhelmed supply chain.
The storm temporarily shut down several ports. Recovery efforts will also strain the trucking industry.
The storm will impact the availability of products from oil to food, electronics, toys and furniture.

The aftermath of Hurricane Ida will only pile onto the multitude of supply chain issues.

The storm wreaked havoc across the Gulf Coast and East Coast last month, killing at least 40 people and causing tornadoes and historic flooding. Current estimates place the damage from Ida at over $95 billion.

The fallout is far from over. From increased shipping delays and shortages to pushing prices even higher, Insider spoke with five supply chain experts that broke down the impact the hurricane will have on the ongoing supply chain crisis.

“Every additional hit is amplified,” Gad Allon, Director of University of Pennsylvania’s Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology, told Insider. “All supply chains are so strained that Ida could have a bigger long term impact than Hurricane Katrina.”

Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, a boom in demand has overwhelmed the supply chain. Transportation has struggled to keep up as rising demand met COVID-19 shutdowns, causing shortages of shipping containers and price hikes. Judah Levine, the Head of Research at Freightos, told Insider shipping prices between Asia and the US have hit a new record, jumping 500% from this time last year.

Hurricane Ida caused damage at several US ports

Hurricane Ida forced the Port of New Orleans to close for several days. While the port was since able to reopen, others, including Port of South Louisiana and Port Fourchon sustained damage.

Chris Tomas, the Lead Intelligence Analyst at BSI, told Insider port delays could impact grain and oil shipments, though the ports are only responsible for a fraction of US imports. But the damage and temporary closures in Louisiana come at the same time as key ports in Southern California are facing record backlogs.

Hurricane Ida has had the most significant impact on US oil production

The storm’s 150 miles-per-hour winds in the Gulf of Mexico cut most offshore oil and gas production for over a week, while also damaging onshore support facilities and causing some of the oil to leak into the Gulf. Reuters reported that the oil losses ranked among the worst in 16 years. Today, the aftermath of the storm has kept about 12% of US oil production at a standstill, The New York Times reported.

The disruption in oil flow will have a reverberating impact on many US industries, Douglas Kent, the Executive Vice President of Strategy and Alliances at the Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM), told Insider.

“Constraints on one raw material compound themselves across the industry,” Kent said, pointing to companies like paint and specialty coatings giant PPG Industries. Earlier this week, the company warned raw materials costs would rise due to Hurricane Ida.

Shipping concerns are minor compared to the impact on ground transportation

Trucking companies will be responsible for bringing in new supplies to areas recovering from the storm.

“The trucking industry already has two major issues: long port delays, as well as a labor shortage,” Allon said. “Now we’re triple-straining the systems by requiring them to go into areas that will be difficult to access, where they will be bogged down.”

Kent warned the supply chain issues will continue to felt by customers, both through a lack of supply of imported items like electronics, toys, and furniture, as well as price hikes.

“When we see these massive increases in transportation costs, it’s clear somebody will have to pay for it,” Kent said. “One more disruption could send it [the global supply chain] into complete chaos.”

Experts have warned that the supply chain crisis will continue into 2023.

The UN warns that Afghanistan will enter ‘universal poverty’ within a year following the Taliban’s takeover

Business Insider

The UN warns that Afghanistan will enter ‘universal poverty’ within a year following the Taliban’s takeover

Yelena Dzhanova September 11, 2021

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - AUGUST 29: Smoke rises after an explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 29, 2021.

Afghanistan is expected to reach “universal poverty” quickly, Kanni Wignaraja of the United Nations Development Program said.
Within a year, the poverty rate in Afghanistan will hover at a whopping 97% or 98%, Wignaraja said.
The Taliban swiftly took over Afghanistan as the US withdrew all troops from the region.

The United Nations’ development agency on Thursday said Afghanistan is heading toward “universal poverty” following the Taliban’s swift takeover of the country.

Within a year, the poverty rate in Afghanistan will hover at a whopping 97% or 98%, said Kanni Wignaraja, UNDP’s Asia-Pacific Director, according to the Associated Press.

“Afghanistan pretty much faces universal poverty by the middle of next year,” Wignaraja said. “That’s where we’re heading – it’s 97-98% no matter how you work these projections.”

The Taliban took over Afghanistan following President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops from the region. In its takeover, the Taliban renamed the country to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, reverting back to the same name used during the last time the regime took power, in 1996. The regime remained in power until 2001, after the US invaded Afghanistan.

After the US ousted the Taliban from power in 2001, Afghanistan made several developmental gains including the doubling of per capita income and an increase in the average number of years of education, Wignaraja said.

In the two decades since the Taliban has not been in power, Afghanistan made significant economic gains that are now in danger of collapsing because of political instability. Afghanistan now faces “a crush on local banking” because of the Taliban takeover, Wignaraja said. That instability is only worsened by the pandemic.

The situation is “a humanitarian and development disaster,” Wignaraja said.

The poverty rate in Afghanistan is hovering at 72%. But without crucial humanitarian and financial aid, Afghanistan will sink deeply into poverty by the middle of next year, the AP reported.

The Biden administration, in an effort to limit the Taliban’s resources, froze nearly $10 billion in reserves in the country’s central bank – most of which is reportedly held by the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. The move has been criticized as misdirected and will ultimately hurt Afghans more than the Taliban, Shah Mehrabi, a senior board member of Da Afghanistan Bank, told Bloomberg.

“President Biden is not hurting the Taliban or the current regime,” Mehrabi said. “This is really hurting everyday Afghans and they will push them into further poverty.”

The Taliban has been blocked by US officials from accessing the reserves, Insider’s Natalie Musumeci reported. And there’s “almost no chance” that the Taliban will be able to bypass this restriction, a legal and financial expert told Insider.

Forget plans to lower emissions by 2050 – this is deadly procrastination

The Guardian

Forget plans to lower emissions by 2050 – this is deadly procrastination

Peter Kalmus September 10, 2021

<span>Photograph: Guy Bell/Rex/Shutterstock</span> — Photograph: Guy Bell/Rex/Shutterstock

The world has by and large adopted “net zero by 2050” as its de facto climate goal, but two fatal flaws hide in plain sight within those 16 characters. One is “net zero.” The other is “by 2050”.

These two flaws provide cover for big oil and politicians who wish to preserve the status quo. Together they comprise a deadly prescription for inaction and catastrophically high levels of irreversible climate and ecological breakdown.

First, consider “by 2050”. This deadline feels comfortably far away, encouraging further climate procrastination. Who feels urgency over a deadline in 2050? This is convenient for the world’s elected leaders, who typically have term limits of between three and five years, less so for anyone who needs a livable planet.

Pathways for achieving net zero by 2050 – meaning that in 2050 any carbon emissions would be balanced by CO₂ withdrawn through natural means, like forests, and through hypothetical carbon-trapping technology – are designed to give roughly even odds for keeping global heating below 1.5C. But it’s now apparent that even the current 1.1C of global heating is not a “safe” level. Climate catastrophes are arriving with a frequency and ferocity that have shocked climate scientists. The fact that climate models failed to predict the intensity of the summer’s heatwaves and flooding suggests that severe impacts will come sooner than previously thought. Madagascar is on the brink of the first climate famine, and developments such as multi-regional crop losses and climate warfare even before reaching 1.5C should no longer be ruled out.

Meanwhile, “net zero” is a phrase that represents magical thinking rooted in our society’s technology fetish. Just presuppose enough hypothetical carbon capture and you can pencil out a plan for meeting any climate goal, even while allowing the fossil fuel industry to keep growing. While there may be useful negative-emissions strategies such as reforestation and conservation agriculture, their carbon capture potential is small compared with cumulative fossil fuel carbon emissions, and their effects may not be permanent. Policymakers are betting the future of life on Earth that someone will invent some kind of whiz-bang tech to draw down CO₂ at a massive scale.

The world’s largest direct air capture facility opened this month in Iceland; if it works, it will capture one ten-millionth of humanity’s current emissions, and due to its expense it is not yet scalable. It is the deepest of moral failures to casually saddle today’s young people with a critical task that may prove unfeasible by orders of magnitude – and expecting them to somehow accomplish this amid worsening heatwaves, fires, storms and floods that will pummel financial, insurance, infrastructure, water, food, health and political systems.

It should tell us all we need to know about “net zero by 2050” that it is supported by fossil fuel executives, and that climate uber-villain Rupert Murdoch has embraced it through his News Corp Australia mouthpiece.

So where does this leave us? Stabilizing the rapidly escalating destruction of the Earth will require directly scaling back and ultimately ending fossil fuels. To lower the odds of civilizational collapse, society must shift into emergency mode.

It will be easy to tell when society has begun this shift: leaders will begin to take actions that actually inflict pain on big oil, such as ending fossil fuel subsidies and placing a moratorium on all new oil and gas infrastructure.

Then rapid emissions descent could begin. I believe the global zero-emissions goal should be set no later than 2035; high-emitting nations have a moral obligation to go faster, and to provide transition assistance to low-emitting nations. Crucially, any zero goal must be paired with a commitment to annual reductions leading steadily to this goal year by year, and binding plans across all levels of government to achieve those annual targets. If this sounds extreme, bear in mind that climate breakdown has still only barely begun and that the damage will be irreversible.

Negative emissions strategies must also be left out of climate planning – in other words, forget the “net” in “net zero”. Otherwise they will continue to provide the distraction and delay sought by the fossil fuel industry. It would be beyond foolish to gamble our planet on technologies that may never exist at scale.

Due to the decades of inaction dishonestly engineered by fossil fuel executives, the speed and scale now required is staggering. There is no longer any incremental way out. It’s time to grow up and let go of the fantasy that we can get out of this without big changes that affect our lives. Policy steps that seem radical today – for example, proposals to nationalize the fossil fuel industry and ration oil and gas supplies – will seem less radical with each new climate disaster. Climate emergency mode will require personal sacrifice, especially from the high-emitting rich. But civilizational collapse would be unimaginably worse.

As a climate scientist, I am terrified by what I see coming. I want world leaders to stop hiding behind magical thinking and feel the same terror. Then they would finally end fossil fuels.

This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story.

A secretive Pentagon program that started on Trump’s last day in office just ended. The mystery has not.

The Washington Post

A secretive Pentagon program that started on Trump’s last day in office just ended. The mystery has not.

Craig Timberg September 10, 2021

WASHINGTON – A Pentagon program that delegated management of a huge swath of the internet to a Florida company in January – just minutes before President Donald Trump left office – has ended as mysteriously as it began, with the Defense Department this week retaking control of 175 million IP addresses.

The program had drawn scrutiny because of its unusual timing, starting amid a politically charged changeover of federal power, and because of its enormous scale. At its peak, the company, Global Resource Systems, controlled almost 6% of a section of the internet called IPv4. The IP addresses had been under Pentagon control for decades but left unused, despite being potentially worth billions of dollars on the open market.

Adding to the mystery, company registration records showed Global Resource Systems at the time was only a few months old, having been established in September 2020, and had no publicly reported federal contracts, no obvious public-facing website and no sign on the shared office space it listed as its physical address in Plantation, Fla. The company also did not respond to requests for comment, and the Pentagon did not announce the program or publicly acknowledge its existence until The Washington Post reported on it in April.

And now it’s done. Kind of.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon made a technical announcement – visible mainly to network administrators around the world – saying it was resuming control of the 175 million IP addresses and directing the traffic to its own servers.

On Friday the Pentagon told The Post that the pilot program, which it previously had characterized as a cybersecurity measure designed to detect unspecified “vulnerabilities” and “prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space,” was over. Parts of the internet once managed by Global Resource Systems, the Pentagon said, now were being overseen by the Department of Defense Information Network, known by the acronym DODIN and part of U.S. Cyber Command, based at Fort Meade.

The IP addresses had never been sold or leased to the company, merely put under its control for the pilot program, created by an elite Pentagon unit known as the Defense Digital Service, which reports directly to the secretary of defense and bills itself as a “SWAT team of nerds” that solves emergency problems and conducts experimental work for the military.

“The Defense Digital Service established a plan to launch the cybersecurity pilot and then transition control of the initiative to DoD partners,” Russell Goemaere, a spokesman for the Defense Department, said in a statement to The Post. “Following the DDS pilot, shifting DoD Internet Protocol (IP) advertisement to DoD’s traditional operations and mature network security processes, maintains consistency across the DODIN. This allows for active management of the IP space and ensure the Department has the operational maneuver space necessary to maintain and improve DODIN resiliency.”

But the Pentagon statement shed little new light on exactly what the pilot program was doing or why it now has ended. It’s clear, though, that its mission has been extended even as it comes more formally under Pentagon control.

On the unusual timing of the start of the pilot program – which began the transfer of control of IP addresses at 11:57 a.m. on Inauguration Day, three minutes before President Joe Biden took office – Goemaere added, “The decision to launch and the scheduling of the DDS pilot effort was agnostic of administration change. The effort was planned and initiated in the Fall of 2020. It was launched in mid-January 2021 when the required infrastructure was in place.”

Global Resource Systems did not return a request for comment Friday.

The unusual nature of the program has been tracked by several people in the networking world, including Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik, a network monitoring company.

In April, Madory, a former Air Force officer, had come to believe the program was intended to collect intelligence. By announcing control of such a large section of the internet – especially one the Pentagon had left mothballed for years – it likely was possible to reroute information flowing across the internet to military networks for examination and analysis.

Madory said Friday that routine networking errors can make such operations fruitful.

“There are a lot of networks that inadvertently leak out vulnerabilities,” he said. “I’m sure they’ve been scooping that noise up for the past few months.”

Such tactics, he added, can allow cyberspies to discover weaknesses in the networks of adversaries or potentially detect evidence of how adversaries are surveilling your own networks, to help inform the creation of better defenses.

Madory shared one more tantalizing fact: His analysis of traffic flowing through the internet addresses once controlled by Global Resource Systems are still leading to the same place as they have for most of the year – a computer router in Ashburn, Va., a major hub of internet connections for government agencies and private companies – despite the official resumption of Pentagon control.

The Washington Post’s Alice Crites and Paul Sonne contributed to this report.

‘Large waves’ of Afghanistan’s heroin supply to hit Britain’s streets

The Telegraph

‘Large waves’ of Afghanistan’s heroin supply to hit Britain’s streets

Charles Hymas September 10, 2021

An Afghan opium farmer stands next to his poppy field in the remote village of Baqwa in Farah - John Moore/Getty Images — An Afghan opium farmer stands next to his poppy field in the remote village of Baqwa in Farah – John Moore/Getty Images

Heroin supply on to the streets of Britain from Afghanistan is set to increase after the fall of the country to the Taliban, a senior policing leader has warned.

Donna Jones, the lead for serious and organized crime for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, said police chiefs were concerned the loss of UK and US forces’ checks on exports would pave the way for more heroin trafficking into the UK.

Afghanistan accounts for 82 per cent of global opium cultivation, according to the National Crime Agency, with most heroin that reaches the UK trafficked through the western Balkans.

“Having checks over airport borders and shipping containers has given us an element of control,” said Ms Jones, the police and crime commissioner for Hampshire.

“With an unstable government, with the Taliban in those key roles, do we believe that these organized crime issues could be overlooked or even possibly supported by the Taliban in Afghanistan? I’d say probably yes.”

The opium trade is a major source of income for a large proportion of the Afghan population as it is far more profitable than wheat or other crops.

For about a year before the Taliban were overthrown by the US-led coalition 20 years ago, they had declared opium production as un-Islamic and led a successful campaign eradicating almost all production in areas it controlled.

However, in the past 20 years, the drug trade has become a significant source of income for the Taliban insurgency against the US.

“It is highly unlikely the Taliban will prioritize a ban on opium production at a time when they are badly in need of funds. This is the cognitive dissonance that will be going on in the minds of their leadership: ideology versus necessity,” said a police source.

Ms Jones said the initial impact was expected to be limited. “I don’t think the increase is hitting the person on the street yet, but I think it will do over the next six to 12 months and I think it will do in quite large waves,” she said.

“As a commissioner who has responsibility for making sure that we are tackling drug-related harm, I am very concerned about the effect of heroin on the streets of Britain over the next year and beyond.”

The number of drug-related deaths are at their highest on record, at 4,561 in 2020 in England and Wales, with heroin and morphine accounting for more than a third.

The warning over heroin imports coincides with a national alert by Public Health England over a surge in overdoses that have accounted for at least 16 deaths in less than two weeks in southern England.

Three of deaths – linked to heroin adulterated with the synthetic opioid isotonitazene – had been in Hampshire, said Ms Jones. Isotonitazene is said to be 500 times stronger than morphine.

Jason Harwin, deputy chief constable and the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for drugs, said: “Heroin causes significant harm and misery in our communities and police continue to work hard to target those who import and sell it. We are monitoring and reviewing intelligence in relation to heroin being imported from overseas.”

Tree planting efforts aren’t replacing burned U.S. forests — not even close

Reuters

Tree planting efforts aren’t replacing burned U.S. forests — not even close

Adria Malcolm, Andrew Hay and Andrea Januta September 9, 2021

DEER LAKE MESA, N.M. (Reuters) – Experimental pine seedlings poke from the rocky New Mexico earth, the only living evergreens on a hillside torched by one of the U.S. West’s drought-driven wildfires.

These climate-smart sprouts about 30 miles (48 km) east of Taos are part of a push to increase the dramatically lagging replanting of U.S. forests after fires.

To condition trees for life in the Southwest, now suffering its worst drought in 500 years, biologist Owen Burney takes the scraggly seedlings to the point of death and back several times by starving them of water in the nursery.

Burney wishes he had funding to mass produce the seedlings and expand his tree nursery, the largest in the U.S. Southwest. With wildfires growing to monstrous proportions https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-WILDFIRES/EXTREMES/qzjvqmmravx, the nursery’s output of 300,000 seedlings a year does not come close to replacing torched trees.

“People get excited about reforestation, and they talk about it, but talk is cheap without action,” says Burney, who heads New Mexico State University’s forestry research center in Mora. “That’s what we’re trying to create, the action of an effective reforestation pipeline.”

Reforestation supporters say planting trees helps fight climate change, protects watersheds and creates jobs — arguments that help generate both global enthusiasm and U.S. bipartisan support https://www.fs.usda.gov/features/trillion-trees. Lawmakers are seeking extra federal funding for such efforts. Some public-private partnerships committed to growing trees have been launched.

Still, evidence suggests replanting campaigns cannot keep up with blazes.

Even with efforts in New Mexico, California https://www.americanforests.org/our-work/restoring-californias-forests and Oregon https://www.orparksforever.org/homepage-box/wildfire-tree-replanting, there is not enough seed collection or nursery capacity https://usfs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=88825ecd8e4a40f9aefdb24147b821e9, according to nearly two dozen land managers, biologists and conservationists Reuters spoke to since June.

Federal replanting remains underfunded and poorly coordinated with the private sector. State, tribal and private landholders struggle to find sufficient seedlings, they said.

Wildfire is a natural part of a forest’s lifecycle, but climate-fueled fires https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wildfires-climatechange-idUKKCN26C30W are so ferocious they incinerate entire stands together with seeds that start regrowth.

That destruction also poses problems for the 180 million Americans who rely on national forests to filter drinking water https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-west-faces-little-known-effect-raging-wildfires-contaminated-water-2021-07-01 and the 2.5 million employed in forest industry jobs.

SYSTEM OVERWHELMED

Most U.S. wildfires burn on U.S. Forest Service land. The agency replants around 6% of its land that needs replanting after wildfires.

“Our systems just haven’t kept up,” said David Lytle, the service’s director of forest and rangeland management and vegetation ecology. “The change to these larger, more severe wildfires has dramatically ramped up our reforestation needs.”

Tree-planting fervor peaked in 2020 when the World Economic Forum launched its One Trillion Trees initiative, or 1t.org, to grow, restore and conserve 1 trillion trees globally. Former President Donald Trump backed the plan. U.S. corporations and foundations pledged 50 billion trees.

Yet visit any Western national forest outside the Pacific Northwest, which still has timber harvests that require trees to be replanted, and there are no major planting efforts, says Collin Haffey of The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

“It seems to be an afterthought of forest management,” said Haffey, the group’s conservation coordinator in New Mexico.

According to Lytle, the problem is not tactics or expertise, but funding. The U.S. Forest Service spends over half its budget fighting and preventing fires. Last year, Congress granted it $7.4 billion in discretionary appropriations. Meanwhile, the amount available for post-fire replanting has not grown since the 1980s. The agency says it does not have enough money or resources to fully reforest burn areas.

To boost replanting, lawmakers have included legislation — called the Repairing Existing Public Land by Adding Necessary Trees (REPLANT) Act — within the infrastructure bill Congress is considering. It would help the service plant 1.2 billion trees on 4.1 million acres of national forests hit by fire, pests and disease over the next 10 years by removing a $30 million annual funding cap to roughly quadruple spending.

With limited public money, Wes Swaffar of 1t.org tries to channel private funds into replanting. That can mean teaming companies seeking zero net carbon emissions with projects that sequester carbon.

“I’m so frustrated by the fact that I have to do this job in the first place,” Swaffar said. “I have to play this interconnector role between the public and private sectors, because neither one is able to do it by themselves.”

A small success story is growing 85 miles (137 km) southwest of Burney’s test site. With some money from the public-private Rio Grande Water Fund, around 4,000 acres of burned-out forest near Los Alamos are being replanted to mimic “tree islands” left after moderate fires. Developed by the TNC, the project has 400 moisture-rich sites, some at higher, cooler elevations to help seedlings survive future, higher temperatures.

“If we’re trying to do anything related to climate change, carbon sequestration, then trees need to be in the ground,” said Burney, who is seeking $40 million to create a New Mexico reforestation center and help lift state annual seedling output to 5 million.

(Reporting by Adria Malcolm at Deer Lake Mesa, New Mexico, Andrea Januta in New York and Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Katy Daigle and Lisa Shumaker)

Afghan allies in hiding, executed in the street — Jewish people know this haunting story

USA Today

Afghan allies in hiding, executed in the street — Jewish people know this haunting story

Will Berkovitz September 9, 2021

The clock is ticking. As an American Jew, a rabbi, and the CEO of an organization trying to get the families of our staff out of Afghanistan, the bell tolls with every passing second.

The season of reflection and reconciliation is upon us. Our names are being inscribed for life or death.

Americans must make good on our pledge and take concrete, immediate action to get these Afghan families and allies out. President Joe Biden must direct his administration to create an expedited process to evacuate them. This is a moment when we can not wait until all the details are worked out.

I can’t imagine how terrifying it must have been for those left behind to see the gates at the Kabul airport shut and the last flight leave, knowing they would face the danger ahead alone.

The last member of Afghanistan’s Jewish community left the country this week. Yet there remain so many other people, our Muslim allies, who need help. In-text messages and voicemail we received, the desperation is palpable: We are left behind, they tell us. The gates are closed. The roads are unsafe. We are in hiding. Please help us, they beg.

I have heard the audio messages of gunfire in the streets. In a terrified call from a family in Panjshir province Tuesday we were told the Taliban dragged all males aged 10 to 65 from their homes and executed them in the street. Children as young as 10 years old murdered just for existing. Their blood is on our hands.

‘Never forget’ is a call to action

As Jews, we know this story all too well. We know what it’s like to fear for the death of our children. These families are in danger because of their work with the United States government and our military.

Our staff feels helpless. They’ve been working tirelessly to save 123 people, many of whom are family members of our team. Seventy-three of them are children forced to play a deadly game of hide and seek with the Taliban. In voice messages from Kabul, I’ve heard children’s hushed laughter in the background even as their parents talked in despair.

A Taliban soldier stands guard at the gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept. 5, 2021. Some domestic flights have resumed at Kabul's airport, with the state-run Ariana Afghan Airlines operating flights to three provinces. — A Taliban soldier stands guard at the gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept. 5, 2021. Some domestic flights have resumed at Kabul’s airport, with the state-run Ariana Afghan Airlines operating flights to three provinces.

As a Jewish social service organization, our reaction to this crisis is urgent and familiar. There are painfully obvious echoes between what is happening in Afghanistan today and what our people endured leading up to the Holocaust. People are being hunted. Families in hiding. We heard of children executed in the street.

“Never forget” is a call to action, not just a suggestion to always remember. For our Jewish community, it doesn’t matter that we are trying to save Muslims. As our tradition teaches, “One who saves a single life, saves an entire world.”

As Americans, we have a moral obligation. All people of faith have a religious one as well. The call of history echoes loud today. “In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible,” said Rabbi Joshua Heschel back in 1972. Those words are as true today as they were 50 years ago.

We will be judged by our actions or indifference. Our words or our silence. Many of my colleagues in faith, as well as community leaders and heads of resettlement organizations, are mortified. We can’t accept the United States government isn’t doing better. We must do better. We have the resources. We just need the will.

What is the actual plan to save lives?

This must not be reduced to politics. We don’t need vague promises. We don’t need to hear, “we are working on it.” We can’t settle for being directed to dead-end websites or email addresses to which no one responds.

We need to know what the plan is to save these people’s lives. Who has the authority to act? People need to be empowered, not left waiting for guidance.

We have no clear answers. We are improvising, communicating with Special Immigrant Visa families in safe houses. They’re scared and are in fear the world will move on after the spectacle of the U.S.’s hasty withdrawal. We owe it to them not to move on until they are safe.

Earlier this summer, the State Department created a staffing surge to help ease the passport backlog so people could take their summer vacations. Why isn’t the State Department creating an even larger staffing surge to process Special Immigrant Visas so we can save the lives of our families and friends who fought and worked with our troops and our government?

The Biden administration must finish the mission. The mission isn’t complete if we leave these people to die.

Rabbi Will Berkovitz in Seattle, Washington, in August 2020.

We don’t have the luxury of time. The longer this drags on, the more desperate those left behind will become. We can’t urge people to take dangerous overland routes based on rumor, speculation, or hope. Cut the bureaucracy and prioritize evacuating these refugees to any intermediary country. Create safe corridors and charter flights. Get the airport in Kabul reopened. At the very least help us determine what is fact and what is fiction.

Each of us should feel we are standing before the gates of repentance this season as the ram’s horn blows a final time. As we are sealed in the book of life or death, let us never forget we can give our allies a chance for life as well. The mission won’t be complete if we leave our allies to die. We will all be judged on both what we do and what we fail to even try.

Rabbi Will Berkovitz is the CEO of Jewish Family Service, a Seattle-based social services agency founded in 1892 that helps vulnerable individuals and families achieve well-being, health and stability.