There was a report of one fatality in Prairieville after a victim was apparently struck by a falling tree, the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office said.
A man passes by a section of roof that was blown off of a building in the French Quarter by Hurricane Ida winds on Aug. 29, 2021, in New Orleans. (Eric Gay / AP)
Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng told reporters earlier Sunday that the only road into Grand Isle, a barrier island south of New Orleans that is home to less 1,000 people, was under six feet of water. The local fire station was flooded, she said, and a few dozen people appeared to have disregarded a mandatory evacuation order.
“The conditions are very, very bad,” she said. “They are really getting beaten up right now.”
Images posted on Facebook by someone who appeared to be riding out the storm in Grand Isle showed roads topped with white-capped waves and a parking lot submerged in water.
“Pray for us all,” the person wrote.
The National Hurricane Center described Ida’s storm surge as “catastrophic” and said it could measure as much as 16 feet at Port Fourchon, where it made landfall shortly before noon.
Elsewhere in southern Louisiana, the quick rise in sea level was expected to be less, the center said. But security camera video from a fire station in St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans, showed what was still a dramatic surge of water.
The storm made landfall with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, and video and photos from areas in and around New Orleans showed roofs that had been ripped from buildings and, in one case, tossed down the road into a power line.
In Galliano, southwest of New Orleans, top sections of the Lady of the Sea Hospital could also be seen getting hurled from the building.
In St. Rose, just west of downtown New Orleans, a boat collision was captured on camera. A barge crashed into a bridge in Jefferson Parish, making it structurally unsafe, officials there said. It was one of more than a dozen examples in the region of what a spokesman with the U.S. Coast Guard’s local office described as “breakaway barges.”
In one instance, the regional transit authority told the station that the vessel had detached from a barge and run aground.
In St. Bernard Parish, where the Chalmette ferry could be seen floating upriver, parish president Guy McInnis told the station: “Nothing we can do at this point.”
A New Breed of Crisis: War and Warming Collide in Afghanistan
Somini Sengupta
Somalian refugees displaced by drought wait for rations in Dadaab, Kenya, July 14, 2011. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)
Parts of Afghanistan have warmed twice as much as the global average. Spring rains have declined, most worryingly in some of the country’s most important farmland. Droughts are more frequent in vast swaths of the country, including a punishing dry spell now in the north and west, the second in three years.
Afghanistan embodies a new breed of international crisis, where the hazards of war collide with the hazards of climate change, creating a nightmarish feedback loop that punishes some of the world’s most vulnerable people and destroys their countries’ ability to cope.
And although it would be facile to attribute the conflict in Afghanistan to climate change, the impacts of warming act as what military analysts call threat multipliers, amplifying conflicts over water, putting people out of work in a nation whose people largely live off agriculture, while the conflict itself consumes attention and resources.
“The war has exacerbated climate change impacts. For 10 years, over 50% of the national budget goes to the war,” said Noor Ahmad Akhundzadah, a professor of hydrology at Kabul University, said by phone Thursday. “Now there is no government, and the future is unclear. Our current situation today is completely hopeless.”
A third of all Afghans face what the United Nations calls crisis levels of food insecurity. Because of the fighting, many people haven’t been able to plant their crops in time. Because of the drought, the harvest this year is certain to be poor. The World Food Program says 40% of crops are lost, the price of wheat has gone up by 25%, and the aid agency’s own food stock is due to run out by the end of September.
Afghanistan is not the only country to face such compounding misery. Of the world’s 25 nations most vulnerable to climate change, more than a dozen are impacted by conflict or civil unrest, according to an index developed by the University of Notre Dame.
In Somalia, pummeled by decades of conflict, there has been a threefold increase in extreme weather events since 1990, compared with the previous 20-year period, making it all but impossible for ordinary people to recover after each shock. In 2020, more than 1 million Somalis were displaced from their homes, about a third because of drought, according to the United Nations.
In Syria, a prolonged drought, made more likely by human-made climate change, according to researchers, drove people out of the countryside and fed simmering anti-government grievances that led to an uprising in 2011 and, ultimately, a full-blown civil war. This year again, drought looms over Syria, particularly its breadbasket region, the northeastern Hassakeh province.
In Mali, a violent insurgency has made it harder for farmers and herders to deal with a succession of droughts and flood, according to aid agencies.
Climate change cannot be blamed for any single war, and certainly not the one in Afghanistan. But rising temperatures, and the weather shocks that come with it, act as what Marshall Burke, a Stanford University professor, calls “a finger on the scale that makes underlying conflict worse.” That is particularly true, he argued, in places that have undergone a long conflict and where government institutions have all but dissolved.
“None of this means that climate is the only or the most important factor in conflict,” said Burke, co-author of a 2013 paper looking at the role of climate change in dozens of conflicts across many years. “But based on this evidence, the international community would be foolish to ignore the threat that a warming climate represents.”
The combination of war and warming compounds the risks facing some of the world’s most vulnerable people: According to the U.N. children’s agency, Afghanistan is the 15th-riskiest country in the world for children, because of climate hazards, including heat and drought, and a lack of essential services, including health care. Two million Afghan children are malnourished.
That is in sharp contrast to Afghanistan’s part in global warming. An average Afghan produces 0.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, compared with nearly 16 metric tons of the average American.
The collapse of the government has also made Afghanistan’s participation in the next international climate talks entirely uncertain, said one of its members, Ahmad Samim Hoshmand. “Now I don’t know. I’m not part of any government. What government I should represent?” he said.
Until recently, he had been the government official in charge of enforcing the country’s ban on ozone-depleting substances, including refrigerants used in old air-conditioners and that are banned by the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement that Afghanistan had ratified. Just days before the Taliban seized Kabul, he fled to Tajikistan. The traders of illegal substances whom he helped arrest are now out of prison, keen to exact revenge. He says they will kill him if he returns.
Hoshmand is now scrambling to emigrate elsewhere. His visa in Tajikistan expires in a matter of weeks. “My only hope is the ozone community, the Montreal Protocol community, if they can support me,” he said.
Afghanistan’s geography is a study of extreme hazard, from the glacier-peaked Hindu Kush mountains in the north to its melon farms in the west to the arid south, stung by dust storms.
Climate data is sparse for Afghanistan. But a recent analysis based on what little data exists suggests that a decline in spring rains has already afflicted much of the country, but most acutely in the country’s north, where farmers and herders rely almost entirely on the rains to grow crops and water their flocks.
Over the past 60 years, average temperatures have risen sharply, by 1.8 degrees Celsius since 1950 in the country as a whole and by more than 2 degrees Celsius in the south.
“Climate change will make it extremely challenging to maintain — let alone increase — any economic and development gains achieved so far in Afghanistan,” the United Nations warned in a 2016 report. “Increasingly frequent and severe droughts and floods, accelerated desertification, and decreasing water flows in the country’s glacier-dependent rivers will all directly affect rural livelihoods — and therefore the national economy and the country’s ability to feed itself.”
This is the country’s biggest risk, Akhundzadah argued. Three-fourths of his compatriots work in agriculture, and any unpredictable weather can be calamitous, all the more so in a country where there hasn’t been a stable government and no safety net to speak of.
The Taliban, for their part, appear more exercised by the need to scrub women’s pictures from billboards than addressing climate hazards.
But climate change is a threat multiplier for the Taliban, too. Analysts say water management will be critical to its legitimacy with Afghan citizens, and it is likely to be one of the most important issues in the Taliban’s relations with its neighbors as well.
Already on the Afghan battlefield, as in many battlefields throughout history, water has been an important currency. The Taliban, in their bid for Herat, a strategic city in the west, repeatedly attacked a dam that is critical for drinking water, agriculture and electricity for the people of the region. Likewise, in Kandahar province in the south, one of the Taliban’s most critical victories was to seize control of a dam that holds water for drinking and irrigation.
Climate change also stands to complicate the Taliban’s ability to fulfill a key promise: the elimination of opium poppy cultivation. Poppies require far less water than, say, wheat or melons, and they are far more profitable. Poppy farming employs an estimated 120,000 Afghans and brings in an estimated $300 million to $400 million a year, according to the United Nations, and has, in turn, enriched the Taliban.
Areas under poppy cultivation grew sharply in 2020.
Analysts said the Taliban would seek to use a poppy ban to gain legitimacy from foreign powers, such as Qatar and China. But it is likely to face pushback from growers who have few alternatives as the rains become less reliable.
“It’s going to be a gigantic political flashpoint,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, who studies the region at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
The last drought, in 2018, left 4 million Afghans in need of food aid and forced 371,000 people to leave their homes, many of whom haven’t returned.
“The effects of the severe drought are compounded by conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic in a context where half the population were already in need of aid,” U.N. humanitarian coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov said by email from Kabul on Thursday. “With little financial reserves, people are forced to resort to child labor, child marriage, risky irregular migration exposing them to trafficking and other protection risks. Many are taking on catastrophic levels of debt and selling their assets.”
Akhundzadah, a father of four, is hoping to emigrate, too. But like his fellow academics, he said he has not worked for foreign governments and has no way to be evacuated from the country. The university is closed. Banks are closed. He is looking for research jobs abroad. For now, there are no commercial flights out of the country.
“Till now, I’m OK,” he said on the phone. “The future is unclear. It will be difficult to live here.”
California Marine Nicole Gee, 23, who cradled baby at Kabul airport, killed in Afghanistan attack
Bill Keveney, USA TODAY
Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee celebrated the joy of service just days before she was one of 13 U.S. service members killed in Thursday’s suicide bombing attack near Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.
A week ago, Gee, 23, posted a photo on Instagram that showed her holding a baby at that airport. She added a simple, profound comment: “I love my job.” The same photo was posted by the Department of Defense on Aug. 21.
Gee, from Sacramento, California, served as a maintenance technician with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. On her Instagram page, she described herself as a “positive mental attitude advocate.” The locations listed on her page include California, North Carolina and “somewhere overseas.”
Another photo on Gee’s Instagram page shows her earlier in the week, on duty with her rifle next to a line of people waiting to board a transport plane. She described her assignment as “escorting evacuees onto the bird.”
Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, seen holding a baby at Kabul’s airport, was one of the 13 U.S. service members killed in the Aug. 26 bombing in Afghanistan.
Other recent Instagram photos show Gee with friends in Spain, where they shared a toast, and Greece. Other pictures show the Marine riding a camel in Saudi Arabia and receiving her promotion to sergeant.
“Never would have imagined having my Sergeant promotion meritoriously in Kuwait,” she wrote of the promotion in a post shared three weeks ago.
A Facebook post by the city of Roseville, California, which calls Gee “a hometown hero,” says she graduated in 2016 from the city’s Oakmont High School and enlisted in the Marines a year later. It says her husband, Jarod Gee, also is an Oakmont graduate and a Marine.
Gee was remembered by Sgt. Mallory Harrison, a fellow Marine who roomed with her for more than three years, in a Facebook post accompanied by more than a dozen photos.
“Her car is parked in our lot. It’s so mundane. Simple. But it’s there,” she began the post. “My very best friend, my person, my sister forever. My other half. We were boots together, Corporals together, & then Sergeants together. Roommates for over 3 years now, from the barracks at MOS school to our house here. We’ve been attached at the hip from the beginning.
“I can’t quite describe the feeling I get when I force myself to come back to reality & think about how I’m never going to see her again. How her last breath was taken doing what she loved — helping people — at HKIA in Afghanistan. Then there was an explosion. And just like that, she’s gone.”
She said the war stories told by older Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are “not so distant anymore.”
Harrison concluded: “My best friend. 23 years old. Gone. I find peace knowing that she left this world doing what she loved. She was a Marine’s Marine. She cared about people. She loved fiercely. She was a light in this dark world. She was my person. … Til Valhalla, Sergeant Nicole Gee. I can’t wait to see you & your Momma up there. I love you forever & ever.”
In 2010, I was in Washington and arranged to interview the mastermind of Afghanistan’s modern era of suffering, Zbigniew Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted that his grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created “a few stirred up Muslims”.
“Do you have any regrets?” I asked. “Regrets! Regrets! What regrets?”
As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed.
In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shar. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.
Foreign journalists in Kabul, reported the New York Times, were surprised to find that “nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup”. The Wall Street Journal reported that “150,000 persons … marched to honor the new flag …the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.”
The Washington Post reported that “Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned”. Secular, modernist and, to a considerable degree, socialist, the government declared a program of visionary reforms that included equal rights for women and minorities. Political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.
Under the monarchy, life expectancy was thirty-five; one in three children died in infancy. Ninety per cent of the population was illiterate. The new government introduced free medical care. A mass literacy campaign was launched.
For women, the gains had no precedent; by the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up 40 per cent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 per cent of its teachers and 30 per cent of its civil servants.
So radical were the changes that they remain vivid in the memories of those who benefited. Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who fled Afghanistan in 2001, recalled:
“Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked … We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian films on a Friday … it all started to go wrong when the mujahedin started winning … these were the people the West supported.”
For the United States, the problem with the PDPA government was that it was supported by the Soviet Union. Yet it was never the “puppet” derided in the West, neither was the coup against the monarchy “Soviet-backed”, as the American and British press claimed at the time.
President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, later wrote in his memoirs: “We had no evidence of any Soviet complicity in the coup.”
In the same administration was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser, a Polish émigré and fanatical anti-communist and moral extremist whose enduring influence on American presidents expired only with his death in 2017.
On 3 July 1979, unknown to the American people and Congress, Carter authorized a $500 million “covert action” program to overthrow Afghanistan’s first secular, progressive government. This was code-named by the CIA Operation Cyclone.
The $500 million bought, bribed and armed a group of tribal and religious zealots known as the mujahedin. In his semi-official history, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote that the CIA spent $70 million on bribes alone. He describes a meeting between a CIA agent known as “Gary” and a warlord called Amniat-Melli:
“Gary placed a bundle of cash on the table: $500,000 in one-foot stacks of $100 bills. He believed it would be more impressive than the usual $200,000, the best way to say we’re here, we’re serious, here’s money, we know you need it … Gary would soon ask CIA headquarters for and receive $10 million in cash.”
Recruited from all over the Muslim world, America’s secret army was trained in camps in Pakistan run by Pakistani intelligence, the CIA and Britain’s MI6. Others were recruited at an Islamic College in Brooklyn, New York – within sight of the doomed Twin Towers. One of the recruits was a Saudi engineer called Osama bin Laden.
The aim was to spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and destabilize and eventually destroy the Soviet Union.
In August, 1979, the US Embassy in Kabul reported that “the United States’ larger interests … would be served by the demise of the PDPA government, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.”
Read again the words above I have italicized. It is not often that such cynical intent is spelt out as clearly. The US was saying that a genuinely progressive Afghan government and the rights of Afghan women could go to hell.
Six months later, the Soviets made their fatal move into Afghanistan in response to the American-created jihadist threat on their doorstep. Armed with CIA-supplied Stinger missiles and celebrated as “freedom fighters” by Margaret Thatcher, the mujahedin eventually drove the Red Army out of Afghanistan.
Calling themselves the Northern Alliance, the mujahedin were dominated by warlords who controlled the heroin trade and terrorized rural women. The Taliban were an ultra-puritanical faction, whose mullahs wore black and punished banditry, rape and murder but banished women from public life.
In the 1980s, I made contact with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, known as RAWA, which had tried to alert the world to the suffering of Afghan women. During the Taliban time they concealed cameras beneath their burqas to film evidence of atrocities, and did the same to expose the brutality of the Western-backed mujahedin. “Marina” of RAWA told me, “We took the videotape to all the main media groups, but they didn’t want to know ….”
In1996, the enlightened PDPA government was overrun. The Prime Minister, Mohammad Najibullah, had gone to the United Nations to appeal to for help. On his return, he was hanged from a street light.
“I confess that [countries] are pieces on a chessboard,” said Lord Curzon in 1898, “upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world.”
The Viceroy of India was referring in particular to Afghanistan. A century later, Prime Minister Tony Blair used slightly different words.
“This is a moment to seize,” he said following 9/11. “The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.”
On Afghanistan, he added this: “We will not walk away [but ensure] some way out of the poverty that is your miserable existence.”
Blair echoed his mentor, President George W. Bush, who spoke to the victims of his bombs from the Oval Office: “The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering … “
Almost every word was false. Their declarations of concern were cruel illusions for an imperial savagery “we” in the West rarely recognize as such.
In 2001, Afghanistan was stricken and depended on emergency relief convoys from Pakistan. As the journalist Jonathan Steele reported, the invasion indirectly caused the deaths of some 20,000 people as supplies to drought victims stopped and people fled their homes.
Eighteen months later, I found unexploded American cluster bombs in the rubble of Kabul which were often mistaken for yellow relief packages dropped from the air. They blew the limbs off foraging, hungry children.
In the village of Bibi Maru, I watched a woman called Orifa kneel at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet weaver, and seven other members of her family, including six children, and two children who were killed next door.
An American F-16 aircraft had come out of a clear blue sky and dropped a Mk82 500-pound bomb on Orifa’s mud, stone and straw house. Orifa was away at the time. When she returned, she gathered the body parts.
Months later, a group of Americans came from Kabul and gave her an envelope with fifteen notes: a total of 15 dollars. “Two dollars for each of my family killed,” she said.
The invasion of Afghanistan was a fraud. In the wake of 9/11, the Taliban sought to distant themselves from Osama bin Laden. They were, in many respects, an American client with which the administration of Bill Clinton had done a series of secret deals to allow the building of a $3 billion natural gas pipeline by a US oil company consortium.
In high secrecy, Taliban leaders had been invited to the US and entertained by the CEO of the Unocal company in his Texas mansion and by the CIA at its headquarters in Virginia. One of the deal-makers was Dick Cheney, later George W. Bush’s Vice-President.
In 2010, I was in Washington and arranged to interview the mastermind of Afghanistan’s modern era of suffering, Zbigniew Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted that his grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created “a few stirred up Muslims”.
“Do you have any regrets?” I asked.
“Regrets! Regrets! What regrets?”
When we watch the current scenes of panic at Kabul airport, and listen to journalists and generals in distant TV studios bewailing the withdrawal of “our protection”, isn’t it time to heed the truth of the past so that all this suffering never happens again?
John Pilger’s 2003 film, Breaking the Silence, is available to view
COVID and wildfires gave us an education instead of a vacation. We’ll never be the same.
Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY
Smoke from the Caldor Fire in California covers Lake Tahoe in the Incline, Nev., area on Aug. 24, 2021.
The last time we tried for a two-week vacation, in 1993, a Hurricane Emily evacuation forced us to leave after six days. Nearly three decades later, we decided to try again. We left early this time, too, after close encounters with COVID-19 and wildfires.
This is not a first-world rant against the inconvenience of climate change and a virus we can’t seem to beat. Rather, it’s a look at lessons learned and not learned – about the folly of betting against nature, science and, in particular, the frightening fires that seem remote on the East Coast but often dictate life in the West. It’s about the friction between a husband and wife with different tolerances for masking, crowds and indoor vs. outdoor dining, as they traveled through a patchwork of pandemic regulations in three states.
And it’s about a family that keeps trying against the odds to celebrate, together in person, two birthdays four days apart in August – prime hurricane and wildfire season and, in 2020 and 2021, prime COVID season as well.
Smoke and COVID on Day One
We should have known from the start that the trip was going to be problematic. The weather app on my phone showed a solid gray sky in Seattle, our first destination, and the forecast was “Smoke.” Those were firsts in my East Coast experience. Friends had arranged a dinner out on our first night. But the restaurant had a COVID outbreak and was closed all three nights we were there.
Our next adventure was a road trip down the Oregon coast, staying in five towns over five nights. We were in Cannon Beach four days after Gov. Kate Brown reinstated a mask mandate for indoor gatherings. There were posters on store doors all over town announcing the mandate. And, in what could be interpreted as simple fact or passive aggression, they offered Brown’s office number and told people with questions to call her.
“Any questions please call Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s office”: Mask mandate signs on store doors in Bandon, Ore., on Aug. 18, 2021.
Each town brought new reasons to study COVID responses. In Newport, a motel clerk was behind plastic but not masked (fine with me, but not my husband). In Fortuna, motel clerks were masked and so was our waiter at a brewery where we ate outdoors. The inevitable happened at a Bandon bakery, as we waited with a dozen others to order or pick up breakfast: An unmasked young man walked in, an employee offered him a mask, he looked annoyed and he stalked back out the door.
Our first stop in California was Crescent City in Del Norte County, the hottest COVID hotspot on the West Coast. We picked a table far from other diners in a large airy restaurant, and my husband noted to our waiter that he was unmasked. The adorable teenager offered to wear one, but he also reminded us of what we had forgotten: We were no longer in Oregon, so there was no mandate.
Halfway through our meal, we heard an older server tell our waiter that a party of 14 was expected in 15 minutes. Unnerved by the prospect of 14 unmasked strangers at tables the staff was pushing together right next to ours, we gulped a few last bites, paid up and fled.
A second try for Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe has been on my bucket list for years, thanks to raves from friends and family. Last year we rented a house there, but COVID forced us to cancel. This year we rented the same house and crossed our fingers. But as we started a 6.5-hour drive, the fire danger snapped into focus. We saw smoke haze for most of the trip. In the parking lot of a Tahoe City supermarket, we slapped on our COVID masks to filter out the smoky air. At the rental house, two big cinders flew by my face as I stepped onto the driveway. Welcome to Tahoe.
Sun through smoke at 11 a.m. PT in Tahoe City, Calif., on Aug. 23, 2021.
I immediately started following @CAL_FIRE on Twitter and checking several times a day on the Caldor Fire, which had destroyed nearly 500 homes and commercial buildings: 98,000 acres and 0% contained. 106,000 and 5% contained. The air quality was hazardous. Then very unhealthy. Then back to hazardous. We had lists of best walks, hikes and places to see sunsets, but we couldn’t go outside. Government agencies advised everyone to stay inside and limit activities. The haze was so thick that there was nothing to see, anyway.
The saving grace was that our sons were coming. One of them was flying into Reno, Nevada, on Aug. 23, the day before his birthday. But wildfire smoke diverted the flight to San Francisco, and then it was canceled. He returned home to Los Angeles the same night. His older brother, driving from Salt Lake City, had been waiting in Reno to pick him up. He continued on to Tahoe alone.
Lake Tahoe’s Emerald Bay is shrouded in smoke from the Caldor Fire, near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., on Aug. 24, 2021.
When the Tahoe air improved to simply “unhealthy,” my first reaction was wow, that’s great. My second was, it’s actually not great when “unhealthy” seems great. “I don’t think it’s healthy to be here,” I told my husband late Monday night. We ended up leaving two days early, on Wednesday. Our Reno-Denver flight was canceled early that morning for visibility reasons, but the airline rebooked us. We walked in our front door in Washington, D.C., about 2 a.m.
Our decision was prescient. By last Tuesday, as it advanced toward Tahoe and closed Reno schools, the Caldor Fire was the No. 1 priority for national firefighting resources. On Wednesday, as we drove away, Tahoe City and South Lake Tahoe had the worst air pollution in the nation. By Thursday, Tahoe basin evacuations had started and tourists were being asked to stay home. By Friday, the fire had grown to 225 square miles and weather conditions were getting worse. On Saturday, a fire that began 70 miles from Lake Tahoe on Aug. 14 was about 8 miles away.
John Martin and Jill Lawrence at Redwood National Park in northern California on Aug. 21, 2021.
This was not quite the trip we had planned. We did reunite with friends in Seattle, and the Oregon coast did live up to its spectacular billing, as did the redwoods. As far as I know, we avoided catching plague from chipmunks at Lake Tahoe. And so far, we are coronavirus-free. But our Pacific Northwest sojourn was not so much an escape as an immersion in two clear and present dangers: COVID and climate change.
The active life we’ve avoided for so long at home exposed us to more COVID risk on the road and more diverse views on how and whether to reduce risk. The challenges of figuring out appropriate restrictions and precautions were never more clear. As for climate change, as an East Coast lifer, I am familiar with its role in making hurricanes more destructive, but until now I could only imagine its impact in the increasingly dry and hot West. This firsthand experience with drought and fire made the climate crisis real and urgent, and our strange, sobering “vacation” unforgettable.
‘Our future might not look the same’: wildfires threaten way of life in California’s mountain towns
Dani Anguiano in Concow
Photograph: Eugene García/AP
Megan Brown’s family has stewarded several ranches in and along California’s northern Sierra Nevada for six generations.
But in the last four years, the Browns have faced unprecedented challenges. Four different wildfires have touched the family’s ranches in Oroville and Indian Valley. Smoke has killed some of their animals. Years of drought have ravaged their lands.
The disasters have threatened the family’s livelihood, and forced them to question whether life in this region can continue as it has as the climate crisis intensifies.
“If I want our family to continue this lifestyle, it might not look the same as it always has,” said Brown. “Trying to come to terms with that is really hard. I feel like I have to grieve and I don’t know what the future’s going to look like. I don’t know what I should be doing.”
Deadly fires have battered this part of northern California almost annually since 2018, destroying entire communities, killing dozens and covering the area in smoke for weeks at a time.
This year, the region is threatened by the Dixie fire, California’s largest ever single wildfire, and the biggest blaze currently burning in the United States. The fire has already scorched more than 750,000 acres, burning across the mountain range and destroying much of the small hamlet of Greenville.
“I should have been a firefighter instead of a cowboy,” said Brown on a recent afternoon as she glanced down at her phone for updates on the fire, which was raging around one of the ranches.
The fire risk in this part of California goes hand in hand with its abundance of natural beauty: river canyons with emerald green water, rolling foothills of the Sierra Nevada that grow thick in the spring with wildflowers, and vast swaths of trees. In some areas, such as the remote settlement of Concow, Ponderosa pines and Douglas firs cover the landscape – their branches sometimes arch over the roads like a canopy.
This stretch of land, from the Feather River in Oroville up to Lake Almanor, is particularly conducive to flames thanks in part to its steep canyons and seasonal winds. Severe drought has only exacerbated the fire risk.
There is no indication that these extreme wildfires will diminish in the coming years without dramatic steps to reintroduce fire into the landscape to reduce fuels in the forest and tackle the climate emergency.
“California is going to fundamentally change,” said Marshall Burke, an associate professor in the department of earth system science at Stanford. “All evidence would suggest a business as usual scenario where we keep warming the climate and we don’t rapidly scale up our efforts to get fuels out of the forest we’re going to see a lot more wildfire and a lot more extreme wildfire. The science is clear on that.”
Sierra Nevada communities, like the town of Greenville that burned earlier this month, were already struggling with population decline, largely due to economic issues, said Jesse Keenan, a climate adaptation expert at Tulane University. The climate crisis will probably accelerate that decline.
Insurers have become reluctant to cover homes and businesses in the region, raising questions about the ability to rebuild. Kimberly Price, a Greenville resident, said she lost insurance coverage for her home because she was in a fire zone, and her partner lost coverage on his store, which burned down in the Dixie fire, for the same reason.
“This is a problem in the state of California. If you can’t get your house insured, people aren’t going to move here,” she said.
Intensifying wildfires also means the region will continue to see severe smoke lingering for weeks at a time, including in more densely populated cities such as Chico and Oroville. This week, air quality in the Lake Tahoe region ranked among the worst in the world because of smoke from the Caldor fire.
Smoke at the levels seen this year and last year are likely to be normal going forward, Burke said. “Instead of a few days or a week or two of smoke exposure it’s going to look more like 2020 and 2021 where we have months of bad air,” he said. “The science suggests 2020 is a historical anomaly looking backwards but looking forward it’s not going to be.”
That is particularly bad for vulnerable populations such as elderly people and those suffering from pre-existing health conditions, but the effects extend far beyond. A recent study from Stanford University, of which Burke is an author, found breathing wildfire smoke during pregnancy increases the risk of premature birth. Research also shows an increase in the rate of heart attacks, increased susceptibility to Covid-19 and decreased test scores among children exposed to smoke.
Wildfire smoke has killed several of Brown’s animals in recent years, she said, and there’s nothing she can do to protect them. “They all sound like they’re pack-a-day smokers. And it’s like, are they sick? No, they’ve been out in the smoke for a month.”
At the same time, the drought brought a swarm of grasshoppers to the land and forced Brown to reduce her herd. “Our cattle herd is decimated. Our ranches are on fire. I don’t have water.”
One of the keys to combating the state’s deadly megafires involves restoring fire’s role in the landscape with prescribed burns, said Don Hankins, a pyrogeographer and Plains Miwok fire expert at California State University, Chico. Prescribed burns help clear fire-fueling vegetation, and can prevent larger, more extreme blazes.
“If people were able to practice the way indigenous cultures have done so since the beginning of time, that would be the way to change the way fires move with the landscape,” he said. Prescribed burning creates less smoke than the megafires California is seeing today, Hankins said, and gives people a say in when and how smoke is dealt with.
Rather than abandoning these areas, people must learn to change the way they live with fire, Hankins said.
“There is no no-fire solution,” he said. “Fire has to be part of this landscape. It has to be, so we should be the ones directing it.”
To Concow residents Pete and Peggy Moak, prescribed burns are an important tool to live in a remote part of California prone to burning. The couple has survived several wildfires, each time staying behind in their home to battle the encroaching flames.
Their expansive property is pristinely manicured and watered – Pete, a former logger, manages the trees – with a large vegetable garden, a fire break and paths free of debris and vegetation so that if a fire does burn they can defend their home. This time of year, the risk is ever present.
“We’ve got a lot of PTSD,” said Pete, whose family has lived in the area since the 19th century. “It’s unexplainable how the tension is, but there’s never a dull moment.”
Jennifer Whitmore sprays her home with water as the Caldor fire burns near White Hall, California, on 17 August.Photograph: Ethan Swope/AP
Fire will surely scorch this area again, the couple says, and living here requires constantly maintaining their land and the lots around them by felling dead trees, clearing needles and dead leaves and using prescribed burns. It also means they’ve all but stopped traveling in the summer and fall, so that they are here to save their home if necessary.
“It’s hard to understand for folks that live in town and sell their house every five years and move somewhere else,” Pete said.
“Pete and folks like us, we have deep roots in the land,” Peggy said.
Brown, too, can’t see herself leaving the land her family has tended for decades or the animals she loves. “That ranch, this land is my passion and I will die defending it. I’ve been here too long. I love it too much,” she said.
But she wonders whether local elected officials will take the necessary steps to prevent these sorts of devastating fires and assist those affected by them.
“Either we’re going to pull it together and we’re going to be better and more resilient and able to protect ourselves. Or we’re just going to be in this cycle of rebuilding and burning, rebuilding and burning,” she said.
Between hot weather and uneven moisture, tomato growing is tough. These tips may help
Dennis Patton
Ice cream, sweet corn and tomatoes are some of the best flavors of summer. More than any other vegetable, tomatoes have a wide variety of home remedies to grow the best-tasting fruit or produce higher yields. Some of these recommendations shared have validity, while others have no effect.
Midwest summer conditions make tomato harvest unpredictable. Heat and uneven moisture will decrease fruit set and quality. Managing weather patterns is a challenge, but here are some research-based tips to make sure you enjoy tasty tomatoes this summer and into fall.
Fluctuation of water
Uneven moisture slows plant growth, reducing flowering and fruit set. Tomatoes produce best when actively growing. Starting and stopping the growing process due to lack of water disrupts the plants’ ability to produce flowers.
When the fruits split or crack before harvesting, it is often a result of uneven moisture. An influx of water after stress results in the rapid growth of the fruit, causing the splits.
New hybrids are bred to be more crack resistant. Heirloom varieties tend to be prone to cracking because of their less firm skin and meat, which many people desire. Mulching around the plant to conserve moisture as well as timely watering are the recommendations.
Lack of fruit
Tomato plants set fruit best with nighttime temperatures in the 60s and daytime highs in the 80s. Temperatures like these are not as common in Kansas City.
Temperatures over 95 degrees, which frequently occur in our area during the summer, hinder pollination. Hot, windy days dry the pollen before it has time to fertilize the fruits. Tomatoes are wind pollinated, and drying winds kill the pollen, which lowers pollination.
Controlling weather patterns like these is not possible. The best recommendation is to continue to provide good care and even moisture. A healthy plant will recover more rapidly as the stressful periods come and go.
Slow to ripen
Temperatures in the 90s also affect fruit ripening. Tomatoes maturing under hot weather fail to develop the deep beautiful red color. Instead, tomatoes ripening under heat are more orange-red in color. The flavor is the same, just not the color.
Achieving red fruit in a hot summer can be accomplished by picking at the breaker stage. This stage occurs when the fruit has reached about half green, half pinkish-red in color.
At this point, the plant forms a layer of cells across the stem, stopping the movement of sugars, which creates the flavor. In other words, all the flavor compounds are inside the fruit at this point.
Pick the partially red tomato and ripen it indoors under home temperatures. Once fully ripe and deep red, the color is more appetizing and the flavor is the same.
Indoor ripening is controlled by temperature, not exposure to light or dark. The optimum ripening temperature is in the mid 80s.
Picking at the breaker stage may help protect the fruit from the neighborhood squirrels as well. They have a knack for getting the bounty a day or two before you.
Dennis Patton is a horticulture agent with Kansas State University Research and Extension. Have a question for him or other university extension experts? Email them to garden.help@jocogov.org.
Doing Just Five Minutes of Breathing Exercise Each Day Can Lower Your Blood Pressure, a New Study Finds
Nashia Baker
Going for a walk with your pet or keeping busy in your garden are easy ways to stay fit in your day-to-day life. But according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, there’s one unexpected type of activity that can boost your health, too: breathing exercises. University of Colorado at Boulder researchers found that just five minutes of “strength training for your breathing muscles” can lower your blood pressure and improve vascular health, and it’s even more effective than standard aerobic exercise or meditation.
woman drinking coffee and breathing fresh air on balcony in the morning
d3sign / Getty
This breathing training is formally called High-Resistance Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training (IMST), according to the research team. “There are a lot of lifestyle strategies that we know can help people maintain cardiovascular health as they age. But the reality is, they take a lot of time and effort and can be expensive and hard for some people to access,” said Daniel Craighead, the lead author and an assistant research professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology. “IMST can be done in five minutes in your own home while you watch TV.”
Practicing IMST includes inhaling heavily through a hand-held device as it provides resistance. The researchers described the feeling as sucking hard through a tube that is also sucking back. To test out the health benefits, the scientists studied 36 healthy adults between 50 to 79 years of age with systolic blood pressure that was above 120 millimeters of mercury. The volunteers were split in two groups: one who did IMST for six weeks and the other who completed a placebo training with low resistance. As a result, the test subjects who did the IMST regimen decreased their systolic blood pressure by an average of nine points. The researchers noted that this is the equivalent of walking 30 minutes a day, five days a week or taking blood pressure-reducing supplements. “We found that not only is it more time-efficient than traditional exercise programs, the benefits may be longer lasting,” Craighead said.
The IMST group also experienced a 45 percent boost in their vascular health (which essentially controls artery expansion when stimulated) and nitric oxide (a molecule that helps dilate arteries and prevent plaque buildup). “We have identified a novel form of therapy that lowers blood pressure without giving people pharmacological compounds and with much higher adherence than aerobic exercise,” Doug Seals, a distinguished professor of integrative physiology and senior study author, said. “That’s noteworthy.”
A 6pm finish, three cups of coffee a day and one cold shower: the maths of a healthy middle-age
Mark Bailey
how to be healthy in midlife
In the final part of our series on the maths of midlife fitness, we reveal the lifestyle habits midlifers should add to their daily routines…
Two minutes in a cold shower
From model Elle Macpherson to fitness guru Joe Wicks, many successful people extol the benefits of a cold shower in the morning. Research has shown that cold water immersion strengthens your cardiovascular, respiratory and musculoskeletal systems – all of which need a little extra care in midlife. Cold water can also increase your immunity-boosting white blood cell count. One study found that people who take cold showers are 29 per cent less likely to call in sick for work while research by Virginia Commonwealth University found that cold showers can even help to ward off depressive symptoms. Research in Medical Hypotheses suggests a bracing 20°C is about right. Try to brave a full two minutes in there if you can.
1.8 liters of water
Water supports your kidneys and liver, lubricates and cushions your joints, boosts your mental alertness and memory, aids digestion, improves the performance of your cells, supports the transfer of nutrients and oxygen, and helps remove waste. But surveys suggest 62-89 per cent of UK adults don’t drink enough. This becomes an even bigger issue in midlife because we tend to “dry out” as we age. According to the NHS, the human body is approximately 70 per cent water at birth, whereas by the time we reach old age this figure is down to 55 per cent. There are a few reasons for this: we naturally lose muscle as we age, which reduces our ability to store water. Our sweat rates, temperature control mechanisms and kidneys become less efficient. And our thirst reflex is blunted with age. So make sure you sip throughout the day. An independent review of hydration studies published in the journal Nutrients found a total daily water intake of less than 1.8 liters appears to be when dehydration-related health issues kick in. So aim for at least 1.8 liters – around eight glasses – per day.
Two hours of hobbies
Whether you enjoy reading novels, gardening or playing the piano, maintaining a range of enjoyable hobbies is the secret to a healthy midlife. Research by the University of California found that participants who devoted two hours a day to hobbies were 21 per cent less likely to die early. Challenging your brain with interesting pursuits helps sharpen your cognitive performance, increases your social interactions and wards off disease. Hobbies also inject a healthy sense of purpose into your life, which research in Psychological Science suggests can work to “buffer against mortality risk” throughout your midlife years and into retirement. Reading is particularly powerful: a study by the University of Sussex found reading a book can help to reduce stress by up to 68 per cent. And listening to music offers a “total brain workout,” according to researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, helping to reduce anxiety and blood pressure while also improving sleep and memory.
200-300 minutes outside
Research by the University of East Anglia found spending time in greenery helps beat stress by lowering blood pressure and HDL cholesterol, which reduces your risk of Type 2 diabetes and all-cause mortality. According to a research paper in Scientific Reports, spending 200-300 minutes per week outside in natural environments delivers the optimal health boost (just over half an hour a day). It doesn’t matter whether you spend every day in a park or enjoy a long day out at the weekend – as long as you hit that target, you’ll improve your physical and mental health.
Four alcohol-free days
People aged between 45 and 65 are more likely than any other group to consume more than the recommended alcohol limit of 14 units a week, despite being at greater risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and cancer. Research in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research found that even drinking lightly four or more times per week may raise the risk of early death by 20 per cent. A little won’t harm you. In fact, research in the British Medical Journal found low to moderate intake of wine is associated with lower mortality from cardiovascular disease. But you really need four alcohol-free days per week to protect your liver – a key organ responsible for over 500 vital bodily functions, from energy production to detoxification – in midlife.
6pm finish time
Working past normal office hours could be killing you. New research presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s Preventive Cardiology Congress found people whose working hours are out of sync with their natural body clock suffer a higher risk to their cardiovascular health. In fact, data from the World Health Organization suggests long work hours are killing 750,000 people per year. With the rise of home working, this is no longer just a problem for shift workers. So stick to a regular work schedule and avoid late night emails.
Three cups of coffee
Excessive caffeine consumption could lead to an early grave. Research has shown that high coffee consumption (more than 28 cups per week, or four cups a day) is linked to a 21 per cent increased mortality risk. But research published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease suggests moderate coffee consumption in midlife can deliver a 65 per cent decrease in risk of dementia later in life, so you don’t need to give it up altogether. A paper in the Journal of Caffeine Research found that coffee can cut your risk of early death by 10 per cent. As ever, the key is moderation and most health organizations recommend no more than 300mg of caffeine (about three cups) per day.
Eight hours of sleep
The 2021 State of UK Sleep Survey found 54 per cent of the UK population is unhappy with their sleep, with work pressure, financial stress and Covid-19 all having an impact. This is bad news for midlife health. Research in the journal Sleep found people who sleep less than seven hours a night have a 26 per cent higher risk of dying early. And a study by the University of Paris found people who get less than six hours sleep in their middle and older years face a 30 per cent greater risk of dementia. However, those who laze in bed for more than eight hours a day also face a 17 per cent spike in their chances of an early death. So getting as close as possible to eight hours of sleep per night seems to be the optimal way to go. Start improving your sleep by downloading a sleep app like Pzizz, Sleep Cycle, Calm or Sleep School now.
Lastly, be organized
Tidy your desk, organize your emails and turn up to meetings on time. Being conscientious helps to sustain your health in midlife, according to research by Duke University. The researchers found people who are conscientious tend to follow other good habits – such as exercising and cleaning their teeth – which makes them 27 per cent less likely to suffer health problems in later life, such as obesity, high cholesterol, inflammation, hypertension and gum disease.
The death squads had just executed Maryknoll nuns, bullets to the back of the head.
It was the Reagan-sponsored war on “communists” in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
Ed Asner, an actor who wasn’t particularly political, agreed to attend a press conference denouncing the killing of the nuns.
Within short order, his network canceled Lou Grant, the number one show on American TV, in fact, #1 worldwide.
Ed once told me he could’ve kissed the network’s ass, promised to be a good on-stage puppet, an off-stage mute, and save his career which was now on the new Black List.
But he couldn’t. Couldn’t stay silent. Instead, Ed grew louder.
And unstoppable. At dinner this week, Ed told me he was preparing to open in three new one-act plays.
But my wife didn’t think so. She said, “This is the last time we’ll see Ed, isn’t it?”
I wish she weren’t always right.
I remember when we were about to film Ed in The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. I deliberately hadn’t revealed his lines to him, nor his costume: a ridiculous Santa suit.
Ed was a good sport about it. And a “one-take” wonder. But, we needed several takes, a bit too long for his 80-something’s bladder. So, rather than halt the production, he said, “The heck with it!”, let go, then simply dropped his soaking pants and continued the shoot in his boxers.
So, that’s how we shot the next scene: Ed Asner in a top hat and underpants. Absolutely brilliant. Take a look.
For inspiration at the shoot, Ed asked our Executive Producer Leni Badpenny if he could think of her naked. Hey, he only said what every guy thinks. Her response was to sit on his somewhat damp lap. (By the way, he was thrilled when he learned we married.)
Ed Asner and Leni Badpenny at The Best Democracy Money Can Buy premiere 2016
Asner was an actor of great talent because he was a man of great feeling. He would allow nothing to get between his emotions and the words he would express. It was true fearlessness, a courage and inner power that came through even in a sitcom or in a Santa suit.
There’s no guessing where it came from. A working class Jewish kid from Kansas City, child of the Depression and the incipient Holocaust which most Americans, Left and Right, were happy to ignore, and a fierce union man from early on. Ed only became an actor, he told me, because he lost his job in the steel mills.
Before I got the call that Ed was gone, it was already a lousy morning.
I was deeply upset about the people of Afghanistan whom we’d just abandoned to the Islamists executioners, the very killers Reagan had unleashed alongside the death squads of El Salvador.
And, frankly, I’ve been afraid that I’d be shunned by progressive friends and editors who are breaking out the party hats to celebrate the end of the “forever war.”
But I just can’t join the party. Should I say something? Death squads, Nazis, Taliban. Which victims am I allowed to speak for?
I’m an operational atheist.
I can’t turn to the Lord for advice.
But I can ask, What would Lou Grant do?
You’ll have my answer this week.
Alev ha-shalom, my friend.
Producer David Ambrose (left), Ed Asner (center), Greg Palast (right)
at The Best Democracy Money Can Buy premiere 2016
Photograph: Eugene García/AP
Ed Asner and Leni Badpenny at The Best Democracy Money Can Buy premiere 2016
Producer David Ambrose (left), Ed Asner (center), Greg Palast (right)