'Inexplicably frozen': Judge quashes Ottawa's Coalspur order as it failed to consult with Ermineskin Cree Nation

Comes just weeks after a federal policy statement on thermal coal all but sent Coalspur's Vista expansion up in smoke

Author of the article: Kelsey Rolfe
Publishing date: Jul 23, 2021 • 

Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in June the federal government could not prevent thermal coal miners from bringing projects forward, but “the bar (for approval) would be exceedingly high.” PHOTO BY SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS FILES

Coalspur Mines Ltd.’s controversial Vista mine expansion project is no longer subject to the federal impact assessment process, a federal judge ruled this week.

The Federal Court ruling quashed a June 2020 designation order from Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson that subjected both Vista’s proposed open-pit expansion and underground test mine to review by the federal impact assessment agency.

It found the minister had failed to consult the Ermineskin Cree Nation, which has an impact benefit agreement with Coalspur, and instead only consulted Indigenous communities who sought the designation order before issuing his decision.

“Not only was there no consultation at all, but I find Ermineskin was inexplicably frozen out of this very one-sided process,” wrote Judge Henry Brown in his decision.

The decision comes just weeks after Wilkinson issued a federal policy statement on thermal coal, saying any new or expanded projects would cause “unacceptable environmental impacts,” at the time all but sending Vista’s expansion up in smoke.t

Wilkinson told the Financial Post in June the federal government could not prevent thermal coal miners from bringing projects forward, but “the bar (for approval) would be exceedingly high.”

In an emailed statement to the Financial Post, Wilkinson said his office was reviewing the decision to “determine its implications and identify next steps.”

“The continued mining and use of thermal coal for energy production in Canada and around the world runs counter to what is needed to effectively combat climate change.”

He said he would “continue to consider” the thermal coal policy in deciding whether to designate future thermal coal projects under the federal impact assessment act.

Wilkinson had initially declined to designate the Vista expansion under the impact assessment act in December 2019, saying the Alberta Energy Regulator could cover the areas of federal concern in its environmental assessment, but reversed course after mounting pressure from Indigenous people and environmental groups.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

 PHOTO BY JIM WELLS/POSTMEDIA

His decision last June said Vista “may result in adverse effects of greater magnitude to those previously considered.”

The proposed two-part expansion would nearly double Vista’s production capacity, from roughly 6.5 million tonnes per year of thermal coal to between 10 and 15 million tonnes.

Coalspur has been plagued by challenges this year, filing for Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act protection in late April, roughly four months after a permitting issue with the AER forced it to put Vista on care and maintenance and lay off roughly 300 workers. The temporary mine shutdown coincided with a multi-million dollar hedge obligation to a Singaporean commodity trading firm.

Operations resumed at Vista during the first week of May, after the company secured a US$26-million interim lending facility to recall about 250 employees and restart the mine while it works through restructuring.

Both Coalspur and the Ermineskin Cree Nation sought judicial review of the minister’s order in two separate court filings. The Ermineskin argued Wilkinson had failed to consult the Nation before putting Vista through the impact assessment process. The decision would impact its Aboriginal and treaty rights, the Ermineskin argued, by lessening, delaying or eliminating its economic interest in the expansion.

Wilkinson argued he had no duty to consult the Nation, and disputed that the loss of any economic, social and community benefits laid out in the impact benefit agreement were an infringement on Aboriginal and treaty rights.

Brown disagreed, writing that the Crown’s duty to consult clearly extends to Indigenous communities’ economic rights and benefits.

Wilkinson said in an email the government’s commitment to working with Indigenous peoples to advance reconciliation and respect Indigenous rights, culture and knowledge was “why we delivered on our promise to put in place better rules for major projects that support reconciliation, while restoring public trust, protecting the environment and ensuring good projects get built.””

Financial Post

MORE ON THIS TOPIC

Coalspur: The canary in Canada’s thermal coal mines as Ottawa sets high bar for new projects

Canada will not approve any new thermal coal mining projects or expand existing mines

Coal-fired power plants feel the heat of Alberta’s new carbon tax rules

Enmax and City of Calgary announce $5M fund for solar installations at community halls

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City to decide which community halls receive installations in a matter of weeks

CBC News · Posted: Jul 23, 2021 

The first phase of the community hall installations are expected to be completed by the end of 2021. (Susan Montoya Bryan/The Associated Press)

The city is teaming up with Enmax to launch a $5-million fund for solar-energy installations at designated community halls across Calgary.

The fund is a one-time contribution that will be used to provide solar equipment and hire people to install it, the power company said Friday in a release. 

The City of Calgary, which owns Enmax, will manage the program and select the community halls that will receive the installations. Those decisions are expected in a matter of weeks.

Enmax vice-president Corry Poole told CBC News the project is a way to work with the city toward a lower-carbon future as the energy landscape evolves.

"The great thing about community halls and community centres is they're used by Calgarians," Poole said. "And [this] really allows them to help lower energy costs overall."

• Amazon unveils plan for major solar power project in southern Alberta

• Albertans are hot for solar right now, even with the pandemic pinch

Ward 14 Coun. Peter Demong said in Friday's release that the project will help communities become more sustainable, and Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said it's cost-saving benefits could prompt others to adopt solar installations, themselves.

"This is a great project that will help community associations free up operating funds to serve our neighbourhoods, and serve as an example to similar-sized facilities of the benefits of solar," Nenshi said.

The first phase of the installations are expected to be completed by the end of 2021.

With files from Rick Donkers

Buildings are a bigger contributor to climate change than cars — these start-ups are trying to help

PUBLISHED SAT, JUL 24 2021

Katie Brigham@KATIE_BRIGHAM

This June was the hottest in American history. The 116-degree heat melted power cables in Portland, Oregon, and smashed previous temperature records. Seattle recorded an all-time high of 108 degrees, as did the Canadian province of British Columbia, at a whopping 121 degrees.

As the world warms, more people are installing air conditioning. Global energy demand for cooling has more than tripled since 1990 and could more than double between now and 2040 without stricter efficiency standards.


But air conditioning itself is a major contributor to global warming. Altogether, building operations that include heating, cooling and lighting account for 28% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than the entire global transportation sector.

But SkyCool, Gradient and a number of other companies are working on the problem. They’re trying to apply new technologies to the traditionally inflexible heating and cooling industry, finance the upfront costs, communicate the value to property owners and make sure it’s all done equitably.

How Air Conditioning Is Warming The World

Jul 24, 2021

CNBC

Summer 2021 is shaping up to be one of the hottest in history, as the effects of climate change are becoming ever clearer. Naturally, that’s led to an increase in global demand for air conditioning, which itself is a major contributor to global warming. It’s a vicious cycle, but there are a number of companies working to make heating and cooling more energy efficient, and get buildings off of fossil fuels for good.

Tough times ahead for survivors of Hong Kong’s industrial past

Jul 23, 2021

South China Morning Post

Once central to Hong Kong’s identity, local manufacturing is now increasingly seen as a sunset industry for the city. In its heyday, manufacturing comprised 31 per cent of Hong Kong’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but today it represents only around 1 per cent of GDP. Only six of nearly two dozen government-subsidised industrial buildings that used to house mini factories are left. And by mid-2022, only two will remain as the Hong Kong Housing Authority converts most industrial spaces into subsidised flats. For the tenants of these factory estates, the government’s plan to close some of the last subsidised industrial spaces may deal the final blow to a dying industry.

OF COURSE TRUMP HAS SCAMMED MILLIONS FROM HIS NOT-VERY-BRIGHT SUPPORTERS

The ex-president has reportedly been using his political PAC as a slush fund for personal expenses.

President Donald Trump during a rally in Dalton, Georgia on January 4, 2021

.BY MANDEL NGAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

One of the more ironic aspects of Donald Trump’s improbable election win in 2016 was that many of his supporters declared they were voting for him because unlike career politicians, he actually told the truth. In reality, of course, he lied about everything all the time. Whether it was a big lie like the one about how Mexico was going to pay for his wall; a weird lie like the one about having been named Michigan’s “Man of the Year”; an insane lie like the one about windmills causing cancer; a sad, pathetic lie like the one about his inauguration crowd being bigger than Barack Obama’s; or a truly WTF lie like the one about the Boy Scouts of America calling to tell him his crazy speech in front of thousands of children was the best one they’d ever heard, the man spent his entire time in office lying through his caps, to the tune of 30,573 lies in four years. (Or 7,643 lies a year, or 21 lies a day.)

Obviously Trump hasn’t stopped lying since he left Washington, with the biggest lie being that he won the 2020 election, but at the same time, his supporters continue not to care. So while it might tick off a normal person to learn that money they’d donated to a (supposedly) important cause had actually gone to funding personal expenses for a guy who never misses a chance to tell everyone how rich he is, we’re pretty sure the ex-president’s followers will not be bothered.

Per The Washington Post:

Former president Donald Trump’s political PAC raised about $75 million in the first half of this year as he trumpeted the false notion that the 2020 election was stolen from him, but the group has not devoted funds to help finance the ongoing ballot review in Arizona or to push for similar endeavors in other states, according to people familiar with the finances.

Instead, the Save America leadership PAC—which has few limits on how it can spend its money—has paid for some of the former president’s travel, legal costs, and staff, along with other expenses, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the group’s inner workings. The PAC has held on to much of its cash.

An extremely charitable, naive way to read this would be to say that Trump is all talk about trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election but actually isn’t putting any real effort into it at all. But of course that’s not what’s going on here. Trump desperately wants to find evidence to support the baseless lie that a second term was stolen from him, but he just wants someone else to pay for it.


Even as he assiduously tracks attempts by his allies to cast doubt on the integrity of last year’s election, Trump has been uninterested in personally bankrolling the efforts, relying on other entities and supporters to fund the endeavors...The tactic allows Trump to build up a war chest to use in the 2022 midterms on behalf of candidates he favors—and to stockpile cash for another potential White House run, an unprecedented maneuver for a former president.

In the meantime, the monthslong audit of Maricopa County’s ballots in Arizona—which is expected to cost millions—is being paid for primarily by nonprofit entities that do not disclose their donors and private individuals such as former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne. A lawsuit seeking a similar audit in Fulton County, Georgia, has been financed by small donations, according to the group that brought the claim. A spokeswoman for Trump did not answer questions on whether the group is considering putting money into the ballot review efforts. The group will have to publicly disclose its fundraising and spending for the first half of the year by July 31.

Since leaving office, Trump has repeatedly pushed for various states to overturn the election results, sending out a blizzard of statements with unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. He has consulted with state officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, and has described state ballot reviews as the key to prove he won the 2020 election. And his political group has repeatedly urged donors to give by claiming that Trump is working to protect their vote—fundraising pitches that his advisers say remain the most lucrative. “We need you to join the fight to SECURE OUR ELECTIONS!” reads one Facebook ad.... The former president has repeatedly made false claims of irregularities in the Arizona vote, asserting in a statement this month that it amounted “to hundreds of thousands of votes or, many times what is necessary for us to have won.”

The Save America PAC “is probably the most lucrative thing he’s had in terms of cash flow since the Plaza casino in Atlantic City,” Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer, told the Post. “This is just as lucrative. He has recognized because of what happened after the election—he can make money as a candidate.”


Of course this isn’t the first time Trump has scammed supporters out of money. In April, New York Times reporter Shane Goldmacher revealed that the Trump campaign had ripped off supporters for tens of millions of dollars through a scheme in which when they donated money, the default option authorized the campaign to transfer the pledged amount from people’s bank accounts not once but every single week. Later the campaign introduced a second prechecked box that doubled a person’s contribution and was thus known internally as a “money bomb.” (In order for people to have noticed this, they would have had to wade through “lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.”) And the scheme continued after Trump lost the election, with his campaign reportedly “continu[ing] the weekly withdrawals through prechecked boxes all the way through December 14.” Those withdrawals, the Times noted, occurred “as [Trump] raised tens of millions of dollars for his new political action committee, Save America.”

BY BESS LEVIN

JULY 23, 2021

White is not a colour – white is an ideology

The word ‘white’, in the context of talking about racism, is not a signifier for skin colour. In this vital context, ‘white’ is an ideology.


Hamid Dabashi
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
23 Jul 2021

Opponents of Critical Race Theory protest outside of the Loudoun County School Board headquarters, in Ashburn, Virginia, US June 22, 2021. [Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]

The rising public conversations about race and racism in the United States have once again confused millions of well-meaning Americans into believing that if they look like what is now socially codified as “a white person” then they must feel guilty about the racist history of their country. This is a false guilt. Looking at any person and judging the content of their character based on the complexion of their skin is blatant racism, predicated on a false and illogical premise. It is only white supremacists who benefit from the confusion of the term “white” as a colour of skin designation with “white” as an ideology of racial supremacy.

A reactionary propagandist named Christopher Rufo is now identified as the chief agent provocateur mobilising racist Americans against a figment of their own imagination they call “Critical Race Theory” by way of conflating racism with the designated colour of a person’s skin. The objective is to frighten people to think that if the colour of their skin is coded as “white” in this country, then they are the targets of their so-called “coloured” compatriots’ demands for racial justice.

But the word “white” in the context of talking about racism is not a signifier for skin colour. In this vital context, “white” is an ideology. You are only “white” in this sense if you think you are entitled to certain privileges that must be denied to others whom you in the same breath call “Black”, “brown”, “red”, “yellow”, etc.

Racism is a construct

“There is no such thing as race, none” – this is how master novelist late Toni Morrison broke it down very simply in a famous interview. “It’s the human race, scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct, and it has benefits, money can be made off of it, people who don’t like themselves can feel better because of it … so it has a social function. But race can only be defined as a human being.”

Precisely in that sense, the word “white” is a signifier of that racism, its ideological register, its coded symbol. That is all. No human being at birth is “white”, “Black”, “brown”, “red”, “yellow” or any other colour. They are all eventually coded with these colours to divide and rule them better. East Asians are called “yellow”, West Asians and Latinx “brown”, Native Americans “red”, Africans “Black”, all of them set against the fictive centrality of the Caucasian “white”, which Europeans have racialised and reserved for themselves and gave to their settler colonial extensions in North America or Australia as a signifier of superiority. The historical origin of all such racist designations come to full “scientific” blooming during the period Europeans call – without the slightest sense of irony – their “Enlightenment”.

Racism is the colour codification of the relation of power and abuse, precisely as sexism is the gendered codification of the selfsame social malaise. Racism is a byproduct of the colonial conquest of the world for economic exploitations that needed a cultural alibi and ideological justification. If you think you are superior to other human beings because you are “white”, or you come from a superior civilisation because you are “white” then you are a racist – namely, you assume you come from a fictitious race that is superior to other races, whom you therefore feel entitled to abuse and exploit.

This is how the British ruled India, the French Algeria, the Belgians Congo, etc. When Germans slaughtered tens of thousands of Africans in Namibia between 1904 and 1908, that was predicated on their sense of racial superiority. When they brought that genocide home and perpetrated it on Jews a couple of decades later, that was based on a sense of racial superiority.

In yet another interview, Toni Morrison was asked, if she would ever change and write books that “incorporate white lives into them substantially”. She looked at her interlocutor with a look of not contempt but pity. “You can’t understand how powerfully racist that question is,” she said, “because you could never ask a white author when they are going to write about white people.”

Morrison is here turning the racist question thrown at her against itself. The question is asked from the presumed epicentre of a position of power so assured of itself that is unconscious of itself. Morrison unveils that centre, makes it conscious of itself, and exposes it for the sham that it is.

No races before racism

Such encounters abound in the ideas of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and others, where the ideological foregrounding of the very supposition of being “white” is questioned and exposed. But it is in her novel A Marcy (2008) that Morrison went back to a point in American history when there was no American history, namely a time of fluidity in the continental social life before the racial codification of power surfaces in a manner that would be sustained for the rest of American history.

Set in the late 17th century, A Marcy maps out the continental domain where the Portuguese, the Spanish, the British, and all other Europeans had come to overrun the natives and begin importing African slaves, before slavery and the coded colour “Black” had become intertwined. In the book, the gathering destinies of Jacob Vaark, an Anglo-Dutch trader, his wife Rebekka, slave girl Florens, Native American farm worker Lina, and a free African blacksmith whom Florens loves, details a whole different America before the rise of racism as the defining moment of American history.

Similarly, though through critical thinking rather than creative writing, in The History of White People (2010), Nell Irvin Painter details the prolonged and twisted history of how the very idea of “white people” has gone through successive changes throughout history and how the European “Enlightenment” period is chiefly responsible for the invention of racial categories.

During this so-called “Age of Reason”, scholars like Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) began dividing people by measuring their skulls. As Painter puts it in a recent follow-up essay:

“At the two extremities Blumenbach placed the skulls he considered ugly, the African and the Asian. Next to the African was the Tahitian. Next to the Asian was the Native American,” Painter explained in a recent follow-up essay. “In the middle was Blumenbach’s ‘most beautiful skull’ — of a young Georgian woman who had been a sex slave in Moscow, where she died of venereal disease. Her beautiful skull became the basis for the name given to white people; a native of the South Caucasus [between the Black and Caspian Seas], she inspired the label ‘Caucasian’.”

Predicated on this illustrious past, being “white” is today an ideological conviction people acquire as they ignore such histories and are indoctrinated not just into racism but even more basically into racialised thinking. Being “white” is not a biological predicate by virtue of which one is condemned to hatred and bigotry. No one is. Being “white” is an ideological conviction by virtue of which you are convinced you are a superior human being.

The overcoming of the disease of racism is to begin with the undoing of the social construction of races that is the premise of racism. Given its long and murderous history of racial hatred, which was fully on display during the four years of the Trump presidency, the US has a very long road ahead before this simple fact is fully perceived and understood. There are powerful interests, institutionalised in the Republican Party in particular, vested in sustaining the bloody history of racism in this country.

To overcome that we must realise “white” is an ideology, a false racialised consciousness that is used by those in power to divide people to rule them better. It is the rich and the powerful who are the beneficiaries of this false consciousness. It is the poor and the powerless who are divided into white and Black and yellow and red. The rich and the powerful use these fictitious racial categories to get people to despise each other and thus conceal the real battlefront – the one between classes. Race is the colour codification of that relation of power, not that relation of power itself. What has a poor person branded as “white” in common with a rich manipulator of such racist ideologies? Nothing but the delusion that he or she belongs to a superior race while they share identical economic hardship with equally disenfranchised people they have been told to hate as Black, brown, yellow, or red?

If you are not racist you are not “white”, no matter what you have been assigned as in that colour codification of power. In the same vein, if you do not feel a victim of the very same colour codification then you are not Black, brown, yellow, red, or any other colour thus designated by the same code. You are a human being. WEB Du Bois’s assumption that “the problem of the Twentieth century is the problem of the colour-line” is only valid if we remain confined within that colour codification of power. “The colour-line” would not be a problem if we understand, dismantle, and overcome it. On that day, MLK is waiting for us: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

The metaphor of a “rainbow” usually used to bring these colours harmoniously together is a flawed liberal metaphor. Far superior is Rumi’s metaphor where in a story in Masnavi he says colours are like shades of clouds covering the bright shining light of the moon. We do not need the false colouring of our troubled imagination. We need the polishing sparkle of our peaceful souls.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.



Hamid Dabashi received a dual PhD in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He wrote his dissertation on Max Weber's theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time. Professor Dabashi has taught and delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. Professor Dabashi has written twenty-five books, edited four, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, and comparative literature to world cinema and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). His books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Danish, Russian, Hebrew, Italian, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan. His books include Authority in Islam [1989]; Theology of Discontent [1993]; Truth and Narrative [1999]; Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future [2001]; Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran [2000]; Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema [2007]; Iran: A People Interrupted [2007]; and an edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema[2006]. His most recent work includes Shi’ism: A Religion of Protest (2011), The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (2012), Corpus Anarchicum: Political Protest, Suicidal Violence, and the Making of the Posthuman Body (2012), The World of Persian Literary Humanism (2012) and Being A Muslim in the World (2013).

Space travel for the masses? Don’t be ridiculous

Space ‘tourism’ as performed by a pair of billionaires is, for now, merely an overpriced joyride for the ultra-rich.

Johnny Luk
22 Jul 2021
The side of a building in Van Horn, Texas, is adorned with a mural of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos on Saturday, July 17, 2021, just days before Bezos launched into space [AP Photo/Sean Murphy]

Earlier this month, the British billionaire entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, successfully flew to outer space, trailblazing his brand, Virgin Galactic, to the edge of the outer hemisphere. This week, his fellow billionaire, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, took his own Blue Origin spacecraft for a spin to the outer limits, managing to get a whole 10 miles (16km) higher than Sir Richard.

The journeys were heralded as marking a new era of “space tourism”, in which untrained people could become astronauts, a title previously reserved for highly trained professional scientists and pilots, to see the earth’s curvature and enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness. Perfect for that viral Instagram photo for one’s millions of followers.

But could the idea of space tourism really become anything more than just an overpriced joyride for the rich?

The idea of travelling into space has fascinated human beings for millennia. Humanity has looked to the stars as a tool for navigation and as a source of spiritual fulfilment. Even now, research from the US think-tank, the Pew Research Center, suggests 29 percent of Americans believe in horoscopes.

In the 20th Century, as scientific discovery advanced, space travel became a symbol of political and ideological prestige, with the superpowers of that era, the US and the former Soviet Union, battling it out for space supremacy.

Both sides poured billions of dollars into a series of space programmes that created new rockets, satellites and most famously, led to humans touching the surface of the moon. It also spun a range of inventions that were commercialised for wider use, such as scratch-resistant lenses for glasses, memory foam and LASIK eye surgery.

These days, with the Cold War long over, political pressure to push forward state-funded space programmes has diminished, with governments even more reluctant to spend after the global financial crisis crippled government budgets in 2007. Thus, a gap has emerged for the private sector to step into.

For Branson, this month’s venture was the culmination of a long-held dream to embark on space tourism, having first promised to build a spaceship in 2004, with the hope of starting a commercial service by 2007. The programme faced years of delays due to, unsurprisingly, having to battle huge technical challenges, including a fatal crash during a development flight in 2014. The current pandemic has made it harder too, having forced Branson to sell $650m worth of Virgin Galactic shares over the past two years to shore up his wider Virgin business empire.

Yet despite delays, Virgin Galactic succeeded in its quest and has pushed space science forwards as a consequence. It developed a unique flight path, with a “mothership” carrying the main vehicle, VSS Unity, up 15km (9 miles) in the air before Unity was released and then activated its rockets to fly an additional 70km (43 miles) above the surface of the earth, to reach the edge of space. Unity then re-entered earth’s atmosphere with rotating wings – a technology known as feathering – to smoothly glide back down to earth without the need for a parachute. This meant no parts needed to be discarded, making it fully reusable, with the plane landing at the same location at Spaceport America in New Mexico, US, making it hassle-free for space tourists to get on and off, just like on a commercial flight.

Similarly, Bezos’s Blue Origin, which flew higher than its archrival Virgin Galactic, also utilises advanced science with a fully automated two-part rocket system, requiring no pilots at all. The launcher, which houses the rocket engine and propellant, separates after launch, flying back by itself to return to the launch pad, while the top part of the craft – the crew capsule – safely lands using parachutes. It is also equipped with a crew ejection system for added safety if any part of the launch goes wrong. Thankfully, there was no need for that on this occasion.

Both companies, after years of research and development and sustaining losses, are now finally poised to make money, with a reported 8,000 individuals already reserving tickets for Virgin Galactic flights, costing at least $250,000 each. Tickets to fly on Blue Origin are speculated to be priced at similar levels. Some 7,600 people with a lot of spare cash had registered for the auction of tickets for this week’s flight, with the winner paying $28m, suggesting there will be strong demand too, at least from the ultra-rich. Indeed, analysts at the investment bank, Bank of America estimate the total value of the space industry will balloon from $350bn to as much as $2.7tn by 2040.

However, before we get too excited, we must call this out for what it is. This is an entertainment business for the super-rich, backed by a formidable PR operation.

Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are suborbital space vehicles. They do not yet fly high enough to orbit earth and are therefore in a wholly different category to – say, NASA or SpaceX – founded by another very successful billionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk – which has become NASA’s preferred launch vehicle, able to resupply the International Space Station or deploy new satellites.

Virgin Galactic has confirmed as much, recently replacing its first CEO, the former NASA Chief of Staff George Whitesides, who led much of the research development phase of Virgin Galactic, with Michael Colglazier, who has no space background and was previously head of Disneyland parks.

The new space tourist companies are marketing these joy rides as “bringing space to the masses”. It is true that, before this, if you wanted to fly as a space tourist, you had to broker with the Russians to pay for a seat on the Soviet-era Soyuz class spacecraft for a cool $25m, as seven people did between 2001 and 2009.

But ticket prices for Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin flights will still be sky-high, which makes the claim absurd. There is no doubt that seeing the earth’s curvature could be a life-changing experience but who are we really inspiring here? Emerging scientists or the children of the billionaire set? Meanwhile, despite these new crafts being relatively energy-efficient compared with older space rockets, they still burn tonnes of fuel to go up and down through the atmosphere – hardly in the spirit of tackling climate change.

Perhaps it does not matter. After all, compared with state-funded programmes, private companies have the political cover of not – overtly – spending taxpayers’ money. Virgin Galactic has funding from the Virgin Group, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, Aabar Investment group and Boeing, alongside being publicly traded in the New York stock market. Blue Origin was funded by the sale of Amazon stock.

In contrast, the NASA Apollo programme, which launched humans to the moon in the late 60s and early 70s and the more recent Space Shuttle programme, which retired in 2011, cost US taxpayers an eye-watering $415bn in today’s money.

Private space companies are following market forces, competing against each other in a new market. The ego contest has also begun, with Bezos taunting Branson that his ship can fly higher.

This is good. Competition drives creativity, efficiencies and the development of new safety procedures, given that a launch failure would cause fatal loss of confidence for prospective customers. Having highly driven, charismatic entrepreneurs being the face of private space companies also gives it a sexiness that has galvanised the entire space sector.

However, this masks the reality that these companies have still benefitted from a sector that has been financed with taxpayers’ support. For example, the New Mexico government has invested nearly $200m in the Spaceport America facility, with Virgin Galactic as the anchor tenant. Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man who founded Amazon, runs a multinational technology firm that pays very little tax.

For example, in Europe, Amazon made record sales of 44 billion euros ($51.9bn) in 2020 but tax filings suggest it did not pay any corporation tax in Luxembourg, where it filed tax paperwork. And while Bezos generously thanked the workers of Amazon for helping to realise his dream of reaching space, warehouse workers on just $15 an hour might be wondering whether those profits – $8bn in net income this past quarter, a record – might be better reinvested elsewhere?

While it is a bit cringe-worthy that rich people can now call themselves “astronauts”, no doubt raising eyebrows among professionally trained, actual astronauts, we should not underestimate the science behind flying people safely under such hostile environments. Normalising space travel could provide opportunities. With Virgin Galactic aspiring to near-daily flights in the future, these suborbital journeys will provide a new platform for science, for example by providing a relatively accessible way to carry out testing in micro-gravity environments. Blue Origin is also developing larger rockets, dubbed New Glen, which aspires to compete with SpaceX on longer distance space flights and Blue Moon, to create lunar landers in partnership with NASA.

Cynics may despair at the waste of money, given there are so many other pressing issues to deal with down here on planet earth, such as human poverty. Yet perhaps space travel is a way of capturing the imagination and acting as a symbol of human advancement. Perhaps, as refinements continue and economies of scale further reduce costs, space flight might indeed become accessible to everyone, with space flights changing how people view our precious earth and provide a new way to advance science that leads to new inventions that benefit all of humanity. One can only wonder.


The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.



Johnny Luk is a strategic advisor, a university governor and ran for parliament in the UK as a Conservative candidate in 2019. He formerly worked on Brexit negotiations as part of the UK government and was a former junior British champion in rowing.

Canada is deporting its ‘guardian angels’

Many asylum seekers in Canada, who served as essential workers at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, are now facing the threat of deportation.


Stefan Christoff
23 Jul 2021

Asylum seeker Mamadou Konaté, who worked as a janitor at three elderly care homes in Montreal at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, is now facing the threat of deportation. On July 6, Konaté addressed a crowd gathered in front of Prime Minister Trudeau's constituency office in Montreal to protest essential worker deportations [Stacy Lee]

In 2017, in response to then-United States President Donald Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban”, Canadian President Justin Trudeau tweeted: “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.” Four years on, many across the world continue to believe Trudeau’s assertion that his country’s doors are open to refugees.

The reality on the ground, however, is very different. While routinely being praised for its extraordinary generosity towards refugees, Trudeau’s Canada is deporting asylum seekers en masse, amid a deadly pandemic.

According to the latest data published by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Trudeau’s government deported some 12,122 people in 2020. This was the highest number of deportations in a year since 2015, when Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was in power. Thousands more face the risk of being forcefully removed from the country before the end of 2021.

Many asylum seekers currently facing the threat of deportation have served as essential front-line workers in Canada during the most difficult and deadly months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mamadou Konaté, who fled his home country of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in the aftermath of its bloody civil war and arrived in Canada as an asylum seeker in 2016, is one of them.

In 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Konaté worked as a janitor in three different long-term care homes (CHSLDs) in Montreal, Quebec. At the time, like most care homes in Canada, these facilities were devastated by the pandemic and were in desperate need of essential workers. Konaté tended to and cleaned the rooms of COVID-positive patients and contracted the virus while doing so. He quickly returned to work after surviving the illness.

Despite his service, however, he is now facing deportation as soon as the Canadian government arranges for Konaté’s travel documents for Ivory Coast to be issued.

“After years of working in this country, along with many, many others, contributing a lot, paying taxes, working in difficult jobs, during this pandemic, now the government is going to remove us? Now the Canadian government is planning to deport us? This is injustice,” Konaté told a crowd gathered in front of Prime Minister Trudeau’s constituency office in Montreal on July 6 to protest deportations.

“During the pandemic,” Konaté said “many key jobs were performed by immigrants, by refugees. I am one of those people, who stepped up, now, I face removal. I worked hard in the CHSLDs, cleaning many times, even on the night shift. Today, it is hard for people to know, to understand, the pain that we are going through, while facing deportation from Canada, after working in essential posts during this pandemic.”

Konaté’s case is only one of many that illustrate the ever-widening gap between the liberal Trudeau government’s rhetoric of “embracing refugees” and the reality on the ground.

Abandoning the ‘guardian angels’

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Canadian politicians from across the political spectrum have been publicly celebrating essential workers, especially those working in healthcare settings.

For example, in April 2020, Quebec’s Premier François Legault, of the conservative Coalition Avenir Québec, described essential workers on the COVID-19 front lines – including asylum seekers – as “guardian angels” and voiced his government’s support for them.

A few months later, in December 2020, his government specifically acknowledged the contributions asylum seekers have made to the pandemic effort, and initiated the “guardian angel” programme ostensibly to provide essential workers with precarious immigration status a direct path to permanent residency.

On the surface, the programme (accompanied by a similar Ottawa-led initiative for essential workers outside Quebec) appeared to provide further proof that Canada is a refugee-friendly country. But in reality, it was yet another demonstration of the hypocrisy of Canada’s leaders.

The so-called “guardian angel” programme, limited in scope to some essential workers in the healthcare sector who provided direct care to patients, left asylum seekers who laboured as front-line workers in other sectors, such as food packing and delivery, out in the cold. Moreover, it excludes many others, like Konaté, who worked as janitors, cooks or security guards in healthcare facilities.

The limitations of this programme show not only that Canada is not as welcoming of refugees as Trudeau likes us to believe, but also that the selective nature of the country’s immigration policies has changed very little since the British colonial era.

In the early 20th century, exclusionist and white supremacist immigration policies led Canada to turn away countless thousands of immigrants from across the world who endured long and arduous journeys to reach the country’s shores. Since then, Canada has made itself a name as a liberal safe haven for refugees. But as ongoing mass deportations and the state’s refusal to give permanent residency to all asylum seekers who served as essential workers illustrates, Canada’s immigration policies are still neither just nor inclusive.

Moreover, as Trudeau continues with his rhetoric of welcoming all those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canada is rapidly militarising its borders. The 2019 federal budget, for example, promised a strategy costing 1.18 billion Canadian dollars ($940m) over five years to beef up border security and to detect, intercept and remove migrants.

Today, Trudeau continues to act as if Canada’s doors are open to refugees and the country is committed to protecting those in need. This, however, cannot be further from the truth. The country is actually allowing only a select few, who meet specific criteria, to settle within its borders, and shamelessly deporting many, like Konaté, who risked their lives to keep the country running at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

So, no – all those “fleeing persecution, terror and war” are not welcome in Canada. And Trudeau should stop pretending they are.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.


Stefan Christoff  is a writer, musician and community activist living in Montréal

The US embargo on Cuba has failed

If Biden truly wants to put principles, and effectiveness, ahead of politics, he should make a bold choice and end the embargo.

Christopher Rhodes
21 Jul 2021

Police scuffle and detain an anti-government demonstrator during a protest in Havana, Cuba, Sunday July 11, 2021. Hundreds of demonstrators went out to the streets in several cities in Cuba to protest against ongoing food shortages and high prices of foodstuffs, amid the new coronavirus crisis. [Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo]

For nearly 60 years, the United States has enforced an embargo against Cuba, severely restricting the flow of goods to the island. Most US companies are forbidden from dealing with Cuba, and various US laws punish foreign companies that do business in Cuba. The restrictions are meant to economically squeeze the island and create enough discontent within Cuba to force the ruling Communist Party to either significantly reform or step down.

The Obama administration, with then-Vice President Biden’s support, sought to rethink the policy and pursue re-engagement with Cuba. Barack Obama relaxed sanctions, allowed direct flights between the two countries, and eased restrictions on Americans doing business in Cuba. Donald Trump reversed Obama’s strategy. He placed Cuba back on the US list of state sponsors of international terrorism, cut off travel between Cuba and the US, and barred Americans from sending remittances to their relatives in Cuba, cutting off a major economic lifeline for many Cubans.

Joe Biden promised to move away from this Trump strategy of “maximum pressures” against Cuba, but has so far not altered any of the Trump restrictions. The White House admitted earlier this year that “a Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.”

However, the protests that have been rocking Cuba for the past week – some of the largest since the Revolution – have forced the issue. Many Cuban American activists and Republicans are urging Biden to keep up or even increase pressure on Cuba, and Democrats are divided on whether to maintain or ease the embargo.

The strongest reason to end the embargo against Cuba is the massive toll that the policy continues to enact on the Cuban population. Both the Cuban government and the United Nations have estimated that the embargo has cost the Cuban economy $130 billion over six decades. It’s also worth noting that the US Chamber of Commerce estimates that the embargo costs the US economy billions of dollars each year, as well. The human toll is harder to quantify, but has clearly been significant. Human rights experts at the UN have urged the US to ease sanctions during the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that such a change will save lives by allowing Cuba greater access to medical supplies and equipment.

Cuba-policy hardliners have implicitly accepted the human and economic costs of the embargo as acceptable in order to achieve the goal of undermining the communist regime. They will point towards the unprecedented level of protests currently going on in Cuba as evidence that the embargo is working. It’s not. Yes, Cubans are angry at the economic hardships and pandemic suffering happening amongst their population. But as Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel uses repression and anti-US rhetoric to contain the protests, there’s little indication that the regime is in immediate danger.

The communist regime has already survived the fall of its Soviet sponsor, the death of Fidel Castro, and the handover of power from his younger brother Raul to Díaz-Canel, who is not a Castro and was born after the Revolution took power. Sixty years of sanctions have only created hardships for the Cuban people while providing the regime with a convenient scapegoat to blame for all of their country’s economic woes and societal discontent.

Counterintuitively, ending the embargo and promoting ties between the US and Cuba is the greatest weapon that America can deploy against the oppressive regime in Cuba. President Obama laid out the strategy when he opened up travel between the two countries: “Nobody represents America’s values better than the American people,” Obama said in 2014, “and I believe this contact will ultimately do more to empower the Cuban people.”

Exposing Cubans to the freedoms and opportunities available to their American relatives will increase outrage and pressure towards the Cuban government for failing to provide these things. And removing the ability of the Communist Party to blame the United States for its own failures will lay bare the consequences of the Cuban government’s unwillingness to shift away from Soviet-era economic policies and political repression.

Hardliners will argue that easing the embargo now will lessen the pressure on the Cuban government by lessening the societal desperation that has fuelled these protests. And while economic crises can lead to collective outrage, spontaneous protests against authoritarian regimes usually ends in renewed repression rather than regime change. Many experts believe that movements for social change are most effective when people and organisations gain the resources that are necessary for sustained political and social activism. Loosening the economic vice grip on Cuba will help to empower its citizens and civil society to stand up to their government.

The administration should be thoughtful about how it rethinks the embargo policy. It need not eliminate the policy all at once, nor should it relent on pressuring Cuba when it comes to democracy or human rights. But being thoughtful should not be an excuse for inaction. For example, rather than dismissing the idea of renewing remittances to Cuba, Biden should seriously explore ways to allow Americans to securely transfer money to their Cuban relatives.

Relaxing the embargo will be a risky political move for the president. Biden lost Florida in the 2020 election after underperforming among Latino voters, and a radical change in policy towards Cuba could risk alienating parts of the Cuban American population in the state.

Republicans will no doubt accuse the president of being soft on communism or caving in to progressive demands. But if Biden truly wants to put principles, and effectiveness, ahead of politics, he should make a bold choice and end six decades of US failure and Cuban suffering.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.



Christopher Rhodes
Lecturer in Government at Harvard University and lecturer in Social Sciences at Boston University.
Dr Christopher Rhodes is a lecturer in Government at Harvard University and lecturer in Social Sciences at Boston University. He is the author of the upcoming book Evangelical Violence: Christian Nationalism, the Great Commission and a Millennium of "Holy" Warfare and co-editor of the volume Conflict, Politics, and the Christian East: Assessing Contemporary Developments.

A Triple Whammy Has Left Many Inner-City Neighborhoods Highly Vulnerable to Soaring Temperatures

Climate change, heat islands and disinvestment have led New York to subsidize air conditioners and Phoenix to cool street corridors and public housing.

By James Bruggers
July 23, 2021

A person lays on the street near Times Square during a heatwave in New York, on Wednesday, June 30, 2021. Credit: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In New York City, several Hunts Point residents have lists of neighbors they’re checking on to help keep the most vulnerable alive during heat waves.

The city has also subsidized 74,000 air conditioners for low-income, elderly residents and is spending tens of millions to plant trees, as part of a “cool neighborhoods” program that also includes outdoor water misters.

In Phoenix, the nation’s hottest big city, officials are working with residents to develop a new model for cooler public housing and cooling key street and pedestrian corridors. Phoenix and Arizona State University say they are developing a system that all cities could use to benchmark heat management.

Because of their experience with killer heat, New York City and Phoenix are leading the way among American cities in an effort to cool down and help vulnerable residents survive heat waves. But for all they are doing, climate change means they, like most cities, will need to do even more to keep their cities livable, according to experts, advocates and city officials.

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As large swaths of North America sizzle through another hot summer and record heat waves, cities face a triple heat whammy.

Climate change is bearing down, messing with weather in new ways that can exacerbate and supercharge heat waves, as Seattle and Portland discovered in late June. Urban cores can be 10 degrees or more warmer than the surrounding countryside, because of the way cities have been built, with so much pavement, so many buildings and not enough trees. And decades of disinvestment in neighborhoods where people of color live have left them especially vulnerable to heat.

“As a society, as a country, we are not ready for this, the future,” said Juan Declet-Barreto, the senior social scientist for climate vulnerability with the Union of Concerned Scientists, which published a report on killer heat in 2019. Excessive heat and other extreme weather made worse by climate change are “happening now,” he said. “We’re watching the trailer for the climate change disaster film that we’re going to screen very soon.”
From California to Maine, Scorching Temperatures

As researchers have documented, heat-related mortality in the United States has been declining for decades. But that trend may be coming to an end, in part because of an increase in the number of heat events, said Kent State University geography professor Scott Sheridan.

During a 10-year period ending in 2018, heat mortality continued to decline for people over 65, probably a result of improved public messaging, according to a peer reviewed study published last year by the American Meteorological Society’s journal Weather, Climate and Society, led by Sheridan. But the researchers also found that there was an increase in mortality among men ages 45 to 64, especially in the southern and southwestern states, wiping out much of the gain in the older population.

For many parts of the country, this summer has been a scorcher.

An early summer heat wave across the western United States broke all-time records in seven states, from Colorado to California, according to the National Weather Service. Phoenix topped 115 degrees for a record six straight days, reaching 118 on June 17. Records were also set in Tucson, Arizona, and tied in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Billings, Montana.

Then in late June, in a region not accustomed to triple digit temperatures, heat overwhelmed the Northwest, not just breaking records but “smashing them,” according to a weather service report. In all, there was a week of what the Washington State Department of Health described as “unprecedented” heat. Portland peaked at 116 degrees at its international airport on June 28.

This past week, temperatures again soared over the inland Northwest and across the northern tier. In Montana, the National Weather Service office in Billings on Monday reported that it had successfully made cookies on a shiny aluminum tray outside its office, where the temperature hit 111 degrees.

In the East, the cities of New York, Boston and Portland, Maine, have flirted with 100 degree temperatures, resulting in heat warnings and strained electrical grids. In all, there were four heat waves in the Northeast in which the temperature reached 90 degrees for three or more days, said Samantha Borisoff, a climatologist with the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University in New York, on Tuesday.

Multiple weather stations from Syracuse, New York, to Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., set records for warm nights in June, she said. “Warm nights don’t allow the body to get relief from the heat, which can be particularly dangerous for high-risk populations and those without air conditioning,” she said.

Heat is the leading weather-related killer in the United States, and this summer, deaths are adding up.

Authorities have reported hundreds of deaths that are likely to be heat-related across the Northwest, including 117 in Washington State, with 29 in Seattle’s King County and 22 in Tacoma’s Pierce County. In Portland’s Multnomah County, a preliminary report tied 54 deaths to the heat wave—mostly older men who lived alone with no air conditioning.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said the deaths in the Northwest were maddening. “The deaths from heat waves are preventable,” he said. “When you see these kinds of outbreaks, I mean, in my view, they didn’t prepare well enough.”

The Seattle Times on Sunday reported that Seattle had no specific plan for a heat response, that only two of the city’s 26 community centers have air conditioning and that many of its public drinking fountains had been turned off because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Officials scrambled to open cooling centers at libraries and senior centers but some neighborhoods were left out.

“There needs to be thinking more about what climate change is going to throw at us, and how we can be better prepared,” Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington Center for Health and the Global Environment, told the newspaper.
Most Cities Don’t Manage Heat Very Well

Cities basically have two main heat problems confronting them: emergencies that require immediate action to save lives, and long-term issues related to combating soaring temperatures in the face of heat islands and global warming.

One reason so many cities are behind is that cities lack dedicated personnel and mandates to manage heat.

“If we were to show up at various city halls around the country, and ask who’s in charge of heat in their city, we wouldn’t get a very clear answer,” said David Hondula, a geographical sciences and urban planning professor at Arizona State University. “And we probably wouldn’t find anybody whose annual performance evaluation has anything to do with heat.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency requires cities or counties to conduct hazard mitigation planning, but for the most part the heat strategies are “embarrassing,” with minimal articulation of the problem or needed responses, he said.

Across the United States, hundreds of cities have adopted climate action plans, and many of those address heat in some way, said Vivek Shandas, a professor of climate adaptation at Portland State University. They are “great on paper,” he said, but in practice are generally not being implemented.

As a result of inaction, cities are keeping their most vulnerable at risk for heat-related deaths, he said.

Shandas was co-author of a study, published in 2020 in the journal Climate, that looked at heat across 108 urban communities and linked the higher temperatures to past practices of red-lining, the historical practice of refusing home loans or insurance to people in neighborhoods of color. They found that 94 of the areas they studied showed a pattern of higher surface temperatures in formerly redlined areas, compared to non-redlined neighborhoods, by as much as 12.6 degrees.

Disinvestment has continued in other ways since red-lining was banned in the 1960s, but with similar results. Shandas cited as an example at least one Portland heat death in June that he investigated.

“There were about 25 or so individual trailer homes,” he said. “These are metal boxes that were right on asphalt, and not only that, they get direct impact from the sun.”

With no air conditioning, he said, it could get “upwards of 130 to 140 degrees inside one of these homes. If you do have AC and you’re running it so hard, continually, the AC is likely to break, which is what happened to this older man who passed away from this heatwave.”

Benjamin, the public health association executive director, said it’s “not rocket science” for cities to figure out who their vulnerable populations are, and develop programs to check on them.

“Communicate with the same communities that your food programs have, or other social support programs, and senior citizen homes,” he said.
By 2050, Phoenix Will be Baghdad

If there’s any place in the county that can serve as a heat laboratory for cities it’s Phoenix. On average, Phoenix has 110 days each year with a high temperature over 100 degrees, and 19 days with high temperatures exceeding 110 degrees, according to its new draft climate action plan. July and August 2020 were the hottest on record, and 2020 saw 53 days with temperatures over 110 degrees and 145 days over 100 degrees.

Last year, Maricopa County had 2,414 heat-related emergency room visits and more than 300 heat-related deaths. It is investigating 138 potential heat-related deaths so far this year.

Researchers from ETA Zurich have forecast that by 2050 the Phoenix climate will be more like that of Baghdad.

Phoenix faces “dire prospects” with its urban heat island and the changing climate, said Declet-Barreto, who lived there for 17 years and earned a Ph.D. in environmental social sciences from Arizona State University.

“There are entire neighborhoods in Phoenix where there is just no vegetation at all,” he said. “It’s just all sorts of impervious surfaces, like cement and glass, and asphalt. Those are also the places where low income populations of color live.”

Eva O. Olivas, executive director and chief executive officer of the Phoenix Revitalization Corporation, a grassroots nonprofit working with underserved communities, agreed.

“To wait at the bus stop literally is a life threatening situation in our neighborhoods in the summertime,” she said.

Still, both Olivas and Declet-Barreto give the city credit for taking heat problems seriously.

The City of Phoenix and the Maricopa County Association of Governments established a heat-relief network in 2005, following an extreme heat event that killed 35 people over nine days. The network coordinates emergency response to heat waves, including water distribution and cooling centers. Phoenix also requires landlords to supply reasonable cooling to rental housing units—air conditioners must keep homes to no warmer than 82 degrees, for example.

The city is now also updating its climate action plan with a strong heat component: new goals of creating a network of 30 cool corridors in vulnerable communities by 2030; increasing shade trees in neighborhood parks and along streets and sidewalks; and incorporating more reflective materials into surfaces and buildings.

The city this year also is establishing an “Office of Heat Response and Mitigation,” aimed at coordinating the city’s response to heat.

Budget constraints amid competing priorities can slow progress, said Karen Peters, deputy city manager.

But she added: “Dealing with and adapting to heat is essential to our long term viability, both our economic viability and being able to provide quality of life for our residents and visitors. So it’s essential.”

Phoenix and its neighbor, Tempe, are also working with ASU to develop a certification system for cities striving to tackle heat. They’re calling the program “HeatReady,” modeled somewhat after the National Weather Services’ StormReady program, to help cities better prepare for and respond to severe storms like tornadoes and blizzards.

The HeatReady program will be designed to help cities think through their heat problems and develop responses based on efforts tested in the Phoenix area, said Hondula, the ASU professor. The program will provide a framework for steps that can be taken, such as adding shade, cooling surfaces like roads, rooftops and parking lots, and adding water features, messaging and public education.

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The partners are still working through questions of how demanding the requirements for certification will be, he said. “Is it really going to be a deep, sophisticated evaluation tool?” Or, he said, it could end up being something more or less based on “good faith and trusting that the pieces are in place.”
And New York Will Feel Like Birmingham

New York City averages 10 deaths a year directly attributable to heat stress and 350 deaths a year from natural causes exacerbated by heat, according to the city’s health department.

The nation’s largest city, with 8.4 million people, experienced on average two heat waves per year from 1970 to 2000. With climate change, New York is bracing for an increase in the number of heat waves, with a tripling of the days when temperatures go over 90, from a baseline of 18 between the years of 1971 and 2000, to 57 by 2050.

New York City will feel more like Birmingham, Alabama, said Jainey Bavishi, director of the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency.

With heat in mind, the city announced it was strengthening its heat adaptation work in 2017, through a new Cool Neighborhoods NYC program that pledged tens of millions toward tree planting and other initiatives, expanded a cool roof program and launched the “Be A Buddy” program targeting the most vulnerable areas.

The city worked with Columbia University to develop a risk index that ranks neighborhood vulnerability, taking into account factors such as density, lack of education, race and poverty, Bavishi said. “When you look at the heat vulnerability index, you can see that the neighborhoods that kind of light up as being the most vulnerable in the city are the South Bronx, Northern Manhattan and Central Brooklyn,” she said.

The city’s heat reduction program involves “physically retrofitting neighborhoods so we can bring temperatures down,” she said.

To help with heat emergencies, she said, home health aides are being trained in heat safety. “They can make sure that their patients are staying hydrated or getting access to a cool space if they need it,” Bavishi said.

The city also launched its buddy pilot program, working with neighborhood organizations like The Point, a nonprofit community development group operating in the industrial Hunts Point neighborhood of the South Bronx. As part of a larger heat mitigation effort, The Point helps distribute subsidized air conditioners and runs a program, a person-to-person outreach that seeks to prepare the community for climate events.

Many mayors ask their city’s residents to check on loved ones and neighbors during weather extremes. The New York City program takes that a step further, by training residents in how to help their neighbors navigate extreme weather.

It’s “very preemptive,” said Danny Peralta, executive managing director of The Point. “This is like how all communities should kind of work at this point, if we’re gonna be able to save lives. And honestly, you know, be able to secure neighborhoods from the effects of climate, which is affecting everybody.”

Related

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A Deadly Summer in the Pacific Northwest Augurs More Heat Waves, and More Deaths to Come

James Bruggers
Reporter, Southeast, National Environment Reporting Network
James Bruggers covers the U.S. Southeast, part of Inside Climate News’ National Environment Reporting Network. He previously covered energy and the environment for Louisville’s Courier Journal, where he worked as a correspondent for USA Today and was a member of the USA Today Network environment team. Before moving to Kentucky in 1999, Bruggers worked as a journalist in Montana, Alaska, Washington and California. Bruggers’ work has won numerous recognitions, including best beat reporting, Society of Environmental Journalists, and the National Press Foundation’s Thomas Stokes Award for energy reporting. He served on the board of directors of the SEJ for 13 years, including two years as president. He lives in Louisville with his wife, Christine Bruggers.