1776 A SLAVE MASTERS REVOLT

 AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Expanding Our Understanding of the Revolution

Despite all the controversy it has courted, Woody Holton's newest book doesn't stray very far from other scholarly interpretations of the American Revolution.

JEFFREY ROGERS HUMMEL | FROM THE MARCH 2022 ISSUE REASON 

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(Simon & Schuster)

Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution, by Woody Holton, Simon & Schuster, 779 pages, $37.50

Even before Woody Holton's Liberty Is Sweet was released, it ignited controversy. Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The New York Times' 1619 Project, touted it as evidence that a British threat to slavery provoked the American Revolution. Then Holton, a historian at the University of South Carolina, argued in The Washington Post that "Whites' fury at the British for casting their lot with enslaved people drove many to the fateful step of endorsing independence," prompting six leading historians of the period to respond in a critical open letter.

But the book itself turns out to be much more restrained than either its champions or its detractors have presumed. Though Holton casts occasional aspersions on allegedly standard "myths" about the Revolution, his overall interpretation of the Revolution's causes and consequence doesn't stray very far from other scholarly volumes. Even Gordon Wood, one of the most prominent historians who signed the critical open letter, gives the book a terse but apt jacket blurb: "A spirited account of the Revolution that brings everybody and everything into the story."

Liberty Is Sweet is interesting, densely packed with detail, and exhaustively researched. It is also relentlessly chronological and occasionally disjointed. Its description of the revolt of the Regulators in North Carolina, for example, is broken up across three separate chapters interspersed with his treatment of other events. In covering the major contemporaneous military campaigns that resulted in the British occupation of Philadelphia and the battles near Saratoga in New York, the book jumps back and forth between the two theaters rather than separately treating each in full. Although this approach should pose few problems for those familiar with the period, it may compromise the appeal of Holton's book for a more general audience.

In the first of the book's three distinct sections, Holton addresses the question of slavery's role in motivating the Revolution. The more extreme proponents of this charge invoke the 1772 Somerset court decision in Britain that freed a slave brought from the colonies. But Holton says only that the decision "strengthened the case against the king" for "many slaveholders," and he concedes that other measures "proved equally decisive."

Indeed, by this point his narrative has covered almost a decade of colonial grievances about such measures as the Proclamation of 1763 and the Stamp Act of 1765. Moreover, an endnote backtracks slightly, admitting that while "Somerset angered slaveholders (especially in the Caribbean), there is much less evidence for the corollary contention that one reason white southerners favored secession from Britain in July 1776 was that they feared Britain's growing anti-slavery movement." Holton specifically contradicts the 1619 Project, saying that Hannah-Jones's "claim vastly exaggerates the strength and size of the British abolition movement in 1772."

In the book's second section, covering the war itself, Holton does engage in a bit of a stretch. Half a year after conflict erupted in Massachusetts, the Virginia Assembly effectively governed independently of the royal governor, the earl of Dunmore. Having fled to a British warship, Dunmore issued a proclamation in November 1775 offering freedom to any slaves or indentured servants who would fight for the British. The offer applied only to Virginia slaves and servants, and even then only to those owned by rebels. Holton boldly asserts that "no other document—not even Thomas Paine's Common Sense or the Declaration of Independence—did more than Dunmore's proclamation to convert white residents of Britain's most populous American colony to the cause of independence."

Historians have long recognized that Dunmore's proclamation stiffened resistance in Virginia, especially because it raised the dreaded specter of slave revolts. Robert Middlekauff wrote in 1982 that "whatever loyalty there was in Virginia pretty much flickered out with Dunmore's call." Even Murray Rothbard, in Conceived in Liberty, acknowledged this effect. Notice also that Holton is not claiming that the proclamation sparked the rebellion against Britain—just that it promoted the desire for full independence in Virginia.

On the other hand, the implication that Virginians would have otherwise hesitated about declaring independence seems far too speculative. Holton himself brings up several other factors that propelled the rebels toward a complete separation from the mother country.

A British general, George Clinton, subsequently issued a broader proclamation offering freedom to rebel-owned slaves in all colonies, regardless of whether they fought for the British, again excluding those owned by Loyalists. Holton several times refers to an "Anglo-African alliance," and he scrupulously records nearly every military engagement in which blacks participated. But he does so on both sides of the conflict, writing that "by war's end, some nine thousand African Americans had served in the Whig army and navy—roughly the same number who enlisted with the British." While more than 3,000 emancipated slaves joined the British evacuation from New York at the end of the war, Holton concludes that many of the African Americans who shipped out of British-held Savannah and Charleston likely remained slaves, either handed over to white Loyalists "or snapped up by a British officer," often landing in Britain's Caribbean slave colonies.

Holton gives far greater attention than other general accounts to African Americans during this period, but his discussion of "the emergence of a significant free African American population" in "the post-revolutionary United States" omits one notable contributing factor. He credits Vermont, founded as an independent republic in 1777, with being "first in the modern world to abolish slavery." He also mentions Pennsylvania's adoption of gradual emancipation in 1780 and Massachusetts' 1780 Declaration of Rights, which made it "the first of the original thirteen states to abolish slavery." But he does not mention that the upper-South states of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia relaxed their restrictions on masters voluntarily freeing their slaves. Virginia's doing so in 1782 resulted in the manumission of an estimated 10,000 slaves over the next decade and a half, more than were freed in Massachusetts by judicial decree.

Liberty Is Sweet offers an equally expansive treatment of Native Americans. It opens with a map delineating the boundaries of the numerous "First Nations" (a Canadian usage Holton frequently employs) east of the Mississippi. Members of these groups, like black Americans, fought on both sides of the conflict, although preponderantly for the British. A third group the book brings to the foreground is women, who crucially supported boycotts of British goods and frugality crusades; launched campaigns to make shirts for the Continental Army; participated in food riots; took over management of farms, plantations, and businesses while their husbands were absent; served as sources of valuable military intelligence; and were often army camp followers, even sometimes fighting alongside the men.

The book's second section is unique in its detailed concentration on military events. Holton covers many minor skirmishes and raids that are often ignored even in purely military histories of the war. And his descriptions are interspersed with telling vignettes about individual participants, conveying better than most accounts how chaotic and savage the conflict could be. It is fairly well known that, until the 20th century, disease regularly killed more soldiers than battle, but Holton's account drives this home. He also gives more attention than usual to resistance against conscription, and he reveals how the 18th century obsession with honor may have motivated commanders on both sides to make otherwise seemingly mistaken decisions. The downside of this heavy concentration on combat is that the book's coverage of wartime politics and finance is comparatively abbreviated.

The third and final section deals with postwar events, extending beyond the Constitution's adoption all the way to the Whiskey Rebellion and the Washington administration's Indian campaigns. Holton's take on the Constitution mirrors his earlier book on the subject, treating it as a counterrevolution "in favor of government." This conclusion is consistent with nearly all recent scholarship, whether specific writers approve of the result or, like Holton, disapprove. The final chapter appropriately deals with the territory lost by the First Nations.

In appraising the Revolution, Holton finds benefits and costs, with a bit more emphasis on the latter, but this is ultimately a glass-half-empty/half-full question. At one point he warns "against any effort to explain the American Revolution in strictly ideological terms," but no serious historian I know of has ever argued that the Revolution was motivated exclusively by ideology, unaffected by economic self-interest, even if ideology was that particular historian's specific interest or topic.

In short, Liberty Is Sweet discusses many facets of the revolutionary era that other general accounts treat less copiously or even ignore. But despite the book's billing as a "hidden history," it does not dramatically overturn the standard interpretations.

JEFFREY ROGERS HUMMEL is the author of Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War (Open Court). He teaches economics and history at San Jose State University.

How Giving Legal Rights to an Indigenous Food Could Stop a Pipeline

The White Earth Band of Anishinaabe gave wild rice legal rights in 2018. Now they’re suing the state in tribal court to stop Line 3 on its behalf.


EAMON WHALEN

Fellow Bio
Mother Jones

Mother Jones illustration; Getty

In 2018, Frank Bibeau, a member of and attorney for the White Earth band of Anishinaabe—the largest of the six federally recognized Indigenous reservations that make up the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe—had an idea.

By that point, for the better part of a decade, Bibeau had been part of organizing efforts to stop the construction of Line 3. A pipeline set to transport tar-sands crude oil from Alberta, Canada, across 330 miles of northern Minnesota to Superior, Wisconsin, Line 3 was planned as a replacement for an older pipeline. But the new Line 3 would carry double the oil, enough to produce the carbon emissions equivalent to the yearly output of 50 coal power plants. After years of dutifully participating in the state’s regulatory processes around Line 3, Bibeau was coming to realize in 2018 that he’d have to find a new strategy that went above and beyond the usual legal tactics used by environmentalists.

In addition to contributing to global warming, another central criticism raised about Line 3 was that it would perilously cross 200 bodies of water in northern Minnesota. Those wetlands encompass 389 acres of Manoomin—an edible grain that Bibeau learned to harvest as a young man. Known in English as wild rice, it’s a staple of the meals, beverages, medicines, and cultural ceremonies of Anishinaabe people. The threat that Line 3 posed to what is considered a sacred plant—and that Minnesota made the official state grain in 1977—was indicative of a longer history of promises made to Native people that the state has failed to keep.

History had taught Bibeau that he couldn’t count on the state’s regulatory agencies to be sufficient environmental stewards, so that year, Bibeau drafted a law to be adopted by White Earth that codified Manoomin with “the right to pure water and freshwater habitat; the right to a healthy climate system and a natural environment free from human-caused global warming impacts and emissions.”The current system doesn’t so much protect nature as permit and regulate the destruction of it.

To give a tree or a river or in this case a plant legal rights is a novel, if not heretical, concept in Western legal frameworks. In response to a deepening ecological and climate crisis, in which the regulatory bodies tasked with protecting nature are too often captured by the corporate interests destroying it, the paradigm shift is catching on around the world. Rights-of-nature laws have been passed everywhere from New Zealand to Pennsylvania to Uganda to Pakistan to Florida. The rights-of-nature movement has proved most consequential, however, in countries with powerful Indigenous social movements. In 2008 Ecuador became the first country to codify rights of nature into their national constitution, followed by Bolivia, which did the same in 2011. As Chile prepares to rewrite its constitution, it is reportedly considering rights-of-nature provisions.

In the final days of 2018, Bibeau’s law passed. A few weeks later, White Earth leadership sent a letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, alerting the newly sworn-in Democrat that they and the 1855 Treaty Authority had given wild rice legal rights, and pressing him on Line 3. (While running for office, Walz tweeted: “Any line that goes through treaty lands is a nonstarter for me.”) The end of the letter read: “We look forward to working together to protect our One Minnesota common, environmental resources which all require clean water. Time is of the essence as the United Nations has warned we only have 12 years to curb climate change.”

In retrospect, those final words read like a warning.

Construction of Line 3 began in December 2020, and thousands of people came to different camps along the pipeline route to protest through the year, reaching their height last summer. Hundreds were arrested by state law enforcement (including my mother, who was arrested at a demonstration against Line 3 near Palisade, Minnesota, last December and spent a night in Aitkin County Jail) and are still facing charges. State and local law enforcement got their overtime pay and other expenses reimbursed by Enbridge. By late summer, Bibeau was ready to try his novel legal maneuver.

In August, as the construction on Line 3 was finalized and the oil set to flow, White Earth filed a lawsuit in tribal court against the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The lead plaintiff was Manoomin.

“We’ve tried playing their game, we’ve tried playing under their rules and laws, and those things didn’t work,” Bibeau said.

The latest iteration of the fight to stop Line 3 could be the plan Bibeau hatched in 2018: the rights of Manoomin.

Manoomin is inextricable from Anishinaabe history. As told by the Seven Fires Prophecy, Anishinaabe migrated from the Atlantic coast through the Great Lakes to “the land where food grows on water,” or what European settlers later called the land of 10,000 lakes. Every September, ricers canoe through the shallow water to harvest the Manoomin that grows near the shores of the wetlands abundant in the northern half of the state. In 2018, researchers at the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering concluded what Anishinaabe already knew: Manoomin is an “indicator species.” A body of water will be only as healthy as the wild rice growing in it. “Our treaty foods are a canary in the coal mine for the environment,” Bibeau said.

Bibeau is the executive director of the 1855 Treaty Authority, an entity made up of representatives of different Chippewa tribes that oversee the status of treaty rights in the ceded territories. For Bibeau, the potential for legal enforcement of the rights of Manoomin hinges on the unique strength of their treaty rights. Under both the 1837 and 1855 treaties, Chippewa were granted usufructuary rights to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice within the territories they ceded to the United States. Most importantly for this case, those rights extend outside of reservation boundaries because they were established before reservations existed, like White Earth, which was established in 1867.

Bibeau and his co-counsel Joe Plummer’s legal argument goes like this: Anishinaabe have a treaty-protected right to gather wild rice on and off reservation, and the White Earth Anishinaabe have codified wild rice with legal rights. The rights of wild rice beds within treaty-protected territory were violated when the state granted the dewatering permits to Enbridge without the consent of tribal leaders, they argue, and so the permits should be invalidated by the state. If Enbridge is no longer permitted to pump Minnesota water, they’d have no choice but to shut down Line 3.

A recent ruling by the Constitutional Court of Ecuador that invalidated mining permits in the forest preserve Los Cedros shows that in a different legal system, these rights-of-nature laws could have real-world impact. But so far in the United States, rights-of-nature laws have been symbolic gestures that are easily circumvented. The closest thing to a sovereign legal system in the United States is tribal court. Combine that independent jurisdiction with the power of treaty rights—“the supreme law of the land,” according to Article 6 of the United States constitution—and a consequential rights-of-nature ruling in the United States becomes more plausible.

“It’s kind of a perfect storm,” explained Thomas Linzey, an environmental attorney and executive director of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, an organization that works worldwide to draft rights-of-nature laws and who consulted with Bibeau and White Earth on the rights of Manoomin. “Which is why the state has been scrambling to try to contain it. Because if it starts to actually become accepted then that case has wide-scale implications for other tribes who might use rights of nature laws to extend that protection of natural resources through their treaty rights,” Linzey said. When Bibeau and Linzey first met, Bibeau was new to the rights-of-nature legal movement, and Linzey hadn’t yet recognized the unique leverage that tribal courts could have to implement rights-of-nature laws. “Tom had the right tools,” Bibeau said. “And I showed him how I would use his tools.”

The lawsuit is focused on a Water Appropriation Permit granted by the Department of Natural Resources that authorized Enbridge to pump nearly 5 billion gallons of water from the ground to help dig the trench for 145 miles of pipeline it had left to build—a process called dewatering. It was 10 times the amount the company originally requested, and White Earth tribal leaders feared it would negatively affect the water quality in the area’s wetlands where Manoomin grows, which were already suffering from a drought.

By granting the Water Appropriation permit, the Department of Natural Resources “has intentionally and knowingly violated the Rights of Manoomin by unilaterally granting 5 billion gallons of water, without official notice to tribes, without Chippewa consent, on and off White Earth Reservation,” the complaint states. The Department of Natural Resources has responded by contesting that White Earth lacks jurisdiction to sue them off-reservation and have attempted to move the case out of tribal court.

On August 12, the DNR filed a motion to dismiss the case from tribal court. They were rejected. They then sued the White Earth Tribal court in a US District court. The case was dismissed. They then appealed the federal court’s decision to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, triggering a mandatory hearing on December 16, 2021, in which Assistant Attorney General Oliver Larson argued that White Earth was attempting to “take a tribal legal code and apply it off-reservation on the theory that their usufructuary rights allow them to do that.”

In a December 21 hearing in White Earth Tribal Court, Assistant Attorney General Colin O’Donovan argued that the Department of Natural Resources had immunity from tribal court, and suggested that White Earth should sue Enbridge instead of Minnesota. O’Donovan’s suggestion gets to the core of the intervention that rights-of-nature laws are trying make in the existing United States legal system. As Linzey explained it, the current system doesn’t so much protect nature as permit and regulate the destruction of it. That’s why, for Bibeau, the suggestion to file his lawsuit with Enbridge instead of the state defied logic.

“[They say,] ‘Why don’t they sue the pipeline?’ Well, the pipeline just lays there and makes an application to do something. It’s the Department of Natural Resources, the Public Utilities Commission, the Pollution Control Agency that gives them the right to go do something,” Bibeau said. “So why would we go after the pipeline when these are the culprits? They don’t see themselves in the mirror. They think they’re invisible or something.”

Several recent developments bolster Bibeau’s argument that state regulatory agencies have been insufficient in protecting the state’s water from the environmental harm caused by Line 3. In January 2021, Enbridge workers punctured an aquifer digging the trench for the pipeline, and the Department of Natural Resources didn’t notice until June 2021. Enbridge announced last month, a full year later, that it had stopped the flow of water from the aquifer. Meanwhile, Bibeau and other Line 3 opponents have been tracking what has now been revealed as up to 28 spills of environmentally harmful drilling-fluid along the pipeline construction route, called “frac-outs.”

While the history of American jurisprudence may be stacked against him, Bibeau sees reasons for optimism in how his lawsuit has galvanized other Native tribes around the country. He points to an amicus brief filed in support of the lawsuit on behalf of seven other Chippewa bands across Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, who see Bibeau’s strategy as a way to bolster tribal sovereignty. In fact, on January 6 the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe filed a lawsuit against the city of Seattle in tribal court. The plaintiff was Tsuladxw, or, in English, Salmon, a treaty-protected food the tribe had given legal rights.

“They saw a pathway, and that’s what’s gonna happen for other people: They’re going to see that there’s a path, and it’s in tribal court using tribal law,” Bibeau said. “It’s going to rely more on our primary treaty foods, and the ones that are connected and rely upon waters the most are the ones that are going to be the most important for us to use. Because that’s what we have to safeguard.”

Will Manoomin see its day in court? Bibeau and Linzey see a path. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals would have to agree to let the case proceed through tribal court, where there can be a trial to determine whether Manoomin’s rights were violated by the effects of the 5 billion gallon dewatering permit. “We’re going to be patient, methodical and we’re going to have a very thorough record created in tribal court, who are more deferential and understanding of our cultural values,” Bibeau said. “I believe we have the right to demand consent, and that the state has to get consent from us. Because our rights are not in common.”

The pathological politics of leaving the pandemic behind

Illustrated | iStock

If you thought partisanship was making us stupid, just wait till you see how Republicans respond to Democrats lifting COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

There are numerous signs this week that Democrats are ready to do precisely that. But will Republicans applaud, cheering on a belated embrace of something they've been advocating for the better part of two years? Not on your life. After endless months of hitting Democrats for upholding masking requirements and attempting to enforce vaccine mandates, Republicans are getting ready to hit them again, this time for lifting pandemic restrictions on the grounds that late is really no better than never.

The line we'll likely hear is this: Your polling must really be in the tank if you're conceding we were right all along!

The claim will be that Democrats are just running scared from political reality, not responding to how the Omicron wave unfolded or the inevitable need to transition to a longer-term, endemic response to COVID-19 and its future variants. The right will insist the left has always wanted to impose its will on the country, forcing everyone to don masks and curtail their activities, and only now is preparing to back down from its "soft totalitarian" footing with great reluctance in the face of a surge of popular resentment.

This is mostly projection. Democrats have actually adjusted their positions quite a lot over time as public health authorities have learned more about the virus, how it spreads, whom it kills, and how many Americans would take advantage of widely available and effective vaccines. They've also learned things from the highly contagious but less deadly Omicron wave. Those lessons are the very reason views are now beginning to change (among public health officials and office holders, as well as in the public at large). 

It's Republicans who have been lamentably consistent from nearly the beginning of the pandemic in opposing any and all restrictions and painfully resistant to adjusting course as COVID-19 deaths have risen into the stratosphere.

Recall, the pandemic began with Republican President Donald Trump backing lockdowns in mid-March 2020. But the first protests against them took place in Michigan a month later, and a few days after that, Trump tweeted "LIBERATE MICHIGAN," "LIBERATE MINNESOTA," and "LIBERATE VIRGINA." Very little has changed on the right since then, as lockdowns have been lifted and various mandates imposed, and as the number of deaths has climbed past 900,000.

The Democratic response to the pandemic has been far from perfect. But it has usually been motivated by a concern for public health, and it has shown an admirable willingness to adjust course in the face of new information. That's more than one can say about Republicans.

DAMON LINKER

5:55 AM

An investment in clean indoor air would do more than help us fight COVID—it would help us concentrate

At CO2 levels that are common in indoor spaces, our ability to concentrate drops. 

But we can have fresher air inside.

[Photo: Morsa Images/Getty Images]

BY PETER MARTIN
02-09-22
Sometimes the best things you can do are invisible.

Such as fighting cholera by ensuring drinking water wasn’t contaminated by sewage, as happened in London in the 1840s.

Or setting up an emissions trading scheme, which drove emissions down, despite former prime minister Tony Abbott attacking it as a “so-called market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one”.

Air free from contamination is as invisible as uncontaminated water, but the case for air isn’t yet as widely accepted as it is for water.

Air pollution from motor vehicles kills about 280 Australians per year, yet Australian petrol is allowed to contain 15 times as much sulphur as petrol sold in the US, the UK, Europe, Korea, Japan and New Zealand. Australia is planning to adopt in 2024 the standard adopted elsewhere in 2015.

And poor air quality harms us in ways that fall short of death.

POOR AIR HARMS PERFORMANCE

A new six-nation study of office workers in countries from China to the United States found that where ventilation is poor and levels of particulate matter are high, workers perform worse or more slowly on tests involving adding and subtracting and colour-coding words.

Another study on the relationship between indoor air quality and competitive chess players found that when the concentration of fine particulate matter with a diameter smaller than 2.5 micrometres (0.0025mm, better known as PM2.5) climbs as much as it can, players are 26% more likely to make mistakes.

The effect is worse if the players are running out of time.

Smart employers recognise this. When Google moved into a new headquarters in Mountain View, California, it was offered air filtration that cut pollutants to 0.0001 parts per billion. It opted for zero parts per billion, and paid more to get it.

If performance and education matter (and they do—on Monday the government launched a new inquiry into productivity) we ought to be treating clean air as an investment in productivity, over and above its undoubted benefit in containing the spread of COVID.

Here’s my big idea. The A$14 billion Building the Education Revolution program Labor put in place during the global financial crisis both helped fight the crisis and left Australia with thousands of school halls.

As far as legacies go, this wasn’t bad. The halls have been used for assemblies and plays and before and after school care.

But a program designed to contain the spread of COVID that left Australia with schools and workplaces in which the occupants were able to think clearly, and rarely caught infections—that would deliver an enduring dividend.

Many schools have openable windows, as do some workplaces. But in winter and for security reasons they are often closed and not reopened.

Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska, director of International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at the Queensland University of Technology, says outside air typically contains about 420 parts per million of carbon dioxide.

Beyond a few hundred parts per million indoors, the aerosols that carry viruses circulate rather than get blown away. In closed rooms and offices they can travel long distances and remain aloft for hours. Beyond 1,000 parts per million—and indoors, many times 1,000ppm is common—our ability to concentrate drops.

In order to fight COVID in classrooms, education authorities in Victoria, NSW, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania the ACT and the Northern Territory say they are prepared to install air purifiers where needed.

The ACT is reusing those it bought to filter smoke during the 2020 bushfires. Victoria has gone the furthest—ordering 51,000 from Samsung.

These so-called high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters work by removing ultra-fine particles rather than bringing in air from the outside.

PORTABLE PURIFIERS ARE A STOPGAP

As a stop-gap for fighting COVID Professor Morawska thinks purifiers are okay. But she says as soon as COVID passes they are likely to be put in cupboards and not used til next time. They are unlikely to produce a lasting benefit..

A far, far cheaper and perhaps more enduring solution would be to buy or mandate cheap carbon dioxide (C0₂) meters (portable meters can cost less than $100) for every classroom, office and shop.

Heavy duty meters can be mounted on walls and set to glow red when the air is bad. They are in schools throughout Germany.

C0₂ meters do more than monitor carbon dioxide.

By calculating how much of it is in rooms where humans have been, they measure ventilation. They are a good guide as to whether air is circulating and viruses and toxins are being diluted.

Installing meters and ensuring their output is displayed might just be one of the best-value interventions to fight COVID there is—leaving us with the lasting benefit of air that is safe in the same way as our water is safe.

METERS MAKE THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE

The initial cost would be low compared to the $14 billion spent on school halls.

The lasting benefit would be an awareness of when and where we needed to open windows and spend money installing better air flow systems, and when and where we did not.

The cost of poor indoor air can be measured not just in billions, but in billions per year. Back in the late 1990s the CSIRO calculated a cost of $12 billion per year. Two decades on, coronaviruses and bushfire smoke would make it greater still.

We’ve been offered a cost-effective chance to make the invisible visible and extend our productivity and lifespans. I reckon we should grab it.

Peter Martin is a visiting fellow at Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Louis DeJoy says USPS wants to order 5,000 electric postal vehicles

U.S. Postmaster General Louis Dejoy speaks during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on February 24, 2021. He said this week the postal service wants to order 5,000 new electric vehicles for letter carriers. File Photo by Graeme Jennings/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said this week the U.S. Postal Service is proposing a purchase of 5,000 electric vehicles as it starts to update its aging fleet with more environmentally friendly options.

The Postal Service faced criticism for not including more electric vehicles in its current plan, which calls for 90% of the fleet to be gas-powered vehicles, CNN reported.

DeJoy said the USPS would like to order more electric vehicles but additional funds would have to become available.

"Absent such funding, we must make fiscally responsible decisions that result in the needed introduction of safer and environmentally cleaner vehicles for the men and women who deliver America's mail," he said in a statement Sunday.

The postal service said it has made its leading engineering, logistics and labor staff available to key federal agencies to determine what is needed from an environmental standpoint for its new delivery vehicles.

DeJoy said he hopes that many of the vehicles can be delivered by next year but added that financial restraints continue to hamper the agency.

"When you're an independent government entity running billion-dollar annual losses, and with a Congressional mandate to operate in a financially sustainable manner, we are compelled to act prudently in the interests of the American public," DeJoy said.

"However, that responsibility should not be mistaken for an ambivalent commitment to operating a cleaner postal vehicle fleet for our country."

DeJoy said that Congress is aware of the postal service's financial limitations in getting electric vehicles on the road and the service will continue to operate in a manner to move toward getting the new vehicles on the road.

The service said electric postal vehicles an internal combustion engine would be more fuel-efficient as compared to the current ones despite being larger. The new vehicle would provide the postal service carriers with numerous modern safety features including 360-degree cameras, automatic front and rear braking, and a driver airbag.

Democrats press postmaster to go with electric vehicles

BY ZACK BUDRYK - 02/09/22

© Associated Press/David Zalubowski

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and climate hawk Democrats in Congress are pressing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to backtrack on the purchase of thousands of gasoline-powered U.S. Postal Service vehicles, setting up a confrontation with one of the few federal officials President Biden can’t replace at will.

Biden in 2021 issued an executive order calling for the federal government to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 — an ambitious goal that would necessarily require the cooperation of the Postal Service, which has the single largest civilian vehicle fleet in the nation.

But in February 2021, the Postal Service awarded the vehicle contract to Oshkosh for a predominantly gasoline-powered fleet, and DeJoy has only committed to 10 percent of the up to 165,000 new vehicles being electric.

Last week, the EPA, the White House Council on Environmental Quality and a group of 17 Democratic senators and representatives called on DeJoy, a longtime donor to former President Trump who was appointed in 2020, to amend the Postal Service procurement plan to increase the percentage of electric vehicles. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Tom Carper (D-Del.), who joined the congressional letter, also sent his own letter.

The EPA noted that the vehicles in the contract are projected to get 8.6 mpg, only a slight change from their predecessors’ 8.2 mpg.

The transportation sector comprises about one-third of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions annually, the largest single source in the country.

Democrats, already unhappy with DeJoy, blasted the decision.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who chairs the House Oversight and Reform subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service, called the decision to purchase the vehicles “another reason why DeJoy was the wrong choice in the summer of 2020 and he’s the wrong choice now to lead the postal service into the future.”

“If he were to succeed in this contract, to me, it’s an enormous lost opportunity,” Connolly told The Hill.

“Rather than delivering on the potential for a healthier, cheaper, and more climate-friendly fleet of mail trucks, Louis DeJoy is undercutting our government-wide goals and subverting the environmental review process,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who led the letter, told The Hill in a statement. “This is unacceptable, it’s short-sighted, and our nation’s postal carriers and customers deserve better.”

The Postal Service has maintained that fully electrifying the fleet would cost an additional $300 billion.

“While we can understand why some who are not responsible for the financial sustainability of the Postal Service might prefer that we acquire more electric vehicles, the law requires us to be self-sufficient,” the Postal Service said in a statement last week.

It added that it is prepared to electrify at a faster rate “if a solution can be found to do so that is not financially detrimental to the Postal Service.”

“The proposed action, which we are evaluating under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), includes an initial order plan for 5,000 electric vehicles, and the flexibility to increase the number of electric vehicles introduced should additional funding become available,” DeJoy said in a statement Sunday. “Absent such funding, we must make fiscally responsible decisions that result in the needed introduction of safer and environmentally cleaner vehicles for the men and women who deliver America’s mail.”

DeJoy made a similar defense of the move at a Tuesday Postal Service board meeting, saying he is “compelled to act prudently in the interest of the American public.”

“That responsibility should not be mistaken for an ambivalent commitment to operating a cleaner postal vehicle fleet for our country,” he added. “As with everything else we now do, we will be resolute in making decisions that are grounded in our financial situation and what we can realistically achieve.”

Reached for comment, a Postal Service spokesperson referred The Hill to the Friday statement.

DeJoy’s history of donations to Republicans and Trump has led to Democratic scrutiny of his tenure at the Postal Service. This was particularly true in 2020, when he assumed office while Trump was frequently making baseless claims that mail-in voting would be used as a means for widespread voter fraud.

Last March, the Postal Service unveiled a 10-year cost-cutting plan that would involve the closure of 18 mail-sorting facilities nationwide, consolidating the closed facilities’ services to other cities in their regions. The plan sparked outrage within the American Postal Workers Union, with leaders saying the planned cutbacks and consolidations would hurt service.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), who introduced legislation in 2021 to make the Postal Service fleet 75 percent electrified, dismissed DeJoy’s response to the criticisms of its purchasing plan as “hostage-taking,” telling The Hill that DeJoy “suggest[ed] that if Congress sweetened the deal enough, them he could go ahead and electrify.”

“It shouldn’t have to take that,” Huffman added, noting that many of the Postal Service’s biggest competitors, such as Amazon and FedEx, are actively electrifying their fleets “just on the economics of it.”

“Unfortunately, the Postal Service is still sitting on a [Request for Proposal] and a contract that could have been written in the 1980s,” he added. “If Louis DeJoy has his way, he’s going to buy a whole bunch of gas guzzlers that in 15 or 20 years will be the last internal combustion fleet vehicles on the road.”

DeJoy was appointed by the Postal Service Board of Governors, all of whom were themselves named by Trump, and cannot be removed by Biden. While Congress’s recourse is also limited, Connolly noted that it has legislated on postal issues before, such as in 2006, when it voted down a proposal to change mail delivery from six to five days a week.

Democratic lawmakers criticize USPS plan to purchase gas-powered...

“Congress has legislative oversight, so we do have options and we’ll look at them very carefully,” he said.

While neither Congress nor the Biden administration can order DeJoy to reconsider the order, they can apply public pressure, as in 2020, when lawmakers pressured DeJoy to walk back operational changes like the removal of some public mailboxes.

DeJoy also delayed a number of planned cost-cutting measures within the department after widespread concern that they could affect mail-in voting in the 2020 presidential election during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Americans Are in Total Denial About Flooding

Among the less-discussed parts of Build Back Better: It would help keep people from drowning.

A man attempts to cross Creek Road in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, the morning following historic flooding from the Hurricane Ida storm system.

Liza Featherstone/February 9, 2022

In the Pacific Northwest, farmers, indigenous groups and governments are struggling to reach consensus over how to manage the Nooksack River in a time of devastating flooding, Mother Jones reports. On Manhattan’s Lower East Side, some community members and environmental groups in the past year have fought the city’s flood protection plans because they imperil a beloved waterfront park. In Congress, centrists and Republicans are blocking the Build Back Better package, which contains billions of dollars for flood control.

The United States will face a 26 percent increase in flood risk over the next three decades. But the problem’s already here: According to a study by the First Street Foundation, nearly 13 percent of all properties in the United States already face either a “substantial” or an “almost certain” risk of flooding. Flooding currently costs us $32 billion a year. Flood control should therefore, in theory, be one of the easiest aspects of the climate crisis to get people to act on: The dangers are immediate, visible, and quantifiable. So why are Americans so incapable of forging a working consensus?

Surviving the climate crisis in a democracy is a crash course in learning how to act in the common good. At the federal level—with Build Back Better stalled due to fossil fuel money, egos, and denialism—some funding for flood protection is stymied by bad actors for whom the idea of the common good is a category error. And that’s something we have to expect as we work to end our dependence on fossil fuels and solve the problem at its source: A kleptocracy of lobbyists and donors will try to stymie our every move.

But flood protection does not demand the reimagining of capitalism, or even that we drive a different kind of car or accept a specific scientific explanation of climate change. Protecting one another from drowning seems straightforward. And still it’s a political struggle. Most of the people fighting over East River Park’s flood mitigation strategy in New York City, or the Nooksack River in the Pacific Northwest, probably agree that climate change is real. But what the inability to agree on something as basic as flood protection reveals is that our society is not wired for consensus.

One problem is that the people with the least social power tend to be most affected by flooding. Research released late last month, using data from the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Census, showed that while flooding at present disproportionately affects poor white people, in the near future predominantly Black neighborhoods will suffer the most. To be specific: By the middle of this century, the census tracts with the largest proportion of Black residents will face twice the flood risk of neighborhoods with the smallest number of Black inhabitants.

In our society, the common good has long been whatever elites say it is. As a result, waterfront properties in Marin or Miami, though some of these are also doomed, probably have a better chance of being protected than thousands of homes occupied by poor, Black Americans living in floodplains.

On the Lower East Side, the people most in need of protection from the East River flooding are the residents of public housing. They also love the park, but they don’t want to drown in the next big hurricane—everyone there remembers that during Sandy, as journalist Keith Gessen has reported, the neighborhood’s streets, even the FDR Drive, “became the river.” My son loved playing baseball in East River Park. He’ll be in college when the renovations are complete, the new park elevated to protect the neighborhood, with new trees and new ballfields. We’ll miss it terribly, but we also aren’t likely to die or go hungry in the next storm: we do not live in the projects. We live about sixty feet above sea level.

Making matters worse, after decades of living under neoliberalism—a word best summarized by Margaret Thatcher’s famous late twentieth-century proclamation, “There is no society. There are only individuals”—many people are skeptical that the government can act in their interests, and with good reason. When the city has developed so little parkland for us to enjoy, why would people agree to give any of it up, even temporarily? Or in the Nooksack River case, why would the indigenous tribes trust governments to protect the salmon upon which their livelihood and culture depends? Why should the farmers have faith in a society so poorly managed that during the flooding in the area late last year, many had to shoot their cows to save them from drowning?

The solution to this crisis of consensus and confidence—and to the flooding itself—is Margaret Thatcher’s non-existent society. We must quickly rebuild it, both conceptually and its physical infrastructure. Encouragingly, and perhaps surprisingly, we may have begun.

Consider two places we’re thoroughly sick of hearing and thinking about: Capitol Hill and the White House. The bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress and signed by the President last fall is, according to the American Flood Coalition, an “historic” investment in flood resilience: $34.7 billion. The law authorizes money to upgrade aging sewer systems (as a taxpayer who has had to Wet Dry Vac my basement at least twice in the past year due to sewer overflowing in storms, I am thrilled) and improve coastal resilience, including by restoring wetlands. It also provides numerous channels to get funding to local communities for flood control projects.

As big as it sounds, the infrastructure bill will barely dent the ballooning need: The Army Corps of Engineers, which gets $17.1 billion for flood resilience projects, currently has a $96 billion backlog. Still, it’s is a bigger start than we’ve ever seen.

Good Democratic leadership would not overlook the centrist and Republican sabotage of Build Back Better but would also brag more about the benefits to communities from the resilience measures in the bipartisan infrastructure bill. The flood funding in this bill will save lives and millions of homes. It will save countless households, farms and communities from ruin. Such investment also has broad economic benefits: Johns Hopkins researchers found that every billion invested in flood resilience creates 40,000 jobs (that’s not counting jobs saved when a store, restaurant, beach, or factory is not destroyed by flooding). Renewable energy gets more attention for its job-creation potential but saving us all from flood damage is also meaningful and potentially well-paid work.

The people who are boasting about flood resilience aren’t who you’d expect. When she voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-TX) called it a “socialist plan.” She did not mean that nicely. But The Los Angeles Times reported that when the Army Corps of Engineers announced it was using some of its money from the bill for a $403 million flood control project in her Fort Worth district, Granger was quick to cheer it on. Other Republicans who publicly hated on the bill and voted against it have gone so far as to take credit for its flood control initiatives, among them Steve Scalise (R-LA), who put out a press release highlighting $400 million in funding for such projects.

Even the most conservative Republicans realize flood control is popular and necessary, or they wouldn’t be touting it so hypocritically. They’re just going to do everything they can to stand in the way of creating the kind of society from which such life-saving policies can emerge. If Democrats have any interest in saving more lives and winning more elections, they should get very specific and loud about that hypocrisy, who actually deserves credit for the infrastructure bill, and why Build Back Better’s climate adaptation provisions are still needed—right now.

Liza Featherstone @lfeatherz is the author of Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation (2018).

Exclusive-Canadians see danger at home from U.S. political strife – poll

By Steve Scherer

 February 9, 2022

Vehicles clog downtown streets as truckers and supporters continue to protest against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine mandates, in Ottawa

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadians say they are concerned political strife in the United States will undermine security and economic growth at home, according to a new poll, as an anti-vaccine mandate protest praised by former U.S. President Donald Trump gripped the capital and affected the border.

The anxiety captured in the Angus Reid Institute survey provides a backdrop to protests across the country, at the international border, and especially in Ottawa, the capital, where police say Americans have provided a “significant” amount of money and organizational support.

The Ottawa protest, now in its 13th day, has been marred by the appearance of hateful symbols, like the Confederate flag, associated with the aggressive populism embraced by Trump supporters and some protesters say their goal is not only to roll back vaccine mandates, but also to overthrow the government.

“The success or failure of the United States will have a profound impact on Canada,” said Bruce Heyman, former American ambassador to Canada from 2014-2017. “Part of the more extreme nature of our politics over the last few years has now moved to occupy some part of Canada today.”

In the poll, 78% of Canadians said they were worried America’s democratic discord will affect their country’s economy and security. The survey of 1,620 Canadians was conducted between Jan. 27 and Jan. 31, the days in which the Ottawa protest began.

Two-thirds of Canada’s 38 million people live within 100 km (62 miles) of the U.S. border, and the two countries are each other’s top trading partners.

The trade relationship with the United States is of existential importance to Canada, with 75% of all exports going to the southern neighbor. Half of Canada’s imports come from the United States, including 60% of all imported fresh vegetables.

The Jan. 6 anniversary of the storming of Capitol Hill in Washington last year led to a series of articles in Canadian newspapers that sounded an alarm about the resiliency of American democracy in coming years, and in particular after the 2024 election.

Until recently, politics in Canada has been less polarized than in the United States. One example is the adoption of vaccines with nearly 80% of Canadians having had two shots of a COVID-19 vaccine in contrast to 64% in the United States.

However, last week’s ouster of Conservative opposition leader Erin O’Toole in part for failing to embrace the protest suggests the political landscape is shifting.

“Canadians have generally looked to the United States and felt like, ‘Whatever is going on there, it’s not as bad in Canada,'” said Shachi Kurl, Angus Reid president.

“We like to think of ourselves as… a country of circumspection and compromise and friendliness, yet two in five people don’t feel that way anymore,” she said. Some 37% of Canadians say there is no room for political compromise in their country, the poll shows.

Ottawa police said on Tuesday they had worked with Ohio police to track down and arrest a man there for calling in fake threats “designed to deceive and distract our emergency resources,” deputy police chief Steve Bell told reporters.

On Monday, Canada’s federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said the government would be “very vigilant about external forces, about foreign interference”.

‘A WAKE UP CALL’

Trump last weekend spoke out in support of the truckers and called Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “far-left lunatic”.

According to Angus Reid poll, 68% of Canadians believe U.S. democracy cannot survive another Trump presidency, and 47% said the United States is on its way to becoming an authoritarian state.

“The United States used to be a beacon of democracy, and now it’s exporting right-wing sedition to other democratic countries,” said Roland Paris, Trudeau’s former foreign policy adviser and professor of international affairs at University of Ottawa.

“The worse things get in the United States, the more dangerous it will be for Canada,” Paris said, calling the Ottawa protest a “wake-up call”.

Gerry Butts, Vice Chairman of Eurasia Group and formerly Trudeau’s top advisor, says “Canadians are astute observers of what’s happening in the United States, and they’re rightly anxious about it”.

“In the long term, Canada will be like everyone else… badly damaged if the United States becomes a democracy in name only,” he said.

Tyler Cowen: What happens in Ottawa may not stay in Ottawa

TYLER COWEN
FEB 8, 2022

The nationwide truckers’ protest in Canada, known as the “Freedom Convoy” and centered in Ottawa, reflects so many global trends that it’s hard to say what it means. But the movement may well end up as the most consequential story of the year.

Under one plausible reading, many Canadians are exhausted by their government’s pandemic restrictions. The protests started in January, when laws took effect requiring truckers who crossed the border to be vaccinated. Since then, the protests have grown to reflect a broader Canadian opposition to COVID restrictions.

The Canadian economy, unlike the U.S. economy, saw a big job loss in January, in part because Canada has been more reluctant to liberalize.

This reluctance is puzzling, because it is now safe to lift most COVID restrictions, in the U.S. as well as Canada. In that regard, the Freedom Convoy genuinely stands for some important freedoms. Travel, for example — either domestic or international — is not easy. If you are Canadian and do not wish to be vaccinated against COVID, it can be difficult to lead a normal life.

That is not to say that all their grievances are justified. I am generally skeptical about government mandates, but I am also very pro-vaccine. At this point in the pandemic, for the vast majority of people, getting vaccinated is far and away the best option.

The protests also have a darker side. The protesters have established a serious infrastructure of their own in Ottawa, replete with cranes and tent cities, and control much of the center city. The situation “is absolutely catastrophic both for the rule of law and for the long-term security of Canada,” tweets Canadian journalist Matt Gurney. “Everyone sees this. This is a massive failure of the state.”

So much of Canadian identity is wrapped up in being “nice” that it may be hard for Canadians and their leaders to fathom that they could lose control of their capital city.

As Mr. Gurney says, it is simply assumed that Canada is “rich, stable and peaceful,” a more polite counterpart to its southern neighbor. But Canadians may be in for a rude awakening about how easy it is for the government to temporarily lose control: “I think the danger of a large violent incident in Ottawa is growing fast.”

Obviously, the Canadian police and armed forces have far greater power than the truckers. But when it comes to imaginative fervor, the truckers have the advantage, just as did the forces that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Who would have thought such a thing could have happened?

At least some parts of the protests reflect White supremacist and extremist ideas. Confederate flags and swastikas have been spotted, though on Twitter there is vociferous disagreement about how representative these signs are.

The debate is not merely over symbols. Using GoFundMe, donors sent C$10 million ($7.8 million) to support the efforts of the truckers. GoFundMe decided not to pass those funds along, claiming the Freedom Convoy had violated its terms of service and promising refunds. Should financial infrastructure companies such as GoFundMe be making such political decisions? While a private company has a legal right to do this, such decisions could end up as de facto restrictions on political speech.

This is all happening in a country that is already chipping away at free speech. Under the guise of regulating “hate speech,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proposed new restrictions on internet speech last year.

Of course such restrictions would have a chilling effect. So maybe the Freedom Convoy is part of a backlash to the underlying trend of restricted discourse. One way or another, freedom of speech will be asserted.

So far at least, the Freedom Convoy has yet to attract sustained and widespread coverage in the U.S. mainstream media. Maybe Americans just aren’t used to Ottawa being the epicenter of political conflict. But now that it is, we should probably be prepared for other surprises as well.

Tyler Cowen is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
First Published February 8, 2022