THERE IS NO CLEAN COAL

Nanoparticles produced from burning coal result in damage to mice lungs, suggesting toxicity to humans

by Steven MacKay, Virginia Tech FEBRUARY 5, 2020

Associate professor of inflammatory disease Irving Coy Allen. Credit: Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech scientists have discovered that incredibly small particles of an unusual and highly toxic titanium oxide found in coal smog and ash can cause lung damage in mice after a single exposure, with long-term damage occurring in just six weeks.

The tests were headed by Irving Coy Allen, a professor with the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, with collaborators from across Virginia Tech and researchers at the University of Colorado, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, East Carolina University, and East China Normal University in Shanghai. The findings were recently published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Immunology.

They follow 2017 findings by Virginia Tech geoscientist Michael Hochella that burning coal—when smoke is not captured by high-end filters currently found in U.S. power plants—emits tiny particulates known as titanium suboxide nanoparticles into the atmosphere. Such nanoparticles were found by Hochella's team of scientists in ash collected from the city streets, sidewalks, and in ponds and bays near U.S. and Chinese cities.

Using mouse models in a lab setting, these tiniest of nanoparticles—as small as 100 millionths of a meter—entered the lungs after being inhaled. Once inside the lungs, the nanoparticles encountered macrophages, the lungs' defensive cells that trap and remove foreign materials. Typically, these cells protect the lungs from pathogens, such as bacteria and viruses. But against these nanoparticles, the macrophages falter.

100 YEARS AGO

"They can't break the titanium nanoparticles down, so the cells begin to die, and this process recruits more macrophages. These processes begin a feedback loop with each round of dying cells concentrating around the nanoparticles," said Allen, a member of the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology. "The dying, nanoparticle-containing cells then begin making deposits in the lungs and these deposits cause problems. We begin seeing negative impacts on lung function, and basically the lungs fail to continue to work correctly."

In what Allen calls a "striking find," his team discovered negative effects after only one exposure to the toxic nanoparticles. Long-term damage from the deposits can appear in as little as six weeks, raising concerns for highly polluted cities. "We realized if someone is living near a power plant, or near one of these coal burning sources, they wouldn't be exposed to a single dose, they'd be exposed to this daily," he said. "We also did not see lung clearance after a week, so when these things are in your lungs they are staying there, and they are staying there for an extended period of time."

More so, damaged lungs can lead to higher susceptibility to virus or bacterial infection, and could worsen symptoms associated with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

However, the exact effects of these toxic nanoparticles on humans, other animals, vegetation, and water systems are not known and demand further study by international researchers, Allen said.

"Mouse and human lungs are functionally similar, but anatomically different in a variety of subtle ways," Allen added. "While the studies done in this paper are commonly utilized to model airway disorders in people, more direct clinical data are necessary to fully understand the human impact of exposure to these nanoparticles."

The titanium suboxide nanoparticles—called Magnéli phases by researchers—were once thought rare, found on Earth in some meteorites, from a small area of certain rocks in western Greenland, and occasionally in moon rocks. However, Hochella, working with other researchers in 2017, found that these nanoparticles are in fact widespread globally from the burning of coal.

According to the earlier study, published in Nature Communications, nearly all coal contains small amounts of the minerals rutile or anatase, both "normal," naturally occurring, and relatively inert titanium oxides. But when burnt, these minerals convert to titanium suboxide. The nanoparticles then become airborne if the power plant is not equipped with high-tech particle traps, such as those in the United States. For countries without strict regulations, the nanoparticles can float away in air currents locally, regionally, and even globally, Hochella said. (He added that the United States first started using electrostatic precipitators on coal stacks in the 1920s.)

Early biotoxicity studies by Hochella's group with zebra fish embryos showed signs of negative biological impact from the nanoparticles, suggesting potential harm to humans. Now, with this study, the odds of toxicity to humans are much greater. "The problem with these nanoparticles is that there is no easy or practical way to prevent their formation during coal burning," said Hochella, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Geosciences with the Virginia Tech College of Science, upon the earlier study's release two years ago.

Hochella and his team came across the titanium suboxide nanoparticles quite by accident while studying the downstream movement of a 2014 coal ash spill in the Dan River of North Carolina. The group later produced the same titanium suboxide nanoparticles when burning coal in lab simulations. This potential health hazard builds on established findings from the World Health Organization: More than 3.3 million premature deaths occurring worldwide per year due to polluted air, and in China alone, 1.6 million premature deaths are estimated annually due to cardiovascular and respiratory injury from air pollution.

This raises multiple questions: Are the nanoparticles absorbed through the body by other means, such as contact with eyes or skin? Can they find their way into vegetation—including food—though soil? If so, what are the implications on the gastrointestinal tract? Are they present in drinking water? If a mouse experiences long-term damage at six weeks, what does that pose for humans who breathe the air?

Allen urges that testing move to human-focused studies.

"We've identified a unique pollutant in the environment, and we've shown there's a potential health concern for humans, so that gives us a biomarker that we can monitor more closely," he said. "We should begin looking at these particulates more closely as we become more aware of the hazards these nanoparticles pose. These are questions that need to be asked."

That path, while obvious, may not be so simple, ethically or politically. Scientists can't expose human test subjects to coal smog or ash and the toxic nanoparticles. Therefore, a likely scenario: scientists could study these particles in human lung tissue from lung biopsies and clinical specimens. However, many clinicians have been reluctant to take part in this effort in many of the countries at the most risk. Allen said one reason may be the sensitivity that these countries hold toward air-quality issues.

Researchers discover potentially harmful nanoparticles produced through burning coal

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More information: Dylan K. McDaniel et al. Pulmonary Exposure to Magnéli Phase Titanium Suboxides Results in Significant Macrophage Abnormalities and Decreased Lung Function, Frontiers in Immunology (2019). DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2019.02714

Save the giants, save the planet

by Mikayla MacE, University of Arizona FEBRUARY 5, 2020

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Habitat loss, hunting, logging and climate change have put many of the world's most charismatic species at risk. A new study, led by the University of Arizona, has found that not only are larger plants and animals at higher risk of extinction, but their loss would fundamentally degrade life on earth.

The study, published today in Nature Communications, is based on computer simulations that compared the state of the natural world during the Pleistocene (a past epoch long before human-caused extinctions began), the present day, and a future world in which all large plants and animals had gone extinct.

Results showed that the continued loss of large animals alone would lead to a 44% reduction in the total amount of wild animal biomass on the planet. It would also lead to a 92% reduction in soil fertility, which underpins the ability of the earth to grow plants and sustain life.

"This research shows there are fundamental scientific principles that explain why large animals and trees matter for the health and integrity of all life on Earth," said lead author Brian Enquist, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. "Protecting big, charismatic species does have an umbrella effect to protect the wider ecosystem."

A key reason for these results lies with the transport of nutrients. When large animals eat in one location and defecate or urinate in another, they transport nutrients, often moving them from nutrient-rich areas to other, less fertile parts of the land and oceans. Similarly, the largest trees are the most productive, and contain and stir more nutrients and carbon.

"Ecosystems with larger trees and animals are also more productive and provide more vital ecological services," Enquist said. "I use this analogy: The largest banks and corporations in the economy are the most productive and have the most impact on the economy, so when those large banks failed during the great recession in 2009, we had to prop them up economically, or they would have had a disproportionate negative impact on economy. It's a similar principle with large plants and animals across ecosystems."

Unfortunately, these large organisms are more susceptible to human pressures and climate change and take longer to recover from shocks, making them more prone to extinction.

"For hundreds of millions of years, Earth has been a planet of giants. In the last few thousand years, these large animals and plants have been whittled away, and this process continues today. Our paper shows why this loss of these giants matters for the very fabric of life on Earth, and why we must do everything possible to protect and restore them," said Yadvinder Malhi, leader of the ecosystems group at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford.

The findings help to answer an ongoing debate about where to channel limited conservation resources. While charismatic species such as the tiger or redwood tree have historically been most appealing and therefore effective at pulling in donations, some scientists worried that the focus on a certain subset of plants and animals could be coming at the cost of protecting other, less well-loved species.

"Our findings instead point to the importance of policies that emphasize the promotion of large trees and animals, as such policies will have a more disproportionate impact on biodiversity, ecosystem processes and climate mitigation," Enquist said. "We can use this model to focus our conservation concerns. For example, we can identify the forest that still contains some of the largest tress on the planet, or forests that have healthy size structure and prioritize them because they're more productive and resilient."

Can ecosystems recover from dramatic losses of biodiversity?

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More information: Brian J. Enquist et al. The megabiota are disproportionately important for biosphere functioning, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-14369-y

Rewilding can mitigate climate change, researchers report after global assessment

by Stephanie Allen, University of Sussex FEBRUARY 5, 2020

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A new study has shown that rewilding can help to mitigate climate change, delivering a diverse range of benefits to the environment with varied regional impacts.

Research led by the University of Sussex and published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, provides a global assessment of the potential for trophic rewilding to help mitigate climate change.

Trophic rewilding restores lost species to ecosystems, which can have cascading influences over the whole food web. This typically means reintroducing large herbivores (e.g. elephants) and top predators (e.g. wolves), or species known to engineer more diverse and complex habitats and benefit biodiversity (e.g. beavers).

But reintroducing species not only influences the local environment, it can also influence the climate. Animals, particularly megaherbivores (like elephants) and large ruminants (like bison and cattle) produce methane—a greenhouse gas. Big herbivores also eat large quantities of vegetation which can prevent trees growing. This stops trees capturing carbon, but on the other hand, it can also prevent trees from reducing albedo in the far north and so mitigate warming. Big herbivores also distribute large seeded trees that are particularly good at capturing carbon.

The influence big herbivores have is also partly dependent on the effects of big predators. The larger the predators present, the bigger the herbivore species regularly on the menu. But because of past extinctions the surviving species that can be reintroduced is limited and this changes the number and type of large herbivores that are more likely to reach relatively high densities and so have bigger impact on their environment.

According to this new research, all of these interacting relationships mean applying trophic rewilding in different parts of the world will have different outcomes for climate mitigation.

Dr. Chris Sandom, Senior Lecturer in Biology at the University of Sussex, said: "The key thing to remember here is that nature is complex and needs to be complex.

"Trophic rewilding aims to restore nature, including its complexity, and then to allow it to take its own path. This path will be different depending on time, place and chance. But the good news is this will also bring with it a diversity of outcomes. Diversity is good because the needs of people and nature are diverse too.

In the study, Dr. Chris Sandom and colleagues from Australia, America, Denmark and Sweden, assessed scenarios in various regions across the globe to ascertain where restoring species which still exist today could help to mitigate climate change.

In some parts of the world, such as Europe and North America, most of the large predators (lions) and herbivores (elephants) have gone extinct. However, by returning healthy wolf populations, the number of any remaining large herbivores, such as deer, could be reduced allowing a greater opportunity for vegetation to grow and provide mitigating effects on climate change.

Owen Middleton, Ph.D. Student at the University of Sussex and co-author of the study, said: "Past extinctions mean only a small fraction of the species present in North and South America, Europe, and Australia can be reintroduced to rewilding projects. If all the species available were reintroduced in these places, predators are likely to exert more control on herbivores than in the past. This would likely result in more trees growing with climate change mitigation benefits.

"In Africa and Asia where extinction was less severe the megaherbivores would likely be more dominant. In savannahs this could stop trees growing, reducing climate mitigation potential but would be important for biodiversity. Regional analysis is needed to explore the details."

"But these are simple estimations of a complex system. Future research should focus on regional case studies which includes social and ecological feasibility of reintroducing species, as well as how it could assist with the climate and other emergencies."

Rewilding landscapes can solve multiple problems

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More information: Christopher J. Sandom et al. Trophic rewilding presents regionally specific opportunities for mitigating climate change, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0125

Water, water everywhere—and it's weirder than you think

by University of Tokyo FEBRUARY 5, 2020

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Researchers at The University of Tokyo have used computational methods and analysis of recent experimental data to demonstrate that water molecules take two distinct structures in the liquid state. The team investigated the scattering of X-ray photons through water samples and showed a bimodal distribution hidden under the first diffraction peak that resulted from tetrahedral and non-tetrahedral arrangements of water molecules. This work may have important implications throughout science, but especially with regard to living systems, like proteins and cell structures, which are strongly affected by their surrounding water molecules.

Given the ubiquity of water on our planet and the central role it plays in all known life, it may be hard to believe that there is anything left to learn about this most familiar fluid. A simple molecule made up of just two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen; water still hides fundamental mysteries that remain to be unraveled. For example, water has unusually high melting and boiling points, and even expands when it freezes (unlike most liquids, which contract). These and other unusual properties make it very different from almost all other liquids, but also allow life as we know it to exist.

The weirdness of water can be best understood by thinking about the very unique interactions between H2O molecules—the hydrogen bond. Water tends to form four hydrogen bonds with its four neighbors, which leads to tetrahedral arrangements of the neighbors. Such arrangements can be largely distorted under thermal fluctuations. However, whether the distortion leads to the coexistence of distinct tetrahedral and non-tetrahedral arrangements has remained controversial.

Now, scientists at The University of Tokyo have combined computer simulations and the analysis of scattering experimental data to find the "structure factor" of water—the mathematical function that represents the paths of dispersed X-rays when they scatter off the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The analysis showed two overlapping peaks hiding in the first diffraction peak of the structure factor. One of these peaks corresponded to the distance between oxygen atoms as in ordinary liquids, while the other indicated a longer distance, as in a tetrahedral arrangement. "The combination of new computational methods and analysis of recent X-ray scattering data allowed us to see what was not visible in previous work," first author of the study Rui Shi explains.

This discovery may have huge implications across many scientific fields. Knowing the exact structural ordering of water is critical for a complete understanding of molecular biology, chemistry, and even many industrial applications. "It is very satisfying to be able to unravel the liquid structure of such a fundamental substance," senior author Hajime Tanaka says.

Understanding the strange behavior of water

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More information: Rui Shi et al, Direct Evidence in the Scattering Function for the Coexistence of Two Types of Local Structures in Liquid Water, Journal of the American Chemical Society (2020). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.9b11211

Tory MP apologizes after asking NDP MP if she's considered sex work

'He would never have asked this question to a man': Victoria MP responds to controversial remark

SEXIST MALE CHAUVINIST PIG AND HE LOOKS STUNNED AS WELL

VICTORIA -- Victoria MP Laurel Collins says that it was "shocking and infuriating" when Conservative MP Arnold Viersen asked her if she had ever considered sex work as an occupation during a House of Commons debate Tuesday.

The debate began following a Conservative motion that called for the House to review the parole board nomination process.

The decision in question was the 2019 parole release of Eustachio Gallese, 51, who was serving 15 years in prison for the murder of his wife in 2004. Last week, while on parole, he was arrested for the murder of a 22-year-old sex worker, Marylene Levesque, in Quebec.

During the debate, Collins suggested that it was important to listen to the voices of sex workers when discussing legislation about the industry, especially when it comes to personal safety.

"I was saying that we need to listen to the voices of the people who are impacted by violence and sexism and misogyny," Collins told CTV News Vancouver Island. "When it comes to sex work legislation, we need to listen to the voices of sex workers."

Before making an apology in the House of Commons, Viersen explained that he did not believe "any woman in this country" chose to become a sex worker, and that prostitution was an "inherently dangerous" trade that the government should work to eliminate. 

Former Victoria city councillor Collins says that the language that Viersen used about sex workers goes against the government's goal to create a safe environment for all Canadian women. 

"When people make denigrating comments about sex workers, when they encourage legislation that criminalizes things that create safety for sex workers, this kind of language, these kinds of comments contribute to the violence and the misogyny that exists in our society," she says.

"It was shocking and infuriating to hear the comments made by the member across the way."

Rachel Phillips, executive director of PEERS Victoria, a non-profit resource society for sex workers on the island, also disagrees with the Conservative MP’s views on the industry.

“I feel sorry for him,” she said. “It’s old school and not informed and he is a man making a comment about what it means to be a woman in the sex industry.”

“He should sit down with someone in the sex industry and then he would have a better understanding about what is going on.” 

Soon after the debate, Viersen apologized to Collins. 

"I'd like to apologize unreservedly for my comments towards the member from Victoria," he said.

Collins says that she appreciates the apology and hopes that the recent debate will draw attention to the issue.

"I hope that we don’t see any more of these kinds of comments and I hope that members across party lines will work together to have policies that fight the sexism, misogyny and violence against women that exist," she says. "If there is some small piece that brings attention to this issue then I’m glad people are paying attention."

"He would never have asked this question to a man and we need to do everything in our power to end violence against women."

Tory MP apologizes after asking NDP MP if she's considered sex work

OTTAWA -- Conservative MP Arnold Viersen asked NDP MP Laurel Collins if sex work is an "area of work" she has ever considered during a House of Commons debate on Tuesday.

Viersen later apologized "unreservedly."

The politicians were debating an opposition day motion from the Conservatives, which asked the House to condemn a recent parole board decision.

After serving 15 years for the murder of his wife in 2004, 51-year-old Eustachio Gallese was granted day parole in September, 2019. Last week, while out on parole, Gallese entered a Quebec City hotel where 22-year-old sex worker Marylene Levesque gave massages. Police later arrested and charged him with her murder.

Beyond asking the House to condemn this decision, the motion calls on the government to instruct the public safety committee to conduct hearings into the matter, including a review of the changes made in 2017 to the parole board's nomination processes.

During the debate, Collins asked Viersen to consider listening to the voices of sex workers.

"Sex workers are saying that sex work is work," Collins said.

"I would just respond to that by asking the honourable member across the way if it's [an] area of work that she has considered, and if that is an appropriate-" Viersen replied.

He was cut off by heckling in the House, including voices yelling "shame."

Viersen then explained that he was trying to make the point that he does not believe "any woman in this country" chooses to become a sex worker.

"Prostitution in Canada is inherently dangerous…we do not want to see our women and girls forced into prostitution," Viersen said.

After the exchange, NDP MP Jack Harris rose on a point of order, calling the comments "insulting and unparliamentary" adding that "the sex workers who are in great danger in this country are, in fact, workers."

In response, Viersen clarified his remarks.

"I in no way mean to have any effect on the reputation of the honorable member in question," he said, in reference to Collins.

"What I do want to say is the very fact that I must tread delicately on this means that – makes my point, I think, about the nature of prostitution."

He later rose to say he was sorry to Collins.

"I'd like to apologize unreservedly for my comments towards the member from Victoria," Viersen said.

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• 

Politics·Analysis

One step forward, another one back: What the Trans Mountain ruling means for Trudeau

It's a federal win in Alberta - but it just made the Indigenous reconciliation project more daunting than ever

Chris Hall · CBC News · Posted: Feb 05, 2020 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: an hour ago

A man listens near an effigy of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as protesters opposed to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion rally in Vancouver June 9, 2019. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

Take, for example, yesterday's Federal Court of Appeal ruling on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

The court ruled unanimously that the federal government had fulfilled its duty to consult meaningfully with a handful of First Nations opposed to the project, clearing a major hurdle in the drawn-out battle to build a second line to carry bitumen from Alberta's oilsands to Burnaby on the B.C. coast.

The federal and Alberta governments immediately claimed victory, putting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Jason Kenney on the same side for once.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks with workers at the Trans Mountain Terminal in Edmonton on Friday, July 12, 2019. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)

"This project is in the public interest," federal Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan told reporters shortly after the decision was released.

"We also know that this is a project that can deliver significant economic benefit to Alberta, to Canadians across the country," added Finance Minister Bill Morneau. "And more importantly, we are going to put that economic benefit back into the environment."

Their sense of relief was palpable. Ottawa spent nearly $4.7 billion in 2018 to buy TMX — a last-ditch effort to ensure the pipeline would be built after its owner, Kinder Morgan, announced plans to step away.

Win-win, or win-lose?

That price, hefty as it is, doesn't include construction costs or any overruns the project has incurred because of the various stop-work orders that have put construction well behind schedule.

But with the victory comes a major setback in relations with those Indigenous groups who continue to oppose the $7.4-billion project, and will no doubt seek to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.

"Reconciliation stopped today," said Rueben George, of the Tsleil-Waututh, his voice cracking with emotion.

Tsleil Waututh Nation Sundance Chief Rueben George leaves a news conference Wednesday March 20, 2013 in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

The band was one of four Indigenous groups behind the court challenge. It argued that the second, court-ordered round of consultations also failed to respond adequately to their concerns about the impact the project would have on marine life.

"This government is incapable of making sound decisions for our future generations," George said. "So we will — even for their children — we will take those steps to make sure Canada stays the way it is."

The pipeline as symbol

It's just another example of how the Trans Mountain project has been transformed into a symbol of the difficulties governments face in trying to reconcile so many competing interests, both legal and political.

It is more than an infrastructure project now, more than the federal government's last remaining option to ease the pressure on landlocked Alberta's resource economy by helping it get its oil to port.

It's more than a token for the federal Liberals' repeated claim that it's possible to carry out policies that balance the environment and the economy.

For Ottawa, Trans Mountain has become the focus of efforts to reduce the Trudeau government's political friction with Alberta, to appeal to Albertans who took out their frustrations in the last election by refusing to elect a single Liberal, to find a way to engage with a province where talk of political alienation — even separation — is now part of the daily discourse.

Protesters with the United We Roll convoy demonstrated on Parliament Hill in February 2019, after crossing the country to share their pro-pipeline message. (CBC)

That's a lot of freight for a pipeline to carry.

The push to build Trans Mountain has involved the strangest of bedfellows. One government is Liberal, the other (United) Conservative. One imposed a price on carbon, while the other is fighting that price in court. One believes climate change is the most pressing issue facing the country, the other sees the federal government's climate policies as part of a long-term plan to kill the province's energy sector.

Yet this federal government worked hand-in-hand with Alberta to oppose this lawsuit and others brought by First Nations and British Columbia's NDP government to stop the project.

Premier Kenney called yesterday's court of appeal ruling a victory for Alberta, for the large number of Indigenous communities that support TMX, and for Canadians who understand that "responsible resource development is key to Canada's future prosperity."

Kenney even offered a shout-out to Trudeau in his victory speech.

"I have my disagreements with Prime Minister Trudeau on a number of issues," the premier told reporters. "But I think he realizes that there has to be at least one project that gets Canadian energy to global markets so we can get a fair price."

When completed, the pipeline expansion will triple the amount of bitumen transported to nearly a million barrels a day. 

Federal officials say that's good news for the 2,700 people already working on the project in Alberta, and the thousands more who expect to be hired as work ramps up.

• In a major victory for Trans Mountain, Federal Court dismisses Indigenous appeal of project's approval

• ANALYSIS
  Can a massive new oilsands mine be reconciled with Trudeau's 'net-zero' promise?

• RCMP reactivated list of flagged activists days before Trans Mountain decision, documents show

But however much ground the Trudeau government has won in the field of Ottawa-Alberta relations, it still likely faces a rematch with Indigenous communities involved in this case, and the potential for more legal challenges to come.

One after another yesterday, the leaders of the First Nations who initiated the appeal spoke of their disappointment with the Trudeau government, with Canadian law and with the courts.

That disappointment could make Ottawa's efforts to settle land claims and pursue other energy projects even more difficult.

Hereditary chiefs of the Wet'suwet'en Nation in the B.C. Interior are still blocking access to a construction site for an already-approved natural gas pipeline. They're defying a court injunction ordering them to leave.

So that's where we are: a court victory shared by two governments that are normally foes, a setback for federal efforts to achieve full reconciliation with Indigenous groups.

Win some, lose some.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Hall

National Affairs Editor

Chris Hall is the CBC's National Affairs Editor and host of The House on CBC Radio, based in the Parliamentary Bureau in Ottawa. He began his reporting career with the Ottawa Citizen, before moving to CBC Radio in 1992, where he worked as a national radio reporter in Toronto, Halifax and St. John's. He returned to Ottawa and the Hill in 1998.

• More by this author

Ups and downs: the battle to buy Thyssenkrupp's elevator unit


FRANKFURT/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) - Finland’s Kone (KNEBV.HE) and private equity firms are battling to buy ThyssenKrupp’s (TKAG.DE) prized elevator division worth more than 15 billion euros ($16.6 billion), a deal which would be Europe’s biggest private equity deal in 13 years.


A model of the elevator called MULTI is pictured inside Thyssenkrupp's elevator test tower in Rottweil, Germany, January 21, 2020. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

Thyssenkrupp says it will either list the business, sell either a stake or the business in its entirety as the company aims to cut 12.4 billion euros ($13.7 billion) in debt and pension liabilities.

The deadline for binding bids for the whole business is mid-February.

SUITORS LINE UP
Suitors are:


* Kone has submitted a 17 billion euro non-binding bid, including a roughly 3-billion break fee, beating three private equity consortia whose offers were between 15-16 billion.

Union sources say that may not be enough to compensate for antitrust risks.

Analysts at Jefferies said that a price tag of 15.6 billion euros after tax would be enough “to negate net debt and pension liabilities, saving about 1.1 billion in outflows per year”.

The rival private equity consortia are:

* Blackstone (BX.N), Carlyle (CG.O) and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board


* A group comprising Advent, Cinven [CINV.UL], the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Germany’s RAG foundation

* Canada’s Brookfield (BAMa.TO) and Singapore’s Temasek [TEM.UL]

A buyout group victory would be Europe’s biggest private equity deal since KKR’s (KKR.N) $21.4 billion acquisition of Britain’s Alliance Boots Plc in 2007, according to Refinitiv data.
KONE VS PRIVATE EQUITY

While being the safest option in terms of execution, a flotation is seen as unlikely at this stage as it wouldn’t bring in enough cash.

That’s why a sale to private equity looks like the easiest option as it would face little or no antitrust scrutiny and could be completed in months.

A sale to Kone runs the risk of a lengthy regulatory review, even when taking into account a plan to sell Thyssenkrupp’s elevator assets in Europe, where overlap is biggest, to CVC [CVC.UL] to try to resolve antitrust risks.

Danske Bank reckons that the combined market share of Thyssen and Kone stands at 43% in North America, which is also expected to lead to a deepened probe.

It took Linde (LINI.DE) and Praxair nearly 17 months to get U.S. antitrust approval for a merger, and only following far-reaching remedy sales to CVC and Messer.

Still reeling from Brussels’ veto of a planned steel tie-up with India’s Tata Steel (TISC.NS), Thyssenkrupp’s appetite for that is considered to be limited.

JOB SECURITY

Bidders are courting representatives of IG Metall, Germany’s most powerful union which can make or break any deal and will fight to protect jobs and secure sites.

The elevator business employs more than 53,000, a third of Thyssenkrupp’s total staff.

Labour representatives also control half of Thyssenkrupp’s 20-member supervisory board, which will have to approve an agreement.

Workers fear that a sale to Kone carries a higher risk of job cuts than a sale to private equity. While cost savings are a key for all bidders, Kone needs synergies to justify its higher price tag.

Labour leaders also remain sceptical about Kone’s plan to sell Thyssenkrupp’s European assets to CVC, as it is uncertain what would happen to workers at the 2.1 billion euro business.

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When it comes to climate hypocrisy, Canada's leaders have reached a new low 

Bill McKibben

A territory that has 0.5% of the Earth’s population plans to use up nearly a third of the planet’s remaining carbon budget

@billmckibben Wed 5 Feb 2020 


 ‘If an alcoholic assured you he was taking his condition very seriously, but also laying in a 40-year store of bourbon, you’d be entitled to doubt his sincerity.’ Photograph: Andrej Ivanov/Reuters

Americans elected Donald Trump, who insisted climate change was a hoax – so it’s no surprise that since taking office he’s been all-in for the fossil fuel industry. There’s no sense despairing; the energy is better spent fighting to remove him from office.

Canada, on the other hand, elected a government that believes the climate crisis is real and dangerous – and with good reason, since the nation’s Arctic territories give it a front-row seat to the fastest warming on Earth. Yet the country’s leaders seem likely in the next few weeks to approve a vast new tar sands mine which will pour carbon into the atmosphere through the 2060s. They know – yet they can’t bring themselves to act on the knowledge. Now that is cause for despair.


The Teck mine would be the biggest tar sands mine yet: 113 square miles of petroleum mining, located just 16 miles from the border of Wood Buffalo national park. A federal panel approved the mine despite conceding that it would likely be harmful to the environment and to the land culture of Indigenous people. These giant tar sands mines (easily visible on Google Earth) are already among the biggest scars humans have ever carved on the planet’s surface. But Canadian authorities ruled that the mine was nonetheless in the “public interest”.

Here’s how Justin Trudeau, recently re-elected as Canada’s prime minister, put it in a speech to cheering Texas oilmen a couple of years ago: “No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there.” That is to say, Canada, which is 0.5% of the planet’s population, plans to use up nearly a third of the planet’s remaining carbon budget. Ottawa hides all this behind a series of pledges about “net-zero emissions by 2050” and so on, but they are empty promises. In the here-and-now they can’t rein themselves in. There’s oil in the ground and it must come out.

This is painfully hard to watch because it comes as the planet has supposedly reached a turning point. A series of remarkable young people (including Canadians such as Autumn Peltier) have captured the imagination of people around the world; scientists have issued ever sterner warnings; and the images of climate destruction show up in every newspaper. Canadians can see the Australian blazes on television; they should bring back memories of the devastating forest fires that forced the evacuation of Fort McMurray, in the heart of the tar sands complex, less than four years ago.

The only rational response would be to immediately stop the expansion of new fossil fuel projects. It’s true that we can’t get off oil and gas immediately; for the moment, oil wells continue to pump. But the Teck Frontier proposal is predicated on the idea that we’ll still need vast quantities of oil in 2066, when Greta Thunberg is about to hit retirement age. If an alcoholic assured you he was taking his condition very seriously, but also laying in a 40-year store of bourbon, you’d be entitled to doubt his sincerity, or at least to note his confusion. Oil has addled the Canadian ability to do basic math: more does not equal less, and 2066 is not any time soon. An emergency means you act now.

In fairness, Canada has company here. For every territory making a sincere effort to kick fossil fuels (California, Scotland) there are other capitals just as paralyzed as Ottawa. Australia’s fires creep ever closer to the seat of government in Canberra, yet the prime minister, Scott Morrison, can’t seem to imagine any future for his nation other than mining more coal. Australia and Canada are both rich nations, their people highly educated, but they seem unable to control the zombie momentum of fossil fuels.

There’s obviously something hideous about watching the Trumps and the Putins of the world gleefully shred our future. But it’s disturbing in a different way to watch leaders pretend to care – a kind of gaslighting that can reduce you to numb nihilism. Trudeau, for all his charms, doesn’t get to have it both ways: if you can’t bring yourself to stop a brand-new tar sands mine then you’re not a climate leader.

Bill McKibben is an author and Schumann distinguished scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College, Vermont. His most recent book is Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

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Canadian court upholds Trans Mountain pipeline expansion approval


Federal court of appeals in a 3-0 decision rejected four challenges from First Nations to government’s approval of the project

Associated Press in Toronto

Tue 4 Feb 2020

 
Steel pipe for the Canadian government’s 
Trans Mountain pipeline expansion in Kamloops, 
British Columbia, on 18 June 2019. 
Photograph: Dennis Owen/Reuters

Canada’s federal court of appeal has dismissed legal objections to the contentious Trans Mountain pipeline expansion that would nearly triple the flow of oil from the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific coast.

In a 3-0 decision, the court rejected four challenges from First Nations in British Columbia to the federal government’s approval of the project.

That means construction can continue on the project, though the First Nations have 60 days to appeal to the supreme court.

The natural resources minister, Seamus O’Regan, said the ruling proves that if consultations and reviews are done properly, major projects can be built in Canada.

“The courts have acknowledged that we listened and that we want to do things right,” O’Regan said.

The pipeline expansion would triple the capacity of an existing line to carry oil extracted from the oil sands in Alberta across the snow-capped peaks of the Canadian Rockies. It would end at a terminal outside Vancouver, resulting in a sevenfold increase in the number of tankers in the shared waters between Canada and Washington state.

Tanker traffic is projected to balloon from about 60 to more than 400 vessels annually as the pipeline flow increases from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels a day.

The decision is a blow for indigenous leaders and environmentalists, who have pledged to do whatever necessary to thwart the pipeline, including chaining themselves to construction equipment


What if Canada had spent $200bn on wind energy instead of oil?

Chief Lee Spahan of the Coldwater Indian Band said in a statement an appeal to the supreme court is under consideration.

Many indigenous people see the 620 miles (1,000km) of new pipeline as a threat to their lands, echoing concerns raised by Native Americans about the Keystone XL project in the US. Many in Canada say it also raises broader environmental concerns by enabling increased development of the carbon-heavy oil sands.

Justin Trudeau’s government bought the existing pipeline and the expansion plan in 2018 after political opposition to the project from the British Columbia government caused Kinder Morgan Canada to pull out from building the expansion

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Iowa's anger over Trump's ethanol policy gives Democrats opening


NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a speech last month to farmers in Texas, President Donald Trump won applause as he talked up recent U.S. trade agreements. When he tried to boast of his administration’s ethanol policy, however, he was met with silence.


Iowa swung sharply to Trump’s Republicans in the 2016 presidential election, but Democrats hope anger over a relaxation of rules mandating use of ethanol by U.S. refineries could put the corn-producing state in the win column this year.

Get the latest from the Iowa caucuses: here

“I think they haven’t solved the farmers’ problems in terms of ensuring farmers will have a consistent market for the ethanol that they produce,” said Wayne Moyer, a political science professor at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. “It’s a sore spot.”

Federal rules require refineries to blend 15 billion gallons of conventional biofuels like ethanol, which is made primarily from corn, into the nation’s fuel pool every year. Refiners have long sought waivers exempting them from these rules, while corn growers argue they are crucial to sustain ethanol demand.

Over the past two years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has granted more than 30 waivers to refineries, including facilities owned by Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp, stoking the ire of farmers and spurring numerous meetings in which the White House has tried to placate growers’ anger.

In addition, farmers bore the brunt of the retaliatory tariffs on soybeans and other products imposed by China during an 18-month trade war with the United States. As the world’s second-largest economy stopped buying U.S. agricultural goods, American farmers had to adapt to a smaller export market.

While many farmers were willing to make that sacrifice to target what they saw as China’s uncompetitive behavior, they were less obliging when it came to giving up demand for their products in what they saw as a concession to the oil industry.

“If we saw some other wrong turn by the EPA ... then I think we’re going to have to take a hard look at the political situation,” said Mark Marquis, chief executive officer of Illinois-based ethanol producer Marquis Energy.

Iowa sells more corn and produces more ethanol than any other U.S. state, according to federal data. Ethanol supports about 40,000 jobs in Iowa, according to the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association.


Some Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, have highlighted the issue heading into the Iowa nominating contest on Monday, the first leg in the race to determine who will face Trump in the Nov. 3 election.

“President Trump has lied to Iowa farmers at every turn. He promised to ‘unleash ethanol’ but instead all he’s done is secretly unleash Big Oil from its renewable fuel obligations,” Biden tweeted in August.

Iowa could be crucial in this year’s presidential election. In the 2018 mid-term elections, two Republicans lost their re-election bids to the U.S. House of Representatives, giving Democrats a majority of the four congressional districts.

“The president is going to be challenged by farmers over the next nine months on whether or not he’s ethanol-friendly,” U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa who advocates for use of biofuels, said in a call with reporters in January.

(GRAPHIC: Iowa's ethanol, corn production tmsnrt.rs/2sR4j9k)


FILE PHOTO - U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., January 30, 2020. REUTERS/Leah Millis
‘HIT AT THE KNEECAPS’

In August, the EPA granted 31 refinery exemptions, sparking outrage from the biofuels industry. There have been around 20 ethanol plant shutdowns since November 2018, equal to about 1.2 billion gallons of annual capacity, though some have reopened. The oil industry says the waivers do not destroy ethanol demand.

U.S. Representative Abby Finkenauer, a first-term Democrat from Iowa who defeated a Republican incumbent in 2018, has endorsed Biden’s presidential campaign, saying he understands the industry’s importance in the state and would stabilize renewable fuel policies.

“What we have seen specifically from Trump and his administration has been going back on words after hands have been shook,” she said.

“The tariffs affected the beans and the ethanol has affected the corn. We’re getting hit at the kneecaps,” said Trent Hatlen, who farms 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans in Rembrandt, Iowa. He said he is likely to support Biden on Monday.

The White House, in a statement, touted its promotion of American ethanol, including the approval of E15, a higher-ethanol blend of gasoline, for year-round use, which had been previously prohibited.

The signing of trade agreements, particularly the Phase 1 deal between the United States and China and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, has boosted Trump’s standing among farmers.
Among those polled in late December who said they or an immediate family member were working in agriculture, 49% approved of the way Trump is handling U.S. farming, up from 43% in September, while 40% disapproved, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

That support may withstand Democrats’ efforts to target Iowa.

“There’s still plenty of time to see what the world looks like between now and November,” said Nick Bowdish, the CEO of Elite Octane near Atlantic, Iowa, and Siouxland Ethanol near Jackson, Nebraska.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BIOFUELS