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William Perry Pendley: Federal judge removes acting Bureau of Land Management director after finding he has served unlawfully for 424 days


By Kyle Feldscher and Andy Rose, CNN
 

© US Department of the Interior

A federal judge on Friday ordered acting Bureau of Land Management Director William Perry Pendley to step aside, blocking him from exercising any more authority after finding that he has served unlawfully for more than 400 days.

Chief District Judge Brian Morris of the US District Court of Montana ruled that Pendley has served unlawfully for 424 days, in response to a lawsuit brought by Democratic Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. Morris additionally ruled Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt cannot pick another person to run the Bureau of Land Management as its acting head because that person must be appointed by the President and Senate-confirmed.

The judge gave both sides of the case 10 days to file briefs about which of Pendley's orders must be vacated.

"Pendley has served and continues to serve unlawfully as the Acting BLM Director," Morris wrote in his opinion. "His ascent to Acting BLM Director did not follow any of the permissible paths set forth by the U.S. Constitution or the (Federal Vacancies Reform Act). Pendley has not been nominated by the President and has not been confirmed by the Senate to serve as BLM Director."

He added, "Secretary Bernhardt lacked the authority to appoint Pendley as an Acting BLM Director under the FVRA. Pendley unlawfully took the temporary position beyond the 210-day maximum allowed by the FVRA. Pendley unlawfully served as Acting BLM Director after the President submitted his permanent appointment to the Senate for confirmation -- another violation of the FVRA. And Pendley unlawfully serves as Acting BLM Director today, under color of the Succession Memo."

Pendley was nominated to be the permanent director of the agency in July but the Trump administration withdrew his nomination in September after a series of controversial statements -- including saying that climate change is not real and falsely saying that there was no credible evidence of a hole in the ozone layer -- were made public by CNN's KFile.

The BLM manages 244 million acres of federal lands in the United States -- one out of every 10 acres of land in the country -- along with 30% of the nation's minerals. As acting director of the BLM, Pendley wielded significant authority over the leasing and use of land for mining, recreation, and oil and gas exploration and development along with maintaining environmental protections for federal lands. The agency is currently taking steps to move its headquarters and employees out west.

Last year, Pendley became the fifth person to lead the bureau on a temporary basis after the departure of Director Neil Kornze less than a year into the Trump administration. Bullock filed suit in July challenging Pendley's authority.

Pendley, a conservative activist, commentator and lawyer, was appointed by Bernhardt as acting director in July 2019.

Morris wrote that, by law, the position of Bureau of Land Management director is required to be confirmed by the Senate. The Trump administration argued that Pendley did not officially have the title of acting director, so the requirement does not apply.

"Such arguments prove evasive and undermine the constitutional system of checks and balances," Morris wrote, adding that the administration referred to Pendley publicly as the agency's director.

Interior Department spokesman Conner Swanson told CNN in an email the administration will appeal "immediately."

"This is an outrageous decision that is well outside the bounds of the law," Swanson said.

Bullock, who is challenging GOP Sen. Steve Daines in a competitive Senate race, tweeted, "Today's ruling is a win for the Constitution, the rule of law, and our public lands."

'She set the benchmark': trailblazing PNG politician Nahau Rooney dies, aged 75

REST IN POWER

Sadhana Sen and Gynnie Kero THE GUARDIAN

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Facebook
Hardworking, audacious, occasionally controversial, but always vivacious: one of Papua New Guinea’s political pioneers, Nahau Rooney, has been remembered as a trailblazer for PNG women in power following her death on 15 September, aged 75.

In 1977, Rooney was one of just three women elected to PNG’s first post-independence parliament – out of 109 members – where she served as the regional member for the province of Manus.

Rooney drew controversy during her early career when as minister for justice in 1979 she was sentenced by the supreme court to eight months in jail for interfering with the administration of justice over a tax case.

Related: Island of Niue considers travelling forward in time to catch up with New Zealand

Then prime minister, Sir Michael Somare, assumed the justice portfolio and overturned the decision immediately.

This early tussle for power between the executive and judiciary – narrowly over whether the judiciary had the right to review deportation decisions, but more broadly an assertion of power by a newly-independent government – led to most of PNG’s foreign judges resigning, and thus brought about the appointment of PNG’s first national judges.

© Provided by The Guardian Nahau Rooney was the first member of parliament for Manus province. Photograph: Tane Sinclair-Taylor/Nature/PA

Somare, PNG’s grand chief, described Rooney as a “wonderful woman”.

“She worked very hard for Papua New Guinea. I feel sorry for the Manus people especially her family. Manus has lost a great leader in Nahau.”

Elizabeth Cox, former UN women Pacific regional director, who has spent decades working with PNG women’s organisations, recalled Rooney as “an energetic member of the early post-independence governments that made genuine efforts to catalyse constitutional promises of equality, participation and a focus on rural development”.

“Sir Michael Somare believed in Nahau. Her female peers were inspired by her and she enjoyed the support of a loving husband, happy to let her shine while he worked hard at home in Manus.

“Nahau leaves us with an important legacy, one that challenges us all to do as much as she did to build a stronger women’s movement in PNG, to get more women into parliament and to make the voices of PNG’s post-independence daughters heard in the region and in the world.”

Rooney was a leading advocate for women to organise and raise their collective voice, a constant presence at conferences and workshops to encourage women’s participation in politics in PNG.

Climate change and its impact on the environment in her province Manus and elsewhere in PNG and the Pacific were among her many passions and worries as was the Manus regional processing centre.

“She was against destructive logging and fishing and, as early as 2001, protested the Australian government moves to make her beloved home a prison for asylum seekers,” Cox said.

PNG’s governor general, Sir Bob Dadae, paid tribute to Rooney as a pioneer.

“As the first female politician of our country soon after our independence, Rooney demonstrated early on to the womenfolk that women too can become politicians and be involved in decision making, a task that is, in our society, traditionally performed by the men,” Dadae said.

“She held various ministerial portfolios during her political career and was not one to hold back from freely expressing her opinion. She set the benchmark for women at a time when women’s role in society was relegated to the home and not in decision making for the nation as a politician and minister of state.

“To the people of Manus, Rooney demonstrated to the rest of the country the potential of what the women of Manus can achieve”, Dadae said.

Rooney was re-elected in 1982, becoming the only female member of that parliament, but lost her seat in 1987.

In the 2000s, retired from politics, her environmental and women’s rights activism continued, while she ran the family’s guest house on Manus Island. She also served as president of the National Council of Women, and on the Council of University of Papua New Guinea, where she had earlier studied social work.

In 2004, she ran, unsuccessfully, for the position of governor-general, which is nominated by a parliamentary vote.

In 2006, Rooney was honoured with the title of the Companion of the Order of the Star of Melanesia.

Rooney’s husband, Australian-born Wes Rooney, pre-deceased her, murdered on her home island of Manus. She is survived by her children, Kevin, Michelle, Poyap, Gabriel, Nawes, Eva, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

A life-saving 'game': Bosnia trains world's mine-detecting dogs

AFP

 

© ELVIS BARUKCIC Bosnia has become a key centre for dogs to be trained in mine detection

With her nose in the grass of a Bosnian field, Orna sniffs furiously until she finds her target. She then sits and wags her tail in excitement for the red rubber toy that is her reward.

The exercise is only a game for the two-year-old dog, but the mine-detection skill is saving lives in Bosnia and around the world.

© ELVIS BARUKCIC At the end of the war, some eight percent of Bosnian territory was littered with explosives, now it's believed to be two percent, thanks in part to the dogs' work

The Balkan state, still working to rid its territory of landmines dating back to its 1990s war, has become an important training ground for canines deployed as far afield as Asia, Africa and the Middle East. 

  

© ELVIS BARUKCIC Training begins when the puppies are four to six weeks old and lasts up to 18 months

At the end of Bosnia's 1992-95 conflict, some eight percent of its territory was littered with explosives.

Today, experts believe it is down to two percent, thanks in part to the work of the dogs, who have learned the trade at two centres backed by US and Norwegian NGOs.



Orna, a black and brown Belgian Malinois, is undergoing her schooling at the global training centre of the Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) in a suburb of Sarajevo.

She is among 40 dogs from the hard-working breed currently in training, while 30 other "veterans" are "enjoying their well-deserved retirement", said Gordana Medunjanin, who works at the centre 

. 

© ELVIS BARUKCIC All the dogs are the Malinois breed, which is known to be hard-working and adaptable

All the dogs are the Malinois breed, which is known to be "energetic, adaptable and have a great desire for work and cooperation", she said.

The site's graduates are currently taking part in mine clearance programmes in Bosnia, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Zimbabwe and Cambodia.

-'It's a game'-

Training starts when the puppies are four to six weeks old and lasts up to 18 months, said Orna's trainer Namik Dzanko, 29.

One of the important first tests is to confirm the dog's interest in the rubber toy, known as a cong, that helps motivate their work.

The dogs then start honing their skills by detecting the scent of explosives, hidden at random in tin canisters attached to a merry-go-round.

The dog circles the structure, stops and sits when it sniffs a mine.

Successes are rewarded with some play time with the red toy.

More advanced training continues in the simulation "minefields" outside, where explosives lacking detonators are buried in a 100- square-metre (1,076-square-foot) plot, with zones delineated by yellow tape.

Guided by their trainers, the dogs methodically sniff in straight lines.

When they pick up the scent of the explosive, they "mark" it by sitting quietly and pointing their muzzle at the suspected spot.

At a real minefield, the area would then be inspected by a de-mining expert.

"The dog does not understand that he is looking for a mine and that it is dangerous. For him, it's a game," said Dzanko.

"He finds something and is rewarded with his toy. Through this positive experience, he does a job which saves lives around the world."

The dogs are used mainly to clear suspicious areas around a known minefield, though they can be sent into the "heart" of the area, if the precise locations of the explosives are unknown.

Using dogs for the perimeter helps save time for the de-miners, said Nermin Hadzimujagic, whose US-funded Mine Detection Dog Center in southern Borci has sent pups on missions to places like Afghanistan, Kosovo and Lebanon.

"On a working day, a de-mining expert can inspect an area of 70 to 100 square metres, while a dog can cover up to 1,000," he added.

- 'Like footballers'-

Bosnia's goal is to be mine-free by 2025.

More than 500,000 inhabitants, or 13 percent of the population, still live close to dangerous areas.

Since the end of the war, anti-personnel mines have killed 617 people, including 53 de-miners, according to the Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Center.

No mine-sniffing dogs trained in Bosnia have ever been killed, in the country or in missions abroad.

The dogs are tested twice a year and must perform flawlessly.

"Otherwise, they cannot be used in de-mining anymore", Hadzimujagic, 44, said.

"If the dog misses a mine and someone has an accident tomorrow, we are accomplices," stressed Emir Cukas, a dog trainer in Bosnia's civil defence de-mining unit.

Dogs can work for a dozen years if they are healthy, but a lifelong training is crucial, he said.

"They are like footballers, like all sportsmen. If you train every day, you are good."

rus/ljv/ssm/kjm

We Are Many looks back to an earlier age of anti-war rallies

Chris Knight NP

© Provided by National Post New York protestors have the whole world in their hands in We Are Many.

The anti-war documentary We Are Many is a kind of double throwback. On the one hand, this 2014 British production is only now opening in Canada, six years after it was shot. But the subject matter is older still; the march against the impending Iraq War that took place in more than 600 cities around the world on Feb. 15, 2003.

The fact that the United States, Britain and their allies went ahead with the invasion barely a month later doesn’t dampen the spirits of the protestors and activists interviewed by director Amir Amirani. In fact, they argue that the scale of the protests – the New York Times declared worldwide public opinion a new superpower – helped future demonstrators make greater gains, and may even have kick-started the Arab Spring revolts of the early 2010s.

The film also functions as a reminder of what feels like another age in geopolitics. We see how British Prime Minister Tony Blair ignored advice from his Attorney General that the war might not be legal. And we watch President George W. Bush joking during a correspondents’ dinner in 2004 about his failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Even a decade and a half later, the outrage it stirs is palpable.

The British focus of the doc means that many of the commentators are specific to that country, including author John Le Carré, actor Mark Rylance and filmmaker Ken Loach. There is some footage of the Toronto demonstrations that were part of the 2003 event, although even more startling are the shots of scientists at McMurdo base in Antarctica joining in. One of the antipodal protestors notes that he lost his job over his participation, but adds he wouldn’t change a thing. And as someone else notes, having the protest spread to Antarctica was like hearing that it had reached Mars.

We Are Many opens Sept. 25 at the Nelson B.C. drive-in, the Rio in Vancouver and virtually through the Metro Edmonton, with other locations to follow.

3 stars out of 5

Largest California wildfire threatens marijuana growing area

© Provided by The Canadian Press

SAN FRANCISCO — California’s largest wildfire is threatening a marijuana growing enclave, and authorities said many of the locals have refused to evacuate and abandon their maturing crops even as weather forecasters predict more hot, dry and windy conditions that could fan flames.

The wildfire called the August Complex is nearing the small communities of Post Mountain and Trinity Pines, about 200 miles (322 kilometres) northwest of Sacramento, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Law enforcement officers went door to door warning of the encroaching fire danger but could not force residents to evacuate, Trinity County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Nate Trujillo said.

“It’s mainly growers,” Trujillo said. “And a lot of them, they don’t want to leave because that is their livelihood.”

As many as 1,000 people remained in Post Mountain and Trinity Pines, authorities and local residents estimated Thursday.

Numerous studies in recent years have linked bigger U.S. wildfires to global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas, especially because climate change has made California much drier. A drier California means plants are more flammable.

The threatened marijuana growing area is in the Emerald Triangle, a three-county corner of Northern California that by some estimates is the nation’s largest cannabis-producing region.

People familiar with Trinity Pines said the community has up to 40 legal farms, with more than 10 times that number in hidden, illegal growing areas.

Growers are wary of leaving the plants vulnerable to flames or thieves. Each farm has crops worth half a million dollars or more and many are within days or weeks of harvest.

One estimate put the value of the area's legal marijuana crop at about $20 million.

“There (are) millions of dollars, millions and millions of dollars of marijuana out there,” Trujillo said. “Some of those plants are 16 feet (5 metres) tall, and they are all in the budding stages of growth right now.”

Gunfire in the region is common. A recent night brought what locals dubbed the “roll call” of cannabis cultivators shooting rounds from pistols and automatic weapons as warnings to outsiders, said Post Mountain volunteer Fire Chief Astrid Dobo, who also manages legal cannabis farms.

Mike McMillan, spokesman for the federal incident command team managing the northern section of the August Complex, said fire officials plan to deliver a clear message that ”we are not going to die to save people. That is not our job.”

“We are going to knock door to door and tell them once again,” McMillan said. “However, if they choose to stay and if the fire situation becomes, as we say, very dynamic and very dangerous … we are not going to risk our lives.”

A firefighter was killed and another was injured on Aug. 31 while working on the fire. Diana Jones, a volunteer firefighter from Texas, was among 26 people who have died since more than two dozen major wildfires broke out across the state last month.

A memorial service was held Friday for a veteran firefighter, Charles Morton, 39, a squad boss with the Big Bear Interagency Hotshot Crew who died Sept. 17 while battling the El Dorado Fire in the San Bernardino National Forest east of Los Angeles.

“I know that Charlie was a very skilled, in fact extraordinary, firefighter and a fire leader,” U.S. Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen told the gathering at The Rock Church in San Bernardino.

“He committed himself, often for weeks and months on end, to protecting lives, communities and natural resources all around this country in service to fellow Americans.”

The Butte County Sheriff’s Office on Friday released the identity of another of the 15 people killed in a rampaging forest fire earlier this month. The remains of Linda Longenbach, 71, of Berry Creek, were found on Sept. 10 in a roadway about 10 feet from an ATV, close to the body of a man previously identified as Paul Winer, 68.

A relative told investigators the victims were aware of the fire and chose not to evacuate.

Efforts to extinguish the wildfires have benefitted recently from low winds and normal temperatures along with and moist air flowing inland from the Pacific. But forecasters said that weather pattern will reverse during the weekend as a ridge of high pressure boosts temperatures and generates gusty winds flowing from the interior to the coast.

In northern and central areas of the state the strongest winds were forecast to occur from Saturday night into Sunday morning, followed by another burst Sunday night into Monday.

The Pacific Gas & Electric utility was tracking the forecasts to determine if it would be necessary to shut off power to areas where gusts could damage the company's equipment or hurl debris into lines that can ignite flammable vegetation.

The utility posted a power cut “watch alert” for Saturday evening through Monday morning. If the shutoff happens, about 21,000 customers in portions of northern Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties would lose power, PG&E said.

When heavy winds were predicted earlier this month, PG&E cut power to about 167,000 homes and businesses in central and northern California in a more targeted approach after being criticized last year for acting too broadly when it blacked out 2 million customers to prevent fires.

PG&E equipment has sparked past large wildfires, including the 2018 fire that destroyed much of the Sierra foothills town of Paradise and killed 85 people.

In Southern California, meteorologists anticipate very hot and dry weather conditions with weak to locally moderate Santa Ana winds on Monday.

The U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region announced Friday that it is extending the closure of all nine national forests in California due to concerns including fire conditions and critical limitations on firefighting resources. The closure orders are being re-evaluated daily, the service said.

____

Associated Press writer John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

The Associated Press

Fast fashion giant Boohoo ignored red flags over working conditions among suppliers and often has 'no idea where its clothes are being made,' an independent review found

insider@insider.com (Grace Dean)

© Provided by Business Insider Boohoo founder Mahmud Kamani and business partner Carol Kane. Jerritt Clark/Getty Images for Boohooo

An independent review into fast fashion giant Boohoo's supply chain found "multiple failings" over pay and working conditions. 

Boohoo, which faced allegations of "modern slavery" in its supply chain in June, ignored red flags, the review found.

Multiple textile factory workers claimed to be paid less than the minimum wage, and around half of the suppliers and subcontractors investigated had no risk assessments.
But Boohoo did not break the law, and it didn't deliberately exploit workers, the review said.

Boohoo said the review "has identified significant and clearly unacceptable issues in our supply chain, and the steps we had taken to address them, but it is clear that we need to go further and faster to improve our governance, oversight and compliance."


Fast fashion giant Boohoo's UK supply chain has "many failings," including low pay, poor working conditions, and "inadequate" monitoring from Boohoo, an independent review has found — but the retailer did not deliberately exploit workers.

The British fast fashion giant announced the independent review in July after workers' rights group Labour Behind the Label (LBL) released a June report about factory conditions in Boohoo's supply chain. Workers at the factories in Leicester, central England, were being exploited and put at risk of catching COVID-19, the report said.

Separately, in July, The Sunday Times reported that workers in a factory making clothes for Boohoo were being paid as little as £3.50 ($4.38) an hour, far below the legal minimum wage.

The independent review, delivered to the board on Thursday, "has identified many failings in the Leicester supply chain," Boohoo said in a statement on Friday. For example, some workers had not always been properly paid for their work, the review found, and many were not fully aware of their rights.

Senior Boohoo staff knew there were "very serious issues" in its supply chain and ignored red flags, the review said.

Despite these failings, the review said there was "ample evidence" Boohoo has been taking action to address these problems for nearly a year, not just in "reaction to the negative publicity in July and August 2020." This included regular factory visits from Boohoo's compliance team to assess health and safety risk, and its supplier code of conduct, which had clauses on safe working conditions and wages.
Allegations of "lockdown breaches, exploitation, and modern slavery"

LBL said in June it had unearthed "lockdown breaches, exploitation, and modern slavery" in Boohoo's supply chain in Leicester, and said that many factories continued working at "100% capacity" throughout the pandemic because of "sustained orders" from Boohoo.

Following the report, retailers including Next, Zalando, Amazon, and ASOS delisted Boohoo products.

While the independent review found no evidence that the company had committed any crimes, it said allegations about poor working conditions and low rates of pay were "not merely well-founded but substantially true."

For example, one of Boohoo's suppliers didn't pay workers their paid statutory holiday pay, and multiple factory workers claimed to be paid less than the minimum wage, the review found.

The review also discovered that some suppliers failed to follow health and safety regulations, and had insufficient first aid kits and training, unhygienic bathrooms, and fire-safety violations. Half of the suppliers and subcontractors investigated had no risk assessments in their factories.
Boohoo "ignored" red flags

The review described Boohoo's monitoring of its supply chain as "inadequate," and said that senior Boohoo directors knew there were "very serious issues" about the treatment of factory workers since at least December 2019. The company "ignored" red flags and "did not move quickly enough," it said.

"By the time they began to take notice, it was too late."

Boohoo's rapid growth meant that its "weak corporate governance" couldn't keep up, said Alison Levitt, the senior lawyer who led the review.

In many cases, "Boohoo has simply no idea where its clothes are being made and thus has no chance of monitoring the conditions of the workers who make them," she said.

She added that "growth and profit were prioritized to the extent that the company lost sight of other issues," such as its social responsibility.

But the independent review found that Boohoo did not deliberately allow poor conditions and low pay within its supply chain, and it also did not intentionally profit from them.

The review said that "if Boohoo is willing to take a different approach to how it both views and interacts with the Leicester supply chain, it has within its power to be a tremendous force for good."
Boohoo: "We need to go further and faster to improve"

After the review was released, Boohoo explained a series of measures it would take after "extensive" consultations with stakeholders and shareholders. These include discussing supply chain compliance at every board meeting, working with more suppliers with a "track record of ethical and sustainability policies," and independently auditing more of its UK and international supply chain.

The company will also support workers' rights by establishing a Garment & Textiles Community Trust, which will provide hardship funds to workers in the local garment industry.

The company said in its statement that it regretted not taking action quickly enough.

Boohoo CEO John Lyttle said: "[The review] has identified significant and clearly unacceptable issues in our supply chain, and the steps we had taken to address them, but it is clear that we need to go further and faster to improve our governance, oversight and compliance."

He added that Boohoo has been "a major force in driving the textile industry in Leicester," and said the company wants to "reinforce [its] commitment to being a leader for positive change in the city."

Levitt commended Boohoo for "helping to democratize fashion."

She added that "Boohoo should also be congratulated for the revenue it has generated for the UK and for the fact that, unlike many of its competitors, it has continued to support UK manufacturing."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Individuals Can’t Heal The Climate When Capitalism Is The Virus

Whizy Kim


We need to talk about our carbon footprint. Not how much of it comes from driving versus eating meat, but the popular concept of dividing up all the greenhouse gases polluting the atmosphere into the fraction that you personally own. Today we have an abundance of handy online calculators and apps that estimate your individual footprint for you. Everyone’s getting involved in the effort; one newly released app called VYVE is even backed by oil giant BP. The app’s home page succinctly captures the motivation behind calculating your footprint: “Take responsibility for your carbon impact.”

To be sure, we should take responsibility. A carbon footprint calculator can help bring an overwhelming global crisis into your backyard. You can compare the average carbon footprint of an American (around 16 metric tons CO2e) to that of neighboring Mexico (about 4 metric tons) and grasp that a high-consumption American lifestyle has a much heavier impact on the environment than others do. It can also be a good jumping-off point for those who want to take action but are unsure of what changes they can make in their lives.

But we also need to admit that the obsession around personal carbon footprints has been harmful. For too long, the dominant call to action has been encouraging the public to opt-in to a set of different lifestyle habits, through carbon footprint quizzes and by invoking the duty to take charge of your personal contribution. Despite this messaging, 88% of Americans still owned a car in 2015 and car ownership has continued to rise. U.S. airlines carried a record number of passengers in 2019. Even though there’s recently been a lot of coverage on the role of animal products in climate change, as of 2018, only 3% of Americans said they were vegan. In 2018, the U.S. also hit record-high energy consumption.

It’s not that shrinking your own carbon footprint isn’t necessary to avoiding climate catastrophe. It is. It’s that, given the state of things, dedicating so much space to the concept clearly hasn’t worked on a wide enough scale. We don’t just need to shave emissions here and there; we need to make them disappear at incredible speed. But according to a Washington Post poll from 2019, most Americans still believe small personal sacrifices will be enough. We have until 2030 before much of the climate damage becomes irreversible due to the triggering of tipping points that can collapse entire ecosystems. The damage is already enormous; more people are being harmed by the climate crisis every year. We’re not on track to keep temperature rise below 2°C of the pre-industrial era, the target set by the Paris Agreement in 2015. More likely, we’ll see a global rise of at least 3°C. Affluent countries like the U.S. need a revolution in the way we live, and that requires systems, not just individual lifestyles, to transform.

Even the most commonly recommended lifestyle changes often require people to swim against strong currents. The fact that most Americans rely on personal vehicles over public transportation might lead you to write us off as hopelessly obsessed with gas-guzzling cars — but cultural fixations don’t arise from nowhere. The post-WWII era was dizzy with incentives, policies, and mass infrastructure projects that made owning a car much more feasible and attractive than in other nations. To this day, a stunning variety of laws help maintain a landscape where having your own car is either the safer, cheaper option, or the only option. U.S. cities with well-connected, affordable public transportation remain extremely rare, partly because public works in general are underfunded, but also because groups that have a stake in the auto or fossil fuel industry use their piles of money to help ensure they don’t get built.

Even when it comes to reducing energy use in your home, there are larger factors at play that can outweigh the good you’re trying to do. A recent University of Michigan study found that in some states, the climate benefit from households consuming less energy than the national average was erased by their grid’s method of producing electricity being carbon-intensive. In Florida, for example, there’s less need to heat homes in winter, leading to energy savings, but its electricity production is more intensive in producing greenhouse gases than average. Power companies in Florida, as in many other places, have also been fighting wider adoption of renewable energy. The sunshine state only generated 1% of its electricity from solar energy last year.

Or take recycling. Americans recycle or compost about 35% of waste. Is the rate so low because of laziness? Maybe partly. But considering that over 90% of the plastic we were told to recycle wasn’t actually recycled — which Pepsi, Coca Cola, Nestle, and others are being sued for right now — it’s not fair to blame individuals.

Obsessing about reducing our individual footprints, then, is an exercise in missing the burning forest for the trees. It’s based on the hope that, by pointing it out, an enormous wave of people will be swayed to live differently — and that massive systems and corporations will also support that goal. Maybe this messaging convinces you to shrink your footprint down from 16 metric tons CO2e to 5 metric tons. Annual global greenhouse gas emissions are around 50 billion tons CO2e; only 49,999,999,989 to go. The climate crisis is a problem of mind-breaking scale.

And this discourse didn’t come about by accident. Even though scientists began loudly calling for climate action back in 1988, “carbon footprint” wasn’t a well-known concept until BP helped popularize it in the mid-2000s. The premise of a carbon footprint is that we’re all contributing to the emergency — so deal with your share. But what if we aren’t all equally to blame? What would the solution look like then?


The fact is, climate crisis denial is thriving. Attacks on the science of it may not be as fashionable as they once were, but the footprint of disinformation remains: many Americans are still fuzzy on whether scientists have formed a consensus (there never wasn’t a consensus), and whether climate change is mainly caused by human activity (it is). In 2015, an investigative report by InsideClimate News uncovered evidence that ExxonMobil knew about the climate crisis as early as the late 1970s, thanks to research conducted by its own scientists. Oil companies then spent decades spilling money into the effort of confusing the public. They didn’t need to provide air-tight proof that temperatures weren’t rising, or that it wouldn’t impact the Earth very much. All they had to do was nudge some doubt into the discussion.

These days, more of us accept that global warming is happening than in the past. Oil companies have changed their tack too, taking a public stance on how they intend to fight climate change. Instead of poking holes in the science, denial today increasingly takes the form of greenwashing — crafting an image that makes corporations seem more environmentally conscious than their business practices would indicate. But this kind of denial still works by spreading confusion; confusion over the best strategy to combat climate change, confusion over the degree of fossil fuel culpability, confusion over what “environmentally conscious” even means in our late-stage capitalist world.

In 2020, you can hardly find a company that hasn’t made a commitment to social and environmental responsibility, whether it’s by partnering with environmental groups across the globe or helping developing nations grow their economy sustainably. Keywords like “innovation” and “growth” get thrown around a lot. In 2000, BP unveiled the slogan “beyond petroleum” and soon launched an ad campaign around the theme that included TV commercials asking people about their carbon footprint and portraying the company as a beacon of progress. But do these amount to real efforts to address the climate crisis?

The answer is no, at least according to a recent analysis on the activities of ten major oil companies between 2008 to 2019, including U.S.-owned Chevron and ExxonMobil. The researchers found that none have been moving away from fossil fuels. At best, companies increased their share of natural gas production, which has been extolled as a temporary “bridge” to carbon-free energy because it emits 50% less CO2 than coal. But natural gas is not clean energy. It’s mostly made up of methane, a greenhouse gas that traps heat 86 times more effectively than CO2. Scientists now believe the amount of methane released by extracting natural gas has been underestimated by up to 40%. Currently, millions of abandoned, uncapped gas wells are leaking methane.

The 2008-2019 analysis found that “not a single major oil and gas firm has invested more than 0.1% of revenues into renewable energy” during this period. In 2011, BP sold off its solar assets, facing financial difficulties in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It recently announced a commitment to more renewables investment — but whether it pans out remains to be seen.

Oil companies haven’t just continued to extract fossil fuels; they’ve been busy constructing new pipelines and developments, which has major implications for future carbon emissions — once a new development is built, it’s likely to be extracting for at least the time it takes to recoup the cost of building it. All ten companies analyzed by researchers “are planning significant expansion of oil and gas assets, totalling some USD$1.4 trillion in the period 2020-2024.”

The podcast Drilled, which describes itself as “a true-crime podcast about climate change,” lays out how the deception of the fossil fuel industry is an obstacle to the systemic change we need. In its first season, it references a 2018 issue of the New York Times Magazine that was wholly dedicated to climate change as a case study in diffusing blame. “The story makes the problem of climate change global,” notes Drilled host and producer Amy Westervelt. “We all failed to act, not just the handful of men in power. The solution, or lack thereof? Individual. It’s human nature. We make short-sighted decisions and there’s nothing we can do to change that.”

The fact is that since 1988, just 100 fossil fuel companies have produced roughly 70% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. We know that burning fossil fuels is pretty much incompatible with having a future. Yet today, about 80% of energy demand in the U.S. is still met through fossil fuels. To be fair, it’s not solely the fault of oil companies. In 2015 alone, the U.S. government gave the industry $649 billion in subsidies. In 2018, we got the dubious honor of becoming the largest producer of crude oil in the world, thanks to the modern fracking boom. At least 82,000 fracking wells have popped up across the country since 2005.

And yet too often, we nod along with blaming the climate crisis vaguely on “human nature.” This fatalistic view isn’t just a dead end, it suggests we apologize for existing at all, especially when coupled with the myth that overpopulation is a leading cause of rising temperatures. Man-made climate change is a modern emergency representing a sliver of the 6,000 years human civilizations have existed. The start of man-made warming coincides with the explosion of industrial capitalism in just a handful of wealthy countries — whose incredible riches were accumulated through the systematic looting of labor and resources from around the world. While we all have to act, the idea that we all shoulder the blame for a crisis spurred by deregulated capitalism doesn’t create solidarity. It’s not showing humility or personal integrity. It only upholds the people and systems that have perpetuated climate change, and creates fog around those who have been most violated by it.
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By seeing climate as a human rights problem, not just an environmental one, a clearer path opens up. For environmental group 350.org, the goal is simple: no more fossil fuels. “The climate change is a systemic crisis, so we need systemic solutions,” says Thanu Yakupitiyage, head of U.S. communications at 350.org.

“Ultimately we’re talking about capitalism, right?” she says. “When we talk about consumption, we’re talking about the level at which we consume and the level at which we’re engaged in these capitalist forces.” It’s another reason why corporate greenwashing is dangerous; promoting your product as being “greener” than another one perpetuates the idea that the solution is to consume differently, not consume less.

The climate justice movement isn’t new, but it has gained more attention in the past few years. It points to the perpetrators of the crisis, and also demands restitution. At the 2009 U.N. climate change conference, several nations in Latin America and the Caribbean began calling for wealthy nations like the U.S. to pay their climate debt. The logic is that the economic growth of the U.S. has been achieved at the expense of global wellbeing. When we say modern climate change is caused by human activity, we mean economic activity. In its rush to grow fast and never stop growing, the U.S. has single-handedly released a quarter of all the greenhouse gas pollution since 1750. “350 really believes in climate reparations,” says Yakupitiyage. “The fossil fuel industry must pay for the damage they’ve caused to our communities and climate.”

Climate change is also entangled with racism and structural violence. In the U.S., people of color are more likely to live in polluted places. An area along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, which has a majority Black population, is known as “Cancer Alley” due to soaring cancer rates connected to the abundance of petrochemical factories. In order to extract resources to be consumed by wealthy economies, indigenous homes and livelihoods are ripped apart. Later, they are often among the earliest to face the consequences of global warming.

Then there’s the violence that comes from resistance. According to environmental rights NGO Global Witness, at least 212 environmental activists were killed around the world last year, a vast proportion of them indigenous people defending their land. One of the most infamous acts of environmental violence was committed against the Ogoni Nine in 1995. The nine men were members of the Ogoni ethnic group in southeastern Nigeria and involved in the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), which demanded reparations from the oil industry for polluting their community until they could no longer farm or fish. The government brutally cracked down on protestors, allegedly encouraged by Shell. When four local Ogoni chiefs were killed by a mob, the nine activists, including MOSOP leader Ken Saro-Wiwa, were put on trial and executed by the Nigerian government. Shell has been accused by Amnesty International of helping frame the activists, and according to the testimony of their widows, prosecution witnesses later admitted they had been bribed with money and job offers at Shell.

“We really must see the climate crisis as inherently linked to all forms of injustice, from racism to anti-immigrant sentiment,” says Yakupitiyage. Immigration is a lens that Yakupitiyage has particular expertise in. Before she became involved in the climate justice movement around the time of the 2014 People’s Climate March, she was working in immigrant rights. “It’s really important that the climate movement is both calling for the protection and safety of people, and also advocating for people’s right to migrate,” she says. “You see within nations like Bangladesh or India, in places in South America, people moving because of drought or because of floods. It’s estimated that up to 1 billion people will be displaced because of climate change by the year 2050.”

Anti-immigration policies deny the reality that a great climate migration has already begun, as well as the cause of it. “Why is it that people are moving in the first place? They’re moving because of the fossil fuel industry and companies in the Global North who’ve made conditions in the Global South even worse,” says Yakupitiyage.

Of course, transforming political ideology and holding corporate power accountable isn’t easy. In 1993, 30,000 locals of Lago Agrio, Ecuador filed a landmark class-action suit against Chevron, accusing the company of dumping 18 billion gallons of wastewater and 17 billion gallons of oil into their community. An Ecuadorian court ordered Chevron to pay $18 billion to the plaintiffs in 2011, later reduced to $9.5 billion. That same year, Chevron filed a fraud case against Steven Donziger, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, claiming he had bribed the judge. According to documents obtained by The Intercept, Chevron sought to demonize Donziger. He was found guilty, disbarred, his bank accounts have been frozen, and he was put under house arrest in August 2019. Since the class-action suit, Chevron has withdrawn all its business from Ecuador, which has made it difficult for the plaintiffs to collect on the $9.5 billion.

Saving the planet will clearly be a herculean effort, but it’s the fight of our lifetime. That’s exactly why the climate justice movement has to grow. The best way to lower your carbon footprint is to stop being an individual and become a part of a movement. It requires demanding more from elected leaders — refusing to settle for “at least it’s better than nothing” — and ensuring that, at the very least, the Green New Deal passes. It means clashing with institutions, recognizing that reducing your individual consumption is important but not the same thing as justice.

“It can be intimidating to take on these huge industries,” Yakupitiyage says. “But I think where I found security is in being part of a movement. A movement that has each other’s backs.” When she feels defeated, she finds strength in activists who’ve helped pave the way for a more equitable society, against incredible odds. “Folks like Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde,” she says. “I look at their teachings in terms of what it means to be intimidated, and to be jailed, and to be told that you’re crazy.”

When asked whether the fossil fuel industry is intimidated by the climate justice movement, Yakupitiyage’s answer is immediate. “Absolutely.”

‘We Work Until We Are Dying’: Palm Oil Labour Abuses Linked To Top Brands

Workers claim they've been cheated, threatened and forced to work off insurmountable debts despite some only making $2 per day.

• Margie Mason and Robin McDowellAssociated Press via CP

ORE HUIYING/AP VIA CP

An Indonesian migrant worker rests after working on a palm oil plantation run by the government-owned Felda in Malaysia in early 2020.

PENINSULAR, Malaysia — An invisible workforce of millions of labourers from some of the poorest corners of Asia toil in the palm oil industry, many of them enduring various forms of exploitation, with the most serious abuses including child labour, outright slavery and allegations of rape, an Associated Press investigation has found.

In Malaysia and Indonesia, these workers tend the heavy reddish-orange palm oil fruit that makes its way into the supply chains of many iconic food and cosmetics companies like Unilever, L’Oreal, Nestle and Procter & Gamble.

Together, the two countries produce about 85 per cent of the world’s estimated $87 billion (US$65 billion) palm oil supply.

Palm oil is virtually impossible to avoid. Often disguised on labels as an ingredient listed by more than 200 names, it can be found in roughly half the products on supermarket shelves and in most cosmetic brands. It’s contained in paints, plywood, pesticides and pills. It’s also present in animal feed, biofuels and even hand sanitizer.

The AP interviewed nearly 130 current and former workers from two dozen palm oil companies who came from eight countries and laboured on plantations across wide swaths of Malaysia and Indonesia. Almost all had complaints against their treatment, with some saying they were cheated, threatened, held against their will or forced to work off unsurmountable debts. Others said they were regularly harassed by authorities, swept up in raids and detained in crowded government facilities.

They included members of Myanmar’s long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority, who fled ethnic cleansing in their homeland only to be sold into the palm oil industry. Fishermen who escaped years of slavery on boats also described coming ashore in search of help, only to be trafficked onto plantations ― sometimes with police involvement. They said they worked for little or no pay and were trapped for years.

This has been the industry’s hidden secret for decades.Gemma Tillack, Rainforest Action Network

The AP used the most recently published data from producers, traders and buyers of the world’s most-consumed vegetable oil, as well as U.S. Customs records, to link the labourers’ palm oil and its derivatives from the mills that process it to the supply chains of top Western companies like the makers of Oreo cookies, Lysol cleaners and some of Hershey’s chocolatey treats.

AP reporters witnessed some abuses firsthand and reviewed police reports, complaints made to labour unions, videos and photos smuggled out of plantations and local media stories to corroborate accounts wherever possible. In some cases, reporters tracked down people who helped enslaved workers escape. More than a hundred rights advocates, academics, clergy members, activists and government officials also were interviewed. 

Though labour issues have largely been ignored, the punishing effects of palm oil on the environment have been decried for years. Still, giant Western financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and the Vanguard Group have continued to help fuel a crop that has exploded globally, soaring from just five million tons in 1999 to 72 million tons today, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Sometimes they invest directly but, increasingly, third parties are used like Malaysia-based Malayan Banking Berhad, or Maybank, one of the world’s biggest palm oil financiers. It not only provides capital to growers but, in some cases, processes the plantations’ payrolls, with arbitrary and inconsistent wage deductions that are considered indicators of forced labour.

ORE HUIYING/AP VIA CP    

A worker bathes at a palm oil plantation run by government-owned Felda in peninsular Malaysia in early 2020. 

“This has been the industry’s hidden secret for decades,” said Gemma Tillack of the U.S.-based Rainforest Action Network, which has exposed labour abuses on palm oil plantations. “The buck stops with the banks. It is their funding that makes this system of exploitation possible.”

The AP found widespread labour abuses on plantations big and small, including some that meet certification standards set by the global Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an association that promotes ethical production ― including labour practices ― and whose members include growers, buyers, traders and environmental watchdogs.

Some of the same companies that display the RSPO’s green palm logo signifying its seal of approval have been accused of continuing to grab land from Indigenous people and destroying virgin rainforests that are home to orangutans and other critically endangered species.

As global demand for palm oil surges, plantations are struggling to find enough labourers, frequently relying on brokers who prey on the most at-risk people. Many foreign workers end up fleeced by a syndicate of recruiters and corrupt officials and often are unable to speak the local language, rendering them especially susceptible to trafficking and other abuses.

They sometimes pay up to $6,700 (US$5,000) just to get their jobs ― an amount that could take years to earn in their home countries ― often showing up for work already crushed by debt. Many have their passports seized by company officials to keep them from running away, which the United Nations recognizes as a potential flag of forced labour.

Countless others remain off the books, including migrants working without documentation and children who AP reporters witnessed squatting in the fields like crabs, picking up loose fruit alongside their parents. Many women also work for free or on a day-to-day basis, earning the equivalent of as little as $2 a day, sometimes for decades.

‘It makes us very sad’

The AP talked to some female workers who said they were sexually harassed and even raped in the fields, including some minors.

The workers AP interviewed came from Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, the Philippines and Cambodia, along with Myanmar, which represents the newest army of exploited labourers. The AP is not fully identifying them or their plantations to protect their safety.

“We work until we are dying,” said one worker sitting in a room with two other colleagues at a Malaysian plantation run by Felda, a government-owned company. Their eyes filled with tears after learning Felda was one of the world’s largest palm oil producers.

“They use this palm oil to make all these products,” he said. “It makes us very sad.”

The Malaysian government was contacted by the AP repeatedly over the course of a week, but issued no comment. Felda also did not respond, but its commercial arm, FGV Holdings Berhad, said it had been working to address workers’ complaints, including making improvements in recruitment practices and ensuring that foreign labourers have access to their passports.

Nageeb Wahab, head of the Malaysian Palm Oil Association, a government-supported umbrella group, called the allegations against the industry unwarranted: “All of them are not true,” he said.

The Indonesian Palm Oil Association said it has been striving to improve labour conditions for the last five years. Soes Hindharno, spokesman for the country’s Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration, said any company violating government rules and regulations on serious issues like child labour and not paying women workers could face sanctions, including having their operations shut down.

Unilever, L’Oreal, Nestle and Procter & Gamble all said they do not tolerate human rights abuses and investigate allegations raised about companies that feed into their supply chains, taking appropriate action when warranted, which can include working with suppliers to improve conditions or suspending relationships when grievances are not properly addressed.

Deutsche Bank reiterated its support of human rights, Vanguard said it monitors companies in its portfolio for abuses, and JPMorgan Chase declined comment.

Maybank expressed surprise at the criticism of its standards, saying that “we reject any insinuation that Maybank may be involved in any unethical behaviour.”

This story was funded in part by the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at CUNY’s Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

With files from Sopheng Cheang and Gemunu Amarasinghe.