Geothermal test success has Albertans excited for the future of the energy source
Chris Chacon 
3/12/2021

A geothermal energy project near Grande Prairie, Alta., has hit a significant milestone that could shape the future of energy in the province.

© Terrapin Geothermics/Global News Image of a geothermal project.

"This is super exciting for us. This is confirmation on the thesis that we can produce geothermal energy in this province," said Terrapin Geothermics VP of Operations Marc Colombina.

The Alberta No. 1 geothermal energy project in the Municipal District of Greenview is managed by Edmonton-based Terrapin Geothermics to produce heat and energy.

The project received a $25.4-million boost in 2019 from the federal government's Emerging Renewable Power Program (ERPP), which also provided more than $15 million to a solar farm in southern Alberta.

Started in 2018, the project recently hit a major mark after finding temperatures needed to produce energy from natural heat in the ground.

"We had reading of 118 degrees C which is well above the 100 degrees needed to economically produce power," Colombina said.

Read more: Alberta intends to clear hurdles for development of clean geothermal energy


The Alberta No. 1 project expects to be providing clean heat and power to Alberta's energy mix by 2024. Colombina said this project will be able to power 2,500 homes.

"It's clean and renewable, there's no emissions from these low temperature systems, its has the smallest land foot print of any renewable energy," Colombina said.

He added it's the beginning of more to come in Alberta.

The new Blatchford community in Edmonton is already using geothermal energy and has a goal of being carbon-neutral. It began using this technology at the end of 2019 and is already powering homes.

Blatchford's Energy Centre One is part of a centralized district energy sharing system using geothermal, solar and other sustainable energy sources to provide energy for heating, cooling and hot water to homes and buildings.

"We are now approaching about 20 customers to the system. As the development grows we expect to (see) more customers connected to this district energy system using the heat from the ground from the geoexchange field," said Blatchford Director of Renewable Energy Systems Christian Felske.

Projects like the Blatchford Renewable Energy Systems and Alberta No. 1 are expected to create hundreds of jobs in Alberta.

"The benefit to it is not just that it's creating more jobs, it's the type of jobs that it's creating. It's specifically the jobs we've been losing as a result of low oil prices," said Business Council of Alberta chief economist Mike Holden.

The province has echoed this excitement, saying it sets the stage for a new and innovative industry, putting Alberta as a global leader in geothermal energy.

The Alberta Number One project expects to be selling power by 2024.

Notley's NDP opens wide lead on Kenney and UCP in latest poll
Bill Kaufmann 

3/12/2021

A governing Conservative Party battered by controversy trails the New Democratic Party by a whopping 2-1 margin, according to a recent poll.

And by a 14-point margin, more Albertans disapprove of the UCP government’s recent budget than support it, says the Leger online survey of 1,001 Albertans conducted March 5-8.

The poll found 40 per cent support for Rachel Notley’s NDP compared to 20 per cent for the governing UCP, with the Opposition party leading in all areas of the province.

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© Provided by Calgary Herald Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley and Premier Jason Kenney.


While the NDP predictably dominated in the Edmonton region with 49 per cent support versus 14 per cent for the Tories, it’s their strength in Calgary and rural areas that’s noteworthy, said Leger’s executive vice-president, Ian Large.

“The UCP led in rural areas and Calgary but that seems to have receded, but there’s still a large number of undecideds,” said Large, noting 27 per cent of respondents didn’t give an opinion provincewide, that number rising to 32 per cent in areas outside the two large cities.

In the Calgary area, the NDP garnered 36 per cent of support versus 34 per cent for the UCP, which trailed its opposition foes 34 per cent to 24 per cent in rural Alberta.

In the 2019 provincial election, the UCP captured 55 per cent of the vote to the NDP’s 33 per cent and took 63 of 87 seats.

The government’s run into a political wood chipper with its handling of MLAs taking pandemic beach trips, provincial parks, a faltering economy and approval of coal mining in the Rockies’ eastern slopes.

But given there are two years until the next provincial election and probably brighter days ahead with the COVID-19 pandemic set to fade, Large said those voter trends are hardly carved in stone.

“What this government gets to own is the vaccination program, which is going quite well, and the economic recovery, which is coming,” he said.

“People will forget the missteps because they get to go dancing.”

A Calgary political scientist said he has no doubt the UCP trails the NDP but doubts it’s by 20 points.

And even if they did, a lot of that is likely a protest poll response that can be wooed back by a well-run COVID-19 vaccination rollout and a general end to the pandemic, said Duane Bratt of Mount Royal University.

“Even if the NDP gets 60 or 70 per cent of the vote in Edmonton, they’ve got 19 seats now so maybe they’ll get 20 there,” he said.

If the UCP dominates in the rural areas or smaller centres “and win a third of the Calgary seats, they can easily (win again),” he added.

But there’s no doubting the dramatic slide in fortunes for a UCP that’s led the NDP ever since the right-wing party was created in 2017, said Bratt.

“And there’s clear dissension in the (UCP) ranks,” he said, noting anger within the party over COVID-19 restrictions.

There’s a danger those on the UCP’s right flank could still leave for another right-wing party, given the questions being raised about Premier Jason Kenney’s leadership, said Bratt.

Dark political clouds rained on other parts of the Leger poll for the governing party.

Though there’s no majority opinion on last month’s 2021-2022 economic blueprint, 41 per cent of respondents said they disapprove of it, while 27 per cent gave their support.

But while only four per cent of those polled strongly approve of the budget, those staunchly opposed numbered 20 per cent.

It’s the fruit of a largely status quo budget with a projected $18.2-billion deficit for the coming year that pleased few on the left or right of the political spectrum, said Large.

“If you were looking for spending cuts or wrestling the deficit, you didn’t see that and if you were hoping for support for building roads or education, you wouldn’t see that either,” he said.

To many Albertans, of whom 32 per cent didn’t know or preferred not to answer, the budget was a non-event, said Large.

“This one kind of came and went. Nobody really noticed,” he said.

More noticeable, said Large, is the 33 per cent support for a provincial sales tax compared to 59 per cent opposed to one, though the vast majority of the latter were strongly against it.

Related
Braid: UCP in polling dumps but pandemic recovery could spark reversal of fortune

Younger Albertans more open to a provincial sales tax: poll

Braid: Kenney is stuck in an alternate universe of debt — and, possibly, a new sales tax

“Five years ago, it would have been 80 per cent opposed, but this has been a conversation for decades in Alberta,” he said.

“And when you blow past an $18-billion deficit, this is an option for more of us.”

Of those surveyed, 69 per cent agreed the government would have to cut spending next year, while 51 per cent said the province was right not to cut spending in its latest budget.

On Friday, the NDP announced it was launching its candidate nomination process in preparation for the 2023 provincial election, saying the UCP’s missteps have given them momentum.

“We have been getting a flurry of interest from people who want to get involved,” said the party’s provincial secretary, Brad Stevens.

BKaufmann@postmedia.com

on Twitter: @BillKaufmannjrn

LINE 5
Whitmer offers plan to supply propane after pipeline closes


TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's administration released a plan Friday to make sure Michigan will have enough propane if a controversial pipeline is shut down.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The strategy addresses a frequent objection to the Democratic governor’s demand that Enbridge Inc. decommission its Line 5, a leading carrier of natural gas liquids that are refined into propane to heat many Michigan homes.

It calls for more state investment in rail and propane storage infrastructure and pledges efforts to find new suppliers while working with the industry to deal with potential shortages. It proposes more energy efficiency and greater use of other sources, including renewables.

“Governor Whitmer has remained committed to ensuring the state’s energy needs are met when the Enbridge oil pipelines shut down, and this plan furthers that commitment while protecting consumers and their pocketbooks," spokeswoman Chelsea Lewis-Parisio said.

Enbridge dismissed the proposals as “wholly inadequate for replacing the propane or energy supply Michiganders currently depend on," adding that it would worsen pollution by requiring greater use of other transport methods that would increase customer costs.

Line 5 carries oil and gas liquids through northern Wisconsin, Michigan's Upper Peninsula and a portion of the northern Lower Peninsula. A 4 mile (6.4 kilometre) section divides into two pipes that cross the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

Whitmer ordered the company last fall to close the 645 mile (1,038 kilometre) line by May, siding with environmental and tribal groups who say it's vulnerable to a rupture that could devastate the lakes.

Video: Natural gas needed for many years to come (cbc.ca)

Enbridge, which is fighting the governor's order in court, says the 68-year-old line is in good condition but that it wants to swap the underwater segment for a new pipe that would be housed in a tunnel beneath the lake bottom. The company has received state environmental permits for the project and is seeking others.

Enbridge says Line 5 fulfills 65% of propane demand in the Upper Peninsula and 55% statewide. For Love of Water, an environmental group, says those numbers are inflated and that a few truckloads or rail cars per day could replace what the pipeline supplies to the U.P.

Whitmer's strategy was based on an assessment of statewide energy needs by the Michigan Public Service Commission, as well as a 2020 report from a U.P. energy task force and recommendations of state departments looking for propane sources other than Line 5.

Retailers have begun developing arrangements less dependent on Line 5, some utilizing state grants for rail facilities, the plan says.

Whitmer's 2022 budget proposal includes $10 million to support rail transport of propane in the U.P. and $5 million for storage tanks near rail spurs. The state is exploring other steps such as injecting more propane into storage reservoirs and encouraging pre-buying to lock in supplies for residents and businesses.

The plan also includes heating assistance for needy families and protections against price gouging.

“For years, Enbridge and their allies have been spending millions of dollars to scare Michigan residents and create a fiction that the sky will fall and people will freeze without Line 5,” said Sean McBrearty of Clean Water Action. “Governor Whitmer’s team has proved them wrong once again. When Line 5 is shut down, our Great Lakes will no longer be at risk of a massive oil spill, and Michigan will still have all the energy resources we need.”

Mark Griffin, president of the Michigan Petroleum Association, said the group was studying Whitmer's plan but remained opposed to closing Line 5.

U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman, a Republican whose district covers northern Michigan, said the plan would leave Upper Peninsula residents “out in the cold and is incredibly tone deaf to the needs of our constituents.”

John Flesher, The Associated Press

As spring thaws the Minnesota ice, a new pipeline battle fires up

By Bill Weir, CNN Chief Climate Correspondent 

3/12/2021

In the north woods of Minnesota, the mighty Mississippi River looks like a frozen creek. After a bitter February, you can stroll across it with more fear of windburn than thin ice. And if you stroll one particular spot near Palisade, you'll find giant pipe, heavy machines and competing signs. A few read "No trespassing" in block letters. The rest say "Water is life" and "Stop Line 3" in hand-painted colors. It is the latest front in the pipeline wars.

© Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images An anti-trespass notice is surrounded by signs protesting the construction on the Enbridge Line 3 crude oil pipeline.

BLACKSNAKE TOO 

Originally built in the 1960s, the Enbridge Line 3 crude oil pipeline snakes 1,097 miles from the tar sands of Canada to Superior, Wisconsin. 

Of the roughly 340 miles through Minnesota, the replacement pipeline includes new sections and added capacity and is cutting through some of the most pristine woods and wetlands in North America. In little camps along the way, a small-but-growing group of protesters is out to stop them, driven by ancient prophesy and the promises of a new President.

When Joe Biden killed plans for the Keystone XL pipeline within hours of taking the oath, many Native American tribe members and environmentalists saw it as validation for all the cold nights spent protesting another pipeline at Standing Rock. Though they failed to stop the oil now flowing through the Dakota Access Pipeline, maybe this was a sign Biden would take their side in the David versus Goliath fight to stop Line 3. And maybe people would finally heed an ancient warning known as The Seven Fires Prophecy.

In Ojibwe tribal lore, an environmental moment of reckoning was predicted in the time of the Seventh Fire, when "the light skinned race will be given a choice between two roads," one green and lush, the other black and charred. A wrong choice, it was warned, would "cause much suffering and death to all the Earth's people." The Ojibwe are of the largest groups of Native Americans north of Mexico with tribal members stretching from present-day Ontario in eastern Canada all the way into Montana.

As a half-dozen female tribal elders sing and pray alongside the frozen Mississippi, it's obvious that for some bands, the fight is sacred and eternal. The question is how many will join them in the face of tougher legal challenges, increased pressure from police and the limits of the pandemic.

"There have been over 130 people arrested so far in just the last few months," tribal attorney and activist Tara Houska told CNN. Some are physically arrested at construction sites, but police also watch social media feeds to identify trespassing protesters and send summons in the mail. Before we walked the frozen river, Houska attended her hearing with a judge over Zoom and was ordered to post $6,000 bail.

"They seem to think that it's going to deter us from protecting the land. They are fundamentally missing the point of what water protectors are doing, which is willing to put ourselves our freedom, our bodies, our personal comfort on the line for something greater than ourselves," Houska said.

After living in Washington and fighting Dakota Access and Keystone XL, she is now hoping this movement helps convince the Biden administration that the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency during the Trump administration were shoddy in their environmental impact studies and too hasty in issuing permits.

But Canadian pipeline giant Enbridge insists that it passed every federal, state and tribal test. The company has been rushing to complete the pipeline before politics or the courts can stop it. Of those 340 miles cutting through The Land of 10,000 Lakes, more than 40% is already in the ground.

"Line 3 is not like the Keystone XL pipeline," Enbridge Chief Communications Officer Mike Fernandez told CNN. "It already exists. And it already is an energy lifeline for literally millions of people in the US and in Canada. And the reality is, even as we see great growth in renewables, we're still going to need some fossil fuels 40 years to come."

But since Biden has built the first White House with a climate agenda at every agency, the biggest argument against the pipeline may be over the kind of energy running through Line 3. Unlike liquid Texas crude hidden in pockets of rock, Alberta's oil is part of the Canadian soil under the boreal forest. It can't be pumped unless it is steamed. As a result, it is the dirtiest and most destructive fossil fuel after coal.

A trip to the tar sands boggles the mind with its scale. Massive, man-made pits crawl with massive dump trucks, filled with what feels like sticky cookie dough and smells like asphalt.

Tens of thousands of tons are moved into massive processing plants each day where the goop is boiled and blasted with Athabasca River water heated with natural gas. To separate the flammable bitumen from the dirt and clay, it takes six gallons of fresh water to produce one gallon of tar sands gasoline and the lakes needed to hold the resulting toxic waste are among the biggest man-made creations in history.

The sheer amount of energy required to turn sticky earth into liquid fuel not only makes Alberta tar sand more expensive, it produces 15% more planet-cooking carbon pollution, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

But to the workers building Line 3, pipelines are safer and cleaner than moving oil by truck or train. And if you stop Line 3, they argue, it does nothing to stop the world's voracious demand for the kind of fuels that burn.

"I think, frankly, people have been drawn to pipelines because it's easy to fight pipelines," said Kevin Pranis with the Laborers International Union of North America as cranes lifted 25,000-pound pipes as long as city buses.

"The truth is that the carbon emissions aren't coming from pipelines. They're coming from cars. And so if you really wanted to go directly to the source, you can protest car dealerships, you can protest gas stations. But the problem is, people like car dealerships and they like gas stations and they would be pretty angry about that."

While most of the 5,200 people building Line 3 are from oil states like Texas and Louisiana, "some 400 will be Native Americans," Fernandez told me. "We met with all of the First Nations along that pipeline. We listened, and as a consequence there are 320 or so route modifications."

Enbridge's tribal relations suffered in February, when two men working on Line 3 were caught in a human trafficking sting set up to protect underage Indigenous girls.

"The two individuals that that were arrested have been fired." Fernandez said. "We don't tolerate that kind of activity or behavior and it's prompted us to go to one of the contractors to say 'This is our expectation, that they be trained to a certain level.'"

Follow the pipeline route, and feelings can change by the tribe or the mile.

"You think that people that are scrambling at home, running out of gas with no heat, are thinking about climate change?" said Jim Jones. "They're thinking about how they're going to heat their home and put food on the table."

As a member of the Leech Lake Band of the Ojibwe and a former expert in cultural anthropology for the state, Enbridge hired Jones to walk the pipeline route and ensure no violation of Indigenous spaces or ruins.

"I'm at peace that I've done the best I can to protect what's important to us," he said. "And I can honestly tell you, as of today, nothing of historic context has been unearthed or disturbed."

After the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa struck a deal with Enbridge to run a part of Line 3 through their reservation, tribal leaders said they were put in an impossible position. Some tribes worked with Enbridge on the route, while others like Winona LaDuke of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe have nothing but scorn for Enbridge.

LaDuke laughed when told of Jones's promise. "He's looking for pot charts and arrowheads. We're live people."

LaDuke is a longtime environmental activist who twice ran for vice president on Ralph Nader's Green Party ticket, but after fighting for Indigenous rights against extractive energy companies for years, she never imagined the fight would come to her.

"Enbridge wants to criminalize us," she said. "I'm a grandmother, you know, graduated from Harvard, ran twice for vice president, at what point did I become a criminal? I'm just asking, 'How much risk should we as Americans take so a Canadian multinational can get a little richer at the end of the tar sands era?'"

She helped convince a sympathetic local to sell them a little piece of land where the pipeline intersects the Mississippi and as the weather warms, the protesters hope their number of tents, yurts and fly-fishing shanties will grow faster than Enbridge can drill under the frozen Mississippi.

"Our people say 'Don't pick a fight with Mother Nature. You can't win, and we're getting we're getting pounded. So why would you pipe the equivalent of 50 new coal fired power plants with this?" LaDuke said, pointing at Line 3.

"The tar sands is the gun. This is the trigger."




 

© Bill Weir/CNN

Kevin Pranis said pipeline construction is good work for laborers and that the oil that flows through is only harmful to the environment when used by consumers.

GIVES NEW MEANING TO PANSPERMIA
Proposed ‘Moon Ark’ would shoot sperm into space to save the Earth

Josh K. Elliott

3/12/2021

The first humans walked on the moon in 1969. Will the last humans be born on the moon in 2969, after we've totally screwed up our own planet?

© NASA/Newsmakers Earth is shown from the moon during the Apollo 11 mission.

THIS PHOTO CHANGED HUMAN  CONCIOUSNESS 

AND GAVE BIRTH TO THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT

That’s the thinking behind a new proposal from researchers at the University of Arizona, who are floating the idea of building a futuristic Noah's Ark-style complex on the moon.

The ark would be an underground facility staffed by robots, powered by the sun and stocked with loads of sperm, eggs, spores and seeds from 6.7 million species on Earth — just in case we totally kill ourselves and everything around us.

Read more: CN Tower-sized asteroid to pass Earth in fastest flyby of 2021

Researchers say such an ark would be a "modern global insurance policy" and a good investment in our future, especially since the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway is already seeing some wear and tear from climate change. The facility houses a catalogue of seeds from around the world, but does not include human or animal samples.

Lead engineer Jekan Thanga presented the Moon Ark idea to a gathering of experts, including NASA, at the IEEE Aerospace Conference earlier this month, where he described it in a 20-minute presentation.

Thanga says the moon would be a good place to set up a fully automated ark, because the moon is not susceptible to the same weather shifts that we see on our planet. It's simply a cold, dead, boring ball, and it's dense enough to repel solar radiation if we hide things below its surface. That makes it a good place to stockpile samples in cryogenically frozen capsules.

Video: What does it take to be an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency?

Thanga cited a few of the ways we could easily screw things up on Earth, including our ongoing failure to reverse climate change and the potential for nuclear war.

"Earth is naturally a volatile environment," Thanga said in a news release from the university. "Because human civilization has such a large footprint, if it were to collapse, that could have a negative cascading effect on the rest of the planet."

He says the notion of launching millions of samples into space might sound daunting, but some "back-of-the-envelope calculations" suggest it could be done in about 250 rocket launches. It took 40 launches to build the International Space Station, he points out.

"It's not crazy big," Thanga said of the project. "We were a little bit surprised about that."

Of course, we'd have to send humans there to do the construction work.

NASA and its partners plan to send humans back to the moon as part of the Artemis program in 2024. The program could potentially lay the groundwork for future bases on the moon, both manned and unmanned, although the idea of building an ark is likely far down the road.

Read more: Take a look around Mars with Perseverance rover’s HD photo panorama

The moon pie-in-the-sky idea combines several cutting-edge or theoretical concepts to image a self-sufficient "ark" on the moon.

Researchers say the facility could be built in the empty lava tubes and pits underground, and it could be powered by solar panels on the moon's surface. Magnets could be used to keep the samples cryogenically frozen, and sphere-shaped robots (like droid BB-8 from Star Wars) could be used to maintain the facility. Everything would need to be designed to operate at low temperatures, but the cold could be a good thing for keeping the frozen samples stable.

The Moon Ark is simply a proposal at this point, and there are no plans to actually start building it.

The researchers acknowledge that they still need to investigate the idea a lot more before a full plan can be assembled.

They also did not lay out plans for restarting life in the distant future, if that becomes necessary.

Read more: SpaceX to launch first all-civilian flight into orbit by end of 2021

All that raises the question: Who will bring humanity back?

Will it be a few surviving Noahs who don't die on Earth? Or will it be aliens who stumble upon the facility in some far-distant future?

Perhaps we need to answer an even bigger question first: If we screw things up once on Earth, do we deserve to come back for a second chance

ARYANISM IS CASTISM, RACISM, FACISM, HINDUTVA 

Silk slaves: India's bonded laborers are forced to work to pay off debts

By Sugam Pokharel and Tom Page, CNN

3/13/2021

The state of Karnataka, located in southwest India, is known for its silk. Mulberry trees grow in abundance, feeding silkworms and a centuries-old textile industry. But while silkworms prosper here, many people in the industry do not

.

© Sugam Pokharel/CNN

In India, the average silk worker is paid less than $3 a day -- small compensation for an industry estimated to be valued at over $14 billion globally. Part of the workforce is trapped in bonded labor, a form of modern-day slavery in which people work in often terrible conditions to pay off debt.

© Sugam Pokharel/CNN Kiran Kamal Prasad, founder of Jeevika.

Bonded labor was made illegal in India in 1976, but it never went away. A 2018 report estimated around 8 million people in India were unpaid workers or held in debt bondage, though some campaigners believe the true figure is much higher. Exactly how many are involved in the silk industry is unknown.

In January 2020, the CNN Freedom Project visited Sidlaghatta, a silk hub some 65 kilometers northeast of Bangalore, Karnataka, and met Hadia and Naseeba. This mother and daughter were forced by their "master" to work 11 hours a day, for which they earned just 200 rupees (about $2.75) to repay a 100,000-rupee (about $1,370) loan that had since doubled in size.

© Sugam Pokharel/CNN Naseeba (left) and Hadia (right), photographed in January 2020.

Naseeba had been working for three years in a silk factory, her mother nine years, boiling silkworm cocoons and removing the threads from which silk is made. The steam was foul and their hands bled, she said.

Read: More on modern-day slavery from the CNN Freedom Project

"(The master) came and he said to my mother, if you will not repay the money then we'll have a rich man and you will have to go and sleep with that man," said Naseeba.

"I'm afraid of the owner, because he has given us (a) home to live in," she added. "Where should we go? We cannot go anywhere. We don't know what he will do with us after (sees) this video."

Hadia and Naseeba concealed their faces on camera and agreed to be identified by CNN only after they had received their release certificates.

In India, bonded laborers can approach authorities requesting a certificate of release. If an investigation finds their case to be genuine, they are issued the certificate, which proves their debt is cancelled and entitles them to government assistance. The process can be lengthy -- sometimes taking years -- and can require bonded laborers to come forward to authorities in the face of social pressures and intimidation.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM IS FASCISM 

Dr. Bonnie Henry's book offers insight into early days of the COVID-19 pandemic

John Magufuli: Tanzania PM dispels rumors about President's health after…

Cleaner air during pandemic lockdowns shows what's possible, say researchers

CBC/Radio-Canada 3/13/2021

Roughly one year ago, city streets across Canada were deserted.

There were virtually no cars, no trucks and few buses as the country went into lockdown mode. Shops and buildings were closed. Most people stopped commuting. And it was the same across most of the world.

While millions of lives have been lost due to COVID-19, and people have suffered economic consequences, these short-term global shutdowns have had a marked effect on the environment.

The amount of pollutants that were pumped into the atmosphere dropped noticeably — including in southern Ontario, where a recent study documented a 20 per cent drop of some pollutants compared to recent years.

And that, in turn, has positive effects on our health, something researchers in the field hope won't soon be forgotten as life creeps back to normal.

© Ben Nelms/CBC A man crosses an empty street in downtown

 Vancouver on April 14, 2020, during early COVID-19 lockdowns.

Bad air kills

It's estimated that each year roughly 8.7 million people around the world die from conditions attributed to air pollution from fossil fuels. And that's due to pollutants like nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone and PM 2.5 (a type of fine particulate matter that can be inhaled) that is produced by cars, industry, coal-fired power plants and other sources.


Studies have also shown that people in countries with elevated levels of air pollution were more susceptible to COVID-19.

"The Harvard School of Public Health found that there was an 11 per cent increase in mortality for [even a small] increase in different air pollution components," said Dr. Courtney Howard, who works in Yellowknife and was the past president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

Previous work has already shown greater risk from respiratory disease in places with higher levels of air pollution in China and Europe.

"It just makes sense," said Howard. "If somebody's body is already struggling to try to cope with the effects of air pollution and there's been some lung damage and some increased levels of inflammation already in their body, that another stressor would be more difficult for those people to contend with."
Cleaner air without lockdowns?

A recent study published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials quantified the effects of the lockdown on air in southern Ontario, one of the most densely populated regions in Canada.

Researchers used 16 ground-based sites across the region and found that, from April to December 2020, carbon monoxide (CO) and NO2 pollutant levels dropped 20 per cent compared to the three previous years. In some locations there was also a decrease in ozone and PM 2.5, however, the researchers said that it was not considered to be a statistically significant drop.

While the lockdowns were a drastic measure to help stop the spread of COVID-19, better planning and guidelines could be used to help reduce pollutants and their respective health effects.

"I hope that the public and different levels of government will use our study as a benchmark for their future measures or regulations, either to limit the spread of new diseases or to control air pollution and smog episodes," said Hind Al-Abadleh, a chemistry professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and lead author of the paper.

© Mark Bochsler/CBC Hind Al-Abadleh, seen here standing in front of an air quality monitoring station in Kitchener, was the lead author of a study that found air pollution dropped in southern Ontario during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"These pollutants contribute to air pollution and to respiratory diseases. Canada is known to have faster growing rates of childhood asthma among the countries around the world."

The significant drop of air pollutants such as NO2, is something that researchers hope can continue after the lockdown, but with less drastic measures.

Jeff Brook, an assistant professor at University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health, studies air quality. The former senior research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada is creating a web-based app that will allow people to check on the air quality wherever they are in Canada.

"All we know about air pollution and health relationships suggests that any improvement leads to benefits in health," Brook said. "What COVID is showing … is that the moment that the lockdown started, we saw bigger gains or equal gains as to what we achieved over 10 years of efforts."

"It's a good reminder of what's possible. We've seen how clear the skies can get. We've seen how people can change their habits to some extent."

Howard said that she hopes that the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates what humanity can do when it comes to the environment.

"It's a moment of crisis, but it's also a moment of opportunity," Howard said. "And we can move forward from here in a way that's going to make a better world."

TAKING THE HINT
Targeted in protests, Chile removes general's statue
AFP 

3/12/2021


The statue of a 19th-century Chilean general was temporarily removed from a Santiago square Friday after being repeatedly vandalized during protests.

© Martin BERNETTI President Sebastian Pinera said Thursday the monument, erected in 1928, will be replaced once restauration work is completed 'because we want to show our appreciation and respect for our heroes'

The likeness of General Manuel Baquedano on horseback -- burnt, painted and dented in months of demonstrations -- was lifted from its pedestal in the early morning hours as military veterans paid their respects.

Nearby, a dozen protesters were detained.

Baquedano and his statue was not a specific target of protests that started in Chile in October 2019 against social inequality, corruption, and the rising cost of living.

But it got drawn into a symbolic tussle between protesters and authorities for control of the central square named after him.

The protests have continued, though on a much smaller scale, despite a referendum last October -- a key demand of the demonstrators -- voting to replace Chile's dictatorship-era constitution.

Week after week, hold-out protesters have taken aim at the statue, once painting it completely red, and repeatedly trying to topple it from its plinth.

On Monday, a group of hooded men tried to dismantle the statue with saws and hammers as a Women's Day rally was unfolding at its feet.

Three days earlier, it was set on fire.

President Sebastian Pinera said Thursday the monument, erected in 1928, will be replaced as soon as it has been fully restored "because we want to show our appreciation and respect for our heroes."

Baquedano was a hero of the War of the Pacific Chile fought against Peru and Bolivia in the late 19th century.

His statue overlooks the tomb of an unknown soldier who died in the same war.

pa-pb/mps/rsr/mlr/jh

Biden administration grants humanitarian protection for Burmese in US

MYANMARESE

By Geneva Sands, CNN 

3/12/2021

The Biden administration on Friday granted humanitarian protection to Burmese nationals and residents in the United States due to the military coup and violence against civilians in Myanmar

DOES THAT INCLUDE MUSLIM ROYTHINGA 

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© Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 21: The Department of Homeland Security seal on the podium used by acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan as he announces new rules about how migrant children and families are treated in federal custody at the Ronald Reagan Building August 21, 2019 in Washington, DC. The Trump Administration announced the change in rules that would allow it to indefinitely detain migrant families who cross the border illegally, replacing the Flores Agreement which limited on how long the government could hold migrant children in custody and how they must be cared for. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas designated Myanmar for Temporary Protected Status, a humanitarian protection, for 18 months.

"Due to the military coup and security forces' brutal violence against civilians, the people of Burma are suffering a complex and deteriorating humanitarian crisis in many parts of the country," Mayorkas said in a statement, using the country's former name.

Conditions in Myanmar prevent Burmese nationals and habitual residents from returning safely, according to DHS. Individuals who can demonstrate continuous residence in the United States as of March 11, 2021, are eligible for the temporary protection and to apply to work lawfully in the US.

The coup in Myanmar has led to continuing violence, pervasive arbitrary detentions, the use of lethal violence against peaceful protesters, said DHS, prompting the designation for humanitarian protection, as conditions in the country worsened.

On Monday, the administration also granted temporary protection to Venezuelans in the US, allowing an estimated 300,000 people to potentially remain and work in the US.

The grants of humanitarian protection mark a shift from the Trump administration, which had sharply criticized Temporary Protected Status and moved to terminate protections the program had provided for immigrants from other countries, arguing that years of extensions were prolonging immigrants' stays in the United States long after crises abroad had abated.

Many Venezuelans had been pushing for protections but for years met resistance from Trump administration officials who were more focused on pushing for regime change in the South American country. Ultimately, former President Donald Trump granted them similar protections from deportation on his last day in office, but no details about how they could apply had been announced and lawmakers have been pushing for answers.

It's unclear how many Burmese are currently in the US that qualify for protection. The designation "will give much needed relief to Burmese immigrants," said Douglas Rivlin, director of communications for America's Voice, in a statement.

On Wednesday CNN reported that an official from ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party died in custody following alleged torture, the second such death while in detention of junta forces this week, according to a watchdog group.

The deaths have raised concerns about the condition and treatment detainees are receiving in detention. Since the military seized power in a coup on February 1, security forces quickly moved to stifle dissent and arrested government officials, protesters, journalists, civil servants and NGO workers, and repressed independent media.

Many people have been taken arbitrarily in nighttime raids and their families do not know where their loved ones are, or what condition they are in, the United Nations said. Human Rights Watch said that people who are forcibly disappeared are more likely to be subjected to torture or ill-treatment than others arrested.

Dr. Seuss' illustrations reveal just how ingrained anti-Asian racism is in America

Taylor Weik 3/12/2021 CNBC

One illustration shows an Asian man with bright yellow skin, slanted eyes, a pigtail and conical hat, holding chopsticks and a bowl of rice over the words “a Chinaman who eats with sticks.” Another depicts three Asian men in wooden sandals carrying a bamboo cage on their heads with a gun-wielding white boy perched on top, next to the rhyme, “I’ll hunt in the mountains of Zomba-ma-Tant / With helpers who all wear their eyes at a slant.”

© Provided by NBC News

The drawings are from “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo,” two of the six Dr. Seuss books that the company in charge of the author’s works announced last week will no longer be published because of their racist imagery, some of which includes stereotypical portrayals of Asian people.

Though Seuss’ art has been around for decades — “Mulberry Street,” his first children’s book, was published more than 80 years ago — widespread criticism of his work is relatively recent. Karen Ishizuka, chief curator at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, said Dr. Seuss' books have been able to get away with this racism for so long in part because of the persistence of anti-Asian racism in the U.S. since the 1800s.

“No doubt, the long-standing prevalence of racist Asian imagery within the larger widespread anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S. added to the delayed response to Dr. Seuss’ racism,” Ishizuka told NBC Asian America. “Generations of Americans have grown up with depictions of Asians that ranged from grotesque to comical. Especially when buffered in Seuss’ rhyming verse, his racist depictions, already normalized in U.S. society, are put forth in jest as if they are innocuous.”

Dr. Seuss eventually edited the image from “Mulberry Street” in 1978, more than 40 years after it was first published, by removing the yellow pigment from the Asian man’s skin as well as the pigtail, and changing “Chinaman” to “Chinese man.” But the character’s slanted eyes remained.

© PM Image: This cartoon was published in the New York newspaper

His racism wasn’t limited to children’s books. Dr. Seuss, the pen name for Theodor Seuss Geisel (who died in 1991, at 87), also perpetuated harmful Asian stereotypes in a series of political cartoons. From 1941 to 1943, he published more than 400 cartoons for the New York newspaper “PM,” many of which displayed anti-Japanese racism during World War II.

One of his most infamous political cartoons suggested that Japanese Americans were a threat to the U.S. after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Titled “Waiting for the Signal From Home … ,” the cartoon depicts countless characters with the same slanted eyes and glasses — who are meant to be Japanese Americans — marching along the West Coast and waiting to pick up TNT from a store labeled “Honorable 5th Column.” The cartoon was published on Feb. 13, 1942 — just six days before President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of more than 110,000 individuals of Japanese descent.

Some of Dr. Seuss' other political cartoons during this time use the slur “Jap,” depict Japanese people as animals, and include captions that replace the letter R with the letter L to mock the way Japanese people speak.

© PM Magazine via UC San Diego Library A 1941 political cartoon by Dr. Seuss. (PM Magazine via UC San Diego Library)

Ishizuka is working on developing a new core exhibit for the museum that she hopes will bring greater attention to Dr. Seuss’ political cartoons by featuring original drawings from the library of the University of California, San Diego — including “Waiting for the Signal From Home ... ”

Video: Six Dr. Seuss books pulled for racist and insensitive imagery (CNBC)

“It’s important to draw attention to the racist images in Dr. Seuss’ cartoons and children’s books because they’re almost insidious,” she said. “The harm they cause is more difficult to identify than when someone calls you a ‘Jap’ to your face. It’s harder to combat.”

Philip Nel, a children’s literature scholar and English professor at Kansas State University, said another reason why Dr. Seuss’ reckoning took so long is that people have excused his racism, especially the anti-Japanese propaganda he created during WWII, as a reflection of the time he was living in. But Nel, the author of several books, including “Was the Cat in the Hat Black? The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books,” said this explanation doesn’t hold up.

“The ‘man of his time’ narrative isn’t a great argument because to make that claim is profoundly ahistorical,” Nel said. “All people in every moment don’t think the same. There were plenty of white Americans during that time who were not spreading the rhetoric that he was.”

Nel said the decision by Dr. Seuss Enterprises to cease publishing the books — which in addition to “Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo,” also include “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!”, “Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer” — is owed to the longtime push for diverse books in the U.S., as well as recent movements for racial and social justice.

© Dr. Seuss Enterprises Image:; Dr. Seuss's 1950 book,

“This is the culmination of decades of work arguing for diverse works and against books that caricature people of color,” Nel said. “The Black Lives Matter movement, I think, has also brought into focus the need for diverse books for young readers. It’s reminded people that one place where justice happens is through representation — acknowledging positive examples and calling out negative ones.”

Dr. Seuss’ image as a children’s literary icon has also delayed the reckoning over his racism. “He’s a symbol of American childhood,” Leslie Ito, the mother of two from Southern California, said.

In 2017, Ito’s children, Rockett and Zoe, who were 11 and 10 at the time, created and distributed flyers to their classrooms on Read Across America Day — which was founded by the National Education Association to coincide with Dr. Seuss’ birthday — to educate their peers about Dr. Seuss’ racist work.

“Ever since the kids started elementary school, my husband and I decided it was important that we taught them about the darker side of Dr. Seuss,” Ito said of her children, who are Chinese and Japanese American. “We did this every year around Read Across America Day, and one year the kids came up with the idea to create a flyer, unprompted.”

The kids came home that day telling their parents they got in trouble and had their flyers confiscated, and that evening Ito and her husband received an email from the school saying the flyers were inappropriate.

In recent years, Read Across America Day has made an effort to distance itself from Dr. Seuss.

Though Ito said she understands the hesitancy to criticize Dr. Seuss, she’s proud that her children contributed to today’s acknowledgment of Seuss’ past.

“When I used to Google ‘Dr. Seuss and racism,’ our story would pop up first for a couple of years, but now it’s completely buried under countless stories,” Ito said. “That excites me because it shows that more people than Rockett and Zoe care about this issue.”