Meet the “New Koch Brothers” – the Hedge Fund Activists Wrecking America’s Green New Deal

Posted on March 14, 2021 by Jerri-Lynn Scofield

By Lynn Parramore. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website

Think the government should do more to deal with climate change? You’re not alone – so do most Americans, according to a 2020 Pew poll.

With Biden in the White House and Democrats controlling Congress, plans to get moving on some form of a Green New Deal could finally emerge. The Texas blackout heightened the sense of urgency, and everybody’s talking about upgrading the power grid, renewable energy, and what it will take to have a greener, cleaner future. Meanwhile, the climate change-denying political right is determined to crush any proposals before they have a chance.

Here’s what you might not know: Players on Wall Street have been torpedoing our chances of averting environmental catastrophe for years. A group of billionaire financiers has made sure the companies the government must partner with to fight climate change are focused on one thing only – making these men (they all seem to be men) even richer. Instead of leading the world in climate change technology, firms like Apple, GE, and Intel have been pressured to become the personal piggy banks of powerful moneymen—known as hedge fund activists—who can’t see beyond the next quarterly report.

These guys are blocking their fellow Americans from the chance to leave their kids a safe, sustainable world. That world will never materialize unless we understand what they are doing and stop them. Let’s dive in.

Games hedge funds play

You may have heard the term “activist shareholders.” These are people, usually hedge fund managers, who buy shares of a public company’s stock and then demand that the company do whatever it takes to jack up their stock price. The hedge fund then quickly sells out—a move called “pump and dump.”

People who did this used to be called “corporate raiders.” They took over companies, fired people, played stock market games to swell the stock price, made a quick buck, and then split. Remember Gordon Gekko from Oliver Stone’s movie, “Wall Street”? The main difference between the Lizard of Wall Street and today’s hedge fund activist is that Gekko wasn’t shy about his motives: “Greed is good.” What has changed is that today’s raiders don’t typically gain control over target companies before they put the squeeze on. Instead, they make company execs do the squeezing or, when that doesn’t work, fire them and replace them with ones that will.

The playbook of today’s hedge fund activists looks like this: Buy a wad of shares of a company on the stock market. Then, line up the proxy votes of the managers of funds who have hedgies manage pieces of their portfolio. Next, send a letter to the CEO of a target company demanding that he or she get busy pumping up the stock price. Hedge funds with deep pockets will spend millions making this happen – remember, their money comes from rich people or institutional investors like pensions and mutual funds who are seeking high yields. Occasionally hedgies will use their own money – those whose “war chests” have come from previous raids.

Activists will also fight proxy battles, launch publicity campaigns, or litigate to get a company to do their bidding. Some shout about what they’re up to, others whisper behind the scenes. A lot of them talk about making the company more honest and accountable and so on, but this is mostly a smokescreen. Their influence always ends up pushing companies to gin up short-term profits by any means necessary – like laying off workers or diverting money from research and development in order to – you guessed it! – jack up the stock price and make them richer.

Carl Icahn, the infamous corporate raider of the ‘80s, pioneered this aggressive approach to “unlocking shareholder value” from companies he targeted. In plain English, this means figuring out how to rip money out of a company so that you can buy a superyacht.

Today, the number of activist campaigns has exploded: In 2019, they set a record in the number of companies targeted. As the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance put it, “No company is too large, too popular, too new or too successful” to fall prey to these predatory financiers.

What does this have to do with fighting climate change? A lot, it turns out.

The government can’t just snap its fingers and make batteries for electric cars, renewable energy storage, and advanced computer chips (needed for everything). It has to partner with companies that have the deep know-how and the substantial resources to develop these complicated and cutting-edge technologies. The government looks to collaborate with companies that are the very best at what they do and will even subsidize them for the long-term goal of saving us from climate disaster. Economist Matt Hopkins, who studies business corporations, stresses that as a taxpayer, you are asked to support such companies not only in the form of direct subsidies, but also indirectly through government-supported research. Not to mention all sorts of tax credits that drive nascent markets for clean technologies.

“The government supports all the industries in the clean tech space, one way or another, to the tune of billions,” Hopkins notes.

The problem is, activists usually aren’t interested in companies being the best at what they do, or doing anything, really, except handing over money to shareholders. A favorite tactic is to force companies to use their cash, or even borrow it, to buy back outstanding shares of their own stock. This neat Wall Street trick reduces the total number of shares available, so it boosts the value of the shares that remain. Presto! The hedgies holding the shares have just made easy money because their shares are now worth more and can be sold at a hefty gain.

Economist William Lazonick, who has written extensively on how businesses do business, explains that this becomes a big problem when we need innovative companies to make stuff we all need. “Companies grow and do things like create new technology, not because of stock market games,” he explains, “but because they develop their capabilities and invest in their people. And they can’t do this when hedge fund managers are calling all the shots and telling them to direct all the profits to shareholders.”

Unfortunately, in the U.S., there is a widespread and very stupid idea — no less a person than Jack Welch, the former head of GE, called it “the dumbest idea in the world” — that it’s ok for people who do nothing but buy and sell shares of a company’s stock to boss it around and pocket all its profits. It really makes no sense, but it permeates American business schools.

As you will see, the shareholder value ideology is wreaking havoc on our climate future.

Let’s look at how companies that could help us fight climate change have been attacked by activist investors.

Carl Icahn and a rotting Apple

In 2013, Carl Icahn, one of the wealthiest men in America, started buying up Apple stock. Soon, he became one of the company’s biggest individual shareholders, owning one percent of Apple’s outstanding shares. Now, one percent is a lot of money in dollar terms — Icahn paid $3.6 billion for his Apple stake. But why should he get to order Apple around just for buying and selling shares? Yet, that’s just what Icahn did. The Wall Street honcho used his public platform to convince other people to buy shares, thereby pumping up the stock price, and he pressured the company to get busy doing stock buybacks through his letters and prolific tweets.

Lazonick explains that Icahn’s goal was to pump up Apple’s stock price to double its value, and then dump it. He would force Apple to use its billions in profits to enrich shareholders through massive stock buybacks instead of using them to invest in our renewable future. Icahn hoped that Apple would make a fortune on watches — and today it does a decent business in wearables — but he wasn’t interested in other business opportunities, like, say, software to drive renewable energy smart grids or even electric vehicles.

As Lazonick put it in a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, “It’s a travesty for Apple to throw away tens of billions of dollars on buybacks when it has the knowledge and power to contribute to the solution of a plethora of social ills.”

On October 1, 2013, Icahn tweeted: “Had a cordial dinner with Tim last night. We pushed hard for a 150 billion buyback…”

When you’re a multibillionaire, this works: Cook did the largest buybacks in history in 2014 and 2015. Then, in 2016, Icahn took the money he had extracted— $2 billion to be precise — and ran, leaving Cook with an Apple in danger of rotting.

Lazonick points out that given Apple’s capabilities, it should be “right in the thick” of any Green New Deal that might be on the table, noting that Steve Jobs had once talked about leading the world on initiatives like electric vehicles. “Apple could be doing that right now, making electric cars, making batteries and all kinds of things critical to fighting climate change,” says Lazonick. “It has tremendous capabilities, it’s still hugely profitable, and its products are used and loved by millions of people.”

Instead, the company is sidelined in the climate challenge. Lazonick points out that since 2013, Apple has done over $400 billion in stock buybacks—a staggering sum that is unprecedented. As Icahn was bailing out of Apple in the winter of 2016, multibillionaire Warren Buffett was using Berkshire Hathaway money to eventually purchase $36 billion in Apple’s outstanding stock. Buffet has been cheerleading Apple’s record-setting buybacks ever since.

For his part, Icahn went on to buy a couple of Trump casinos, donate tons of money to the Donald, and even served as an economic advisor to the former president.

But wait, isn’t there anybody who could push the company in a better direction? Al Gore, Mr. Climate himself, joined Apple’s board in 2003, just a few years before he released his famous documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

In Lazonick’s view, the man you would expect to be a champion of Apple’s forays into green technology has become part of the problem: “He has overseen the looting of Apple to the tune of $403 billion in buybacks since 2013 (on top of more than $100 billion in dividends) without a public word of dissent. He is one of only seven people on Apple’s board, but shareholders like Icahn and Buffett, who have not invested a penny in Apple’s productive capabilities, are, apparently, still telling Tim Cook what to do. Board members fear that if they object to things like stock buybacks to prop up the stock prices, then the hedge fund activists will unleash a giant proxy war and kick them out.”

So, rather than a leader on climate change, Apple is a laggard. As Greg Petro of Forbes noted, the company just isn’t innovative at its core anymore. Thanks, Carl Icahn! And you, too, Warren Buffett! (And can we hear from you, Al Gore?)

Nelson Peltz ushers in dark ages at GE

General Electric has been around since Edison set up his lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey in 1876.

Today, the long-admired company produces electric power systems, jet engines, and most of the wind turbines in the U.S. “There’s really no other company like it when it comes to the capacity and potential to produce renewable energy technology,” notes Lazonick.

It ought to be a no-brainer that this iconic firm would be a leader on climate change, and not so long ago, it appeared to be headed in that direction.

Then, Nelson Peltz came along.

The name Nelson Peltz may not be as familiar as that of Carl Icahn, but he’s a big wheel on Wall Street. Peltz is the billionaire founder of the investment firm Trian Partners, known for a lifestyle so opulent that he owns not one but two private jets and a mansion (one of several) with an indoor hockey rink. And some albino peacocks.

At Wendy’s, where Peltz owns 12.4 percent of the shares, he has profited from not only paying low wages to Wendy’s direct fast-food employees but also by screwing farmworkers out of decent wages and subjecting them to unsafe conditions. Peltz, a big fan of nepotism, is the board chair at Wendy’s and has also given his son Matthew a seat on the board. He is also a loyal supporter and lavish funder of his friend, Donald Trump.

In 2015, Trian took a $2.4 billion stock position in GE—equal to about 0.09% of GE’s outstanding stock. GE had a long history of being shareholder orientated. Besides ample dividends, it was among the largest repurchasers of its own stock in the two decades before Peltz bought his stake. Nevertheless, at the same time, longstanding CEO Jeffrey Immelt was keen on investing in technology and renewables that would pay off in the future. He had actually invited Peltz to support these and other plans for GE as a shareholder.

But Peltz didn’t want to wait around. So, he pressured Immelt to cut expenses, hit more ambitious earnings targets, and do even bigger stock buybacks. In 2016, GE did $22 billion in buybacks, “all for the purpose of boosting the stock price so Nelson Peltz could achieve his goal of doubling his money when he was ready to sell his shares,” Lazonick observes. GE also continued to increase its dividend payouts.

Unfortunately, GE could not sustain these distributions to shareholders and invest in its businesses at the same time. “The stock price went into the toilet,” explains Lazonick. “Peltz has lost a lot of money and has helped destroy the company, or at least set it back in terms of its ability to invest in the technologies of the future.”

In 2017, Trian orchestrated the ouster of Immelt, replacing him with John Flannery, a veteran GE finance guy, in August. In October, Peltz installed a son-in-law, Ed Garden, on GE’s board. When Flannery could not engineer a stock-price recovery, he was fired, too, replaced in October 2018 by Larry Culp, who remains GE’s CEO.

Today, GE is struggling to stay alive and is selling off pieces of itself instead of investing in climate change-fighting batteries or other renewable-energy technologies.

“GE had the best researchers and the ability to hire the best employees, but has missed windows of opportunity to be a leader in fighting climate change,” says Lazonick. “All because a guy with a lot of money — in this case, money from pension funds, endowments, and wealthy investors — was allowed to tell it what to do.”

Dan Loeb chips away at Intel

The Intel corporation, situated in Santa Clara, California, designs and manufactures semiconductor chips. You need semiconductors for just about anything — especially anything connected to clean technology. A sustainable future requires more efficient computing systems to manage sophisticated clean energy grids and reduce power consumption while doing it.

The Taiwanese are the leaders in the highly capital-intensive and technologically dynamic fabrication segment of the semiconductor industry. Besides its leadership in the design of processors, Intel was the pioneer in chip fabrication and remains one of the few companies in the world that manufactures the chips that it also designs.

So far, the company has been profitable, but it costs a ton to manufacture chips, so Intel has been making capital investments of $15 billion per year and rising, trying to stay at the technological forefront of chip fabrication. But it’s no longer a leader in this area, perhaps because its senior executives have been distracted. Besides its huge investments in chip fabs, Intel also did $11 billion in buybacks in 2018 and $15 billion in 2019, trying to keep the activist predators at bay. When it determined to use a large portion of its cash to upgrade its fabrication capabilities, the hedgies complained of “waste.” They wanted more buybacks.

Enter billionaire Daniel Loeb. Loeb is the founder and chief executive of Third Point, a New York-based hedge fund. He’s quite a character, fancying himself a literary man and writing scathing letters to CEOs, presumably in between his Transcendental Meditation sessions (TM is beloved by Wall Street, perhaps because it is a very expensive way to learn to say a mantra). He’s also a big art collector, having become smitten in college upon beholding Poussin’s “Rape of the Sabine Women.” His great-aunt invented the Barbie doll and ran Mattel until she was convicted of securities fraud. Whoops!

In 2020, Dan Loeb set his sights on Intel, purchasing a bit less than half a percent of the company’s total shares through Third Point. Then he started pushing for changes at the chip giant, sending a nastygram to Intel Chairman Omar Ishrak. Loeb urged the company to split off its chip manufacturing operations from its chip design, despite the fact that Intel’s roots in making chips instead of outsourcing them had made it stand out from rivals. This move, the Wall Street Journal noted, “would end Intel’s long-held status as America’s leading integrated semiconductor maker.”

Right now there is a global chip shortage, and Intel’s chips are sorely needed in myriad products. But Loeb is also pushing Intel to do more buybacks—it did $14.2 billion in 2020 along with $5.6 billion in dividends, absorbing 92% of Intel’s net income. Intel could potentially receive subsidies from the Biden administration it had asked for in order to keep fabricating chips. But you can’t do escalating buybacks and invest in cutting-edge chip manufacturing at the same time.

So, Intel may lose its chance, all for the sake of Loeb wanting it to play Wall Street casino games and maybe buy another waterfront home.

In 2017, after Trump was elected president, Loeb cheered him for reviving activist investing.

Lazonick thinks this story could end in Intel being bought by a Taiwanese company—quite possibly the world leader TSMC. “This has huge geopolitical implications,” he warns. “Do you really want Taiwan having almost complete control of the U.S.’s computer chip supply?”

Bottom line: Whether it’s Apple, GE, or Intel, or any other number of companies, that could potentially be mobilized for a Green New Deal, they can’t do it while being held hostage by hedge fund activists looking for quick and easy money. Because they are irreplaceable in their capacities, knowledge-base, and talent, it means that the U.S. is severely hampered from being a climate change leader on the world stage.

“Predators like Carl Icahn, Nelson Peltz, and Daniel Loeb are the new Koch brothers,” says Lazonick. “By holding these companies hostage, they are scuttling the opportunity for a Green New Deal. They are playing manipulative Wall Street games with our future.”

What to do?

Now that we understand the activist predator problem, what is the solution? Meaningful plans to fight climate change require money – though they cost less in terms of resources and human misery than what’s coming if we don’t act. Nevertheless, as taxpayers we want our money spent wisely. If a company is going to get special status and funding in a Green New Deal, then we’d rather not see our hard-earned cash ending up funding a party for Donald Trump or exotic birds for Nelson Peltz.

Lazonick recommends that if the government wants to partner with a company to develop and produce climate change-fighting technology, the following rules should apply:

1. Ban stock buybacks: Prohibit large corporations from buying their own stock through open market repurchases. Buybacks are just a manipulation of the stock market.

2. Limit the hedge fund activists: Don’t let hedgies control proxy votes of the company that enable them to threaten top executives, even though they only hold a small fraction of the company’s shares. (For more on this, see Lazonick’s book, Predatory Value Extraction, co-authored with Jang-Sup Shin).

3. Protect U.S. taxpayers and workers: Place stakeholder representatives on corporate boards.

4. Change incentives for company insiders: Reward senior executives for building up capabilities and new technologies and training employees rather than playing stock market games.

5. Set up oversight procedures: Scrutinize companies so that you know subsidies are going into actual productive investments rather than into the pockets of corporate executives and hedge fund activists.

America can have a Green New Deal. But first we have to free corporations from the predations of hedge fund activists who are mainly interested in the kind of green that fills their pockets.

This entry was posted in Banana republic, Doomsday scenarios, Environment, Global warming, Guest Post, Politics on March 14, 2021 by Jerri-Lynn Scofield.

Meet the "New Koch Brothers" – the Hedge Fund Activists Wrecking America’s Green New Deal | naked capitalism

AIR QUALITY
The US CLEAN Future Act — What’s In It?

Image by Kyle Field, CleanTechnica.

By World Resources Institute

3/15/2021

Originally published on WRI’s Resource Institute Blog.

By Dan Lashof, Devashree Saha, Karl Hausker, Greg Carlock, Kevin Kennedy, and Tyler Clevenger

U.S. Representative Frank Pallone, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, together with subcommittee chairs Bobby Rush and Paul Tonko, introduced the CLEAN Future Act on March 2, 2021. While numerous climate bills are introduced in each Congress, this proposal deserves special attention: It is the first major piece of climate legislation to be introduced since President Biden assumed office, and it is authored by leadership of the committee with primary jurisdiction over climate policy in the House. It is an updated version of a discussion draft circulated last year, reflecting dozens of hearings, input from experts and activists, and the changing political and physical climate.

Chairman Pallone promised to hold legislative hearings on the bill, and some version is likely to be reported out of the committee and eventually pass the House. While the bill’s prospects in the closely divided Senate are murkier given its arcane rules requiring a super-majority to advance most major legislation, significant elements of the bill could be enacted before the end of this year.


Here, we outline the major features in brief, as well as some important measures that are not included.

1. National Emissions-reduction Target

Like last year’s discussion draft, the CLEAN Future Act of 2021 (CFA) starts by setting a national goal to achieve a 100% clean economy by no later than 2050 (defined as net-zero or negative greenhouse gas emissions). Importantly, this year’s bill adds an interim goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 50% by 2030 from 2005 levels, the same goal WRI urged the Biden administration to establish through its forthcoming Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Climate Agreement. Analysis shows that this target is both ambitious and achievable through measures that would create good jobs, make the U.S. economy more competitive internationally, and make Americans healthier.

While these goals are not directly enforceable, the CFA tasks agencies with using their existing legal authorities to achieve them and tasks the EPA with tracking progress and recommending to Congress any additional legislative authority that may be needed.

2. Climate Federalism

Recognizing the integral role that state governments must play in achieving national targets, the CFA would require states to develop State Climate Plans to achieve interim and midcentury emissions-reduction goals set by the EPA to collectively meet the national targets. Each state would be able to craft emissions-reduction pathways tailored to its unique priorities and circumstances. Under this model of climate federalism, states would submit a proposal to the EPA that details emissions-reduction plans for each decade until 2050. This approach builds on the leadership of the 25 governors who have committed to the goals of the Paris Agreement through state clean electricity standards, zero emission vehicle programs, natural climate solutions, and other policies.

In the event that a state misses an interim target, it is required to submit a revised plan and, until the target is met or the revised plan is satisfactory, would need to offset increased emissions from any source with double the emission reductions from other sources. The bill would require the EPA to set a carbon fee that kicks in if it determines that a state has failed to submit an adequate plan. EPA would set the fee at a level calculated to be sufficient to put the state on track to meet its emissions target.


In addition to $200 million in federal grants for the preparation of state plans, states would be provided with a portfolio of state-level strategies developed by the EPA, including performance-based fuel standards, carbon removal strategies, pollution phaseout plans, and more. States can also apply for grants under a Race to Net-Zero Grant Program. Furthermore, the CFA allows for regional collaboration, effectively encouraging the expansion and proliferation of pacts such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI).

3. Environmental Justice

While Title VI of the bill focuses on environmental justice, equity and justice components are woven into all aspects of the legislation, reflecting the elevated priority Congressional Democrats are putting on equity as they consider ways to address climate change. For instance, in the transportation section, the bill provides directions on expanding access to electric vehicles in underserved communities.

Within Title VI, the provisions aim to not only protect the health and safety of communities disproportionately impacted by environmental harms and risks (also referred to as “environmental justice communities”), but also include grants to enable those communities to participate in decision-making processes under the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and Solid Waste Disposal Act.

Ample evidence highlights how communities of color are disproportionately exposed to toxic air pollution from facilities located in their neighborhoods. The CFA increases air quality monitoring for toxic air pollutants and expands the national ambient air monitoring network in environmental justice communities. It also restricts the issuance of permits for major sources of air pollutants in areas that are determined to be pollution burdened.

Other provisions include funding for a new program to replace lead water service lines across the country, a 10-year deadline for cleaning up all federal Superfund sites, protections for underground drinking water sources from enhanced oil recovery, new coal ash disposal requirements, and repeal of oil and gas production exemptions from landmark environmental laws. The CFA also creates a climate justice grant program to provide $1 billion each year from 2022 to 2031 to help communities respond to the impacts of climate change.

Taken together, these provisions provide a bold roadmap for the federal government to protect historically marginalized communities from legacy toxic exposures and the effects of climate change.

4. Worker and Community Transition

The importance of helping workers and communities dependent on the fossil fuel industry to find new opportunities and diversify their economic base as the country transitions to a low-carbon economy cannot be overemphasized. While “just transition” policies are gaining traction in a handful of U.S. states, including Colorado and New Mexico, the CFA acknowledges the significant responsibility of the federal government.

To begin with, the bill broadens the conversation to include all workers and communities adversely affected by the low-carbon transition, including those with ties to oil and gas industry and those manufacturing internal combustion engine vehicles. This is important given that much of the national conversation so far has focused on coal workers and communities.

The bill creates an Office of Energy and Economic Transition in the White House, entrusted with developing federal policies on just transition. With the help of an interagency energy and economic task force and a stakeholder advisory committee, the office would coordinate across federal agencies to align transition strategies. The legislation also calls for the creation of a clearinghouse to provide information on federal programs, grants, loans, loan guarantees, and technical assistance that can help impacted workers and local communities.

The legislation also creates new programs to support fossil workers who have lost their jobs, and provides funding assistance to local governments that have been fiscally impacted due to closure of a fossil fuel employer.

One promising program is “community-based transition hubs,” which would provide federal funding to entities with relationships to local and regional economic development organizations, workforce development, and other community organizations to provide assistance to displaced workers and aid communities with economic diversification. The hubs would support workers by providing information and facilitating enrollment in locally available training and employment opportunities and offering prevocational services to prepare individuals for employment, among other things. This reflects a more bottom-up approach to investing in communities, enabling federal dollars to be targeted to local challenges and needs.

5. Transportation

Title IV of the CFA authorizes more than $100 billion over the next decade to electrify the U.S. transportation system, which is currently the largest source of climate-altering pollution in the country. It prioritizes projects that will reduce diesel emissions, providing substantial health benefits to communities of color and others overburdened by pollution. It would provide major support for domestic manufacturing of electric and other advanced vehicles.

Key provisions include:

Grant and rebate programs authorizing almost $50 billion for charging infrastructure for both passenger vehicles and trucks, and programs to electrify equipment at airports, ports, railyards and other freight facilities.

A dedicated $25 billion program to clean up ports, which are a major source of pollution impacting environmental justice communities. The bill also reauthorizes the broader Diesel Emissions Reduction Act program at $5 billion over 10 years and directs EPA to set emissions standards for non-road engines and aircraft.

Establishes a revised Clean School Bus program at EPA, authorizing $25 billion over 10 years to support the replacement of diesel school buses with zero-emission electric buses and associated charging infrastructure. At least 40% of program investments will be dedicated to communities of color, low-income communities and environmental justice communities.

Authorizes $25 billion for retooling plants to manufacture electric vehicles, with priority given to at-risk or recently closed plants. To be eligible, manufacturers must pay prevailing wages and commit to continuing production at the facility for at least 10 years.

6. Power

Title II of the legislation addresses the power sector.

The centerpiece is a proposed federal Clean Electricity Standard (CES) that would require all retail electric providers to generate 80% of their power from zero-emissions sources by 2030, and 100% by 2035, consistent with President Biden’s campaign pledge. Key provisions of the CES include:

A credit system for compliance that awards full credits for zero-emission power generation and partial credits for generation with emissions below specified carbon-intensity benchmarks.

An Alternative Compliance Payment system to provide flexibility to covered entities, while also granting the EPA administrator some limited authority to defer compliance by a maximum of five years.

Among other provisions, Title II would:

Direct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to lower barriers to interstate transmission expansion, and to establish an Office of Transmission to assess current transmission policies.

Amend the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act (PURPA) to require states and utilities to consider investment in energy storage systems; consider non-wire alternatives to traditional transmission investments; and offer community solar programs to all ratepayers.

Authorize programs to promote microgrids, distributed energy resources, and solar installations in low-income and underserved areas; and improve resiliency, performance and efficiency of power grids.

7. Industry

Achieving the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 will require significant steps to reduce emissions from the industrial sector. The CFA takes several important steps in that direction.

One of the major challenges in creating markets for low-carbon products such as steel and concrete is the lack of clear, consistent and transparent information on the embodied carbon in those products. This bill would build on progress from the private sector in the use of environmental product declarations (EPDs), which provide information on the lifecycle environmental impacts of products. This bill would bring the power of the federal government to bear on the problem, helping ensure that EPDs or similar disclosure tools follow clear and consistent rules and creating a national database.

The bill would also create a Buy Clean program that creates standards for the embodied emissions in construction materials and manufactured products purchased in projects with federal funding, and create a voluntary Climate Star program. Similar to the successful Energy Star program, this initiative would identify and certify products with significantly lower embodied carbon emissions. Such a voluntary program would aid companies and consumers looking to reduce the carbon footprint of the products they purchase.

The bill also includes two provisions to help manufacturers improve their efficiency. It directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to expand the existing work of the national labs in assisting small and medium manufacturers in implementing smart manufacturing practices, and would authorize $100 million over 10 years for states to support this effort. The bill also would authorize $10 billion over 10 years to establish a rebate program for industrial facilities to improve their energy and water efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

While these steps will not be sufficient on their own to decarbonize U.S. industry, they are a good starting point and provide a foundation for more ambitious action.

8. Buildings

In 2019, residential and commercial buildings accounted for 35% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions due to their direct use of fossil fuels directly and from the electricity they consume. The CFA tackles energy use in both new and existing buildings in several ways.

The first is a push for stronger building energy codes that aim for all new buildings built by 2029 to use 50% less energy compared to buildings built under today’s codes. The new codes would also ensure that all new buildings built in 2030 and after are “zero energy ready,” meaning they are highly efficient and could meet their energy needs through onsite or nearby sources of zero-emission energy.

The CFA targets state and local public facilities with nearly $40 billion of investment over 10 years to improve resilience, increase energy efficiency, expand use of renewable energy and enhance grid integration. This includes $1.5 billion for tribal governments, $1 billion for public schools and $100 million for nonprofits.

The legislation also revives two successful programs utilized under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) during the 2009 recession. This includes $35 billion for the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program to finance energy efficiency, renewable energy, zero-emission transportation and the use of alternative fuels in commercial and industrial buildings. It also reauthorizes the State Energy-Efficient Appliance Rebate Program at $3 billion — 10 times the ARRA level — and expands eligibility to encourage adoption of electric appliances.

Finally, the CFA makes a large push to retrofit the nearly 140 million existing residential buildings. It establishes a new home energy savings rebate program that would provide $1,500 to property owners for the installation of insulation, air sealing, and replacement of a heating, ventilation and air conditioning system. This rebate could be as much as $4,000 if upgrades achieve a 40% reduction in energy consumption, which would cut household utility bills while reducing emissions.


However, this rebate program is limited only to appliances that improve the thermal efficiency of the home, excluding important equipment like EV chargers. Electrification of all appliances and vehicles, when combined with clean electricity generation, is the best way to achieve net-zero emissions.
9. Methane Emissions and Waste Reduction

The expansive bill contains an array of additional climate provisions, including measures to reduce methane emissions and waste. The legislation aims to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas operations 65% below 2012 levels by 2025 and 90% by 2030. Efforts to tighten emissions leakage would be aided in part by a technology commercialization program to develop waste-reduction improvements in the oil and gas sector, as well as grants to improve the performance of natural gas distribution systems.

The bill also encourages reductions in emissions and waste from the plastics industry, which is currently surging in production. It proposes a pause on issuing permits for plastic-producing and some petrochemical facilities, and directs the EPA to issue emissions and health standards for the industry. The legislation also takes aim at waste accumulation by revamping the nation’s recycling system and establishing a grant program to support community-level zero-waste projects.

What’s Missing from the CLEAN Future Act?

As expansive as the CLEAN Future Act is, it is not comprehensive.

First, although the legislative jurisdiction of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is broad, it does not include carbon taxes, other taxes, or tax credits (which fall under the Ways and Means Committee); transportation system planning and construction (Transportation and Infrastructure Committee); or the contribution that natural and working lands can make to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (Agriculture and Natural Resources Committees). Additional legislation covering these important components of a comprehensive plan to tackle the climate crisis will need to be developed separately.

Within the jurisdiction of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the largest gap in the bill is the lack of a national emissions cap with specific enforceable emission limits for sources outside the electricity sector (which are covered by the Clean Electricity Standard). Instead, the CFA leaves it up to states to ensure that economy-wide emissions reduction targets are achieved, which could lead to inconsistent results.

The bill also lacks a mandate to phase out the sale of polluting vehicles. The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis recommended that Congress enact a national standard to ensure all passenger vehicles sold produce zero emissions starting no later than 2035. Similarly, the Select Committee recommended that all new medium- and heavy-duty vehicles produce zero emissions no later than 2040. The bill’s provisions on electrifying the federal vehicle fleet are also less ambitious than these targets.

Failure to include these recommendations in the CFA is puzzling, particularly given General Motors’ recent commitment to sell only zero-emission passenger vehicles by 2035 and the formation of a Zero Emission Transportation Association of leading clean vehicle manufacturers and charging infrastructure providers, which called for 100% of vehicles sold by 2030 to be electric. While the EPA has existing authority under the Clean Air Act to set vehicle emissions standards, a Congressional mandate would avoid the risk of regulatory delays and litigation.

Other provisions of the CFA could be enhanced as the bill moves through Committee hearings and markup. For example:

A grant program could be added to support construction of underground powerlines that would be less vulnerable to damage from extreme weather and could avoid land-use conflicts by following existing railroad and highway rights-of-way.

A federal low-carbon fuel standard could be included to reduce transportation fuels’ emissions-per-gallon-equivalent. This standard could replace the existing renewable fuels standard, which expires in 2022 and is not based on emissions-per-gallon-equivalent performance.

A low-carbon fuel standard could be established for fuels used to provide heat in industry and buildings, while a low-carbon products standards could be established for all cement and steel used in the United States.

Provisions aimed at electrifying existing buildings could be strengthened by providing incentives to replace fossil fuel water heaters and furnaces with electric heat pumps.

These measures would help achieve the goals of the CLEAN Future Act by accelerating construction of the electricity transmission infrastructure needed to support a zero-emissions electricity system, as well as the equipment needed to use that clean electricity to eliminate emissions from other sectors.

Despite some limitations, the CLEAN Future Act provides a great starting point for turning President Biden’s necessarily ambitious agenda for tackling the climate crisis into specific policies that create good-paying jobs, address the legacy of environmental injustice, and, well, create a clean future. The pathway from bill introduction to enactment is strewn with potholes, but the CLEAN Future Act clearly lays out the direction we must tr

The ketamine blew my mind’: can psychedelics cure addiction and depression?

‘We prepare a client for their drug experience; allow them to feel safe and warm.’ Illustration: Frieda Ruh/The Guardian

This week sees the opening of the first UK high-street clinic offering psychedelic-assisted therapy. Could popping psilocybin be the future of mental healthcare?


Words: Alexandra Jones Illustration: Frieda Ruh
Sat 13 Mar 2021 11.00 GMT

In the summer of 1981, when he was 13, Grant crashed a trail motorbike into a wall at his parents’ house in Cambridgeshire. He’d been hiding it in the shed, but “it was far too powerful for me, and on my very first time starting it in the garden, I smashed it into a wall”. His mother came outside to find the skinny teenager in a heap next to the crumpled motorbike. “I was in a lot of trouble.”

Grant hadn’t given this childhood memory much thought in the intervening years, but one hot August day in 2019, it came back to him with such clarity that, at 53, now a stocky father of two, he suddenly understood it as a clue to his dangerously unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

The day before, a team of specialists at the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital had given him an intravenous infusion of ketamine, a dissociative hallucinogen, in common use as an anaesthetic since the 1970s, and more recently one of a group of psychedelic drugs being hailed as a silver bullet in the fight to save our ailing mental health. To date, more than 100 patients with conditions as diverse as depression, PTSD and addiction have been treated in research settings across the UK, using a radical new intervention that combines psychedelic drugs with talking therapy. What was once a fringe research interest has become the foundation of a new kind of healthcare, one that, for the first time in modern psychiatric history, purports to not only treat but actually cure mental ill health. And if advocates are to be believed, that cure will be available on the NHS within the next five years

Thanks to its world-leading academic institutions, the UK has become a home to many of the biotech companies developing these treatments. But while investment money pours in and new experimental trials launch almost weekly, ketamine remains the only psychedelic drug that’s actually licensed for use as a medicine.

Under its influence, Grant had an out-of-body experience he struggles to put into words. “It was like I was sinking deeper and deeper into myself,” he says. “Then I became white… and I left my body. I was up on the ceiling, looking at myself, but I was just this white entity. I felt very serene and humbled; I finally understood my place in the universe, just a white speck of light, I wasn’t the centre of everything and that was fine.”

The next day, in a therapy session at the hospital, the motorbike story and other memories swirled up from his subconscious: being caught smoking at school and caned, and other instances of “playing up” as a child. Most vividly, he remembers the consequences: “I got my parents’ attention.”

I realised feeling overlooked as a child drove my drinking. It hadn’t been on my radar – but with ketamine I got there

His parents were evangelists; Grant’s father was a teacher and lay preacher, and his mother ran a nursery from home. They were also fosterers who, over the span of their marriage, gave a home to more than 200 children. “Growing up, love was never in short supply,” Grant says. What was in short supply was his parents’ attention. “They had a lot of commitments, they were very busy people,” he says. “I suppose what I realised in that therapy session was that I’d felt overlooked as a child and that had caused me pain.” Over the years, that pain crystallised, and alcohol became a crutch. “I could see it was the root of the negative emotions that drove my drinking, and a lot of other bad habits and behaviours.” He says it’s a realisation he might have taken years to come to with standard talking therapy. “It wasn’t even on my radar, so it blew my mind. To understand myself and my drinking, and why I behaved the way I did… With the ketamine therapy I got there in a few weeks. I feel free.”

In recent years, research into psychedelic-assisted mental healthcare has shed its outsider status. As far back as 2016, Robin Carhart-Harris and his team at Imperial College London published promising findings from the world’s first modern research trial investigating the impact of psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) alongside psychological support, on 19 patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD). This is when a person doesn’t respond to two or more available therapies; it is particularly debilitating and, recent data shows, affects about a third of all people with depression. In the study, two doses of psilocybin (10mg and 25mg, seven days apart), plus therapy, resulted in “marked reductions in depressive symptoms” in the first five weeks, which “remained significant six months post-treatment”. This new treatment proved so promising that, in 2018, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) awarded breakthrough therapy status to psilocybin (given only to drugs that “demonstrate substantial improvement over available therapy”) as a treatment for TRD. In December 2019, a ketamine-like drug – esketamine – was licensed for use in the UK as a rapid-onset treatment for major depression: it starts working in hours, compared with weeks or months with traditional antidepressants. In April 2020, after running their own psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy study, with 24 participants who had depression, experts from Johns Hopkins University in the US issued a press release stating: “The magnitude of the effect we saw was about four times larger than what clinical trials have shown for traditional antidepressants on the market.”

All this, and other early-stage evidence, is fuelling larger, more ambitious investigations. The London life sciences company Compass Pathways, whose research led to the FDA award, is coordinating one of the biggest psilocybin for TRD studies in the world, involving 216 patients across Europe and North America. The aim is to develop a new style of therapy that harnesses the psychedelic experience, as well as to change these substances’ classification, so they can be licensed as medicines. This wouldn’t change the legal status of MDMA or psilocybin (banned for recreational use in the UK), but it would mean treatments using these compounds could be prescribed.

Laurie Higbed, Ben Sessa and Steve O’Brien at Awakn in Bristol, the UK’s first high-street provider of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Photograph: Joel Redman/The Guardian


In the meantime, practitioners of this new kind of mental healthcare can use ketamine as their psychedelic agent; and some studies, such as the one Grant participated in, are even government funded. The Ketamine for Reduction of Alcoholic Relapse (Kare) study is a novel attempt to ease the huge burden on the NHS caused by alcohol-related illnesses. (Two years ago, a major review of inpatient records found that 10% of people in hospital beds in the UK were alcohol dependent, and one in five were doing themselves harm by drinking.) As the Kare study lead, Professor Celia Morgan, tells me, “Three-quarters of people who stop drinking and go through detox will be back drinking within 12 months: that’s not a good recovery rate.”

Patients aren’t merely given a dose and left to their own devices; a new style of therapy was developed for the study which, Morgan says, uses principles from cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness and relapse prevention. “We designed it to go with the ketamine effects. We wanted something evidence based, a therapy that has been shown to help people avoid alcoholic relapse. But also something that would work with what we know about the brain in the ketamine state.” The patient is primed for new learning, she says, and more able to view the self from an outsider’s perspective.

Until now, in the UK, therapy using psychedelics has remained the preserve of academic institutions – available only in research trials with highly specific criteria for inclusion. This week, though, with the opening of its clinic in Bristol, Awakn Life Sciences has become the UK’s first on-the-high-street provider of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. The clinical-biotech company is “researching, developing and delivering evidence-based psychedelic medicine to treat addiction and other mental health conditions”. This means it will be developing its own type of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (with a focus on MDMA to treat addiction) via experimental trials. And alongside it, delivering ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.

“Our USP is the clinics,” says Dr Ben Sessa, consultant psychiatrist, psychedelic therapist and chief medical officer at Awakn. “We’re aiming to open 15 to 20 across the UK and EU in the next 24 months. Patients will be able to self-refer or be referred by their GP (including NHS).” They will need a formal diagnosis and will most likely have to prove they have already tried a number of other therapies.

See a psychiatrist at 20 and chances are you still will be at 60. We’ve come to accept we can’t cure patients. Why not?

Sessa is scathing about the psychiatric profession as it currently operates: “We need innovation in this industry, desperately and now.” The problem, he argues, is that outcomes within psychiatric treatment fall far short of the gold standard set for the rest of the medical profession. “If you broke your leg and went to an orthopaedic specialist, you’d expect it to be fixed,” he says. “You wouldn’t expect to be prescribed painkillers for the rest of your life. But if you present to your psychiatrist in your early 20s with a severe mental illness, there’s a good chance you will still be seeing them when you’re 60. You’ll still be on the same daily drugs.” According to the most recent NHS figures, only half of talking therapy patients recovered from their condition. “What about the other 50%?” Sessa asks. “As an industry, we’ve come to accept that we can never cure our patients. But why not?”

Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, he says, may be “the holy grail – curative psychiatry”, arguing that these interventions offer relatively fast-acting alleviation of symptoms and don’t require the same level of maintenance (with drugs or talking therapy) as the treatments currently available.

Though alcoholism is a focus, Awakn will also offer psychedelic-assisted therapy to treat depression, anxiety, eating disorders and most addictions.

On a Monday in late February, the Bristol clinic is abuzz with builders and workmen. Formerly the site of an Indian restaurant, it sits in a 19th-century building on the corner of Regent Street and Hensmans Hill in Bristol’s chi-chi Clifton area. Its position, next to a barber shop and cocktail bar, and overlooking a small park, was picked for its ordinariness. As Awakn’s CEO Anthony Tennyson explains, “Our strategy is to normalise the industry; we want to integrate into the mainstream, so that popping in for mental health treatment is as normal as… ” he trails off. Getting your teeth whitened? “Something like that,” he laughs.

Inside, the clinic is painted a tasteful dove grey, with exposed brickwork and wooden floors. “It’s going to be sort of Scandinavian chic in design,” says Steve O’Brien, the operations manager. “That will be one of the treatment rooms.” He points up a flight of stairs to a room separated from reception by a reinforced glass partition. “We’re waiting for the beds to be delivered.” “Set and setting” (ie the mental state and physical environment) have been shown to be vital to the psychedelic experience – and a bad setting can equal a bad trip.

This is something O’Brien has experience of. “Years ago I took [the powerful hallucinogen] ayahuasca in Iquitos, Peru. It was all a bit dodgy. I ended up in this dark little hut with breeze-block walls covered in sheets and 12 Peruvian ladies in deck chairs watching Friends really loudly next door. I thought I was going to be ritually sacrificed,” he says. The clinic’s attention to the furnishings and feel of the space isn’t just elegant window dressing: “It’s about preparing a client for their drug experience, allowing them to feel safe and warm. It’s about as far from that Peruvian hut as you can get.”

Patients will be assessed by Awakn’s team, including Sessa and Dr Laurie Higbed, a clinical psychologist who specialises in complex trauma and addictions, who has been part of research trials using both psilocybin and MDMA as adjuncts to psychotherapy. “I was the clinical psychologist, alongside Ben [Sessa as consultant psychiatrist], in an addiction service,” Higbed says. “We used to chat over coffee about how our caseload was full of clients who had experienced trauma in their lives, particularly in childhood. We were treating their heroin or alcohol use, but really that was just a symptom, rather than the cause.”

Her job was to help addicts uncover and work through those underlying traumas via talking therapy. But being forced to remember a trauma we may have spent a lifetime trying to suppress can be very daunting. “Often you get a little bit worse before you get better,” Higbed says, and this requires “a lot of faith that it’s worth the effort”.

‘Psychedelic compounds free thoughts to move in new ways.’ Illustration: Frieda Ruh/The Guardian

Metaphors abound for exactly how psychedelics work on a neurological level but one of the most popular involves considering the brain as a snow globe, showing a pristine scene at birth. As we age, our experiences, habits and the traumas we live through create tracks in the snow for our thoughts to run along. The older we get, the more worn the tracks become, making it harder for us to escape established thought patterns. “So with things like depression,” Higbed says, “you might have this negative worldview which can be very difficult to break free from.” Psychedelic compounds shake up the snow globe. Old ruts are destabilised and thoughts are free to move in new ways.

“This is why therapy is an important part of the treatment,” says Morgan who, as well as running the research trial Grant was a part of, will be consulting on treatments for alcoholism at Awakn. “The drugs alone might prompt big epiphanies, but the therapy helps you to learn from them and create lasting change.” She has seen this process in action. “One patient had been drinking seven bottles of wine a day, and had seen his life crumble,” she says. “His wife left, his daughter stopped speaking to him.” The patient had been abused as a child, and over his lifetime had spent increasing amounts of energy trying to avoid the emotions thrown up by that early trauma. “He had a very strong reaction to the ketamine infusion,” Morgan says. “He said he felt a kind of love and safety that he hadn’t felt for a long time. At one point he felt like he was back in his mum’s tummy.”

As part of the psychedelic experience, he also encountered his abuser, his father. “He said he felt pity for him. This was a massive step because he was able to understand his experiences from the perspective of an observer; the pity also extended to himself, which alleviated a lot of the shame and guilt he’d been feeling because of his alcoholism.” Eighteen months later, the man was still sober – having previously only ever managed a month.

A treatment course at Awakn lasts six weeks, with four drug-assisted sessions in that time. “And a follow-up session at week nine, so it’s 11 in total,” Higbed says. “It’s intensive.” Though, ultimately, they hope to work primarily with MDMA, they’re hamstrung by the current global legislation, which says the drug can be used only in an experimental setting. In the meantime, they’ll offer ketamine injections, more fast-acting than the infusion Grant received, but likely to yield similar results. It will cost “around £6,000”, Tennyson says. “Though our ultimate aim is to make it available on the NHS, to help as many people as possible.”
It’s not a magical cure. People should definitely try talking therapy first. It does work, and is much less invasive

Tennyson comes from a corporate finance background (Merrill Lynch, Bank of Ireland and 10 years in the risk consulting arm of the insurer Aon, . Like Sessa, he’s evangelical in his belief that the services offered by Awakn have never been more necessary. “Twenty per cent of the population have a mental health issue on an annual basis. The industry that is meant to be fixing this is significantly underperforming,” he says. In fact, according to figures from the mental health charity Mind, that figure is closer to 25%.

Tennyson’s job is to drive sales and generate investor interest. Financially, Awakn needs the clinics to be a success, but it’s also gearing up for a round of funding to help start its own research trials. Tennyson is coy about exactly how much this might cost (one academic confirms it runs to tens of millions) but says, “Ultimately, you can’t solve problems of this magnitude without capital.”

The capital, it seems, is following the science into a psychedelics gold rush. Peter Rands is the CEO of Small Pharma, a London-based life sciences company preparing to run the world’s first formal trial evaluating the combination of DMT (a short-acting but powerful hallucinogen) and psychotherapy to treat patients with major depressive disorder. “2020 was a relatively easy year to raise money into a psychedelics company,” he says, partly because investors understand the proposition now more than ever: “I don’t think this seems like a niche industry any more.” But it’s also because the pandemic proved drugs can suddenly have global demand. “Covid showed how much value there is in responding quickly to a major unmet medical need. Pre-pandemic, the biotech industry was worth a fraction of the price it is now. When drugs were suddenly being touted as a Covid cure, there was huge investor interest.”

A lot of investment, Rands says, is coming from Canada. Small Pharma plans to list on the Toronto stock exchange, and Awakn is incorporated in Toronto. “The Canadian investor community has a higher risk appetite to emerging industries,” Tennyson says. Rands agrees, pointing out that, “until recently, Canadian companies were pretty much all mining companies. And mining has a similar risk-return profile to drug development.” In both industries, he says, huge sums are invested upfront to excavate the necessary goods: “In drug development, that’s through clinical trials.”

In September 2020, Compass Pathways floated on the Nasdaq exchange. In October, it was valued at $1.3bn.

The company was founded in 2016 by Dr Ekaterina Malievskaia and her husband, George Goldsmith, after a years-long battle to find adequate mental healthcare for their son, who had OCD and depression. Goldsmith is quick to correct the narrative about his work. “We don’t see ourselves as part of a ‘psychedelics industry’ – we are a mental healthcare company.”

He is sanguine about how quickly these interventions could become more widely available, likening the process to climbing Everest. “A medicine is a drug plus the evidence that says it’s safe and effective to use for a certain type of patient. We’re about halfway through the process of collecting that evidence. But I think if everything works out well, by 2025 psilocybin-assisted therapy could be prescribed on the NHS for treatment-resistant depression.”

Sessa, whose focus is MDMA-assisted therapies to treat addiction, has a shorter timeline in mind. “MDMA is further along than psilocybin in the regulatory process,” he says. “It is thought it will be approved as a medicine by late 2022 or early 2023.” By that point, if Awakn has realised its ambitions, it will have a clinic in every major city in the UK.


'My mother-in-law called me Walter White': how magic mushrooms rescued me from grief

Despite the widespread evangelism from within the psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy field, Higbed resists the idea that it is some kind of panacea. She points out that it doesn’t work for all people, and that many would be put off by the hallucinogenic experience. “It’s not a magical cure,” she insists. “People should definitely try talking therapy first. It does work, and is much less invasive.” She also points out that antidepressants and other kinds of medications work “incredibly well for many people. This is really only for the subset of sufferers who aren’t being helped by what’s currently out there. It’s an innovation in an industry that hasn’t innovated in a long time.”

Dr Andrea Cipriani, a professor at the department of psychiatry, University of Oxford, shares the enthusiasm about the potential for psychedelics, but cautions that there is still a long way to go before they are more widely used. “These are very potent medications which, from a public health policy point of view, means it’s not a straightforward path to delivering this in a wider clinical setting,” he says. “I don’t think ketamine will ever get into the NHS as a first-line treatment; you reach this option only if previous ones have failed. And for the other psychedelics, I think it’s more difficult.”

Meanwhile, Grant hasn’t picked up a drink once since his ketamine treatment. “I haven’t even thought about a drink,” he says. “Problem drinkers struggle so much to control this – they avoid aisles in the supermarket, they carry all this shame. If everyone who needed it had access to this, I truly believe it would change the world.”

This article was amended on 13 and 14 March 2021. The insurer Aon was previously referred to as “an Irish insurance broker”; Awakn plans to open 15 to 20 clinics in the UK and EU in the next two years, not just the UK as Dr Ben Sessa told us in an earlier version; and we incorrectly referred to “John Hopkins University” in the US, rather than Johns Hopkins University.

Buddhists take on US army to keep peace in Scottish sanctuary

Eve Livingston THE GUARDIAN 3/14/2021

Nestled in the village of Eskdalemuir in Dumfries and Galloway, between wet moorlands, farmland and neolithic stone circles, is the largest Buddhist temple in western Europe.

Samye Ling, home to about 60 monks, nuns and volunteers, and visited by thousands of people each year, was established in 1967 and has welcomed famous names including Billy Connolly, Richard Gere and David Bowie – the latter, so the story goes, was so moved by his time there that he considered becoming a monk, until spiritual leaders told him to pursue a career in music.


But despite being a place usually characterised by peace and tranquility, Eskdalemuir’s monastic population are now at the centre of an unlikely dispute with a firearms dealer, a shooting club, and the US military. The controversy concerns two retrospective planning applications by neighbouring farms to expand shooting ranges in the small borders village. One, at Over Cassock farm about five miles from Samye Ling, seeks to replace temporary buildings with a permanent structure while the other, at Clerkhill farm just two miles away, is to expand a shooting range, which was opened last March but closed eight months later in the absence of full planning approval.

© Photograph: Andrew Cawley/Alamy Abbot Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche at the monastery near Lockerbie in Scotland.

Both plans are opposed by the residents of Samye Ling on the basis of noise concerns and disruption to wildlife, as well as the use of one range for US Special Forces machine gun and rifle training.

“Samye Ling has been here more than 50 years and we have always tried to be good Buddhists and especially to be good neighbours,” said Abbot Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche. “Now I hear the US forces will be training on a long-range high-velocity firing range within two kilometres of Samye Ling, on forestry land. We have a lot of very tame birds in Samye Ling; it’s like a peaceful sanctuary for them. They feel safe here because nobody harms them and so there are a large number of little birds and bigger ones too. They are used to our peaceful environment and the sound of gunshots is terrifying for them all.”

Samye Ling’s residents have been supported by more than 10,000 members of the public in an online petition, as well as by Eskdalemuir community council and Joan McAlpine, MSP for South Scotland, who told the Observer that constituents had raised concerns about the plans and the use of the Clerkhill range by US military. “I share the concerns of my constituents about large sections of the land around their community being given over to people who appear to want to play war games with high-calibre live ammunition,” she said

© Provided by The Guardian The Kagyu Samye Ling monastery and Tibetan centre. Photograph: Sam Mellish/Getty Images

“This is about far more than noise – locals are rightly worried about safety and the militaristic nature of a development, which is completely inappropriate in a place of peace. There is not a shred of evidence it will bring economic benefits; it is more likely to drive visitors away.”

A spokesperson for the owner of Clerkhill farm and Gardner Guns, which operates the range, said it was essential to diversify income following Brexit and the pandemic, and the plans would generate jobs and income. Darren Bean of the Fifty Calibre Shooters Association, which operates the Over Cassock range, said: “The range operated for three years without the inhabitants of Samye Ling being aware of its existence: it is at the end of a valley facing away from all habitation.”

A spokesperson for Dumfries and Galloway council said both applications would be considered by the planning applications committee .

For Rinpoche, the plans are a final straw after years of growing traffic and noise pollution from commercial forestry and hunting, about which the Samye Ling community have never complained. Now they are calling on supporters to contact the council with their objections.

“Thousands of people come here for courses and to meditate,” he said. “They all feel strongly opposed to this plan, and I have many friends from around the world who are determined to raise their voices in opposition to it.”

#MILKTEAALLIANCE

Thai protest leaders go on trial for sedition, insulting king

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A trial got underway in Thailand on Monday for activists accused of sedition and insulting the powerful monarchy at a major protest last year, one of a series of mass demonstrations against the country's military-backed establishment.

© Reuters/CHALINEE THIRASUPA Arrested anti-government protesters arrive at criminal court to face lese majeste charges in Bangkok

© Reuters/CHALINEE THIRASUPA Arrested anti-government protesters arrive at criminal court to face lese majeste charges in Bangkok

The 22 demonstrators deny charges of committing sedition and a litany of other offences, which includes lese majeste, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison for each count.

"They can lock me up but they cannot lock up the truth," protest leader Parit "Penguin" Chiwarak shouted as he arrived in a prison truck, defiantly flashing the three-finger "Hunger Games" salute synonymous with the youth movement.

"The truth is always the truth whether in prison, under torture or awaiting execution, the truth is the truth," said Parit, 22, who is among seven defendants held in pre-trial detention and accused of insulting King Maha Vajiralongkorn, as well as sedition.

© Reuters/CHALINEE THIRASUPA Arrested anti-government protesters arrive at criminal court to face lese majeste charges in Bangkok

Thailand's youth movement has posed the biggest challenge so far to prime minister and former coup leader Prayuth Chan-ocha, who they say engineered a process that would preserve the political status quo and keep him in power after a 2019 election. Prayuth has rejected that.

Protesters also broke a traditional taboo by demanding reform of the powerful monarchy, saying the constitution drafted by the military after the 2014 coup gives the king too much power.

© Reuters/CHALINEE THIRASUPA Arrested anti-government protesters arrive at criminal court to face lese majeste charges in Bangkok

The length of the trial will be determined later on Monday after the defence and prosecution discuss how many witnesses both sides will call upon for the case, which stems from a September rally.

© Reuters/JORGE SILVA Arrested anti-government protest leader Jatupat "Pai" Boonpattararaksa shows a three-finger salute as he arrives at the criminal court to face lese majeste charges in Bangkok

(Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um and Panarat Thepgumpanat; Editing by Martin Petty)

Suu Kyi to face court after bloody day in Myanmar

AFP 

3/14/2021

Myanmar's ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi is to appear in court on Monday, after one of the country's bloodiest days since the February 1 coup.

© STR Protesters demanding the release of Suu Kyi and the restoration of democracy have taken to the streets across Myanmar every day for around six weeks

At least 38 protesters were killed on Sunday as security forces cracked down on anti-coup protesters, taking the total death toll to more than 120, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) monitoring group.

© Thet AUNG Lawyer Khin Maung Zaw has said the claims against his client were 'groundless'

Protesters demanding the release of Suu Kyi and the restoration of democracy have taken to the streets across Myanmar every day for around six weeks despite the junta's increasingly forceful attempts to quell the dissent.

Sunday -- the joint deadliest day of unrest along with March 3 -- saw violent clashes between security forces and protesters and the torching of several Chinese-owned factories in a textile-producing district of Yangon, as many protesters believe Beijing to be supportive of the coup.

© STR Live rounds have been used during the crackdowns

State-run television confirmed on Monday that a police officer was shot dead in the city of Bago during a protest.

The Yangon court hearing for Suu Kyi -- who spent more than 15 years in house arrest under previous military rule -- is expected to start by video link around 10 am (0330 GMT), her lawyer Khin Maung Zaw told AFP.

The Nobel laureate faces at least four charges: possessing unlicensed walkie-talkies, violating coronavirus restrictions, breaching telecommunications laws and intent to cause public unrest.

Military authorities have also accused her of accepting illegal payments of $600,000 in cash as well as a large quantity of gold -- allegations her lawyer says are "groundless".

"The ruling junta has showed its teeth and taken its mask off… they are showing their true self," Khin Maung Zaw said of Sunday's violence.

Khin Maung Zaw has complained he has not been allowed to meet Suu Kyi, who has been in custody since the coup, though he said the 75-year-old appeared in good health at her last court appearance, by video link, on March 1.

© STR Security forces have set up barricades across Yangon

- Chinese factories attacked -

Video: Myanmar military coup, protester death toll rises with increased violence (USA TODAY)

The international community is growing ever more alarmed at the bloodshed, but so far the generals have shown no signs of heeding calls for restraint.

The UN's top rights expert on Myanmar Tom Andrews tweeted that he was "heartbroken/outraged" at Sunday's events.

"Junta leaders don't belong in power, they belong behind bars," he wrote.

"Their supply of cash & weapons must be cut now. I appeal to UN member states to heed my call to act."

On Sunday night state media announced that Yangon's massive Hlaing Tharyar township and the neighbouring Shwepyitha township were being put under martial law.

The move came after protesters and security forces clashed violently and five factories -- several of them Chinese-owned -- in Hlaing Tharyar, a garment-producing district, were razed.

Security forces opened fire on demonstrators wielding sticks and knives, and using cut-out trash cans as shields.

Beijing's embassy in Myanmar issued a statement condemning the actions of "destroyers" and urging police to "guarantee the security" of Chinese businesses.

The declaration of martial law means anyone arrested in the two townships faces trial by military tribunal rather than civilian courts, with sentences ranging from three years' hard labour to execution.

The UN envoy for Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener strongly condemned Sunday's bloodshed, while the former colonial power Britain said it was "appalled" by the use of force "against innocent people."

Last week Andrews, the UN Special Rapporteur on rights in Myanmar, said there was growing evidence that the junta was engaging in crimes against humanity -- including murder, forced disappearances and torture.

The human rights campaign group Amnesty International has also accused the military of using battlefield weapons on unarmed protestors and carrying out premeditated killings.

bur-pdw/je

'You'll have to come through me': Myanmar nun on becoming a symbol of resistance

Siobhan Robbins and Henry Austin 

3/14/2021

Dressed in a white habit and a dark veil, Sister Ann Roza Nu Tawng knelt before Myanmar military forces and told them, "You'll have to come through me."

A picture of her dramatic plea electrified protesters and made headlines around the world, which has been watching an increasingly brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters after last month's military coup.

At a rally in the city of Myitkyina last week, Sister Ann Roza, 45, told U.K. broadcaster Sky News that she had pleaded with police "not to beat, not to arrest, not to crack down on the protesters, because the protesters were not doing anything bad — they were just shouting slogans. " (Sky News is owned by Comcast, the parent company of NBC News.)

© Provided by NBC News A nun pleading with police not to harm protesters in Myanmar. (Myitkyina News Journal / AFP - Getty Images)

Asked to leave, she refused. "The police were also kneeling, and they told me they had to do it because this was to stop the protest," she said. "I replied: 'No, if you want to do this, you have to come through me.'"


Moments later, tear gas was fired and gunshots rang out.

With her vision impaired, she was unable to say whether the shots were fired by the officers she spoke with or by members of the military.

As she struggled to breathe, she saw a man who had fallen down in the street. She quickly realized he had been shot.

He was taken to a clinic for treatment, she said, and died later from his injuries. Another person died on the spot, she said.

The sister had already placed herself between the police and protesters in the city on Feb. 28.

In a separate interview with Sky News, Sister Ann Roza said that on that occasion, she "thought today is the day I will die" and that she had "decided to die."

"I thought it would be better that I die instead of lots of people," she said.

Police also opened fire on protesters and beat some of them.

She survived both times. Others have been less fortunate.

Thomas Andrews, the U.N.'s human rights investigator in the country, said Thursday that at least 70 people had been "murdered" since the army seized power Feb. 1 and detained the government's elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and much of her party leadership, alleging fraud in a November election that her party won in a landslide.

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Accusing the military junta of perpetrating killings, torture and persecution that may constitute crimes against humanity, Andrews told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva that more than half of those killed were under age 25. He added that more than 2,000 people had been unlawfully detained.

"The country of Myanmar is being controlled by a murderous, illegal regime," he said.

The coup brought a halt to tentative steps toward democracy in Myanmar, a southeast Asian country of 54 million people, after nearly 50 years of military rule, and it has drawn hundreds of thousands onto the streets.

U.N. investigator: ‘Myanmar is being controlled by a murderous, illegal regime’

Western countries have condemned the military's actions, and some have imposed limited sanctions, but the generals have traditionally shrugged off such diplomatic pressure. They have promised to hold a new election but have not set a date.

Sister Ann Roza said the generals were not protecting the people, who "have to defend themselves."

She pledged to pray for both the military and the protesters, warning that "people are not safe anymore in Myanmar, which used to be a place for happiness."

She added that she would ask "people abroad to pray for us."

"May God bless you," she said. "I salute the fallen souls."

Martial law imposed in parts of Myanmar city as deaths rise

YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar's ruling junta has declared martial law in parts of the country's largest city as security forces killed more protesters in an increasingly lethal crackdown on resistance to last month's military coup

© Provided by The Canadian Press

At least 38 people were killed Sunday and dozens were injured in one of the deadliest days of the crackdown, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an independent group tracking the toll of the violence.

Most of those killed — 34 — were in Yangon, where two townships, Hlaing Thar Yar and neighbouring Shwepyitha were being placed under martial law.

Video from Hlaing Thar Yar township showed people running away after gunfire was heard. Those fleeing carried one injured person and tried to revive two others, one who seemed to be dead or dying, the footage from independent Democratic Voice of Burma showed.

Hlaing Thar Yar was the location of 22 civilian deaths Sunday, according to the aid group, which said more than a dozen civilians were wounded and described a large number of junta forces engaged in the township.

Since the takeover six weeks ago, Myanmar has been under a nationwide state of emergency, with its civilian leaders ousted and detained and military leaders in charge of all government. But the announcement on state broadcaster MRTV late Sunday appeared to be the first use of the term martial law since the coup and suggested more direct military control of security, instead of local police.

The announcement said the State Administrative Council acted to enhance security and restore law and order and said the Yangon regional commander has been entrusted with administrative, judicial and military powers in the area under his command.

Four other deaths were reported in Bago, Mandalay, and the northern city of Hpakant in Kachin state, according to the aid group and local media.

In Yangon, video posted on social media showed crowds of people, some wearing hard hats and gas masks, running down a street amid sounds of gunfire. The demonstrators quickly sprayed vapour from fire extinguishers as they retreated — a tactic widely used to smother tear gas and create a vapour screen that makes it harder for police to pursue or shoot demonstrators.

There were also reports of injuries from live rounds and rubber bullets in other parts of Yangon, including Insein district, where billows of black smoke could be seen after security forces reportedly set roadblocks on fire.

In a new tactic, anti-coup demonstrators used the cover of darkness to hold mass candlelight vigils Saturday and Sunday nights in a Yangon commercial area that was usually the scene of their daytime protests. After-dark rallies were also held in Mandalay and elsewhere.

The protest movement has been grounded in non-violent civil disobedience from the start, with marches and general strikes among its main features. But some protesters have advocated stronger, more agile methods of self-defence — such as holding small rallies that are quick to disband and reunite, and devising cover from fire extinguishers and billowing laundry.

On Saturday, the civilian leader of Myanmar’s government in hiding vowed to continue supporting a “revolution” to oust the military leaders who seized power in the Feb. 1 coup. Mahn Win Khaing Than, who was named the acting vice-president by Myanmar's ousted lawmakers and is a member of deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, addressed the public for the first time since the coup.

“This is the darkest moment of the nation and the moment that the dawn is close,” he said in a video posted on the shadow government’s website and social media.

“In order to form a federal democracy, which all ethnic brothers who have been suffering various kinds of oppressions from the dictatorship for decades really desired, this revolution is the chance for us to put our efforts together," he said.

He added: “We will never give up to an unjust military, but we will carve our future together with our united power. Our mission must be accomplished.”

At the end of the message, he flashed the three-finger salute that has become a symbol of resistance to the military rulers.

The aid group's tally of Sunday's victims appeared to raise beyond 100 the number of civilians killed by security forces since the coup. Confirmation is nearly impossible in the country due to the security situation and a crackdown on independent media, but various groups have carefully compiled tallies with similar figures.

The actual death toll is likely higher, as police apparently seized some bodies, and some victims have had serious gunshot wounds that medical staff at makeshift clinics would be hard-pressed to treat. Many hospitals are occupied by security forces, and as a result are boycotted by medical personnel and shunned by protesters.

Police have also aggressively patrolled residential neighbourhoods at night, firing into the air and setting off stun grenades as an intimidation tactic. They have also taken people from their homes in targeted raids with minimal resistance. In at least two known cases, the detainees died in custody within hours of being hauled away.

The Associated Press

The death of Zaw Myat Lynn: allegations torture used on opposition activist in Myanmar


THE GUARDIAN 3/14/2021

Under cover of darkness, the soldiers rolled up outside a school building on the outskirts of Myanmar’s main city, Yangon. It was 1.30am. The military began searching the Suu Vocational College, in the north-west suburb of Shwe Pyi Thar. They moved swiftly from room to room.

© Photograph: Facebook Zaw Myat Lynn, right, posted on Facebook that ‘people should fight the army even if it costs our lives’.

They had come to arrest Zaw Myat Lynn, a prominent community organiser and teacher. He was an activist with the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party of Aung San Suu Kyi. In November, the NLD won a landslide election victory. It was in power until last month, when the military abruptly ended civilian rule.

Zaw Myat Lynn had been at the forefront of local anti-coup protests. He shared graphic videos of soldiers beating and shooting peaceful demonstrators. On Facebook he spoke out in fearless terms against Myanmar’s ruling junta. Its armed enforcers were “terrorists” and “dogs”, he wrote, adding “people should fight the army even if it costs our lives”.

Related: Myanmar: acting civilian leader says 'we must win' as five more protesters die

In his haunting final post, Zaw Myat Lynn live-streamed a pro-democracy rally close to the school. Locals sought to defend themselves from night-time arrest by putting up barricades and making defences out of sandbags. “We must prepare to protect our people,” he said, adding that an unknown number of troops had taken up positions nearby.

The defences didn’t work. The soldiers discovered him in the school compound, where he lived with his wife Phyu Phyu Win. They dragged him away. Zaw Myat Lynn was 46. He taught Japanese at the college; the couple had two children and a 10-year-old granddaughter. He was loaded into a truck and driven off. It was early morning, Monday 8 March.

Twenty-four hours later, his wife was instructed to visit a military hospital in Mingarlardon township, in north Yangon, according to Maung Saungkha, a family friend. There, she was told to identify a body. It was her husband. Officials said she had to cremate his remains as soon as she took delivery of the corpse.

They gave her an official postmortem “report”. It claimed Zaw Myat Lynn had fallen nine metres (30ft) on to a sharp metal fence while trying to escape from custody. This explained his injuries. It was only after collecting his remains two days later that she discovered another explanation. The horrific nature of his injuries supports allegations that Zaw Myat Lynn had been savagely tortured.

Photographs of his body seen by the Guardian give clues to his horrifying final hours. It appears that boiling water or a chemical solution had been poured into his mouth. The tongue was melted, his teeth missing. Facial skin was peeling off. The body had been wrapped up to conceal further traumatic injuries.

These included a stab wound to the abdomen seemingly made by a cross-sectional knife. The wound appears to have been inflicted while he was still alive, and may have been the cause of death. Severe bruising can be seen on the sides of his body, which had been cut open and stitched up.

“All participants in the civil disobedience movement are aware they are in danger. Lynn knew the risks,” one fellow activist, connected to Myanmar’s underground national legislative committee, the CRPH, said. “A lot of young people go out to protest and never come back. We don’t know if they are arrested or dead.”

The activist added: “Lynn was targeted because he was high-profile. The military’s aim is to teach the rest of us a lesson, to say, ‘this is how you will end up’. The strategy won’t work. We are cleverer. We have a lot of social media and ways of reaching the world that we didn’t have before.”

© Provided by The Guardian Protesters hold hands to keep watch during a night-time demonstration against the military coup in Yangon Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Zaw Myat Lynn was the second senior NLD aide to perish as the result of alleged torture, according to Ba Myo Thein, an MP in the now-dissolved upper house. Days earlier, Khin Maung Latt, 58, a local NLD chairman in Yangon, also died in detention. A party leader said pictures showed he had a wound on the back of his head and bruises on his back.

Since the 1 February coup, the military has shot dead more than 80 people, and arrested over 2,100, amid demonstrations across the country and a general strike. Last week, it accused Aung San Suu Kyi of taking bribes worth $1.3m (£934,000) in cash and gold. Her lawyer has dismissed the charges as a “joke”. But they carry a long prison sentence and represent an escalation of the regime’s attempts to silence her.

According to witnesses, the police had carried out previous operations at Zaw Myat Lynn’s township, which is separated from central Yangon by the Hlaing River. On 21 February, officers opened fire on unarmed protesters. “As a police vehicle entered into the street, we tried to stop them. Police suddenly shot a man in the head and then drove away,” said Myint Myat Thu who saw the shooting.

Zaw Myat Lynn had met Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under arrest since the coup, and worked for her humanitarian foundation. In the months leading up to the coup he had helped the fight against Covid in Myanmar. “He was well respected and well known in the civil disobedience movement,” a fellow activist, who declined to be named, said.

During the 8 March raid at Zaw Myat Lynn’s institute, three students and three local residents were arrested. Computers, vehicles, phones and money at the school were confiscated, according to Ko Min Wai, a teacher volunteer. The school has offered free training courses on computers, language and mechanics to young people in Shwe Pyi Thar.

Photos from the funeral show Zaw Myat Lynn’s wife crying over an open coffin, surrounded by mourners. “It is not possible,” Ko Min Wai said. “I can’t bear this. How could they do this to an unarmed civilian? Even I was in tears after I heard of this shocking death.”