Thursday, May 06, 2021

Google 'arguably violated' labor law when it fired employees involved in unionizing, says NLRB chief
mcoulter@businessinsider.com (Martin Coulter) 6/5/2021

The National Labor Relations Board has said Google "arguably violated" US labor laws when it fired three employees involved in unionizing. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Google 'arguably violated' labor laws when it fired employees involved in unionizing activity.

NLRB chief Peter Sung Ohr accused the tech giant of 'unlawfully discharging' three ex-Googlers.

But Google insists the company remains 'very confident' in its legal position.

Google "arguably violated" US labor laws when it fired three employees involved in unionizing activity, the acting head of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has said.

Peter Sung Ohr's comments mark the latest twist in the long-running fallout between Google execs and employees, and may underscore a more pro-labor approach at the agency under President Biden.

Google suffered backlash after firing five activist workers in the space of a month towards the end of 2019. Laurence Berland, Paul Duke, Rebecca Rivers, and Sophie Waldman became known as the "Thanksgiving Four" after the company sacked them around the holiday season, alleging they had leaked company information in violation of its policies, an allegation all of them deny.

The four were subsequently joined by Kathryn Spiers, who had created an internal pop-up notification for employees telling them they had a right to "participate in protected concerted activities" before being fired in December 2019.

The ex-Googlers subsequently filed complaints via the NLRB, alleging that Google terminated their contracts in an attempt to crush unionization efforts.

In 2020, under the Trump administration, then NLRB leader Peter Robb accused Google of illegally firing Berland and Spiers, but rejected the other three's claims.

In a new letter seen by Bloomberg, however, the agency's new acting chief Ohr said that Google had "arguably violated" federal labor laws by "unlawfully discharging" .

As a result, Bloomberg reports that the NLRB is now considering amending its original complaint to include Duke, Rivers, and Waldman, unless Google settles out of court.

In a statement shared with the site, a Google spokesperson said, "Our thorough investigation found the individuals were involved in systematic searches for other employees' materials and work, including distributing confidential business and client information."

They added: "As the hearing on these matters moves forward, we're very confident in our decision and legal position."

Insider approached Google and the NLRB for further comment.

‘There are so many hurdles.’ Indian scientists plead with government to unlock COVID-19 data

People wait in line to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in Mumbai, India, on 29 April. AP PHOTO/RAJANISH KAKADE

By Priyanka PullaMay. 4, 2021 , 12:10 PM

Reporting for this story was supported by a journalism grant from the Thakur Family Foundation, which has not influenced the contents of this report.

Indian researchers say they urgently need better access to data collected by government agencies to help them understand and fight the country’s devastating second pandemic wave. An open letter published on 29 April that has 740 signatories so far asks the government for access to databases on COVID-19 testing and genomic sequencing and urges it to remove other obstacles to research.

“There are currently so many hurdles and so much paperwork around accessing these data,” says Partha Pratim Majumder, a genetic epidemiologist at the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in West Bengal and one of letter’s signers.
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The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, K. VijayRaghavan, released a note the next day acknowledging the problems and promising to increase access. “Our broader research community needs to be much more facilitated by our research agencies,” the letter said. But some scientists are skeptical that the situation will improve quickly; the note was low on details and previous requests for data from government agencies have often gone unanswered, they say. Why the Indian government is so reticent to share data is unclear.

The government has collected detailed data on some aspects of the pandemic. For example, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the country’s top medical research agency, captures demographic details such as age, location, and health status of everyone who submits a sample for a COVID-19 test. The data could help answer key questions, such as whether people with certain concurrent illnesses are more likely to have worse outcomes and whether vaccines are working, says Gagandeep Kang, a public health microbiologist at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, who also signed the letter. “Lots of people want to know, for instance, what mortality is by location, and whether it differs between rural and urban areas,” she says. “This speaks to the kind of care people are getting.”

But so far, scientists say, ICMR and other government agencies have dragged their feet on responding to requests for access. That has forced several groups building computer models of the epidemic to rely on public domain data, which are aggregated by state but lack granular details such as breakdowns by district, age, or gender, says L. S. Shashidhara, a developmental biologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune. Even modeling groups advising the Indian government on its COVID-19 response policy often don’t have these data, Shashidhara says.

Scientists also want access to more viral genome sequences generated by the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG). Established in December 2020, the consortium’s stated goal is to sequence 5% of all new SARS-CoV-2 cases in the country, which is important to keep up with the spread of new virus variants. INSACOG has had a slow start, with just over 15,000 samples sequenced by late April, out of about 5.9 million new cases India has seen since January. And just 6200 sequences—fewer than half—have been deposited in GISAID, an international database, during this period.

In February, INSACOG identified a variant, later christened B.1.617, which was growing in frequency in Maharashtra at a time when that state was experiencing a massive outbreak. B.1.617 has spread to several other countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States. But INSACOG has yet to share its analyses of whether the variant is more transmissible or more virulent. “We need multiple pairs of eyes need to look at this data, instead of just one,” Majumder says.

The authors also ask the government to remove obstacles that prevent INSACOG from stepping up the sequencing pace. INSACOG scientists currently have to jump through several bureaucratic hoops to import reagents, plastics, and other key materials. The measures, designed to protect Indian industry, are ill-advised during the coronavirus surge, says Rakesh Mishra, a genomicist at Hyderabad’s Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, one of 10 INSACOG labs. “It’s like taking a blanket away from a person in winter because the blanket is imported,” he says.

The note released by VijayRaghavan’s office says government agencies “will immediately highlight mechanisms of research access to already available datasets and put in place access to new datasets as they are formed.” It also says the government will remove import bottlenecks and INSACOG will involve more teams in data analysis, bioinformatics, and decision-making.

Although some scientists welcomed the quick response, others say the letter is too little, too late. “The note only says that government agencies will facilitate data access,” Majumder says. “The question is: when? Time is of the essence. And promises made in the past by important government functionaries have often not been fulfilled on time.”

As clock ticks down on Enbridge's Line 5, anxiety grows in Sarnia and Michigan

Enbridge vows to defy order that comes into force next week in move lawyers say will make case more difficult to argue in courts

Author of the article: Geoffrey Morgan
Publishing date:May 05, 2021 •

A signpost marks the presence of Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline, which Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer ordered shut down in May 2021, in Sarnia, Ont. PHOTO BY CARLOS OSORIO/REUTERS

CALGARY — For Mike Bradley, the mayor of Sarnia, the impending shutdown of a pipeline that supplies fuel to his city’s biggest employers has been “hovering” for seven months.

That anxiety has been steadily building ahead of a deadline this month imposed by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for Enbridge Inc. to shut down its Line 5 pipeline, which crosses through Michigan, where it delivers more than half of the state’s propane needs, en route to deliver oil to Ontario, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In November, Whitmer cancelled the easement that allows Enbridge’s pipeline to pass under the straits and provided a deadline of May 12 to shut the line down. Enbridge, for its part, has vowed to defy the order that comes into force next week in a move that lawyers say will make its case more difficult to argue in state and federal courts.

The two sides are currently in mediation and there is the potential that this fight turns into a national dispute between Canada and the U.S., leaving communities like Sarnia largely powerless in an entrenched environmental fight that could imperil thousands of existing jobs.

The Ontario government believes 4,900 jobs in Sarnia, a city of 71,500, are in jeopardy if the line is shut down next week, but Bradley said there’s a broader economic impact in his city.

“Anytime there’s uncertainty about the source of what drives a particular economy, it does have an impact when you’re trying to recruit companies and industries into the area,” he said. “When you’re in the economic development game, you’re always trying to eliminate anything that could be an impediment and the longer this goes on, the more of that anxiety is there.”

Whitmer’s Democratic administration has attempted to shut the line down twice previously on environmental grounds because the pipeline runs under the Straits of Mackinac, which divides Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Whitmer has also opposed an Enbridge plan to bore a tunnel under the straits, encase the tunnel in concrete and put a replacement for the 65-year-old pipeline through the tunnel.

The urgency of the situation has led to the formation of a House of Commons committee in Canada, a flurry of diplomatic calls and meetings between Ottawa and Washington, D.C., advertising campaigns in Ontario and Michigan as well as legal filings, some of which are due in U.S. federal court on May 11, the day before Line 5 is required to shut down.

Experts say the fight over Line 5 is also indicative of a broader and evolving fight over oil and gas pipelines in North America. Previously, pipeline opponents would vigorously fight new pipeline proposals — like the Keystone XL pipeline project — and in the process deal a major blow to the growth aspirations of upstream oil and gas companies. Now, the fight has moved from new pipelines to existing ones including Line 5 and the Dakota Access Pipeline and the effect of targeting existing pipelines is that more people and more industries are affected, even outside of the oil and gas industry.

“This is a natural evolution of the anti-pipeline movement,” said James Coleman, associate professor of law at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law in Dallas, adding that politicians have been willing to shut down existing pipelines particularly when there is a repair, replacement or new easement needed.

This is a natural evolution of the anti-pipeline movement
JAMES COLEMAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF LAW, SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY DEDMAN SCHOOL OF LAW

“Frankly, it has gotten much harder to build pipelines over time. Sometimes people say that means we don’t need increased capacity but what it also means is we don’t shut down old pipelines,” Coleman said.

Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage said the Line 5 pipeline dispute, as well as the Dakota Access Pipeline, are some of the first examples of groups opposed to oil and gas development targeting existing pipelines and their efforts to shut the lines down “hurts people,” in addition to the oil and gas industry.

“People can understand it, they can relate to it, whereas a future pipeline doesn’t impact them in the same way and it doesn’t resonate with people in the way they live their life everyday,” Savage said.

In Michigan, home to the Big Three automakers, the Michigan Manufacturers Association said in a letter supporting Enbridge and Line 5, that the supply of energy “underpins all aspects of manufacturing.” The association threw its weight behind the pipeline, saying its members drive the state’s economy and provide jobs for 628,800 residents and 20 per cent of the state’s GDP.

“Energy costs affect not just the manufacturing process but also the transportation of raw materials to our manufacturing facilities and finished products made in Michigan to their markets within Michigan and beyond,” Caroline Liethen, the association’s director of environmental and regulatory policy, said in a letter to the Michigan Public Service Commission on April 12.

United Auto Workers members leave the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Warren Truck Plant in Warren, Michigan. PHOTO BY GREGORY SHAMUS/GETTY IMAGES FILES

She added that “energy costs are also a major contributing factor in Michigan’s ability to retain a strong, globally competitive manufacturing sector and attract new investment by manufacturers looking to site new facilities.”

Industry groups in Michigan opposed to the shutdown of the line have launched TV, radio, billboard and social media advertising campaign “to explain just how vital this piece of infrastructure is,” said Derek Dalling, executive director of the Michigan Propane Gas Association.

Michigan is the largest consuming market for propane in the U.S. and Dalling said his association’s member companies are preparing contingency plans in case the line is shut down, including looking for truck drivers that would go as far afield as Indiana and New England to source propane and investing in new railway infrastructure.

“If Line 5 were to go down, by our calculations, we are the smallest piece of the fuels that go through Line 5,” Dalling said, adding that small piece accounts for 55 per cent of all propane demand in Michigan. “Our small piece does account for over 400 million gallons per year diverted from Line 5. That would be almost 10,000 propane rail cars to account for what’s going through Line 5,” he said in an interview with the Financial Post.

In an effort to avoid the line shutting down, Minister Savage has been working with her counterparts in Ontario and Saskatchewan as well as federal Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan to coordinate a legal response to the impending shut down of the line. Alberta has also recruited its Washington, D.C. envoy James Rajotte to make the case for Line 5 in the U.S. Capitol.

O’Regan has also raised the issue directly with U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, while Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., has met with Governor Whitmer to discuss the issue.

“As the minister has repeatedly made clear, the continued safe operation of Line 5 is vital for energy security on both sides of the border,” said Ian Cameron, spokesperson for O’Regan.

Legal experts contacted by the Financial Post say the best case scenario for Canada is to reach a diplomatic resolution to the problem, but the federal government does have additional legal options including recourse to the 1977 Transit Pipelines Treaty between the two countries if diplomatic talks fail.

The treaty states that “no public authority in the territory of either party shall institute any measures… which are intended to, or which would have the effect of, impeding, diverting, redirecting or interfering with in any way the transmission of hydrocarbon in transit.”

Calgary-based Enbridge, which owns and operates Line 5 and also plans to bore a tunnel underneath the Straits of Mackinac to encase a replacement for the pipeline, references the treaty in its legal filings opposing Michigan’s demands to shut the line down.

“We argued that the state is prohibited from interfering with the operation of an international pipeline, like Line 5, because that operation is a matter reserved for the federal government,” Enbridge spokesperson Tracie Kenyon said in an emailed statement

A tank farm at the Enbridge pipelines terminal in Sarnia.

PHOTO BY PAUL MORDEN/THE OBSERVER/POSTMEDIA NETWORK FILES

“We will not stop operating the pipeline unless we are ordered by a court or our regulator to do so, which we view as highly unlikely,” Kenyon said.

Enbridge is currently in mediation with Michigan over the issue, but lawyers in the U.S. do not expect a negotiated solution to the problem.

“That judge orders mediation in every case — always,” said Margrethe Kearney, Grand Rapids, Michigan-based senior attorney at the Environmental Law and Policy Centre, adding that the likelihood of an agreement is lower than if Enbridge and Michigan had embarked on mediation on their own initiative.

Kearney’s group is opposed to Line 5 and the replacement project and she argues that there are exceptions in the 1977 treaty that would allow Michigan to demand the pipeline cease operations.

Article 4 of the treaty also notes that the transit pipeline will be subject to regulations by the “appropriate governmental authorities,” including on pipeline safety, technical pipeline construction and operation standards and environmental protection. Kearney said she questions whether the treaty applies to Line 5 in this situation.

In addition, she said Enbridge’s plan to continue operating the pipeline despite the state government’s order to shut the line down will hurt the company’s ability to argue that it is a responsible pipeline operator.

“I have represented a lot of very large companies and I never advised them to ignore a government order. It never, in the long run, was the right way to go,” she said. “I think it’s a very risky and dangerous thing that Enbridge is doing by refusing to comply with the state’s order.”

I think it’s a very risky and dangerous thing that Enbridge

is doing by refusing to comply with the state’s order
MARGRETHE KEARNEY, SENIOR ATTORNEY, ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY CENTRE

For Ottawa, invoking the treaty would set off a round of arbitration with U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, which has so far shown some antipathy towards Canadian pipelines carrying oilsands crude into the U.S., as evidenced by his cancellation of the Keystone XL project on his first day in office.

“Typically, in a situation like this, the government would expect that the company would be taking the lead in exhausting all of its legal options,” said Sander Duncanson, partner in Calgary at Osler, Hosking & Harcourt LLP.

“Once you’re into a dispute mechanism, you’re acknowledging that there is now a formal legal dispute between the two countries and I can imagine that the federal government would prefer not to do that if they can avoid it,” Duncanson said.

Despite the cancellation of Keystone XL, legal experts say the Biden administration has taken a more nuanced approach to existing pipelines and has even taken the Trump’s administration position in court to support two separate pipelines through the U.S., which are the Dakota Access Pipeline and the PennEast Pipeline through Pennsylvania.

Enbridge owns a stake in both of those pipeline projects.

A protest against the Dakota Access pipeline in California, in 2016.

PHOTO BY LUCY NICHOLSON/REUTERS FILES

“The Biden administration did not reverse the Trump position that was filed in that court case and so I saw that as a positive development,” said Mark Warner, principal at MAAW Law in Toronto.

Though Biden has taken a softer, more nuanced stance on existing pipelines in the U.S., Warner said that forcing the U.S. government into arbitration over the Line 5 issue could have the unintended consequence of forcing the president into a corner.

“I think it is a threat,” Warner said of the potential invocation of the treaty. “If you’re going to make a threat, you better be prepared to live with it.”

In Sarnia, Mayor Bradley said he believes the Line 5 dispute has highlighted the need for Canadian governments to safeguard existing trade with the U.S.

Bradley said the ad-hoc House of Commons committee dealing with this issue should be turned into a permanent standing committee and Canadian diplomats need to take lessons from the Line 5 event to prepare for potential future trade challenges.

“Do we want to get into trying to stop trade in certain sectors? I don’t think so,” Bradley said, noting that if the Line 5 precedent is allowed to stand, there could be other parts of the Canadian economy targeted in the future, whether in Ontario or in other provinces.

“This issue won’t go away with just a solution on Line 5,” Bradley said

MORE ON THIS TOPIC

U.S. 'highly unlikely' to order Line 5 shut down as deadline on crucial pipeline nears, chief negotiator says

Looming showdown as Michigan governor orders Line 5 pipeline to Ontario shut down

Frustrated Canada presses White House to keep Enbridge's Line 5 oil pipeline open

Varcoe: Canadian MPs rally around a pipeline — who could've imagined?

Enbridge has challenged Michigan’s order in U.S. federal court, maintaining the state lacks the authority to shut down the pipeline as oversight rests with the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

A judge ordered the two sides to work with a mediator to seek a resolution and additional meetings have been scheduled.

“We will not stop operating the pipeline unless we are ordered by a court or our regulator, which we view as highly unlikely,” Enbridge’s Tracie Kenyon said in a statement.

The attempt to shut down the line has commanded the attention of federal and provincial politicians across the country, given the potential fallout.

If operations are halted, Enbridge notes refineries in Ontario, Quebec, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan would receive about 45 per cent less oil from Enbridge than they currently demand. Line 5 supplies about half of all propane demand in Michigan.

The pipeline is clearly critical for consumers — and blocking it would cause a lot of unnecessary angst.

“All you are doing is artificially constraining the market. . . . When you do that, there is going to be a product shortage. It is going to increase prices and hit consumers,” Little said in an interview.

“This is a hit to the economies and it’s being generated by this action by the governor.”

While Suncor has contingency plans to continue supplying its refineries in Montreal and Sarnia, these measures would increase the expense of doing so.

“The tougher it is to get into the marketplace, the more constraints you throw up . . . the higher the price goes,” Little said

Suncor Energy CEO Mark Little at the Fort Hills oilsands project on Sept. 10, 2018. PHOTO BY VINCENT MCDERMOTT/FORT MCMURRAY TODAY/POSTMEDIA NETWORK

Last week, Imperial Oil CEO Brad Corson said the integrated producer is closely watching the Line 5 situation as the company uses the infrastructure to move oil to its refineries in Sarnia and Nanticoke, Ont.

Imperial also has plans ready in case the pipeline is shut down, although Corson views that as a “low probability” event.

Analysts say a disruption in Line 5 would hit consumers in the region and the effect would ripple across Canada.

A recent report by the industry consultancy Kent Group said refineries would need to find other, more expensive sources of oil if Line 5 is blocked, which would translate into higher diesel and gasoline prices in Ontario and Quebec.

“There will be a short-term spike in pricing and we think that will be six to eight cents a litre,” Vijay Muralidharan, a senior consultant with the Kent Group, a Kalibrate company, said in an interview Tuesday.

“It will be first felt in Ontario, but . . . the price increase will flow through across Canada.”

After a sharp rise in gasoline and diesel prices, other fuel supplies would likely flow into the region and ease some of the pressure, he added.

If a disruption lasted long enough, it could also affect petroleum producers by widening the price discount for western Canadian crude as oil becomes stranded in the region due to a transportation bottleneck.

Jackie Forrest, executive director of the ARC Energy Research Institute, noted there is excess crude-by-rail capacity available to move barrels to market today, but it’s likely not enough to cover all of the shipments moving on Line 5 for a protracted period of time.

“It would have knock-on effects on Canadian heavy oil prices,” said Forrest.

“It would reduce the amount of crude oil that we can put into our export pipelines and we already have quite a tight situation here.”

None of these outcomes is tenable. The pain would be felt in many parts of the country if the pipeline is suddenly stopped.

For Canada, the struggle over Line 5 continues as more voices speak out.

Chris Varcoe is a Calgary Herald columnist.

Why won’t this giant oil pipeline reveal its secret backers?

Construction on the Trans Mountain oil pipeline in Acheson, Alberta, Canada, in December 2019. Photograph: Candace Elliott/Reuters

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About this content

Carl Meyer for Canada's National Observer and Emily Holden for Floodlight
Tue 4 May 2021

Nestled in the harbors of Vancouver, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation has lived for thousands of years within an inlet set against the mountain views of the Pacific north-west.

But across the water from Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s reserve, less than 2km away, or a little over a mile, is a jarring juxtaposition: an industrial terminal for the large Trans Mountain oil pipeline.

Oil tankers have frequented the terminal weekly for years, and now it is being enlarged so Trans Mountain can triple the amount of oil it transports from the landlocked oil sands of Alberta to the west coast. Traffic will increase by sevenfold – bringing in up to 34 giant oil tankers a month and three barges, the Canadian government-owned company has forecasted.

In traditional ceremonies on the water, the supertankers already dwarf the Tsleil-Waututh’s cedar strip canoes, said Charlene Aleck, the spokesperson for the Sacred Trust Initiative, which is trying to stop the expansion.

“It is that look of a David-and-Goliath fight,” Aleck said.

Last week, opponents of the project suffered a major setback in that struggle. In an expanding front of the climate movement, the Initiative and allied environmental organizations have been targeting the insurers and other financial institutions that make pipelines and other fossil fuel projects possible, ramping up public pressure on the companies.

But in response, Canadian regulators are agreeing to a request from Trans Mountain to keep the names of its insurers secret.

Nor are they alone. California officials have similarly declined to require insurers to disclose their fossil fuel investments and the projects they underwrite. In Connecticut – a US insurance hub – one lawmaker is trying to make the industry reveal its fossil fuel investments and the premiums they charge companies.

The Biden administration is also strategizing about requiring companies to be more transparent about the risks they face from climate change, as extreme weather intensifies and disrupts economies.

Charlene Aleck. Behind her is Trans Mountain’s marine terminal near Vancouver that will grow significantly as part of the project. She is standing on the Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s reserve. Photograph: Marc Fawcett-Atkinson/Courtesy of Canada's National Observer

Carmen Balber, the California-based executive director of Consumer Watchdog, said insurers helping the fossil fuel industry are working against their own interests and will ultimately leave the public to clean up the mess.

“What if doctors offered cigarettes in their waiting rooms … What if firefighters were giving out matches and flame throwers?” Balber said. “It does not make sense for the insurance industry to be causing the very disasters that they’re insuring against.”

Pressure campaigns against fossil fuel insurers have become a critical strategy in the international environmental movement.

“Basically, without insurance, there’s no project approval, there’s no project financing,” said Ross Hammond, a senior insurance strategist with the Sunrise Project.*

Hammond said until about four years ago insurers were considered to be enlightened about climate risks. They were among the first to ring alarm bells about the crisis in the 1970s.

“The problem is, what that doesn’t include is the other side of the equation … like what are the insurers themselves doing to make the problem worse?” Hammond said.

In California, in 2019, watchdog groups tried and failed to get the state’s insurance department to require insurers to disclose which fossil fuel projects they back.

Now, public advocates have their sights on Connecticut, where many insurers are based. A lawmaker there has proposed to require insurers to disclose the premiums they charge on fossil fuel projects – so the public has an idea of how risky they are. The bill was approved by a state senate committee with a bipartisan vote.

The Biden administration has also signaled that its treasury department could require certain climate disclosures from the finance sector. An upcoming order from the White House is expected to require the Federal Insurance Office to study climate disclosures as well.

The Trans Mountain pipeline, which the Canadian government bought in 2018, stretches 1,150km, or more than 700 miles, from Edmonton to Vancouver, just above the US Pacific north-west. Its expansion is meant to increase oil exports to Asia.

The Trudeau administration has faced intense political pressure over the project, which it acquired after Kinder Morgan threatened to walk away amid opposition from British Columbia. It has spent billions of public dollars buying and operating the pipeline, despite its stated climate commitments.

Steel pipe for Canadian government’s Trans Mountain expansion project a stockpile site in Kamloops, British Columbia, in June 2019. Photograph: Dennis Owen/Reuters

The type of oil from western Canada – mostly heavy crude, with high amounts of sulphur – is more complicated and expensive to refine than other types of oil. Trans Mountain has cited opposition from environmental advocates as one of the reasons it wants to keep insurers secret.

But activists point to a string of other difficulties the project has faced that could be making it harder to get insurance.

Robyn Allan, an economist and former president of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia who is an expert in underwriting, said if the company was having difficulty getting coverage, it wasn’t because of public pressure campaigns. It’s because the insurance industry would view a 68-year-old pipeline with a recent oil spill and a checkered safety record as a high-risk client.

In its letter to regulators, Trans Mountain argued that disclosing its insurers could result in a “material loss” to the company and “prejudice the competitive position of its insurers” because of “targeting and pressure” on insurance companies from groups opposed to the pipeline.

Trans Mountain did not respond to a request for comment. When the pipeline was reapproved by the Canadian government in 2019, it vowed to invest the money it earned from operating it into “Canada’s clean energy transition”.

The pipeline was also ordered to follow a set of 156 conditions, designed to mitigate a wide range of risks, from environmental issues like water quality and fish habitat, to marine shipping and effects on Indigenous communities.

In June 2020, as much as 190,000 liters of crude oil leaked from a failed compression fitting at one of Trans Mountain’s pump stations in Abbotsford, BC, according to a review by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. Some of the oil contaminated a nearby agricultural field.

Four months later, Samatar Sahal, a 40-year-old employee of one of Trans Mountain’s general contractors, died after being struck by equipment at a pipeline construction site. Then, in December, another contractor was “seriously injured” at the pipeline’s Burnaby terminal. Trans Mountain shut down construction for a few months and started up again in February after vowing to retrain workers and supervisors.

Allan also called the timing of Trans Mountain’s request to the Canada Energy Regulator “highly suspect”. The company filed its request to shield its insurers just after Indigenous youth with the Braided Warriors group had peacefully occupied the downtown Vancouver office building for AIG.

Zurich, a former insurer, has confirmed it does not intend to re-insure the pipeline, while two others, Munich Re, and HDI, will follow suit, according to environmental group Stand.earth.
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The others – AIG, Chubb, Energy Insurance Mutual Limited, Liberty Mutual, Starr, Stewart Specialty Risk Underwriting Ltd and WR Berkley – either declined to comment or did not respond.

To the Tsleil-Waututh, who called themselves the “people of the Inlet”, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is an existential threat to their way of life.

Aleck said the Tsleil-Waututh have worked tirelessly on restoring local ecosystems, cleaning up clam beds that they were recently able to successfully harvest, and witnessing herring fish return and spawn, both for the first time in 60 years.

This project will just decimate everything

Charlene Aleck

“To have the traffic of the tankers, or an oil spill, would just decimate all possible rehabilitation that we’ve done,” she said. “This project will just decimate everything.”

Trans Mountain has said it has signed 59 unique, confidential agreements to compensate Indigenous groups along the pipeline route, but critics say the company didn’t get consent from proper titleholders.

Judy Wilson, secretary treasurer of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs and chief of the Neskonlith Indian Band located east of Kamloops, maintains that the original pipeline was built through contested lands that were never ceded by Indigenous nations. She said the project should disclose its backers.

“When they’re impacting our territorial homelands like that, they should be transparent about who’s insuring it, and all aspects of the business,” Wilson said.

The Sunrise Project is a contributor to Floodlight

How we created the 'perfect storm' for pandemics

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

Research News

The way that many of us live has created the "perfect storm" for the evolution and transmission of infectious diseases like Covid-19 according to a researcher at the University of East Anglia.

A new editorial published today describes how the world's vast population of people, pets and livestock has created an ideal breeding ground for infectious diseases which are passed between humans and animals.

It shows how we urgently need to control the transmission of pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 by using vaccination passports, maximising genetic variation in livestock, and reducing how much meat we eat.

Prof Cock Van Oosterhout, from UEA's School of Environmental Sciences, said: "We humans have been living in a non-sustainable way over the past few centuries. We now have a vast population size - not only of humans but also of domesticated animals and livestock.

"This makes an ideal breeding ground for the evolution and transmission of zoonotic infectious diseases that jump from an animal to a human host."

Prof Van Oosterhout's article shows how the world's biomass of livestock is more than 10 times higher than that of all wildlife combined.

'Genetic effective size' determines how much genetic variation can be maintained in the population, and this genetic variation is critical to counter the evolution of infectious diseases.

But the genetic effective size of the world's livestock is 80 times lower than the minimum viable population size of free-living species.

Prof Van Oosterhout said: "The combination of high livestock biomass and low genetic variation has tipped the co-evolutionary balance with zoonotic pathogens.

"Habitat destruction, illegal wildlife trade and other human activities have brought many species into contact with each other - and this facilitates a spill-over, spillback and hybridisation of the pathogens.

"Given that we are in close contact with our domesticated animals and livestock, there are many opportunities for the spill-over of viruses from animals to humans, and spillback from humans back to animals.

"Altogether, these conditions have created a perfect storm for the evolution and transmission of zoonotic infectious diseases.

"Covid-19 has shown us that humans are not immune to the evolutionary processes that drive the adaptations of pathogens.

"We urgently need to reset this co-evolutionary imbalance and control the transmission of pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 by using vaccination passports, maximising genetic variation in livestock, and reducing our consumption of animal protein. We also need to be aware of pathogen reservoirs, both locally and globally.

"It is time that we start to recognise that our health, the environment, and our global economy are all closely interlinked. Pathogens like SARS-CoV-2 will continue to evolve when allowed to infect humans, anywhere in the world. In turn, this poses a threat to the human population at large, also in countries that have the infection under control.

"Our society is facing significant threat, and we all need to do what we can both at an individual and societal level to improve our long term prospects as a species. These changes needs to be implemented globally to effectively combat pandemics," he added.

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'Mitigating the threat of emerging infectious diseases; a coevolutionary perspective' is published in the journal Virulence on May 7, 2021. This work was supported by the Earth and Life Systems Alliance (ELSA) of the Norwich Research Park.

Nocturnal migrant songbirds climb to great heights during extended flights over barriers

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

Research News

When crossing the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert, great reed warblers that otherwise conduct their migratory flights strictly at night continue flying by day, but climb to previously unknown daytime cruising altitudes - from roughly 2,000 meters to well above 5,000 meters above the Earth. The findings about the heights these birds reach during daytime flights over geographic barriers reveal a previously unrecognized behavior in migratory birds and might help to explain the evolution of nocturnal migration. Each year billions of migrating songbirds traverse vast, intercontinental distances during their annual migratory sojourns. Most species preferentially fly at night and spend their days on land to rest and refuel before setting off again on the next leg of their nightly journey. However, the migratory tracks of some species involve traversing great distances over inhospitable terrain, like deserts and oceans, where landing options are few. While previous studies have shown that these birds will occasionally prolong their nighttime flights into daytime or even shift into a nonstop flight strategy when crossing formidable barriers, little is known about how these birds manage these extended flights. To better understand the flight behavior of migratory songbirds while crossing barriers, Sissel Sjöberg and colleagues equipped great reed warblers with custom-made, multisensory data loggers and tracked their annual journey between breeding sites in Europe and wintering areas in tropical Africa - a trip that requires crossing both the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert. Sjöberg et al. found that while crossing boundaries, the warblers extended their flights into the daytime. Unexpectedly, however, the authors discovered that the birds sharply gained altitude at dawn - more than doubling their nocturnal cruising altitudes, reaching upwards of 6,200 meters (roughly 20,000 feet) above sea level. At dusk, the birds rapidly descended to their mean nighttime altitudes. While Sjöberg et al. note that the explanations for the marked increase in altitude between night and day flights are not clear, they suggest that could be related to daily variation in ambient light, thermal regulation, winds, predation, vision range and exposure to solar radiation. This finding, say the authors, may help to explain why the overwhelming majority of nonsoaring long-distance migrant birds generally conduct their migratory flights during the night.

For reporters interested in trends, a 2016 Science study found that frigatebirds, which can stay aloft for months at a time, achieve these long flights by capitalizing on atmospheric conditions; by doing so, they fly over hundreds of miles a day using very little energy.
http://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aaf4374

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SOLIDARITY ONTARIO
Show of support for striking VON nurses with talks at standstill
Striking VON Sarnia-Lambton employees don superhero capes on the picket lines. 5 May 2021. (Photo from LiUNA! Local 3000's Twitter page)

By Colin Gowdy May 5, 2021

There was a show of support for striking VON Sarnia-Lambton employees Wednesday morning.

Dozens of protestors gathered near the VON office on London Line in solidarity with 24 employees who walked off the job at 8 a.m. Saturday.

LiUNA 3000 Union Steward and Registered Practical Nurse (RPN) Kat Prevost said contract talks with the employer are at a standstill.

“We have not heard from them since Saturday. They have refused to come back to the negotiating table, and as of their last offer, it required us to take concessions — it would have resulted in us giving up two paid holidays and some of our mileage compensation.”

Prevost said VON’s offer is a 0.5 per cent lump sum payment, representing a $170 payout for the year for some of the full-time nurses.

She said they’re asking for a one per cent yearly wage increase.

“We’re not asking for much, but to be called valued employees and to be working in a pandemic, the worst healthcare crisis that we’ve ever faced, to have so many changes to our jobs — the risks that we’re taking, the workload that’s been put on us — and to be offered a lump sum payment as well as concessions, feels completely disrespectful to us,” she said. “Our job has changed significantly, we are working overtime every day and these nurses are not being compensated for that overtime.”

Prevost said they have not had any trouble with police preventing them from protesting, and that picketers are following the social distancing guidelines that are in place.

The VON’s only statement so far in the dispute said the not-for-profit agency is committed to the bargaining process and looks forward to a timely resolution of the matter.

Evergy coal shutdowns; environmental groups say it's not fast enough

Posted May 05, 2021

Lawrence Energy Center Brian Grimmett / Kansas News Service

By BRIAN GRIMMETT
Kansas News Service

Scientists say that if we’re going to stop rising global temperatures, the world will need to greatly reduce the amount of carbon it’s emitting into the air.

Electricity production is one of the largest culprits and transitioning away from fossil fuels is seen as a key step in stopping climate change.

Under mounting pressure to ditch fossil fuels and amid shifting economics that make coal increasingly less competitive, the largest utility in Kansas pledges to close nearly all of its coal-burning plants in the next 20 years.

In the meantime, it’s moving to harvest more energy from the wind and the sun.

Environmental groups remain unimpressed. They say Evergy could abandon coal for renewable energy far more quickly.

The update comes from the latest long-term planning document Evergy is required to file with state regulators in Missouri. Kansas regulators are also asking for a state-specific plan for the first time. That’s not due for another month.

“We are ahead of the national average and ahead of most utilities in the amount of carbon reduction that we’ll be able to do,” Evergy spokesman Chuck Caisley said.

The plan calls for retiring about 20% of its coal power generating capacity in the next ten years. Evergy would retire its last three coal plants in 2039.

The first plant scheduled for retirement is Lawrence Energy Center in 2023. A plant near St. Joseph, Missouri would close in 2024, followed by a unit north of Topeka in 2030 and a unit near La Cygne, Kansas in 2032.

“That falls way short of what’s needed in order to stop the climate crisis,” said Andy Knott, a deputy regional director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

But Caisley said Evergy can’t shift to renewable energy until it has the capacity to generate enough electricity to replace it. And even though it’ll keep some coal-burning plants open until 2039, they likely won’t be operating at full capacity. Instead, they’ll be run seasonally to meet peak demands.

The plan would reduce Evergy’s carbon emissions by 70% from 2005 levels by 2030. The Biden administration would like to see the electricity generation sector have net-zero emissions by 2035. Evergy’s current plan wouldn’t get there until 2045.

Beto Lugo is the executive director of Clean Air Now, an environmental justice organization in Kansas City. He said the closure of the coal plants is a big win for communities of color that are often more impacted by pollution than other groups.

“That’s why the communities need to be a part of those discussions,” he said. “They need to be at the table guiding a lot of these projects.”

Lugo said it’s particularly important that those communities benefit in some way from the renewable energy projects planned.

Evergy says it plans to build 3,200 megawatts of renewable energy in the next decade, nearly doubling its renewable capacity. Most of the new development will be in large-scale solar energy farms. The first project would be completed as early as 2023.

The Sierra Club’s Knott and other environmental advocates also worry that the plan calls for potentially building several new natural gas power plants after 2035. They would provide always-ready power to replace some of the lost coal. (Wind and solar lack the on-demand convenience of coal and gas.) While natural gas releases fewer carbon emissions than coal, it’s still a fossil fuel built on a supply chain that emits large amounts of greenhouse gases.

“Building new gas would continue the climate disaster,” Knott said. “That is not the right direction to go.”

But Caisley said the analysis for the plan was done using today’s technology at today’s prices. He said the further the plan gets into the future, changes are nearly inevitable.

“Our hope is that over that time period the technology exists in order to not have to make an investment in carbon,” he said. “But we’re not there yet.”

The plan was also made without considering newly approved financial tools that would make it easier and more financially appealing for Evergy to retire older coal plants earlier than expected.

Ashok Gupta is an energy economist with the National Resource Defense Council. He said the plan is definitely a step in the right direction, but it needs to do more of what is proposed, and quicker.

He said the new financial tool will play a key role in making that happen.

“This is not the end of the process,” Gupta said. “And we expect a lot to change even in the annual update by next year.”

80% Of U.S. Coal Plants Are Uneconomic As Renewables Costs Drop

By Charles Kennedy - May 05, 2021,

As much as 80 percent of the coal-fired power plants in the United States are already uneconomic compared to new wind and solar projects, energy and climate policy think tank Energy Innovation said in new research this week.

The combined costs for fuel, maintenance, and other costs at most operating coal power plants in the U.S are higher than the all-in costs of new solar and wind projects because of the cost declines of wind and solar generation, Energy Innovation said.

The think tank’s report, The Coal Cost Crossover 2.0, compares the economics of each U.S. coal-fired power plant against the expected economics of potential new wind and solar plants nearby, using publicly available data.

“Out of the 235 plants in the U.S. coal fleet, 182 plants, or 80 percent, are uneconomic or already retiring,” Energy Innovation said.

The key findings of the report show that of existing U.S. coal capacity, 72 percent is either more costly to operate than new nearby wind and solar or is slated to retire by 2025. Of the existing U.S. coal-fired plants, 80 percent are more costly to operate than new nearby wind and solar plants or are slated to retire by 2025.

Coal-fired power generation has been on a decline for a decade, as cheap natural gas from the U.S. shale plays first started competing with coal for power plants, and then falling wind and solar costs started to make new renewable energy projects more competitive than coal.

Renewables—mostly solar and wind—are set to account for more than two-thirds of the new electricity generation capacity that the United States will install in 2021, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a forecast early this year.

At the same time, due to higher natural gas production and increased natural gas-powered generation, coal-fired electricity generation capacity continues to retire in the United States.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Nocturnal migrant songbirds climb to great heights during extended flights over barriers

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