Saturday, July 24, 2021

Space travel for the masses? Don’t be ridiculous

Space ‘tourism’ as performed by a pair of billionaires is, for now, merely an overpriced joyride for the ultra-rich.


Johnny Luk
22 Jul 2021
The side of a building in Van Horn, Texas, is adorned with a mural of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos on Saturday, July 17, 2021, just days before Bezos launched into space [AP Photo/Sean Murphy]

Earlier this month, the British billionaire entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, successfully flew to outer space, trailblazing his brand, Virgin Galactic, to the edge of the outer hemisphere. This week, his fellow billionaire, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, took his own Blue Origin spacecraft for a spin to the outer limits, managing to get a whole 10 miles (16km) higher than Sir Richard.

The journeys were heralded as marking a new era of “space tourism”, in which untrained people could become astronauts, a title previously reserved for highly trained professional scientists and pilots, to see the earth’s curvature and enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness. Perfect for that viral Instagram photo for one’s millions of followers.

But could the idea of space tourism really become anything more than just an overpriced joyride for the rich?

The idea of travelling into space has fascinated human beings for millennia. Humanity has looked to the stars as a tool for navigation and as a source of spiritual fulfilment. Even now, research from the US think-tank, the Pew Research Center, suggests 29 percent of Americans believe in horoscopes.

In the 20th Century, as scientific discovery advanced, space travel became a symbol of political and ideological prestige, with the superpowers of that era, the US and the former Soviet Union, battling it out for space supremacy.

Both sides poured billions of dollars into a series of space programmes that created new rockets, satellites and most famously, led to humans touching the surface of the moon. It also spun a range of inventions that were commercialised for wider use, such as scratch-resistant lenses for glasses, memory foam and LASIK eye surgery.

These days, with the Cold War long over, political pressure to push forward state-funded space programmes has diminished, with governments even more reluctant to spend after the global financial crisis crippled government budgets in 2007. Thus, a gap has emerged for the private sector to step into.

For Branson, this month’s venture was the culmination of a long-held dream to embark on space tourism, having first promised to build a spaceship in 2004, with the hope of starting a commercial service by 2007. The programme faced years of delays due to, unsurprisingly, having to battle huge technical challenges, including a fatal crash during a development flight in 2014. The current pandemic has made it harder too, having forced Branson to sell $650m worth of Virgin Galactic shares over the past two years to shore up his wider Virgin business empire.

Yet despite delays, Virgin Galactic succeeded in its quest and has pushed space science forwards as a consequence. It developed a unique flight path, with a “mothership” carrying the main vehicle, VSS Unity, up 15km (9 miles) in the air before Unity was released and then activated its rockets to fly an additional 70km (43 miles) above the surface of the earth, to reach the edge of space. Unity then re-entered earth’s atmosphere with rotating wings – a technology known as feathering – to smoothly glide back down to earth without the need for a parachute. This meant no parts needed to be discarded, making it fully reusable, with the plane landing at the same location at Spaceport America in New Mexico, US, making it hassle-free for space tourists to get on and off, just like on a commercial flight.

Similarly, Bezos’s Blue Origin, which flew higher than its archrival Virgin Galactic, also utilises advanced science with a fully automated two-part rocket system, requiring no pilots at all. The launcher, which houses the rocket engine and propellant, separates after launch, flying back by itself to return to the launch pad, while the top part of the craft – the crew capsule – safely lands using parachutes. It is also equipped with a crew ejection system for added safety if any part of the launch goes wrong. Thankfully, there was no need for that on this occasion.

Both companies, after years of research and development and sustaining losses, are now finally poised to make money, with a reported 8,000 individuals already reserving tickets for Virgin Galactic flights, costing at least $250,000 each. Tickets to fly on Blue Origin are speculated to be priced at similar levels. Some 7,600 people with a lot of spare cash had registered for the auction of tickets for this week’s flight, with the winner paying $28m, suggesting there will be strong demand too, at least from the ultra-rich. Indeed, analysts at the investment bank, Bank of America estimate the total value of the space industry will balloon from $350bn to as much as $2.7tn by 2040.

However, before we get too excited, we must call this out for what it is. This is an entertainment business for the super-rich, backed by a formidable PR operation.

Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are suborbital space vehicles. They do not yet fly high enough to orbit earth and are therefore in a wholly different category to – say, NASA or SpaceX – founded by another very successful billionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk – which has become NASA’s preferred launch vehicle, able to resupply the International Space Station or deploy new satellites.

Virgin Galactic has confirmed as much, recently replacing its first CEO, the former NASA Chief of Staff George Whitesides, who led much of the research development phase of Virgin Galactic, with Michael Colglazier, who has no space background and was previously head of Disneyland parks.

The new space tourist companies are marketing these joy rides as “bringing space to the masses”. It is true that, before this, if you wanted to fly as a space tourist, you had to broker with the Russians to pay for a seat on the Soviet-era Soyuz class spacecraft for a cool $25m, as seven people did between 2001 and 2009.

But ticket prices for Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin flights will still be sky-high, which makes the claim absurd. There is no doubt that seeing the earth’s curvature could be a life-changing experience but who are we really inspiring here? Emerging scientists or the children of the billionaire set? Meanwhile, despite these new crafts being relatively energy-efficient compared with older space rockets, they still burn tonnes of fuel to go up and down through the atmosphere – hardly in the spirit of tackling climate change.

Perhaps it does not matter. After all, compared with state-funded programmes, private companies have the political cover of not – overtly – spending taxpayers’ money. Virgin Galactic has funding from the Virgin Group, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, Aabar Investment group and Boeing, alongside being publicly traded in the New York stock market. Blue Origin was funded by the sale of Amazon stock.

In contrast, the NASA Apollo programme, which launched humans to the moon in the late 60s and early 70s and the more recent Space Shuttle programme, which retired in 2011, cost US taxpayers an eye-watering $415bn in today’s money.

Private space companies are following market forces, competing against each other in a new market. The ego contest has also begun, with Bezos taunting Branson that his ship can fly higher.

This is good. Competition drives creativity, efficiencies and the development of new safety procedures, given that a launch failure would cause fatal loss of confidence for prospective customers. Having highly driven, charismatic entrepreneurs being the face of private space companies also gives it a sexiness that has galvanised the entire space sector.

However, this masks the reality that these companies have still benefitted from a sector that has been financed with taxpayers’ support. For example, the New Mexico government has invested nearly $200m in the Spaceport America facility, with Virgin Galactic as the anchor tenant. Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man who founded Amazon, runs a multinational technology firm that pays very little tax.

For example, in Europe, Amazon made record sales of 44 billion euros ($51.9bn) in 2020 but tax filings suggest it did not pay any corporation tax in Luxembourg, where it filed tax paperwork. And while Bezos generously thanked the workers of Amazon for helping to realise his dream of reaching space, warehouse workers on just $15 an hour might be wondering whether those profits – $8bn in net income this past quarter, a record – might be better reinvested elsewhere?

While it is a bit cringe-worthy that rich people can now call themselves “astronauts”, no doubt raising eyebrows among professionally trained, actual astronauts, we should not underestimate the science behind flying people safely under such hostile environments. Normalising space travel could provide opportunities. With Virgin Galactic aspiring to near-daily flights in the future, these suborbital journeys will provide a new platform for science, for example by providing a relatively accessible way to carry out testing in micro-gravity environments. Blue Origin is also developing larger rockets, dubbed New Glen, which aspires to compete with SpaceX on longer distance space flights and Blue Moon, to create lunar landers in partnership with NASA.

Cynics may despair at the waste of money, given there are so many other pressing issues to deal with down here on planet earth, such as human poverty. Yet perhaps space travel is a way of capturing the imagination and acting as a symbol of human advancement. Perhaps, as refinements continue and economies of scale further reduce costs, space flight might indeed become accessible to everyone, with space flights changing how people view our precious earth and provide a new way to advance science that leads to new inventions that benefit all of humanity. One can only wonder.


The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.




Johnny Luk is a strategic advisor, a university governor and ran for parliament in the UK as a Conservative candidate in 2019. He formerly worked on Brexit negotiations as part of the UK government and was a former junior British champion in rowing.

Canada is deporting its ‘guardian angels’

Many asylum seekers in Canada, who served as essential workers at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, are now facing the threat of deportation.



Stefan Christoff
23 Jul 2021
Asylum seeker Mamadou Konaté, who worked as a janitor at three elderly care homes in Montreal at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, is now facing the threat of deportation. On July 6, Konaté addressed a crowd gathered in front of Prime Minister Trudeau's constituency office in Montreal to protest essential worker deportations [Stacy Lee]

In 2017, in response to then-United States President Donald Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban”, Canadian President Justin Trudeau tweeted: “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.” Four years on, many across the world continue to believe Trudeau’s assertion that his country’s doors are open to refugees.

The reality on the ground, however, is very different. While routinely being praised for its extraordinary generosity towards refugees, Trudeau’s Canada is deporting asylum seekers en masse, amid a deadly pandemic.

According to the latest data published by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Trudeau’s government deported some 12,122 people in 2020. This was the highest number of deportations in a year since 2015, when Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was in power. Thousands more face the risk of being forcefully removed from the country before the end of 2021.

Many asylum seekers currently facing the threat of deportation have served as essential front-line workers in Canada during the most difficult and deadly months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mamadou Konaté, who fled his home country of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in the aftermath of its bloody civil war and arrived in Canada as an asylum seeker in 2016, is one of them.

In 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Konaté worked as a janitor in three different long-term care homes (CHSLDs) in Montreal, Quebec. At the time, like most care homes in Canada, these facilities were devastated by the pandemic and were in desperate need of essential workers. Konaté tended to and cleaned the rooms of COVID-positive patients and contracted the virus while doing so. He quickly returned to work after surviving the illness.

Despite his service, however, he is now facing deportation as soon as the Canadian government arranges for Konaté’s travel documents for Ivory Coast to be issued.

“After years of working in this country, along with many, many others, contributing a lot, paying taxes, working in difficult jobs, during this pandemic, now the government is going to remove us? Now the Canadian government is planning to deport us? This is injustice,” Konaté told a crowd gathered in front of Prime Minister Trudeau’s constituency office in Montreal on July 6 to protest deportations.

“During the pandemic,” Konaté said “many key jobs were performed by immigrants, by refugees. I am one of those people, who stepped up, now, I face removal. I worked hard in the CHSLDs, cleaning many times, even on the night shift. Today, it is hard for people to know, to understand, the pain that we are going through, while facing deportation from Canada, after working in essential posts during this pandemic.”

Konaté’s case is only one of many that illustrate the ever-widening gap between the liberal Trudeau government’s rhetoric of “embracing refugees” and the reality on the ground.

Abandoning the ‘guardian angels’


Since the beginning of the pandemic, Canadian politicians from across the political spectrum have been publicly celebrating essential workers, especially those working in healthcare settings.

For example, in April 2020, Quebec’s Premier François Legault, of the conservative Coalition Avenir Québec, described essential workers on the COVID-19 front lines – including asylum seekers – as “guardian angels” and voiced his government’s support for them.

A few months later, in December 2020, his government specifically acknowledged the contributions asylum seekers have made to the pandemic effort, and initiated the “guardian angel” programme ostensibly to provide essential workers with precarious immigration status a direct path to permanent residency.

On the surface, the programme (accompanied by a similar Ottawa-led initiative for essential workers outside Quebec) appeared to provide further proof that Canada is a refugee-friendly country. But in reality, it was yet another demonstration of the hypocrisy of Canada’s leaders.

The so-called “guardian angel” programme, limited in scope to some essential workers in the healthcare sector who provided direct care to patients, left asylum seekers who laboured as front-line workers in other sectors, such as food packing and delivery, out in the cold. Moreover, it excludes many others, like Konaté, who worked as janitors, cooks or security guards in healthcare facilities.

The limitations of this programme show not only that Canada is not as welcoming of refugees as Trudeau likes us to believe, but also that the selective nature of the country’s immigration policies has changed very little since the British colonial era.

In the early 20th century, exclusionist and white supremacist immigration policies led Canada to turn away countless thousands of immigrants from across the world who endured long and arduous journeys to reach the country’s shores. Since then, Canada has made itself a name as a liberal safe haven for refugees. But as ongoing mass deportations and the state’s refusal to give permanent residency to all asylum seekers who served as essential workers illustrates, Canada’s immigration policies are still neither just nor inclusive.

Moreover, as Trudeau continues with his rhetoric of welcoming all those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canada is rapidly militarising its borders. The 2019 federal budget, for example, promised a strategy costing 1.18 billion Canadian dollars ($940m) over five years to beef up border security and to detect, intercept and remove migrants.

Today, Trudeau continues to act as if Canada’s doors are open to refugees and the country is committed to protecting those in need. This, however, cannot be further from the truth. The country is actually allowing only a select few, who meet specific criteria, to settle within its borders, and shamelessly deporting many, like Konaté, who risked their lives to keep the country running at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

So, no – all those “fleeing persecution, terror and war” are not welcome in Canada. And Trudeau should stop pretending they are.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.


Stefan Christoff  is a writer, musician and community activist living in Montréal
The US embargo on Cuba has failed

If Biden truly wants to put principles, and effectiveness, ahead of politics, he should make a bold choice and end the embargo.


Christopher Rhodes
21 Jul 2021
Police scuffle and detain an anti-government demonstrator during a protest in Havana, Cuba, Sunday July 11, 2021. Hundreds of demonstrators went out to the streets in several cities in Cuba to protest against ongoing food shortages and high prices of foodstuffs, amid the new coronavirus crisis. [Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo]

For nearly 60 years, the United States has enforced an embargo against Cuba, severely restricting the flow of goods to the island. Most US companies are forbidden from dealing with Cuba, and various US laws punish foreign companies that do business in Cuba. The restrictions are meant to economically squeeze the island and create enough discontent within Cuba to force the ruling Communist Party to either significantly reform or step down.

The Obama administration, with then-Vice President Biden’s support, sought to rethink the policy and pursue re-engagement with Cuba. Barack Obama relaxed sanctions, allowed direct flights between the two countries, and eased restrictions on Americans doing business in Cuba. Donald Trump reversed Obama’s strategy. He placed Cuba back on the US list of state sponsors of international terrorism, cut off travel between Cuba and the US, and barred Americans from sending remittances to their relatives in Cuba, cutting off a major economic lifeline for many Cubans.

Joe Biden promised to move away from this Trump strategy of “maximum pressures” against Cuba, but has so far not altered any of the Trump restrictions. The White House admitted earlier this year that “a Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.”

However, the protests that have been rocking Cuba for the past week – some of the largest since the Revolution – have forced the issue. Many Cuban American activists and Republicans are urging Biden to keep up or even increase pressure on Cuba, and Democrats are divided on whether to maintain or ease the embargo.

The strongest reason to end the embargo against Cuba is the massive toll that the policy continues to enact on the Cuban population. Both the Cuban government and the United Nations have estimated that the embargo has cost the Cuban economy $130 billion over six decades. It’s also worth noting that the US Chamber of Commerce estimates that the embargo costs the US economy billions of dollars each year, as well. The human toll is harder to quantify, but has clearly been significant. Human rights experts at the UN have urged the US to ease sanctions during the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that such a change will save lives by allowing Cuba greater access to medical supplies and equipment.

Cuba-policy hardliners have implicitly accepted the human and economic costs of the embargo as acceptable in order to achieve the goal of undermining the communist regime. They will point towards the unprecedented level of protests currently going on in Cuba as evidence that the embargo is working. It’s not. Yes, Cubans are angry at the economic hardships and pandemic suffering happening amongst their population. But as Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel uses repression and anti-US rhetoric to contain the protests, there’s little indication that the regime is in immediate danger.

The communist regime has already survived the fall of its Soviet sponsor, the death of Fidel Castro, and the handover of power from his younger brother Raul to Díaz-Canel, who is not a Castro and was born after the Revolution took power. Sixty years of sanctions have only created hardships for the Cuban people while providing the regime with a convenient scapegoat to blame for all of their country’s economic woes and societal discontent.

Counterintuitively, ending the embargo and promoting ties between the US and Cuba is the greatest weapon that America can deploy against the oppressive regime in Cuba. President Obama laid out the strategy when he opened up travel between the two countries: “Nobody represents America’s values better than the American people,” Obama said in 2014, “and I believe this contact will ultimately do more to empower the Cuban people.”

Exposing Cubans to the freedoms and opportunities available to their American relatives will increase outrage and pressure towards the Cuban government for failing to provide these things. And removing the ability of the Communist Party to blame the United States for its own failures will lay bare the consequences of the Cuban government’s unwillingness to shift away from Soviet-era economic policies and political repression.

Hardliners will argue that easing the embargo now will lessen the pressure on the Cuban government by lessening the societal desperation that has fuelled these protests. And while economic crises can lead to collective outrage, spontaneous protests against authoritarian regimes usually ends in renewed repression rather than regime change. Many experts believe that movements for social change are most effective when people and organisations gain the resources that are necessary for sustained political and social activism. Loosening the economic vice grip on Cuba will help to empower its citizens and civil society to stand up to their government.

The administration should be thoughtful about how it rethinks the embargo policy. It need not eliminate the policy all at once, nor should it relent on pressuring Cuba when it comes to democracy or human rights. But being thoughtful should not be an excuse for inaction. For example, rather than dismissing the idea of renewing remittances to Cuba, Biden should seriously explore ways to allow Americans to securely transfer money to their Cuban relatives.

Relaxing the embargo will be a risky political move for the president. Biden lost Florida in the 2020 election after underperforming among Latino voters, and a radical change in policy towards Cuba could risk alienating parts of the Cuban American population in the state.

Republicans will no doubt accuse the president of being soft on communism or caving in to progressive demands. But if Biden truly wants to put principles, and effectiveness, ahead of politics, he should make a bold choice and end six decades of US failure and Cuban suffering.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.



Christopher Rhodes
Lecturer in Government at Harvard University and lecturer in Social Sciences at Boston University.
Dr Christopher Rhodes is a lecturer in Government at Harvard University and lecturer in Social Sciences at Boston University. He is the author of the upcoming book Evangelical Violence: Christian Nationalism, the Great Commission and a Millennium of "Holy" Warfare and co-editor of the volume Conflict, Politics, and the Christian East: Assessing Contemporary Developments.
A Triple Whammy Has Left Many Inner-City Neighborhoods Highly Vulnerable to Soaring Temperatures

Climate change, heat islands and disinvestment have led New York to subsidize air conditioners and Phoenix to cool street corridors and public housing.


By James Bruggers
July 23, 2021

A person lays on the street near Times Square during a heatwave in New York, on Wednesday, June 30, 2021. Credit: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images


In New York City, several Hunts Point residents have lists of neighbors they’re checking on to help keep the most vulnerable alive during heat waves.

The city has also subsidized 74,000 air conditioners for low-income, elderly residents and is spending tens of millions to plant trees, as part of a “cool neighborhoods” program that also includes outdoor water misters.

In Phoenix, the nation’s hottest big city, officials are working with residents to develop a new model for cooler public housing and cooling key street and pedestrian corridors. Phoenix and Arizona State University say they are developing a system that all cities could use to benchmark heat management.

Because of their experience with killer heat, New York City and Phoenix are leading the way among American cities in an effort to cool down and help vulnerable residents survive heat waves. But for all they are doing, climate change means they, like most cities, will need to do even more to keep their cities livable, according to experts, advocates and city officials.

We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every day or once a week, our original stories and digest of the web’s top headlines deliver the full story, for free.


As large swaths of North America sizzle through another hot summer and record heat waves, cities face a triple heat whammy.

Climate change is bearing down, messing with weather in new ways that can exacerbate and supercharge heat waves, as Seattle and Portland discovered in late June. Urban cores can be 10 degrees or more warmer than the surrounding countryside, because of the way cities have been built, with so much pavement, so many buildings and not enough trees. And decades of disinvestment in neighborhoods where people of color live have left them especially vulnerable to heat.

“As a society, as a country, we are not ready for this, the future,” said Juan Declet-Barreto, the senior social scientist for climate vulnerability with the Union of Concerned Scientists, which published a report on killer heat in 2019. Excessive heat and other extreme weather made worse by climate change are “happening now,” he said. “We’re watching the trailer for the climate change disaster film that we’re going to screen very soon.”
From California to Maine, Scorching Temperatures

As researchers have documented, heat-related mortality in the United States has been declining for decades. But that trend may be coming to an end, in part because of an increase in the number of heat events, said Kent State University geography professor Scott Sheridan.

During a 10-year period ending in 2018, heat mortality continued to decline for people over 65, probably a result of improved public messaging, according to a peer reviewed study published last year by the American Meteorological Society’s journal Weather, Climate and Society, led by Sheridan. But the researchers also found that there was an increase in mortality among men ages 45 to 64, especially in the southern and southwestern states, wiping out much of the gain in the older population.

For many parts of the country, this summer has been a scorcher.

An early summer heat wave across the western United States broke all-time records in seven states, from Colorado to California, according to the National Weather Service. Phoenix topped 115 degrees for a record six straight days, reaching 118 on June 17. Records were also set in Tucson, Arizona, and tied in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Billings, Montana.

Then in late June, in a region not accustomed to triple digit temperatures, heat overwhelmed the Northwest, not just breaking records but “smashing them,” according to a weather service report. In all, there was a week of what the Washington State Department of Health described as “unprecedented” heat. Portland peaked at 116 degrees at its international airport on June 28.

This past week, temperatures again soared over the inland Northwest and across the northern tier. In Montana, the National Weather Service office in Billings on Monday reported that it had successfully made cookies on a shiny aluminum tray outside its office, where the temperature hit 111 degrees.

In the East, the cities of New York, Boston and Portland, Maine, have flirted with 100 degree temperatures, resulting in heat warnings and strained electrical grids. In all, there were four heat waves in the Northeast in which the temperature reached 90 degrees for three or more days, said Samantha Borisoff, a climatologist with the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University in New York, on Tuesday.

Multiple weather stations from Syracuse, New York, to Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., set records for warm nights in June, she said. “Warm nights don’t allow the body to get relief from the heat, which can be particularly dangerous for high-risk populations and those without air conditioning,” she said.

Heat is the leading weather-related killer in the United States, and this summer, deaths are adding up.

Authorities have reported hundreds of deaths that are likely to be heat-related across the Northwest, including 117 in Washington State, with 29 in Seattle’s King County and 22 in Tacoma’s Pierce County. In Portland’s Multnomah County, a preliminary report tied 54 deaths to the heat wave—mostly older men who lived alone with no air conditioning.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said the deaths in the Northwest were maddening. “The deaths from heat waves are preventable,” he said. “When you see these kinds of outbreaks, I mean, in my view, they didn’t prepare well enough.”

The Seattle Times on Sunday reported that Seattle had no specific plan for a heat response, that only two of the city’s 26 community centers have air conditioning and that many of its public drinking fountains had been turned off because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Officials scrambled to open cooling centers at libraries and senior centers but some neighborhoods were left out.

“There needs to be thinking more about what climate change is going to throw at us, and how we can be better prepared,” Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington Center for Health and the Global Environment, told the newspaper.
Most Cities Don’t Manage Heat Very Well

Cities basically have two main heat problems confronting them: emergencies that require immediate action to save lives, and long-term issues related to combating soaring temperatures in the face of heat islands and global warming.

One reason so many cities are behind is that cities lack dedicated personnel and mandates to manage heat.

“If we were to show up at various city halls around the country, and ask who’s in charge of heat in their city, we wouldn’t get a very clear answer,” said David Hondula, a geographical sciences and urban planning professor at Arizona State University. “And we probably wouldn’t find anybody whose annual performance evaluation has anything to do with heat.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency requires cities or counties to conduct hazard mitigation planning, but for the most part the heat strategies are “embarrassing,” with minimal articulation of the problem or needed responses, he said.

Across the United States, hundreds of cities have adopted climate action plans, and many of those address heat in some way, said Vivek Shandas, a professor of climate adaptation at Portland State University. They are “great on paper,” he said, but in practice are generally not being implemented.

As a result of inaction, cities are keeping their most vulnerable at risk for heat-related deaths, he said.

Shandas was co-author of a study, published in 2020 in the journal Climate, that looked at heat across 108 urban communities and linked the higher temperatures to past practices of red-lining, the historical practice of refusing home loans or insurance to people in neighborhoods of color. They found that 94 of the areas they studied showed a pattern of higher surface temperatures in formerly redlined areas, compared to non-redlined neighborhoods, by as much as 12.6 degrees.

Disinvestment has continued in other ways since red-lining was banned in the 1960s, but with similar results. Shandas cited as an example at least one Portland heat death in June that he investigated.

“There were about 25 or so individual trailer homes,” he said. “These are metal boxes that were right on asphalt, and not only that, they get direct impact from the sun.”

With no air conditioning, he said, it could get “upwards of 130 to 140 degrees inside one of these homes. If you do have AC and you’re running it so hard, continually, the AC is likely to break, which is what happened to this older man who passed away from this heatwave.”

Benjamin, the public health association executive director, said it’s “not rocket science” for cities to figure out who their vulnerable populations are, and develop programs to check on them.

“Communicate with the same communities that your food programs have, or other social support programs, and senior citizen homes,” he said.
By 2050, Phoenix Will be Baghdad

If there’s any place in the county that can serve as a heat laboratory for cities it’s Phoenix. On average, Phoenix has 110 days each year with a high temperature over 100 degrees, and 19 days with high temperatures exceeding 110 degrees, according to its new draft climate action plan. July and August 2020 were the hottest on record, and 2020 saw 53 days with temperatures over 110 degrees and 145 days over 100 degrees.

Last year, Maricopa County had 2,414 heat-related emergency room visits and more than 300 heat-related deaths. It is investigating 138 potential heat-related deaths so far this year.

Researchers from ETA Zurich have forecast that by 2050 the Phoenix climate will be more like that of Baghdad.

Phoenix faces “dire prospects” with its urban heat island and the changing climate, said Declet-Barreto, who lived there for 17 years and earned a Ph.D. in environmental social sciences from Arizona State University.

“There are entire neighborhoods in Phoenix where there is just no vegetation at all,” he said. “It’s just all sorts of impervious surfaces, like cement and glass, and asphalt. Those are also the places where low income populations of color live.”

Eva O. Olivas, executive director and chief executive officer of the Phoenix Revitalization Corporation, a grassroots nonprofit working with underserved communities, agreed.

“To wait at the bus stop literally is a life threatening situation in our neighborhoods in the summertime,” she said.

Still, both Olivas and Declet-Barreto give the city credit for taking heat problems seriously.

The City of Phoenix and the Maricopa County Association of Governments established a heat-relief network in 2005, following an extreme heat event that killed 35 people over nine days. The network coordinates emergency response to heat waves, including water distribution and cooling centers. Phoenix also requires landlords to supply reasonable cooling to rental housing units—air conditioners must keep homes to no warmer than 82 degrees, for example.

The city is now also updating its climate action plan with a strong heat component: new goals of creating a network of 30 cool corridors in vulnerable communities by 2030; increasing shade trees in neighborhood parks and along streets and sidewalks; and incorporating more reflective materials into surfaces and buildings.

The city this year also is establishing an “Office of Heat Response and Mitigation,” aimed at coordinating the city’s response to heat.

Budget constraints amid competing priorities can slow progress, said Karen Peters, deputy city manager.

But she added: “Dealing with and adapting to heat is essential to our long term viability, both our economic viability and being able to provide quality of life for our residents and visitors. So it’s essential.”

Phoenix and its neighbor, Tempe, are also working with ASU to develop a certification system for cities striving to tackle heat. They’re calling the program “HeatReady,” modeled somewhat after the National Weather Services’ StormReady program, to help cities better prepare for and respond to severe storms like tornadoes and blizzards.

The HeatReady program will be designed to help cities think through their heat problems and develop responses based on efforts tested in the Phoenix area, said Hondula, the ASU professor. The program will provide a framework for steps that can be taken, such as adding shade, cooling surfaces like roads, rooftops and parking lots, and adding water features, messaging and public education.

Keep Environmental Journalism Alive

ICN provides award-winning, localized climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going.Donate Now

You will be redirected to ICN’s donation partner.

The partners are still working through questions of how demanding the requirements for certification will be, he said. “Is it really going to be a deep, sophisticated evaluation tool?” Or, he said, it could end up being something more or less based on “good faith and trusting that the pieces are in place.”
And New York Will Feel Like Birmingham

New York City averages 10 deaths a year directly attributable to heat stress and 350 deaths a year from natural causes exacerbated by heat, according to the city’s health department.

The nation’s largest city, with 8.4 million people, experienced on average two heat waves per year from 1970 to 2000. With climate change, New York is bracing for an increase in the number of heat waves, with a tripling of the days when temperatures go over 90, from a baseline of 18 between the years of 1971 and 2000, to 57 by 2050.

New York City will feel more like Birmingham, Alabama, said Jainey Bavishi, director of the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency.

With heat in mind, the city announced it was strengthening its heat adaptation work in 2017, through a new Cool Neighborhoods NYC program that pledged tens of millions toward tree planting and other initiatives, expanded a cool roof program and launched the “Be A Buddy” program targeting the most vulnerable areas.

The city worked with Columbia University to develop a risk index that ranks neighborhood vulnerability, taking into account factors such as density, lack of education, race and poverty, Bavishi said. “When you look at the heat vulnerability index, you can see that the neighborhoods that kind of light up as being the most vulnerable in the city are the South Bronx, Northern Manhattan and Central Brooklyn,” she said.

The city’s heat reduction program involves “physically retrofitting neighborhoods so we can bring temperatures down,” she said.

To help with heat emergencies, she said, home health aides are being trained in heat safety. “They can make sure that their patients are staying hydrated or getting access to a cool space if they need it,” Bavishi said.

The city also launched its buddy pilot program, working with neighborhood organizations like The Point, a nonprofit community development group operating in the industrial Hunts Point neighborhood of the South Bronx. As part of a larger heat mitigation effort, The Point helps distribute subsidized air conditioners and runs a program, a person-to-person outreach that seeks to prepare the community for climate events.

Many mayors ask their city’s residents to check on loved ones and neighbors during weather extremes. The New York City program takes that a step further, by training residents in how to help their neighbors navigate extreme weather.

It’s “very preemptive,” said Danny Peralta, executive managing director of The Point. “This is like how all communities should kind of work at this point, if we’re gonna be able to save lives. And honestly, you know, be able to secure neighborhoods from the effects of climate, which is affecting everybody.”





James Bruggers
Reporter, Southeast, National Environment Reporting Network
James Bruggers covers the U.S. Southeast, part of Inside Climate News’ National Environment Reporting Network. He previously covered energy and the environment for Louisville’s Courier Journal, where he worked as a correspondent for USA Today and was a member of the USA Today Network environment team. Before moving to Kentucky in 1999, Bruggers worked as a journalist in Montana, Alaska, Washington and California. Bruggers’ work has won numerous recognitions, including best beat reporting, Society of Environmental Journalists, and the National Press Foundation’s Thomas Stokes Award for energy reporting. He served on the board of directors of the SEJ for 13 years, including two years as president. He lives in Louisville with his wife, Christine Brugger
s.

My Articles on Anarchism


FROM THE ARCHIVES

Amour Anarchie


Léo Ferré (Shoed Leo in English)


Léo Ferré is, without doubt, one of the most important figures in French music history. Renowned for his musical compositions, Ferré is also remembered for his astonishing lyrics. Indeed, many would go so far as to call him one of the finest poets of French chanson.


This truly exceptional singer, songwriter and composer changed the face of the French music scene irrevocably. Léo Ferré’s poetry also made a major impact on French literature. As his old friend, the writer and poet Louis Aragon once said - "The literary history of France will have to be re-written a little differently because of the contribution made by Léo Ferré". The same could also be said of French music history.

Ferré gets involved into anarchism and communism

Throughout the early part of his career Ferré had kept out of politics, even during the heyday of the Front Populaire. But from the late 40’s onwards the singer found himself becoming increasingly involved with French political groups. After performing at several concerts organised by the French Anarchist Federation, Ferré decided his real sympathies lay with the French Communist Party and he became increasingly involved with their activities. (Ferré remained a committed communist right up until the end of his life).

In the early 50’s Ferré’s encounter with a young woman called Madeleine, whom he met in a Paris café, was to change the rest of his life. For not only was Madeleine to replace Odette in his life, she also took charge of his career. Shortly after meeting Madeleine, Ferré began writing his famous opera "la Vie d'Artiste", proving his talent as a musical composer. Four years later Ferré would go on to write an oratorio based on the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire’s work " La Chanson du mal-aimé", which was performed at the Monte Carlo Opera House.

By 1953, Léo Ferré’s singing career was going from strength to strength. He was invited to perform as a support act for the American star Josephine Baker, when she performed at the prestigious Paris music-hall, L’Olympia. Ferré then went on to land a recording deal with the Odéon label who soon released his version of "Paris Canaille" (the song which had been a hit for Catherine Sauvage the previous year). Ferré’s personal life was also looking up. The singer moved into a flat on Boulevard Pershing with Madeleine and the daughter from her previous marriage, whom Ferré brought up as his own child. Despite the fact that the couple existed on very little money, this was a particularly happy time in Ferré’s life. The door was always open to friends and the flat on Boulevard Pershing was always filled with visitors. Singer Catherine Sauvage, the actor Pierre Brasseur, Les Frères Jacques and many other stars from the music and theatre world were all regular visitors to Ferré’s home.

Following the immense success of the single "Paris Canaille", Ferré could afford to buy a big house in the country. In March 1955 he returned to the Olympia, but this time as the headlining star. It was on this memorable occasion that the singer performed "l'Homme", "Monsieur William", and "Graine d'Ananar" (all songs which went on to become absolute classics of the Ferré repertoire). At the end of the year Ferré went back into the studio to record eight new songs including the famous "Pauvre Ruteboeuf" and "Le Guinche". He was not surrounded by a group of musicians in the studio, preferring to accompany himself instead on the piano, and the organ.

Ferré's new album also contained the song "l'Amour" - a track which would greatly impress the famous Surrealist poet André Breton. Ferré and Breton went on to become close friends but this relationship came to an abrupt end when, in 1956, Ferré presented Breton with a copy of his work "Poètes...vos papiers". In this collection of poetry and song lyrics (77 texts in all) Ferré took a strong stand against the automatic writing techniques which the Surrealists had employed in their poetry. Breton was most unhappy with Ferré’s stance and, declaring that he did not share the same poetic views as the singer, refused to write a preface to the collection. This argument brought an abrupt end to Breton and Ferré’s friendship, and the pair were not on speaking terms when Breton died in 1966.

In 1956 Ferré devoted all his time and energy to composing "La Nuit", a modern ballet created for choreographer Roland Petit and his troupe, which included spoken texts and songs. Unfortunately, when the ballet was performed at the Théâtre de Paris it was slammed by the critics and the show came to a grinding halt after only four performances.

Ferré was to be caught up in the revolutionary fervour of May 68. Indeed, on May 10th the singer performed at the famous Gala de la Mutualité, organised by the Anarchist federation. Ferré the protest singer became the public symbol of revolutionary zeal and anarchic student demonstrations (although he continued to keep his distance from actual political involvement).

LEO FERRE
AMOUR ANARCHIE

In 1970 Léo Ferré produced a wondrous double album on which some incomparable jewels can be found. Among those are the pop marvel "La 'the nana'", the pulsating "Psaume 51", the pyshedelic opening "Le chien" (killer lyrics included) or the somber minimalist "Le mal", a masterpierce in sobriety. Those into more conventional orchestrations will indulge themselves with "La mémoire et la mer" and the moving, delicate and kind of deranged "Petite" speaking of the impossible love of a middle-aged man and a very young girl-child. Ferré dares it all, as usually, singing with his heart and guts (see "Poète, vos papiers"), writing with a great ease on themes no one but he can cover. There's anger, love, indignation and many more feelings here all mastered with great skills and incomparable strength! Jean-Michel Defaye's arrangements are, as always, wonderful. The whole double album is a must hear, a masterpiece and a great introduction to the peculiar world of Léo Ferré.


UN: public water in Lebanon could stop pumping in matter of 'weeks'

Lebanon's water sector is on the verge of collapse due to the harrowing economic crisis, the United Nations has warned.


Lebanon is suffering from an acute water shortage. Here, a Lebanese woman walks past canisters used to store water and fuel in front of a shop in the coastal town of Junieh, north of Beirut, on Aug. 11, 2006. - PATRICK BAZ/AFP via Getty Images

Millions of Lebanese are at risk of losing access to water, the United Nations warned Friday.

The representative of UNICEF in Lebanon said the economic crisis could severely hinder people’s access to public water in the near future.

A loss of access to the public water supply could force households to make extremely difficult decisions regarding their basic water, sanitation and hygiene needs,” said Yukie Mokuo in a press release.

Lebanon is in the midst of a yearslong and increasingly devastating economic crisis. The local currency has lost more than 90% of its value since late 2019. Many people are struggling to buy essentials amid job losses and rising prices. Fuel shortages are also worsening, leading to long lines at gas stations.

UNICEF said Lebanon’s water sector is being “squeezed” due to maintenance costs, electricity cuts and rising fuel prices. More than 4 million people, including 1 million refugees, are at risk of losing access to water that is safe to use as a result.

“UNICEF estimates that most water pumping will gradually cease across the country in the next four to six weeks,” read the release.

The UN children's agency further predicted that water costs could shoot up 200% if people are forced to buy from private vendors in the event of a shutdown of public water.

The situation is already bleak. Almost 1.7 million people in Lebanon already only have access to 35 liters (nine gallons) of water a day, which is a nearly 80% decrease vis-a-vis the national average before 2020, according to a UNICEF assessment. Water pollution has also been an issue in Lebanon in recent years.

Lebanon has had a caretaker government since August 2020 when the Cabinet resigned en masse following the Beirut port explosion. The political impasse appears set to continue after Saad Hariri, who was the prime minister-designate, withdrew his nomination to form a new government last week.

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/07/un-public-water-lebanon-could-stop-pumping-matter-weeks#ixzz71aoG5WTT