Opinion: US failure in Afghanistan: What lessons for Africa?

The ineffectiveness of military interventions has been underscored by the US failure in Afghanistan. 

This should lead to a rethink in Africa, writes Mimi Mefo Takambou.

Soldiers fighting separatists in Cameroon's restive Anglophone regions have been accused of rights 

abuses and arbitrary killings

It has been a very disturbing week for many across the world — not least for those of us who come from countries experiencing wars and conflicts. The scenes from Afghanistan conjured up vivid recollections of the hopes of many English-speaking Cameroonians in 2016 and 2017. At the start of the "Anglophone Crisis," the prevailing discourse among many activists was that the crackdown by the Cameroonian government forces on peaceful protesters would result in a military intervention from the United States and other world powers. 

Not surprisingly, five years on, there has been no response to the desperate calls for help from Cameroonians from the country's embattled regions. In the face of human rights abuses from both sides of the conflict, the only solace has been halfhearted condemnations — which to me — are not worth the papers on which they are written.

US President Joe Biden's stance on Afghanistan has made it abundantly clear that the aspirations by Cameroonians and indeed many Africans who look to the US for such support are falling on deaf ears.

Has nation-building run its course?

DW's Mimi Mefo Takambou

In 2001, then-Senator Biden said his hope was that the US would provide the foundation for the future reconstruction of Afghanistan. Fast forward to 2021 and his statement that their "mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building," makes my heart sink.

That feeling resulted not from a belief that the US could solve the problems of any African country, but from the many nagging questions that weigh on my mind, the most pressing of which is: If nation-building isn't the answer, then what is?

A look at Libya appears to provide the answer. There, the United Nations Security Council for the first time authorized the use of force, couched under the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), against the wishes of a sovereign functioning state. Today, Libya is a classic example of a failed state and a cesspit of horror — a place where some African migrants are bought and sold as slaves.

When then UK Defense Secretary Phillip Hammond urged UK corporations to go into Libya for business to begin reconstruction, the clear message was that Libya was destroyed, not because of the need to protect the people, but rather so the West could rebuild it. I am not surprised that Afghanistan is another such failed experiment.

Why are US troops in Africa?

The US was in Afghanistan for 20 years, spent $2 trillion (€1.7 trillion) , and left the country in the hands of a maniacal terrorist organization. The rationale for the continuous existence of their troops in Africa, is therefore at best contentious.  From the era of the Cold War to the dawn of the global fight on terror, every intervention, whether unilateral or multilateral, has been whitewashed with the polemics of protecting the values of liberal democracy. I would therefore conclude that the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) has outlived its usefulness, if there ever was one. Except, of course, the raison d'être for these troops in Africa, has nothing to do with ending conflicts or engaging in nation-building.

US interventions in Africa have not always had the desired results

The fact remains that the interventions by the US, China, and other former colonial powers in countless conflicts in Africa have led to one outcome: state collapse. The many examples in Africa provide ample evidence that should temper the surprise many are expressing about Afghanistan.

Most interventions, either internally or externally, have only helped in exacerbating the conflicts rather than providing a foundation for peaceful resolutions. Repressive governments in Africa, some as malignant as the Taliban, have more often than not received substantial military support from abroad. The rise of warlords, dictators, and dissident movements all fighting for control of resources, at the expense of human rights, has been largely fueled by imported arms and ammunition.

Lessons for Africa?

One thing is clear to me: Just like in Afghanistan, the US has failed to invest in basic infrastructure or poverty-reducing services or programs that could help African nations out of economic deprivation.

External interests have merely succeeded in altering the dynamics of internal struggles, leading to an escalation of local conflicts with devastating effects for many Africans.

Africa should look to the tragic events in Afghanistan and not make the same mistake in thinking that the biggest military force in the world can resolve its problems by using the means of conflict.

Power in seeds: Urban gardening gains momentum in pandemic

By KATHERINE ROTH

August 18, 2021

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This photo provided by Stephen Zeigler shows Ron Finley in a garden in Los Angeles. Interest in gardening has grown around the country. And urban gardeners say it's particularly important for the health and resiliency of city neighborhoods. (Stephen Ziegler via AP)


NEW YORK (AP) — On an assemblage of vacant lots and other pockets of unused land in the Bronx, gardeners from low-income neighborhoods have banded together to create over a dozen “farm hubs,” coordinating their community gardens and their harvest.

Several years ago, some discovered that, together, their small gardens could grow enough peppers to mass-produce hot sauce — Bronx Hot Sauce, to be precise, with profits from the sales reinvested in their communities.

During the pandemic, the farm hubs of the Bronx have again proved their might, producing health-boosting crops like garlic, kale and collard greens.

“The trick is, how can we learn from the pandemic so that we become genuinely resilient?” says Raymond Figueroa-Reyes, president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition.

“When the pandemic hit, urban farming went into hyper-productivity mode. People saw that the (food) donations coming in were are not adequate in terms of quantity or quality, and there is no dignity in waiting on that type of charity,” he says.

The farm hubs are part of an urban gardening movement across the country dedicated to empowering residents of poorer neighborhoods by encouraging them to grow fresh food.

Areas (both urban and rural) with little access to healthy, fresh food have been called “food deserts,” and tend to have high rates of diabetes and other diseases, such as hypertension and obesity. In cities, where many see the phenomenon as inseparable from deeper issues of race and equity, some community leaders prefer terms like “food prisons” or “food apartheid.”

Ron Finley in Los Angeles has been at the forefront of urban gardening for years. He sees gardening as both therapeutic and an act of defiance.

“Growing your own food is like printing your own money,” says Finley, who runs the nonprofit Ron Finley Project. “It’s not just about food, it’s about freedom. It’s our revolution, and our eco-lution.”

Finley grew up in South Central Los Angeles, where he says he had to drive 45 minutes just to get a fresh tomato. His efforts to rejuvenate communities through gardening have included planting vegetables on neglected parkways and other pieces of unused land, and teaching online classes to global audiences about the power of growing food.

Millions of Americans live in neighborhoods without healthy food options. The same neighborhoods are magnets for fast-food restaurants and the packaged foods available at drug stores and convenience stores.

“The drive-thru is killing more people in our communities than the drive-by,” Finley says. “I want people to come back to reality, to touch the soil and take back some of the things that have been taken away. When you plant a seed, it will multiply. It’s a currency. It’s a valuable resource. That’s empowering. It’s about more than food.”

In the Bronx, Karen Washington, who has spent decades promoting urban farming, said it is about “food justice.” (She helped coordinate the pepper-growing that led to Bronx Hot Sauce; the company they worked with, Small Axe Peppers, now makes hot sauce with community-grown peppers from Queens, Detroit, Chicago, Oakland and other cities.)

“Healthy food is a human right, along with clean water,” she said.

A board member of the New York Botanical Garden, Washington has worked with neighborhoods to turn empty lots into community gardens, and helped launch City Farms Market, which brings affordable fresh produce grown in community gardens or on upstate farms to a weekly farmers market in the Bronx.

She co-founded Black Urban Growers and helped found the Black Farmer Fund, which aims to provide access to capital for black farmers and entrepreneurs.

COVID had a big impact on people wanting to grow their own food, and Washington said she sees more people growing food on city terraces and in yards across the country.

“It really gained urgency during the early stages of COVID, before the vaccines came out. If we are going to fight viruses, especially in these neighborhoods with a lot of diabetes and obesity, we need to start eating healthy,” Washington says.

Figueroa-Reyes concurs.

“Folks said, we gotta get into these unused spaces and we gotta grow food,” he says. “There is a collective effort around organizing farm hubs with the idea of growing more immune-boosting food and getting it to where it’s needed most.”

Through its Bronx Green-Up program, the New York Botanical Garden has long provided technical support to community gardens. It stepped up efforts when the pandemic hit, working directly with community farm hubs; organizing biweekly Zoom meetings to help with problem solving, resource sharing and harvest distribution; and providing more than 10,000 herb and vegetable seedlings.

“We came together with longtime community partners early in the pandemic, realizing that food insecurity has always been a big issue in the Bronx,” says Ursula Chanse, the program’s director.

“There’s definitely a lot of community gardening interest now, and more urban farm spaces,” she says.

Takeover of UK's premier tech firm ARM could face in-depth probe amid concerns £31bn Nvidia deal may stifle innovation

Deal could impact Nvidia's rivals by limiting their access to Arm's technology

Competition at risk in markets like the internet of things and self-driving cars

This could result in consumers missing out on new products or prices going up

Competition watchdog has recommended an in-depth probe into the deal

It is now up to Secretary Oliver Dowden to decide whether it should be referred

By CAMILLA CANOCCHI FOR THISISMONEY.CO.UK

PUBLISHED: 20 August 2021 

Britain's competition watchdog has recommended an in-depth probe into the £31billion takeover of UK chip-maker ARM by US giant Nvidia amid 'serious' concerns it might stifle innovation and result in higher prices for consumers.

The Competition and Markets Authority said it was concerned that the deal would create 'real problems' for Nvidia's rivals by limiting their access to ARM's technology, which is used by firms that make semiconductor chips and other products.

This potential loss of competition could affect a number of markets, including data centres, gaming, the 'internet of things', and self-driving cars, the watchdog said, adding that an in-depth investigation was necessary.

Britain's competition watchdog is concerned that a loss of competition could affect a number of markets, including data centres, gaming, the 'internet of things', and self-driving cars

'We're concerned that Nvidia controlling ARM could create real problems for Nvidia's rivals by limiting their access to key technologies, and ultimately stifling innovation across a number of important and growing markets,' said Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the CMA.

'This could end up with consumers missing out on new products or prices going up. The chip technology industry is worth billions and is vital to products that businesses and consumers rely on every day.

'This includes the critical data processing and datacentre technology that supports digital businesses across the economy, and the future development of artificial intelligence technologies that will be important to growth industries like robotics and self-driving cars.'

The findings and recommendations were published in a report to the Government, which had ordered an investigation into the takeover earlier this year, citing competition and national security concerns.

It is now up to Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Oliver Dowden, to decide whether the merger should be referred for an in-depth investigation on both competition and national security grounds, or if it should be passed back to the CMA to investigate on competition grounds only.

A spokesperson for the DCMS said: 'We have received the CMA's phase one report and the Digital Secretary will make a decision on whether to proceed to the next phase of the investigation in due course.'

The takeover comes at a time of mounting shortage of computer chips worldwide

Today's findings by the watchdog mark the latest setback for the takeover, after China recently joined regulators in the Europe and the US in looking at the deal.

When the deal was announced last September, Nvidia and ARM said it would be complete by spring 2022, a timeline that now looks unrealistic.

The takeover has been politically charged as ARM is the UK's premier tech firm - and it comes at a time of mounting shortage of computer chips worldwide.

There are also fears that some of the 3,000 UK jobs could be moved abroad, leaching vital skills that were protected under current owner Softbank.


Nvidia offered a measure to regulate the ongoing behaviour of the business, but the competition watchdog said such this would not alleviate its concerns.

An Nvidia spokesperson said: 'We look forward to the opportunity to address the CMA's initial views and resolve any concerns the Government may have. We remain confident that this transaction will be beneficial to ARM, its licensees, competition, and the UK.'

Neil Wilson, an analyst at Markets.com, said: 'The CMA is only reviewing from a competition point of view at present. That alone may be enough to scupper Nvidia’s advances.

'But several deals have lately caught the attention and there is a sense of there being a raid on top British companies.

'Tory governments don’t like to be too interventionist – Britain is open for business and all that – but they also don’t like to appear asleep at the wheel when blue chips get hoovered up.'

Polish Olympian auctions silver medal to fund boy’s surgery, buyer lets her keep it


Maria Andrejczyk (Poland) celebrates winning the silver medal in women's javelin throw during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Summer Games at Olympic Stadium on August 7, 2021. (Reuters)

Al Arabiya English
Published: 20 August ,2021

Polish javelin thrower Maria Andrejczyk auctioned off her Tokyo 2020 silver medal to fund an urgent heart surgery for a child in her country.

Andrejczyk, herself a bone cancer survivor, announced on Facebook last week that she would sell her medal and put the proceeds toward an operation for 8-month-old Miloszek Malysa, who is currently under home hospice care in southern Poland.

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The boy’s heart defect causes his blood pressure to skyrocket and damage the arteries in his lungs and in the heart.

Żabka, a Polish supermarket chain, won the auction with a bid of $125,000, allowing the boy to get the surgery.

According to a fundraiser page, the boy is under home hospice care and requires an urgent operation in the United States.

This week, Andrejczyk announced the auction winner.

The Polish convenience store chain Zabka made the top bid, paying $125,000 for the silver medal, according to media reports.

But instead of collecting the prize, the company announced it would let Andrejczyk keep the silver medal after all.

“We were moved by the beautiful and extremely noble gesture of our Olympian,” the company said in a Facebook post translated from Polish. “We also decided that the silver medal from Tokyo will remain with Ms. Maria, who showed how great she is.”

The money will go towards paying for Małysa's operation at Stanford University Medical Center.

Andrejczyk in an interview to with Eurosport Polska, a Polish sports program, said that winning the medal brought her “enormous happiness” and that she wanted to “pass that happiness on” to a young child who could use some.

"The true value of a medal always remains in the heart," Andrejczyk said. "A medal is only an object, but it can be of great value to others. This silver can save lives, instead of collecting dust in a closet. That is why I decided to auction it to help sick children."

In the 2016 Rio Olympics, Andrejczyk, just missed winning a medal at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

Then, two years later, Polish media reported, she was diagnosed with bone cancer.

“I’m very proud of myself,” Andrejczyk said in an interview after she returned to Poland from Tokyo. “I fought like a lioness through a lot of pain and depression.”

Andrejczyk won silver in the women's javelin throw with a 64.61-meter throw.

Brazil city district slipping into sea after river diverted

By DIARLEI RODRIGUES and MARCELO SILVA DE SOUSA

August 19, 2021


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The ruins of the Predio do Julinho hotel that collapsed in 2008 due to the encroachment by the sea lay on the beachfront in Atafona, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021. The hotel is among more than 500 other building that have fallen victim to the encroaching Atlantic Ocean, so far. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

SAO JOAO DA BARRA, Brazil (AP) — Decades ago, Júlia María de Assis thought someday she would take over the hotel her father had begun building in Atafona, a seaside district in Brazil’s northern Rio de Janeiro state.

But the very attraction that drew the tourists to Atafona – the sea – became its foe. Advancing water put the hotel’s construction on hold until, 13 years ago, the ocean’s force finally tore it down. Almost 500 other buildings have succumbed, too.

“It was going to be 48 suites – a big hotel that never started operations,” said de Assis, 51, standing beside rubble that once composed her family’s dream. “Even though the hotel’s structure was strong, every time the waves hit the building they damaged it and, finally, it collapsed.”

As a result of human action, over the past half century the Atlantic Ocean has been relentlessly consuming Atafona, part of the Sao Joao da Barra municipality that is 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Rio de Janeiro’s capital and home to 36,000 people. Due to climate change, there is little hope for a solution. Instead, Atafona will slip into the sea.
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Julia Maria de Assis, daughter of the owner of the Predio do Julinho hotel, that collapsed in 2008. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

View of Atafona, in Rio de Janeiro state. (AP Photo/Mario Lobao)

The Paraiba do Sul River, which originates in neighboring Sao Paulo state, brings sediment and sand to Atafona where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Its flow was mostly diverted in the 1950s to provide water to the growing capital, which weakened Atafona’s natural barrier to the ocean, said Pedro de Araújo, materials technology professor at the Fluminense Federal Institute.

“Less land sediment and sand that stabilized the coast made it so the sea is eating away at the city,” said de Araújo, who is pursuing a doctorate analyzing river erosion and seeking to model what that will mean for its delta going forward. He estimates that the river has one-third of its original flow.

Deforestation of mangroves in recent decades also left Atafona more vulnerable, said de Araújo. The sea’s average position moves some five meters (16 feet) inland every year, according to the professor.

The remains of a house destroyed by the sea stand on the beach in Atafona. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

The side of a home is buttressed by sand bags to protect it from the rising sea in Atafona. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Vanessa Nunes and her daughter stand at the door of her hut on the shore of the Paraiba do Sul river. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

“Sometimes the water comes up to my knees. My biggest fear is that one day it will take my hut,” fisherwoman Vanesa Gomes Barreto, 35, said at the stall where she sells her catch. “There was a chapel here, a bakery. It was a very large city, of which only a piece remains. The sea swallowed everything, even my childhood.”

Specialists have evaluated possible solutions, such as construction of artificial barriers or depositing vast quantities of sand, but none appear effective enough to halt the ocean’s advance. Global sea level rise due to melting ice means destruction will continue, and at a faster rate, de Araújo said.

People often ask de Assis, who thought she would inherit a hotel, if her city’s reversal of fortunes saddens her. She says she is grateful she was born in Atafona, but that humans need to respect nature.

“I feel nostalgic for the house where I spent summers,” she said, and pointed to the sea. “It’s at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”

The ruins of the Predio do Julinho hotel, that collapsed in 2008. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

___

Silva de Sousa reported from Rio de Janeiro.

RIP

Tom T. Hall, Country Music’s “Storyteller,” Dies at 85

The Grand Ole Opry and Country Music Hall of Fame member passed at his home in Tennessee


By Matthew Ismael Ruiz

August 21, 2021

Tom T. Hall performs on the ABC television special The 1974 Country Music Awards (Photo by Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images).

Tom T. Hall, the singer, songwriter, and Country Music Hall of Famer, died Friday (August 20) at home in Franklin, Tennessee. He was 85.

A prolific songwriter known for his narrative prowess, Hall was once dubbed “The Storyteller” by his contemporary Tex Ritter. He was responsible for hit songs such as “That’s How I Got to Memphis,” “I Love,” and Jeannie C. Riley’s 1968 pop country crossover “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” which was later adapted for film and television.

Born May 25, 1936, in Olive Hill, Kentucky, Hall played in a band and worked as a DJ before joining the Army in 1957. He was working on the radio when a publisher heard his song “D.J. for a Day” and brought it to Jimmy C. Newman, who helped Hall score his first top 10 hit. He would go on write several number one songs, including “Hello Vietnam,” “(Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine,” “I Love,” “Country Is,” and “Faster Horses (The Cowboy and the Poet).”

Hall signed with Mercury Records in 1967 and joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1971. He was nominated for six Grammys, winning for Best Album Notes in 1972 for Tom T. Hall's Greatest Hits. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1978, the Kentucky Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002, and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008.

His penchant for narrative was not limited to songs. Hall released five books in his lifetime, from memoir (1979’s The Storyteller’s Nashville) to How-To (1976’s How I Write Songs, Why You Can).

Country singer Tom T. Hall dies; wrote ‘Harper Valley PTA’

By KRISTIN M. HALL

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FILE - In this Tuesday Oct. 30, 2012 file photo, Tom T. Hall accepts the Icon Award at the 60th Annual BMI Country Awards in Nashville, Tenn. Singer-songwriter Tom T. Hall, who composed “Harper Valley P.T.A.” and sang about life’s simple joys as country music’s consummate blue collar bard, has died. He was 85. His son, Dean Hall, confirmed the musician's death Friday, Aug. 20, 2021 at his home in Franklin, Tennessee. (Photo by Wade Payne/Invision/AP, File)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tom T. Hall, the singer-songwriter who composed “Harper Valley P.T.A.” and sang about life’s simple joys as country music’s consummate blue collar bard, has died. He was 85.

His son, Dean Hall, confirmed the musician’s death on Friday at his home in Franklin, Tennessee. Known as “The Storyteller” for his unadorned yet incisive lyrics, Hall composed hundreds of songs.

Along with such contemporaries as Kris Kristofferson, John Hartford and Mickey Newbury, Hall helped usher in a literary era of country music in the early ’70s, with songs that were political, like “Watergate Blues” and “The Monkey That Became President,” deeply personal like “The Year Clayton Delaney Died,” and philosophical like “(Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine.”

“In all my writing, I’ve never made judgments,” he said in 1986. “I think that’s my secret. I’m a witness. I just watch everything and don’t decide if it’s good or bad.”

Singer-songwriter Jason Isbell performed Hall’s song “Mama Bake A Pie (Daddy Kill A Chicken)” when Hall was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019.

“The simplest words that told the most complicated stories. Felt like Tom T. just caught the songs as they floated by, but I know he carved them out of rock,” Isbell tweeted on Friday.

Hall, the fourth son of an ordained minister, was born near Olive Hill, Kentucky, in a log cabin built by his grandfather. He started playing guitar at age 4 and wrote his first song by the time he was 9.

Hall began playing in a bluegrass band, but when that didn’t work out he started working as a disc jockey in Morehead, Kentucky. He joined the U.S. Army in 1957 for four years including an assignment in Germany. He turned to writing when he got back stateside and was discovered by Nashville publisher Jimmy Key.

Hall settled in Nashville in 1964 and first established himself as a songwriter making $50 a week. He wrote songs for Jimmy C. Newman, Dave Dudley and Johnny Wright, but he had so many songs that he began recording them himself. The middle initial “T” was added when he got his recording contract to make the name catchier.

His breakthrough was writing “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” a 1968 international hit about small-town hypocrisy recorded by Jeannie C. Riley. The song about a mother telling a group of busybodies to mind their own business was witty and feisty and became a No. 1 country and pop hit. It sold millions of copies and Riley won a Grammy for best female country vocal performance and an award for single of the year from the Country Music Association. The story was so popular it even spawned a movie of the same name and a television series.

“Suddenly, it was the talk of the country,” Hall told The Associated Press in 1986. “It became a catch phrase. You’d flip the radio dial and hear it four or five times in 10 minutes. It was the most awesome time of my life; I caused all this stir.”

His own career took off after that song and he had a string of hits with “Ballad of Forty Dollars” (which also was recorded by Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings); his first career No. 1 hit “A Week in a Country Jail,” and “Homecoming,” in the late 1960s.

Throughout the ’70s, Hall became one of Nashville’s biggest singer-songwriters, with multiple hit songs including, “I Love,” “Country Is,” “I Care,” “I Like Beer,” and “Faster Horses (The Cowboy and The Poet.)” He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1978.

“Tom T. Hall’s masterworks vary in plot, tone and tempo, but they are bound by his ceaseless and unyielding empathy for the triumphs and losses of others,” said Kyle Young, CEO, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, in a statement. “He wrote without judgment or anger, offering a rhyming journalism of the heart that sets his compositions apart from any other writer.

He also penned songs for children on his records “Songs of Fox Hollow (for Children of All Ages)” in 1974 and “Country Songs for Kids,” in 1988. He also became an author, writing a book about songwriting, “The Songwriter’s Handbook,” and an autobiography, “The Storyteller’s Nashville,” as well as fiction novels.

He was host of the syndicated TV show “Pop Goes the Country” from 1980 to 1983 and even dabbled in politics. Hall was close to former President Jimmy Carter and Carter’s brother, Billy, when Carter was in the White House. Tennessee Democrats urged Hall to run for governor in 1982, but he declined.

For his 1985 album “Songs in a Seashell,” he spent six months walking up and down Southern beaches to get inspiration for the summer mood of the LP.

He was inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008 and in 2012, he was honored as the BMI Icon of the year, with artists such as the Avett Brothers, bluegrass stars Daily & Vincent, Toby Keith and Justin Townes Earle paying tribute to the songwriting legend.

“I think a song is just a song,” Hall said at the ceremony in 2012. “They can do it with all kinds of different bands. It’s just a lyric and a melody. I was talking to Kris Kristofferson one time. They asked him what was country, and he said, ‘If it sounds country, it’s country.’ So that’s my philosophy.”

He married English-born songwriter Dixie Deen in 1968, and the two would go on to write hundreds of bluegrass songs after Hall retired from performing in the 1990s, including “All That’s Left” which Miranda Lambert covered on her 2014 album, “Platinum.” Dixie Hall died in 2015.

In 2015, music legend Bob Dylan singled out Hall for some harsh criticism in a rambling speech at a MusiCares event. He called Hall’s song, “I Love,” “a little overcooked,” and said that the arrival of Kristofferson in Nashville “blew ol’ Tom T. Hall’s world apart.”

The criticism apparently confused Hall, as he considered Kristofferson a friend and a peer, and when asked about Dylan’s comments in an 2016 article for “American Songwriter” magazine, he responded, “What the hell was all that about?”

  

Column: Sports should require fans be vaxxed - or stay home

By PAUL NEWBERRY

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FILE - In this July 31, 2021file photo Las Vegas Raiders fans watch the team during an NFL football practice in Henderson, Nev. Vaccine verification is becoming a coronavirus fighting front in Nevada. Las Vegas' biggest trade conference on Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021, followed the NFL's Las Vegas Raiders in announcing they'll require attendees to prove they've gotten a COVID-19 inoculation. (AP Photo/David Becker, File)

The Raiders have always prided themselves on being a maverick franchise, so maybe it wasn’t too surprising that they were the first NFL team to take such a bold — yet obvious — step.

Now every other sports team — both college and pro — should follow the lead of the Silver & Black and require spectators to get vaccinated.

Amid a surge of coronavirus cases as the highly contagious delta variant spreads across the United States, Las Vegas’ football team announced this week that all fans must show proof of a jab to attend games.

“Health and safety has always been our No. 1 priority,” Raiders owner Mark Davis said. “This policy ensures that we will be able to operate at full capacity without masks for fully vaccinated fans for the entire season.”

The idea of having a packed stadium for the entire season seems out of touch with reality, given that each day brings another six-figure round of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. And while we’re at it, we wish Davis and others weren’t so eager to dump masks, a cheap, relatively low-hassle way to stifle the spread of the virus.

But requiring vaccinations — or at least a negative COVID-19 test — for fans to attend a sporting event is the most logical, effective way to deal with the spike of new cases just weeks before the start of the NFL and college football seasons.

Beyond the Raiders, there are glimmers of hope.

The city of New Orleans enacted new rules last week for indoor arenas and entertainment venues that require anyone attending a Saints game at the Superdome to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of kickoff.

Masks also will be required.

“We are committed to doing everything we can in the current environment to protect your health and safety while at the same time providing the best game day experience in the NFL,” the Saints told their fans. “We understand some will be frustrated, as are we, that we find ourselves in this position.”

Tulane, a private college in the Big Easy and member of American Athletic Conference, said it will have the same vaccination and testing requirements to attend its home sporting events, even though its football stadium is an outdoor facility.

The Green Wave thus became the first major college football program to make such a move.

On Friday, others followed their lead.

Both Oregon and Oregon State of the Pac-12 said anyone ages 12 and older attending a university event — yep, that includes football — would need a vaccine or negative test to get in.

Hawaii, a member of the Mountain West, won’t have any fans at its home football games, at least to start the season. Honolulu officials issued the ban due to a rising number of COVID-19 cases in the state and hospitals being overwhelmed, though they plan to re-evaluate that decision in coming weeks.

Beyond football, Long Beach, California, has mandated that pretty much everyone wear a mask, as well as provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test, to attend IndyCar’s Sept. 26 season finale on a street course winding along the city’s waterfront.

Bravo, Long Beach.

New Orleans’ requirements will allow the 73,000-seat Superdome to operate at full capacity during football season, which wasn’t permitted last year as the entire sports world limited how many fans could attend games to preserve social distancing.

Those policies have largely been lifted in U.S. sports, as teams and colleges try to make up for the billions in lost revenue since the start of the pandemic.

Except for Hawaii, there has been no serious talk of going back to sparsely filled or empty stadiums, even with rising death tolls and hospital ICU units packed to capacity in some states — though it must be noted there is scant evidence of sporting events becoming “superspreaders.”

Clearly, American sports have decided they will take a different path than much of the rest of the world, even in those countries that have dealt with only a fraction of our staggering toll of deaths (at least 625,000) and cases (more than 37 million).

In Tokyo, the recently completed Olympics were staged in empty arenas while the city and five other areas were under a state of emergency, and it will be the same for the Paralympics that begin next week.

The Australian Football League, which early in its season was allowing some of the largest sports crowds since the start of the pandemic, has gone back to playing in empty stadiums because of a surge in cases.

But American sports are not willing to endure another devastating assault on their almighty bottom line, so vaccinations — and masks, too — are the most reliable line of defense.

So, let’s applaud NFL teams such as the Raiders and the Saints, and colleges such as Oregon, Oregon State and Tulane, and cities such as Long Beach and Honolulu for their stances. And let’s keep pushing for leagues and college conferences to impose a universal vaccination mandate for fans to come through the gates.

Imagine the impact if not just the hugely popular NFL, but an entity as culturally influential as the Southeastern Conference or the Big Ten, had such a requirement.

Major League Baseball could get on board. NASCAR and IndyCar, too. And let’s not forget the NBA and NHL, which will be beginning new seasons in a few short months.

Without question, America’s hodge-podge approach to containing the virus has not worked. Time and time again, it has run roughshod through our cities and neighborhoods, even since highly effective vaccines became widely available.

We need sports to provide the sort of unified — and, hopefully, unifying — approach that might finally get this pandemic under control.

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Paul Newberry is a sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at pnewberry(at)ap.org or at https://twitter.com/pnewberry1963 and check out his work at https://apnews.com/search/paulnewberry

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Female scientist ‘nerdy girls’ tackle COVID-19 questions

By SARAH GANTZ, 

The Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA (AP) —

Stoked by fear of a virus that doctors and researchers knew little about, we wiped down our groceries, bought up every last roll of toilet paper, and researched how to make our own hand sanitizer.

Alison Buttenheim was no expert in infectious diseases, but as a social scientist and public health researcher, she felt compelled to help friends and family make sense of the novel coronavirus spreading quickly in the United States.

“Wash hands wash hands wash hands. Seriously, it’s like the Victory Garden equivalent of how we win this war against #COVID19US” Buttenheim, who is an associate professor of nursing and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, tweeted in late February 2020.

She wasn’t alone.

“Maybe I’m the closest thing you personally know to an infectious disease epidemiologist,” Malia Jones, a social epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote at the beginning of an email to friends and family explaining how viruses spread and offering safety tips. People started sharing the email and it soon went viral.

That’s when the two friends decided to create Dear Pandemic — an online platform where no question was too basic or embarrassing, where answers would be backed by science and a “Dear Abby” kind of level-headed reason. The project was intended as a temporary public service, to help people get through a few tough weeks of uncertainty.

But it quickly ballooned from an Instagram account to include Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a website with tens of thousands of followers. Over the last 18 months, national media outlets, the World Health Organization, and even Dr. Phil have all turned to the self-proclaimed “nerdy girls” for help deciphering the pandemic. Now, as the delta variant fuels more surges in cases, hospitalizations and deaths, largely among the unvaccinated, their help is in high demand.

“The satisfaction for me is in knowing that we have helped people navigate difficult decisions, uncertainty, and the ‘information overwhelm,’” Buttenheim said. “I’m proud that we are a trusted resource for so many — trust really is our engine and our currency.”

Within weeks of launching in spring 2020, the pair had built up a roster of scientists — all women with Ph.D.s or medical degrees — who volunteered to help answer common questions, such as:

How do I choose the best face mask? Answer: Pick one with a snug fit and adjustable nose piece made from a non-woven material. Avoid masks with ventilation valves.

How can I stay safe using a public restroom? Answer: Wear a mask, avoid touching surfaces as much as possible, wash your hands well, use a paper towel or tissue to handle the faucet.

Should I go to a “COVID party” to get sick and get it over with? Answer: No. Or as Amanda Simanek, a social epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee put it, “For the love of peanut butter and jelly, please NO, 1000 X NO!”

Much of Dear Pandemic’s work aims to explain science concepts that can help people better understand what is happening during the pandemic and how to cope, said Ashley Z. Ritter, a geriatric nurse practitioner at Penn and a founding member of the platform.

“We want it to sound like it comes from your neighbor who happens to have a Ph.D.,” said Ritter, who currently serves as the organization’s CEO, and who first suggested that Buttenheim and Jones post their pandemic advice on social media.

For instance, when followers questioned whether staying home and social isolation would weaken their immune systems, Ritter explained the difference between the friendly microbes that exist everywhere and the unfriendly microbes, which make people sick without any benefit to the immune system.

“Play in the dirt. Embrace the three-second rule. Avoid unnecessary exposure to viruses,” Ritter wrote.

And when asked whether COVID-19 could cause erectile dysfunction, Dear Pandemic editor-in-chief Jennifer Beam Dowd, an associate professor of demography and population health at the University of Oxford, wrote that, yes, it was possible, due to the virus’ effect on inflammation and the vascular system.

“But as with much COVID-19 research more, ahem, hard data is needed,” she wrote.

The group had as many as 30 contributors last summer, and currently has 15 women who regularly contribute.

The operation is almost entirely volunteer, though they do pay a graphic designer and received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to enlist racially diverse visiting experts.

“We wanted to make sure we were writing from and for a diverse set of perspectives,” Buttenheim said.

In October, they launched a Spanish-language version of the website, Querida Pandemia.

The group has also made sure its panel of experts address topics beyond infectious disease science.

Aparna Kumar, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and assistant professor at Jefferson College of Nursing, never considered herself much of a writer, but accepted Ritter’s invitation because she knew people were struggling with mental health. She wanted to offer advice some people may not feel comfortable asking for because of potential stigma.

“It brought a lot of joy through purpose. It’s been meaningful. I can use my skills — I’m not a nurse in a hospital, but I’m still able to do something,” she said.

In November, she explained exponential math — the way a virus multiplies — using pom pom visuals, and told readers who may be feeling helpless and trapped by the pandemic that what they do today matters tomorrow.

She’s also tackled how uncertainty fuels anxiety and, now that the delta variant is driving up cases again, how to cope with anger.

The questions, which followers can submit through the Dear Pandemic website, are increasingly difficult to answer because there is still much unknown.

Among the biggest challenges is how to talk to people about vaccination, when the vast majority of those who remain unvaccinated don’t plan to get the shot.

Buttenheim thinks the best way to convince holdouts is through one-on-one conversations, where they have an opportunity to voice their concerns and feel they’ve been heard. Bringing the conversation to primary care practices, where providers tend to have strong, long-lasting relationships with patients, and where it may be possible to make vaccination a standard part of care, could be particularly effective.

As always, Buttenheim said, it is important to stick to facts: No vaccine offers 100% protection from infection. You can get vaccinated and develop mild symptoms if you contract COVID-19, or you can go without the vaccine and risk severe illness or even death.

“Which version do you want?” she said.

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Dogs intended as dinner now have loving Pennsylvania homes

By MIKE ARGENTO, York Daily Record

YORK, Pa. (AP) — When Meghan Kahler and Steven Halstead adopted the Japanese mastiff, he came with the name Daniel.

He is a big, old goofy dog, emphasis on big. He has paws the size of saucers and a head the size of a volleyball. He tips the scale at more than 100 pounds, with a wide body and a back you could use as a coffee table.

Daniel didn’t seem to be a good name, the couple thought. It didn’t seem to capture his personality, or his heritage, so they changed it.

Mochi, a rescue dog from South Korea, is a little hesitant with strangers in the house. Aidan Oliver, age 11, at right, tries to sooth her with a peanut butter treat, while his parents Eric, center, and Natasha Lewis-Oliver look on at their home in Manchester Township.

They named him Ham.

It’s not short for Hamilton – as in the play or the founding father. It’s just Ham, “like Christmas ham,” Meghan said.

It made sense. They adopted Ham around Christmas 2020. And just a few months before that, Ham was destined to become ham, having been rescued from a South Korean farm where dogs were bred and raised to be food.

“We think we’re funny,” Steven said. “For a meat market dog, it’s a great name.”

‘Truly pitiful’ conditions

Ham was among 170 dogs liberated from a farm in late October last year, rescued by South Korean members of the Humane Society International’s Animal Rescue Team from the facility in Haemi, a rural town south of the capital, Seoul.

Although dog meat is not a staple in the South Korean diet, it is still part of the nation’s tradition, particularly in rural parts of the country during what’s known as Bok days, the hottest days in late July and early August. Bok days are, quite literally, the dog days of summer. Consuming dog, it is believed, increases energy and brings luck and prosperity.

The majority of South Koreans, though, abhor the practice. Eighty-four percent of South Koreans, according to a poll commissioned by the Humane Society, have never eaten dog meat and have no plans to do so. And a majority of South Koreans – 57 percent, according to the poll – believe that dog meat consumption reflects poorly on the nation, contributing to racist Asian stereotypes.

The South Korean government, responding to increased pressure, both internationally and domestically, has been leaning toward banning dog meat. Authorities, in the past couple of years, have shut down some of the nation’s largest dog meat farms, markets and slaughterhouses.

Among those was the farm in Haemi.

The 170 dogs in the farm lived in terrible conditions, kept in cages, stacked one upon another in a long, seemingly haphazard structure fashioned from PVC pipe, corrugated metal sheets and plastic tarps.

An investigator from the Humane Society described the conditions as “truly pitiful.” Nara Kim, the Humane Society’s dog meat campaign manager, said, “Every dog meat farm I’ve visited has a horrible stench of feces and rotting food, but there was something different about this dog farm; it had a smell of death. When we found these dogs, they had looks of utter despair on their faces that will haunt us forever.”

Nine of the dogs wound up at the York County SPCA. All but one has been adopted, a difficult feat considering that these dogs would need special attention to make the transition from the dinner table to the couch.

‘A chance for a better life and a little love’

Natasha Lewis-Oliver and her husband, Eric Oliver, had fostered shelter dogs while living in Baltimore. But when they moved north to York County eight years ago, they took a break from rescuing dogs to get settled in their new home in the suburbs in Manchester Township.

As dog people know, eight years is a long time to go without canine companionship. And Natasha and Eric thought it would be nice for their youngest son, Aidan, who’s 11, to have a dog.

So they visited the SPCA shelter to look over the dogs. They hadn’t set out to adopt one of the dogs rescued from South Korea. But when they laid eyes on the young Japanese mastiff – it’s believed that she’s between 2 and 3 years old – it was love at first sight.

“She was very shy,” Natasha said. “She just wouldn’t engage with people.”

When they learned about Mochi’s early life, it was a done deal. “If we could give her a home and a chance for a better life and a little love, why wouldn’t we do that?” Natasha said. Noting the scars on her legs, Eric said, “We didn’t know exactly what she went through, but we suspect it was a lot.”

They adopted her Dec. 6.

When Mochi came home, she was skittish. She went into the room that serves as Natasha’s home office and just cowered in the corner. Natasha spoke with the behavioral specialist at the SPCA who recommended getting her a crate. Since she grew up in a crate, it would provide her with a safe place. Now, she has a crate with a soft dog bed and several blankets. They never close the crate door, allowing her to come and go as she pleases.

She is still shy around strangers and, ironically, around Aidan sometimes. Eric tells her, “Aidan’s the reason you’re here. Don’t be afraid of him.”

You can tell Mochi is still kind of anxious. She seems to have a worried expression on her face constantly.

She is coming out of it, little by little. And physically, she’s doing much better. When they adopted her, you could see her ribs, Eric said. And her appetite was poor. “We almost had to force feed her,” he said.

Now, she appears healthy, and her appetite is better, preferring snacks slathered with peanut butter and the occasional pork chop or some chicken. The last time she was at the vet, she weighed 90 pounds.

When they took her to the SPCA to visit recently, the staff said Mochi was completely different, much more comfortable around people and not as skittish.

“She’s had a really tough time so a lot of things frustrate her. We just have to be loving,” Natasha said. “We know it’s going to take a lot longer because of the circumstances she came from.”

They know it’s going to take patience. “We think about what she probably experienced,” Eric said, “and it makes it easy.”

Natasha said, “It makes us happy to make her happy.”

‘It would take a lot of patience’

Shirley Lewis had a black lab mix named Sadie.

She’s retired and lives alone near Wrightsville, and Sadie provided companionship and gave her a purpose. “She does best when she has something to take care of,” her daughter, Jami Smeal, said.

She had acquired Sadie from a neighbor who had to move and couldn’t take his dog with him. Shirley adopted Sadie and the two were constant companions. Then, Sadie was diagnosed with heart failure and, at 9 years old, crossed the rainbow bridge, as they say.

Shirley had a cat, Penny, but she didn’t fill the void left by Sadie’s death. “Cats are jerks,” her daughter explained.

Jami told her mother that they would go the SPCA to look for a dog to adopt. That’s when they met Angel, an English lab rescued from the South Korean meat farm. “We went up there to meet her and just fell in love,” Jami said.

Shirley was a bit apprehensive, at first. “We were a little concerned how she would adapt and how we would adapt,” she said. “We knew it would take a lot of patience and a lot of love.”

Angel was a bit shy. Loud noises would prompt her to hunker down, making Shirley wonder about how she was treated on the farm. She was afraid of the water – Shirley lives near the Susquehanna and walks Angel by the river.

She has improved. Angel now loves the water, jumping into the river with abandon, “like a bull in a China shop,” Jami said. And loud noises don’t seem to bother her anymore. She slept through the fireworks on the Fourth of July, snoring. (“She’s a snorer,” Shirley said. “She sounds like a pig.”)

“We had to reassure her that if there was a loud noise or a quick motion, she wasn’t going to get hit,” Shirley said.

Jami said, “We just had to reassure her that we aren’t where she came from.”

And she took a lot of attention. “When she lays down,” Shirley said, “I rub her tummy and sing to her.”

She is Shirley’s constant companion. They do everywhere together.

“She’s my buddy,” Shirley said.

‘Not like any dog I ever had’

Kristen and Shannon Sweeney saw Flenderson’s Christmas photo online and fell in love.

“That’s what got us,” Shannon said. “He looked so gentle. And he looked so sad. He was not like any dog I ever had.”

When they went to the SPCA to meet him, they learned he was already adopted. The Sweeneys were crestfallen. They wanted to have a chance to turn Flenderson’s life around, to give him a chance to be a dog.

About a month later, they learned Flenderson had been returned to the shelter. It turned out that of the nine dogs that came from South Korean, Flenderson and a Samoyed named Baron were the most frightened by their new surroundings. For Baron, his fright led him to run away from his foster home and elude those trying to capture him for a week until he was struck by a car on Interstate 83. For Flenderson, his anxiety caused some behavioral problems. He liked chewing things, and the people who adopted him couldn’t handle it.

Flenderson would have an advantage in their home. They had another rescue dog, a lab-Chesapeake Bay retriever mix named Howdy that they adopted from a kill-shelter in Alabama, who could provide companionship and a role model.

Flenderson took some time to settle into their Dallastown home. “He was scared of everything,” Kristen said. “He’s on the defensive most of the time. But he’s getting better.”

She said, “When we first got him, he didn’t know how to eat or drink. That first day, he was afraid to eat. The second day, we just opened his mouth and shoved food in there.” He was terrified of everything and had a lot of anxiety. When somebody tried to pet him, he would pee or poop.

One of the expressions of his fear and anxiety is chewing. “He was a chewer,” Kristen said. “Sheets, comforters, mattresses, couches, he chewed everything. We’ve lost so many sheets and comforters.”

And he was afraid to go outside, which led to some problems when it came to housebreaking him, they said. “It was a rough start,” Kristen said.

“Overall,” she said, “he’s been a very good dog, except for the destruction.”

‘Suckers for a sad story’

Meghan Kahler and Steven Halstead are “suckers for a sad story,” Meghan said.

They’ve served as a foster family for rescued dogs from the SPCA and were, well, failures at it. The dogs would come into their North York home and they couldn’t bear to send them off to another home. In this instance, their failure as fosters turned out to be a win for the dogs.

They’ve always told the folks at the SPCA, Meghan said, “If you need any help, we’re here.”

And that’s how Ham came into their lives, joining their five other dogs, all rescues. “When our dogs met him,” Meghan said, “he was all about our dogs. It took time for him to get close to us.”

Like Flenderson, Ham is wary of people. And like Ham, he’s a chewer. “He’ll take the pillow you’re sitting on and start chewing it,” Steven said. He once ate an 8-foot-long leash, they said. (He passed it, they said.) He’s taken pictures off the wall and destroyed a neon “EAT” sign in their kitchen.

He’s come a long way since they adopted him last December. But he still has a way to go to learn to be a dog. “He’s super good in the house and listens very well,” Meghan said. “But it seems that he’s always on watch.”

On a recent trip to PetSmart, for instance, he hid behind Meghan and her cart when other people approached.

A reunion at the dog park

On a recent Monday morning, Ham was reacquainted with Flenderson and Angel at Canine Meadows at the John C. Rudy County Park. It was a hot day, one that would wind up in the 90s, truly a dog day, and the dogs and their owners sought refuge in the shade, making sure to bring water bowls for their dogs.

Flenderson and Ham seemed to recognize one another. Since they came from the same farm and are the same breed, their owners speculate that they’re either litter mates or, more likely, Flenderson, who had been a breeding dog at the farm and is older than Ham, is Ham’s father. Angel was a little shy, staying by the side of her owner.

The dogs have begun adjusting to life as pets, not as livestock. Essentially, they had to learn how to be dogs.

Their new owners shared notes, about their dogs’ progress in learning to be dogs. The Sweeneys and Meghan and Steven shared stories about things their dogs have chewed up. Meghan and Steven won that round, noting that Ham has torn up carpet and has tried to eat it and that they’ve been to the emergency vet clinic three times with him. Angel has done her share. Jami said, “I lose a pair of flip-flops a week.”

The owners chatted as the dogs lazed in the heat.

“I wish they could talk,” Jami said wistfully, “so we could know what they went through. The good thing is we know they’ll never have to go through that again.”

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Hydrogen, carbon storage project tapping into all the trends

By ANYA LITVAK AND LAURA LEGERE, 

Pittsburgh Post-Gazettean hour ago


PITTSBURGH (AP) —

For as long as the Marcellus Shale has been pumping out more natural gas than the state knows what to do with, Perry Babb has been hatching schemes to alleviate the glut.

He’s been involved in projects to compress the gas, liquify it, put it on trucks, and make things out of it. He’s the kind of prolific entrepreneur whose bankers have actually pleaded with him to stop launching new companies, Mr. Babb once confessed.

His latest venture is such a collection of hot topics that government and university scientists who’ve spent careers writing “what if” papers can hardly believe they might see their work tested in a live experiment.

It’s got hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, shale drilling, chemical production, economically distressed communities, a possible solar tie-in and an elk habitat.

“I don’t have a problem using the word miracle,” Mr. Babb, a former pastor, said of the $410 million project that’s slated to be built on a large tract of mostly empty land in Clinton County.

Without a single permit filed or the financing secured, the central Pennsylvania project — called KeyState to Zero — sums up a zeitgeist in the energy industry. After years of being the next big thing, hydrogen is having a moment inspired by the tidal wave of corporate and government commitments to reach net zero carbon emissions by various self-imposed deadlines to forestall catastrophic climate change.

“If we were talking about reducing emissions by 20-30-50 percent, I’m not sure we’d be having a conference about hydrogen,” said Capella Festa, COO of Genvia, at S&P Global’s Second Annual Hydrogen Markets Conference in May.

The newly established hydrogen venture, Genvia, is backed by the world’s largest oilfield services company, Schlumberger. The other oil and gas service giants, Baker Hughes and Halliburton, also have announced hydrogen projects.

Here’s why they are all chasing hydrogen: the path to net zero means electrifying as much as possible and churning out that electricity through increasing amounts of carbon-free sources. Hydrogen — a colorless, odorless, highly flammable gas — is a leading candidate to power industries that can’t be electrified, at least not easily, like marine transportation, cement and steel production, and long-haul freight. Hydrogen has no carbon and thus emits none when burned or reacted in fuel cells.

It also might be a lifeline for the oil and gas industry in an increasingly carbon conscious world because hydrogen is most commonly made from natural gas.

When Mr. Babb spoke at the inaugural Appalachian Hydrogen & Carbon Capture Conference at Southpointe in April, he declared: “Hydrogen is the next chapter.”

“Thank God, if you’re in the Marcellus industry, that this is not the end of natural gas,” he said.

“The best environmental thing we can do on a large scale,” Mr. Babb said, “is to have everything running on natural gas.”
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A chance encounter

Mr. Babb’s project did not start out with hydrogen. It started with a stranded asset — a 7,000-acre slot of land in Clinton County where a small natural gas company, Frontier Natural Resources, leased the rights to the natural gas and inherited four producing wells.

Frontier hired Mr. Babb to figure out what to do with that gas since there were no pipelines nearby to get it to market. Mr. Babb decided he would bring the market to the gas instead. The team built a small plant, now in the start-up phase, to liquefy the gas and load the compressed fuel into tanker trucks for local delivery.

But there was much more fuel left in the ground, so Mr. Babb — looking at the many economic development studies that predicted a slew of manufacturing plants would spring up around shale gas supplies — set out to build one that uses natural gas as a power source and a feedstock.

At first, he thought it would be a fertilizer plant. Then an ammonia and urea facility. Ammonia, made from natural gas, is used in agriculture and chemical industries. Urea, which is ammonia combined with carbon dioxide, is mostly used as a diesel exhaust fluid to reduce emissions from vehicles.

He pitched the idea at a meeting with two senior officials at the U.S. Department of Energy in December 2019. Shawn Bennett, then the deputy assistant secretary for oil and gas at DOE, was one of them.

At the time, Mr. Bennett was several months into researching a hydrogen roadmap for the U.S., which DOE released in November 2020. As a well-connected former oil and gas lobbyist in Ohio, he was also hearing rumblings about the promise of hydrogen and carbon capture in keeping the oil and gas industry relevant during the energy transition to a zero emission future.

With all that swirling around in his brain, Mr. Bennett asked Mr. Babb if he’d considered capturing and storing the carbon from his proposed manufacturing plant.

“No sir, we haven’t,” Mr. Babb said.

Had he considered making hydrogen?

“No sir, but we’ll find out about it,” Mr. Babb promised.

They never spoke again.

Mr. Bennett was tickled to find out recently that his suggestion materialized. (He is now a consultant for companies looking at hydrogen and carbon storage, but Mr. Babb’s project wasn’t on his radar.)

The hydrogen color wars

Like many trendy items, hydrogen comes in different colors.

If it’s derived from electrolysis — where renewable energy is used to power the splitting of water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen — it’s referred to as green hydrogen.

Today, the vast majority of the hydrogen that’s produced is gray. It is done through a process called steam methane reforming where very hot steam is used to produce hydrogen from methane, the primary component of natural gas. The chemical reaction also yields carbon dioxide, as does the burning of whatever fuel is used to heat the steam — most often also natural gas.

If that CO2 were captured and sequestered, that hydrogen would be called blue.

There is also pink hydrogen (where electrolysis is powered by nuclear energy) and turquoise (which involves pyrolysis), but the oil and gas industry is squarely focused on the blue variety, which it claims has the biggest decarbonization potential in the shortest time.

Pennsylvania, with its abundance of natural gas and geological pockets that might be able to store vast amounts of CO2, is a natural fit for the development of a blue hydrogen economy, proponents argue.

Former Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner Andrew Place, who now serves as director for U.S. State Energy & Climate Policy at the Clean Air Task Force, made that case last month at a Pennsylvania House Democratic Policy Committee hearing.

“From a system perspective, reforming Pennsylvania’s natural gas with (carbon capture and storage) to produce hydrogen could allow us to remain a keystone of energy supply in the region,” he said.

The state has the gas. It already has pipelines, which could be repurposed to ferry hydrogen, either blended in with natural gas or by itself, and as Mr. Place noted, there is plenty of heavy industry — especially in the western part of Pennsylvania — that could avail itself of a carbon capture and hydrogen hub if one were available.

The challenges

Hydrogen isn’t exactly a plug-and-play fuel for current pipelines. It is a much smaller molecule than natural gas and more easily leaks out of steel pipelines. It can also cause steel to become brittle, is easier to combust and burns with an invisible flame. These issues aren’t unsolvable, but would take a huge investment to solve.

Critics argue that basing a hydrogen economy on natural gas would lock in the use of fossil fuels and divert investment from green hydrogen initiatives.

Mr. Babb, who also spoke to the Democratic Policy Committee last month, believes that blue hydrogen will build the house that green hydrogen can occupy when it becomes as cost effective, which the European Union and Bloomberg New Energy Finance project might be as soon as 2030.

But cost is just one part of the equation, he said. The ability to scale up, and quickly, is perhaps more important.

“Net zero is a great policy and goal, but what happens between now and net zero?” he said.

Mr. Babb has become a go-to voice for natural gas in the energy transition. Three times within a month this winter, he was a featured presenter at state House and Senate environmental committee meetings to discuss his project.

During debate over whether to create a $667 million state tax credit for manufacturers that turn methane into petrochemicals and fertilizer, the KeyState project was touted by supporters as a key possible beneficiary of the incentive. The tax break was approved by large margins in the Legislature and signed by Gov. Tom Wolf last year.

Laboratory at scale

At this point, the list of major oil and gas companies that aren’t looking at hydrogen might be shorter than those who have made announcements over the past year.

Earlier this year, Downtown-based EQT Corp., the largest producer of natural gas in the country, said it was partnering with U.S. Steel, local universities and government researchers in exploring a hydrogen and carbon storage hub in southwestern Pennsylvania. The details are still fuzzy, but EQT’s CEO Toby Rice said he expects the company could make the cheapest hydrogen from its gas and would start experimenting with pumping CO2 down its depleted wells.

The buzz from that announcement has served Mr. Babb’s much smaller project well.

“It’s nice when you hear that substantial, mature companies are thinking about something you’re talking about,” he said. “You don’t sound so crazy.”

If things work out as Mr. Babb expects, KeyState is likely to be the first project in Pennsylvania and anywhere in the Northeast to begin commercially storing carbon dioxide in the ground.

To do so, it would need authorization from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a carbon storage well. The EPA has only permitted one such project, in Illinois, and is reviewing three other applications.

Mr. Babb has said that even if it takes years to get the carbon storage permit, that won’t keep the project from breaking ground. The ammonia and urea off-take contracts are the profit center of the deal, not the carbon capture aspect, he said, although it’s what will make the project a “laboratory at scale.”

Tom Murphy, who co-directs Penn State’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, said there are about a dozen researchers at the university interested in different aspects of Mr. Babb’s project.

For example, KeyState is working with Penn State researchers on the design of the carbon capture system, which will scale up technology they have demonstrated in smaller settings.

“It is every researcher’s dream to get their inventions and developed technologies commercialized and into practical application,” said Xiaoxing Wang, an associate research professor at Penn State who specializes in carbon capture. “Perry and his KeyState project offer us this great opportunity.”

Other members of the team will have to drill and assess possibly miles of geological layers to find out if any are suitable for storing the carbon after it is captured.

“They would have to still prove it out before they would call this a storage project,” said Kristin Carter, assistant state geologist of the Pennsylvania Geological Survey.

Still, she said, “I remember when I first met Perry and he was explaining to me what they wanted to do, I was struck by — whether it’s fortuitous or intended — they’ve got a lot going for them in this location.”

Crucially, KeyState has the right to access both the surface and subsurface on the 7,000-acre parcel. That will allow them to drill both wells for the natural gas they need for power and feedstock and wells to store carbon dioxide in perpetuity.

The carbon storage needs for the KeyState project would be modest — between 100,000 and 200,000 tons of CO2 per year, compared to a power plant that might need millions of tons of CO2 storage annually, Ms. Carter said.

Some sandstone layers a mile or less underground that had once been the target of gas drillers in the area would possibly be suitable for the relatively low volumes of CO2 that KeyState is seeking to store.

But there’s a business case for drilling much deeper.

The Appalachian Basin in Pennsylvania is at its deepest just west of the ridge and valley that cuts roughly diagonally across the state. From West Keating Township, it could take 20,000 feet or more of drilling to reach the geologic basement. If KeyState can assess all those rock layers, it may find it has more storage than it needs and can sell the space to other companies looking to sequester their CO2.

“You know what, it probably is one of the better spots to pick,” to pilot a carbon storage project in Pennsylvania, Ms. Carter said. “If you’re going to do a really good test, I would say go for where you think it might be really deep. That would be the most bang for the buck of permitting the test well and having to pay for the drilling and coring.”

Mr. Babb is already planning for just such an expansion of the yet-to-be-built project. He envisions a pipeline being built to carry CO2 from northeastern Pennsylvania.

“We want to be in a position to take other people’s emissions,” he said.

For the moment, Mr. Babb is focused on lining up financing for his next round of studies: he is in the pre-engineering and design phase now, he said, and is projecting construction might begin sometime in 2023.

“A lot of the envisioning that a person like me would do, it’s to build stamina for the big one, or the harder one,” Mr. Babb said recently, reflecting on his previously unsuccessful attempts to find a big-enough market for shale gas.

“Do those misses make me less passionate about this one? No,” he said. “If you have no hope for the future, it’s a terrible way to live.”

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