STATEHOOD OR INDEPENDENCE

FEMA Ignores Puerto Rico's Once-in-a-Lifetime Chance to Build a Clean Energy Grid

FEMA plans to spend $9.4 billion on fossil fuel infrastructure instead.

LAY POWERLINES UNDERGROUND


A person waves a flag reading "Fuera Luma" (Luma out) during a demonstration to mark May Day, or International Workers' Day, in San Juan, Puerto Rico on May 1, 2021. 

(Photo by Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images)

PATRICK PARENTEAU,

  RACHEL STEVENS

October 13, 2021

 by The Conversation

The Biden Administration has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help Puerto Rico transition to a greener and more resilient energy future, but it's on the verge of making a multibillion-dollar mistake.

Since Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, many residents and environmental advocates have called for new clean energy sources for the island. Currently Puerto Rico gets more than 97% of its electricity from imported fossil fuel. Power is expensive and unreliable.

As environmental lawyers and professors of law, we are surprised to see FEMA move forward on a path that runs directly counter to the White House's energy and climate policy.

Puerto Rico adopted laws that called for generating 15% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, 40% by 2025, 60% by 2040 and 100% by 2050. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which controls relief funding for the island, appears ready to underwrite a rebuild of the old fossil fuel system.

As environmental lawyers and professors of law, we are surprised to see FEMA move forward on a path that runs directly counter to the White House's energy and climate policy. President Joe Biden has called for a governmentwide approach that promotes clean energy, protects public health and the environment, and advances environmental justice.

In our view, FEMA's actions don't support those goals. They also ignore legal requirements for federal agencies to carefully weigh the environmental impacts of major actions.

Power lines toppled by Hurricane Maria in Alta Vega, Puerto Rico, Sept. 30, 2017.

 (Photo: Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

Rebuild or replace with a more resilient green system?

In September 2017, Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico with sustained winds of 155 mph. It tore a diagonal 100-mile swath across the island, demolishing tens of thousands of homes and washing away roads and bridges.

The storm toppled transmission and cell towers, snapped concrete power poles, battered power plants and plunged the island into darkness. It killed an estimated 3,000 people and caused over US$90 billion in damages.

In response, Congress authorized some $23 billion in disaster aid, including at least $10 billion to restore or replace Puerto Rico's electricity grid. It also passed the Disaster Recovery Reform Act to promote a more flexible energy system that could withstand and recover quickly from climate disruptions.

FEMA, which administers the funds, has allocated $9.4 billion for rebuilding Puerto Rico's electricity system and will start approving projects after it receives more details explaining how the work will be performed. So far, none of this money has been earmarked for renewable power, except for a small sum to repair a hydroelectric dam that provides less than 1% of the island's power.

The organizations making decisions in Puerto Rico are the Commonwealth's Electric Power Authority, known as PREPA, and Luma Energy, a private company that received a 15-year contract in 2021 to manage power transmission and distribution on the island. PREPA and Luma have proposed hundreds of projects for the coming decade, but none include federal funding for rooftop solar, community solar, battery storage or microgrids. Advocates say that this kind of small-scale local generation would make the island's electricity cheaper, cleaner and more reliable.

A 2015 study by the nonprofit Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found that investing in solar and wind power and energy efficiency could transform Puerto Rico's electrical system into a resilient grid. And in 2020, the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated that rooftop solar power in Puerto Rico could generate roughly four times as much electricity as residents currently use.
Federal law requires weighing the options

Spending almost $10 billion to rewire an island with 3 million residents is clearly a major federal action with significant environmental impacts. Under the National Environmental Policy Act, agencies undertaking such actions must prepare an environmental impact statement that takes a hard look at alternatives and invites meaningful public input.

PREPA and Luma's proposed plan includes reconstructing and hardening nearly all of Puerto Rico's transmission lines and building at least two new natural gas-fired power plants. Burning more natural gas will affect air and water quality and contribute to climate change. Natural gas is shipped to Puerto Rico in liquid form, so using more of it also means expanding import facilities and pipelines.

Instead of producing a full-scale environmental impact statement, FEMA produced a superficial programmatic environmental assessment—a narrower study that did not weigh other options. It concluded that there would be "no significant impact" from rebuilding Puerto Rico's fossil fuel-based energy system. The study did not mention climate change, which scientists widely agree is making hurricanes larger and more destructive.

Beyond a pro forma invitation for public comment, FEMA made no effort to engage with overburdened communities of color that have disproportionately suffered from pollution and climate change under Puerto Rico's energy system. This directly contradicts Biden's order to place environmental justice at the center of federal energy and climate policy.

The National Environmental Policy Act also requires agencies to "study, develop and describe appropriate alternatives to recommended courses of action." FEMA's environmental assessment only considers rebuilding and hardening the existing grid, and does not mention renewable energy. When some public commenters criticized this omission, FEMA responded that it was not responsible for considering alternative means of generating electricity.

Advancing the public interest

Both PREPA and Luma are proponents of an energy strategy that centers on importing natural gas. Federal law requires FEMA to take a broader approach and ensure that it spends federal money in ways that support U.S. environmental goals.

Courts have held that environmental justice is not simply a box to be checked. In our view, the law clearly requires FEMA to give Puerto Ricans—who have lived with a creaky power system for four years—a seat at the table before it starts writing checks for projects that affect their lives.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License



Patrick Parenteau is a Professor of Law at Vermont Law School.


Rachel Stevens is Professor of Law & Staff Attorney at Vermont Law School.

The United States Must Rejoin the Global Biodiversity Conservation Community

In recent decades, the U.S. federal government, growing more and more isolationist, has abandoned its role in global conservation of biodiversity.


Snow geese, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico. After spending the winter in New Mexico, the snow geese go to the Arctic (Alaska, Nunavut, Siberia) for nesting and rearing their young. (Photo: Subhankar Banerjee, 1998).

LONG READ

SUBHANKAR BANERJEE

COMMON DREAMS

October 12, 2021

After a long stretch of public inattention, biodiversity conservation is a hot topic again, as if we had suddenly been jolted into awareness that our survival as a species, too, depends on the flourishing of all the other nonhuman beings who inhabit this Earth. Articles and op-eds are now filling print and online spaces. This, of course, is very encouraging, but no one is speaking about the elephant in the room or, rather, not in the room: the United States federal government is missing from the global biodiversity conservation community.

The climate crisis requires that we work together, and so does biodiversity.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is moving full speed ahead on the creation of a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework that is expected to be finalized and adopted at the UN Biodiversity Conference COP15, scheduled to take place, in-person, in Kunming, China, next year. The first part of the negotiations started on Monday, with meetings to take place virtually through Friday of this week. The United States, however, is not at the table helping to shape that Framework as an official member. Why?

Check the "List of Parties" page on the CBD website, and you'll find a long, numbered list of nation states, 196 in total. But there are also two unnumbered entries at the very bottom: the "Holy See" and then, dead last, "United States of America." The U.S. did sign the agreement in 1993, a year after the CBD was established at the historic 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, but never ratified it. Hence the ignominious bottom-of-the-pile spot it occupies today. And not only is the U.S. not a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, it hasn't joined the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) either.

This is embarrassing. More importantly, it is also sad.

It is sad because the United States was the first country in the world to establish a federal agency for biodiversity conservation, the first to establish a national wildlife refuge, the first to establish a transnational migratory species conservation treaty, the first to help steer a hemispheric treaty to protect wild animals and plants across the Americas, and the first to establish a legal framework to protect species that are in peril. One cringes to see the United States now hunkered on that last, unnumbered spot on the "List of Parties" committed to biological diversity. To understand our current disgrace, a quick look back might prove helpful.

A brief history of U.S. leadership in biodiversity conservation

At the turn of the twentieth century, alarmed by decades of industrial-scale massacres of wild birds to support the demands in the cities for plumes for the fashion industry and wild meat for game markets, the U.S. federal government and conservation advocates took action. In 1896, the Division of Biological Survey was established within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with a mandate to study the nation's birds and other wildlife. Five years later, President Theodore Roosevelt established the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge on the ancestral lands of the Miccosukee Tribe along Florida's Atlantic coast. This action provided the foundation of a conservation system that today comprises more than 150 million acres with nearly 570 national wildlife refuges strewn across the nation, including the imperiled Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which harbors a vibrant biological nursery of global significance.

Buff-breasted sandpiper courtship display, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Born in the Arctic tundra, these sandpipers spend the winter in the Pampas grasslands of Argentina and other places in South America (Photo: Subhankar Banerjee, 2002).

In 1905, the Division of Biological Survey was renamed the Bureau of Biological Survey. The same year saw the creation of the National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals. Five years later, the Bureau of Biological Survey published a 100-page report by one of its ornithologists, Wells W. Cooke's "Distribution and Migration of North American Shorebirds." Cooke's report, not the kind one would expect from a government scientist, is a curious but effective mix of scientific facts and passionate appeals for conservation. In the end, the efforts of the Bureau of Biological Survey and the grassroots campaigns organized by members of the Audubon Society were successful: in 1916, the United States and Great Britain (representing Canada) signed a treaty to protect migratory birds. Two years later, the U.S. Congress passed the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) of 1918.

In 1940, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service emerged from a fusion of the Bureau of Biological Survey and the Bureau of Fisheries and was placed within the Department of the Interior. The same year, at a gathering in Washington, DC, the United States and other nations across the Americas drafted and adopted the Convention on Nature Protection and Wildlife Preservation in the Western Hemisphere. Initially signed by 18 nations, with four more to follow in later years, the hemispheric treaty aimed to protect all wild animals and plants across the Americas.

In 1962, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, a former biologist and writer with the Fish and Wildlife Service, brought critical attention to industrial chemicals that threaten the survival of birds and animals. Carson's bestselling book marked a turning point and a watershed moment for species conservation, which now was about so much more than protecting land and water. The worldwide campaign for environmental justice had begun.

Remembering Rachel Carson at the Edge of the Sea: sea star mass die-off, Olympic National Park, Washington. (Photo: Subhankar Banerjee, 2015).

In 1966, catalyzed in part by Carson's writing, the U.S. Congress passed the Endangered Species Preservation Act. Three years later, the Act was expanded and renamed the Endangered Species Conservation Act of 1969, which in turn became the basis for the 1973 Endangered Species Act. It is widely recognized that the Endangered Species Act and its precursors have inspired other nations to establish similar frameworks for species conservation. In 1973, the United States also convened a conference in Washington, DC, during which eighty nations agreed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Thus, from the early twentieth century through 1973, the United States federal government spearheaded many historic species conservation initiatives, in conversation and cooperation with other nations, which led to binational, hemispheric, and international treaties to protect wild animals and plants with whom we share this Earth.

And then the story changed, and not for the better.

The U.S. abandons its role in global biodiversity conservation

In recent decades, the U.S. federal government, growing more and more isolationist, has abandoned its role in the global conservation about biodiversity. Yet the biodiversity crisis, which includes the extinction of species and rapid decline of populations, has not abated. It is just as severe, just as consequential, and just as difficult to mitigate as the climate crisis. Both are intensifying, and both are caused by human action (and, exacerbated by inaction).

On September 29, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that the agency is proposing to remove 23 species from the Endangered Species list and preparing to declare those species extinct, a sad awakening. Nearly 3 billion birds have died in the U.S. since 1970, with a 53% decline in populations for grassland birds and 37% decline for shorebirds. What is not so widely known, however, is that the United States ranks #7 globally in terms of the number of threatened species, with 1,851 species currently in peril in the U.S., according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

While the "America the Beautiful" conservation initiative of the Biden-Harris administration is certainly admirable, we can no longer afford to limit our efforts to what is happening within our boundaries. The United States must immediately end its isolationist approach and rejoin the global biodiversity conservation community.

If there is one lesson we have learned from the no-end-in-sight coronavirus pandemic, it is this: there must be cooperation among nations and with the United Nations. The climate crisis requires that we work together, and so does biodiversity.

The three turning points of modern biodiversity conservation

As I see it, modern biodiversity conservation has three distinct turning points. The first two are marked not so much by the severity of the biodiversity crisis observed at the time but rather by the significant actions that conservation advocates and governments took to mitigate the loss of nonhuman lives. The first turn—the dawn of modern biodiversity conversation—happened at the turn of the twentieth century and remained focused primarily on protection of land and water and banned the massacre of wild birds for commercial purposes. The second turning point, the publication of Silent Spring in 1962, redirecting our attention to the impact of industrial chemicals on the biodiversity crisis, warned us that destroying the web of life would mean destroying ourselves, which provided a foundation for environmental justice.

We have now reached a third turning point. What makes this moment so distinctive, again, is not so much the intensifying biodiversity crisis itself and its drivers, including massive habitat loss and climate change, which are very concerning of course, but rather the promise of a new model of biodiversity conservation.

The most spirited, and most acrimonious, global debates are being triggered by different approaches to biodiversity conservation. While western ecologists dream about setting aside "protected areas" (e.g. the Harvard entomologist E. O. Wilson's "Half-Earth" project), many Indigenous human rights activists and their allies denounce that approach as "fortress conservation" and illuminate its cruel history: the evictions of Indigenous and marginalized peoples from their homelands, the criminalization of their traditions, the destruction of their food security, the severing of sacred relations they enjoy with their nonhuman kin, and the extrajudicial murders of defenders of the environment and ancestral lands. These activists and human rights institutions now demand a new, rights-based approach to biodiversity conservation.

In August, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment issued a policy brief, "Human rights-based approaches to conserving biodiversity: equitable, effective and imperative," which offers a thoughtful critique of the "fortress conservation" model. In light of this significant brief, it is imperative that the United States rejoin the UN Human Rights Council, from which the country withdrew three years ago.

We have a historic opportunity to turn a corner in the global biodiversity conversation and to develop a more just model that, while it takes what it can from western science, doesn't slight the voices of those who have been stewards of their environments for centuries.

Environmental organizations like Defenders of Wildlife in the United States are stepping up to meet this third turning point. As I write, Defenders is facilitating a national bi-lingual (English / Spanish) student letter campaign calling on President Biden to establish a National Biodiversity Strategy and a whole-of-government approach to mitigate the biodiversity crisis. Each nation that is a Party to the Convention on Biological Diversity develops a national biodiversity strategy. The youth-led letter campaign, then, is also, laying a foundation for the U.S. to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity.

National Biodiversity Strategy Student Letter Banner. (Illustration: Alexandria Zuniga de Dóchas, 2021).

We should all be supporting these efforts and, the Biden administration should take heed of them and not only act but also build on them. Right now, the U.S. is uniquely positioned to reclaim its leadership role in biodiversity conservation, with Madame Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous cabinet secretary, at the helm of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Hailing from Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico, Secretary Haaland cares deeply about biodiversity conservation, and environmental equity and justice. Occupying such an influential post, she can aid President Biden and provide the necessary leadership to bring the United States back into the global biodiversity conservation community. At the same time, she may also act as a bridge builder between the two models of biodiversity conservation: the rights-based approach to conservation of Indigenous activists and the protected area model proposed by western ecologists.

Three decades ago this month, the first National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit was held in Washington, DC. At that gathering, the participants drafted and adopted the "Principles of Environmental Justice". I foresee that before long there will be a similar but expanded gathering where the participants would draft and adopt a "Principles of Multispecies Justice" to mitigate the intensifying biodiversity crisis—a set of principles to protect our nonhuman relatives and also the relations the Indigenous and other ecosystem peoples have built with their nonhuman kin.

In summary, to advance a more just biodiversity conservation agenda at this third turning point, at a minimum, four actions need to be taken, three by the United States government and one by the global community. The United States needs to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity; needs to join the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals; and needs to rejoin the UN Human Rights Council. And the global community, with the U.S. included, need to come together and draft and adopt a Principles of Multispecies Justice, which could then shape a more just Global Biodiversity Framework. The process that the UN Convention on Biological Diversity has so far followed, to develop the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework draft, appears to have been largely top-down and rushed and adopted a "conservation as usual" model. The CBD needs to slow down and make a "dramatic departure" from its current path and expand its model of biodiversity conservation to also include rights-based approaches (and, not merely as token for the sake of inclusion but as equal to the other approaches), as has been urged by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment in the recent policy brief.

This is truly an auspicious moment for biodiversity conservation. Madame Secretary Haaland, please don't miss this opportunity.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Subhankar Banerjee works closely with Indigenous Gwich’in and Iñupiat community members and environmental organizations to protect significant biological nurseries in Arctic Alaska. Author of "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land" (Mountaineers Books, 2003), and editor of "Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point" (Seven Stories Press, 2013), Subhankar is currently completing two books: coeditor (with T.J. Demos and Emily Eliza Scott) of "Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture and Climate Change" (Routledge, Spring 2021), and coauthor (with Ananda Banerjee) of "Biological Annihilation" (Seven Stories Press, Spring 2022). Subhankar serves as the founding Director of the Species in Peril project at UNM.

In 2021, US on Pace for Most Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters Since Records Began

"What we are seeing now with these increasing disasters is with just one degree of warming on our planet," said one scientist. "We have to choose now between bad or terrible outcomes."

Flames rip across a hillside behind a building donning a U.S. flag as the Caldor Fire pushes into South Lake Tahoe, California on August 30, 2021.

 (Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)


KENNY STANCIL

COMMON DREAMS

October 12, 2021

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday in its latest monthly report that the United States endured 18 "billion-dollar weather and climate disasters" through the first nine months of 2021, putting this year on pace to be among the worst for such catastrophes.

For decades, scientists have sounded the alarm that extreme weather would become more frequent and intense amid the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency. With 18 calamities costing at least $1 billion already on the books and three months to go, 2021 is second only to 2020, when there were 22 such events.

Before it was surpassed last year, the previous annual record for billion-dollar disasters was 16—reached in 2011 and matched in 2017. While last year saw a greater number of billion-dollar disasters, 2021 is outpacing 2020 through September

.


Furthermore, although not all of the destruction has been calculated, this year's events have already proven more expensive, causing $104.8 billion in damages compared with $100.4 billion in 2020. The costliest years to date are 2017 and 2005, when Hurricanes Harvey and Katrina devastated Houston and New Orleans, respectively.

Communities across the nation have been ravaged by a variety of extreme weather events in 2021, which have resulted in the deaths of 538 people.

Some of the most notable billion-dollar disasters that occurred between January and September include the winter storm that wrecked Texas' isolated, deregulated, and fossil fuel-dependent power grid, causing dozens to freeze to death; relentless Western drought, heatwaves, and wildfires that have burned nearly 6.5 million acres to date and killed over two hundred people; and the highly destructive Hurricane Ida, which barreled into the Gulf Coast's extensive petrochemical infrastructure, leaving dozens of oil spills in its wake, and also pummeled the Northeast, adding more casualties.

Just as climate scientists have warned it would, unmitigated greenhouse gas pollution is producing higher temperatures and more extreme weather—leading to more and more catastrophic events.

Since NOAA started keeping such records in 1980, the U.S. has been hammered by 308 billion-dollar disasters, claiming 15,030 lives and costing roughly $2.1 trillion—with annual averages of just over seven events, 358 deaths, and approximately $50 billion in damages.

The average number of annual billion-dollar disasters has skyrocketed from about three events nationwide per year in the 1980s to more than 12 events per year in the 2010s. The average number of annual deaths has also increased over the decades, from 287 per year in the 1980s to 522 per year in the 2010s.

From 2016 to 2020—the five hottest years on record—there were more than 16 separate billion-dollar disasters per year, on average. Combined, the 81 events killed nearly 4,000 people, or more than a quarter of the death toll since 1980, and cost $640.3 billion, accounting for over 30% of the 40-year financial toll.

Researchers at Climate Central recently pointed out that the growing frequency of calamitous events "can strain the resources available for communities to recover quickly and manage future risks."

According to their new analysis, the average time between billion-dollar disasters has declined from 82 days in the 1980s to just 18 days on average in the past five years (2016-2020).

Climate Central argued that NOAA's "staggering figures primarily reflect direct impacts on assets (including damage to homes, crops, and critical infrastructure) and therefore don't reflect the full toll of disasters—including on human health and well-being, displacement, food and water supplies, as well as loss of cultural heritage, biodiversity, and habitats."

"Nor do these figures convey the disproportionate impacts of disasters on people in poverty or the need for equitable allocation of federal disaster assistance in accordance with social vulnerability," the group added.

And the U.S. is far from alone in experiencing an uptick in extreme weather events, which are also decimating impoverished nations around the globe.

Related Content

'Uninhabitable Hell' for Millions: UN Report Sounds Alarm on Humanity's Continued Destruction of Planet Earth
Brett Wilkins

Last year, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction reported a "staggering" increase in climate-related disasters worldwide, which nearly doubled from 3,656 between 1980 and 1999 to 6,681 between 2000 and 2019.

Camilo Mora, a professor of geography at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, told the Washington Post on Tuesday that "the poorest countries in the world are the ones that we know the least about."

"If it is already bad in the countries that have the money to study," he continued, "you can just imagine what is happening in the developing countries."

"What we are seeing now with these increasing disasters is with just one degree of warming on our planet," Mora added. "Looking into the future, our best-case scenario is 1.5 degrees [Celsius] of warming, and the worst case is 5 degrees. We have to choose now between bad or terrible outcomes."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Our Health Depends on Indigenous Botanical Knowledge and Plants That Are Rapidly Being Destroyed

The decline is one of the effects of the industrial modernization that is supposed to have brought increasing comfort, health, and advanced knowledge into our lives.

A farmer tries to pour water on an area close to an illegally lit fire in the Amazon rainforest, south of Novo Progresso in the Brazilian state of Pará on August 15, 2020. (Photo: Carl de Souza/AFP via Getty Images)


JOHN BUELL

October 12, 2021

 by Informed Comment

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – While mainstream media celebrate the remarkable development in record time of vaccines spectacularly effective against the Covid virus, knowledge that might contribute to other medical breakthroughs is being steadily undermined. This decline is not the result of some dramatic lawsuit or corporate takeover. It is one of the effects of the industrial modernization that is supposed to have brought increasing comfort, health and advanced knowledge into our lives. Economic growth has produced not only a climate emergency but a less publicized decline in the many efficacious forms of traditional knowledge and the biodiversity they sustain and are sustained by. In an email exchange I had with ethnobotanist Kirsten Tripplett, Ph.D., she pointed out:

“the generally accepted understanding is that 12-25% of “Western” medicine is derived or based on plant molecules/chemical backbones…It depends who’s talking and what their agenda is. And that is JUST in Western medicine. There are other, much older and empirically-based medicinal systems out there that are incredibly effective, but most U.S. citizens are unaware or only dimly, of them. Not only is the loss of language directly linked to knowledge loss and potential medical/economic loss, but think of all of the practical and useful things that get lost, too.”

When Brazil President Bolsanaro encouraged more forestry development in the Amazon, global climate advocates worried about the lungs of the planet and the contribution to global warming. They might equally have been concerned with the indigenous knowledge going up in smoke.

Sibélia Zanon writing at nature site Mongabay reports:


“A study at the University of Zurich in Switzerland shows that a large proportion of existing medicinal plant knowledge is linked to threatened Indigenous languages. In a regional study on the Amazon, New Guinea and North America, researchers concluded that 75% of medicinal plant uses are known in only one language.” She reports that 91% of medicinal knowledge exists in a single language, so the loss of linguistic diversity diminished the former as well.

Nor are medicines all that is lost. She adds,

“Every time a language disappears, a speaking voice also disappears, a way to make sense of reality disappears, a way to interact with nature disappears, a way to describe and name animals and plants disappears,” says Jordi Bascompte, researcher in the Department of Evolutional Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich.”

As indigenous peoples rely on the spoken word for intergenerational knowledge transfer, the disappearance of these languages will take with them a universe of information. The possible losses include fundamental neurological facts about the human brain. Jairus Grove, author of Savage Ecology, cites work by neurologists showing that each language contains a different cognitive map of the human brain. Sometimes the differences are very significant and open up important research potential. Grove cites work by linguist David Harrison on the Uririna people of Peru showing that some, though very few, languages place the object of the sentence at the beginning. Were it not for the continued existence of this people, neuroscientists would not even suspect or know that the human brain could be wired in such a way to make O-V-S sentences possible.

Grove points out that most Indo European languages have an active subject, verb, passive object form, but there are minority cultures that do not express that format. In a world beset by the dangerous exploitation of the natural world these minority cultures may teach us more about how to survive and thrive in this world. In this context Tripplett points out that agency is not confined to the human world. The unwillingness to recognize and accept this fact could have increasingly dire consequences.

Dr. Kirsten Tripplett writes, “It’s a long leap conceptually to make, but if one accepts a premise that “language” isn’t just spoken, and that knowledge is transmitted through actions and lifeways, then loss of biological species and their exploitation to serve human interests, is a critical loss, too, for the same reasons as those cited above . . .”

Grove has similar worries: “Irreversible catastrophic changes are certain but extinction is unlikely. What we stand to lose as a species in this current apocalypse of homogenization is unimaginable, not because of the loss of life but because of the loss of difference. Who and what will be left on Earth to inspire and ally with us in our creative advance is uncertain. If the future is dominated by those who seek to establish the survival of the human species at all costs through technological mastery then whatever “we” manages to persist will likely live on or near a mean and lonely planet.” (Savage Ecology, p. 209)

Why this loss of cultural diversity? There is first the reductionist tendency to treat cultural diversity and biodiversity as separate issues rather than as continuously interacting. Zanon further quotes Jordi Bascompte: “We can’t ignore this network now and think only about the plants or only about the culture . . . We humans are very good at homogenizing culture and nature so that nature seems to be more or less the same everywhere.”

This homogenization process includes reduction of human labor to cogs in a corporate machine, to cookie cutter development to the planned obsolescence and corporate-dominated consumer culture. Most important is a neoliberal financial system fostering increasing wealth gaps within and among nations. In this context it is especially important to preserve alternative ways of being in the world and their origins and history. Despite efforts to homogenize many indigenous cultures some retain their vitality. But their survival will depend on bottom-up activism and rules, laws, and practices negotiated across race, ethnicity, religion, and class.

As Subhankar Banerjee argues, saving elephants in different states presents complex problems. More broadly biodiversity conservation is contextual. What works for one place and in a particular culture may not work for another place and in another culture. This is not, however, cultural relativism. Biodiversity advocates value most those cultures that seek space for difference and for a politics that celebrates that end.

Banerjee again: “What makes biodiversity conservation so beautiful is that it is a pluriverse—so many ideas, so many practices, so many forms of human-nonhuman kinship that exist around the world, which in a different context, a quarter-century ago, Indian historian Ramachandra Guha and Spanish ecological-economist Juan Martinez-Alier called Varieties of Environmentalism.”

To help indigenous peoples worldwide preserve, revitalize and promote their languages, UNESCO has launched its Decade of Action for Indigenous Languages from 2022 to 203. This is a principle worthy of much more attention than it receives. For that situation to change more than proclamations of rights will be necessary, including political movements celebrating and willing to fight for economic justice and biological and cultural diversity.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

John Buell has a PhD in political science, taught for 10 years at College of the Atlantic, and was an Associate Editor of The Progressive for ten years. He lives in Southwest Harbor, Maine and writes on labor and environmental issues. His most recent book, published by Palgrave in August 2011, is "Politics, Religion, and Culture in an Anxious Age."

AOC Warns Pelosi and Schumer: 'We Can't Negotiate Reconciliation Bill Down to Nothing'

"The Build Back Better reconciliation package is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a sustainable and prosperous future for our country."



Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at a rally in New York City on June 5, 2021.

 (Photo: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON

COMMON DREAMS

October 12, 2021

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined seven of her fellow New York Democrats on Tuesday in issuing a warning to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: Don't cut funding for housing, transportation, or immigration reform from the emerging reconciliation bill in an attempt to appease right-wing lawmakers.

"We can't let corporate interests, Big Pharma, and a few conservative Democrats stand in our way of delivering."

"We can't negotiate the reconciliation bill down to nothing," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

In their letter, the New York Democrats argued that "the Build Back Better reconciliation package is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a sustainable and prosperous future for our country—affordable housing; quality, sustainable, and accessible public transportation; and sound immigration reform must remain priorities in the debate."

Specifically, the House Democrats urged Pelosi and Schumer to ensure that the final reconciliation package includes $80 billion in funding for public housing, a $10 billion investment in public transportation, and $107 billion to "expand safety-net protections and create a pathway to citizenship for millions of DACA recipients, people with temporary protected status, essential workers, and farm workers."

"It is vital that we preserve the entirety of this funding allocation, not only because these communities have been the backbone of our national economy throughout this pandemic and beyond, but also because the U.S. is their only home and refuge from the political, economic, and climate disasters they are fleeing," the lawmakers wrote.


The message from Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the New York congressional delegation was made public hours after Pelosi circulated a "Dear Colleague" letter indicating that the Democratic leadership could be considering cutting programs from the reconciliation bill in order to lower its $3.5 trillion price tag—an effort aimed at securing the votes of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), and other corporate-backed holdouts.

"Overwhelmingly," Pelosi wrote, "the guidance I am receiving from members is to do fewer things well so that we can still have a transformative impact on families in the workplace and responsibly address the climate crisis."

That approach could spark backlash from progressive lawmakers such as Ocasio-Cortez, who has argued that Democrats should shorten the duration of programs to reduce costs, not cut out key priorities. Pelosi did not specify which programs are at risk of being removed from the reconciliation package, which is a centerpiece of President Joe Biden's domestic policy agenda.

"One of the ideas that's out there is: fully fund what we can fully fund, but maybe instead of doing it for 10 years, we fully fund it for five years," Ocasio-Cortez said during an interview with CBS earlier this month. "I think it's unfortunate that we have to even, as Democrats, have a discussion about not having a child tax credit. I think it's unfortunate that we have to compromise with ourselves for an ambitious agenda for working people."

Speaking to the press Tuesday morning, Pelosi suggested that Democrats could go the route suggested by Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives—a message that conflicts with the sentiment of her "Dear Colleague" letter. The House Speaker voiced "hope" that Democrats ultimately won't have to drop any programs from the reconciliation measure.

The push by right-wing Democrats to slash the reconciliation bill's price tag has set off a scramble among lawmakers to ensure that programs they support—from Medicare expansion to the expanded child tax credit to paid family leave—aren't left on the cutting room floor. Progressive lawmakers in the House and Senate have argued that there is no need to pit priorities against one another in the name of fiscal restraint.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told reporters Tuesday that "$3.5 trillion is already a major compromise."

"The time is now long overdue for Sen. Manchin and Sen. Sinema to tell us… where do they want to cut?" Sanders added.

Referring to progressives' effort to expand Medicare benefits to cover dental, hearing, and vision, the Vermont senator said: "This to me is not negotiable. This is what the American people want."



During a recent closed-door Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) meeting, according to the Washington Post, "members stood up one by one to vouch for establishing universal pre-K, making the child tax credit permanent, and guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid family leave."

"Others mentioned the need to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision, which would get them one step closer to the progressive goal of Medicare for All," the Post noted.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—chair of the 96-member CPC—declared that "the agenda that Progressives are fighting for IS the president's agenda."

"We must pass the full Build Back Better Act—and we can't let corporate interests, Big Pharma, and a few conservative Democrats stand in our way of delivering," Jayapal added.

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Sanders, Jayapal Say Medicare Expansion in Reconciliation Package 'Not Negotiable'

"This is what the American people want," the socialist senator from Vermont insisted.


Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) appear at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2019. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

BRETT WILKINS

COMMON DREAMS

October 12, 2021

As congressional progressives push back against right-wing Democrats seeking to shrink the size and scope of the Build Back Better Act, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Tuesday insisted that expanded Medicare benefits must remain part of the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package.

"I do understand that the healthcare industry does not like this idea, but maybe, just maybe, we stand with the American people."

In a call with journalists reported by The Hill, Sanders (I-Vt.), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, adamantly declared that dental, hearing, and vision benefits must be added to Medicare as part of the Democrats' flagship package.

"This to me is not negotiable," he said. "This is what the American people want."

Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, backed Sanders—the group's only Senate member—saying his stance is also "the position of the House Progressive Caucus."

Sanders, in recent tweets, has pointed to polling showing that expanding Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision is overwhelmingly popular, with 84% of U.S. voters supporting the proposal. A new survey published Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation also found that 83% of respondents favor empowering Medicare to leverage its prodigious purchasing power to secure lower prescription drug prices.

Sanders noted industry opposition to Medicare expansion during Tuesday's call.

"I do understand that the healthcare industry does not like this idea, but maybe, just maybe, we stand with the American people," he said. "There are millions of seniors who have rotting teeth in their mouths or are unable to hear what their grandchildren are saying."

Echoing her progressive colleagues, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted: "We are fighting for roads and bridges, universal child care, Medicare expansion, and climate investments. We know what we need and progressives in Congress will continue to hold strong."

Earlier Tuesday, Common Dreams reported that eight House Democrats representing New York City—including progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman—sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warning them against slashing funding for public housing, transportation, and immigration reform from the Build Back Better Act.

"We can't negotiate the reconciliation bill down to nothing," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

However, Pelosi indicated in a Monday letter to House colleagues that Democratic leaders are open to considering scaling back the proposed legislation to reduce its $3.5 trillion cost in a bid to win the support of right-wing Democrats including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who have balked at the bill's price tag.

Responding to the letter, Sanders said that "$3.5 trillion is already a major compromise."

Tweeting Tuesday against potential cuts in the bill, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) said that "we cannot pit child care against Medicare expansion, or pre-K against free community college."

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The Media Keeps Getting It Wrong: The Democrats Are Not Divided

Just a few members out of the hundreds of Democrats elected to the House and Senate are stalling the President's agenda.

(L-R) Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and other Congressional Democrats hold a rally and news conference ahead of a House vote on health care and prescription drug legislation in the Rayburn Room at the U.S. Capitol May 15, 2019 in Washington, D.C. 

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

PETER DREIER

October 12, 2021

 by Talking Points Memo (TPM)

Historians describe Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1936 presidential victory (with 60.8% of the popular vote), Lyndon Johnson's 1964 triumph (61.1%), and Ronald Reagan's 1984 win (58.8%) as "landslide" elections. Likewise, in 2018, the San Diego Union-Tribune and many other news outlets described Democrat Gavin Newsom's defeat of Republican John Cox for the California governorship by a 62% to 32% margin as a "landslide." When a recent poll found that 65% of Americans support vote-by-mail during the COVID pandemic, a USA Today headline proclaimed that the support was "overwhelming." Reporting on a survey showing that 73% of American voters supported President Biden's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, another news outlet, The Hill, described it as an "overwhelming majority." A news story reporting that 94% of American voters embrace universal background checks for gun-buyers called that support "near unanimous." A few years ago, another news story used the same phrase—"near unanimous"—when 61 of 64 coaches (95.3%) ranked the University of Alabama football team as the best in the country.

Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, typically described as "moderates" or "centrists," are the only hold-outs.

Currently, 96% of Democrats in Congress support President Biden's social safety net and clean energy reconciliation package, but the the media have consistently described the Democrats as "deeply divided," "fractious," "feuding," and even "in disarray" over the plan. "The Democrats are at war with each other," said Washington Post reporter Robert Costa on a recent episode of the Bill Maher show.

In the Senate, 48 of the 50 Democrats (96%) embrace the Biden legislation. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, typically described as "moderates" or "centrists," are the only hold-outs.

In the House, 210 out of 220 Democrats (again, 96%) have indicated that they will vote for Biden's plan, which would invest $3.5 trillion over ten years in child care, education, health care, and climate change. Only 10 House Democrats (also described as "moderates" or "centrists")—Carolyn Bourdeaux (Georgia), Ed Case (Hawaii), Scott Peters and Jim Costa (California), Henry Cuellar, Filemon Vela, and Victor Gonzalez (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), and Kurt Schrader (Oregon)—are not yet on board the Biden plan.

The 95-member House Progressive Caucus initially embraced Senator Bernie Sanders' plan for a $6 trillion (over ten years) package, but agreed to support Biden's much trimmed-down $3.5 trillion alternative. As a result, almost every Democrat in Congress—all the progressives and liberals and even most of the so-called moderates—agree on the Biden plan.

In other words, the Democrats are quite unified. But they are being held hostage by a handful of corporate-friendly Democrats. The problem is that the Democrats' margins in both chambers are so slim that they can't afford defections. The Democrats are clinging to an eight-seat majority in the House. The Senate is split between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, requiring Vice President Kamala Harris to break ties votes. As a result, even a small number of defectors can derail the Democrats' agenda—forcing Biden to make huge cuts or killing the plan altogether—which gives the tiny handful of hold-outs undue influence.

This doesn't mean that 96% of elected Democrats who support the Biden plan agree on every policy issue, from abortion to bank regulation to military spending. Some disagree with parts of the president's plans, but are willing to swallow their concerns for the sake of unity. By embracing Biden's Build Back Better plan, they recognize the importance of restoring Americans' faith in the ability of the federal government to address fundamental problems and to help the country recover from the existential crisis we faced, and that still persists, because of Trump and Trumpism.

Soon after Biden took office in January, he, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed to draft two bills that reflected key parts of the president's campaign promises. One involved a $1 trillion (over ten years) public-works infrastructure plan, about $550 billion of which would be new spending not previously allocated by Congress. The other focused on expanding the nation's social safety net and addressing climate change, and would cost $3.5 trillion over ten years—though that figure is misleadingly high, as explained below.

In August, the Senate approved a $1 trillion physical infrastructure plan to rebuild roads, replace water pipes that have toxic lead, expand broadband internet, shore up coastlines against climate change, modernize the electric grid, protect public utility systems from cyber attacks, pay for new public transportation, and upgrade airports and railroads. Speaker Pelosi has postponed a vote on that bill; Biden, Schumer and Pelosi have all insisted that both bills should move in unison.

The safety net and climate change plan is stuck primarily because Manchin and Sinema won't go along. Manchin has demanded that at least $2 trillion be lopped off Biden's plan, which would result in a $1.5 trillion bill—an amount that Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) dismissed as "crumbs." Sinema won't even say what her ideal figure is.

The Build Back Better plan would expand Medicare and, for the first time, provide dental, vision, and hearing coverage to the 60 million elderly and disabled Americans who rely on it. It would expand health care for roughly four million low-income people in the states (most of which are run by Republicans) that have refused to expand Medicaid on their own. The provision to expand the Child Tax Credit to $300 a month per child under six and $250 a month per child age 6 to 17 would cut child poverty by half, according to some estimates. The Biden plan would also offer free public pre-kindergarten and two years of free community college and provides 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, which would guarantee that all Americans have the time to care for themselves and their families and loved ones.

The plan also includes provisions to deal with climate change and cut greenhouse gas emissions, including a clean-electricity program designed to significantly reduce fossil fuel emissions from U.S. power plants by 2035. It would invest billions of dollars to build 500,000 electric-vehicle charging stations and update the electrical grid to make it more effective during extreme weather events.

The Republicans and the handful of Democratic dissenters typically describe the plan as "massive," "big government," and "unprecedented."

In fact, the plan would only amount to roughly 1.5% of the country's gross domestic product. This is a smaller increase than that of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal (which included Social Security and unemployment insurance) and President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs (which included Medicare and Medicaid).

Even the $3.5 trillion figure is misleading. It would stretch over ten years, a fact that many news reports ignore or downplay. One expert estimated that the total cost is less than three dollars (actually $2.88) a day.

Moreover, the $3.5 trillion would be offset by $2.9 trillion in new revenue, according to recent estimates. So the actual cost is just $0.6 trillion.

To pay for the plan, Biden proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 26.5 percent on companies' annual income over $5 million. He's also proposed restoring the top tax rate to 39.6 percent on individuals earning more than $400,000—or $450,000 for couples—plus a 3 percent surtax on wealthier Americans with adjusted income over $5 million a year. As such, the plan would partially reverse the trillions that the Trump administration and the Republican Congress gave away to the wealthy and big business in tax cuts through their signature legislative achievement of the Trump era. Moreover, Biden's plan would reduce federal taxes for eight out of 10 households.

One thing is certain. Those Democratic dissenters are out of sync with what Americans—and not just Democratic voters—think.

The Democrats' plan is very popular among Americans.

A Quinnipiac poll conducted July 27-Aug. 2 asked, "Do you support or oppose a $3.5 trillion spending bill on social programs such as child care, education, family tax breaks and expanding Medicare for seniors?" and found 62% support, 32% opposition.

Support is even higher for some key provisions of the plan. For example, over two-thirds of voters (69%) support raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. A whopping 84 percent of likely voters (including 74 percent of Republicans) support paid family leave programs. According to recent polls, 84% of voters want to expand Medicare coverage to include dental, vision and hearing; 88% want Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to reduced prescription drug prices. Data for Progress polling earlier this year found that nearly two thirds of likely voters support government action moving the country away from fossil fuels to a fully clean energy grid by 2035, including 86% of Democrats, 60% of independents, and 40% of Republicans.

So why are those two Democratic senators and 10 Democratic House members trying to subvert legislation that most Americans and 96% of their own colleagues support?

Most of the 10 House Democrats who are still waffling over the Biden plan are from swing congressional districts that they won by small margins, although other Democrats from battleground districts are on board with the plan. But in each of their districts, the Build Back Better plan would significantly improve the lives of their constituents as well as lower their taxes.

The opposition of the handful of Democrats can be explained in part by their close ties to big business and wealthy donors. They are doing the bidding of corporate America, which wants the physical infrastructure projects that is part of the separate $1 trillion bill, but doesn't want the higher taxes or stiffer regulations to reign in corporate greed that is part of the $3.5 trillion safety net and clean energy bill.

For example, Rep. Scott Peters of California is leading the opposition to the drug pricing provisions. Last month, he voted to block it from advancing out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Since he was elected from his San Diego area district in 2012, the pharmaceutical industry has showered him with $860,465 in campaign donations. So far this year alone, he's received $88,550 from the drug lobby—the most of any member of Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political spending on the website OpenSecrets.org.

Manchin and Sinema insist that their stances reflect the concerns of voters in their home states. Last November, 68 percent of West Virginians voted for Trump, though Arizona narrowly went to Biden by a 49.4% to 49.1% margin.

But both West Virginia and Arizona are states with high levels of poverty and poorly funded schools and health centers, so there's no question that their residents would benefit from the plan's key provisions regarding health care, education, and other programs—indeed, more than residents of most other states. Manchin's insistence that the bill incorporate means tests and eligibility caps, and Sinema's fierce opposition to allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug companies to lower the price of medicine, will only hurt their constituents.

Manchin also has opposed many of the plan's provisions to deal with the climate crisis—provisions that could hurt both his political fundraising and his pocketbook. He's pocketed more contributions from coal, oil, and gas companies this campaign cycle than any senator, according to OpenSecrets. And his ties run deeper than the campaign donations he's received from these corporate interests. Last year, Manchin made half a million dollars in stock dividends from a coal company that is now controlled by his son, according to the New York Times. The Intercept reported that since joining the Senate, he has earned more than $4.5 million from that coal company and another, both of which he founded in the 1980s.

For her part, Sinema promised to push to lower prescription drug prices when she ran for the Senate in 2018. Now she's changed her tune, having taken in over $750, 000 from the pharmaceutical and medical device lobbies since then. In late September, Sinema held a fund-raiser with five business lobby groups that oppose the Biden bill.

Since Biden took office, America's corporations have significantly ramped up their campaign donations and lobbying efforts. According to OpenSecrets, corporations have deployed more than 4,000 lobbyists to scuttle core provisions of the Biden bill. During the first six months of this year, business groups spent $1.5 billion lobbying Congress, much of it directed at undermining the Build Back Better legislation. In addition, business lobby groups have significantly increased their campaign contributions to key members of Congress, including Manchin and Sinema.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, and other business lobby groups are investing big bucks to kill the proposed tax increases on big corporations and the rich. The oil and coal companies don't want to wean the country off fossil fuels and are working overtime to kill Biden's clean energy provisions. During just one week last month, oil giant Exxon Mobil spent $275,000 on Facebook ads against the Biden plan.

Prescription drug prices in the U.S. are about three times higher than in other affluent democratic countries, according to a RAND Corporation study. But the pharmaceutical companies don't want to negotiate with Medicare to lower drug prices and are swarming Congress with big donations and lobbying efforts. The industry spent $171 million and deployed almost 1,500 lobbyists through the first half of the year, more than any other industry. Even the American Dental Association is mobilizing its 162,000 members to fight a proposal to include dental coverage for all Medicare recipients

On behalf of their corporate benefactors, Manchin and Sinema may be sabotaging the potential success of Biden's presidency and the odds that the Democrats will have legislation to tout as they seek to maintain even their slim hold on Congress in next year's midterm elections. They may also be undermining the last best chance to address America's most pressing problems.

Democrats' support for the Biden plan is—pick your adjective—overwhelming or near unanimous.

If Biden's bill doesn't make it through Congress, don't blame "the Democrats." Blame every Republican, and the tiny faction of Democrats, who have put their personal ambitions over the public good.


Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College. He is the author of "The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame" (2012) and an editor (with Kate Aronoff and Michael Kazin) of "We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style" (2020). He is co-author of the forthcoming "Baseball Rebels: The Reformers and Radicals Who Shook Up the Game and Changed America" (2021).

Bolsonaro Accused of Crimes Against Humanity at ICC Over Amazon Destruction 

"Crimes against nature are crimes against humanity."

A climate change activist holds a sign depicting Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro with the slogan "Exterminator of the Future" during a protest against the Brazilian leader over the fires in the Amazon rainforest on August 23, 2019. 

(Photo: Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images)


JULIA CONLEY

October 12, 2021

An Austrian environmental law group on Tuesday filed an official complaint at the International Criminal Court accusing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro of crimes against humanity for his administration's role in pushing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

"They are knowingly aiding and abetting the perpetrators on the ground committing crimes such as murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts."

The complaint by the organization, AllRise, highlights Bolsonaro's alleged actions since taking office in 2019 and their direct link to the heating of the planet, affecting not just Indigenous environmental defenders in the Amazon, but the global population as well.

"Crimes against nature are crimes against humanity," Johannes Wesemann, the founder of AllRise and its new project titled The Planet vs. Bolsonaro, said in a statement. "Jair Bolsonaro is fueling the mass destruction of the Amazon with eyes wide open and in full knowledge of the consequences. The ICC has a clear duty to investigate environmental crimes of such global gravity."

"With the power of the law and the support of the public, the ICC will need to act," the new initiative states. "Bolsonaro will be brought to justice."

Since Bolsonaro took office, the rate of deforestation in the Amazon has risen by as much as 88% as the extreme right-wing president has attempted to open up the forest to more economic development.

In July 2019, the number of fires set in the Amazon—a frequent occurrence driven by ranching, agricultural, and mining interests—jumped 28% compared to the year prior, with the country's National Institute for Space Research recording 6,803 blazes in a month.

In the first year of Bolsonaro's presidency, more than 3,700 square miles of the Amazon were burned—a portion of the jungle equal to the size of Lebanon.

The president has also gutted regulations protecting the Amazon, with his administration reducing fines for illegal logging by 42%.

Environmental defenders, including many members of Indigenous tribes, have come under attack for trying to defend the forest, which serves as a crucial carbon sink for the planet as well as a habitat for more than three million species including 2,500 tree species.

"Bolsonaro will be brought to justice."

As Common Dreams reported last month, 20 environmental defenders in Brazil were killed in 2020, with several of the murders linked to the logging sector.

"We're saying as a result of the state policy that they are pursuing they are knowingly aiding and abetting the perpetrators on the ground committing crimes such as murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts," lawyer Nigel Povoas, who has prosecuted international crimes, told AFP.

Previously, Indigenous leaders in Brazil have issued formal complaints regarding Bolsonaro's alleged crimes against humanity at the ICC; in January, Chief Raoni Metuktire of the Kayapo people and Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui of the Paiter Surui tribe accused the president fueling the "the assassination of Indigenous leaders," which was at an 11-year high, as well as deforestation.

AllRise said the complaint filed on Tuesday was the first to underscore the effects that Bolsonaro's attacks on the Amazon are having on the planet as a whole.

According to the organization, the emissions caused by Bolsonaro's policies will cause over 180,000 deaths related to excess heat this century.

"What's happening in Brazil—mass deforestation—we want to understand the causal link to the global climate," Wesemann told AFP Tuesday. "It is exactly what the Rome Statute defines as a crime against humanity: the intentional destruction of the environment and environmental defenders."

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Brazil's Bolsonaro accused of 'crimes against humanity' at ICC
Agence France-Presse
October 12, 2021

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro AFP

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was accused Tuesday of "crimes against humanity" at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his alleged role in the destruction of the Amazon, the first case seeking to explicitly link deforestation to loss of life.

Planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from burning and industrial-scale agriculture in the Amazon are higher than the total annual emissions of Italy or Spain. Deforestation in the region already releases more CO2 than the rest of the Amazon can absorb.

Austrian environmental justice campaigners Allrise filed the official complaint at The Hague-based court Tuesday morning. They asked for legal proceedings against Bolsonaro and his administration for actions "directly connected to the negative impacts of climate change around the world".

The complaint accuses the Brazilian leader of waging a widespread campaign resulting in the murder of environmental defenders and of endangering the global population through emissions caused by deforestation.

It harnesses the growing field of climate attribution science, which allows researchers to prove a link between extreme weather events, on the one hand, and global heating and environmental degradation, on the other.

The team behind it said that Bolsonaro's administration had sought to "systematically remove, neuter, and eviscerate laws, agencies and individuals that serve to protect the Amazon".

It said that Bolsonaro was responsible for approximately 4,000 square kilometers (400,000 hectares) of lost rainforest each year, and that he had presided over monthly deforestation rates that had accelerated by up to 88 percent since taking office on January 1, 2019.


Bolsonaro's office did not respond to a request for comment from AFP.

- 'Intentional destruction' -

The team of experts estimated that emissions attributable to the Bolsonaro administration due to rampant deforestation will cause over 180,000 excess heat-related deaths globally this century.

"In the last few years, climate science has come a long way in being able to provide evidence of specific causal relationships between emissions of greenhouse gases and the consequences that arrive globally as a result," Rupert Stuart Smith, from the University of Oxford's Sustainable Law Programme, told AFP.

While there have been at least three other complaints by indigenous groups against Bolsonaro at the ICC since 2016, organisers say this one is the first to highlight the clear link between forest loss and global human health.

The Bolsonaro administration's actions 'are directly connected to the negative impacts of climate change around the world', says the complaint 

EVARISTO SA AFP/File

"What's happening in Brazil -- mass deforestation -- we want to understand the causal link to the global climate," AllRise founder Johannes Wesemann told AFP.

"It is exactly what the Rome Statute defines as a crime against humanity: the intentional destruction of the environment and environmental defenders."

The point of the complaint was "not to speak on behalf of any Brazilian, but rather to show the global gravity of mass deforestation", said Wesemann.


- 'Aiding, abetting murder' -

Lawyer Nigel Povoas, who has led prosecution of some of the most notorious international criminals, said the complaint was leveled against several individuals within Bolsonaro's administration.

"We're focusing on the most senior actors responsible," he told AFP.

"We're saying as a result of the state policy that they are pursuing they are knowingly aiding and abetting the perpetrators on the ground committing crimes such as murder, persecution and other inhumane acts."

The ICC has no obligation to consider complaints filed to the prosecutor by individuals or groups, and does not comment on them until the prosecutor announces that it has started a preliminary examination into a specific matter.

Maud Sarlieve, a human rights and international criminal lawyer said that were the Bolsonaro complaint to be pursued, it would send a clear message to individuals such as CEOs of fossil fuel companies: "Beware."

"The law is now allowing us to go after those who are ruthlessly and knowingly pursuing policies which clearly result in environmental destruction and an impact on civilian population," she said.

© 2021 AFP

What necessitates a new approach to urban planning subsequent to the coronavirus pandemic?

Zohreh A. Daneshpour, 

Shahid Beheshti University  

Purpose

This paper is about the lessons that can be learned from the Coronavirus pandemic 2020 for the Post-pandemic urban and regional planning. It discusses the essence of urban and regional planning during the post pandemic era and the necessity that a new approach to urban planning must be devised out of the coronavirus crisis. This is important as “recovery from the coronavirus crisis must lead to a better world” (due to the UN secretary general), i.e., a plea for a just and devoid of greed and war world and to radically change the political economy of societies to embrace an adapted and“ public welfare-orientated” urban and reginal planning system and rewrite urban regulations to promote sustainability and equity. Lessons that can be learned from this pandemic in terms of urban planning is that ‘urban problems are not only  related to climate change and natural disasters, but also to viral viruses. Thus, is that there is an urgent need to adapt planning thinking and practice in a way that is more responsive to disasters and also to the needs of all socio-economic groups and mainly the more deprived people. The immediate focus for cities is on stopping the spread of COVID-19, but next step is answering the question of: what would be the longer- term impact of a pandemic situation on urban and regional planning

https://www.academia.edu/50107649/What_necessitates_a_new_approach_to_urban_planning_subsequent_to_the_coronavirus_pandemic?auto=download&email_work_card=download-paper