Opinion: Sen. Manchin's inaction on climate change is the real 'fiscal insanity'

Opinion by Jessica Moerman 

CNN

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has in recent weeks dubbed the proposed social safety net spending in the reconciliation bill currently being discussed in Congress as "reckless" and "fiscal insanity." However, when it comes to climate change, the true insanity is ignoring the brutal fiscal reality that our nation will face if we don't make serious investments now to stave off the worst of global warming and make American communities and the economy resilient to climate-fueled extreme weather.

© Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images 

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) speaks at a press conference outside his office on Capitol Hill on October 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Manchin spoke on the debt limit and the infrastructure bill.

Last week, negotiations to trim back President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion Build Back Better economic recovery plan were sent into another tailspin with Manchin indicating his opposition to the framework's climate linchpin -- the Clean Energy Performance Plan (CEPP), which would pay utilities to switch to clean electricity and fine those that don't. Deficit hawks, like Manchin and fellow moderate Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, however, would be foolish to slash ambitious climate investments in the name of fiscal responsibility as these provisions are necessary to prevent the future fiscal calamity which they seek to avoid.

As anyone with a leaky roof will tell you, making sufficient investments early on is key to avoiding catastrophic costs down the line. Looking at the dollars and cents, it's clear our failure to advance strategies to eliminate planet-warming carbon emissions -- either with carrots like clean energy tax incentives, sticks like carbon pollution standards, or market-based solutions like a carbon fee -- isn't only a future problem but one that's already costing us trillions.

Since 1980, the US has been hit with 308 weather and climate disasters that have caused more than a billion dollars each in damages, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). In total, these disasters have cost the American economy more than $2 trillion.

Manchin's West Virginia has not been spared. The Mountain State is facing one of the top ten largest increases in heat wave days nationwide, putting more than 60,000 vulnerable West Virginians at risk for heat illness or death, and has the highest percentage of homes, businesses, and critical infrastructure, like power stations, roads, and police and fire stations, at substantial risk of being rendered inoperable by flooding.

With each passing decade, the number of disasters in the US crossing the billion-dollar mark has climbed steeply while the total annual cost has grown exponentially. Costs nationwide have ballooned from an average national price tag of $18 billion per year in the 1980s to more than $86 billion per year for the last decade, according to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. Extreme weather supercharged by climate change -- and compounded by increased economic development right in the firing line of hurricanes, wildfires, and floods -- is squarely to blame for these trends.

If we fail to make ambitious investments now to transition to a clean, low-carbon economy and make our communities resilient to climate change, damages from climate-fueled disasters are estimated to skyrocket to hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Indeed, we are already knocking on that door. NOAA's just updated report indicates that in the first nine months of 2021 alone, we've already clocked in nearly $105 billion in property and infrastructure damage and over 500 lives lost from 18 disasters, underscoring the urgency to act without delay.

Investing in clean power and transportation also promises huge savings not only by avoiding catastrophic disaster property damages but by protecting the health of American families and our children. Toxic air pollution like soot, mercury, and carcinogenic benzene -- emitted from the same fossil fuel sources that are fueling climate change -- currently cost the American economy an estimated $800 billion annually in work absences, hospital stays, years of life lost, and premature deaths.

Accelerating the deployment of clean cars and clean power not only saves on avoided costs but also yields a powerful return on investment, making spending on carbon reductions and climate resilience now a darn good deal.

For every dollar spent to avert climate change, an estimated $4-7 is saved in extreme weather damages, according to a National Institute of Building Sciences study. Furthermore, every dollar invested in climate action could save an eye-popping $30 from avoided health costs due to air pollution, according to an Environmental Protection Agency report.

While some may be tempted to point towards the Senate-passed $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan with its many climate and pollution investments -- from plugging leaking abandoned oil and gas wells to swapping out diesel-powered school buses for zero-emitting electric ones and building a national system of electric vehicle charging stations -- as a job well done, the infrastructure bill only gets the ball rolling.

To truly secure the sound economic future, healthier environment, and safer climate our children deserve, we cannot afford to slash or water down the critical climate and pollution provisions proposed in the budget reconciliation framework.

This includes tax incentives for clean electricity, zero and low emission vehicles, and energy efficient homes and buildings; financing utilities and the power sector to speed up the switch to clean electricity to power clean cars, buildings, and manufacturing; holding the oil and gas industry accountable for fixing methane leaks in gas infrastructure and halting wasteful practices like venting and flaring that spew not only heat-trapping gases but also toxic air pollution; supporting America's farmers and foresters to adopt 'climate smart' practices to store more carbon in soils and forests; and establishing a Civilian Climate Corps to enhance natural climate resilience.

Aggressively acting on climate is not only fiscally responsible on the macroeconomic level but also at the home economic level. The climate investments proposed in the reconciliation plan will create millions of new family-sustaining jobs across the urban to rural spectrum while also lowering household energy bills through increased home energy efficiency and accelerated access to electricity from utility-scale wind and solar, which have overtaken conventional fossil-powered energy as the cheapest sources of electricity when judged on a level playing field without subsidies.

However, with the national debt at the highest level it has been since the end of World War II, making such once-in-a-generation investments understandably may give deficit hawks pause. That's why a carbon-linked revenue-raiser like a carbon fee currently being discussed in Congress makes for a smart addition to the reconciliation plan.

Operating as a user fee for carbon polluters to pollute, a carbon fee is estimated to bring in up to $2 trillion over 10 years according to the Tax Foundation, effectively covering more than half -- to potentially all -- of the reconciliation plan's price tag. Indeed, a National Academies of Sciences' report released this year named an economy-wide carbon price, like a carbon fee, the most cost-effective and indispensable strategy to achieve a rapid, just, and equitable transition to a net-zero carbon economy that simultaneously unlocks innovation in every corner of the energy economy.

The definition of "fiscal insanity" is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Allowing billion-dollar disasters to batter our coastlines, burn our forests and family homes, and flood our farms and communities at an ever-increasing rate but continuing to do nothing about it is indeed insane.

Historic climate spending is not only fiscally responsible but necessary to passing a strong and secure economic future on to our children and ensuring they won't be saddled with trillions of unnecessary and destabilizing future spending.

To avoid the brutal fiscal reality wrought by unchecked carbon emissions and global warming, deficit hawks should cheer ambitious climate action and ensure that the level of climate investment within the current framework survives the reconciliation bill chopping block intact.

Joe Manchin's rise was accompanied by years of federal investigations into his associates: report

Tom Boggioni
October 23, 2021

Joe Manchin on Facebook.

According to a report from The Intercept's Daniel Boguslaw, Sen. Joe Manchin's rise from state lawmaker in his native West Virginia to one of the most powerful members of the U.S. Seante was accompanied by a fair share of FBI and IRS investigations into the people who surrounded him.

Manchin, who by virtue of a split Senate holds an inordinate amount of power over President Joe Biden's agenda, has come under increasing national scrutiny as he and fellow Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) hold up Senate negotiations on a massive infrastructure bill.

While a spokesman for the West Virginia Democrat stated, "Senator Manchin has devoted most of his adult life to public service. At every stage he has been compliant with financial and ethical standards. He has never been the subject of a federal investigation," Boguslaw wrote that a cloud of investigations has hovered over people close to the senator for years.

Pointing to the death of Sen. Robert Byrd in 2010 which opened the door from Manchin to move from serving as West Virginia's governor to the nation's Capitol, The Intercept report notes, "As Manchin launched his Senate campaign, a federal investigation was bearing down on his administration and its inner circle."

According to Boguslaw, "Weeks after Byrd's death, federal subpoenas were sent to agencies throughout Manchin's administration. Though the Manchin governor's office wasn't directly subpoenaed, investigators were looking into multiple people and agencies with a web of ties to Manchin, including Manchin's former chief of staff and confidante, Larry Puccio, then the head of the state Democratic party," before adding, "The full purview of the investigation was never made clear. In addition to a subpoena to the Department of Transportation's Division of Highways investigating land seized through eminent domain, the government sought campaign finance records from the secretary of state's office on Manchin's 1996 gubernatorial bid and from the department of administration's aviation division."

The report notes that Manchin has "stayed a step ahead of federal investigations as they closed in around his inner circle" for over twenty years with "public court records, and sealed documents" obtained by The Intercept illustrating a decades-long trail "of investigations into employees, contractors, and business associates of Manchin."

Boguslaw added, "These incidents involve investigations into tax evasion, grand larceny, campaign finance violations, and an investigation by federal agencies including the FBI and IRS into a wide range of alleged criminal activity centered around Manchin's governor's office," before adding, "In both the 2010s and the 1990s, federal investigations involving confidential informants petered out, with only low-level players facing prosecution, sentencing, and jail time."

LONG READ
You can read more here including details of the investigation into Larry Puccio as well as questionable financial dealings by the Manchin family business dating back to 1992.

Jay Black Dies: Jay And The Americans Frontman Who Sang Best Known Version Of “This Magic Moment” Was 82

 AP

Jay Black, the musician who sang the most iconic version of the classic “This Magic Moment,” penned by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, as frontman for American rock group Jay and the Americans, has died. He was 82.

His passing was confirmed in a post published on Saturday to the band’s official Facebook page. “Today, we mourn the passing of David Blatt a/k/a Jay Black and we acknowledge the great successes we had with him both as a partner and as a lead singer,” a spokesperson wrote. “We shared both wonderful and very contentious times, and much like an ex-wife, we are so proud of the beautiful children we created. We’ll always remember The Voice.”

The artist born in Brooklyn on November 2, 1938 as David Blatt joined Jay and the Americans as lead singer in 1962, stepping into the role previously occupied by John “Jay” Traynor. With them, he’d record albums including Come a Little Bit Closer, Blockbusters, Sunday and Me, Livin’ Above Your Head, Try Some of This!, and Sands of Time, among others. Additional hits from Black and his band included “Cara Mia,” “Only In America”, “Come A Little Bit Closer” and “Walkin’ In The Rain.” Given his skills as a singer, Black would come to be referred to by his bandmates and by fans as “The Voice.”

Jay and the Americans was at the height of its output in the 1960s, officially disbanding in 1973. In the years in between, Black and his collaborators would appear on numerous music programs and variety shows, including Upbeat, Hullabaloo, Shindig!, Where the Action Is, The Merv Griffin Show, The Clay Cole Show and The Mike Douglas Show.

Black continued performing after the breakup of his band—all the way up to 2017. Outside of music, he was also an occasional actor, appearing in Lennie Weinrib’s 1966 film Wild Wild Winter, and in William A. Graham’s 1977 TV movie Contract on Cherry Street, starring Frank Sinatra.

Everest's 100 years of destiny and death on the roof the world

It's a fact every school child knows: Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world.

n this picture taken on May 31, 2021 shows the Himlayan range as seen from the summit of Mount Everest (8,848.86-metre), in Nepal.

 (Photo by Lakpa SHERPA / AFP) (Photo by LAKPA SHERPA/AFP via Getty Images)

By Maureen O'Hare, CNN 

It's a truth that feels ancient and inevitable, an unassailable certainty that draws hundreds of climbers to attempt the summit each year -- because, in the words of George Mallory, one of the first mountaineers to conquer it, "it's there."

However, this fascination with the mountain whose historic Tibetan name is Qomolangma ("Holy Mother") is a modern phenomenon and the first reconnaissance mission to its slopes was completed just a century ago, on October 25, 1921.

This is the story of how Mount Everest became the ultimate adventure challenge of our age.

Becoming the tallest

In the 19th century, the British Empire was a global industrial superpower, with a drive towards exploration and mastery. Places, people and even time itself -- a standardized time system was first introduced on British railways in 1847 -- were all to be categorized and measured.

© Royal Geographical Society/Getty Images 

George Everest (1790-1866) was Surveyor General of India from 1830 to 1843.

The Great Trigonometrical Survey was a 70-year project by the East India Company that applied this scientific precision to the Indian subcontinent, establishing the demarcation of British territories in India and the height of the Himalayan peaks.

There had been a number of former claimants to the title of "world's highest mountain": Chimborazo in the Andes. Nanda Devi and Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas.

It was in 1856 that the formerly overlooked Peak XV -- soon to be Mount Everest -- was officially declared to be the world's tallest mountain above sea level, at 29,002 ft (8,839.8 meters. Its official height today is a little higher -- 8,849 meters).

© Lakpa Sherpa/AFP/Getty Images 

Mountaineers descending from the summit of Mount Everest in June 2021.


Acquiring an English name

"People had been waiting for years to measure some of these peaks, because it seemed then that nobody had any way of getting to them, much less climbing them," explains Craig Storti, author of "The Hunt for Mount Everest," published this month.

Peak XV stood on the border of Nepal and Tibet (now an autonomous region of China) and both were closed to foreigners.

The mountain's height was calculated through a series of triangulation measurements where were conducted some 170 kilometers away in Darjeeling, India.

Andrew Waugh, British Surveyor General of India, successfully argued that as the two countries were inaccessible, a local name could therefore not be found and that Peak XV should be named after his predecessor in the role, George Everest.

Everest, who initially objected to the honor bestowed upon him, had no direct involvement in the mountain's discovery, nor did he ever get the opportunity to see it. (Incidentally, we've been saying it wrong: his family name was pronounced "Eev-rest").


Opening to outsiders

Everest's human history is thought to have begun around 925 with the building of Rongkuk Monastery on the mountain's north side, writes Storti. But the first known attempt to ascend it was the British reconnaissance expedition that set out in 1921.

The Lhasa Convention of 1904, following the British invasion led by Francis Younghusband, was the trade deal that formed the wedge to the British being able to enter Tibet.

The 1921 expedition was led by the Anglo-Irish explorer Charles Howard-Bury and included George Mallory, who would die on an Everest expedition in 1924, with his remains not recovered until 75 years later.


The golden age of mountaineering

In Europe, mountain-climbing took off as a sport -- rather than a practical, political, or spiritual activity -- in the 18th century. By the mid-19th century -- alpinism's "golden age" -- the Alps' high peaks were all scaled, from Mont Blanc to the Mattherhorn.

Attention turned in the late 19th century to the Americas and Africa also, but the ultimate and greatest challenge remained the Himalayas.

An Englishman named Albert F. Mummery was the Western pioneer in South Asia, perishing on Nanga Parbat in 1895.

Says Storti, "The confluence of the maturing of mountaineering, and Britain's presence in India, led to (it almost almost being) inevitable that the people from a tiny island nation would dominate Himalayan mountaineering for many years."


Working out the route

For the first three decades of Everest expeditions, mountaineers approached the summit from the north side, which is a significantly more difficult climb.

The first reconnaissance mission set off marching from Darjeeling on May 18, 1921 on what would be a five-month-long trip and were laying the groundwork for a century of mountaineers to follow.

Today, adventurers approach from the south, where, says Storti, most of the journey is a "fairly easy plod up the mountain, not technically difficult at all. People with very little climbing experience can put down $60,000 and have a good chance of reaching the top as long as the weather holds and the Sherpas take care of them."

Lou Dzierzak, editor-in-chief at outdoor adventure experts Outforia, tells CNN Travel that "One major advancement was the establishment of a team of highly skilled Nepalese climbers known as the Icefall Doctors in 1997.

"The Icefall Doctors establish a route through the Khumbu Icefall, which is one of the most dangerous sections of the popular South Col Route. Without them, the number of commercial expeditions on Everest each year wouldn't be nearly as high as it is today. However, many Nepalese Icefall doctors, guides, and porters have lost their lives in recent years while working in this dangerous section of the mountain."


Learning how humans cope at altitude

One of the men on the 1921 expedition was Scottish chemist Alexander Kellas, whose previous pioneering work on high-altitude physiology was crucial to the future of Himalayan engineering.

At the beginning of the 20th century, very little was currently known about the effects on the body, because "nobody had been that high yet," says Storti.

Kellas, an experienced climber, was part of the reconnaissance mission to Everest but died of heart issues just a day's hike before reaching the mountain.

Says Storti, "He just went about his work quietly, became an expert on elevation and the effects on the human body, (and) made some of the most spectacular climbs of anyone of his generation."

Says Dzierzak, "The biggest physiological challenge to climbing Mount Everest is the negative effects that climbing at high elevations has on the human body.

Prolonged exposure can cause dizziness, headache, fatigue, nausea, and shortness of breath, among other signs and symptoms. Even when a climber isn't feeling particularly sick, most mountaineers need to stop for a few breaths after every single step while climbing on the highest slopes of Everest."

Climbers didn't use oxygen at all on the first expeditions, but today they "have access to improved mask designs and regulators," says Dzierzak. "But, even then, climbers still have issues with oxygen masks and regulators freezing, which makes climbing at high elevations risky business."

Dzierzak adds: "The other major physical challenge to climbing Everest is the sheer amount of time that it takes to summit the mountain. Most climbers spend months on the mountain setting up intermediary campsites along their route."


Developing specialist clothing and equipment

It's said that when the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw saw a photo of the 1921 reconnaissance expedition, dressed in their simple clothing of wool, cotton and silk, he described them as looking like a "Connemara picnic surprised by a snowstorm."

Says Storti, "The climbing equipment was very primitive, the clothes also. The boots were cloth and not leather. And so if storms came up -- the main risk on Everest is the weather not the terrain, except from the north -- they risk serious frostbite."

Dzierzak says that there been a number of major technological developments in equipment between the 1920s and now, primarily in climbing clothing and equipment. "Modern advancements in fabric design and synthetic insulation have really changed the game in mountaineering. Waterproof-breathable fabrics that we take for granted today, like Gore-Tex, were truly revolutionary when they first hit the market in the late 1960s."

As for equipment, "Mallory and his fellow climbers used hemp ropes, hobnail boots, wooden ice axes, and metal pitons to climb," says Dzierzak. "These were cutting-edge pieces of equipment in the 1920s, but they can't perform as well as the nylon ropes, crampons, and metal ice axes that we use today."


Everest in the 21st century

While the expedition of 1921 didn't attempt a summit, it certainly paved the way for the first successful ascent in 1953, led by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary -- and for many more that followed.

"Everest is now one of the most popular big mountains to climb in the world and, with that, comes an influx of money and infrastructure in the region," says Dzierzak.

"However, the popularity of Everest has its own challenges. Overcrowding on the South Col Route is a real issue, as are the large quantities of trash on the mountain."

Too many people on Everest has, in the past, resulted in tragedy. On May 11, 1996, 12 people died after blizzards closed in on climbers some of whom had been delayed in their ascent by having to wait in line.

Close to 900 people reached the summit in 2019 -- a record year, but also one that saw 11 people die. That year also produced the memorable image of a long tailback of climbers waiting to ascend.

Climate change is also a worry. Says Dzierzak, "There are already concerns about how warming temperatures might destabilize the Khumbu Icefall even further, making it more dangerous to cross."

Despite the hazards, Mount Everest's fascination for climbers shows no sign of waning 100 years after that first expedition. Its deadly allure will no doubt inspire generations of adventurers to come.

Some Americans were primed for vaccine skepticism after decades of mistrust in Big Pharma
insider@insider.com (Allana Akhtar) 

 How distrust in pharmaceutical firms gave rise to the anti-vaxx movement, according to experts in the anti-vaccine movement and the history of Big Pharma. Samantha Lee/Insider

Claims of mismanagement and greed in the pharmaceutical industry may have contributed to vaccine hesitancy.

Of Americans who said they would "definitely not" get a COVID-19 vaccine, 20% say they trust drug companies, according to KFF.

Pharma companies are now lobbying against waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines.

Ten months after the world's first COVID-19 vaccine received an emergency green light for use, the US is still reeling from COVID cases among mostly unvaccinated Americans.

Among Americans who said in a recent survey that they will "definitely not" get a COVID-19 vaccine, only 20% said they trust pharmaceutical companies to provide reliable information, according to Ashley Kirzinger, the associate director of public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Pharmaceutical companies large and small are responsible for advancements in medical treatments that have helped cure diseases, relieve chronic pain, and save lives. Several developed COVID-19 vaccines that are highly effective at preventing severe disease.

But publicized claims of mismanagement and greed among some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, collectively known as Big Pharma, have eroded public trust and, in turn, have contributed to vaccine hesitancy among some Americans, experts told Insider.

"In the '50s, after World War II, the drug industry was highly respected; they saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Gerald Posner, investigative journalist and the author of "Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America," said in an interview. "They lost that over decades of greed and mismanagement."

Now, as some pharmaceutical companies lobby to keep their COVID-19 vaccine formulas out of the hands of manufacturers in low-income countries (thereby maximizing profits from the life-saving shot), some Americans may develop a renewed distrust of Big Pharma, Posner said.

"[Pharmaceutical companies] are behaving as if they have absolutely no responsibility beyond maximizing the return on investment," Tom Frieden, infectious disease expert and a former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The New York Times.

Skepticism of Big Pharma has been decades in the making

American trust in Big Pharma reached a peak in the early-to-mid 20th century, when the pharmaceutical industry ushered in life-saving treatments like penicillin and vaccines, as Patrick Radden Keefe reports in his book "Empire of Pain."

Public trust started to erode, however, with the invention and widespread adoption of addictive drugs, Keefe reported. Gallup, whose polling has placed pharmaceutical companies as America's least liked industry for the past two decades, attributes the public's dislike to the companies' high drug prices, tremendous lobbying budgets, and their roles in the opioid epidemic.

Over the last 50 years, lawsuits began piling up against pharmaceutical companies, including those that developed COVID-19 vaccines.

In 2013, Johnson & Johnson settled a federal investigation involving marketing fraud of several drugs, including one to treat dementia patients. Reuters reported in 2018 that small amounts of asbestos were found in the company's baby powder between the early 1970s and the early 2000s. The report claimed that the company failed to disclose that information, which Johnson & Johnson has repeatedly denied. The company is facing thousands of lawsuits alleging that the talc-based products caused cancer and mesothelioma.

Last year, 46 US states sued 26 drug makers, including Pfizer, over allegations of conspiring to drive up drug prices. (Pfizer told Reuters the company did not behave in unlawful conduct.)

In 2009, Pfizer, which produced the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, paid the second-largest healthcare fraud settlement in US history to settle accusations of misleading advertising of an anti-inflammatory drug. When asked to comment on this article, a Pfizer spokesperson told Insider the company "cannot speculate why some remain vaccine hesitant, but vaccination remains one of the best tools we have to help protect lives and work to achieve herd immunity."

The anti-vaccine movement in the US, which gained momentum in the early 2000s, has tried to use drug industry scandals to discourage parents from inoculating their children, according to Dr. Stewart Lyman, the owner of Lyman Biopharma Consulting LLC and a vaccine advocate.

In the mid-2010s, measles in children began resurfacing despite the CDC having declared measles as eliminated from the US in 2000. Some anti-vaccine believers fought for personal exemptions for vaccine mandates during local measles outbreaks.

Others within the movement said not to trust the pharmaceutical company Merck with vaccines because of a whistleblower complaint claiming that the company overstated the effectiveness of the shot. (Merck did not respond to Insider's request for comment.)

© Provided by Business Insider "In the fifties, after World War II, the drug industry was highly respected; they saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Gerald Posner, and investigative journalist and the author of "Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America, said in an interview. "They lost that over decades of greed and mismanagement." 

Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images

Big Pharma's business model drives mistrust among vaccine skeptics

Kirzinger told Insider anecdotal data from Kaiser suggests some Americans are hesitant about the COVID-19 vaccine due to how pharmaceutical industries profit from shots, despite the shots being rigorously tested by scientists before given to the public and built on decades of research.

Vaccine makers have made billions in revenue by selling the shots to countries, and soaring pharmaceutical stocks have minted a class of "vaccine billionaires."

"[Some vaccine hesitant Americans] are talking about distrust of Pharma because they think that they're mostly concerned about profits rather than safety," Kirzinger said.

The price of the life-saving hormone insulin, for example, has skyrocketed in the last decade, costing diabetes patients around $300 for a 10-millimeter vial, up from about $93 in 2009. Many low-income Americans have resorted to rationing insulin to make it last longer, and lawmakers are pressuring drug companies to reduce costs.

Still, pharma companies are currently lobbying President Joe Biden to prevent him from waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines - thereby keeping manufacturers in poor countries from making life-saving shots for vulnerable populations.

And while some vaccine makers like Johnson & Johnson have sold COVID-19 vaccines at cost, others, including Pfizer and Moderna, have sold them for a profit.

SPACE RACE 2.0

The UAE is becoming a major space power

Mark R. Whittington, opinion contributor


An old saying among foreign policy circles stated that while the kingdom of heaven runs on righteousness the kingdoms of the Earth run on oil. However, because of concerns about climate change, the fracking boom in the United States and the discovery of oil and gas deposits offshore of the State of Israel - the old reality no longer applies.

© Getty Images The UAE is becoming a major space power

The new reality is that the kingdoms of the Earth run on high technology. Few countries have moved so quickly to adapt as the United Arab Emirates. The UAE, as part of a shift toward high tech, has started its own space program. In a few short years, the Arab gulf state has become a major space power.

The UAE is pursuing a strategy that includes developing its own space capabilities and seeking both international and commercial partners for its various space missions. The UAE is also nurturing its own indigenous commercial space sector. The strategy has met with considerable success.

The Hope Mars probe was developed in house, assembled by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder and was launched on board a Japanese rocket. The Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre recently released a treasure trove of data from the probe for anyone to evaluate and use. The data show, among other things, how Martian atmospheric gasses interact with each other and with solar radiation.

The Rashid lunar rover will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and will be taken to the lunar surface on a Japanese lander. The Rashid will land on the Lacus Somniorum region of the moon's near side in late 2022.

The UAE intends to mount a mission to the main asteroid belt in 2028. The probe, which has not been named yet, will conduct gravity-assist maneuvers at Venus and Earth, arriving at the main belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in 2030. It will fly by seven asteroids before landing on another one in 2033. The University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics will be a key scientific partner.

Finally, the UAE and Israel have signed an agreement pledging cooperation, among other projects, in the Beresheet 2 moon mission. The agreement further cements relations between the two countries, which have become commercial and defense allies, in the wake of the Abraham Accords.

The UAE has its own astronaut corps, including astronauts are Hazzaa Al Mansoori, Sultan Al Neyadi, Nora Matrooshi and Mohammed Al Mulla. Al Mansoori has already flown a week-long mission to the International Space Station, riding to the orbiting laboratory on a Russian Soyuz. Al Matrooshi is the first Arab woman astronaut. She has expressed interest in being included in a future Artemis mission to the moon.

Besides a growth of technology, the UAE-based National News reports that the UAE's space program has sparked a "space culture" in the Arab gulf state. The Emirate's space culture has been manifested in a growth of astrophotography and other visual art.

The UAE's space program, and its power to positively affect that country's economy and culture could serve as a model for other countries. NASA and the new space commercial sector have certainly proven to be a positive influence in the United States, a country much in need of something to feel good about.

Too often, developments in the Islamic world have proven to be tragic. The recent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban is a case in point, with the resulting collapse of that country's economy and the chronic human rights violations, especially against women.

The UAE's turn toward technology development and education harkens back to the early history of the Islamic world, when that region was a center of science, mathematics and medicine. The fact that STEM in the Arab gulf state has been of benefit to women should not go unnoticed. Besides Nora Matrooshi, Sara Al Amiri was recently elevated to become the UAE's first Minister of Advanced Science and the chairperson of that country's space agency.

The UAE was an early signatory of the Artemis Accords, an alliance of states pledging cooperation in the movement of humankind to the moon, Mars and beyond. Thus, the Arab gulf state will be a major force in the exploration of space.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of space exploration studies "Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?" as well as "The Moon, Mars and Beyond," and "Why is America Going Back to the Moon?" He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.

LU researcher tackles ‘the next frontier’ of Sudbury’s regreening program

A researcher at Laurentian University’s Living with Lakes Centre is planting the seeds for a more sustainable and environmentally friendly land reclamation process.

Jonathan Lavigne has partnered with Collège Boréal to explore the potential for pulp and paper mill waste and municipal biosolids as an alternative to the lime and fertilizer method of treating soils damaged by years of acid rain deposition.

He is tracking more than 3,000 seedlings at the college’s state-of-the-art greenhouse facility to determine how they respond to nine different soil treatments as part of the first phase of his project.

His goal is to find the safest and most effective way to reintroduce organic matter to the region’s most damaged landscapes, including aggregate pits and Sudbury’s upland environments.

“Part of my master’s research project was to see how well Sudbury was doing in its regreening efforts,” said Lavigne, a former hockey player who went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Laurentian University.

“They were trying to reintroduce a bunch of species other than Red Pine and Jack Pine to Sudbury’s most damaged hills. My job was to see what works and what doesn’t – we tracked 1,800 seedlings over two summers, and in the end, I produced a report that I gave to the city.”

The results of the project were not surprising.

“As we suspected, only the most drought-tolerant species (essentially conifers) had a chance of reaching maturity. The rest succumbed to drought,” he said.

This is because Sudbury’s upland soils lack a key component retained by undamaged landscapes – soil organic matter.

“Undamaged landscapes have a thin, but critical layer of organic soil that helps retain moisture and critical nutrients while reducing soil temperature,” said Lavigne.

“Years of acid rain deposition caused millions of tonnes of upland soil to erode into surrounding lowlands.”

Sudbury’s upland environments are so damaged they can be compared to aggregate pits.

“If you look at Sudbury’s landscape, you can see that the areas with the highest elevation are the areas with the most rock concentration,” said Lavigne.

“We’ve regreened the lowlands – and they are doing very well because everything flows to the lowlands, and they are full of moisture. The uplands are really the next frontier of Sudbury’s regreening project.”

Lavigne’s PhD project will focus on improving soil for land reclamation in aggregate pits using different kinds of waste. The project will happen in multiple phases.

The goal of the first phase is to narrow down the safest and most effective soil treatments during the greenhouse trial.

“We wanted to see if we could replace the lime and fertilizer method of treating soil because the current method can be environmentally destructive and it’s really expensive to bring lime all the way over here from the prairies,” said Lavigne.

“Using different types of waste, we’re trying to see if we can replace this old method with a new method and find a solution that’s a bit more local.”

Lavigne has partnered with different businesses and organizations to get his hands on a number of different waste materials that would otherwise get landfilled or burned.

Using these materials, he developed the nine different soil treatments currently under trial.

These include Sudbury’s traditional method of treating damaged soils with dolomitic limestone and fertilizer in addition to treated municipal sewage, boiler ash, and pulp and paper mill waste.

“Our control is just regular gravel material that you would find in an aggregate pit. If we were to plant or lay seed down without doing anything, it would go onto this material,” he said.

“The second treatment is stockpile soil.”

When building an aggregate pit, Lavigne explained, companies remove about 10 to 20 cm of the top layer of soil.

“Then, they stockpile it and pile it back on after the project is finished, but sometimes after 20 years, the material isn’t good anymore,” he said.

“What they will often do is cycle the soil – they will take material from aggregate pit two and use it to regreen aggregate pit one. They are always borrowing from another place to cover somewhere else. It’s a bit destructive, and it’s not very environmentally friendly.”

Lavigne is also using a material called biomass boiler ash.

“That’s the fancy name for it. In a pulp and paper mill, they burn up a lot of material, and biomass boiler ash is literally just the kind of ash from the tree bark that they get rid of,” he said.

“They use this material all the time in the Ottawa Valley region because it’s really high in calcium, and it’s good for calcium depleted regions. We’re using that ash plus some agricultural fertilizer because the ash isn’t very high in macronutrients.”

He is also using pulp and paper mill waste mixed with healthy forest soil from another location, and municipal sewage powder mixed with lime and fertilizer.

Many of these materials have been used for decades in agricultural fields and mine tailings where all the effluent is accounted for. They have not been considered safe for use on public lands.

“The material back then was bad for business. You did not want that near any type of public waterway or anything like that,” said Lavigne.

“I would say probably in the last 10 to 15 years, there’s been a lot of advancements in pulp chemical engineering and processing. Now, there’s been enough technological advancement in terms of treating this stuff that it could be considered safe.”

The greenhouse trial will test all these treatments for efficacy.

When Lavigne has narrowed his selection down to two or three treatments, he will then use those treatments to try and regreen an abandoned aggregate pit in the region.

“During the greenhouse trial, what we’re doing is using this controlled environment where we can see if any ugly, nasty chemistry is coming out of the water, and we will see at the end of the trial what is most effective,” he said.

“Because even if one pulp does really well, there’s no point in doing a larger trial if it’s just going to damage the waterways because they’ve been through hell and back already.”

Lavigne added that there’s a huge difference between taking a bit of material and putting it in a lab and actually applying that material in a field environment.

“The lab and field are two different realities – a lab is a controlled environment where you know all the variables and the field is a chaotic system. You put the material down and you don’t know what will happen after that,” he said.

The second phase of the trial will involve applying the chosen treatments to an aggregate pit that was abandoned in the 1980s and planting trees and a variety of other plants to see how well they take.

“We’re going to let that grow for two to three years and then we’re going to see at the end what material did well and what we can find being leached out of that site,” he said.

“The idea is that if we can regreen a gravel pit using this material and we can say it’s safe, then we can apply this protocol to similar environments like the 70,000 hectares of land in Sudbury that still need to be treated.”

Lavigne and his team completed a pre-application site assessment for the next step of the project in September.

“The goal is to lay down the material sometime this fall, and then to plant in the spring. We will track them from spring 2022 to around fall 2024,” he said.

This research will have important implications as the world enters the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration in 2021, Lavigne added.

“When you’re trying to reclaim a landscape anywhere in the world, one of the biggest issues is being able to improve the conditions of the soil,” he said.

“The soil needs to be able to support a seedling for at least the first few years of its life where it’s at its most vulnerable. If it isn’t able to do that, you’re going to plant 300 trees and six of them are going to survive.”

The results of this experiment, he added, will be “another tool” in a restoration ecologist’s pocket.

“Sudbury really is the poster child for how a community can come together to successfully claim an environment,” he said.

“With over 200,000 brownfield/industrially contaminated sites in Canada alone, the world needs the forward-thinking, innovative science coming out of Laurentian's natural science departments to lead the effort in tackling climate change and restoring damaged landscapes.”

The Local Journalism Initiative is made possible through funding from the federal government.

sud.editorial@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @SudburyStar

Colleen Romaniuk, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Sudbury Star

COP26: 4 ways rich nations can keep promises to curb emissions and fund climate adaptation

The time has come for Canada and other rich nations to pony-up and pay for the devastation they have caused countries in the Global South. That means, for a start, providing far greater climate adaptation financing to low-income countries and plugging the holes that siphon their limited fiscal resources to tax havens.

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© (Jeremy Selwyn/Pool via AP) The United Kingdom will host the upcoming COP26 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

Bruce Campbell, Adjunct professor, faculty of environmental and urban change, 

York University, Canada 

Two Canadians have prominent roles at the COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. United Nations Ambassador Bob Rae, is co-chair of the COP26 finance panel, and Mark Carney is the UN special envoy for COP26, responsible for getting financial institutions to join the new Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero. They are experienced and highly respected individuals with solid reputations as mediators.

However, despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent climate plan, Canada’s record on greenhouse gas emissions reduction has been abysmal. Furthermore, its failure to meet its climate finance commitments to developing countries will not be viewed favourably as Ambassador Rae attempts to negotiate a meaningful international climate agreement.

The UN says more than 160 financial firms are signed onto the alliance but very few are Canadian. There are no Canadian banks among the 43 banking members, and only a handful of asset owners and managers, including the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. Moreover, many financial institutions have joined the alliance with sustainability plans that have been criticized as public relations exercises or greenwashing by environmental groups
Canada, one of the worst carbon emitters

Canada is, historically, the 10th largest carbon emitter and the worst contributor to carbon emissions on a per capita basis. The federal government has committed to reducing carbon emissions to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. However, it has not committed to end fossil fuel company subsidies or provide an end-date for fossil fuel production, despite the urging of the UN secretary general to hold the line.

Low-income countries are tiny emitters of greenhouse gases, least responsible for climate change, yet bearing its worst consequences. In the past 15 years, 90 per cent of deaths from heat wave-related disasters have occurred in low- and middle-income countries. The UN refugee agency estimates that 21.5 million people are displaced by climate change-related disasters every year. For these countries, adaptation, not mitigation, is the overriding priority.
Create zero-interest loans

Twenty years ago, at the Copenhagen summit, rich countries promised to provide developing countries US$100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020. They have yet to meet this target.

Canada has contributed less than 20 per cent of its fair share. Even with the Trudeau government’s promise to double climate financing to US$4.2 billion over five years, US$840 million per year, this is still only 24 per cent of its fair share. The Group of 78, of which I am a member of the executive, has called for a quadrupling of Canada’s financing commitment as a bare minimum.

Moreover 80 per cent of rich country financing is in the form of loans, increasing the stress on countries already struggling to manage their debt burdens.

International Monetary Fund-created money, or special drawing rights, which is allocated to countries based on their economic size, is largely unused by rich countries. Although discussions are ongoing, there has been no commitment to recycle these funds into zero-interest loans to low-income countries.
Tax havens harm climate action

Tax havens have disproportionately siphoned off wealth from low-income countries, a post-Second World War legacy of former colonies gaining independence that prompted the exit of colonial wealth via the proliferation of tax havens. Their losses have been accentuated during the pandemic.

According to a report by the tax justice network these countries are losing the equivalent to more than half of their yearly public health budgets due to the shifting of multinational corporations profits to tax havens. The loss is equivalent to eight per cent of rich countries’ health budgets.

More than 130 countries, including Canada, have reached an agreement, co-ordinated by the OECD, that would establish a minimum of 15 per cent corporate tax to restrict tax avoidance and evasion. However, it has been sharply criticized as being rife with loopholes and carveouts. Oxfam accused it of pandering to corporations, having “practically no teeth” and offering no revenue for the world’s poorest countries.

Read more: Paid millions to hide trillions: Pandora Papers expose financial crime enablers, too

Tax havens are enabled by an infrastructure of lawyers, accountants and bankers, including some from Canada. Rich countries’ efforts to restrict and bring greater transparency to international tax rules have largely fallen short.

Even by that standard Canada has been a laggard. The Liberal government recently increased the investigative resources of the Canada Revenue Agency and promised in its most recent budget to address cross-border tax avoidance and evasion schemes. How effective these will be in reining in these actions by wealthy individuals and corporations; past inaction does not bode well going forward. Carney will have his work cut out for him if, or when, he addresses these issues at COP26.
No more blah, blah, blah

To its credit, Canada, along with several other developed countries, is a member of the High Ambition Coalition, a group at the UN talks comprising many of the poorest and most vulnerable developing countries. But good intentions and empty promises will not pass muster. We don’t need more “blah blah blah,” to quote Greta Thunberg.

The UN Human Rights Council recently recognized access to a clean and healthy environment as a fundamental right and established a special rapporteur on the human rights impacts of climate change. These developments have the potential to make major emitting companies, including Canada’s, legally liable for human rights violations arising from climate change.

Hopefully, this will put additional pressure on rich countries to get serious about climate financing, debt restructuring and development funding for poor nations. Inaction is a luxury we can no longer afford.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bruce Campbell is affiliated with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Group of 78, the Rideau Institute for International affairs, The Polaris Institute

STATEHOOD OR INDEPENDENCE
How Puerto Rico became the most vaccinated place COLONY in America

A member of a scientific coalition advising Puerto Rico's government on the coronavirus pandemic recently joked about the island's high Covid-19 vaccination rate, attributing it to the proliferation of drug store chains on the island.

© Ricardo Arduengo/AFP/Getty Images People attend first mass vaccination event at the Puerto Rico Convention Center in San Juan on March 31, 2021.

"There is a Walgreens on like every corner," said Rafael Irizzary, a professor of biostatistics at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "Everywhere you go, they have everything you need. Rum. Coffee. You get your fireworks and then you go get a vaccine."

Irizzary was only half joking about vaccination rates and Puerto Rico's more than 100 Walgreens outlets.

The Caribbean island -- in recent years pummeled by deadly hurricanes, rocked by earthquakes, beset by political unrest and saddled by debt -- has quietly managed to outpace even New England states with the highest vaccination rates in the country.

"All those emergencies and collective trauma primed Puerto Rico and the leadership, the scientific community, the healthcare community," said Daniel Colón Ramos, a Yale medical school professor who presides over the coronavirus coalition advising the government. "There was a sense of urgency. A lot of people that I have worked with, their attitude was like: Not on my watch. Not again."

Senior citizens receive Covid-19 vaccines at a National Guard vaccination center in San Juan on February 8, 2021.

Puerto Rico has fully vaccinated just over 73% of its 3.3 million residents, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's more than 2.3 million people.

The island has the highest rate of total vaccine doses administered, with 154,563 per 100,000 people. It had administered 4.9 million doses as of Friday, according to the CDC.

On the mainland, Vermont leads with 70.8% of the population fully vaccinated, followed by Connecticut at 70.2% and Maine at 70%, according to the CDC, which added that just over 57% of the total US population was fully vaccinated as of Friday.

Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, wrote on Twitter that Puerto Rico's "fabulous" vaccination efforts have "gotten way too little attention."

"Best I can tell, they've done this largely by not tying vaccines to politics," Jha wrote last weekend. "They pay less attention to mainland politics. All their political parties actively support vaccinations. And generally, political [identity] & vaccinations are not intermixed."

Not only is Puerto Rico poor compared to much of the mainland, Jha noted, but it also has a larger population than 21 states. It's about "5 times bigger" than Vermont, he wrote. The poverty rate on the island was about 43% in 2018, compared to 13% at the national level and more than double Mississippi's 19.7%, according to the US Census Bureau.

'A lot of saved lives'

"It represents a lot of saved lives," Colón Ramos said of the island's vaccination success. "It's really about the fact there are hundreds of people -- if not thousands -- right now walking around somewhere in Puerto Rico and they wouldn't be there if it wasn't for these efforts."

Dr. Iris Cardona, chief medical officer of the island's health department, attributed the success to teamwork by the scientific community, the private sector, government agencies, medical associations and schools, the National Guard and religious and municipal leadership.

"It's a collaborative exercise," said Cardona, who is overseeing the vaccination program. "Given the difficulties that the whole world knows Puerto Rico has endured in the last five years -- hurricanes, earthquakes, political and fiscal crises -- the Puerto Rican people at all levels have cooperated."

That cooperation has included both vaccine education programs and vaccination events.

Throughout the pandemic, the island's government has implemented lockdowns and other restrictions, issued mask and vaccination mandates and put in place stringent indoor dining and social distancing rules, according to members of the Covid-19 coalition.

"In the cultural context of Puerto Rico, the social distancing is not something that comes easy to us as Puerto Ricans -- we want to be close," Colón Ramos said. "But people have managed to navigate that very well.

'Coherent message ... based on scientific evidence'

While some states have fiercely resisted Covid-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates, the US territory has not.

"Right now the legislature is controlled by one party, the governorship is controlled by another party, but in spite of those differences... wanting to save lives during the pandemic was never politicized in Puerto Rico," Colón Ramos said.

"Difficult decisions were made and criticized," he said. "But, for example, mask mandates were never really politicized. The importance of vaccination was never made into a political issue. It helped to send a coherent message that was based on scientific evidence."

Puerto Rico has had at least 151,245 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 3,219 reported deaths during the pandemic, according to the island's health department. Connecticut, which is about the same size as Puerto Rico, has had more than 400,000 Covid-19 cases and 8,721 deaths.

Dr. Víctor Ramos, a pediatrician and president of the island's Association of Physicians and Surgeons, said mass vaccination centers were set up by the National Guard in shopping malls throughout the island.

There were door-to-door vaccination events in remote rural towns, where shots were administered in homes, particularly to the elderly and bedridden.

"We will go wherever we need to go to vaccinate people," Ramos said. "After (Hurricane) Maria many people were holed up in remote towns and we had to get out there to help them. We're doing the same now with the vaccine."

The housing crisis and the labor shortage are linked: People can't take jobs if there aren't affordable homes nearby

bwinck@businessinsider.com (Ben Winck,Madison Hoff) 

© Steve Pfost/Newsday RM/Getty Images A "Help Wanted" sign hangs in the window of Gino's Pizza on Main Street in Patchogue, New York on August 24, 2021. Steve Pfost/Newsday RM/Getty Images

The housing crisis and the labor shortage are linked. Fighting the former could help solve the latter.

Numerous studies show that affordable housing improves job growth, while expensive housing can damage local economies.

Investing in underserved neighborhoods and creating affordable housing in cities can boost hiring across the US.

San Francisco could learn something from Columbus, Ohio.

It's a fairly simple concept: Though the Bay Area boasts abundant jobs, housing for the people to fill those jobs isn't affordable. In Columbus, however, affordable housing can be found within a reasonable distance from the city's largest job hubs.

San Francisco's problem reveals the link between the housing crisis and the labor shortage. Columbus's planning hints at a solution for both.

Across the US, businesses are struggling to fill job openings. The trend, now known as the "labor shortage," has changed the game for employers and employees. Americans are flexing unprecedented bargaining power and demanding higher pay to return to work. Those with jobs are quitting at record pace for new opportunities, hoping to capitalize on the overwhelming demand for workers.

It's working. Average wages have risen at the fastest pace in decades as firms scramble to rehire. Yet the shortage shows no signs of calming. More than 10 million job openings remained unfilled at the end of August, signaling the return to full employment will take some time.

At the same time, the US housing market is still white-hot. A shortage of available homes has led to frenetic bidding wars and the fastest price growth in 45 years. More houses are on the market than during pandemic lows, but it's still well below what experts estimate is needed to meet demand.

The shortages are two sides of the same coin. Cities with the most job openings don't have the affordable housing needed by many workers. And areas with cheaper housing don't have the promising labor markets to make them attractive.

Fixing the housing market could be the best bet for fighting the labor shortage.
Housing and employment are fundamental to the American Dream

The gap between affordable housing and job access already has a name: spatial mismatch. The trend has been studied for years, but the pandemic's effects on the labor market brought the term back into the limelight.

It also describes where San Francisco can learn from Columbus. A 2019 study by the Urban Institute found that, while the San Francisco Bay Area had an overabundance of job openings, there weren't enough job seekers within a reasonable distance to fill them. It wasn't until one looked far into the Bay Area's surrounding neighborhoods that openings matched available workers. But that had more to do with fewer postings than more applicants.

The landscape is different in Columbus. While the city had more open job than people seeking work, those jobless people tended to at least live within a reasonable distance to work hubs. By creating affordable housing and placing it near transit, Columbus was able to connect low-income residents with employment opportunities.

Similar effects can help close spacial mismatches throughout the US, Christina Stacy, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, told Insider.

"People need safe, stable, affordable housing in high-opportunity neighborhoods in order to have any upward economic mobility. Certainly having affordable housing near jobs will help us get there," she said.

The equation works the other way around, too. Unaffordable housing poses "significant negative effects" on local employment growth, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston said in a 2010 paper.

For example, California cities suffer a two percentage-point drop in employment growth for every one-unit increase in the Fed's housing affordability ratio (higher ratios mean worse affordability). Metropolitan areas and counties faced 10-point drops in job growth for every one-unit increase. Despite varied housing markets across the country, the results "turn out to be remarkably consistent," the team said.

Even housing uncertainty can harm local job markets. A survey of nearly 700 Milwaukee workers showed that experiencing a forced move increased the likelihood of losing work by up to 22 percentage points, according to a 2016 study by Harvard University researchers.

Improving housing affordability doesn't just lift job growth; It keeps workers from losing the jobs they have.
Moving people to jobs and bringing jobs to the people

Cities have long offered the best job prospects, while poorer and less densely populated areas have been left by the wayside. The effect snowballed through much of the post-war period as home prices rose, low-income Americans were forced out, and wealthier workers brought fresh investment to gentrified neighborhoods.

The pandemic widened the gap even further. Home prices have skyrocketed through 2021 as a broad housing shortage fueled bidding wars across the US. The price surge was most intense in the most populous areas, making job hubs even less accessible to low-income workers.

Only eight states - including California, New York, and Hawaii - had more unemployed workers than job openings at the end of August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. The remaining states had far more job openings than workers to fill them, the defining characteristic behind the country's labor shortage.

The solution must be two-pronged, the Urban Institute's Stacy said. City governments can leverage pandemic-era aid to create and preserve affordable housing. Transportation options like buses and train stops can connect affordable neighborhoods to job opportunities. And renter protections can stave off gentrification and ensure neighborhoods remain accessible.

"As we do invest in under-invested neighborhoods, we need to get in there and preserve affordable housing," Stacy said. "Otherwise you're just shifting people around and it's not really helping with equity or reducing poverty."

On the other end of the spectrum, governments can draw jobs to areas where homes are affordable. Policies like the New Markets Tax Credit and Opportunity Zone tax incentives can attract private businesses to affordable areas, she said. Governments can also stimulate employment directly through workforce training programs and public-sector jobs.

"The answer to all of this is that we have attack everything by every angle," Stacy said. "This is a great opportunity point to be rethinking this and responding to all these demographic shifts."