Is nuclear power the way forward to combat the climate crisis?

Nuclear power can go horribly wrong and is notorious for cost overruns, but it is gaining high-profile champions.

China, the United States and France are all are embracing nuclear power in the fight against the climate crisis 

[File: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg]

By Patricia Sabga
Published On 12 Nov 2021

As the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) wraps up and countries prepare to throw a lot more money towards decarbonising their economies, the debate over the role nuclear energy should play in achieving net-zero targets is heating up.

Nuclear power plants have been around since the 1950s. The technology is relatively basic: Atoms are split and the energy that’s released heats water to produce steam that moves electricity-generating turbines.

Of course, when things go wrong with that 20th-century technology – whether due to nature or human error – they can go horribly wrong. Chernobyl. Fukushima. Three Mile Island.

Nuclear power is also notorious for cost overruns and is relatively more expensive compared to renewables like solar and wind.

But some countries are embracing nuclear power in a big way. China – the world’s biggest carbon emitter – is planning to build at least 150 nuclear reactors over the next 15 years, Bloomberg News reported (paywall). That is more than the entire world has built over the past three and a half decades.

French President Emmanuel Macron said this week that his country “will for the first time in decades revive the construction of nuclear reactors” to reach its net-zero goal.

United States Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm reportedly told an audience at COP26 that the US is “all in on nuclear” as part of its clean electricity plans.

There are also business A-listers throwing their weight behind nuclear power. Through firms TerraPower and PacifiCorp, billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are championing a type of advanced small modular reactor (SMR) known as a “fast” Natrium reactor.

Even the UN is throwing its support behind SMRs and advanced reactor technology, lauding its benefits in a recent technology brief (PDF).

So should countries go nuclear to save the planet?

Allison Macfarlane is a professor and the director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. Before that, she was chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

She wrote an article for Foreign Affairs (paywall) this summer on the subject of nuclear energy and climate goals. Her arguments generated some pointed pushback (paywall) as world leaders descended on Glasgow, Scotland for COP26.

Macfarlane describes herself as neither a proponent nor a detractor of nuclear power, but an analyst who prefers to give a “measured analytical response” to questions surrounding nuclear energy.

She recently shared her views with Al Jazeera Digital’s Managing Business Editor Patricia Sabga about nations building more nuclear power plants to battle the climate crisis.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Patricia Sabga: Proponents of nuclear energy say it has a bigger role to play in decarbonisation plans. Does the world need more nuclear power plants to fight the climate crisis?


Allison Macfarlane: Almost 19 percent of the power [in the United States] right now is produced by nuclear power. That’s carbon free. That’s really helpful. We don’t want to shut that off right now. But I live in a pragmatic, realistic world. And I don’t think, at least in the next 10 or 20 years, that nuclear power will be able to have a big impact on reducing carbon emissions because we can’t build new plants fast enough.

PS: And why is that? Why can’t we build new plants fast enough?

AM: It’s complicated. These are mega projects, and they require a level of quality control and programme management that doesn’t exist in a lot of other industries. And though people may promote some of the newer reactor designs as being easy to produce in factories, if we look at the existing reactors that have been produced in factories – for instance, the ones that are under construction in Georgia, the Vogtle plant [where two additional reactor units are under construction] – the experience in factories has not been good.

The factory that built the modules for the Georgia plant built them incorrectly for years. They welded them incorrectly and they had to be rewelded at the reactor site. That factory led in large part to the bankruptcy of Westinghouse.

We can’t build new plants fast enough.

PS: You mentioned newer reactor designs. What are these designs and what challenges do they face?

AM: First of all, a lot of them aren’t new. A lot of these designs are 70 years old or older. But given that, there are new sorts of twists to some of these designs.

Many of them exist only on paper, or as small-scale models. And the way engineering works is that you design something – these days, it’s computer-assisted – and then you build a scale model. When you build the scale model, you see where you are wrong in your computer design, and so you fix that. Then you have to build the full-scale design. And when you scale up again, there will be things that you’ve gotten wrong in the scale model, and you’re going to have to fix that.

And so, for many of these designs, we’re still at the computer model stage. We haven’t done the other steps. And those steps take years. And when you get to the full-scale model, that’s really expensive. Where’s that money coming from?

PS: Let’s talk about expense then. In terms of just cost, how does nuclear stack up to say wind or solar?

AM: It’s significantly more expensive. Of course, it depends on what solar you’re talking about. But if you look at Lazard’s recent analysis of levelized costs of energy [an analysis that takes into account how much it costs to finance and build a power plant and to keep it running throughout its lifetime and then divides that cost by how much energy it kicks out each year] and you look at solar PV [photovoltaic] utility scale, and wind, they are significantly cheaper than nuclear.

That’s not true of solar PV rooftop. It’s as expensive or maybe more expensive than nuclear.

These plants are very expensive to build.

PS: Why is nuclear so expensive compared to wind and utility-scale solar?

AM: Expenses are dominated by the capital costs of plant construction. These plants are very expensive to build. I think we’re up to at least $14bn a plant for the Vogtle plants in Georgia. That’s for a thousand gigawatts generation capacity. They’re just really expensive to build and they take a long time to build. And so not only do you have the cost of the capital of building the plant, but you have the cost of the interest on the capital, which becomes a big cost.

That’s really what hurts nuclear. Now there are claims made about the small modular reactors that they’ll be cheaper. But because nobody’s ever built one, and nobody’s established the supply chains to build them and to operate them, we really have no idea what those will cost.

PS: You wrote an article in Foreign Affairs in July. Subsequently, you’ve been criticised by Armond Cohen [of the Clean Air Task Force] and Kenneth Luongo [of the Partnership for Global Security] for comparing the lifetime cost of a nuclear power plant with the lifetime cost of wind and solar because wind and solar are not “always on” energy generators, whereas nuclear is.

AM: There’s a point that wind and solar are intermittent, and nuclear is not. I think the larger question is, how relevant is intermittency now?

Ten years ago, it was a really big deal. It’s becoming less of a deal, I think. What’s interesting to note is that when you talk to utility companies, they are really interested in having plants be load following [responding to surges and ebbs in power demand]. They’re really orienting themselves towards dealing with intermittency. But that means they need a plant that can ramp up and down quickly. Nuclear can’t do that. The existing nuclear fleet can’t do that. They’re either on or they’re off, and it takes a long time for them to ramp up to full scale on.

PS: What about when you factor in energy storage, because it’s still expensive? It’s still not where it needs to be to make solar and wind reliable 24-7. Is that a big concern?

AM: It is a legitimate concern. But there are storage options that you can go and buy right now and build in the next couple of years. But that kind of rapid construction and ability to have stuff that’s available on the shelf, pull it off right now, doesn’t exist [for nuclear energy], especially for these advanced reactor designs.

There are claims made about the small modular reactors that they’ll be cheaper.

PS: What about proliferation concerns? Do you think that those should factor into arguments about whether nuclear energy should be part of the new energy mix to respond to the climate crisis?

AM: Absolutely. We have to consider proliferation and the connection to nuclear weapons when we think about nuclear energy. We should be working to devalue nuclear weapons. That means getting rid of them. But we have to be careful. And there is an international structure set up to do this through the International Atomic Energy Agency and the safeguards agreements that countries fall under.

So there is a structure. It’s been in place for many, many decades. But we do have to be cognisant of this. The light-water reactors that exist in many countries today don’t pose big proliferation risks. But some of the new designs that are being talked about may produce materials that could be used directly in nuclear weapons. And so those we have to be more careful, and understand the proliferation implications better, and make sure that there are safeguards in place to ensure that materials aren’t diverted.

PS: What role do you see nuclear power playing in the future of energy, not only in the United States but globally?

AM: Right now it plays a fairly significant role in electricity production in a number of countries. I imagine that will continue for many decades. And then we’ll see what happens. I don’t know. I don’t have a good crystal ball. I can just tell you that we’re going through a massive change. I don’t know whether there’s the will, globally, to move away from fossil fuels as seriously and as quickly as we need to. We need to do it yesterday. And nuclear power would be part of that mix, potentially, if we were really, really serious. But it means a lot of money. So somebody has to pay for this.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Fight for fossil fuels dominates COP26 climate deal

Analysts question the text of COP26’s final agreement citing ‘watered down’ language on hydrocarbon eradication and missing commitments on emission cuts.

President Xi Jinping has said China would stop financing coal-fired power plants abroad and 'step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy' 

[File: Li Bin/EPA-EFE]

By Robert Kennedy
Published On 12 Nov 2021


Glasgow, Scotland – Crucial moves to head off the climate emergency – such as walking away from fossil fuels – remained on the table on Friday as climate negotiators zeroed in on a COP26 deal with only hours to go at the summit.

However, the latest draft for a final climate change agreement in Glasgow was inserted with caveats that “watered down” hard targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, analysts said.

“Fortunately, we still have some reference to getting rid of fossil fuels, and we have some reference to coal. That’s a good thing – many expected there would be strong pushback to remove it completely,” said Richie Merzian, a former Australian government climate negotiator now with The Australia Institute.

“But, having said that, there have been multiple caveats placed on it – enough that you can run a coal train right through it,” he added.

COP26’s first draft was released on Wednesday, raising hopes for real action as ending coal use and fossil fuel subsidies made it into UN climate text for the first time. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China have long fought to banish any such language.

One caveat inserted on Friday – which threatens the crucial goal to keep a 1.5-degrees Celsius (2.7-degrees Fahrenheit) temperature rise by the end of the century – was only old, outdated coal factories will be targeted for shutdown, not ones running on new technologies.

Another stipulation added from the previous draft communique was ending only “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies. “As if there are efficient ones,” Merzian noted wryly.

“Unfortunately these are weasel words that allow countries to get away with it,” he said. “These are the caveats that we expected, but at least there is some placeholders in there to actually address fossil fuels.”

­­­­In terms of stronger targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 – a key demand at the climate talks – the language is totally absent, Merzian said.

What is needed, he added, is text that compels nations to clearly state their new emission-cut intentions – aligned with 1.5C – by next year.

“That is missing, that’s been watered down,” Merzian said.

Scientists say the planet needs hydrocarbon emissions to be extinguished by about 50 percent over the next eight years – otherwise keeping the 1.5C goal alive will be out of reach.

Major funding shortfalls

One positive addition to the final draft was on financial compensation for developing nations already dealing with myriad climate disasters and those on the way.


Rich nations – which caused the climate crisis by pumping vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution – pledged years ago to pay $100bn annually to poorer ones hit hardest by climate chaos.

That promise has never been fulfilled. Friday’s draft text, however, outlined a fund for climate reparations and to help developing countries transition away from hydrocarbon energy, a welcomed move.

“I think it’s a step up in that we acknowledge the shortfall of $100bn, and we actually have a call to fully deliver it. That was a call very much missing from the previous text,” said Jennifer Tollmann from the European think-tank E3G.

She noted the need to double of funds to nations victimised by climate change to adapt to weather catastrophe was also inserted into the draft.

More powerful superstorms, ravaging floods, raging wildfires, and sea surges will intensify as the globe unrelentlessly warms in the decades ahead.

‘Doesn’t fill the gap’

Tollmann said while it was positive that finance for climate-vulnerable countries was addressed, the broader issue is serious funding shortfalls.

Some observers say $100bn per year is a drop in the ocean compared with what nations really need to fight the worst climate change effects, and to move away from fossil fuels. According to estimates, anywhere from $300bn to $800bn annually is what is actually required.

“So will it be enough? When we actually step back, the reality is doesn’t fill the gap of what developing countries need to fully adapt and to fully transition [to green economies],” she said.

It remains to be seen if the current COP26 text will survive as is on Friday. Climate negotiating teams are expected to work into Saturday, perhaps even longer, to nail down a deal.

For vulnerable nations of the Global South, they can only hope any agreement signifies a serious commitment to finally address the dire climate situation, after 30 years of empty words from world leaders.

COP26 in extra time, as climate negotiators struggle for deal

Thorny issues including funding, cutting gas emission pledges and phasing out coal were unresolved as deadline passed.

Climate activists wearing masks of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden protest outside the COP26 venue in Glasgow. on what was supposed to be the final day of negotiations [Robert Perry/EPA]

Published On 12 Nov 2021

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Updated: 

25 minutes ago

Negotiators at COP26 were due to meet again on Saturday, after failing to conclude a deal on the climate crisis to rein in rising temperatures that threaten the planet.

A draft of the final deal of the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference was released early on Friday, which was supposed to be the final day of the two-week conference

But a final agreement on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) remains stuck over issues from coal and other fossil fuels to financial support for poorer nations from rich countries.

Alok Sharma, the COP26 president, called on negotiators from the nearly 200 countries at the conference in the Scottish city of Glasgow, to come together and conclude an agreement.

“We have come a long way over the past two weeks and now we need that final injection of that ‘can-do’ spirit, which is present at this COP, so we get this shared endeavour over the line,” Sharma said.

The draft deal includes a requirement that countries set tougher climate pledges next year in an attempt to bridge the gap between their current targets and the much deeper cuts scientists say are needed this decade to avert catastrophic climate change.

Talks were at a “bit of a stalemate,” and the United States, with support from the European Union, was holding back talks, said Lee White, Gabon’s minister for forests and climate change.

White said there was a lack of trust between rich and poor nations over payments from rich countries to the poor for damage from the worst effects of global warming – funds for adapting to climate change and carbon markets.

A police officer monitors protesters during a climate change demonstration outside

 of the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow on November 12, 2021 

[Andy Buchanan/AFP]

COP26 began on October 31 amid dire warnings from leaders, activists and scientists that not enough was being done to curb global warming.

An agreement was supposed to be finalised 6pm local time (18:00 GMT) on Friday.

“The negotiating culture is not to make the hard compromises until the meeting goes into extra innings, as we now have done,” said longtime climate talks observer Alden Meyer of the European think-tank E3G.

“But the UK presidency is still going to have to make a lot of people somewhat unhappy to get the comprehensive agreement we need out of Glasgow.”

Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest oil producer and considered among the nations most resistant to strong wording on fossil fuels, said the latest draft was “workable”.

The Saudi delegate, Ayman Shasly, said the country would guard against any changes that “skew the balance” of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

A final deal will require the unanimous consent of the nearly 200 countries that signed the Paris accord.

Cutting fossil fuel subsidies

Friday morning’s draft proposals from the meeting’s chair called on countries to accelerate “the phaseout of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels”.

A previous draft on Wednesday had been stronger, calling on countries to “accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuel”.

US climate envoy John Kerry said Washington backed the current wording.

“We’re not talking about eliminating” coal, he told fellow climate diplomats. But, he said: “Those subsidies have to go.”

A protester holds a placard displaying a ‘Stop Climate Crime’ slogan during a climate change

 demonstration outside of the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow on November 12, 2021

 [Andy Buchanan/AFP]

There was a mixed response from activists and observers on how significant the addition of the words “unabated” and “inefficient” was.

Richie Merzian, a former Australian climate negotiator who directs the climate and energy programme at the Australia Institute think-tank, said the additional caveats were “enough that you can run a coal train through it”.

Countries like Australia and India, the world’s third-biggest emitter, have resisted calls to phase out coal any time soon.

Scientists agree the use of fossil fuels must end as soon as possible in order to keep the rise in global temperatures at 1.5C.

Rewording of some crucial text of the draft agreement around coal and fossil fuels is “very unfortunate”, Danish Environment Minister Dan Jorgensen told Al Jazeera.

“Some of the very strong wording that was in there, for instance, with regards to fossil fuels and coal … is being watered down,” he said.

Funding issues

Another crunch issue is the question of financial aid for poor countries to help them cope with, and adapt to, climate change.

Rich nations failed to provide them with $100bn annually by 2020, as agreed, causing considerable anger among developing countries going into the talks.

The latest draft reflects those concerns, expressing “deep regret” that the $100bn goal has not been met and urging rich countries to scale up their funding.

The sum, which falls far short of what the UN says countries would actually need, aims to address “mitigation”, to help poor countries with their ecological transition, and “adaptation”, to help them manage extreme climate events.

The new draft says that, by 2025, rich countries should double from current levels the funding they set aside for adaptation – a step forward from the previous version that did not set a date or a baseline.

Of roughly $80bn rich countries spent on climate finance for poor countries in 2019, only a quarter was for adaptation.

A more contentious aspect, known as “loss and damage”, would compensate them for the ravages they have already suffered from global warming, although this is outside the $100bn and some rich countries do not acknowledge the claim.

Updating emissions target

Updating emissions targets is another thorny issue as nations were asked to come back with new emissions-cutting targets that they were supposed to submit before the Glasgow talks.

The draft calls on the nations to submit another tougher target by the end of 2022, but some nations, such as Saudi Arabia, are baulking at the proposal, said the World Resources Institute’s David Waskow.

In 2015 in Paris, there was debate about whether targets should be updated every five or 10 years, so updating them one year after Glasgow is a big deal, said the Environmental Defense Fund’s Vice President for Global Climate Kelley Kizzier, a former EU negotiator.

Serbia restores warship that fired first shots of World War One
 

Fri, November 12, 2021, 6:28 AM·1 min read

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia has finally recalled to service as a floating museum a warship that fired the first shots that began World War One, following years of lobbying from navy ship enthusiasts who wanted it restored.

The SMS Bodrog was one of two Austro-Hungarian heavy gunboats that sailed into the confluence of the rivers Sava and Danube around midnight on July 28, 1914. Its two canons hurled shells at Serbian positions in Belgrade, marking the start of the four-year war in which around 20 million people died.

Renamed Sava, it also served in World War Two after it was taken over by Nazi German-ruled Croatia and was part of the former Yugoslavia's navy until 1962 after which it was sold to a private company as a gravel barge.

It was left to rot for years at its moorings near Belgrade after it was retired before the Serbian government granted it heritage protection status in 2005.

"In 2015, the Defense Ministry decided that the ship should be placed under its auspices, it was added to the inventory of the Military Museum and over the next few years it has been restored and re-equipped," Natasa Tomic, a curator with the Belgrade-based Military Museum, told Reuters.

Sava, which is now fully restored and floats on the river Sava near Belgrade's city centre, is one of two surviving Austro-Hungarian river monitors which served during World War One. The other is SMS Leitha which is moored in Hungary's capital Budapest.

(Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Why are giant conglomerates falling out of fashion?

This week, General Electric, Toshiba and Johnson & Johnson all announced they were breaking up their empires into separate companies.

Having struggled under its sheer weight for decades, GE finally decided to break itself up into three separate publically traded companies 

[File: Charles Krupa/AP]

Published On 12 Nov 2021

Bigger is not always better. That appears to be the verdict sweeping some of the biggest corporations on the planet this week.

After once-mighty United States conglomerate General Electric announced on Tuesday that it’s breaking itself up into three separate units, Japanese industrial giant Toshiba and US drugs and healthcare behemoth Johnson & Johnson followed suit on Friday, with spin-off announcements of their own.

Each firm has its own unique reasons for wanting to get small, but in general, conglomerates start spinning off units because they want to “unlock value”.

Put simply, that means they think investors see less value in the company’s businesses if they remain combined, and that shareholders will be better off if those businesses are spun off into separate companies.

Of course, the reasoning behind forming a conglomerate is that a giant firm with lots of businesses can find synergies and cost savings.

But such is the ebb and flow of the corporate landscape.

Just look at General Electric. Back in the 1980s, then-CEO Jack Welch achieved rock-star executive status by ditching businesses where GE didn’t dominate, buying up new ones where he thought the firm could be a market leader, and ruthlessly firing underperforming employees and managers – earning him the moniker “Neutron Jack”.

But just as shoulder pads have fallen out of fashion, so too have Jack Welch-style industrial giants.

Having struggled under its sheer weight for decades, GE finally decided to break itself up into three separate publically traded companies: aviation (which will keep the GE name), healthcare and energy.

Toshiba said on Friday that it is also breaking itself up by spinning off its energy infrastructure and computer devices units into two separate companies. The rest of its assets will be held under the Toshiba name.

Also on Friday, Johnson & Johnson said it is splitting into two separate companies. One as-yet-to-be-named unit will focus on healthcare products like Band-Aids, Listerine and over-the-counter medicines. The other – which will keep the J&J name – will encompass prescription drugs and medical devices.

But this week’s announcements don’t mean investors are turning against all big corporations.

Just look at the technology sector. On Monday, Google parent Alphabet breached the $2 trillion value mark for the first time, joining the likes of Microsoft and Apple in the exclusive $2 trillion-and-higher valuation club.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

CVS withdraws US Supreme Court case on disability rights



Michael Roppolo
Thu, November 11, 2021, 4:01 PM·2 min read

The CVS pharmacy chain has reached an agreement with a coalition of disability rights organizations and dropped a legal case that had made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court was scheduled to hear arguments in the dispute next month, and the ruling could have had far-reaching effects on disability rights.

The company formally withdrew its complaint Thursday and announced a new partnership to work with four groups, including the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.

"We've agreed to pursue policy solutions in collaboration with the disability community to help protect access to affordable health plan programs that apply equally to all members," a CVS spokesperson told CBS News. "Any further legal proceedings will take place in district court when the case is remanded."

The case, CVS Pharmacy, Inc. vs. Doe, stemmed from a lawsuit filed against CVS by multiple people who take prescription drugs for HIV/AIDS. The plaintiffs objected to changes to the company's terms that meant they could not opt out of mail-only delivery or utilize another pharmacy with experience handling their special medication needs. They argued it had a discriminatory impact on them, even if that wasn't the company's intent.

"When encouraging CVS to withdraw this case, the disability community asked CVS to find a different regulatory or policy venue other than the Supreme Court to address its concerns and agreed to work with CVS to do so," Maria Town, president and CEO of AAPD, told CBS News in a statement.

"A core [tenet] of the disability rights movement is 'Nothing about us without us,' and that's what this partnership achieves," Town added.

CVS Health said the new partnership builds on their longstanding relationship with those in the disability community and they will be exploring solutions together.

Disability rights advocates celebrated news of the agreement when it was first announced Wednesday.

Our power!!! https://t.co/QMnYxTa5lJ

— Imani Barbarin, MAGC | Crutches&Spice ♿️ (@Imani_Barbarin) November 11, 2021

When the case was first heard in trial court, the judge ruled the problems the plaintiffs described did not violate federal disability laws. But when they appealed, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the unnamed plaintiffs.

CVS then appealed to the Supreme Court, saying in court filings the ruling would "upend insurance plans and skyrocket healthcare costs nationwide." The justices agreed to take the case and scheduled arguments for December 7, but both sides have now asked the court to dismiss the case.

The US Supreme Court Tactic That Aims to Kill Affirmative Action

Anemona Hartocollis
Fri, November 12, 2021

Demonstrators in Boston on Oct. 14, 2018 supported a lawsuit accusing Harvard of discrimination against Asian Americans in its admissions decisions. (Kayana Szymczak/The New York Times)

The plaintiffs who filed lawsuits accusing Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill of racial discrimination in their admissions policies are asking the Supreme Court to hear both cases together, potentially increasing the chances that the justices will issue a sweeping ruling that strikes down affirmative action across higher education.

A group known as Students for Fair Admissions sued both schools on the same day in 2014. Its targeting of both a private and a public university was part of a long-term legal strategy that seeks to overturn a practice that the Supreme Court has upheld in some fashion for more than four decades, as colleges have worked to admit a more racially diverse student body.

The Harvard case has already been heard by a federal appeals court, while the North Carolina case has only reached the district level — with rulings against the plaintiffs in both. But Students for Fair Admissions argues in a petition filed to the Supreme Court on Thursday that the justices regularly fast track cases when similar issues are already pending before them and should hear the two suits together.

And indeed, that is what happened almost two decades ago in a ruling that affirmed the very precedent that Students for Fair Admissions seeks to overturn. The court decided to hear two affirmative action challenges at the University of Michigan — one at the law school and one at the undergraduate level — at the same time, bypassing the appeals court in the undergraduate case.

In 2003, those cases, known as Grutter and Gratz v. Bollinger, resulted in decisions striking down the college’s system for admitting a more racially diverse student body as too mechanical but affirming the law school’s consideration of race in admissions, allowing affirmative action to continue.

The Supreme Court has tilted more conservative in recent years with the addition of three justices nominated by former President Donald Trump, who are considered potentially receptive to arguments against race-conscious admissions practices, emboldening opponents of affirmative action to seek quick reconsideration of the policy.

But the court has put off a decision on whether to accept the Harvard case until it hears from the Biden administration, whose brief is expected soon. If the justices take the Harvard case, it would make sense for them to consider the North Carolina lawsuit at the same time, some legal experts said — especially as there might be greater public interest in the use of affirmative action at a taxpayer-supported institution.

“It’s possible that the court would feel more comfortable with a case involving a public university,” said Justin Driver, a Yale law professor and expert in constitutional law, adding, “I think this can be seen as trying to force the hand of the Supreme Court to issue a decision invalidating affirmative action sooner rather than later.”

Ilya Shapiro, a constitutional law expert at the Cato Institute, threw some cold water on the strategy. He said that at the end of the day, he did not believe it would make any difference whether North Carolina was added to the Harvard case, because the court was unlikely to treat public universities differently from private ones that accept federal funds. But he said that if he were in the plaintiff’s position, he would probably pursue the same maneuver to remind the court that if it did not review Harvard’s policy, there was another case coming behind.

The strategy of filing against both North Carolina and Harvard was orchestrated by Edward Blum, a financial adviser who founded Students for Fair Admissions. He has spearheaded more than two dozen lawsuits challenging affirmative action practices and voting rights laws, including a case against the University of Texas at Austin that led to the Supreme Court’s most recent decision supporting race-conscious college admissions policies in 2016.

The plaintiffs accused Harvard of using a subjective personal metric to discriminate against high-performing Asian Americans and to create an unspoken ceiling for them in admissions. The argument in North Carolina was more conventional, contending that the university discriminated against white and Asian applicants by giving preferences to Black, Hispanic and Native American applicants. The universities denied those accusations and defended their admissions practices.

The two-pronged attack faltered when the North Carolina case fell behind the Harvard case by about two years. A federal judge ruled for Harvard in the fall of 2019, and the appeals court affirmed that ruling in the fall of 2020, while a judge did not rule in the North Carolina case until last month — also in favor of the university.

If the justices choose to hear both cases, the court could rule in a narrow way, either upholding the admissions systems at one or the other university or both, or asking for specific fixes, which would have little relevance to higher education as a whole. Or it could rule more broadly, taking on the bigger topic of race-conscious admissions in a decision that would apply across the land.

Harvard declined to comment on the plaintiffs’ petition to the Supreme Court. The University of North Carolina did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apart from clearly linked companion cases, such as the University of Michigan lawsuits that led to the 2003 affirmative action decisions, the Supreme Court usually does not hear cases before an appellate decision unless they involve exceptional or urgent matters, like the Texas abortion challenges argued recently.

Such immediate review, leapfrogging an appeals court, is called “certiorari before judgment,” and is used typically in cases involving national crises, such as President Richard Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings to a special prosecutor.

© 2021 The New York Times Company

#MeTooMédias: French journalists denounce sexual harassment and rape in media industry

by Arshiya Jahanpour
November 12, 2021
in France

A new #MeToo scandal has seized French media after seven women publicly accused Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, a former top news anchor for the French TV channel TF1, of rape and sexual assault. Now more journalists are taking to social media to denounce the harassment, intimidation and abuse they say they’ve suffered in the industry.

“Sexual harassment, humiliation, discrimination, exploitation … Just having the strength to continue, even at my low level, already feels like a victory,” said journalist Tiphaine Blot on Twitter.

Another woman tweeted about a “journalist who raped me, harassed me and slandered me when I told him I didn’t want anything more than friendship. I almost left journalism because of him, and because of his girlfriend who told me I was ‘too ugly to be raped’.”

Emma Audrey, a journalist who often does live reporting for Radio BIP/Média 25, reminded her followers in a tweet that harassment doesn’t just happen in the workplace, but also in the street, where “violence comes from every side (police, protesters, passers-by, etc).”

The French media industry is undergoing a reckoning as more and more journalists are using the hashtag #MeTooMédias to speak up about violence and harassment experienced in and outside the workplace.

Some journalists have spoken about how they were doubly impacted, first with the harassment and then with what felt like a punishment for speaking up about that harassment.

Marie Albert, a former journalist at the news agency Agence France-Presse, says that her contract was not renewed after she went public about the sexual harassment she had endured from a colleague for six months.

Élodie Hervé says that the news channel LCI stopped giving her regular work after she reported an attempted sexual assault at work, and that she was still fighting for her rights with her lawyer.

The wave of men and women coming forward to describe abuse in the workplace was prompted by an explosive report by the French newspaper Libération in which seven women accusing the former TV presenter Patrick Poivre d’Arvor of rape and sexual assault decided to shed their anonymity and publicly share their experiences.

‘Complicit silence’ and ‘impunity’

Poivre d’Arvor is a household name in France. The now 74-year-old presented TF1’s evening news bulletin on weekdays for 21 years. In 2003, then French president Jacques Chirac awarded him the Légion d’Honneur – the country’s highest honour.

The women who have come forward have described an enduring system of “domination” during his years working at TF1 – an “abuse of power” sustained by “complicit silence” and Poivre d’Arvor’s apparent feeling of total “impunity”.

One of the women to speak out publicly, Stéphanie Khayat, says she was raped by Poivre d’Arvor for the first time in 1994. She was suffering from anorexia at the time. She worked alongside him for four years after that.

“I never spoke to anyone about that encounter,” she told Libération. “Never, never. Because I was ashamed. Because I felt dirty […] Because I agreed to work with him … It goes round and round in my head: How could I have accepted that job? I wasn’t backed up against a wall, I wasn’t forced to. So why?”

Poivre d’Arvor’s daughter Solenn had also suffered from anorexia, and she committed suicide in 1995. Khayat says that because of that he was extra attentive when she was working with him: He helped her through her illness and put her in touch with a specialist when he saw that her health had seriously deteriorated. He supported her decision to go to hospital for treatment for her anorexia. When she came out of hospital, she says he raped her again.

Support within the industry

Poivre d’Arvor has denied all of the charges against him. A case brought against him earlier in the year was dismissed, the court judging that there wasn’t enough evidence despite the testimonies of 22 women.

A group of his accusers have decided to set up an organisation called #MeTooMédias to support the fight of “the men and women who are silently suffering in the media industry”. When contacted by FRANCE 24, they said that they weren’t yet ready to give further details about the organisation as it was still in its early stages.

Media trade unions and associations are also supporting the movement. The top trade union for journalists in France, the Syndicat National des Journalistes, tweeted its support for victims of sexual violence and for the new organisation.

Prenons La Une, an organisation that fights for gender parity and professional equality in the media, tweeted: “To all those who are using the hashtag #MeTooMédias to tell their story, and to all those who remain silent, we support you and we believe you.”

Source: France 24

Amazon birds becoming smaller, longer-winged due to climate change

A Collared Puffbird of the Amazon rainforest (AFP/Vitek Jirinec)

Issam AHMED
Fri, November 12, 2021

Even the wildest parts of the Amazon untouched by humanity are being impacted by climate change, according to new research.

Hotter, drier conditions over the past four decades are decreasing the body size of the rainforest's birds while increasing their wingspans, a study published in the journal Science Advances said Friday.

The changes are thought to be a response to nutritional and physiological challenges, especially during the June to November dry season.

"The biggest takeaway for me is that this is happening far from direct human disturbance, such as deforestation, in the heart of the world's biggest rainforest," Vitek Jirinec, an ecologist at the Integral Ecology Research Center and the paper's lead author told AFP.

"That is something to ponder on the last day of COP26," he added.

Jirinec and colleagues analyzed data collected on more than 15,000 birds that were caught, measured, weighed, and tagged over the course of 40 years of field work.

They found that nearly all the birds had become lighter since the 1980s.

Most species lost an average of two percent of body weight every decade, meaning a bird species that would have weighed 30 grams in the 1980s would now average 27.6 grams.

The data was not tied to a specific site but rather collected from a large range of the rainforest, meaning the phenomenon is ubiquitous.

- More efficient flight -

In all, the scientists investigated 77 species whose habitats ranged from the cool, dark forest floor to the sunlit and warmer midstory -- the forest's middle layer of vegetation.

The birds at the highest sections of the midstory, which fly more and are exposed to heat for longer, had the most pronounced changes in body weight and wing size.

The team hypothesized this was an adaptation to energy pressures -- for example decreased availability of fruit and insect resources -- and also to thermal stress.

"There's good theoretical reasoning why a smaller size is beneficial under climate warming -- you can cool yourself better -- but the larger wings are more difficult to explain," said Jirinec.

"That's why we proposed the 'wing loading' hypothesis," he added.

Longer wings, and a reduced mass-to-wing ratio, produce more efficient flight -- similar to how a glider plane with a slim body and long wings can soar with less energy.

A higher mass-to-wing ratio requires birds to flap faster to stay aloft, using more energy and producing more metabolic heat.

Jirinec added that the study was not designed to tell whether these differences were driven by natural selection resulting in genetic changes, or whether they were the result of different growth patterns based on available resources.

Both are possible, "but there's good evidence that evolution can happen over short intervals," he said. A confirmed example of rapid evolution is the recent emergence of tuskless African elephants, which are poached for their ivory.

The Amazon birds "are fairly fine-tuned, so when everyone in the population is a couple of grams smaller, it's significant," added co-author Philip Stouffer of Louisiana State University, in a statement.

How well they deal with increasingly hotter and drier conditions in the future remains an open question.

The team behind Friday's paper last month published a study showing a dramatic decline in sensitive bird species in the Amazon owing to a warming climate -- particularly those that dwell on forest floor where they forage for insects.

The authors believe other species across the world are likely to be facing similar pressures that have not yet been documented.

"This is undoubtedly happening all over and probably not just with birds," Stouffer said.

ia/dw

US BILLIONAIRE space tourist dies in plane crash


Glen de Vries (R) with fellow Blue Origin crew members at the New Shepard rocket landing pad in Texas on October 13, 2021 (AFP/Patrick T. FALLON)


Fri, November 12, 2021

US businessman Glen de Vries, who flew into space with "Star Trek" actor William Shatner on last month's Blue Origin flight, has died in a plane crash, police said Friday.

The small aircraft came down in Hampton Township, New Jersey, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) west of New York City, shortly before 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) on Thursday, a spokesman for New Jersey state police told AFP.

"There are two confirmed fatalities," the spokesman said, naming de Vries, 49, and 54-year-old Thomas Fischer.


"The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) will be the lead investigating agency," he added, without providing more details.

De Vries, the founder of clinical research platform Medidata Solutions, joined Shatner on Blue Origin's second crewed mission on October 13.

Also on board for the 11-minute journey that took them beyond Earth's atmosphere and back again were Blue Origin executive Audrey Powers and Planet Labs co-founder Chris Boshuizen.

"We are devastated to hear of the sudden passing of Glen de Vries," Blue Origin said in a tweet.

"He brought so much life and energy to the entire Blue Origin team and to his fellow crewmates. His passion for aviation, his charitable work, and his dedication to his craft will long be revered and admired."

pdh/bgs