Biden sets out oil, gas leasing reform, stops short of ban

By MATTHEW DALY

An oil well works at sunrise Aug. 25, 2021, in Watford City, N.D., part of McKenzie County. The Biden administration on Friday, Nov. 26, called for an overhaul of the nation’s oil and gas leasing program to focus on areas that are most suitable for energy development and raise costs for energy companies to drill on public lands and water. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Friday recommended an overhaul of the nation’s oil and gas leasing program to limit areas available for energy development and raise costs for oil and gas companies to drill on public land and water.

The long-awaited report by the Interior Department stops short of recommending an end to oil and gas leasing on public lands, as many environmental groups have urged. But officials said the report would lead to a more responsible leasing process that provides a better return to U.S. taxpayers.

“Our nation faces a profound climate crisis that is impacting every American,″ Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement, adding that the new report’s recommendations will mitigate worsening climate change impacts “while staying steadfast in the pursuit of environmental justice.″

The report completes a review ordered in January by President Joe Biden, who directed a pause in federal oil and gas lease sales in his first days in office, citing worries about climate change.

The moratorium drew sharp criticism from congressional Republicans and the oil industry, even as many environmentalists and Democrats said Biden should make the leasing pause permanent.

The new report seeks a middle ground that would continue the multibillion-dollar leasing program while reforming it to end what many officials consider overly favorable terms for the industry.

The report recommends hiking federal royalty rates for oil and gas drilling, which have not been raised for 100 years. The federal rate of 12.5% that developers must pay to drill on public lands is significantly lower than many states and private landowners charge for drilling leases on state or private lands.

The report also said the government should consider raising bond payments that energy companies must set aside for future cleanup before they drill new wells. Bond rates have not been increased in decades, the report said.

The Bureau of Land Management, an Interior Department agency, should focus leasing offers on areas that have moderate to high potential for oil and gas resources and are close to existing oil and gas infrastructure, the report said.

The White House declined to comment Friday, referring questions to Interior.

The federal leasing program has drawn renewed focus in recent weeks as gasoline prices have skyrocketed and Republicans complained that Biden policies, including the leasing moratorium, rejection of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and a ban on oil leasing in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, contributed to the price spike.

Biden on Tuesday ordered a record 50 million barrels of oil released from America’s strategic reserve, aiming to bring down gas prices amid concerns about inflation. Gasoline prices are at about $3.40 a gallon, more than 50% higher than a year ago, according to the American Automobile Association. Oil prices dropped about 13% Friday as a new coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa appeared to be spreading across the globe.

The Biden administration conducted a lease sale on federal oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico last week, after attorneys general from Republican-led states successfully sued in federal court to lift the suspension on federal oil and gas sales that Biden imposed when he took office.

Energy companies including Shell, BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil offered a combined $192 million for offshore drilling rights in the Gulf, highlighting the hurdles Biden faces to reach climate goals dependent on deep cuts in fossil fuel emissions.

The leases will take years to develop, meaning oil companies could keep producing crude long past 2030, when Biden has set a goal to lower greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50%, compared with 2005 levels. Scientists say the world needs to be well on the way to that goal over the next decade to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Yet even as Biden has tried to cajole other world leaders into strengthening efforts against global warming, including at this month’s U.N. climate talks in Scotland, he’s had difficulty gaining ground on climate issues at home.

The administration has proposed another round of oil and gas sales early next year in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana and other states. Interior Department officials proceeded despite concluding that burning the fuels could lead to billions of dollars in potential future climate damages

.

Emissions from burning and extracting fossil fuels from public lands and waters account for about a quarter of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Environmentalists hailed the report’s recommendation to raise royalty rates, but some groups said the report falls short of action needed to address the climate crisis.

“Today’s report is a complete failure of the climate leadership that our world desperately needs,″ said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.

The report “presumes more fossil fuel leasing that our climate can’t afford” and abandons Biden’s campaign promise to stop new oil and gas leasing on public lands, McKinnon said.

The American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying group for the oil industry, said Interior was proposing to “increase costs on American energy development with no clear roadmap for the future of federal leasing.”

Other groups were more upbeat.

“This report makes an incredibly compelling case both economically and ecologically for bringing the federal oil and gas leasing program into the 21st century,” said Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. “Enacting these overdue reforms will ensure taxpayers, communities and wildlife are no longer harmed by below-market rates, insufficient protections and poor planning.″

The wildlife federation and other groups urged the Senate to include reforms to the oil and gas program in Biden’s sweeping social and environmental policy bill. Many reforms, including a royalty rate increase and bans on drilling in the Arctic refuge and along the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, were included in a House version of the bill approved last week.

Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the left-leaning Center for Western Priorities, said the report “provides a critical roadmap to ensure drilling decisions on public lands take into account (climate) impacts on our land, water and wildlife, while ensuring a fair return for taxpayers.″

Republicans said the report was a continuation of what they call Biden’s war on domestic energy production.

While the report hides behind language of “necessary reforms″ and royalty rate adjustments, ”we know the real story,″ said Arkansas Rep. Bruce Westerman, the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee.

The Biden administration “will bog small energy companies down in years of regulatory gridlock, place millions of acres of resources-rich land under lock and key (and) ignore local input,″ Westerman said. “Ultimately, the American consumer will pay the price. Look no further than the skyrocketing prices you are already paying at the gas pump.″

Experts say economic factors, including a slow rebound from the pandemic, are tamping down U.S. oil and gas production. As the economy recovered, production lagged and prices jumped to a seven-year high in October.

LE NATIONALISME QUÉBÉCOIS EST BLANC
Indigenous leaders denounce Quebec Premier Legault as 'paternalistic,' 'arrogant'

MONTREAL — Indigenous leaders in Quebec on Friday denounced Premier François Legault for his decision not to meet with them during a two-day economic summit in Montreal.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Ghislain Picard, chief of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador, criticized Legault for speaking with reporters after the speech and for not meeting with Indigenous leadership.


"He did not have time to meet with the chiefs, but he did have time to speak to the media," Picard said at the conference, called the Grand Economic Circle of Indigenous People and Quebec.

Picard said Legault was in "electoral mode," adding that the premier's refusal to meet in person with the chiefs "shows a certain level of arrogance."

Indigenous leaders said Legault had only planned to deliver remarks to the gathering but then finally agreed to take three questions at the end of his speech from those in attendance.

Réal McKenzie, chief of the Innu Matimekush-Lac John of Schefferville, Que., asked Legault about royalties owed to Indigenous Peoples in exchange for the use of their lands. John Martin, chief of the Micmacs of Gesgapegiag, asked the premier about First Nations communities being excluded from accessing natural resources.

Neither chief said they were satisfied with the premier's responses.

The two-day event, which concluded Friday, aimed to bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous business people together.

During his speech, Legault announced a $10-million investment over five years for First Nations Executive Education, a program based at HEC Montréal business school.

Earlier Friday, Indigenous Affairs Minister Ian Lafrenière announced a $3.3-million investment for a hotel project in Kahnawake, south of Montreal.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 26, 2021.

———

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

The Canadian Press

Port of Vancouver CEO calls for climate change action to reduce future trade bottlenecks
Bianca Bharti 

© Provided by Financial Post A container ship sits docked at the Port of Vancouver on Nov. 20, 2021 in Vancouver, B.C.

The CEO of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, who has spent the year trying to keep goods moving amid unprecedented supply-chain snarls and a catastrophic flood, called on the business community to recognize the urgency to reverse climate change and invest in infrastructure to reduce the risk of future trade bottlenecks.

Robin Silvester delivered his annual remarks to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade on Nov. 25, a routine update on the state of the port. But there was nothing routine about the backdrop for this year’s “State of the Port” address, given British Columbia faced another onslaught of torrential weather, and all the goods stuck on the dock are a contributing factor to the most severe inflation threat since the early 1990s.

“In the past 20 months — and in a very concerning and tragic way over the last two weeks, here in B.C. — we have seen mounting impacts of climate change,” Silvester said. “Globally, and in the ports and shipping industry, we know that the future must be decarbonized.”

B.C. endured record-breaking rainfall last week that could amount to Canada’s costliest disaster . The weather event, known as an “atmospheric river” because it creates a dense mass of travelling water vapour, dropped a month’s worth of rain on the Fraser Valley in two days. It submerged farms and caused mudslides that wrecked highways and damaged railways, effectively severing the Port of Vancouver from the rest of the country. Environment Canada is warning of another bout of potentially detrimental rains this weekend.

What occurred in B.C. is part of a larger trend of disastrous climate events taking place around the world, heightening the “need to act now,” Silvester said. B.C. experienced a deadly wildfire season this summer, which also caused disruptions to transport routes.

Silvester said the port authority is working with federal and provincial governments on a joint supply-chain recovery working group to work on flood recovery and to prepare for future climate events.

“But bigger picture, we’re trying to create a framework that supports and enables industry across the port and its supply chain to switch to cleaner fuels,” he said.

Currently, the authority is working to provide liquid natural gas supply to fuel ships at the port in the interim until fuels like green ammonia and hydrogen become the more viable option. Silvester also told the board of trade about the Clean Technology Initiative, a program in partnership with the provincial government to provide funding for trial and adoption of low- and zero-emission fuels and technologies at the port.

He highlighted two examples already being deployed: biodiesel ferry fuel and battery-electric powered terminal tractors.

Silvester also discussed issues facing the port, such as limited industrial land for container storage as well as logistics and distribution centres. He touted the advancements in corridor infrastructure and data collection to avoid the heavy backlogs at ports seen around the world.

As one of the biggest import and export gateways in North America, the Port of Vancouver has been at the forefront of supply-chain disruptions that have beleaguered the Canadian economy while stoking inflation. The consumer price index increased 4.7 per cent in October from a year earlier, matching the biggest increase since 1991, the year the Bank of Canada pledged to set interest rates to keep inflation at about two per cent. The damage due to the floods will likely weigh on the economic recovery even more.

“We have seen, all too clearly, how a surge of demand exceeding capacity can overwhelm a trade system,” Silvester said, particularly in reference to the need to expand container space. “That should give us serious pause for thought, here in Canada.”

• Email: bbharti@postmedia.com | Twitter: biancabharti

North Sask. lake comes under ecological protection

A lake in the southern part of North America's largest freshwater river delta has new environmental protections.

Saskatchewan has designated Lobstick Lake as an ecological reserve that stretches over 98,580 hectares.

"Establishing the Lobstick Lake representative area will promote the conservation of valuable wildlife habitat in the area," Environment Minister Warren Kaeding said. "This designation will ensure the protection and further enjoyment of this land for many years to come."

The lake is part of the Saskatchewan River Delta, which stretches over 10,000 square kilometres of wetland straddling the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border.



The lake is about 24 kilometres south of Cumberland House.

The ecological protection designation follows Cumberland House Cree Nation Chief Rene Chaboyer's June declaration of economic and ecological sovereignty over the Delta in the wake of its decades-long environmental decline.

Chaboyer said he was unable to comment on the Lobstick Lake protections.

The lake site includes wetlands, lakes and river channels that are both active and abandoned, bordered by peat-forming fens and bogs, a provincial news release said.

Its land uses include fishing, hunting, trapping and tourism. It's also used for industrial development, most notably peat extraction and forestry, the release added.

Gord Vaadeland, executive director of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) Saskatchewan, said he welcomes the move as a step toward broader protections for the Saskatchewan River Delta.

Lobstick Lake was previously designated a protected zone, which cleared the way for its new designation, Vaadeland said.

"There's going to be a lot more than just Lobstick," he added. "But it's a really good carrot and a foundation for continued discussions between the province and the First Nations in that area."

CPAWS Saskatchewan has been involved in coordinating some of those discussions between the First Nation and the province, Vaadeland said.

Potential models for the land include co-management or an Indigenous protected and conserved area.

The Saskatchewan River Delta, including Lobstick Lake, is a massive carbon sink that's part of a major route for migratory birds. It's also home to a diverse array of plant and wildlife, Vaadeland said.

"The Delta itself is the most ecologically significant area of the province, as far as checking all the boxes."

Nick Pearce, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The StarPhoenix

Scathing reports reveal decades of Canadian climate failure

A series of scathing reports from Canada’s climate watchdog have laid bare decades of failure to reduce emissions, with the current government tarred with “policy incoherence” across several files.

Used by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Jerry DeMarco to describe Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s major initiatives, like the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline and Onshore Emissions Reduction Fund, “policy incoherence” is, in this case, a euphemism for policies that undermine long-term climate goals

The Trans Mountain expansion would nearly triple capacity for the pipeline stretching from Edmonton to Burnaby, helping to facilitate increased production in the oilsands. Meanwhile, the emissions reduction fund was so poorly designed that it amounts to little more than a fossil fuel subsidy that may have actually increased emissions, the commissioner found.

DeMarco compared Ottawa’s climate policy to pushing a boulder up a hill, and said policies like those supporting the fossil fuel sector run counter to the goal.

“When departments are then pushing up the hill … there's other departments pushing on the other side of the rock pushing it back down, that's essentially what's happening,” he said.

The federal government under Trudeau’s watch famously declared a climate emergency and then approved the Trans Mountain pipeline the next day from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion to ensure the expansion’s construction. Though the official price tag for the project has swollen from $5.4 billion to $12.6 billion, some have calculated that with continued delays and increased insurance costs, it is likely approaching $20 billion.

A growing chorus of international energy forecasts says there is no room for any new fossil fuel development in a world that holds global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 C, and that oil demand will decline in every scenario. But as recently as this month, Trudeau said it’s important for Canada to make money off its oil and gas sector as part of his justification for following through on the pipeline’s construction. Ottawa has repeatedly said the pipeline’s revenue will be deployed to environmentally friendly projects.

However, a cost-benefit analysis from Simon Fraser University earlier this year found there “is no likely scenario in which (the Trans Mountain expansion project) will generate a net benefit to Canada.” Rather, the net cost is expected to range from $8.3 billion to $18.5 billion, with the “base case assumptions” projecting a loss of $11.9 billion to Canadians.

The “federal government is relying on years-old talking points about Trans Mountain that just don't match the science or economics,” said climate advocacy group 350 Canada’s Cam Fenton.

“It's becoming increasingly clear that the government doesn't have an answer for this incoherence and that threatens to undermine their entire climate agenda."

Government messaging around the onshore emissions reduction fund has similarly not held up to scrutiny. The fund was started with the purpose of helping oil and gas companies reduce emissions while remaining economically competitive. DeMarco’s findings, however, show the majority of companies that tapped the fund said it would increase fossil fuel production, and that some of the emissions targeted by the funding were already covered by other programs, leading to the risk of double counting. In other words, it was a cash handout to the oil and gas industry.

DeMarco said his primary interest was its impact on emissions, but the government said there were other objectives around investments and job retention and suggested he take a more “holistic” approach. DeMarco says he asked for data and the government couldn’t provide it.

“We asked for the data on how much value for money are you getting, what is the dollar cost per job saved, for example, and they can't show us that … because they aren't tracking that,” he said.

“They have to be able to say to taxpayers: We've gathered the $600 (million) to $700 million from the tax base of Canada, we're redistributing it to the fossil fuel industry, (and) here's the value you're going to get out of that. There just can't be assertions that there will be emissions reductions, or job retention, or investment, there needs to be data to back that up,” he said.

Not being able to track stated goals “goes contrary to the basics of performance management in government,” DeMarco said.

DeMarco makes several recommendations in his report covering the past 30 years of Canada missing climate targets. Among them are calls to centralize responsibility for climate change with the federal government, diversifying energy production to lower the risk of stranded assets, protecting workers and communities from any harmful impacts of a transition to a clean economy, developing a national energy strategy, and improving transparency.

Environmental Defence senior program manager Julia Levin called the report “a scathing indictment of a failure of leadership put in gentler words.”

“A huge part of why they're not wearing this as much as they should be — why they can get away with continuing these big policy decisions that make fighting climate change even harder … is because they know they're not being closely watched,” she said.

Still, Levin said the Liberal Party is starting to pay the price for dragging its heels as the climate crisis continues to barrel down on Canadians.

“Twice in a row they weren't given a majority government,” she said.

Speaking with reporters, Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault acknowledged Canada has been poor at policy implementation but said since 2015, the federal government has been making progress.

“We have to do more, and in the last election, Canadians told us very clearly: We want you to do more and to do it faster when it comes to climate change. And that’s certainly a message that I’ve taken at heart and so has the rest of our government and the prime minister,” he said.

Opposition climate critics were quick to weigh in.

In a statement, NDP environment critic Laurel Collins challenged the idea that since Trudeau took office, progress has been made, highlighting that, unlike its G7 peers, Canada’s total emissions are still growing, its per-capita emissions are the highest in the world, and the country ranks in the top 10 for countries that have contributed the most to climate change since the Industrial Revolution.

“While Mr. Trudeau pretends to be a climate leader, he continues to give big oil and gas billions in fossil fuel subsidies,” she said.

The Conservative Party’s shadow ministers for climate, natural resources, and official languages, MPs Dan Albas, Michelle Rempel Garner, and Alain Rayes, respectively, also issued a joint statement, taking a swing at the federal government.

“The finding that the Natural Resources Canada’s Emissions Reduction Fund was so poorly designed that the funding may have actually led to an increase in carbon emissions is ridiculous. We urgently need policies that incent the continued development of low-carbon energy and carbon reduction,” the statement read.

Green Party parliamentary leader Elizabeth May told Canada’s National Observer that confronting the climate crisis requires leadership from the top to encourage a genuine whole-of-government approach.

“Clearly, there's something wrong when you look at 30 years of failure,” she said, adding, “the failure to have the response to climate be seen as a whole-of-government responsibility is, I think, key.”

May described how U.S. President Joe Biden tapped former secretary of state John Kerry, who signed the Paris Agreement on the U.S.’s behalf, to be a special climate envoy and sit on the National Security Council.

“It's a very different approach than Justin Trudeau saying, ‘Here's your new environment minister and he's going to fix it all,’” May said.

“The environment minister should not be in charge of the climate crisis file. No one minister should unless it's the prime minister. This requires leadership.”

John Woodside, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

Biology: Coal plant 'help' with climate change nothing short of a miracle

Steve Rissing
Fri, November 26, 2021



The Washington Post recently described the odd situation of a North Dakota coal industry group advocating for electric vehicles. This in a state where coal’s fossil fuel friends, the oil industry, disdain the concept.

According to the Post, the idea depends on “…a long-shot project to (capture and) store carbon emissions in deep underground wells."

Inside Climate News recently reported on similar efforts by advocates proposing to retrofit carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology at North Dakota’s largest coal-fired generating plant. Coal Creek Station and its nearby mine employ almost 800 people; they see the technology as a “godsend.”

Clean air advocates, on the other hand, see it “as an expensive distraction from the urgent need to embrace cleaner options to help address climate change.”

With the infrastructure bill passed and other proposals to address climate change, powerful coal industry interests have increased efforts to advocate for CCS technology.

When I read about hopes for CCS technology, I think of the iconic Sidney Harris cartoon depicting two scientists at a chalk board full of equations. One says to the other, “I think you should be more explicit here in step two” while pointing to a statement among the equations that reads, “then a miracle occurs.”

Miracles, almost by definition, violate the Laws of Thermodynamics; CCS gets close to qualifying. To understand this, think of the often-told parable of a gossip seeking absolution for mistruths they have spread. Their spiritual advisor tells them to take a feather pillow to the top of a nearby hill and release the feathers to the wind.

The gossip returns and says, “That wasn’t too hard.”

“But that’s not your penance,” the advisor replies; “now go capture them all and sequester them back in the pillow.”

“That’s impossible!” gasps the gossip.

“My point exactly!” says the advisor.

That’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the concept of entropy: All things, including burning fossils, tend toward disorder. Only adding energy into the system can reverse the effect.

Green plants transform sunlight energy when they bind atmospheric carbon dioxide with water and make sugars. They and everything that eats them directly or indirectly use that energy building bodies and staying alive.

Burning fossil fuels formed over hundreds of millions of years releases that locked-away sunlight. It also, of course, liberates all that carbon dioxide captured long ago by green plants and sequestered underground through geological processes.

Reversing that with CCS requires a near-miraculous amount of energy. Ironically, some CCS advocates propose using wind-generated electricity to capture carbon dioxide emitted from coal. That reduces CCS’s carbon footprint but competes with other uses.

Advocates argue that capturing carbon dioxide on the way up a smokestack will increase CCS efficiency.

Picture grabbing feathers as they fly from that hilltop.

CCS technology aims to capture 90% of carbon dioxide from burning coal. The MIT Climate Portal estimates exhaust from a coal burning plant contains 300 times the carbon dioxide of surrounding air. Cutting that by 90% still increases atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The proposed solution: Aim for 99 percent!

The chances of that from the view of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Horsefeathers!

Steve Rissing is a professor emeritus in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at Ohio State University.
steverissing@hotmail.com

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Capturing carbon from burning fossil fuels needs a miracle to work

What happens when America’s coal plants die?

Matt Krupnick

THE GUARDIAN
Fri, November 26, 2021

Photograph: Radek Hofman/Alamy

When the coal-fired power plant just outside the tiny town of Nucla, Colorado, closed in 2019, it had the makings of a disaster.

The plant, which opened in 1959, shut down three years ahead of schedule when it ran out of coal, leaving the town shocked and facing the loss of its largest employer. The facility provided nearly half the tax revenue to the region, said Deana Sheriff, executive director of the West End Economic Development Corp, which serves Nucla and the surrounding area between Telluride and Grand Junction in western Colorado.

Left without vital funding for its fire department and school district, the town was terrified about its future.

We’re not going to die because one industry went away

Deana Sheriff

But despite the early plant closure, and an unemployment rate that more than doubled overnight, Nucla had done enough to prepare. The town has leaned on tourism, driven by outdoor activities, and the recent opening of dozens of small businesses to survive.

“Initially we saw a lot of frustration and concern, mostly about selling homes and folks moving away,” Sheriff said. But the town has adapted fairly well, she said: “We’ve diversified our economy enough that we’re not going to die because one industry went away.”

Increasingly outpaced by cheaper alternatives, including renewables, and under pressure from climate concerns, at least two dozen US coal power plants – many of them in small, rural communities – are expected to close or downsize in the next 10 years, as are most of the coalmines that supply them, according to the Environmental Protection Agency and experts. Most coal communities face the same challenges as Nucla: how to replace the jobs and tax dollars that have kept these towns afloat for decades?

In some cases, such as in Nucla, local officials started planning early. In others, the closures appear to have taken leaders by surprise.

The huge Navajo Generating Station in northern Arizona, within the Navajo Nation, also shut down in 2019. Local leaders complained that plant operators closed the facility decades ahead of schedule, although the region did have two years to prepare after the announcement. Little planning appears to have preceded the closure.

“What does ‘prepare’ mean?” said the Coconino county supervisor Lena Fowler. Regional leaders didn’t see many options for replacing the money and jobs as the closure loomed, she said.

The lack of preparation in Arizona – compounded by the subsequent pandemic that shut down tourism in the picturesque region near the Grand Canyon and a drought that has devastated the popular boating destination Lake Powell – has had dire consequences. Coconino county has lost $40m a year in property taxes since the plant, just outside the town of Page, closed, Fowler said. Families have been separated as one parent left for a job at another power plant, and there are concerns the Navajo Nation could cut essential services because of the tax losses.

The trio of concrete stacks at the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona, being demolished on 19 December 2020. Photograph: George Hardeen/Navajo Generating Station/AP

A second Navajo power plant, Four Corners, is due to close in the next decade, as is the Cholla plant just outside the Nation. A nearby coalmine on the Hopi reservation, which supplied the Navajo Generating Station, has also closed. The Navajo Nation president, Jonathan Nez, did not respond to an interview request.

“The Nation didn’t do enough planning,” said Nicole Horseherder, a Navajo water rights activist who leads the Tó Nizhóní Ániup environmental non-profit. “They should have been planning for this the day the coal plant signed the leases. We can’t just be dependent on something we knew wasn’t going to last for ever.”

Cultural and regional differences have a huge bearing on how communities prepare and recover from a coal plant closure. Secluded towns that have relied on coal for decades – including power plant jobs that pay an average of $90,000 or more – can be reluctant to talk about a coal-free future. And don’t even bring up solar or wind power in some places.

“Renewables, for the workforce there, are the antichrist,” said Clint McRae, who owns the Rocker Six Cattle Company near the Colstrip coal power plant in Montana and is a member of the Northern Plains Resource Council, an advocacy group that fights for water quality protections. Some communities remain very loyal to coal and consider energy sources such as solar and wind as a threat to their way of life.

“It’s a very difficult subject to talk about over there. It’s going to take time to absorb in the community,” McRae said.

The Colstrip plant is scheduled to be retired in 2025, according to its operator’s latest estimates, and McRae and others worry about the pollution it will leave behind. Like other plants, Colstrip has been collecting coal ash – a toxic byproduct – in ponds. That pollution has seeped into the groundwater.

The Colstrip coal burning power plant in Colstrip, Montana, is scheduled to close by 2025. 

Photograph: Matt Brown/AP

Coal ash can often be the most dangerous legacy of a closed plant. In 2014, 39,000 tons of ash and 27m gallons of contaminated water from a plant owned by Duke Energy that had closed two years earlier spilled into North Carolina’s Dan River.

Duke Energy has two other plants in North Carolina’s Person county that are expected to close within six years. Among those who have tried to get the community to transition its coal-based economy is state senator Mike Woodard, who admits it’s been a tough hill to climb in an area that has yet to accept the reality of coal’s future.

“Person county is going to have to accept that there’s a new way of doing business there,” said Woodard, a Democrat who helped negotiate the state’s recently enacted clean energy law. Renewable energy, not coal, is the future, he added. “We’re all going to be in the rowboat together and it would be great if we were rowing in the same direction.”

Some states have done better than others helping to row the boat. With a slew of coal closures coming to Colorado, the state has established an office to help communities plan for the transition.

Led by director Wade Buchanan, the Office of Just Transition has tried to steer local officials and residents away from the coal v renewables argument and to think about the transition in more economic terms. Buchanan compares the transition to that faced by timber communities in the Pacific north-west, which successfully transformed their economy when lumber mills began to close.

“I think we make a mistake thinking about this as uniquely coal-related or uniquely energy-related,” Buchanan said. “There is a cultural factor that makes it unique. But when you step back and think about how to transition away from this, there are other places that have relied on one industry or employer for a while.”

Buchanan pointed to Nucla as an example of how to manage that transition effectively, with more than 100 diverse small businesses opening in the area since the plant closed, thanks in part to tax breaks and other financial incentives. States and outsiders need to let rural communities figure out their own transitions, he said.

Related: When Wall Street came to coal country: how a big-money gamble scarred Appalachia

The Nucla area has leaned on its strengths to recover from the closure, Sheriff said. Residents are trying to open small bed and breakfasts rather than large hotels. Sheriff’s organization runs a grain mill for local businesses and is considering building a meat processing plant to make life easier for local ranchers. Other new businesses include catering companies, coffee shops, organic markets and ATV rentals.

Residents have made it clear they like Nucla’s quiet atmosphere, Sheriff said, and they don’t want to replace the coal plant with huge distribution centers or call centers or offices. “We’re not asking Google to come in and create a new tech location here,” she said. “It’s finding the right mixture of businesses that want that rural lifestyle. We’re isolated and we like it that way.”

The Nucla model isn’t always replicable in less picturesque areas. While western Colorado and the region near the Navajo Generating Station are obvious tourism destinations, it can be difficult for other communities to replace coal dollars with tourist dollars. Amanda Ormond, who formerly led the Arizona energy office and now is a director with the Western Grid Group, urged community leaders to think about their unique assets and then to research federal funding options to make the most of them and fill the gaps.

Then there’s the question of what to do with the sites of shuttered plants. Utilities across the country have discussed replacing coal plants with gas-powered plants, which has been criticized by activists who urge an end to fossil fuel use, while other plants have become college athletic facilities, restaurants and cannabis growing sites, according to Bloomberg.

Communities should look at non-energy possibilities for old power plants, relying on facilities already in place, Buchanan said. “There’s often railroad, water rights, transmission lines,” he said. “There’s a lot of energy infrastructure and that’s an asset to build on.”

Coal's last boom? World's dirtiest fuel isn't being put out of business anytime soon
Bianca Bharti 

© Provided by Financial Post Commodity markets show coal remains very much in demand.

At the end of the climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, Alok Sharma, president of the United Nations’ 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26), fought tears as he announced that 197 countries had only been able to agree to “phasing down” the use of coal, rather than “phasing out” one of the main sources of global warming.


“May I say to all delegates I apologize for the way this process has unfolded and I am deeply sorry,” Sharma, a minister in British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cabinet, said at the culmination of the two-week summit on Nov. 13.

China and India, each a big polluter with populations that exceed one billion people, refused at the last minute to commit to quitting coal. Sharma’s failure to secure a consensus to end coal’s reign wouldn’t have surprised anyone watching commodity markets. The pandemic has stirred up multiple economic forces that undermine the prevailing narrative that the dirtiest fuel source is on its way out.

“Is this the final market run for coal? I would say probably not,” Andrew Blumenfeld, who analyzes North American coal markets at IHS Markit, said in an interview.

Commodity markets show coal remains very much in demand. In October, the price of coal for delivery in northwest Europe surged by more than 300 per cent to US$231, compared with prices that were hovering around US$50 before the pandemic, according to McCloskey price assessments provided by IHS Markit. In southern China, prices spiked to US$251 from about US$80 in February 2020.

Few saw such a dramatic swing coming.

Until about a decade ago, thermal coal had been one of the predominant energy sources mined and burned to produce electricity and heat. In 2010, it made up nearly 45 per cent of the energy mix in the United States, compared with 25 per cent for natural gas, about 20 per cent for nuclear, eight per cent for hydro, and three per cent for wind, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

EIA data for China and India is less comprehensive, but fossil fuels made up 80 per cent of their energy mix a decade ago, and most of that would have been coal, Blumenfeld said.

But as governments began taking climate change more seriously, and technological advances lowered the cost of cleaner energy sources, the overriding narrative was that greener politicians or market forces were well on their way to putting coal out of business.

For example, Ontario eliminated all coal-fired electricity in 2014 , primarily replacing the source of a quarter of its power with hydro and nuclear. Recent policy initiatives by the current Alberta government set the province on a course to close all coal power plants by 2023 — accelerating an earlier timeline of 2061 — and Nova Scotia, which relies on coal for more than 60 per cent of its electricity, is set to cut off coal by 2030, according to the Pembina Institute and Canada Energy Regulator .

In the U.S., natural gas became more economical than thermal coal beginning around 2008, Blumenfeld said. Stricter environmental regulations raised the costs associated with coal, giving natural gas an additional edge.

Natural gas took over coal’s place as the dominant fuel source by 2020, accounting for about 40 per cent of total energy, compared with 20 per cent for coal. (Wind climbed to 8.5 per cent, while solar entered the picture and represented about three per cent of the energy mix.)

© Money Sharma/AFP via Getty Images A woman burns coal for domestic use at Singrauli in India’s Madhya Pradesh state on Nov. 18, 2021.

Even in China and India, where worsening air quality over the past decade has created major health and political issues, authorities appeared keen to end their dependence on coal.

Fossil fuels now make up about 66 per cent and 76 per cent of their energy mix, respectively. Renewables are growing, if slowly. Solar makes up four per cent of the supply for both countries, while wind makes up six per cent in China and five per cent in India.

However, government rhetoric about the urgency of a green transition hasn’t translated into enough investment in renewables to make coal redundant, at least not yet.

Storage capacity technology isn’t advanced enough to make wind and solar a reliable energy source, ensuring that coal remains part of the mix, even in countries with solid green reputations such as Germany, Blumenfeld said

.

Further stoking the demand for coal was an especially cold winter last year in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, and unusually hot summers in the past couple of years, said Edward Gardner, a commodities economist at Capital Economics.

The global recovery from the COVID-19 crisis put even more pressure on energy supplies. China led the rebound, and because it remains a big user of coal, demand surged beyond existing supply. Miners hadn’t invested in new production because all indications were that demand was fading.

Extreme flooding in China, combined with stricter rules governing mine safety, added to supply constraints by hobbling the country’s domestic sources, forcing the country to enter international markets. Indonesia, another big coal producer, also suffered floods that forced mines to close, squeezing global stockpiles.

These factors — the weather, dwindling investment and a surprisingly strong recovery — created “the perfect storm” for prices and production to jump, Gardner said. And because these factors still persist, it suggests the market surge has exposed a gap between coal and renewables that could make kicking coal difficult.

“The last thing any country wants is to be short of electric power, especially in winter,” Blumenfeld said.

Natural gas prices also spiked this year due to a mismatch between demand and supply, forcing many countries to return to coal as a replacement for the cleaner fuel. But the U.S. and Russia have indicated they will increase supplies of natural gas, which could reduce demand for coal. Indeed, coal prices in northwestern Europe have plunged by 35 per cent from their October peak, and prices in southern China dropped 17 per cent.

Still, coal prices remain elevated compared to last winter. In the midst of power outages last month, China commanded its domestic producers to boost coal production and placed a cap on their prices in order to encourage utility companies to keep electricity flowing.

Though China promised to end financing of new coal power plants abroad at the UN General Assembly in September, it didn’t make immediate commitments that would curb domestic usage. It even still has domestic coal power plant projects in the pipeline, said Ilaria Mazzocco, fellow with the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

© Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images A worker uses a torch to cut steel pipes near the coal-powered Datang International Zhangjiakou Power Station at Zhangjiakou, one of the host cities for the 2022 Winter Olympics, in China’s northern Hebei province.

At COP26, climate watchers had hoped Chinese President Xi Jinping would set a firm date when he reiterated the country’s pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 2030, but they were disappointed. The earliest China observers can expect a date on peaking emissions is 2026, when the government is set to release its next Five Year Plan on the direction of the economy.

“The Chinese leadership does seem very committed to decarbonization, but they’re also committed to doing it on China’s timeline,” Mazzocco said.

In the U.S., there isn’t a carbon emissions limit. Instead, federal agencies are slowly tackling the coal industry. The Environmental Protection Agency last month delivered a deadline to comply with new rules that would require generators to retrofit their facilities to clean their wastewater of toxic heavy metals by 2025. However, there’s a provision to allow power plants to remain online without retrofits, prolonging operations, until they are forced to shut down in 2028 for non-compliance.

Evidence of a quicker pulse in the coal industry might even rekindle investor interest, which could result in increased production, at least on the margins.

Tyler Mordy, chief executive at Forstrong Global Asset Management Inc. in Toronto, has exposure to coal through mixed-energy exchange-traded funds. He recognizes that coal is “a left-for-dead asset class,” but sees opportunity in fossil fuels overall.

Dancing on the edge of climate disaster: Why COP26 was both a triumph and a disaster
Energy crunch drives carbon to record as Europe burns more coal
The big switch: Meet the Alberta utility that pivoted to natural gas despite lure of cheap coal
Why China and India won’t quit coal

The pandemic helped make Mordy’s bet on coal a profitable one. Another unpredictable crisis, such as further waves of COVID-19 infections or more natural disasters, could force countries back into old, dirty habits.

“As long as coal production remains a big component of power generation and the ability to find a dispatchable source of electricity, I think the possibility of this happening in the future remains,” Blumenfeld said.

Financial Post

• Email: bbharti@postmedia.com | Twitter: biancabharti

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American vaccine disinformation used as ‘Trojan horse’ for far right in New Zealand

Emanuel Stoakes

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — When Josephine Bartley, a councilor in Auckland, New Zealand, heard that a local Covid-19 vaccination clinic had been vandalized in early November, she drove over to survey the damage. After speaking to the owners and helping them connect with local law enforcement, she noticed three men loitering near her parking spot.

© Provided by NBC News

“Some guys were standing around my car just staring at me,” she told NBC News by telephone and email last week.

“One of them called me scum,” she said, and suggested they damage her vehicle. The men then entered a four-wheel drive and left. While the labour party councilor said she did not know if the trio were linked to the vandalism of the health center, which primarily serves the local Pacific community, the experience left her shaken.

“I was confused, I was trying to figure out who was ‘scum’- was it brown people? Was it Labour, was it Council? Was the vaccination? Was it women? But I was concerned for my safety,” Bartley said. The police “advised me not to use my car and lay low for a few days,” she said.

© Fiona Goodall Image: COVID-19 lockdown restrictions are eased in Auckland (Fiona Goodall / Reuters file)

As New Zealand shifts to a policy of “living with the virus,” residents accustomed to living virtually Covid-free for most of the pandemic are being confronted by rising case numbers and widening vaccine mandates. Opposition to vaccination as well as frustration with ongoing pandemic restrictions is fueling a small but vocal protest movement inspired in part by American politics.

In a working paper published in November, a team of researchers in New Zealand said there had been a “sharp increase in the popularity and intensity” of disinformation around Covid-19 since August, when an outbreak driven by the highly transmissible delta variant of the virus that is responsible for the vast majority of New Zealand’s cases began.

The researchers said the disinformation was “being used as a kind of Trojan horse” to coax New Zealanders from vaccine hesitancy to vaccine resistance, and then to the embrace of far-right ideologies like white supremacy and extreme misogyny. Some of the most extreme content, they said, comes from overseas, particularly Australia and the United States.

Bartley said that before the incident at the vaccination clinic there had been a surge in online abuse from New Zealanders directed at her office as well as the clinic.

“I got sent a video with an American anti-vaxxer saying, ‘If you support vaccinations you’re going to hell,’” she said.

NBC News has also seen Telegram messages from Shane Chafin, an American resident of New Zealand disclosing the personal cellphone number of a pharmacist who criticized his anti-vaccine broadcasts, in which he appeared to encourage followers to harass her in retaliation. NBC News has approached Chafin for comment.

Chafin works for “Counterspin Media,” a New Zealand-based news site hosted by GTV, a company founded by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon. In November, a press conference by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was suspended after Chafin heckled her about vaccinations.

At anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protests in cities like Wellington and Christchurch, “Make America Great Again” hats and flags from the QAnon conspiracy theory movement are visible among the crowds. Sam Brett, a student at the University of Canterbury who attended recent protests for his doctoral research, said they felt like a “miniature, New Zealand version of a Trump rally.”

THIS SIGN MAKES NO SENSE

Anti-Lockdown Protesters Gather In Wellington (Hagen Hopkins / Getty Images file)

The protests often feature “powerful, charismatic speakers,” Brett said, who cast the government as “maliciously trying to take away people’s rights.”

They have also co-opted the language and culture of New Zealand’s Indigenous Maori, even as related discourse online promotes anti-Maori racism, said Sanjana Hattotuwa, a research fellow at the University of Auckland and one of the working paper’s authors.

“Maori identity, symbols, history, culture, narratives and specific individuals are being appropriated by white-supremacist accounts and actors, especially on Telegram,” an app that can serve as an alternative social media platform, allowing greater anonymity and less stringent community rules than sites like Twitter.

Those symbols include the Maori flag and the “Ka Mate” haka, a ceremonial dance known globally for its performance before matches by New Zealand’s All Blacks rugby team.

In a statement in November, Ngati Toa, a Maori tribe recognized by the government as having legal rights over the dance, asked protesters to stop using it “immediately.”

“We are absolutely clear that the Covid-19 vaccine is the best protection we have available to us,” Helmut Modlik, the tribe’s chief executive, said in the statement.

In its statement, the tribe singled out Brian Tamaki, an anti-lockdown firebrand who leads a group called the Freedom and Rights Coalition, saying it had been alerted that he planned to teach the haka to protesters for future performances.

Tamaki, who is out on bail after multiple arrests over his appearances at anti-lockdown protests in defiance of court orders and public health controls, did not respond to requests for comment. But Martin Daly, a member of the Pentecostal church Tamaki leads who is also active in the Freedom and Rights Coalition, said he disagreed with the tribe’s directive.

“There’s a lot of Maori iwi [tribal] leaders in our movement, up in the North Island, and they’ve said they’re speaking completely out of line,” he said.

Maori tribes are all the more frustrated because they are less likely to be vaccinated than other New Zealanders and have been disproportionately affected by the delta outbreak.

Hone Harawira, a Maori rights advocate and former lawmaker, said he respected people’s right to protest, but “not when that protest endangers the health and well-being of our whanau,” a Maori-language word for family and community.

Harawira condemned Tamaki’s activity and called on Maori to confront what he perceives as the far-right themes in parts of the protest movement, specifically “their anti-vax games, the Trumpist rhetoric, their hatred and their basic racism as well.”

New Zealand’s national security advisers have warned that individuals radicalized by their exposure to extremist online content during the pandemic could resort to violence, media outlet Newshub reported in November. Security measures for government officials have been stepped up in recent weeks.

Paul Buchanan, an Auckland-based security analyst and former consultant to U.S. intelligence services, said he was concerned by the “importation of U.S.-style populist rhetoric” into New Zealand’s anti-vaccination movement, characterizing it as “tinged with violence and vulgar, dehumanizing disrespect for political and social opponents.”

“When you reduce the quality of discourse down to street-fighting level,” he said, it can raise the risk of violence.

Daly said that fears of extremists among the protest movement were misplaced, arguing it was an expression of broadly felt concerns about the erosion of civil liberties.

“It’s about freedom of movement, to be able to gather, freedom of speech,” he said. “The removal of freedoms is our big issue; we’re not anti-vax, we’re more pro-choice.”

On Nov. 9, as thousands gathered outside Parliament in Wellington to protest lockdowns and vaccine mandates, Ardern said she was aware of the opposition but did not think it was representative of public views.

“Regardless of your position, there’s a place for everyone’s voice to be heard,” she said later. “Please just make it kind.”

Rise of a new coronavirus variant in Africa looks like the disaster scenario experts warned of if rich nations hoarded vaccines for themselves

Sinéad Baker
Fri, November 26, 2021,

A man receiving a coronavirus vaccine on a train in South Africa

.Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters


A new coronavirus variant was found in southern Africa. Experts worry it could be the worst so far.


Scientists had warned that a dangerous variant could emerge if there wasn't global vaccine access.


They said all countries needed vaccines before rich ones got boosters. Rich nations didn't listen.

As coronavirus vaccines were produced, approved, and rolled out, health experts said the doses needed to make it around the world, not just to the richest countries.

This was needed, they said, to reduce the rates of death and serious illness in poorer nations, and to protect their populations.

They also mentioned another reason: The more the virus spreads, the more likely it is to mutate and result in a strain that could become more dangerous to everyone, including the vaccinated.

A worrying variant found

A new variant, dubbed B.1.1.529, has been mostly identified in Botswana and South Africa, as well as in Hong Kong, where it was imported by a traveler.

A relatively small number of cases has been discovered so far, but the variant has been spreading rapidly, officials said.

Experts are describing B.1.1.529 as worrying, pointing to its high number of mutations, which means it could render existing antibodies, vaccines, and treatments less effective, as Insider's Dr. Catherine Schuster-Bruce reported.

Scientists are trying to figure out whether it's more infectious, more deadly, or both.

Many experts have already said that it's the worst variant they've seen since the pandemic began.

It's not clear exactly where the new variant developed. It could have been in South Africa, in Botswana, in a neighboring country, or somewhere else entirely.

But both those countries have low vaccination rates, and they've documented the struggle in securing doses, including accusing rich nations of hoarding vaccines.

As of Thursday, 23.51% of people in South Africa and 19.58% in Botswana have been fully vaccinated, Our World in Data reported.

A graph showing the vaccine rates of South Africa and Botswana compared to many of the world's wealthiest countries. Our World in Data

This means the nightmare scenario could be arriving in just the way experts have warned about.

Experts warned of this for months

The World Health Organization has repeatedly urged richer countries to share or buy fewer vaccine doses, and to make sure poorer nations have their first doses before distributing booster shots.

Those countries haven't listened.

The WHO experts said this wider vaccine distribution was needed in part to stop new, dangerous variants from emerging. Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, WHO's chief scientist, said in August that she was "afraid" that booster campaigns "will only lead to more variants."

Other experts have warned of the same scenario for months.

Ken Shadlen, a professor of development studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, told Insider in March that if global vaccine inequality persisted, "it's going to potentially undermine the health benefits of all that we're doing with lockdowns and vaccines."

He said it wasn't inevitable that a vaccine-escaping variant would emerge if the virus kept spreading, but that "it would take a lot of confidence to believe that it's not going to, if it keeps spreading."

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota who advised Joe Biden on COVID-19 during his presidential transition, expressed the same concerns to Insider in March.

He said that efforts to end the pandemic would be difficult if there was a "largely uncontrolled transmission in the low- and middle-income countries," even if the world's richest nations had done widespread vaccinations.

Countries such as the UK and Germany are restricting travel from a number of African nations in a bid to stop the spread of the new variant.

A Hawaiian TikToker called out tourists after a video appeared to show an influencer on a forbidden hiking trail
Lindsay Dodgson
Fri, November 26, 2021

The Haiku Stairs in Oahu, Hawaii, have been closed to the public since 1987.

Marcin Wloch / EyeEm/Getty Images

A Hawaiian TikToker shared a viral video of tourists appearing to climb the Haiku Stairs in Oahu.


The trail, also known as the "Stairway to Heaven," has been closed to the public since 1987.


Camille Leihulu criticized the video and said, "Outsiders get to blatantly ignore laws."

The Hawaiian TikToker Camille Leihulu went viral when she criticized a travel TikToker whose video appears to show her climbing a forbidden hiking trail in Oahu.

Leihulu posted her reaction alongside the original video (known as duetting on TikTok) of a travel vlogger named Sofia McMillan who has 40,000 followers. The original video shows McMillan and her friends at the top of a hiking trail. Leihulu speculated it was the Haiku Stairs, which has been closed to the public since 1987.

The video was captioned "full circle rainbow on stairway to heaven," which the trail is also known as.

McMillan did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

@camilleslagle #duet with @sofmcmillan yes, she acknowledged it’s an old video, but think of the thousands more who’ve done this. DON’T DO IT. #hawaii ♬ original sound - AntiNightcore

In her response TikTok post, which received 1.5 million views, Leihulu said she had never been on the stairs.

"I've never been up these stairs to see this view and I never will because I have respect for Hawaii and my homelands," she wrote in the caption. "Why do outsiders get to blatantly ignore laws and rules and do as they please without facing any repercussions or acknowledging the consequences that Hawaiians have to deal with as a result of their actions?"

@camilleslagle #duet with @sofmcmillan yes, she acknowledged it’s an old video, but think of the thousands more who’ve done this. DON’T DO IT. #hawaii ♬ original sound - AntiNightcore

The 3,922 steps were constructed along Oahu's Ko'olau mountain range in the 1940s to reach the US Navy's top-secret Haiku Radio Station at the summit, which was used to transmit radio signals to submarines. The stairs were open to hikers in the past but closed in 1987 over safety concerns. Anyone using them is considered to be trespassing on government property and could face a fine of up to $1,000, according to the TV-news outlet Hawaii News Now.

Leihulu added: "Hawaiians and Hawaii residents pay thousands in taxes to rescue people who get stuck up there."

In April, the Honolulu Star Advertiser — Hawaii's largest daily newspaper — reported that a 24-year-old man had to be airlifted from an area the summit after injuring his knee.

In September, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi ordered the stairs be removed following a City Council meeting.

"Due to rampant illegal trespassing, Haiku Stairs is a significant liability and expense for the city, and impacts the quality of life for nearby residents," Esther Kiaʻāina, a city-council member, told Hawaii News Now.

Another council member, Brandon Elefante, told the outlet the city had spent "$1 million in taxpayer dollars to remodel the stairs," as well as "hundreds of thousands of dollars in security costs."

Blangiardi's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Despite warnings, there are dozens of videos posted by TikTokers who have trekked along the Haiku Stairs, which often rack up hundreds of thousands of views.