Test feeding plan in works for starving Florida manatees
By CURT ANDERSON

- In this Dec. 28, 2010, file photo, a group of manatees are in a canal where discharge from a nearby Florida Power & Light plant warms the water in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Normally giving food to wild animals is considered off limits, but the dire situation in Florida with more than 1,000 manatees dying from starvation due to manmade pollution is leading officials to consider an unprecedented feeding plan. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)

St. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Normally giving food to wild animals is considered off limits, but the dire situation in Florida with more than 1,000 manatees dying from starvation due to manmade pollution is leading officials to consider an unprecedented feeding plan.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and state environmental officials intend to unveil a limited proposal this week to feed the beloved marine mammals in one specific Florida location to test how it works. This is not usually done with any wild animal, but the situation has become such an emergency that it has to be considered, said Save The Manatee Club Executive Director Patrick Rose.

The club was co-founded in 1981 by Florida troubadour Jimmy Buffet and former governor and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham.

“It’s the entire ecosystem that is affected by this and will be affected for a decade to come,” Rose said in an interview Tuesday. “This is a necessary stopgap measure. It is a problem created by man and man is going to have to solve it.”

A Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman said in an email that the agency “does have approval to move forward on a limited feeding trial” but that details are not yet finalized. A formal announcement is expected later this week.

The emerging plan would involve feeding manatees at a Florida Power & Light plant in Cape Canaveral, along the Indian River Lagoon on the east coast where manatees congregate in cold winter months because of the warm water discharge from the plant. It would be an experiment involving lettuce, cabbage, and other greens delivered in a controlled manner such as via a conveyer belt, Rose said.

People would not be authorized to simply start tossing lettuce into a Florida bay some place.

FILE - A manatee comes up for air is it swims in the Stranahan River, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on April 2, 2020. More than 1,000 manatees have died in Florida so far in 2021, eclipsing a previous record as the threatened marine mammals struggle with starvation due to polluted waters. 

(AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

“Under no circumstances do we want people feeding manatees. It’s illegal, and remains so,” Rose said.

Manatees have long struggled to survive with humans. Hundreds of the slow-moving animals are struck every year by boats, which has led to no-wake manatee zones throughout Florida with violations punishable by significant fines. But the starvation threat has led to a record 1,017 manatee deaths as of Nov. 19, according to state figures.

As winter looms, even in Florida, another bad year is expected.

This has been caused mainly by runoff from farms, urban areas and sewage that promotes growth of blue-green algae and other harmful organisms. It chokes off light needed by seagrass, eliminating the main food source for manatees. Climate change that worsens the algae blooms is also a factor.

And it’s not just manatees. People’s health can be affected by the algae blooms along with the health of a wide range of aquatic creatures, from crabs to dolphins. Aside from protecting the animals, there is an economic loss for boat captains, sightseeing tours and others who flock to Florida for the chance to see these creatures.

“Literally, saving manatees is part of saving the ecosystem. If we can get this taken care of, manatees will flourish. If we don’t, they won’t,” Rose said. “We are in the most critical position.”

Manatees were listed as endangered for years by the federal government, but in 2017 their numbers appeared to have rebounded enough — officials say there are between 7,000 and 8,000 animals in Florida — that their status was downgraded to threatened. Several Florida politicians, including Republican U.S, Rep. Vern Buchanan, have been pushing to restore the endangered status which brings more attention and resources to them.

USA THE BEST MEDICINE MONEY CAN BUY
1 in 3 U.S. children lack adequate health insurance, study finds
By Alan Mozes, HealthDay News

Roughly one-third of children in the United States are "underinsured," according to new research. File Photo by designer491/Shutterstock


Though they live in one of the world's richest nations, a growing number of young Americans are without ample health insurance.

A new study reports that 34% of U.S. kids age 17 and under were "underinsured" in 2019. That means their insurance failed to address their overall health needs, ensure access to preferred providers, that it came with high out-of-pocket costs or wasn't in effect at all times.

And the trend appears to be getting worse, given that 30.6% lacked adequate coverage in 2016.

That means there are 2.4 million more at-risk kids whose insurance is not cutting it. And researchers say a large portion of the flimsy coverage is private -- not public -- insurance.

RELATED Death rates declined in states that expanded Medicaid in 2014, study shows

"Inadequate insurance -- mainly experienced as high out-of-pocket costs -- causes families to delay, sometimes even forgoing, the medical care their child needs," said study author Dr. Justin Yu, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.

"Especially for children with chronic and complex health conditions, families have to choose between paying for their child's medical care or basic necessities like food and housing," he said.

For the new study, Yu and his colleagues analyzed data from a federal government survey conducted between 2016 and 2019.

RELATED Survey: Family health insurance premiums rise 4% this year, up 47% since 2011

The National Survey of Children's Health is a yearly look into the physical and mental health of more than 73 million Americans under age 18.

On average, just over two-thirds were deemed to have continuous and adequate insurance coverage over the four-year study period. But roughly 1 in 3 did not.

The researchers said having "unreasonable" out-of-pocket medical expenses, rather than a lack of insurance, was the main problem.

RELATED  Study: Nearly 13M in U.S. skip, delay meds due to cost

And that, they said, reflects a growing pattern in which private insurance companies increasingly off-load their overhead by imposing higher copays, premiums and deductibles.

Because regulations make transfers of such cost burdens less likely in public programs such as Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, kids covered by private insurance are more vulnerable to being underinsured, the authors said.

At the same time, however, Yu said more and more kids have been shifted off Medicaid and CHIP in recent years, in favor of private coverage with diminishing returns. He attributed that to a combination of economic incentives as well as state and federal policy decisions.

This may also explain why the study found that children from relatively wealthier households -- those considered middle-class and well-educated -- appear to be bearing much of the increased risk.

Rising underinsurance rates were notably higher among kids in households at or above 200% of the federal poverty line, the study found.

To address the problem, major policy reforms must be considered, Yu said.

"This includes further expanding Medicaid eligibility criteria for children, expanding Social Security income financial assistance for families of children with disabilities and chronic health conditions, and consideration of a national single-payer child health insurance program," he said.

Katie Keith, a researcher with Keith Policy Solutions LLC in Washington D.C., and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University, reviewed the findings.

"The documented increase in underinsurance for children is very concerning, and troublingly consistent with similar findings for adults," she said, adding that growing consumer costs, driven by rising deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses, are linked to underlying health care costs, which continue to rise rapidly.

"Underinsurance for children is particularly troubling, because of the long-term impact it can have on a family's financial stability and their ability to access the health care that their child needs," Keith said.

She and Yu agreed that passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in 2010 has helped to prevent an even more concerning situation.

"Things would arguably be much worse for children's coverage in the absence of the ACA," Keith said.

"But this [study] suggests a need for perhaps the expansion of public coverage, like Medicaid and CHIP, to more children," she added. "And even greater out-of-pocket protections for families through marketplace coverage."

The findings were published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

More information

For more about health insurance coverage, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

GIVING BIRTH IS DANGEROUS IN USA
VP Kamala Harris issues call to action on first Maternal Health Day of Action

By Simon Druker


Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks about the White House Maternal Health Day of Action on Tuesday. Photo by Shawn Thew/UPI | License Photo


Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Vice President Kamala Harris marked the White House's first Maternal Day of Action on Tuesday, holding a summit aimed at improving health for recent mothers across the United States.

The summit included both celebrities and politicians at various levels, as she implored both the public and private sectors to do more to reduce the U.S. maternal mortality rate -- about 16.7 per 100,000 live births.

Harris used the occasion to highlight investments proposed in the Build Back Better Act, which would support safer pregnancies and childbirth, while reducing complications in the first year after a child is born.

She also urged lawmakers to spend an additional $3 billion on maternal healthcare, which would include expanding postpartum Medicaid coverage to one year.

The Department of Health and Human Services also released a report Tuesday estimating that 720,000 more people would gain Medicaid postpartum coverage if states act independently from the federal government. The report also provides guidance to states on how to provide Medicaid coverage for a full year postpartum.

The summit is part of President Joe Biden's Build Back Better Plan and the administration's push to expand Medicaid coverage and provide a greater safety net of social services. The bill is currently being negotiated in the Senate.

Black and Native American mothers are more likely to die from complications during or after childbirth than any other race or ethnicity in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

RELATED Report: Pregnancy, childbirth complications cost U.S. billions

"In the United States of America, in the 21st century, being pregnant and giving birth should not carry such great risk," said Harris, while pointing out the United States has the highest maternal death rate among developed countries.

"So, let us all say unequivocally, maternal mortality and morbidity is a serious crisis, and one that endangers both public health and economic growth, which means everyone is impacted by it."

A Mathematica and the Commonwealth Fund report released last month estimated that pregnancy and delivery complications for all births in 2019 will cost the United States more than $30 billion in healthcare expenses over the first five years of the infants' lives.

RELATEDHouse passes expanded workplace protections for nursing mothers

Most dog breeds are highly inbred, and unhealthy, researchers say

By HealthDay News

Many well-known features of certain breeds of dog have been the product of inbreeding, and many increase the risk for health problems, researchers say. Photo by Kamracik/Pixabay.

Traits particular to certain dog breeds -- the distinctive spots of a dalmatian or the stubby legs of a dachshund -- are often achieved through inbreeding.

But most breeds are now highly inbred, increasing a dog's risk of health problems, a new study confirms.

"It's amazing how inbreeding seems to matter to health," study leader Danika Bannasch said.

Her genetic analysis of 227 breeds found an average inbreeding rate of 25%. That's the equivalent of sharing the same genetic material with a full sibling.

RELATED Head shape, breed function play a part in dog-to-human communication

That level is far above what would be safe for either wild animals or humans. For example, high levels of inbreeding in humans -- 3 percent to 6 percent -- are associated with increased rates of complex diseases and other health conditions, according to the study team.

"Data from other species, combined with strong breed predispositions to complex diseases like cancer and autoimmune diseases, highlight the relevance of high inbreeding in dogs to their health," Bannasch, a veterinary geneticist at the University of California, Davis, said in a school news release.

"While previous studies have shown that small dogs live longer than large dogs, no one had previously reported on morbidity, or the presence of disease. This study revealed that if dogs are of smaller size and not inbred, they are much healthier than larger dogs with high inbreeding," Bannasch noted.

RELATED Search and rescue dogs fared well after work at 9/11 sites

The reason some dog breeds are more inbred than others is often a combination of a small original population followed by breeding for specific traits that are often based on appearance rather than purpose, Bannasch explained.

While she isn't sure there is a way out of inbred breeds, there are ways to preserve the genetic diversity and health of a breed.

That includes careful management to avoid the loss of existing genetic diversity through breeder education and monitoring of inbreeding levels.

RELATED Sled dogs are closely related to 9,500-year-old 'ancient dog'

Every effort is needed to maintain genetic diversity in the few breeds with low inbreeding levels, Bannasch emphasized.

The findings were published this week in the journal Canine Medicine and Genetics.

More information

The American Kennel Club offers a guide to responsible dog breeding.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Snow, floods and hurricane-force winds pound Hawaii

By Mark Puleo, Accuweather.com

Hawaii has looked like anything but a tropical oasis this week.

The archipelago has been socked by a potent storm that has unleashed pounding rainfall, high winds and even blizzard conditions to the mountain summits. The state's Big Island has taken some of the worst impacts thanks to "catastrophic flooding" after 2 feet of rain fell in some areas.

According to the National Weather Service office in Honolulu, the locations of Nene Cabin and Keaumo in Hawaii County received the biggest amounts of rainfall in the state. On Monday, the rain grew so intense that Hawaii Gov. David Ige declared a state of emergency in anticipation of the potential flooding damage to public and private property.

Some of the top rainfall reports in Hawaii as of Tuesday morning, Dec. 7, 2021.

Rescues were required for stranded residents in the Nuuanu Stream after a 911 caller reported multiple people struggling to get out of the rushing waters near the Pali Highway, the Star-Advertiser reported.

RELATED 'Weather bomb' brings heavy rains, flooding to Ireland, Northern Ireland

The rush of floodwaters also necessitated the rescuing of five young boys, ages 9 and 10, who were swept away by the rapid waters of a creek while playing after school.

Far above those flooding rains, heavy snow has blanketed the Big Island's tallest mountains, notably sparking a blizzard warning that ran through Monday morning. According to the NWS, totals of 8 inches of snow were reported on the roads near the dormant volcano Mauna Kea, the highest peak in the state.

Although vacationers don't think of Hawaii for its snow, blizzard warnings aren't uncommon for the volcanic peak, as the last warning for the summit was issued in 2018. On top of the weekend's heavy snow, wind gusts of nearly 90 mph were also recorded at the peak, the equivalent of a Category 1 hurricane.

The catalyst behind the week of quirky weather was a storm system known as a Kona low. According to AccuWeather forecasters, Kona lows are storms that change the wind direction near Hawaii and bring heavy rain to areas that don't typically receive high amounts of precipitation.

On top of the unsavory precipitation totals, the state's capital city of Honolulu has also dealt with abnormally cold conditions in recent days, including a record low of 56 degrees Fahrenheit on Saturday.

According to AccuWeather meteorologist Jessica Storm, Honolulu has already reported over 93 times more rain in the first week of December than it did in all of November.

"Aside from the flooding rain, cities such as Honolulu have experienced quite chilly conditions compared to average and have even set record lows," Storm added. "The Big Pineapple typically doesn't stray too far from its average temperatures, which remain in the lower 80s Fahrenheit in the day and around 70 degrees at night."

The stormy conditions also left thousands of customers on the islands without power. As of Tuesday morning, over 4,000 residents were still in the dark, according to PowerOutage.us.


According to AccuWeather senior meteorologist Alex Sosnowski, the rain may not stop falling any time soon, either.

"There is the potential for up to a foot of rain to fall on Honolulu with an AccuWeather Local StormMax of 40 inches possible for the south- and southwest-facing mountainsides of the islands," Sosnowski warned, adding that a firehose effect would continue to focus on Oahu and Kauai through much of Tuesday.

AccuWeather senior meteorologist Michael LeSeney added that the Kona low will shift westward as the week progresses, with the heavy rain being isolated to certain islands by midweek.

"By the second half of the week, the typical trade wind pattern should return to the Hawaiian Islands," LeSeney said.

Melting glaciers may create new Pacific salmon habitat, study finds


Salmon can colonize streams created by glacier melt but face many other challenges from climate change, researchers say. Photo courtesy of Freshwaters Illustrated

Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Melting glaciers may produce thousands of miles of new Pacific salmon habitat, a study published Tuesday by Nature Communications found.

As glaciers in the mountains of western North America melt, or retreat, they could produce around 4,000 miles of new Pacific salmon habitat by the year 2100, the data showed.

After modeling glacier retreat under different climate change scenarios, the glaciers could reveal potential new Pacific salmon habitat nearly equal to the length of the Mississippi River under moderate temperature increases, the researchers said.

"We predict that most of the emerging salmon habitat will occur in Alaska and the transboundary region, at the British Columbia-Alaska border, where large coastal glaciers still exist," co-author Kara Pitman said in a press release.

RELATED Dams may help against climate change, but harm fish, freshwater ecosystems

"Once conditions stabilize in the newly-formed streams, salmon can colonize these areas quite quickly," said Pitman, a spatial analyst at Simon Fraser University in Canada.

The Gulf of Alaska is predicted to see the most gains in salmon habitat, with a 27% increase by 2100, she said.

Most salmon return to the streams they were born in, but some will migrate into new streams to spawn.

RELATED EPA to restore protections for Alaska's Bristol Bay

Salmon colonization can occur relatively quickly after glacial melt creates favorable spawning conditions, the researchers said.

For example, Stonefly Creek in Alaska was colonized within 10 years by pink salmon that grew rapidly to more than 5,000 spawners, according to earlier studies.

Using computer modeling, Pitman and her colleagues "peeled back the ice" from 46,000 glaciers between southern British Columbia and south-central Alaska.

RELATED Survey: Innovation, oversight needed to make aquaculture more sustainable

The analysis was designed to assess how much potential salmon habitat would be created when underlying bedrock is exposed and new streams flow over the landscape, the researchers said.

Low-gradient streams, or those with a less than 10% incline, connected to the ocean with retreating glaciers at their headwaters are most desirable to salmon, they said.

Based on the analysis, 315 of the glaciers studied met this criteria.

While the newly created habitat is a positive for salmon in some locations, climate change still poses grave challenges for some salmon populations, according to the researchers.

"On one hand, this amount of new salmon habitat will provide local opportunities for some salmon populations," Pitman said.

"On the other hand, climate change and other human impacts continue to threaten salmon survival, via warming rivers, changes in stream flows and poor ocean conditions," she said.

Carbon capture and storage: where should the world store CO₂? It’s a moral dilemma


Boundary Dam power station in Saskatchewan, Canada, claims to be the world’s first coal plant with incorporated carbon capture and storage. SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CCS  

Orjan Ellingvag/Alamy Stock Photo

Kian Mintz-Woo 

December 6, 2021

The recent Glasgow climate pact committed 197 countries to “phas[ing] down unabated coal”. Unabated coal refers to when power stations or factories burn coal without capturing and storing the carbon dioxide (CO₂) generated.

Because the world has made such little progress in eliminating coal, oil and fossil gas, climate modellers foresee some use of carbon capture and storage as necessary to reach zero emissions in enough time to avert catastrophic warming. The technology to capture carbon is in development, but one burning question remains: where on Earth should we store all that carbon?

Different methods of carbon capture will take place at different sites. Some involve absorbing emissions immediately after burning fossil fuels in chimneys and smokestacks where the CO₂ is highly concentrated. Other methods capture carbon directly from the air, either by using chemical reactions that bind the carbon using lots of energy or by growing carbon-hungry plants which can be burned for energy and the resulting emissions subsequently captured.

In new research, myself and environmental engineer Joe Lane at Princeton University in the US argued that, regardless of the method, leaving decisions about where to store carbon to commercial entities would mean avoiding an important moral dilemma.

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Read more: We can't let markets decide the future of removing carbon from the atmosphere

Funding for carbon capture and storage is insufficient. At the current rate of deployment, 700 million tonnes of CO₂ storage capacity will be added by 2050 – 10% of what is required.

Countries would have to massively ramp up investment to be compliant with the Paris aqgreement’s target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Some of this money would be public funding, and people would reasonably expect it to fund projects which are morally sound.

On the one hand, it might be deemed important to develop storage sites with the best prospects for storing lots of greenhouse gas for the longest duration. This argument maintains that the most important consideration for deploying carbon capture and storage is making the largest possible contribution to arresting climate change.

To give carbon storage sites the greatest chance of success, it makes sense to develop them in places where the geology has been thoroughly explored and where there is lots of relevant expertise. This would imply pumping carbon into underground storage sites in northern Europe, the Middle East and the US, where companies have spent centuries looking for and extracting fossil fuels. Storing carbon is roughly the reverse of extracting it from the ground, and there is an opportunity for workers in the oil and gas industry to lend their skills and expertise to this endeavour.

Some US companies have been extracting oil for well over a century. 

Alizada Studios/Shutterstock

On the other hand, it might be important to develop storage sites in economies where the current and future demand for carbon capture and storage is greatest. These competing aims pull in different directions. The regions with the best prospects are not often those with the greatest expected need.

Developing storage sites in economies where expected demand for carbon capture is highest overwhelmingly favours developing regions of Asia. In India and China, for instance, coal power stations and cement plants are expensive to decommission and will need lots of carbon capture and storage capacity to decarbonise. If developing regions are expected to decarbonise without sufficient support to roll out carbon capture and storage, it could mean they have to throttle development to reduce emissions.

There are no easy answers in this debate. Increasing carbon capture and storage capacity as quickly as possible could benefit future generations by reducing the severity of climate change. So, you could argue that developing the most promising sites in Europe is the best way forward. But directing investment for storage facilities from wealthy countries to developing regions could help address the debt the former owes the latter for causing the brunt of the climate crisis.

World leaders should recognise this moral dilemma and consider the choices with urgency. The need to remove and safely store carbon becomes more severe by the day. Given the time and costs involved in developing storage sites, and the real possibility that the storage sites may not be sufficient for the carbon countries emit, this is a question which cannot be delayed.

Author

Kian Mintz-Woo
Lecturer in Philosophy, Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork
Disclosure statement
Kian Mintz-Woo is a guest researcher at the Equity and Justice group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
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University College Cork provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

Greenpeace Activists to Canadian RBC Bank: 'Stop Funding Climate Chaos and Injustice'

"We are not going to let bank CEOs ignore the deadly consequences of their actions."


Greenpeace Canada campaigners disrupt business as usual in Toronto's financial district on December 7, 2021. (Photo: Ian Willms/Greenpeace)


KENNY STANCIL

COMMONWEALTH

December 7, 2021

Climate justice advocates suspended fellow activists from 15-foot-tall tripods in Toronto's financial district on Tuesday, blocking entrances to the Royal Bank of Canada's corporate headquarters as part of a campaign to pressure the nation's five biggest banks to "stop funding climate chaos and injustice."

"Bankers' business-as-usual... is destabilizing the climate, destroying biodiversity, and violating Indigenous rights."

According to Greenpeace Canada's latest report on fossil fuel financing, Canada's five largest banks are among the world's top 25 funders of coal, oil, and gas. Collectively, Canadian banks have provided more than $820 billion to fossil fuel corporations since the 2015 signing of the Paris agreement, which seeks to curb greenhouse gas pollution in order to avert catastrophic global warming. That sum is over 13 times more than the $60 billion the federal government has invested in climate action during the same period.

"I'm a middle-aged dad with a mild fear of heights who has been politely asking Canadian banks to stop funding fossil fuels for decades," Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist at Greenpeace Canada and one of the climbers, said in a statement. "I'm dangling from a tripod today because the banks' response has been to continue providing over a hundred billion dollars a year to fossil fuel companies."

"That money pipeline is fueling the climate crisis," said Stewart. "After what has happened in B.C. this year we are not going to let bank CEOs ignore the deadly consequences of their actions."

Stewart was referring to last summer's record-shattering heatwave in British Columbia—which killed hundreds and sparked multiple wildfires, including one that incinerated the entire town of Lytton—and last month's devastating floods in the same province.

During his address at last month's COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alluded to the destruction of Lytton, a disaster of the sort that scientists say will become increasingly common in the absence of ambitious policy changes. Such warnings haven't stopped Canada from forging ahead with its plan to expand the production of fossil fuels—the key driver of the climate crisis—over the course of this decade.

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Kenny Stancil

According to Greenpeace Canada, demonstrators at Tuesday's action urged bank CEOs to "come down from their towers and accept charred wood fragments from Lytton homes, with the hope that the fragments would remain on the bankers' desks to remind them of the life-and-death consequences of all of their investment decisions."

Juan Ortiz, a spokesperson at Greenpeace Canada who joined others in handing out flyers at the protest site, said that "we are in the heart of Canada's banking district today to interrupt bankers' business-as-usual because it is destabilizing the climate, destroying biodiversity, and violating Indigenous rights."

Activists also encouraged passersby to watch video testimonials from Lytton, Shackan, and Kamloops residents whose lives have been turned upside down by extreme weather.

"We call on CEOs like RBC's Dave McKay to meet face-to-face with communities devastated by climate change and fossil fuel projects, listen to their lived experience, and take corrective actions," said Ortiz.

As Greenpeace Canada noted:


Ortiz, Stewart, and the other activists pointed to RBC's financing of the Coastal GasLink pipeline as an example of a project whose funding should be stopped immediately due to the violation of Indigenous rights and failure to obtain free, prior and informed consent from the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs.

According to research commissioned by Greenpeace Canada, RBC Capital Markets is currently providing CAD 390.7 million in loans directly to the Coastal GasLink project and an additional CAD 400.6 million to the project's parent company TC Energy. TC Energy rents office space in the Royal Bank tower whose entrances were blocked today. Collectively, Canada's big five banks are providing $1.95 billion in project financing to the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

More broadly, Greenpeace is imploring Canadian banks to immediately halt all financing of new fossil fuel projects, develop a plan to slash financed emissions in half by 2030, and ensure that any funded projects obtain the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous communities.

More than 9,400 of the group's supporters have demanded in writing that the nation's most powerful bank CEOs—Daryl White of BMO, Victor Dodig of CIBC, Dave McKay of RBC, Brian Porter of Scotiabank, and Bharat Masrani of TD—stop funding fossil fuels.

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

Filibuster Reform for Debt Ceiling Fight 

But Not Voting Rights or Reproductive Freedom?

"If our senators are willing to suspend the filibuster to protect our economy, they should be willing to suspend it to protect our democracy and our freedom to vote."


Advocates of killing the filibuster protest at the Manhattan office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on July 26, 2021. (Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)


JESSICA CORBETT

COMMONDREAM

December 7, 2021

Progressives on Tuesday responded to reports that U.S. Senate leadership reached a deal to allow Democrats to raise the nation's debt ceiling by suggesting similar maneuvers on other key priorities for the party, from voting rights and reproductive freedom to gun violence prevention and immigration reform.

"Faced with the frightening prospect of the United States defaulting on our debt, the proposed solution is a convoluted legislative maneuver that highlights the Senate's growing dysfunction," said Sean Eldridge, president and founder of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America.

"This deal makes clear the need to reform the filibuster to make the Senate work for the American people," he added. "If our senators are willing to suspend the filibuster to protect our economy, they should be willing to suspend it to protect our democracy and our freedom to vote."

In a tweet Tuesday, Stand Up America highlighted two specific pieces of legislation that Republicans in the evenly split Senate have prevented from reaching President Joe Biden's desk: the Freedom to Vote Act—a compromise that followed the twice-blocked, bolder For the People Act—and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

"Allowing the 33 voter suppression laws passed by state Republicans this year to go into effect isn't an option," the group said. "Senate Democrats must end the filibuster to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Our democracy depends on it."

Earlier in the day, responding to reporting by Punchbowl News, Stephen Spaulding of the group Common Cause noted that the deal "will increase pressure for doing something similar" on other top legislative issues.

Along with passing the voting rights bill named for the late John Lewis, the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives recently approved the Women's Health Protection Act, which has gained greater attention as the right-wing majority Supreme Court has heard arguments for a case that could reverse abortion rights affirmed by Roe v. Wade in 1973.

GOP state legislators' growing attacks on both voting rights and reproductive freedom this year have fueled demands for U.S. Senate Democrats to reform or fully kill the filibuster so they can swiftly advance legislation on both issues. However, a couple of key Democrats—namely Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.)—remain opposed to such a move.

Rather than Democrats taking broader action related to the filibuster or garnering Republican support to raise the debt ceiling before the rapidly approaching December 15 deadline, Senate leaders have settled on "a complicated legislative maneuver to help them stave off another high-stakes battle and prevent the U.S. government from experiencing a catastrophic default," according to The Washington Post.

The newspaper noted that each party's top Senate member—Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—"expressed a measure of confidence that they had the votes to proceed with their plans, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) put the House on track to adopt the measure Tuesday evening."

Politico reported that "at a party leadership meeting on Tuesday, McConnell pitched his lieutenants on a convoluted strategy that would require at least 10 Republicans to approve legislation that would later allow Senate Democrats to raise the debt ceiling by a simple majority vote. Though Republicans would still be facilitating an easier debt ceiling increase for Democrats by carving out an exception to the Senate's supermajority requirement, it's increasingly likely enough Republicans view it as the least-bad scenario."

Explaining that filibuster rules would be suspended for about a month to increase the debt ceiling, Politico added:

But it would require Democrats to raise the debt ceiling to a specific number rather than suspend it for a length of time, such as through the election.

Republicans can tout that as a key concession, while Democrats successfully rebuffed Republicans' efforts to force them to use the more cumbersome budget reconciliation process to raise the debt ceiling. The debt increase would likely range from $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion to ensure Congress won't have to address the debt again before November midterms, according to several people familiar with the matter.

While Politico noted that this is "a stunning turnaround for McConnell," another Republican leader made clear the maneuvering is a political calculation.

"I'm going to support Democrats raising the debt ceiling without Republican votes," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told the outlet on Tuesday. "To have Democrats raise the debt ceiling and be held accountable for racking up the debt is my goal. And this helps us accomplish it."

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

The United States Lets Violence Against Women Thrive

From racist and xenophobic attacks against Muslim women, to the likelihood of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, it’s clear that women’s lives carry little value.


Demonstrator join the second annual Women's March in New York City on January 20, 2018. (Photo: Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images)

SARAH LAHM

December 7, 2021 by The Progressive

As Bob Dylan once noted, "it's easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred" in American life, despite the false front of piety that often guides our public conversations.

Just look at what the first week in December has brought us. When it comes to the contrast between what we say we care about as a nation and what our actions reveal, I'll reference the video of Republican Congressmember Lauren Boebert of Colorado targeting Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

"If you think your rights and the rights of women are somehow guaranteed, think again."

Omar is a Muslim, making her an easy foil for Boebert and others in Trumpland. The prevailing presumption, promoted by far-right activists and media profiteers, is that Muslims are terrorists by default. This is an old line of attack, as Omar frequently points out, spun from hate, xenophobia, and racism.

In Boebert's video, she can be seen at a recent fundraising event held in Colorado, warming up the crowd with casual jokes about Omar being a backpack-carrying terrorist, as well as a member of the "Jihad Squad." Boebert appears on camera as a Sarah Palin-like version of an unapologetically harsh yet folksy and idealized Republican woman who is capable of toting a gun while wearing stiletto heels.

The camera captures only a slice of Boebert's audience, which appears to be older white men clutching pints of beer and laughing a bit nervously at her careless antics. Only a few days after this video was made public, another one emerged from a previous Boebert fundraising event, where she tells a different version of her alleged, and reportedly false, encounter in an elevator with Omar.

What's even worse, perhaps, is that the latest Boebert video to come to light includes her calling Omar and her fellow Democratic Congressmember Rashida Talib of Michigan, who is also Muslim, "blackhearted, evil women." Boebert is likely less of a source for this hatred than a mirror of it, reflecting the ugly rhetoric that appeals to the Trumpian wing of the Republican party.

Reducing this to a political game, however, isn't the right approach. Certainly, Kevin McCarthy has continuously excused Boebert's behavior, fearful that any blowback from Trump will prevent him from becoming the future Speaker of the House.

Or, as New York's Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it, "Kevin McCarthy is so desperate to be speaker that he is working with his Ku Klux Klan caucus to look aside & allow violent targeting of WOC [women of color] members of Congress."

McCarthy recently brushed off Boebert's actions, along with those of her equally offensive colleagues, Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Paul Gosar, as "things we would not want to deal with." In fact, when asked by reporters about his apparent refusal to condemn Boebert's words, McCarthy played the victim, saying he had been treated poorly by both Omar and Ocasio-Cortez and never received an apology for it.

I wonder how many death threats McCarthy has received throughout his political career. One would be too many, of course, but could he possibly be dealing with anything that compares to the racist, anti-woman, anti-Muslim threats Omar has endured? I doubt it.

Women's lives are cheap in the United States, aren't they? On the one hand, we have people like McCarthy excusing the behavior of Boebert and Gosar, in particular, as if it's all no big deal.

Meanwhile, we have the U.S. Supreme Court on the brink of overturning Roe v. Wade.

This is the moment that a women's studies professor I had in college years ago warned our class about. "If you think your rights and the rights of women are somehow guaranteed, think again," she told her wide-eyed, unbelieving students.

Now we are living through it.

No one I know wants to face an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy. But, then again, no one wants to face domestic violence, or the pain of being forced to raise a child all alone, without equal access to health care, child care, or paid family leave. (Let's not forget the relatively high maternal mortality rate in this country, especially for Black women.)

Even Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett's suggestion this week that abortion shouldn't be necessary, since pregnant people can simply give their babies up for adoption, stands as a form of violence against women. It is unacceptable that women's lives should be so misunderstood and poorly represented today, as if carrying a child to term (even if rape or incest occurred) and then parting with it is some easy task, for either the baby or the parent.

The stakes are incredibly high these days; the Supreme Court's pending decision regarding abortion rights in Mississippi and the entire country epitomize the degree to which women's lives are casually used as chess pieces, for political and religious purposes.

It's easy to see, as Dylan wrote, that not much is really sacred after all.

© 2021 The Progressive

Sarah Lahm is a Minneapolis-based writer and researcher. Her work has appeared in outlets such as The Progressive, where she writes the Midwest Dispatch column and contributes pieces to the Public School Shakedown site.