U.S. Has Far Higher Covid Death Rate Than Other Wealthy Countries

By Benjamin Mueller and Eleanor LutzFeb. 1, 2022

Two years into the pandemic, the coronavirus is killing Americans at far higher rates than people in other wealthy nations, a sobering distinction to bear as the country charts a course through the next stages of the pandemic.

The ballooning death toll has defied the hopes of many Americans that the less severe Omicron variant would spare the United States the pain of past waves. Deaths have now surpassed the worst days of the autumn surge of the Delta variant, and are more than two-thirds as high as the record tolls of last winter, when vaccines were largely unavailable.

With American lawmakers desperate to turn the page on the pandemic, as some European leaders have already begun to, the number of dead has clouded a sense of optimism, even as Omicron cases recede. And it has laid bare weaknesses in the country’s response, scientists said.

“Death rates are so high in the States — eye-wateringly high,” said Devi Sridhar, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who has supported loosening coronavirus rules in parts of Britain. “The United States is lagging.”

Some of the reasons for America’s difficulties are well known. Despite having one of the world’s most powerful arsenals of vaccines, the country has failed to vaccinate as many people as other large, wealthy nations. Crucially, vaccination rates in older people also lag behind certain European nations.

The United States has fallen even further behind in administering booster shots, leaving large numbers of vulnerable people with fading protection as Omicron sweeps across the country.

The resulting American death toll has set the country apart — and by wider margins than has been broadly recognized. Since Dec. 1, when health officials announced the first Omicron case in the United States, the share of Americans who have been killed by the coronavirus is at least 63 percent higher than in any of these other large, wealthy nations, according to a New York Times analysis of mortality figures.

In recent months, the United States passed Britain and Belgium to have, among rich nations, the largest share of its population to have died from Covid over the entire pandemic.

For all the encouragement that American health leaders drew from other countries’ success in withstanding the Omicron surge, the outcomes in the U.S. have been markedly different. Hospital admissions in the U.S. swelled to much higher rates than in Western Europe, leaving some states struggling to provide care. Americans are now dying from Covid at nearly double the daily rate of Britons and four times the rate of Germans.

The only large European countries to exceed America’s Covid death rates this winter have been Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Greece and the Czech Republic, poorer nations where the best Covid treatments are relatively scarce.

“The U.S. stands out as having a relatively high fatality rate,” said Joseph Dieleman, an associate professor at the University of Washington who has compared Covid outcomes globally. “There’s been more loss than anyone wanted or anticipated.”

As deadly as the Omicron wave has been, the situation in the United States is far better than it would have been without vaccines. The Omicron variant also causes less serious illness than Delta, even though it has led to staggering case numbers. Together, vaccines and the less lethal nature of Omicron infections have significantly reduced the share of people with Covid who are being hospitalized and dying during this wave.

In Western Europe, those factors have resulted in much more manageable waves. Deaths in Britain, for example, are one-fifth of last winter’s peak, and hospital admissions are roughly half as high.

But not so in the United States. Record numbers of Americans with the highly contagious variant have filled up hospitals in recent weeks and the average death toll is still around 2,500 a day.

Chief among the reasons is the country’s faltering effort to vaccinate its most vulnerable people at the levels achieved by more successful European countries.

Twelve percent of Americans 65 and over have not received either two shots of a Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine or one Johnson & Johnson shot, which the C.D.C. considers fully vaccinated, according to the agency’s statistics. (Inconsistencies in C.D.C. counts make it difficult to know the precise figure.)

And 43 percent of people 65 and over have not received a booster shot. Even among the fully vaccinated, the lack of a booster leaves tens of millions with waning protection, some of them many months past the peak levels of immunity afforded by their second shots.

In England, by contrast, only 4 percent of people 65 and over have not been fully vaccinated and only 9 percent do not have a booster shot.

“It’s not just vaccination — it’s the recency of vaccines, it’s whether or not people have been boosted, and also whether or not people have been infected in the past,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, the director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Covid-19 modeling consortium.

Unvaccinated people make up a majority of hospitalized patients. But older people without booster shots also sometimes struggle to shake off the virus, said Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University, leaving them in need of extra oxygen or hospital stays.

In the United States, cases this winter first surged in more heavily vaccinated states in the Northeast before moving to less-protected states, where scientists said they worried that Omicron could cause especially high death tolls. Surveys suggest that the poorest Americans are the likeliest to remain unvaccinated, putting them at greater risk of dying from Covid.

America’s Omicron wave has also compounded the effects of a Delta surge that had already sent Covid deaths climbing by early December, putting the United States in a more precarious position than many European countries. Even in recent weeks, some American deaths likely resulted from lengthy illnesses caused by Delta.

But Omicron infections had edged aside Delta by late December in the United States, and epidemiologists said that the new variant was most likely responsible for a majority of Covid deaths in the U.S. today.

“These are probably Omicron deaths,” said Robert Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at a branch of the C.D.C. “And the increases we’re seeing are probably in Omicron deaths.”

Still, the United States’ problems started well before Omicron, scientists said. Americans began dying from Covid at higher rates than people in western European countries starting in the summer, after the United States had fallen behind on vaccinations. During the Delta surge in the fall, Americans were dying from Covid at triple the rate of Britons.

By tracking death certificates that list Covid as a cause of death or as a contributing factor, Dr. Anderson said, the C.D.C. is able to ensure that it is counting only those people who died from Covid — and not those who might have incidentally tested positive before dying for unrelated reasons.

It is too early to judge how much worse the United States will fare during this wave. But some scientists said there were hopeful signs that the gap between the United States and other wealthy countries had begun to narrow.

As Delta and now Omicron have hammered the United States, they said, so many people have become sick that those who survived are emerging with a certain amount of immunity from their past infections.

Although it is not clear how strong or long-lasting that immunity will be, especially from Omicron, Americans may slowly be developing the protection from past bouts with Covid that other countries generated through vaccinations — at the cost, scientists said, of many thousands of American lives.

“We’ve finally started getting to a stage where most of the population has been exposed either to a vaccine or the virus multiple times by now,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Referring to American and European death rates, he continued, “I think we’re now likely to start seeing things be more synchronized going forward.”

Still, the United States faces certain steep disadvantages, ones that experts worry could cause problems during future Covid waves, and even the next pandemic. Many Americans have health problems like obesity and diabetes that increase the risk of severe Covid.

Risk Factors for Severe Covid-19

The population of these 10 high-income countries differ in many demographic factors that are associated with an increased likelihood of severe Covid-19 illness or death.

Share of population not fully vaccinated

United States

36%

Netherlands

29%

Britain

28%

Sweden

27%

Germany

26%

France

23%

Belgium

23%

Japan

21%

Australia

20%

Canada

20%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Share of population age 65 and older

28%

Japan

22%

Germany

21%

France

20%

Sweden

20%

Netherlands

19%

Belgium

19%

Britain

18%

Canada

17%

United States

16%

Australia

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Share of adult population with obesity

36%

United States

29%

Canada

29%

Australia

28%

Britain

22%

Germany

22%

Belgium

22%

France

21%

Sweden

20%

Netherlands

4%

Japan

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Sources: C.D.C (risk factors and U.S. vaccinations); World Health Organization via Our World in Data (obesity data); United Nations (age distribution data); Our World in Data (world vaccinations) Note: Age distribution data is the estimated population for 2020; data is as of 2019. Obesity data is the age-standardized estimate of obesity prevalence among adults; data is as of 2016.

More Americans have also come to express distrust — of the government, and of each other — in recent decades, making them less inclined to follow public health precautions like getting vaccinated or reducing their contacts during surges, said Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A study published in the scientific journal The Lancet on Tuesday by Mr. Bollyky and Dr. Dieleman of the University of Washington found that a given country’s level of distrust had strong associations with its coronavirus infection rate.

“What our study suggests is that when you have a novel contagious virus,” Mr. Bollyky said, “the best way for the government to protect its citizens is to convince its citizens to protect themselves.”

While infection levels remain high in many states, scientists said that some deaths could still be averted by people taking precautions around older and more vulnerable Americans, like testing themselves and wearing masks. The toll from future waves will depend on what other variants emerge, scientists said, as well as what level of death Americans decide is tolerable.

“We’ve normalized a very high death toll in the U.S.,” said Anne Sosin, who studies health equity at Dartmouth. “If we want to declare the end of the pandemic right now, what we’re doing is normalizing a very high rate of death.”

'Please Do What Is Right': Native American Lawmakers Urge Biden To Free Leonard Peltier

The ailing Indigenous rights activist, who is 77, "deserves to live his final years among his people," say dozens of Native state legislators.


Jennifer Bendery
02/01/2022 
Leaders of the National Caucus of Native American State Legislators wrote to President Joe Biden on Monday urging him to release Leonard Peltier from prison, warning that the 77-year-old Indigenous rights activist is in poor health and deserves ”to live his final years among his people in dignity.”

“Mr. President, please do what is right,” reads the message from New Mexico state Sen. Benny Shendo (D) and North Dakota state Rep. Ruth Buffalo (D), the chair and vice-chair of the caucus, respectively. The caucus represents 89 Native American state legislators from 21 states.

“Amid our country’s racial reckoning after George Floyd’s murder, Native Americans have not yet been included in any promise of federal justice reform. Your clemency towards Mr. Peltier would change that,” Shendo and Buffalo wrote. “His expected release would sound as a promise to the first peoples of these lands that we too enjoy America’s promise of justice for all.”

“Our communities have suffered enough,” they added. “Please prioritize equity.”

Peltier has been in prison for 45 years without any evidence that he committed a crime. The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office charged him with the 1975 murders of two FBI agents during a shootout on a Native American reservation ― something Peltier has long said he didn’t do, even when taking responsibility for the killings could have meant parole for him. His trial was riddled with misconduct, and even the U.S. attorney who helped put Peltier in prison decades ago is now pleading with Biden to grant him clemency because, he says, federal officials never had evidence that he committed a crime.

On Friday, Peltier tested positive for COVID-19. He is currently in quarantine.

His COVID status has only intensified the calls from supporters and elected officials to let him go home. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, last week urged Biden to commute Peltier’s sentence given his age, illness and time served. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the former longtime chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the longest-serving member of the Senate, has also called on Biden to send Peltier home.

Actor Danny DeVito on Monday joined the calls for Peltier’s release.

“President Joe Biden. Please let Leonard Pleltier [sic] go. You can do it man. Pick up that pen,” he tweeted.

President Joe Biden. Please let Leonard Pleltier go. You can do it man. Pick up that pen.— Danny DeVito (@DannyDeVito) January 31, 2022

Peltier told HuffPost last week that his prison facility’s prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns, and its failure to provide booster shots to inmates, have left him ― and likely others ― unbearably isolated and preparing for death. He is particularly vulnerable to COVID’s effects given his existing serious health problems, including diabetes and an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

“I’m in hell,” he said, days before his COVID diagnosis. “Left alone and without attention is like a torture chamber for the sick and old.”

Buffalo said Tuesday that members of her caucus “understand fully the sense of urgency” in protecting elderly loved ones from COVID, particularly if they are in prison. Native Americans are more than twice as likely to die from COVID as white Americans, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and are incarcerated at a much higher rate than the national average.

“Add inhumane living conditions, and prison guards who don’t follow CDC guidelines, [and] it is a recipe for disaster,” Buffalo told HuffPost. “Even if Mr. Peltier had not been convicted under contested circumstances, his advanced age, ill health and the amount of time he’s served ought to be enough to reconsider his circumstances. We are beyond the stage of making an example, and sheer human compassion and clemency urgently needs to be considered.”

Here’s a copy of the letter to Biden from the National Caucus of Native American State Legislators:           61f99a49e4b0b69cfe86ed26.pdf (google.com)

A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

RELATED...

Leonard Peltier Is America's Longest-Serving Political Prisoner. Biden Is Likely His Last Hope.

Leonard Peltier Tests Positive For COVID-19

Sen. Brian Schatz Urges Biden To Commute Leonard Peltier’s Prison Sentence

BREAKING NEWS: Leonard Peltier Tests Positive for Covid-19



Free Leonard Peltier sign at Standing Rock camp in Dec. 2016.

 (Photo/Levi Rickert)

BY LEVI RICKERT JANUARY 29, 2022

American Indian activist Leonard Peltier (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians), has tested positive for COVID-19 at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida. Peltier is 77-years-old.

“Today, Leonard tested positive for COVID,” Peltier’s attorney Kevin Sharp told HuffPost late Friday. “We are all very concerned, as is Leonard. He wanted people to know that he sends his love and appreciation for the years everyone has fought for him."

According to the HuffPost article, Peltier has not received his vaccination booster shot.

Peltier’s health has long been a concern for those seeking his release from prison for his conviction of killing two FBI agents at Oglala on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. He suffers from heart problems and diabetes.

Supporters believe that Peltier was wrongfully convicted in 1977 for a crime he did not commit. Imprisoned for more than 46 years, Peltier has the support of Amnesty International, and other human rights organizations. Over the years, some 50 members of Congress and others — including Judge Gerald Heaney (8th Circuit Court of Appeals) who sat as a member of the court in two of Peltier’s appeals — have called for his immediate release.

Peltier's COVID-19 diagnosis comes just two days after the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), sent a letter to President Joe Biden that urged the president to commute the Peltier's sentence.

Leonard Peltier (Photo/Courtesy

Schatz cites Peltier’s advanced age, illness, and a loophole in current laws that unfairly disqualifies Peltier from compassionate release. While legislation led by Schatz to fix the loophole continues to be considered in Congress, that process can take years – time Peltier may not have.

“I commend your administration’s commitment to righting past wrongs in our criminal justice system. In continuing that work as you consider recommendations for individuals to receive clemency, I write to urge you to grant a commutation of Leonard Peltier’s sentence. Mr. Peltier meets appropriate criteria for commutation: (1) his old age and critical illness, (2) the amount of time he has already served, and (3) the unavailability of other remedies. Given these factors, Mr. Peltier should be granted a commutation of his sentence,” Chairman Schatz wrote in his letter to President Biden. “Mr. Peltier has consistently maintained his innocence because the facts of his case, as well as the actions of federal agents and prosecutors involved, raise serious questions about whether he received a fair trial.”

During the daily White House press briefing on Thursday a reporter asked Press Secretary Jen Psaki about Sen. Schatz's letter in the following exchange:

"REPORTER: Yesterday, Senator Schatz, who chairs the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, wrote to the President, asking him to commute the sentence of Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist who was convicted of murder in a very controversial trial about four decades ago. Is that something the President is considering or taking a look at, at this time?

MS. PSAKI: I don’t have anything to predict for you on that front."

Editor's Note: This is a developing story that will be updated as more news becomes available.

President Biden: Enough is Enough, Free Leonard Peltier

BY LEVI RICKERT 

 

JANUARY 30, 2022

The long and sad imprisonment of Leonard Peltier (Turtle Mountain Chippewa Nation) took on a new complication on Friday when it was reported he tested positive for COVID-19 while incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary at Coleman, Fla. (USP Coleman 1).

Prison is not a great place to have COVID-19, especially if you are a 77-year-old man with comorbidities that include diabetes, hypertension, a heart condition and acute aneurysm, such as Peltier.

The Prison Policy Initiative reported in October 2021 that the COVID-19 death rate in prisons is more than double that of the general U.S. population, as calculated by the UCLA COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project

Peltier has been incarcerated for 46 years for the killing of two FBI agents at Oglala on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1975.

To many American Indians, Peltier is a symbol of an oppressive federal system that relegates Native people to apartheid and neglect. He is a political prisoner that we may only think about if we happen to see a bumper sticker on the back of a vehicle that reads “FREE Leonard Peltier.”

The International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (ILPDC) on Saturday afternoon distributed a news release saying the federal prisons acted recklessly in regard to Peltier’s care. Peltier has yet to receive a COVID-19 booster shot, 11 months after his last vaccination.

The ILPDC noted in its news release that visitors to USP Coleman 1 have observed that the facility is not mandating vaccines for guards or staff. Guards and staff have been seen improperly wearing masks or not wearing them at all. Social distancing was not encouraged or enforced and booster shots had not, until recently, been available to any inmate at USP Coleman 1.

Soon after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, then U.S. Attorney General William Barr issued U.S. Department of Justice guidelines for COVID Release to Home Confinement for inmates who were elderly or with compromised immune system or co-morbidities on March 26 and again, April 3, 2020.

Peltier’s age and comorbidities unequivocally make him eligible for home release under Department of Justice guidelines. Peltier’s tribal community on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota has repeatedly expressed willingness to ensure he is provided adequate housing there.

Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Chairman Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), sent a letter to President Joe Biden last Wednesday urging him to commute Peltier's sentence. 

“I commend your administration’s commitment to righting past wrongs in our criminal justice system. In continuing that work as you consider recommendations for individuals to receive clemency, I write to urge you to grant a commutation of Leonard Peltier’s sentence. Mr. Peltier meets appropriate criteria for commutation: (1) his old age and critical illness, (2) the amount of time he has served, and (3) the unavailability of other remedies. Given these factors, Mr. Peltier should be granted a commutation of his sentence,” Chairman Schatz wrote.

Leonard Peltier (Photo/Courtesy)

Beyond Peltier’s current battle with COVID-19, the White House needs to review Peltier’s 1977 case, in which two of his co-defendants were acquitted on the basis of self-defense against the FBI.

Peltier was tried separately from his co-defendants.

According to Kevin Sharp, former Chief Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, who Peltier’s current attorney, Peltier’s trial was replete with prosecutorial misconduct, falsified testimony and fabricated evidence. Even the autopsy presented to the jury was done by an examiner who had never seen the bodies of the two agents.

The former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, James H. Reynolds, who supervised the post-trial sentencing and appeals, admitted they “shaved a few corners” and “we could not prove Leonard Peltier personally committed any crime on the Pine Ridge Reservation” said in a letter to President Biden last year.

Reynolds wrote “enough is enough.”

On behalf of all Indigenous people in the U.S. and across the globe, enough is enough. We call on President Biden to commute the sentence of Leonard Peltier.

Hold off — for now — on feeding seaweed to cows to reduce methane

BY JOSEPH MCFADDEN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 02/01/22
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN

 AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

© Istock


Since the United Nations COP26 climate summit, the race to reduce methane emissions from cattle production and to slow climate change appears to have officially started. Unofficially, animal scientists have been exploring the effects of feed additives to reduce methane production from beef and dairy cows for more than a decade; albeit, funding has been limited to adequately support such endeavors.

As attention on this challenge grows, one potential feed additive for cattle has found the limelight: seaweed. Feeding cows seaweed is a promising approach to “help slow methane emissions — and change the world.” We certainly should be optimistic — and the feeding strategy might be a critical breakthrough. But expectations should be tempered until its merit is evaluated by science.

The attention has focused on seaweed because it contains trihalomethanes, such as bromoform, which is an active ingredient that decreases methane emissions from cattle belches. But the reality is that there are thousands of species of seaweed. Red seaweed (e.g., Asparagopsis taxiformis) has been praised for inhibiting methane production from cattle by more than 80 percent because of its high bromoform content. In contrast, brown seaweed (e.g., Ascophyllum nodosum) has a lower bromoform content and is less effective at being antimethanogenic.

Widespread use of seaweed varieties will require large-scale cultivation for the cattle feed industry. Seaweed farming in oceans is possible but does have some environmental concerns.

Different species of seaweed prefer cold or warm water at various depths. For instance, Asparagopsis taxiformis won’t grow off the coast of Maine because it prefers tropical or sub-tropical climates. We also have to examine how seaweed farming would impact marine mammal diversity and potentially contribute to ocean pollution. Bromoform from seaweed may also have an ozone-depleting effect, but its impact is not fully understood. Land-based aquaculture systems in controlled environmental conditions or the production of bioactive ingredients using bioengineering are underdeveloped investment opportunities that might meet the demand for seaweed and be more environmentally friendly.

Processing and distribution of seaweed is another challenge.

Raw seaweed is wet and heavy. This creates a transport issue from the harvest site to the processing facility. Seaweed will need to be dried and ground. The final product will need additional transport to the feed mill or farm, which could be significant to feed cattle in the Midwest. Shelf-life of the raw and final product, and waste, will also need to be investigated. These are all factors that may increase fossil fuel consumption and affiliated greenhouse gas emissions. A life cycle assessment is needed to ensure that we don’t increase methane and carbon dioxide emissions more than by not feeding cows seaweed at all.

We also need to learn more about how feeding seaweed impacts cow biology.

We want to feed cattle additives that enhance meat and milk production and quality, and promote animal health with less feed, nutrient waste, and cost. But we know so little about whether the ability of seaweed to inhibit methane production is influenced by changes in the animal’s diet, digestion, microbiome, or genetics. Does seaweed impact feed intake, growth, or carcass or milk yield or composition? What about the sensory attributes (e.g., taste) of meat and milk from cows fed seaweed?

These uncertainties require attention because farmer income is derived from selling milk and its components (i.e, fat and protein) not by how much methane is reduced. Active research in this area at the University of New Hampshire is expected to provide clarity.

Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that bromoform is unlikely to be found in food for humans, bromoform consumption is a potential human safety concern. Research suggests that bromoform can be detected in milk from cows fed red seaweed at concentrations that would be deemed below the EPA-established maximum for drinking water. However, research from University of California, Davis, suggests that feeding cows red seaweed doesn’t impact bromoform content of meat. Scientific research on the matter is very limited but essential because the level of bromoform is highly variable across species of seaweed. So, the type but also the amount and duration of seaweed feeding are all critical factors that could contribute to bromoform content of animal-sourced foods but also the efficacy to reduce methane production.

Feeding cows seaweed is a potentially transformative approach to reduce methane production from the beef and dairy industries, but for it to become practice, we have some challenges to overcome.

Society has limited time to develop mitigation strategies for climate change. We must invest our time, people, and money with the conscious consideration of how technology will impact our environment, human health, and the livelihood of farmers.

Dr. Joseph W. McFadden is an associate professor of dairy cattle biology in the Department of Animal Science at Cornell University. He studies dairy cattle nutrition, milk production, and the effects of diets on animal and human health. His research — including current research on cattle methane emissions — is funded by USDA, NSF, FFAR and industry.

 Environment

EPA restores rule to limit power-plant mercury emissions

EPA Administrator Michael Regan speaks during a press conference on President Biden's Building a Better America agenda at the Shockoe Retention Basin in Richmond, Va., Friday, January 28, 2022. (Alexa Welch Edlund/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)

Feb. 1  06:32 am JST  

By MATTHEW DALY

WASHINGTON 
                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                                                     

In a reversal of a Trump-era action, the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday it will resume enforcement of a rule that limits power plant emissions of mercury and other hazardous pollutants.

The EPA action restores a rule imposed under President Barack Obama and continues a practice in which the Biden administration reinstates environmental protections loosened under President Donald Trump. The 2012 rule requires significant reductions in emissions of mercury, acid gases and other harmful pollutants, primarily by coal-fired power plants.

EPA said its actions would improve public health, including reducing the risk of heart attacks and cancer and avoiding neurodevelopmental delays in children.

“Sound science makes it clear that we need to limit mercury and toxins in the air to protect children and vulnerable communities from dangerous pollution,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. “EPA is committed to aggressively reducing pollution from the power sector so that all people, regardless of zip code or amount of money in their pocket, can breathe clean air and live healthy and productive lives.”

The Trump administration gutted the power-plant rule in 2020, saying the earlier rule amounted to regulatory overreach that imposed undue harm on the power sector. Andrew Wheeler, the former coal lobbyist who headed the EPA under Trump, said the 2020 action balanced the rule's cost to utilities with public safety.

In reversing that decision, the EPA said the Trump-era action was “based on a fundamentally flawed interpretation of the Clean Air Act that improperly ignored or undervalued vital health benefits from reducing hazardous air pollution from power plants.''

Based on a thorough review of the benefits, the “reasonable costs of controls” and other factors, "EPA is proposing to reaffirm that it is appropriate and necessary to regulate emissions of hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants,'' the agency said.

The Obama-era rule led to what electric utilities say was an $18 billion cleanup of mercury and other toxins from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants. The rule was credited with curbing mercury’s devastating neurological damage to children and prevented thousands of premature deaths annually, among other public health benefits.

Most coal-fired power plants have already made the technological upgrades required by the 2012 rule. Coal-fired power plants are the largest single manmade source of mercury pollutants, which enter the food chain through fish and other items that people consume.

 

Group warns of potential catastrophe on old tanker off Yemen

Jan. 31, 2022

By NOHA ELHENNAWY

CAIRO

A leading environmental group has warned of a potential major oil leak or explosion on an aging oil tanker moored off of Yemen's Red Sea coast. The neglected vessel is loaded with more than a million barrels of crude oil.

Greenpeace released a report listing the environmental, humanitarian and economic impacts of a potential oil spill from the FSO Safer on conflict-riddled Yemen and the Red Sea region in general.

“The event could be one of the biggest oil spill disasters in history and would cause widespread severe environmental damage and exacerbate the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the country,” the group said in its report.

The rusting, neglected Japanese-built tanker has been moored in its location 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) away from Yemen’s western Red Sea port of Ras Issa since the 1980s, when it was sold to the Yemeni government. Prior to the escalation of Yemen's conflict in 2015, the vessel was used to store and export oil from fields in eastern Marib province.

The 42-page Greenpeace report argues that an oil spill or explosion on the tanker would lead to the closure of desalination plants in Yemen, which will eventually disrupt the supply of drinking water to nearly 10 million people.

“The entire Red Sea region’s drinking water supply could be contaminated by oil in just three weeks following a spill,” said Greenpeace.

A major spill would also lead to the closure of Yemen's western ports, including Hodeida and Salif, through which 68% of aid is brought into the Arab world's poorest country, the report said. Up to 8.4 million people relying on food aid supplies would be affected, said the Amsterdam-based advocacy group.

An oil leak would also cause the closure of fisheries, the rise of air pollution levels in the region and the disruption of shipping traffic through Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Suez Canal, said the report.

Internal documents obtained by The Associated Press in 2020 show that seawater has entered the tanker's engine compartment, causing damage to pipes and increasing the risk of sinking. Rust has covered parts of the tanker and the inert gas that prevents the tanks from gathering flammable gases has leaked out. Experts say maintenance is no longer possible because the damage to the ship is irreversible, according to the AP report.

“The question is no longer whether the catastrophe will happen. The question is when it will happen,” Greenpeace MENA Campaigns Manager Ahmed El Droubi told reporters in a virtual news conference Thursday.

Ras Issa is controlled by the country's Houthi rebels. Since 2015, the Houthis have been at war with the internationally recognized government, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition and the United States.

Last month, a Yemeni official with the U.N.-recognized government said there was an oil leak from the tanker. Undersecretary of Hodeida province Waleed al-Qudaimi blamed the situation on the U.N. Security Council and called on countries bordering the Red Sea to act urgently.

The U.N. has constantly warned of the catastrophic impact of a potential leak from the aging and neglected tanker. However, none of its diplomatic efforts to resolve the matter has materialized. Last year, the U.N. accused the rebels of using the tanker as a “bargaining chip” to advance their political agenda in Yemen.

“The technology and expertise to transfer the oil to other tankers exist, but despite months of negotiations we are still at a stalemate,” said Paul Horsman, project leader of Greenpeace's Safer response team. “It is really time to put aside the politics and agree on a contingency plan.”

Horsman told reporters that his group is calling for the deployment of a containment boom around the tanker as a first line of defense. Booms are interconnected floating barriers that are usually spread across the water to stop a major oil spill.

“The boom is not a solution but it could potentially buy us time in case there is a spill,” said Horsman. “The only solution is to move the oil safely from Safer to another tanker.”

Chris Johnson, a U.N. senior policy advisor who was present during the release of the Greenpeace report, said the U.N. is already working on bringing a boom from Djibouti to Hodeida port. She added that the U.N. is pursuing with diplomatic efforts to reach an agreement between the Houthis, the Saudi-led-coalition and the Yemeni government to resolve the matter.

Meanwhile, the U.N. is trying to locate a suitable vessel to which the oil could be transferred, Johnson told reporters.

© Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Deadly Colorado blaze renews focus on underground coal fires

 Rowdy Alexander watches from atop his horse as a hillside burns on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation on Aug 11, 2021, near Lame Deer, Mont. An area outside Denver where Colorado's most destructive in history wildfire burned 1,000 homes last month is home to numerous abandoned coal mines that authorities say could be a potential cause of the wind-driven wildfire. This past summer in Montana, smoldering coal seams were blamed for a string of major fires that burned hundreds of square miles and prompted widespread evacuations. 

(AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)Environment

Today 04:53 am JST
By MATTHEW BROWN and COLLEEN SLEVIN
DENVER

A fire raging in an underground Colorado coal field in 1883 sent so much smoke pouring from cracks in the ground that the scene was likened to burning volcanoes and the state's first mining inspector deemed the blaze “impossible to extinguish.”

Nearly 140 years later two fires still smolder in the now-abandoned coal field near Boulder — the same area where a wildfire last month destroyed more than 1,000 homes and buildings and killed at least one person.

It’s still unknown what caused the December blaze that became the most destructive in Colorado history, but Boulder County authorities have said they're investigating the area’s abandoned coal mines as one of several possible causes, along with power lines, human activity and other possibilities.

Could smoldering coal have started such a fire? History shows the answer is yes, with at least two Colorado blazes in the past 20 years blamed on mine fires that spread to the surface. And in Montana this past summer slow-burning coal reserves fanned by winds sparked a pair of blazes that burned a combined 267 square miles (691 square kilometers) on and around the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.

Across the U.S. at least 259 underground mine fires burned in more than a dozen states as of last September, according to federal Office of Surface Mining data. There are hundreds and possibly thousands more undocumented blazes burning in coal seams that have never been mined, researchers and government officials say.

Globally, such fires are also a problem, including in India, Australia and South Africa. In China, the world’s largest coal producer, an estimated 10 million to 200 million tons of the fuel annually burn or are left inaccessible by fires, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

As climate change leads to drought across larges swaths of a U.S. West already seeing longer and more destructive fire seasons, experts say smoldering coal fires will pose a continuing threat.

Such fires can be ignited by lightning, humans and even spontaneously at temperatures as low as 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), said Jurgen Brune a Colorado School of Mines engineering professor. Many are impossible to put out, slowly burning underground as the combustion feeds off a small amount of oxygen present in the coal, he said.

“Covering it up and trying to take away the oxygen from the fire puts out most fires. Not for coal fires,” Brune said.

Underground coal seams burn unpredictably and can break through to the surface without warning long after a fire starts, he said.

“It’s like trying to predict an earthquake,” Brune said. “With all the technology we have today they are not coming any closer to predicting them. The same goes for a coal fire.”

The fires emit toxic mercury and the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, and cause sinkholes when the ground’s surface collapses into burned cavities below. In Centralia, Pennsylvania, the fumes and subsidence from a coal fire that started beneath the town in 1962 got so bad that more than 1,000 people eventually relocated at a cost of $42 million.

The estimated future cost to control the 200 known abandoned mine blazes across the U.S. is almost $900 million, according to the Office of Surface Mining database.

In the wake of last summer's fires, local officials in Montana plan to map out burning seams across the state's southeast in coming months using a federal grant. Controlling them will be difficult and could cost a minimum of $300,000 per site, said Bobbi Vannattan with the Rosebud Conservation District, which is helping to coordinate the mapping.

“The problem with coal seam fires is we don’t know how deep they are or how wide they are until you get in there and start digging,” she said.

In Colorado, officials were monitoring at least 38 underground coal fires as of 2019.

Boulder County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Carrie Haverfield declined to specify which mines were being investigated in relation to the Dec. 30 blaze or what prompted authorities’ interest, which was first reported by KUSA-TV.

At least three efforts were made by authorities to quench or reduce damage from the blaze the state mine inspector first encountered more than a century ago at the abandoned Marshall Mine, located on park land in the vicinity of where investigators believe the recent fire started.

The first came in 1982, when federal officials drilled into the ground to investigate how far the fire extended and later sought to smother it with a 2-foot (60-centimeter) layer of dirt, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report.

In 2005, a small brush fire was traced back to a hot vent from the fire. Crews from Boulder removed vegetation in the area and federal officials tried to fill the vent and others with rocks to try to protect against another fire, according to the Office of Surface Mining. In 2016, after federal officials said the state had taken control of the site, workers excavated and filled in two areas where ground had subsided after fire consumed the underground coal.

When the site was visited two years later by workers for a state contractor, Tetra Tech, they found no evidence of fire — no melting snow, no smoky odors. The company recommended annual monitoring of the site because of its past erratic behavior but no new steps to abate the potential hazard.

“The fire’s activity is very low and thus presents little potential to start a surface fire,” Tetra Tech wrote in a 2019 report prepared for the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety.

Generally the responsibility of monitoring coal mine fires falls to the property owner, according to the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety. The Marshall Mine fire sits under an open space park owned by the city of Boulder near a state highway.

Boulder officials said they don't have responsibility to do work on the fire. However, the city is required to notify the state if rangers or trail crews at the popular hiking area see smoke or shifts, city spokesperson Sarah Huntley said.

The state’s mining division said it was not notified of any changes at the mine fire since the 2019 report.

The state receives federal funding to help property owners monitor or mitigate abandoned coal mine fires. But the mining division cannot require any work be done at the sites, spokesperson Chris Arend said.© Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Fewest Americans Ever Are Laid Off in Frenzy to Retain Workers

Raeedah Wahid, Bloomberg News

BC-Fewest-Americans-Ever-Are-Laid-Off-in-Frenzy-to-Retain-Workers , Raeedah Wahid

(Bloomberg) -- The fewest number of U.S. workers were laid off in December, highlighting businesses’ desperation to retain talent.

Just 1.2 million Americans were dismissed from their jobs, the least in data back to 2001, the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed Tuesday. That translated into a layoffs and discharge rate of 0.8%, also a record low.

The data are consistent with a tight labor market in which employers are raising pay and offering attractive benefits in a battle to lure and retain talent. Labor shortages continue to plague businesses in a variety of industries, contributing to decades-high inflation.

The report also showed that job openings rose unexpectedly in the month while quits declined slightly, suggesting that labor demand held steady in the month despite a surge in Covid-19 infections and pandemic-related business disruptions.

Retail trade saw the largest decrease in layoffs and discharges, while they increased in sectors like education and health services and federal government positions. By region, layoffs and discharges decreased in the Northeast and rose slightly in the West.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

The Geopolitical Dynamics of Extraterritorial Detention

   

 by Christian Fernandez , February 1, 2022

The Biden administration is undertaking a formal assessment of Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay military prison. Former President George W. Bush created the detention center in 2002 to hold foreign terrorist suspects in the aftermath of 9/11. President Biden wants to shut down the prison by the conclusion of his first term in 2024, resurrecting an Obama-era objective that was never realized.

After Afghanistan

The events of September 11 fundamentally changed the US’s counterterrorism strategy, resulting in measures focused on apprehending and holding individuals who were suspected of terrorist activity. As a result, the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, a US military facility, was created. The majority of those classified as extremists have been sent to other countries, where they are being imprisoned or have been freed. Individuals held in Guantanamo Bay are those who have been taken as prisoners of war (POW) in a foreign country. According to the New York Times, 780 prisoners have been detained at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. The remaining 741 were transferred to the care of a foreign government. There are presently 39 people that are still imprisoned there. They have been detained by the Executive branch of the government. These individuals will not be prosecuted, and in some instances, the reason for this will be due to the fact that the evidence against them will be deemed inadmissible in court. In any case, there appears to be sufficient evidence to infer that they are at war with the US.

The Current State

The cost of operating Guantanamo Bay’s jail and judicial system increased by almost $90 million between 2013 and 2018, despite a decline in the number of detainees. Since opening over 19 years ago, the US military court and prison at Guantanamo Bay have cost more than $6 billion to maintain and continue to consume more than $380 million each year while holding just 39 detainees.

In the past we have seen detainees released, only to carry out new attacks on Americans. Senate Republicans state that “relocating the remaining 40 individuals or closing the facility would create an unnecessary risk.” On the other side, Senate Democrats argue that Guantanamo has tarnished America’s reputation, promoted anti-Muslim prejudice, and undermined America’s capacity to combat terrorism and promote human rights and the rule of law globally. House Democrats believe the US has an obligation to treat prisoners in Guantanamo humanely and to make adjustments for their medical treatment. Additionally, they note that certain prisoners should be tried in federal courts, and other prisoners should be deported to their home countries or sent to other nations under suitable circumstances. 

Biden’s Agenda and The Risk of Closing Guantanamo 

Since taking office, the Biden administration repatriated its first inmate from Guantanamo Bay in July; Abdul Latif Nasir, a Moroccan man who had been imprisoned there for almost two decades. Nasir was detained indefinitely as a prisoner of war (POW) for 19 years without prosecution as part of the armed battle against the terrorist organization, al-Qaeda. The Biden administration has not specified how or when it would carry out their plan to close the detention center. However, early actions to release one prisoner and add five others to a list of individuals eligible for release has sparked hope among those eager to see it end. Guantanamo has been a financial, legal, and moral hardship throughout its existence. The expense of holding prisoners in Guantanamo is significantly more than the cost of holding them at a maximum-security prison in the United States. Guantanamo costs the US government $445 million each year, or around $5.56 million per inmate, in comparison to Federal prisons that house detainees for a maximum yearly cost of approximately $78,000 per prisoner.

A report by Human Rights First, a nonpartisan organization, posits that the danger of returning detainees authorized for release from Guantánamo to their homes is manageable. The assertion that transferred prisoners are very likely to engage in or re-engage in terrorist activity upon their release is mostly false. Under the Bush administration, which released over 500 inmates, 21.4% of freed detainees were found to have participated in criminal activity after their transfer. This rate has decreased to 4.6% as the Obama administration implemented more rigorous vetting procedures (i.e., The Guantanamo Review Task Force). Given the fact that the Obama administration revised the prisoner review and transfer systems, according to national security leaders, releasing prisoners who are no longer a danger to the US or its interests can be done securely.