Detroit police break up Native sugarbush ceremony, saying 'sovereign stuff is not valid'

"They're not stopping us. There's absolutely nothing these settlers could do to stop the cultural revival that's happening among Native peoples all over in this country."

Elissa Welle, Detroit Free Press
Sat, February 19, 2022

Antonio Cosme speaks to an officer on Feb. 18, 2022.

Detroit police officers shut down an Indigenous sugarbush ceremony Friday night in River Rouge Park, despite claims from organizers of having valid fire permits and approval from the city.

The Detroit Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The ceremony was held to kick off the third annual tapping season as part of the Detroit Sugarbush Project, led by a coalition of local groups whose mission is to teach Detroiters how to tap — literally and figuratively — into the tradition of making maple syrup and pass on other ecological knowledge.

For three years, participants have learned from the Anishinaanabe and Potawatomi people from the Midwest about sugerbush ceremonies, tapped maple trees in River Rouge Park and boiled sap over a fire. The city of Detroit issued the project a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to do as much, according to the project website and ceremony organizers.

Antonio Cosme, Detroit Sugarbush Project organizer, said he also received a burn permit for Friday's bonfire from the fire department.

It was about 8 p.m., after the prayers and before dinner, when the roughly 20 attendees noticed a helicopter overhead. Then, Rosebud Bear-Schneider, a ceremony organizer, said they saw police cars and lights through the trees.

"We thought maybe somebody else might be getting pulled over. We didn't think it was for us. We were doing nothing wrong," Bear-Schneider said.

Cosme said he went to investigate and discovered that seven police cars and over 12 officers had arrived. He said he showed the permits and MOU to the officer in charge.

As Cosme and the officer in charge spoke at the edge of the woods, six officers in tactical gear appeared in the clearing and informed attendees they had two minutes to put out the fire and leave.

A video of this interaction posted to Instagram shows officers standing side-by-side along the edge of the clearing as smoke from the recently extinguished fire billowed between them and the attendees.

"We tried to talk them about the Religious Freedom Act," Bear-Schneider said. "We tried to tell them about our sovereignty. They didn't want to hear anything of it."

One officer can be heard in the video saying, "The sovereign stuff is not valid," insisting that attendees were in violation of city ordinances for entering the park after dark.

However, Bear-Schneider insists they were allowed to stay in the park until 10 p.m., even without the MOU and city permit.

Detroit Code of Ordinances chapter 33 states: "All City parks and public places ... shall be closed to the public from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., unless posted signs designate a different period of closure."

Just as he received the go-ahead from the officer in charge to continue the ceremony, Cosme noticed attendees filing from the woods carrying tables and chairs.

Back in the clearing, Bear-Schneider said the six officers watched the attendees pack up, threatening arrest if they didn't comply, until the situation was diffused by the officer in charge.

Bear-Schneider said it was clear this was "a major miscommunication between all of these departments" that should not have happened.

No citations were issued. Instead, the night ended with upset attendees filing a police report with the officer in charge, Cosme said. Bear-Schneider said a second report was filed Saturday morning at the Detroit Police Department's 6th Precinct.

Cosme reaffirmed the group's paperwork is up to snuff and it will continue with the Sugerbush Project as planned.

"They're not stopping us. There's absolutely nothing these settlers could do to stop the cultural revival that's happening among Native peoples all over in this country."

Rosebud Bear-Schneider speaks to sugarbush attendees on Feb. 19, 2022.

Some of the attendees, including Bear-Schneider, reconvened in Rouge River Park on Saturday morning to reflect on the events of the night before.

She said maple tapping season is part of a broader food sovereignty movement focusing on the right to Indigenous food systems and ways.

"We have a responsibility to this land and to these trees and to these ways, so we're not going to let any anything like that get in the way of our responsibilities," Bear-Schneider said. "It's a shame that it's 2022 and we still have to fight for our rights and just to exist as Native people."

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit police break up peaceful and permitted Native ceremony

UK 

Wind farms were paid not to generate half their potential electricity

Edward Malnick
Sat, February 19, 2022

Researchers said the payments were being fuelled by a high concentration of onshore wind farms in Scotland - 

Ashley Cooper/Construction Photography/Avalon/Getty Images

Wind farms have been paid to refrain from producing up to half of the electricity they are capable of generating, according to research that led MPs to warn that "inappropriate" decisions on wind power were "forcing excess costs onto consumers".

An analysis found that, in 2020, three large wind farms in Scotland were paid a total of £24.5 million to fail to produce about half of their potential output.

Researchers said the "constraint payments", which are ultimately added to consumer bills, were being fuelled by a high concentration of onshore wind farms in Scotland often leaving the electricity grid unable to cope on windy days.

The Renewable Energy Foundation, a charity that publishes energy data, said the problem would continue until "until there is more than sufficient interconnection between Scotland and the centres of demand in England". The analysis comes ahead of an expected spike in electricity bills.

Craig Mackinlay, who leads the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of Conservative MPs, said the constraint payments were an example of unnecessary costs being charged to consumers.

A government spokesman insisted the payments were "not a viable income stream for onshore wind developers", but a new analysis by REF found some individual wind farms were agreeing to not produce up to half of their potential output in order to avoid overwhelming the grid.

Excess costs ‘forced onto consumers’

In one case, £7.7 million in "constraint payments" handed to the operator of a 23-turbine scheme in Scotland in 2020 led to the wind farm deliberately failing to produce 51 per cent of its potential output. In another, SSE, the operator of the 33-turbine Strathy North wind farm in the Highlands, was paid £5.9 million to avoid producing 48 per cent of its capacity.

Last year, which saw particularly low wind speeds, the 59-turbine Dorenell wind farm in Moray, owned by EDF Renewables, was paid £1.5 million to avoid producing a total of 179 gigawatt hours – 35 per cent of its potential output.

Dr Lee Moroney, REF's principle analyst, said: "When wind farms have been so poorly sited that they are discarding up to 50 per cent of their annual output, the public has every right to ask how on Earth these projects came to get planning permission."

Mr Mackinlay said turbines appeared to be constructed "in inappropriate locations, forcing excess costs onto consumers and harming our precious natural heritage in the process".

More renewables ‘will protect customers’

A government spokesman said: "Gas is expensive and wind power is cheap, so we need more renewables to protect consumers. Constraint payments remain the most efficient option for National Grid to keep Britain's lights on, and are only used when there is excess supply."

A spokesman for EDF Renewables said it had to respond to National Grid's constraint requests "in order to manage the system and keep the lights on".

Alistair Phillips-Davies, the chief executive of SSE, said: "Wind will end up generating most of the energy the country needs, and the best resource is in Scotland. Britain needs more wind power to minimise our reliance on volatile international gas markets."

Scottish Renewables, a trade body, said constraint payments added just £1 per year to the average household electrical bill.

On Friday, about 40 per cent of the day's electricity supply was generated by turbines – far higher than average – amid the strong winds brought by Storm Eunice.

Fully Loaded Sunken Car Carrier Finally Recovered

John Puckett
Sat, February 19, 2022, 

This story is insane!

December 5, 2012, just off the Dutch coast, the MV Baltic Ace collided with the Corvus J in one of the busiest shipping channels in the world. In 15 minutes the 500-ft long car carrier was resting on the floor of the North sea and nearly half of its crew was lost. The tragedy was far from over though, and a potential for even more loss was very real.

For two years, the shipwreck impeded traffic through the busy channel, threatening to drag more ships to its watery grave. Likewise, the fully loaded carrier threatened the environment with irreparable damage from the some odd 143,000-gallons of oil on board, not to mention the 1,400 cars worth of potentially harmful materials that would not otherwise be there. There was never a doubt that the bottom of this busy channel was not a good final resting place for the ship, but lifting a heavy ship filled with cars and water is not an easy task.

After much planning, a team started the recovery process with the removal of the oil in March of 2014. It took the crew two-weeks to heat the solidified oil and pump it all out. Upon further inspection of the ship's damage, the original plan for removal proved to be impossible and the team went back to the drawing board.

The plan that they came up with was to cut the ship into eight pieces with a wire cutting system passed under the wreck and between two barges. This plan was put into action at the beginning of April 2015. Many of the individual pieces of the ship were able to be removed in single pieces but some fell apart on the way up and a large salvage crane. In all, the recovery of the 13,000 tons of wreckage cost an estimated $73-million, involved 18 ships, and employed more than 150 people. Today, where there once was a dangerous shipwreck, there is now only a clean ocean bed.

UK
Voices: Nuclear fusion is an expensive delusion – so of course this government is right behind it


Donnachadh McCarthy
Fri, February 18, 2022

The UK’s JET Fusion programme only produced enough energy to boil 60 kettles (PA)

It is time to end the fusion delusion. Last week, there were headlines (again) about a “major breakthrough” in the search for unlimited, cheap, carbon-free electricity from nuclear fusion reactors.

Breathless announcements suggested that the UK’s 38-year-old JET Fusion programme had finally produced 11 megawatts of heat energy for five seconds. To the average person on the street that sounded impressive.

But it equates to the energy needed to boil a measly 60 kettles. Even more unimpressive, but a crucially important question that the headlines missed, was: how much energy had to be put into the Jet machine to get these 11 megawatts (MW) out?

So we decided to ask the UK Atomic Energy Agency (UK AEA), whose sole mission is to research and produce a working fusion electricity plant and who carried out last week’s experiment.

The sad truth is that they admitted that they actually had to put 40 MW of heat into the plasma to produce 11 MW of sustained fusion heat for five seconds. They added: “It is no secret JET uses a lot of energy. It was designed in the 1970s with copper magnets and will soon pass the baton to more energy-efficient experiments.

“Of course, the ultimate success of fusion could solve energy problems in the future. The results announced last week prove we’re getting closer.”

They went on: “ITER, the larger and more advanced upgrade in France, will use superconducting magnets to drastically lower the energy cost [...] ITER aims to release 500 MW of fusion heat using only 50 MW of external heating, and if you consider the power consumption of this entire experimental facility, it will break even.”

The italics are mine – this hugely expensive new fusion experiment is not expected to produce a single net kWh of electricity.

Thus, after literally a hundred years of research, since Arthur Eddington first postulated that nuclear fusion could be the stellar energy source, and untold billions of pounds invested by various governments ever since to try and replicate the creation of a mini star on earth, we still cannot produce a single net kWh of energy.

The fusion “industry” is always promising us unlimited clean energy in two to three decades time, but the cruel truth is that despite yet another annual flurry of “breakthrough” headlines, the fusion Holy Grail remains as illusory as the Grail itself.

Despite all these wasted billions, Boris Johnson’s government, as part of its supposed “10 Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution”, stated: “Our ambition is to be the first country to commercialise fusion energy, enabling low carbon and continuous power generation.”

It pledged another £222m for the spherical tokamak programme which “aims” to build the world’s first commercially viable fusion power plant by 2040, and another £184m to help found a global hub for fusion innovation in the UK.

But in response to an excited BBC interviewer asking a fusion spokesperson when she might be able to boil her kettle with fusion energy, they said possibly in the 2050s. So, two years after the Johnson 2040 fusion promise, the delivery date is again delayed to three decades hence at the earliest.

Even if fusion is delivered then, it is far too late to help us reduce even one ton of CO2 by the net-zero deadline dictated by the science of 2030.

But behind the headlines lies another really dirty truth about the UK AEA fusion experiments. Over just the last four years, it has consumed an eye-watering 232 million kWh of electricity to run its projects. Not a single kilowatt of the electricity used was from a renewable energy supplier. It also consumed 23 million kWh of fossil fuel gas and emitted 70,000 tons of CO2. In addition, they used 349 million litres of water and 11.75 million sheets of photocopying paper.

Over £0.5billion has been poured into the AEA fusion project over the last three years alone, with £100s of millions more planned over the coming decades.

Just this three year AEA budget would have insulated the roofs of 1.6 million poor people’s homes and thus reduced their heating bills and heating carbon emissions by 25 per cent. It costs just £300 to insulate the average semi-detached roof.

Even if fusion can eventually produce more electricity than that required to run the fusion plant, it is likely to be far more expensive than using renewables, energy efficiency and storage to eliminate carbon emissions.

Daniel Jassby spent 25 years as a senior fusion researcher at the Princeton Plasma Research Laboratory. In a shocking expose for the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, he explained that even if an operating plant were successfully launched, it would require mind-boggling amounts of water to cool it and a large labour force to keep it operational and safe.

And while fusion, unlike nuclear fission, does not risk a disastrous nuclear meltdown if the plant goes awry, the amount of radioactive waste, whilst being less radioactive than fission, is many times larger. This is a huge problem as no nation has yet satisfactorily solved how to safely store radioactive waste.

He also points out that fusion plants can readily produce the enriched plutonium-239 used in nuclear bombs and so would pose a potential major nuclear proliferation risk. Fusion is the perfect metaphor for the UK government’s policies on climate action. All PR bluster and a refusal to get a grip with the reality that the climate emergency needs action now and not in 30 years.

It is time to halt this fusion delusion and instead invest the billions being squandered, in technologies and solutions that we know can actually work in time to potentially save us from catastrophe.

Fact-check: Did Canada declare martial law because of truck driver protests?


Monique Curet, PolitiFact.com
Sat, February 19, 2022

Facebook post: “Trudeau declares Emergencies Act amounting to near martial law in Canada.”

PolitiFact's ruling: False

Here's why: The Emergencies Act invoked in Canada to quell protests gives specific powers to the federal government, police and banks, but one social media claim says it goes much further.

"Trudeau declares Emergencies Act amounting to near martial law in Canada," says the caption on a Feb. 14 video posted on Facebook. The caption continues, "One of the powers is they can immediately seize anyone’s bank account funds without any redress."

The video is footage of Trudeau, who says, "The federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act, to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations."

The video was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. For this check, we’re looking specifically at the claim that Trudeau’s move is tantamount to martial law.

Typically, martial law refers to temporary rule by military authorities and involves the suspension of civil rights. Trudeau said he will not call in the military as part of the Emergencies Act.

Canada’s Emergencies Act is being used because of a public order emergency, to deal with blockades of downtown Ottawa and border crossings in several Canadian cities by people protesting COVID-19 restrictions and mandates.

The law will be used to "strengthen police powers to impose fines and imprison people; compel tow-truck companies to help clear blockades; allow banks to freeze the personal and corporate accounts of individual protesters without a court order; and subject crowdfunding companies to anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rules," the Toronto Globe and Mail reported.

During a press conference, Trudeau said he wanted to be equally clear about what the Emergencies Act does not do. "We’re not using the Emergencies Act to call in the military. We’re not suspending fundamental rights or overriding the Charter of Rights and Freedoms," he said on Feb. 14, referring to a part of Canada’s Constitution.

In previous comments on Feb. 11, Trudeau said that "using military forces against civilian populations in Canada or in any other democracy is something to avoid having to do at all costs."

The role of the military is not specifically addressed in the Emergencies Act, according to reporting by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Other federal laws such as the National Defence Act would allow Canadian Armed Forces to assist in civil situations if needed, CBC reported.

Under the Emergencies Act, banks can temporarily freeze accounts being used to support blockades without obtaining a court order.

"Banks are likely to focus on specific organizations suspected of coordinating the blockades and accounts receiving donations in large amounts," the Globe and Mail reported. "Accounts belonging to individual donors are not expected to be a key focus of the financial crackdown."
Our ruling

The caption on a Facebook video says, "Trudeau declares Emergencies Act amounting to near martial law in Canada."

Under the Emergencies Act, banks can temporarily freeze accounts being used to support protesters’ blockades without obtaining a court order. But the act doesn’t specify a role for the military.

Trudeau has said he will not call in the military as part of the Emergencies Act. He also said fundamental rights will not be suspended.

We rate this claim False.
Sources

Britannica, "Martial law," accessed Feb. 17, 2022

Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, "The federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act. Here's what that means," Feb. 14, 2022

Facebook post, Feb. 14, 2022

New York Times, "Trudeau Rejects Calls to Use Military to End Protests," Feb. 11, 2022

The Globe and Mail, "Banks grapple with new Emergencies Act powers to curb the flow of funds to support blockades," Feb. 15, 2022

The Globe and Mail, "Emergencies Act will expand powers of Canadian banks to freeze accounts, halt funds," Feb. 14, 2022

The Globe and Mail, "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invokes Emergencies Act to try to bring an end to the blockades," Feb. 14, 2022

Twitter post, Feb. 15, 2022

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Fact-check: Did Canada impose martial law because of vaccine protests?

Rock dust used in agriculture can remove carbon dioxide


Deborah J. Comstock

The Monroe News
Sat, February 19, 2022,

Deborah J. Comstock

It is not often that a positive parallel can be drawn between curbing greenhouse emissions and agriculture, but one solution may be on the horizon.

Let’s start with the facts, however. Industrial scale farming is one of the biggest sources of pollution to the planet, according to a recently released New York Times video entitled “Meet the People Who Are Killing Our Planet”.

In their video, they indicate that one-third of all greenhouse gases in the world are linked to food production. That pollution is equivalent to the emissions of 143 million cars. These emissions come from three agricultural practices, namely, plowing or tilling the soil, fertilizer applications and livestock (methane) production.

Food production, or the industry of agriculture, has $116 billion in profits, they estimate, but there is very little regulation to the food industry due to the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington. Feeding the planet does not bode well with these kind of statistics, unless new farm practices can be identified and implemented.

According to Yale Environment 360, adding rock dust onto the soil can help get and trap carbon into the ground. A group of researchers from Cornell University and the University of California-Davis are studying the effects of farms applying silicate (basalt) rocks, pulverized to a fine powder, to soil to stop the massive emissions attributable to the farm industry. This research is not exclusive to the U.S., as scientists across the globe are studying the effects of spreading pulverized basalt on a number of crops, including corn, sugar cane, soybean and alfalfa fields.

Since agriculture is responsible for nearly a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, this technique could stem the more drastic consequences of climate change. According to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “rocks naturally remove 1 gigaton (1 billion tons) of carbon dioxide a year from the atmosphere. If applied to croplands globally, rock dust could suck an estimated 2 to 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the air every year.”

Basalt is a byproduct of mining and manufacturing operations and is found all over the world. According to the Cornell study, some estimates show there is enough basalt rock dust stockpiled to treat the planet’s cropland for several years. Basalt — containing magnesium, calcium and silica among other components — when pulverized and applied, dissolves in water and with carbon forms bicarbonates, which stay in water for thousands of years, eventually making their way to the oceans where they precipitate out as limestone and stay on the sea floor for millions of years. The rock dust may also affect the nitrogen cycle, allowing farmers to apply less nitrogen fertilizers, thereby reducing the effects of fertilizer runoff that affects our streams, lakes and large waterways.

But rock dust affects more than just climate. Field tests on corn and alfalfa show increases in crop yields, which releases other nutrients like phosphorus and potassium. In some studies, yields are 30% higher, which is encouraging to farmers to decrease inputs while increasing harvest. At some point, if farmers are paid for the amount of carbon they sequester, this could be a win-win with increased harvest and payment to capture carbon.

These preliminary studies could prove pivotal to the industry of agriculture and climate enthusiasts. And, with so much rock salt available on the planet, applying these techniques should start now.

Deborah Comstock is a small farm owner in Adrian, and a member of Lenawee Indivisible.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Deborah Comstock: Rock dust used in agriculture can remove CO2

TIPS FEED SUBMINIMUM WAGES

A restaurant in San Francisco that has a no tip-policy and instead shares profits with its staff says it wasn't hit by the labor shortage

gdean@insider.com (Grace Dean) 

© Provided by Business InsiderZazie has a no-tip policy and instead shares profits with staff. Maskot/Getty Images

The co-owner of a SF restaurant says it's avoided the labor shortage thanks to its staff benefits.

Zazie gives workers paid family leave, health and dental insurance, and a 401(k) with employer match.

The restaurant also has a no-tip policy and instead shares profits with staff.

Many independent restaurants across the US say they've been devastated by the labor shortage, with some shutting their dining rooms, cutting their opening hours, or even closing for good.

But the co-owner of Zazie, a French restaurant in San Francisco, says that it's managed to avoid the labor shortage thanks to the benefits it offers staff.

These include paid family leave, health and dental insurance, and a 401(k) with employer match.

"Everyone returned after we reopened," Megan Cornelius, co-owner of the restaurant, told Insider. She said that Zazie had a "very low" turnover because it offered benefits that other restaurants didn't, and that just one server left during the pandemic because they changed careers.

Cornelius said that only a handful of staff had left the restaurant over the past five years, to either change city or switch careers. No one had quit to work at another restaurant instead, she said.

The restaurant has around 40 employees, roughly half of which have been at Zazie for at least 10 years, Cornelius said. Cornelius herself had been a server at Zazie for nine years before she bought the restaurant along with its executive chef and its general manager in January 2020.

Cornelius said the restaurant paid staff for the first month it was closed during the pandemic, then maintained their health and dental insurance while staff received unemployment benefits.

It even paid staff when it shut for around two weeks in January for repairs, she said.

The next time you open a menu at your favorite restaurant, prepare yourself for a little pre-meal indigestion.

Several popular restaurant chains have announced that they are raising prices in 2022.

Some chains say higher labor prices are forcing their hand and resulting in price increases. Others blame higher costs due to the general wave of inflation surging through the economy, or hardships brought on by the omicron variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The restaurant also has a no-tip policy, put in place by the previous owner.

Instead, staff get extra money through profit sharing, Cornelius said. Servers get 12% of their sales, and 12% of the restaurant's total sales are shared between back-of-house staff, which Cornelius said created less of a division between front- and back-of-house staff and removed the bias associated with tipping.

"Profit sharing just made sense to us as it's reflective of how busy we are," Cornelius said. "If we are busy, the staff and the restaurant make money. If you simply raise wages, it can get expensive. It also is an incentive to work hard and maintain great service with your tables.

The no-tip policy forms a core part of the restaurant's philosophy. "Zazie is proud to be tip-free!," a banner on its website reads.

"We get compliments on it all the time from our guests," Cornelius said, saying she thought that momentum for no-tip policies was growing among diners.

"Tipping is a very archaic way of people making their money," she added. "It's just nice to not have tap dance for money."

Some diners still do leave tips, Cornelius said, which servers can take for themselves, though many choose to share them with other staff.

She said the restaurant's previous owner had financed the benefits it offers staff by hiking up its menu prices. The restaurant currently charges around $20 for sandwiches at lunch and $35 for dinner entrées.

Zazie pays its staff the city's minimum wage, which is $16.32 per hour. Cornelius said that servers, kitchen staff, and dishwashers typically make $1,000 or more a week from wages and profit shares, depending on how busy the restaurant is.

Cornelius said that she hoped more people would start to respect restaurant staff.

"I just really hope that people kind of take a second look at their server or take a second look at their busboy or the dishwasher when they go into the restaurant and really appreciate how hard they're working," Cornelius said.

Calling the coronavirus the 'Chinese virus' matters – research connects the label with racist bias


Brad Bushman, Professor of Communication and Rinehart Chair of Mass Communication, The Ohio State University
Fri, February 18, 2022,

Asian Americans have been targeted with hate crimes during the pandemic. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

No one wants their geographic region to be associated with a deadly disease. Unfortunately, this has happened in the past with diseases such as “German measles,” “Spanish flu” and “Asiatic cholera.”

It happens today, too, even though the World Health Organization advises against naming pathogens for places to “minimize unnecessary negative effects on nations, economies and people.” By Feb. 11, 2020, the WHO had announced that the official name for the novel coronavirus just starting its spread around the world would be severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 – or SARS-CoV-2. The illness it caused would be called COVID-19, short for Coronavirus Disease of 2019.

Yet some politicians, conservative journalists and others persisted in calling the COVID-19 virus the “Chinese virus,” or some variant of this term, such as the “China virus,” “Wuhan virus” (after the Chinese city that first reported the virus), “Chinese flu” and “Kung flu.”

Does it matter?

Hateful behavior against Asians in the U.S. and many other countries rose after the start of the pandemic. According to the FBI, anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 73% in 2020.

Social scientists like me are investigating the kinds of repercussions racialized framing – like calling the coronavirus “Chinese” – can have.
Reading just one article had an impact

The way media frame, depict and describe events can have a profound influence on the public’s perception of those events. Researchers have found that audiences are prone to interpret media stories in the context of their biases, especially in relation to racial groups.

My colleagues Lanier Frush Holt, Sophie Kjærvik and I found that simply reading one media article calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” made people more likely to blame China for the pandemic.

We randomly split a diverse sample of 614 American adults into two groups. One read a fabricated news article that labeled the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus.” The other read an identical article except for labeling the coronavirus as the “COVID-19 virus.”

There were important differences in how the articles were perceived. For instance, Democrats and more liberal individuals judged the “Chinese virus” article much more negatively than did Republicans and more conservative individuals. But overall, we found that participants who read the “Chinese virus” article were 8.5% more likely to agree with the statement “China is responsible for the current global pandemic” than were those who read the “COVID-19 virus” article.

The effect of reading that one article with “Chinese virus” language was not huge, and we wouldn’t expect it to be. The attitudes and beliefs that people brought with them before they read the story had a greater influence on their likelihood to blame China for the pandemic than did the framing language. But the fact that reading a single “Chinese virus” article did have an impact on readers with a range of political leanings shows the power of labeling a disease for a geographic region.
Naming does the framing

Other researchers have also found connections between the “Chinese virus” label and anti-Asian sentiments.

One study linked then-president Donald Trump’s tweet on March 16, 2020, that referred to “the Chinese Virus” with a rise in anti-Asian hashtags.

When pressed on his repeated use of the term “Chinese virus,” Trump told reporters at a news briefing: “It’s not racist at all. … It’s from China. That’s why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate.”

When researchers studied 1.2 million hashtags on Twitter in March 2020, they found that approximately 1 in 5 hashtags used in tweets along with #covid19 were anti-Asian, whereas half of the hashtags used alongside #chinesevirus were. “Chinese virus” wasn’t just an innocent statement of reality, as Trump seemed to contend. It was often paired with racist sentiment.

As racially stigmatizing language like “Chinese virus” increased in the media in March 2020, so did the belief that Asian Americans are less “American” than their white counterparts.

Another study found that exposure to conspiracy theories and misinformation linking China to the spread and creation of the coronavirus was correlated with an increase in anti-Chinese sentiment and xenophobia.

Use of terms like “Chinese virus” by the media and political leaders is unlikely to change a person’s beliefs or attitudes. But it can trigger negative stereotypes that can heighten prejudice and possibly even incite incidents of hate.

Just as biomedical researchers try to understand how pathogens spread through a population, social scientists are working to understand the spread of hate and prejudice. Unfortunately, in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-Asian bias, only a brief exposure to racially charged language can have negative impacts.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Brad Bushman, The Ohio State University.

Read more:

Calling COVID-19 a ‘Chinese virus’ is wrong and dangerous – the pandemic is global

The long history of US racism against Asian Americans, from ‘yellow peril’ to ‘model minority’ to the ‘Chinese virus’

White House slams Gov. Kristi Noem for saying she doesn't know why LGBTQ people in South Dakota have high rates of depression

Oma Seddiq

Fri, February 18, 2022, 

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signs a bill Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022, at the state Capitol in Pierre, S.D., that will ban transgender women and girls from playing in school sports leagues that match their gender identity.AP Photo/Stephen Groves

• The White House slammed Noem for saying she didn't know why South Dakota's LGBTQ people have a high depression rate.

• "That makes me sad, and we should figure it out," Noem said.

• Noem signed a bill into law banning transgender girls and women from competing on female sports teams.

The White House on Friday derided Republican Gov. Kristi Noem because she was unable to answer a question about the high depression rate within South Dakota's LGBTQ communities.

"Here's a start for you, Governor," White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted in response to a clip of Noem. "1. Don't advance policies that attack trans youth, 2. Don't fund ads attacking LGBT youth, 3. support @POTUS' agenda to enhance support for youth mental health needs, with funding made available through the American Rescue Plan."

Around 87% of LGBTQ residents in the state reported experiencing feelings of depression, the highest rate in the country, according to a recent national study by HelpAdvisor. The clip in Jean-Pierre's tweet shows a reporter asking Noem about the issue at a news conference on Thursday.

"Why do you think that is?" the reporter asked Noem.

"I don't know," Noem replied. "That makes me sad, and we should figure it out."

Noem made national headlines earlier this month after she signed a bill into law banning transgender girls and college-aged women from participating on sports teams that match their gender identity. South Dakota is the first state to do so this year, and the 10th nationwide.

"This bill is about fairness," Noem said at the time. "It's about allowing biological females in their sex to compete fairly in a level playing field that gives them opportunities for success."

Prior to the bill's passage, Noem released an advertisement highlighting the legislation.

"In South Dakota, only girls play girls' sports," the ad says. "Why? Because of Governor Kristi Noem's leadership."

Opponents have condemned the GOP-led bans as discriminatory and dehumanizing toward LGBTQ youth. Many of the bills have faced legal challenges, as could South Dakota's.

More than 85% of transgender and non-binary youth reported that the news of such restrictions have negatively impacted their mental health, according to a survey by the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth.

Preparing for our climate future requires building better now

Noah Millman, Columnist

THE HILL
Fri, February 18, 2022

Climate change. Illustrated | iStock

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration released a new report this week predicting a sea level rise of roughly one foot within the next 30 years. The consequences for coastal communities could be quite severe: Damaging floods would be 10 times as common as they are today, and would reach much further inland. The rising waters won't stop there. Just based on emissions to date, the report predicts sea levels rising at least another foot by the century's end; if emissions aren't curbed, that number could be as much as five feet higher.

Decarbonizing is essential to preventing the latter scenario. But even a rise of a foot or two more would put major coastal cities in danger. Over the next couple of decades, therefore, we're going to need to invest huge sums of money simply to preserve what we have. The bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed last year was only a small downpayment on what is going to be required.

There's an alternative way to think about it, though, a complement to the foregoing, not a contradiction. Climate change is going to accelerate the depreciation of a host of very large and expensive assets. It's going to cost more and more money to keep those assets viable — to protect coastal cities from storm surges, to protect arid areas from water shortages, and so forth. In some cases, no amount of money will suffice: If snowmelt dries up, power from a hydroelectric plant run by that meltwater will dry up too.


As markets start to factor that reality into their valuations of those assets, we should expect to see a shift, in some cases, from building back better to abandoning and moving on — not only from particular dams and roads but from entire cities and regions.

How will our political system adapt in turn? It's hard to know for sure, but the safe way to bet is that our government will be more reactive than proactive. That is to say, it will be more responsive to powerful local constituencies that demand relief and protection from climate-related disasters than it will to calls for a more thoroughgoing restructuring, even if the latter would be more valuable in the long run. Politicians representing Tampa, Houston, or New York City will naturally lobby for funds to defend those cities, and will likely be more successful than not. It would be against their parochial interest, after all, to make it easier for their constituents to move to Minneapolis.

It's important, for that reason, that we recognize the risks of that parochialism. We absolutely need to invest in protecting our existing infrastructure and communities. But we also need to facilitate the construction of new infrastructure and communities in places that will naturally be much more resilient. Indeed, that kind of investment could prove even more valuable down the line.

From an international perspective, countries with more opportunity and ability to build right the first time are going to have a significant competitive advantage over countries with a lot of vulnerable assets to protect. This is a phenomenon already familiar from technological transitions. Countries that never built wireline phone systems, for example, were able to leapfrog directly to cellular phones and achieve widespread connectivity at a much lower cost. Countries today with large and growing power needs have the opportunity to meet them with green energy technologies that are much cheaper than they were only a decade ago, and thereby avoid some of the transition costs of decarbonization.

The same is likely true for climate adaptation. China has engaged in a historically unprecedented building boom over the past generation, constructing entire new cities along with massive transportation and power-generation projects. To the extent that they ignored the prospect of climate change in their plans, that was an enormous missed opportunity that, had they made the opposite choice, could have contributed massively to their future economic competitiveness. Countries like India and Nigeria, which will face enormous infrastructure needs in the future even without climate change due to the combination of demographic expansion, economic growth, and rapid urbanization should not make the same mistakes.

Small countries face opportunities as well, and not just risks. The small Caribbean island of Dominica has been a recent leader in climate adaptation, recognizing that they risk repeated destruction from hurricanes like Maria, which caused damage equivalent to over twice their annual GDP. Rebuilding successfully in a way that makes the island more resilient will not only make it a more attractive investment destination compared to its peers. In the best case, it could give it expertise that could become a services export industry.

Wealthy countries with a great deal of land and an openness to immigration, like Canada, are in the best position of all to build out new infrastructure in locations likely to be most resilient to climate disruption, and thereby to grow economically and demographically even as they also spend what is necessary to make existing communities more resilient. The long-term relative trajectory of world power could be meaningfully shaped by which countries have those opportunities and choose to seize them, and which do not.

The struggle to decarbonize the world economy is an absolutely vital one. But the struggle to adjust to change that is already certain to accelerate is equally vital. Trillions are going to be spent on adapting to the reality of a warmer world. If we want to remain competitive, we need to make sure we get the biggest bang for the climate adaptation buck.