'A Failure': Critics Rebuke Biden for Nuclear Posture Review Update

"It is a tragedy for everyone counting on the president to keep his campaign promise to make deterrence the sole purpose of nuclear weapons."


An unarmed Lockheed Martin Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic is fired from the USS Nebraska off the California coast on March 26, 2008.

 (Photo: Ronald Gutridge/U.S Navy/Flickr/cc)



BRETT WILKINS

COMMON DREAMS

March 30, 2022

Nonproliferation advocates on Wednesday expressed disappointment after the Biden administration released a summary of its latest Nuclear Posture Review, which fails to depart from decades of dangerous U.S. first use policy.

"We live in a new era and sticking to the status quo is not going to make us safer. We have to get rid of nuclear weapons."

"This Nuclear Posture Review is a failure. It nudges the needle back to the Obama administration but does almost nothing to reduce the continuing risks of nuclear war," Stephen Young, the senior Washington representative for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said in a statement.

While President Joe Biden—a longtime advocate of adopting a no first use (NFU) policy—promised reform while on the 2020 campaign trail and in office, he has largely continued his predecessors' policies, including initial use of nuclear weapons, even against non-nuclear foes.

"If media reports are true, President Biden has missed a historic opportunity to reduce the role of... nuclear weapons in U.S. military strategy," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement last week. "Retaining a warfighting role for U.S. nuclear weapons is a triumph for the trillion-dollar defense industry, but it is a tragedy for everyone counting on the president to keep his campaign promise to make deterrence the sole purpose of nuclear weapons."

Young of UCS asserted that "the U.S. faces two choices: spending $1 trillion rebuilding our entire nuclear arsenal and continuing Cold War-era policies that make nuclear war easier to start, or deciding it is time to change, and beginning to move posture and policy back from the brink."

"This NPR chooses the first path," he added. "If maintained, it will mean decades more of nuclear brinkmanship and clear nuclear risk. The chances of catastrophic failure are higher than ever."

The United States waged the only nuclear war in human history. Since then, it has devised various plans for the first use of nuclear weapons, and has repeatedly threatened first-strike nuclear war—including against conventionally armed foes—in various conflicts and crises.

An extreme U.S. first-strike policy proposal was drafted during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Called "Furtherance," it initially called for a full-scale nuclear attack on both the Soviet Union and China in the event that the president was killed or disappeared during an attack on the United States, even if it was accidental or carried out with conventional weapons.

In the post-Cold War era, the U.S. embraced the first use doctrine—even against non-nuclear states and actors—as part of a broader plan to ensure that no geostrategic rivals emerged. This so-called "Wolfowitz Doctrine" profoundly influenced the militant policy of the neoconservative George W. Bush administration, whose first-strike doctrine was continued by Bush's successors with relatively minor adjustments.

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'Dangerous': Experts Slam Biden for Keeping First-Use Nuclear Strike on the Table

Of the world's nine nuclear powers, only China has unconditionally pledged never to use nuclear weapons first. India has an NFU policy with exceptions for chemical or biological attack.

Last week, Russia—whose invasion of Ukraine has been frustrated by fierce resistance—alarmed the world by declaring it could use nuclear weapons even if no enemy used them first. The Kremlin has since walked back its threat.

"Many have argued it would take a nuclear crisis to break the stranglehold that Cold War hawks have held on nuclear policy," said UCS' Young. "Right now, in Ukraine, we are witnessing just such a crisis: A nuclear-armed aggressor, empowered by its arsenal, acts with impunity. Nuclear weapons no longer 'keep the peace,' they enable war."

"We live in a new era and sticking to the status quo is not going to make us safer," he added. "We have to get rid of nuclear weapons. It won't be quick or easy. But everything we do should be directed toward that end, or we risk facing the end of humanity as we know it."

Nonproliferation advocates have long urged U.S. administrations to adopt an NFU policy. Last year, Markey and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) reintroduced the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, which would prohibit the presidents from launching a nuclear first strike without a congressional declaration of war.

"President Biden and our allies have shown remarkable restraint in the face of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin's saber-rattling, to avoid escalating a conventional war into an unfathomable nuclear one," Markey said last week.

"Congress must now step up and lead by passing my Restricting the First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act," he continued. "Our constitution gives Congress, not the president, the exclusive power to declare war. And there is no war like a nuclear war."

Markey added that "no president—especially under duress in the fog of war—should have the power to unilaterally and unconstitutionally order the end of millions of lives by firing the first shot in a nuclear war."

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For Immediate Release

Wednesday March 30, 2022, 2:18pm EDT

Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)

Contact

Kyle Ann Sebastian, ksebastian@ucsusa.org

PRESS RELEASE

Biden's Nuclear Posture Review a Failure

Statement by Stephen Young, Global Security Program, Union of Concerned Scientists

WASHINGTON -

Yesterday the Biden administration released a fact sheet on the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), a day after briefing Congress on the classified version of the document. The publicly available unclassified NPR, which lays out Biden’s views on U.S. nuclear weapons policy, may not be available for some weeks. As described by officials who have provided briefings on it, the NPR can only be seen as a disappointment, a far cry from the sensible goals Biden set out over his long career in public service. 

Below is a statement from Stephen Young, senior Washington representative for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

“This Nuclear Posture Review is a failure. It nudges the needle back to the Obama administration but does almost nothing to reduce the continuing risks of nuclear war. 

“The U.S. faces two choices: Spending $1 trillion rebuilding our entire nuclear arsenal and continuing Cold War-era policies that make nuclear war easier to start, or deciding it is time to change, and beginning to move posture and policy back from the brink. 

“This NPR chooses the first path. If maintained, it will mean decades more of nuclear brinkmanship and clear nuclear risk. The chances of catastrophic failure are higher than ever. 

“Many have argued it would take a nuclear crisis to break the stranglehold that Cold War hawks have held on nuclear policy. Right now, in Ukraine, we are witnessing just such a crisis: A nuclear-armed aggressor, empowered by its arsenal, acts with impunity. Nuclear weapons no longer ‘keep the peace,’ they enable war. We live in a new era and sticking to the status quo is not going to make us safer. 

“We have to get rid of nuclear weapons. It won't be quick or easy. But everything we do should be directed toward that end, or we risk facing the end of humanity as we know it.” 

###

The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.

Majority of Americans Fear Nuclear Weapons Use After Russia's Ukraine Invasion

Nearly nine in 10 people in a new poll said they fear the U.S. could be drawn into Putin's war in Ukraine, and 75% said they are worried the U.S. will be targeted in a nuclear attack.

Anti-nuclear weapons activists from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament stage a die-in protest on May 3, 2019 in London. 

(Photo: WIktor Szymanowicz/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

JULIA CONLEY

COMMON DREAMS

March 28, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has left Americans on edge, according to a recent poll which found a majority of people in the U.S. are worried that the war has made the impending use of nuclear weapons more likely.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents told the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that the invasion has increased the likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used anywhere in the world.

Eighty-five percent of people surveyed said they were concerned that the U.S. could be drawn into the conflict, including 47% of people who said they were "extremely or very concerned" about this scenario, which would amount to a conflict between the two countries with the world's largest nuclear stockpiles.

"Whenever you have nuclear-armed nations getting closer to conflict, there's always a risk of nuclear escalation."

Putin raised alarm when he placed his country's nuclear weapons on high alert days after invading Ukraine. In the U.S., President Joe Biden last week unnerved international observers when he appeared to call for the Russian president's removal from power.

"Whenever you have nuclear-armed nations getting closer to conflict, there's always a risk of nuclear escalation," Tara Drozdenko, director of the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the AP.

Weeks before Putin's invasion, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that its "Doomsday Clock," established in 1947 after the U.S. bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of World War II, remains at "100 seconds to midnight" for the third year in a row—a status attributed in part to U.S. and Russian nuclear modernization efforts.

"For many years, we and others have warned that the most likely way nuclear weapons might be used is through an unwanted or unintended escalation from a conventional conflict," said the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists earlier this month as Russian forces battered Ukrainian cities and more than 3.7 million people fled the country. "Russia's invasion of Ukraine has brought this nightmare scenario to life, with Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening to elevate nuclear alert levels and even first use of nuclear weapons if NATO steps in to help Ukraine. This is what 100 seconds to midnight looks like."

Eighty-seven percent of respondents to the AP poll said they were at least "somewhat concerned" that Putin could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, and 75% were concerned that the U.S. could be targeted.

Since the invasion, anti-war and arms control groups have intensified calls for Biden to commit to a no "first-use" policy, affirming that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is only a deterrent and will never be used in an offensive strike.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week, however, that the president has abandoned his campaign pledge to establish an official policy to that effect.

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Climate change increasing pandemics

Now is the time to address climate change for the health of society.

By

 Jane Marsh

 -

March 23, 2022

SOURCENationofChange

Pandemics and endemics have emerged and reemerged throughout the centuries, with humans finding ways to survive and adapt. COVID-19 has swept through nations worldwide in recent years, causing high mortality rates and health and socioeconomic distress.

However, as scientists scramble to understand the origins of the coronavirus and how new strains form over time, the question remains whether climate change will increase the likelihood of future pandemics and the spread of pathogens.

The emergence of new diseases

Climate change has become a contentious and politicized topic worldwide. A portion of the population believes the world faces little impact from climate change, while others remain adamant the risks are a grave concern.

According to a Pew Research Center study that surveyed people from 14 countries, 7 in 10 people believe climate change is the biggest threat we’re facing. Another 69% of those surveyed felt infectious diseases are the biggest threat. But do climate change and infectious diseases go hand in hand?

Climate change creates the right conditions for a virus’s development and survival and influences the way it circulates. When weather events and rising temperatures alter ecosystems, the health effects are significant.

For example, the African Rift Valley fever (RVF) is closely associated with increased rainfall and has led to explosive transmission rates from animals to humans. Meanwhile, warmer weather drives higher cases of bluetongue, hantavirus, and Lyme disease.

This emergence of climate-related disease will put epicenters at risk of economic and environmental despair. The wide range of vector-borne pathogens carries dire consequences for clean water and food accessibility, leading to 700,000 deaths from parasites, bacteria, or viruses each year.

The impact of climate on transmission

When we consider zoological diseases, it’s apparent that climate has played a role in rapid transmission and spillover. A spillover event occurs when a virus can overcome specific barriers to spread more easily from species to species.

For example, mosquitoes use temperature-sensing receptors on their antennae to detect heat and latch onto their prey. As the planet warms, dangerous mosquito populations will migrate northwards, infecting more people.

The World Health Organization (WHO) states that the dengue epidemic affected nine countries before 1970. Today, 129 countries have local mosquito populations that carry dengue, with 4.2 million cases reported in 2019.

Climate change creates the perfect conditions for pests to populate, as well. An increase in pests can cause severe allergies and respiratory diseases. With the rapid reproduction of pests, ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes in hotter environments, more humans and animals face more significant infection risks.

Tropical regions have a much higher transmissibility and spillover risk than others due to having the largest animal diversity globally that carries vector-borne pathogens. Because food markets are common in these areas, a significant spread of disease will likely occur between animals and humans.

The future of pandemics

While scientists have yet to figure out if climate change has directly influenced the spread of the coronavirus, several factors should be considered for future pandemics.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), agricultural expansion accounted for 33-40% of tropical deforestation between 2000 and 2010. Additionally, nearly 198 million acres of the world’s forests have been lost since 1990.

The degradation of habitats has led to animal migrations, putting humans at a higher risk of contact with germs. Large livestock farms are also a source of spillover from animals to humans. By decreasing the demand for meat and promoting sustainable farming, society can lessen the emergence of infectious diseases.

A recent study also suggests people were more likely to die from COVID-19 if they lived in a poorer area with heavy air pollution. If air pollution influences higher mortality in vulnerable people with less access to health care, then more significant air pollution mitigation is required to assist these populations during future pandemics.

COVID-19: Not the first or the last

Scientists have learned a lot about the novel coronavirus over the last two years. However, as climate change impacts the emergence and spread of new diseases, the human race needs to be prepared for future pandemics. Now is the time to address climate change for the health of society

Jane Marsh

Jane Marsh is an environmental and sustainability writer. You can keep up with her work on her site Environment.co.

Two years in, we need to learn the lessons of this pandemic

America’s pre-existing condition when the pandemic hit is not a “normal” we should return to.

By

 Domenica Ghanem

 -

March 28, 2022

SOURCEOtherWords

Two years ago I was panicking, making hundreds of phone calls to postpone my wedding that was a few days away. It was March 2020.

A global pandemic had reached the United States and changed each of our lives in ways we never imagined. Millions of Americans would lose jobs, friends, family, and even their lives to COVID-19, while billionaires would see record increases in their wealth.

While the country ground to a halt, and I googled whether an imam would perform our marriage over Zoom, there was a glimmer of hope at the back of my mind. Surely, I thought, an event so monumental — one that laid bare every inequity of our economic system — would call for a change of equal measure.

There was a swell of recognition that working people were essential. Affordable child care — and well paid providers — were revealed as the backbone of a functioning economy. Free health care suddenly seemed like a great idea.

As a new administration took over, some short term changes in the American Rescue Plan kept people from falling off a steep cliff.

Vaccines were distributed freely and efficiently. Americans got bigger stimulus checks, while workers who lost jobs got more generous unemployment insurance. Families with kids started getting monthly direct payments through the expanded Child Tax Credit.

But when it came time to pass the more transformative, longer term changes we needed, the lessons of the past two years weren’t enough for some politicians.

The Build Back Better Act would have reset the terms for how child care, housing, and income support operate in our country. It would have extended the Child Tax Credit, created green jobs, and much more.

But every one of the 263 Republicans in the House and Senate — plus Senate Democrat Joe Manchin — opposed it. For this, they were rewarded handsomely by corporate lobbyists. Oil giant Exxon, for example, donated $65,000 to Manchin’s campaign and bragged about their access to the senator, who also owns stock in the company.

A good deal for Manchin. Not so much for the many Americans who can’t fill up their tank for less than $100. We were so close to living in a country where higher gas prices, or an extra few dollars for ground beef, didn’t mean someone going to bed without dinner.

Companies that monopolize these necessities deserve the blame for a lot of inflation, including the rising cost of gas and food. But they’re also to blame for the fact that they don’t pay their workers enough to meet those costs.

Big corporations artificially raise the price of diapers, while also lobbying against extending the Child Tax Credit for people who buy them. The credit has since expired, throwing millions of kids back into poverty.

Banks are benefiting from the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates while also refusing Black people mortgage loans to buy a house and build up generational wealth.

Two years later, I can enjoy the photos from the in-person wedding I was finally able to have after my family and friends could get vaccinated. I’m grateful for that semblance of normalcy. But some things shouldn’t go back to the status quo.

We can’t fall back into a system where small unexpected expenses put entire families in poverty. We should be able to pay our bills and save some for the future, too. While that might sound “normal,” it’s been many decades since that’s been the reality for the average American.

But that doesn’t mean nothing at all has changed. As we grapple with another year of COVID-19, it’s time we flex the power that comes with being essential and fight for a new economy that favors people, not just corporations.

Domenica Ghanem

Domenica Ghanem is a communications consultant on political and social justice campaigns. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

Toxic chemicals in food packaging weaken our immune system response to COVID-19—when will Congress ban them?

A new federal bill would advance public and environmental health by banning toxic chemicals from food packaging.

By

 Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner

 -

March 23, 2022

SOURCENationofChange

While so many Americans have taken all necessary precautions to keep themselves and those around them safe from COVID-19 and prevent severe illness if they do get sick with the virus, there are plenty of other factors in Americans’ daily lives that are beyond their control that may actually worsen the effects of the novel coronavirus and especially result in the vulnerable population being more susceptible to the virus despite their best efforts to get vaccinated and boosted and ensure they are masked up and are socially distanced from others.

Chemicals commonly found in consumer products have been proven to harm human health, yet they still remain legal stateside. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which negatively affect human hormones, can exacerbate COVID-19 in particularly vulnerable individuals, yet these EDCs can be hard to avoid for any American consumer. “Certain underlying chronic conditions associated with exposures to… [endocrine-disrupting] chemicals (EDCs) are exacerbating the effects of COVID-19 in vulnerable populations,” confirmed the Collaborative on Health and the Environment.

PFAS (short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which are frequently found in food packaging and mass-manufactured goods, like cosmetics, are an EDC.

According to a June 2020 article in the Intercept, “Studies have shown that in both adults and children higher levels of certain PFAS chemicals were associated with weaker responses to vaccines. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the CDC, recognized this evidence in an announcement it recently posted to its website on the ‘potential intersection between PFAS exposure and COVID-19.’”

“PFAS chemicals are a family of chemicals that are widely used in industrial and consumer product applications, and commonly used to make water-, grease- and stain-repellent coatings,” explains David Andrews, PhD, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit public health advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “PFAS chemicals are very stable and impervious to breakdown, giving them what is often considered to be a performance advantage in many products. This apparent advantage of chemical and physical stability is what has led to widespread global contamination [by PFAS] and [has provided them with] their ability to cause human health harm.”

These toxins are pervasive in everyday life, but a PFAS ban for food packaging, proposed in Congress in late 2021, can help limit everyday exposure to the toxins. The Keep Food Containers Safe from PFAS Act is a bipartisan effort, introduced in the Senate by Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and in the House of Representatives by Representative Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Representative Don Young (R-AK). If the bill passes, it is expected to be enacted by January 1, 2024.

A PFAS ban is “long overdue and [is] hopefully the first of many,” says Calloway Cook, president of Illuminate Labs, a dietary supplements company. “It’s unfortunate that many packaged food products in the U.S. contain compounds that are known to be harmful to human health but remain legal to use,” he adds. “The FDA and Congress should review the medical literature on more compounds like PFAS and err on the side of caution, [and look at] banning all compounds that have proven toxicity in animal studies at doses achievable through regular use… The cost to switch to more sustainable alternatives is not much, even with plastics, but most businesses are not focused on long-term environmental effects. It’s absolutely the role of Congress to better regulate the food industry, and I hope the bill banning PFAS is the first of many similar bills.”

Andrews agrees, saying in an EWG press release, “The Keep Food Containers Safe from PFAS Act would quickly cut off a potential major and completely avoidable source of exposure to these forever chemicals.”

PFAS are widely used because they offer a solution to consumer packaging, but what could be used instead? “With hundreds to thousands of PFAS chemicals, it is likely that there will be a significant, if not similar, number of alternative chemicals or alternatives needed to fully replace PFAS,” explains Andrews, emphasizing that where safer alternatives exist, they should be used instead of PFAS as soon as possible. In other cases, alternatives may need to be developed, and should potentially be incentivized. For example, medical devices, which are essential to human health and safety, should absolutely not have toxins in them. But that is unfortunately not the case.

Still, replacing PFAS with non-detrimental alternatives isn’t that simple. “Many of the PFAS being used today are replacements for different PFAS chemicals such as PFOA [perfluorooctanoic acid] and PFOS [perfluorooctane sulfonic acid] that were used decades ago,” Andrews explains. “Many of the regulations phasing out the use of PFAS, such as the Washington state ban of PFAS in food packaging, require an alternative assessment to ensure that the replacements [provided] are safer [than the original options].” This certainly explains why it would be difficult to ban PFAS immediately, even after knowing the health risks involved in using them: they help support consumerism.

The Environmental Protection Agency is currently investigating more than 1,000 completely legal PFAS chemicals, which is worrisome for environmental and human health. Introducing regulations for various industries, such as food packaging, cosmetics and textiles, will help curb the use of PFAS and halt further contamination and sickness related to these chemicals. To check if you live in an area contaminated by PFAS and should take precautions, such as filtering your tap water, the EWG offers an online interactive map as well as expert-sourced tips on avoiding PFAS exposure.

And just as it is not always possible to avoid all sources of COVID-19, avoiding all potential sources of PFAS isn’t always as easy as it may sound. Research by Greenpeace in 2016 found PFAS contaminants in jackets made by environmentally focused brands like the North Face, which plans to phase out PFAS by 2025, and Patagonia, which aims to ensure that 85 percent of its garments are “PFAS-free by the end of 2022”; in 2014, Greenpeace found PFAS in more than 80 articles of clothing, including footwear, that were purchased in 2013. Finding a water-repellent, affordable and PFAS-free raincoat may not be easy, but cutting back on greasy food packed in PFAS-treated containers or wrappers (such as for fast food and microwave popcorn) and preparing food in non-PFAS treated nonstick cookware—a currently available alternative you could try is learning to cook with a cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven, for example—may help. Still, with the proliferation of PFAS use in so many aspects of Americans’ daily lives, the responsibility for substantial change lies most heavily with the government, which has the power to make legislative changes to curb companies’ reliance on PFAS. As it stands, Americans live in a nation where it is very difficult to avoid PFAS exposure and its harms.

“It is imperative that regulations move forward to limit future harm from PFAS chemicals based on what we know about the extreme toxicity and potent risk that these chemicals pose for human health,” says Andrews. “Regulations should be enacted quickly to stop any ongoing industrial discharges and [to] eliminate approval of new PFAS that may pose risks to health or the environment.”

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner

Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner is a writer based in New York. She is a writing fellow at Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. She’s written for Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Glamour, AlterNet, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, Architectural Digest, Them and other publications. She holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Columbia University and is also at work on a forthcoming novel. Follow her on Twitter: @melissabethk.

Shell reconsiders exploring Cambo oilfield

in the UK

With a surge in oil prices since Russia invaded Ukraine, Shell is said to still be invested in the controversial oilfield project.

By

 Ashley Curtin

 -

March 24, 2022

SOURCENationofChange

Shell’s decision to pull out of the Cambo oilfield project in the UK last December is being reconsidered by the oil giant now that the “economic, political and regulatory environment” had changed. With a surge in oil prices since Russia invaded Ukraine, Shell is said to still be invested in the controversial oilfield project.

The Cambo oilfield, which is located to the west of Shetland, was first licensed for exploration in 2001 and is said to have the capacity to produce hundreds of millions of barrels of oil, according to EcoWatch. While the “UK government has been more willing to speed investment in domestic fossil-fuel production” as a way to reduce its dependence on foreign oil and gas, environmentalists warn that the development of Cambo would threaten the UK’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 and could threaten many ocean species.

“We know this is a response to the Ukraine war,” Mark van Baal, leader at Follow This, said. “The only good response to the Ukraine war is to replace Russian fossil fuels with renewables.”

Environmentalists believe that “developing Cambo would contradict the advice of the International Energy Agency, which said that no new fossil-fuel exploration could be allowed if the world is to meet the Paris agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” EcoWatch reported. All the while, Shell also promised to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

“Any new fields will be stranded if we are to meet the Paris climate targets,” van Baal said.

However, Shell continued to own an interest in Cambo, according to the BBC and The Guardian, as the company’s been reported to currently still have analysts assigned to the project. Therefore, climate activists’ said they will have to up their pressure on Shell once again.

“Cambo makes as little sense today as it did last year,” Tessa Khan, director at Uplift, said.

Ashley Curtin

Ashley is an editor, social media content manager and writer at NationofChange. Before joining NoC, she was a features reporter at The Daily Breeze – a local newspaper in Southern California – writing a variety of stories on current topics including politics, the economy, human rights, the environment and the arts. Ashley is a transplant from the East Coast calling Los Angeles home.

Short cons, long cons: crypto currencies, NFTs and making money off of the war in Ukraine

While it’s hard to fault the Ukrainian government for fundraising by whatever means necessary during a terrible time of crisis, the adoption of crypto for fundraising in this way is worrying.

By

 Derek Royden

 -

March 25, 2022

SOURCENationofChange

Image Credit: Reuters

When I first started to hear and read about Bitcoin and the blockchain technology that underpins it, the concept of a currency outside of the control of governments and limited in the amount that would be created to ensure its value would increase over time intrigued me. Soon after, reading about the enormous amounts of energy required to ‘mine’ a non-existent thing, much of it happening in poorer countries still reliant on the most polluting fuels to produce the necessary processing power used in the creation of it, I was horrified.

It became clear to me over time that the majority of those talking about cryprWeb3 is Going Just Greato-currency’s utopian potential were right leaning libertarians, most of them much younger than the ones obsessed with gold and silver as true measures of ‘value’ over ‘fiat’ currencies who came before them.

For many of those who bought in early enough, Bitcoin and some of its imitators have created great fortunes (some just as quickly lost due to volatility in an unregulated market), especially if they sold some or all of it at the right time.

Speaking of Bitcoin imitators, the most successful of these is the Ethereum platform and its currency, Ether. A recent profile of its founder, 28 year old Canadian Vitalik Buterin put the utopian vision of much of the crypto community front and center, with the author of the piece in Time magazine writing, “Buterin hopes Ethereum will become the launchpad for all sorts of sociopolitical experimentation: fairer voting systems, urban planning, universal basic income, public-works projects. Above all, he wants the platform to be a counterweight to authoritarian governments and to upend Silicon Valley’s stranglehold over our digital lives.” Somewhat ironically, many of those who hold and have increased the value of Ether are the same Silicon Valley types it was designed to get around. Over the last year or so it’s become more mainstream as it’s also the platform used to trade ‘non-fungible tokens’ or NFTs, arguably the biggest scam created in the crypto sphere yet.

In a nutshell, NFTs allow people to buy access to a gif, photo or work of art through a URL accessible to all on the internet, works that the buyer would have no real ownership of, the asset basically being a receipt for their purchase that they can theoretically sell.

The claim is made that NFTs will create wealth for starving artists, who are supposed to receive a piece of the action every time they’re sold. This may be enforceable for someone like ‘Obey’ creator Shpard Fairey but less so for those with less celebrity. The space is already rife with claims of outright theft of others’ work on the OpenSea platform where the majority of them are sold. 

Celebrities like Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton have jumped on board the trend arguably inflating the value of works like the ‘Bored Ape Yacht Club’, repetitive images one of which has sold for $2.3 million. 

Contrary to the purported hopes of Buterin and other crypto ‘visionaries’, alongside the introduction of NFTs, more and more coins have proliferated with little seeming motive beyond enriching their creators and promoters with hundreds of meme or ‘sh*t’ coins produced using yet more energy for tokens with dodgy prospects. Some with greater technical knowledge than this writer have also argued that most of these tokens are created by amateurs and aren’t as secure as Bitcoin or Ether.

Some of these ‘sh*t’ coins have been outright ‘pump and dump’ scams, with basically no protections provided for investors, even in comparison to the most speculative assets available in traditional markets like penny stocks. Others like EthereumMax, which has no connection to Ethereum itself, court fraud.

One recent example of the former shows how internet ‘influencers’ can leverWeb3 is Going Just Greatage their often very young fans to make large amounts of money for themselves while ‘pulling the rug out’ from those who believe in their schemes.

Paul Denino, who goes by the name Ice Poseidon and was one of the most popular streamers on Twitch before he was banned, continued his ‘IRL’ (in real life) streams on Youtube where he recently pushed his own CXcoin on his young followers, promising that he and they would all get rich together. Shortly after the coin’s launch, Denino removed $500,000 from CX, tanking its value and leaving investors holding the bag. He was said to have kept $300,000 for himself and paid the coin’s developers with the remainder.

Commenting on the rug pull while showing no regret, Deninotold streamer Coffeezilla, who is at the forefront investigating these influencer scams, “Part of the responsibility is on them [the fans] as well, for putting too much emotion into it.”

He went on to say after the streamer pressed him about his ability to return the money, “If you want the answer, yeah I could give the money back, it is within my power, but I am going to look out for myself and not do that.”

Ice Poseidon has faced no consequences thus far for this activity, although he hopefully lost some of his fan base for this unethical scheme.

While Denino’s actions and those of many others like him are terrible, including some in the Youtube collective called the “Faze Clan” who engaged in an even larger rug pull earlier using a token called “Save the Children” that did no such thing,  the inroads that crypto has made into charitable and humanitarian giving are even more troubling, which brings us to their use in raising money for those suffering from the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Like almost every article not detailing a specific allegation of some kind of fraud or illegal activity that I found in researching this, most of the coverage of the use of crypto currencies in aid of besieged Ukrainians has been overly positive, ignoring any possible problems and putting a positive spin on them in ways that would do a public relations firm proud.

After about 3 weeks of violent conflict, Mykailo Federov, Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation made an interesting announcement in terms of the country’s crypto fundraising, “With the beginning of the war, cryptocurrencies became a powerful tool for attracting additional funding to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In more than three weeks of war, the Crypto Fund of Ukraine has raised more than $54 million in cryptocurrencies.” https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/17/22982608/ukraine-crypotcurrency-sector-legalized-zelenskyy-signs-bill

Leaving aside how problematic fundraising for military purposes is on its face, a number of less well known coins quickly angled to have their tokens join Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and the original meme currency, Dogecoin, in being accepted as part of the country’s official fundraising effort through the web-site Aid for Ukraine

These crypto entrepreneurs made this happen by promising to donate large sums of their own tokens. Gavin Wood, founder of the currency Polkadot got the ball rolling with the promise of $5 million if Ukraine’s government adopted the currency, which they did soon after. Polkadot tokens have since gained 13% in value. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/03/01/ukraine-opens-polkadot-wallet-for-war-fundraising/

Perhaps the most telling thing to happen so far in terms of Ukraine’s foray into crypto fundraising is the ‘air drop’ cancelled on March 3rdWeb3 is Going Just GreatWeb3 is Going Just Great. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-03/ukraine-cancels-planned-crypto-airdrop-rewards-for-donations An airdrop is most often when tokens or NFTs are given away to promote the adoption of new crypto currencies.

What Ukraine’s government had planned was a commemorative token with no value as a thankyou for those who donated money in the form of crypto to their fundraising efforts. Almost immediately after the announcement, donations flooded in and it was clear that some were looking at the airdrop as a speculative opportunity. Unfortunately for their plans, just before the airdrop was to take place, scammers were already circulating a fake token and making money off it from unsuspecting buyers. https://icobattle.com/airdrops/ukraine-cancells-crypto-airdrop-program-instead-embraces-nfts-plan/ Outrage followed by some donors who clearly had plans for whatever token came out of the cancelled airdrop.

To make up for the cancellation, Ukraine’s government has promised to create NFTs as a thank you for at least some donors.

While it’s hard to fault the Ukrainian government for fundraising by whatever means necessary during a terrible time of crisis, the adoption of crypto for fundraising in this way is worrying. Rather than the revolution promised as part of ‘Web 3.0’ that would come out of blockchain technology, not much more has been done beyond creating an anonymous digital ledger and empowering some of the worst cons so far this century.

*In researching this article I relied heavily on two other sources besides Coffeezilla, who is cited above. The Youtube show and podcast Scam Economy, which covered the use of crypto by Ukraine in a recent episode  and the web-site Web3 is Going Just Great  by Molly White which aggregates stories of the many scams coming from the crypto world on a daily basis.

Derek Royden

Derek Royden is a freelance writer based in Montreal, Canada with an interest in activism, politics and culture. His work has appeared on Occupy.com, Truthout, Antiwar.com and Gonzo Today as well as in Skunk Magazine.

Climate Groups Say Planetary Impacts of Crypto Mining Could Be Reduced by 99%

"No matter how you feel about bitcoin, pushing those with the power to ensure a code change will make our planet and communities safer from the destructive impacts of climate change."

According to green groups, bitcoin mining uses as much annual electricity as entire nations including Sweden and the Netherlands. (Photo: QuoteInspector.com/Flickr/cc)

COMMON DREAMS STAFF

March 29, 2022

A simple switch in the way bitcoin is coded could reduce the power-hungry cryptocurrency's energy use by 99%, dramatically reducing its environmental impact.

"The 'currency of the future' is dragging us into the past when it comes to the urgent battle to save the climate."

That's according to a new campaign launched Tuesday by a coalition of billionaire-backed green groups aiming to "Change the Code, Not the Climate."

"The science is clear: To prevent runaway climate change, we need to start phasing out fossil fuels and investing in the clean energy economy," Greenpeace USA chief program officer Tefere Gebre said in a statement.

"No matter how you feel about bitcoin, pushing those with the power to ensure a code change will make our planet and communities safer from the destructive impacts of climate change," he added. "What we do have is a solution: Change the Code. Not the Climate."

The new effort is backed by Chris Larsen, the co-founder and executive chairman of ripple, a cryptocurrency and digital payment network for financial transactions. Larsen has contributed $5 million to fund the campaign's ads, which will appear on Facebook as well as in publications including MarketWatch, The New York Times, Politico, and The Wall Street Journal.

The campaign notes that bitcoin's software code—called "proof of work" (PoW)—requires massive computer arrays that use as much electricity annually as entire nations such as Sweden and the Netherlands. In order meet this ever-increasing demand for electricity, bitcoin miners are buying U.S. coal plants and striking deals with fossil fuel corporations to purchase flare gas, which is normally burned off, to power their operations.

The activists cite a 2018 study published in the journal Nature Climate Change that found continued wide adoption of bitcoin could alone produce enough carbon dioxide emissions to push planetary warming past 2°C within less than three decades. The landmark Paris climate agreement seeks to limit warming below 2°C and, ideally, no higher than 1.5°C.

Experts say that switching from PoW to "proof of stake" (PoS) or other more efficient means of validating cryptocurrency transactions would dramatically reduce energy consumption and greenhouse emissions. Bitcoin rival ethereum's blockchain network—where most non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are traded—is switching to proof of stake, a move expected to reduce energy use by 99%.

Larsen, whose ripple runs on neither PoW nor PoS, insists he is not targeting bitcoin, but noted in an interview with Bloomberg that "now with Ethereum changing, bitcoin really is the outlier."

Michael Brune, campaign adviser and former executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement that "we are calling on the bitcoin community to change to a low-energy code. This could mean switching to proof of stake, federated consensus, or even changing proof of work to use far less energy. We won't prescribe the exact solution, but we demand urgent action to save our climate and future."

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said that "the 'currency of the future' is dragging us into the past when it comes to the urgent battle to save the climate. Our planet can't afford bitcoin's excessive and unnecessary energy use and associated pollution."

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