How fetal politics stole Americans’ reproductive rights

Jennifer Holland
Claire Potter
28 June 2022

The US Supreme Court has overturned two landmark cases that protected a woman’s rights over her own body for 50 years. How did ‘fetal politics’ — a political movement that has turned embryos and fetuses into ‘unborn children’ endowed with unique and inviolable civil rights – gain such momentum? And what will be the outcome of this new ruling?


In preparation for the day when a reversed decision on Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey might come, Claire Potter interviewed Jennifer Holland about her book, Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement.


Claire Potter: I want to start with the arresting title of your book, Tiny You. Can you tell our readers why you chose it?

Jennifer Holland: The book describes how a host of white, conservative, religious people become personally invested in fetal politics, and the title comes from a brochure created by the anti-abortion/movement for small children. It explained pregnancy and it said: ‘Everything that you are was there at this moment–a fetus is a “tiny you.”’

Next, the brochure describes abortion as when a parent chooses to kill their fetus. It’s very explicit. So, the pamphlet captures what I think is happening in the movement as a whole: inviting people to have a relationship with fetuses, imagine themselves as fetuses—and especially aborted fetuses.

Claire Potter: So, tell us how do fetuses at all stages, from conception to birth, become transformed into babies and children?

Jennifer Holland: The movement works hard from the beginning to sell this idea. First, they use analogy. They narrate themselves as a civil rights movement, comparing abortion to slavery and the dehumanization of Black people during Jim Crow. But also, they compare abortion to the Nazi Holocaust.

Second, they pair their messaging with fetal imagery to humanize fetuses and persuade people to see them as babies. By the late twentieth century, Americans cannot live their lives without encountering anti-abortion arguments conveyed through visual ephemera.

Claire Potter: What is the tradeoff between images that are arresting and suck people in, and images that risk people turning away and disengaging?

Jennifer Holland: That’s why the movement generates so many kinds of fetal ephemera because they are worried about it. It’s not that they don’t want to keep the gory photos and the embalmed fetuses, but activists realize they’re not good for every situation. For example, in the 1980s, they come up with these little plastic fetus dolls, which you can use in situations with children and young adults, dolls that aren’t going to immediately horrify parents. As the movement develops in the 1980s and 1990s, activists also invest in the idea that they are protecting women from trauma. Those that create crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), turn away from the gorier representations and towards ultrasound imagery and fetal models.




Plastic fetus dolls. Image via Wikimedia Commons

Claire Potter: But the anti-abortion movement does not actually start out as a religious movement, and churches must be persuaded to embrace it.

Jennifer Holland: It’s a little messy, because all the activists are, in fact, religious and they are coming out of religious organizations like the Knights of Columbus, or the Catholic Lawyers Guild. Religious institutions, especially the Catholic churches, prime them for activism. The default assumption is that anti-abortion activism is a top-down movement that individuals can’t possibly be invested in.

But, especially if we look at the early 1970s, that was not the case. The Catholic church hesitated in a way that Catholic activists were upset about. So, you have activists who are meeting with priests and pressing them to give anti-abortion sermons. Not every priest needed to be pushed, but many did. And activists kept meeting with higher-ups saying, you need to commit to this, in infrastructure and money.

By 1975, the Church made those commitments.

Claire Potter: So, a grassroots movement pushed churches into this struggle.

Jennifer Holland: I don’t want to deemphasize how important religious leaders were, especially later and particularly on the religious right. But that doesn’t explain why those leaders have such an audience in the first place, and why they have such power. It’s largely because this movement has already created that audience, and those leaders tell stories that resonate because people already understand them.

By the time activists politicize churches, they’ve already integrated anti-abortion politics into the rhythms of how so many white people experience their faith.

Claire Potter: And some activists must overcome theology. In the Mormon Church, the soul does not enter the human body until birth, so to imagine abortion as killing a soul, Mormons must override their own theology.

Jennifer Holland: There are a lot of people who believe that fetal politics represent their church’s theology, even when it doesn’t. Catholic anti-abortion activists pitch the idea, hard, that the soul enters the body at conception, and the Mormon church doesn’t press hard to correct that.

I don’t think they know this, but Mormons often take up Catholic visions of spirituality and conception and they incorporate it into their vision of what Mormon theology is. Then there is the power of what Mormons are already invested in, social conservatism.

Claire Potter: One of the things I hope our readers are noticing is that you keep saying white Christians, white evangelicals, white activists. Even though many Black and Latinx people are Catholic, they don’t get involved in the anti-abortion movement. Why?

Jennifer Holland: This was a question I had from the beginning, since the book is set in multiracial spaces with a host of religious people who, as you say, are people of color. And I found that they didn’t participate in the movement, or they did for a day at most; they’re very peripheral. Longstanding activists agreed; they had all these explanations for why, but none of them really explained it.

I think that the answer is that this is a movement of white people that co-opts civil rights and racial justice rhetoric and narrates themselves as the inheritors of Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement. They speak in that language, but they don’t do any work in communities of color on any of the other issues around race. They don’t even talk about involuntary sterilization.

The people of color who came in for a day did all sorts of racial justice work, but you don’t see white anti-abortion activists going and doing work alongside them. So, abortion was a civil right that was very contained. It was a movement that was contained to white people and to fetuses that were either narrated as universal subjects or as white. That didn’t sell to communities of color, even conservative ones. They weren’t ready to imagine abortion as the origin of all social problems, which is the primary argument of the movement.

Claire Potter: So, there are people of color who are personally anti-abortion, but the movement is a big turnoff.

Jennifer Holland: Yes. So, surveys show that Latinx Catholics are more against abortion than white Catholics overall, but that does not translate into movement work. For the most part, it does not translate into voting. White activists notice this, and keep saying, ‘We don’t see them around and they don’t seem to vote on this issue.’

Claire Potter: In the book, with narratives about the fetus itself, and then you move outward toward the woman who is carrying the fetus and beyond. One of the things activists realize early on is that they cannot demonize the women who are choosing abortion. Why?

Jennifer Holland: Well, the 1970s is a moment in which feminism is reshaping conversations about sex and gender, as well as American politics. When abortion was illegal, women were punished in myriad ways, but they weren’t often prosecuted. It was abortion providers who were prosecuted.

Abortion seekers were a thorn in the movement’s side because if you’re saying that abortion is murder, well, abortion is murder. Abortion providers are murderers in this formulation, but it only makes sense that women would be too, because they’re hiring abortion providers. However, the movement realizes very quickly that that is not going to sell.

Yet, you do have a deep hostility to women that bubbles up: birth needs to be a repercussion for sex, it holds people accountable. Mostly, the movement tries to not talk about women having sex in that way: instead, they portray motherhood as the thing that makes women special.

But in the 1980s, they come up with a new idea: women are victims of abortion, that that they are both physically damaged and psychologically traumatized by it. They invent the idea of ‘post-abortion syndrome.’ This is not supported by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, which keep saying, ‘No, this is not a common traumatic event.’

But it doesn’t matter. The movement runs with this idea that women are hurt by abortion. Laws are passed with names like ‘Women’s Right to Know’, or ‘Women’s Protection Act’. Right? And even the Supreme Court, prior to this one, starts to parrot the movement and say that women are hurt by abortion.

Claire Potter: It’s also one of the ways that fake science creeps into conservatism. Rejecting mainstream science and psychology powers a social movement.

Jennifer Holland: I thought about this a lot in relation to contemporary misinformation. Anti-abortion activists started saying very different things than they had a century before. You couldn’t trust doctors, you couldn’t trust universities, or the scholars that produced knowledge there. Even the word ‘fetus’, they argued, was a way that doctors hid the truth from you.

The only people you could really trust were in the movement.

Claire Potter: Then, the anti-abortion movement starts running pseudo-therapy groups for women who have had abortions, where they are taught that everything in their life that has gone wrong is because they had an abortion.

Jennifer Holland: I found that part of the book hard to write, and sometimes when I go back and read it, hard to read, because it’s so manipulative. The movement creates a diagnosis, ‘post-abortion syndrome’, and in CPCs, their fake reproductive health clinics, they organize ‘post-abortion therapy’, or ‘post-abortion education’. They would bring in women who had had abortions and then ask them questions intended to lead them to conclusions about their experiences. Every story led back to the idea that abortion was a traumatic event, and that doctors hadn’t told them what the negative outcomes were.

The counselors organized those details into a story, and they would try to get women to reconcile with God and with their fetus, who would get a name. ‘Can you tell God who you killed? Can you talk to your daughter, Brittany, and tell her why you killed her?’ And they imagined that by reckoning with this, by making peace with abortion, acknowledging it as a moral crime, and reconciling with God, women could regain their well-being.

Then, once they got women to that space, they asked them to become activists and speak to legislatures or go into CPCs to stop other women from having abortions. So, this was not just about emotional health, it was about making their clients into the face of abortion’s damage. What they call ‘post-abortive women’ take up important roles in the movement by the 1980s.

Claire Potter: Perhaps it’s my age, perhaps it’s the circles I run in, but I’ve never known a woman who regretted having an abortion.

Jennifer Holland: That’s what the American Psychiatric Association found too. There were a very small number of people who felt what they called ‘abortion regret’, and even that often coincided with other kinds of things going on in their lives. There were people I found whose lives didn’t pan out the way they expected, who imagined themselves as upwardly mobile, and who thought sex would lead to marriage and a middle-class lifestyle. Instead, the sex they had led them into bad marriages, unexpected pregnancies, abortions, and lives that were more working-class. We can imagine the structural or personal reasons why that occurred, but at least some believed that their lives didn’t pan out because of abortion.

Claire Potter: Let’s dig back into the crisis pregnancy centres. We mentioned them earlier but they’re a highly visible and enduring part of this movement.

Jennifer Holland: The first ones were started in Canada in 1968, but they almost immediately moved into the United States. I call them fake clinics because they masquerade as abortion providers, and their advertising is geared to that. Common advertisements say: ‘Pregnant? Need help? Call this number.’

Once they got abortion seekers into their space, they gave them a political pitch. They gave them free pregnancy tests to make sure they were pregnant, they got ultrasound machines, and then they would make anti-abortion arguments, showing them images and fetal models, and trying to convince people to keep the pregnancy. And they would never refer anyone for abortions or birth control.

One of the later strategies was to put these CPCs right next to abortion providers in the same complex, so that people became confused. And they were. Activists I talked to said that everybody was calling them was looking for an abortion, not to be talked out of it. Only women activists staffed these centres: they imagined themselves as mothers or friends, having a kitchen table conversation. But they also falsely presented themselves as medical providers: taking urine, and giving clients medical arguments about why abortion is murder and the physical damage it will do.

Even if they didn’t convince a ton of people, they convinced some people, so this became a special space for women anti-abortion activists to try to stop abortion one woman at a time. Importantly, these spaces also get an incredible amount of state and federal money, especially as the movement gets stronger in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. And the people who come are young women and poor women and women of color, they’re all people who for one reason or another are not getting their healthcare in other places.

Claire Potter: They’re women who aren’t attached to the healthcare system at all.

Jennifer Holland: Right.

Claire Potter: The other thing this makes me think about is when the Jane Collective began its work in Chicago, they put flyers up on telephone poles that said: ‘Pregnant? Don’t want to be? Call Jane.’ And there’s a number.

Jennifer Holland: I think anti-abortion activists were drawing on that ambiguous message, but of course, they want to reverse the desires of the people coming to them. That’s the whole pitch: luring in people who don’t want your services and convincing them that they do.

And of course, a lot of people became traumatized by this bait and switch. They were shown graphic imagery and films, they were told terrible things, and they had been brought there by deceit. In more feminist-oriented states, Democratic states, you get a lot more interest in trying to get these people to represent themselves accurately. That never really pans out because that would ruin what these centres are built to do.

Claire Potter: These CPCs also decide to work on their clients’ moral fibre too. How does that shift happen?

Jennifer Holland: Well, the fact of the matter is, many abortion seekers live in cities where people circulate knowledge, and one thing CPCs always had was to serve a donations closet with diapers, clothes, used furniture, and so on. They hoped that if they could convince someone not to have an abortion, and provide a little bit of material help, it would be enough. But then, they realized that some people were not actually considering abortion at all, and knew that if they came and said the right things they could get access to things they needed.

And so, you have a whole host of centres who say, ‘These women are taking advantage of us.’ Then, one activist came up with a program that became a national program in CPCs called Earn While You Learn. Some of them were about prenatal care and taking care of your newborn baby. But a lot of classes were about conveying conservative ideology. You had to take these classes to get your ‘mommy dollars’, which you could then use to get things from the donations closet or ‘baby boutique’, as they sometimes call them.

Claire Potter: Then, these activists extend the circle of trauma to living children. Why?

Jennifer Holland: Early on, the movement was concerned that schools and the media were creating a ‘pro-choice generation’ by indoctrinating children. And so, they imagine that they need to come into youth spaces and politicize young people.

One of the central arguments they make is that young people are survivors because they were born, as opposed to being aborted fetuses. And so, as survivors, children have a responsibility to speak on behalf of those who didn’t survive. There are organizations that call themselves Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust that invite young people into the movement, saying: ‘You have a responsibility to engage in these politics because you were born.’

Evangelicals build whole worlds around young people so they don’t have to go outside for their music, their reading – they can just consume evangelically oriented stuff. So, activists come into schools and homes, and churches, and I think it resonates with young people in part because of the ways in which this movement, unlike a lot of conservative movements, draws on rights rhetoric. A lot of young people want to be part of a justice campaign, which was so much a part of American culture by the late twentieth century. Anti-abortion activism means that white conservative youth can do that in a way that feels meaningful, and that doesn’t overturn social hierarchies.

So fetal politics becomes more and more central to what it means to a young person to be evangelical, to be a young conservative, and to be an American. In addition, the idea of young people as lives that have been saved plays an incredibly important role in the movement, since activists imagine that abortion is a slippery slope to all born people being at risk. They argue, inaccurately, that abortion was central to Hitler’s philosophy, a path to dehumanization and genocide, the killing of the elderly, and anyone we don’t want around anymore.

Claire Potter: So, we are entering a period in which abortion will be available in some states, and not in others. How will the movement adapt to partial victory?

Jennifer Holland: There are two big avenues that I see. One is that they will continue working for a total victory. Dobbs is not the end game. People talk all about differences between radical and mainstream anti-abortion activists, and there are differences in strategy. But there are no differences in the end goal, which is to make abortion illegal everywhere. The only exception would be the life of the mother, and that’s not a stable exception.

So, overturning Roe and Casey is not the end. They need to continue working to make abortion illegal everywhere, and that could either come through Congress, and I think they will go back to the court and see if they can get fetuses protected under the 14th Amendment as citizens. So that’s one direction.

We also need to see what the next steps are in terms of the other cases that rely on a right to privacy. Gay rights, birth control, marriage issues—all these things look like they could be on unstable ground.

But I think there are new challenges for the movement because Roe has been an easy punching bag: you had the government protecting at least some abortions in every state. But they don’t have that anymore, and more importantly, in the states where abortion will now be illegal, they will now have the power of the state.

What will they do with that? Anti-abortion activists have been able to imagine a future where everyone is better off without legal abortion. Women are no longer traumatized, they’re having bigger families, violence is stemmed, racism gets better. But once they have the power of the state, and Roe no longer stands, they’re going to have to face it that the future they promised people isn’t coming.

In addition, to stop abortion-seekers in Oklahoma, where I am, they will have to stop those people from moving across state boundaries. They must stop the mail from coming in with abortion pills. Are they going to use the power of the state to do that? Are they going to track people online? Are they going to prosecute people who have sought abortions? Because these things will run up against some of the core arguments they’ve made in the past: that women are not going to be prosecuted, that they were only always victims, and they were going to be better off without an abortion.

The movement is going to have to reckon with that. I’ve heard that some people in the movement think that deeply Republican states will, or the movement itself, will press state legislators to create new social safety nets for all these people who have larger families than they thought. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I can say pretty certainly that Oklahoma’s legislature is not going to be passing such laws.

So, there is now a possibility that the movement’s own narratives will come under pressure within the movement itself, and potentially, from the voters who’ve supported them for so long.

Nuclear Threats Prevent South Korea from Ratifying the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention

by Aleydis Nissen 

Last month, the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) fundamental Forced Labour Convention 29 of 1932 went into effect in the Republic of Korea, internationally known as South Korea, a year after the country completed the ratification process. However, South Korea has not yet ratified the 1957 Convention on the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention 105, which significantly does not contain several exceptions that existed in the previous Convention 29. Convention 105 is the last of the fundamental labour conventions that South Korea has not yet ratified and is unlikely to do so, despite recent promises to invest time in ‘building social consensus and thorough review [of the] domestic legal system’.

There are numerous reasons why ratifying the Convention is controversial in South Korea. In a forthcoming article in The European Journal of International Law, I discuss two of these: South Korea’s migrant labour system which provides few rights to negotiate a change of job and makes migrants vulnerable to forced labour and other forms of exploitation, and its legislation imposing prison labour for expressing political opinions sympathetic to North Korea (nominally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). This post addresses a third issue, specifically South Korea’s military service. Convention 105 appears to designate military service as forced labour. Article 2.2.a of Convention 29 determines that ‘any work or service exacted in virtue of compulsory military service laws for work of a purely military character’ is not forced or compulsory labour, but Convention 105 does not contain such a provision.

From a security perspective, conscription is non-negotiable in South Korea. The country has remained at war with its northern neighbour since the Armistice Agreement was signed in 1953. Accordingly, the Military Service Act and the Presidential Enforcement Decrees oblige all able-bodied South Korean men between 18 and (typically) 28 years old to serve in the military, contributing 18 months for the Army, 20 months for the Navy, and 22 months for the Air Force.

South Korea’s practice of conscription is ostensibly a matter of survival. Since Joe Biden assumed the Presidential office in the United States, North Korea has accelerated its development of ballistic missiles, while recent satellite images show that the Punggye-ri nuclear test site – which collapsed in 2017 – is being restored. When Kim Jong-un, the leader of the North, congratulated the outgoing President of the South, Moon Jae-in, on his achievements in bringing the two Koreas together last month, South Korean journalists did not take Kim on his word.

If anything, conscription is likely to be expanded in the future. There have been reports that conscription may be introduced for women. While the current system ascribes to women stereotyped roles based on the assumption that they need to be protected, mandatory service for women begs the question of whether the army is sufficiently adapted to the specific needs of female conscripts, or whether they would be forced into yet another environment designed by men and for men. While men have been serving in the army, women have been disproportionally represented in factory jobs, spending their pre-married lives as “industrial soldiers”.

Even the members of South Korea’s most successful musical export product, K-Pop band BTS, will be required to undertake military service. Thus far, BTS only benefited from regulation allowing them to delay their service. When the oldest member of BTS, Kim Seok-jin, turned 28, Article 60.2.3 of the Military Service Act was amended to allow outstanding popular artists who have enhanced national prestige to delay their military service. The exceptional nature of this amendment is apparent from the text of Article 114 of the Presidential Enforcement Decree, which determines that only artists that have received a decoration in the Order of Cultural Merit may delay their service by up to two years. In 2018 BTS was the first – and thus far only – K-Pop act to receive such a commendation.

As tension builds around the world and on the Korean peninsula, military ‘service’ will continue to divide South Korea. Given the realities of geopolitics, conscription is not an outmoded concept, even though its abolition is a fundamental labour right.

May 12, 2022

About Aleydis Nissen
Aleydis Nissen is a research fellow at Leiden University, VUB and ULB. Her research is supported by grants from FWO and F.R.S.-FNRS.

‘Hope Always Comes From the People’: Gen Z’s New Language of Resistance

By Isabella Rolz
June 28, 2022

This story is part of a new original series, Closer Look.


Greta Thunberg’s impact on environmental activism caught the attention of world leaders, including Donald Trump, back in 2018. Thunberg, who is known for her direct and unapologetic style, was 15 when she first stepped into the spotlight. Since then, she has had a heavy hand in shaping the next generation of climate activists, inspiring thousands of members of Generation Z, also known as zoomers, to join the climate movement.

“We can no longer let the people in power decide what is politically possible. We can no longer let the people in power decide what hope is. Hope is not passive. Hope is taking action. And hope always comes from the people,” said Thunberg at the Youth4Climate summit in Italy last year. Since 2018, the 19-year-old activist, alongside two million people in 2,000 cities around the world, has taken fate into her own hands, carrying out a series of global climate strikes called #FridaysForFuture to protest against the “passivity of politicians to curb climate change.” What makes these protests different? They are organized entirely online.

But Thunberg was not always so tech-savvy. When she first started campaigning, her style was somewhat “conventional,” said Klaus Hurrelmann, Professor of Public Health and Education at the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany. #FridaysForFuture marked the beginning of a new chapter in Thunberg’s career: She started using social media as a tool for mass communication and mobilization. “She is a master in using a hybrid communications technique by combining conventional methods with social media–something that other generations do not know how to combine,” said Hurrelmann.

Under Gen Z’s guidance, the climate movement has grown during the pandemic on the back of digital-first strategies from younger, bolder leaders, such as Uganda’s Vanessa Nakate, Colombia’s Francisco Vera, and Mexico-Chile’s Xiye Bastida.

Generation Z has made it clear that they are committed to playing an active role in how the climate issue is handled globally. Like Thunberg’s media exchanges with Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and other world political leaders, Nakate’s work with the United Nations and the impact Bastida had on President Joe Biden’s Summit on Climate last April are public displays of their generation’s commitment to a new brand of environmental activism.

Advocacy at a community level


According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, zoomers and Millenials in the U.S. are talking much more about climate change than adults of other generations like the Baby Boomers. This is because “[in] Gen Z’s lifetime, and certainly the lifetime of their kids, will be severely affected by climate change,” said Bas Fransen, CEO of EcoMatcher. “Gen Z is aware of the potentially irreversible damage to the climate, so they become more vocal,” said Fransen.

Recent criticism issued by world political leaders against activists like Thunberg has shown that the best way to raise awareness may not be through global politics, but rather through community organization. “We cannot wait for people like me to grow up and be the ones in charge of everything; we have to act now,” Thunberg said in an interview in 2021.

This is where the greatest tool that Gen Z has at its disposal comes into play: social networks. “Because Gen Z is ‘digitally native,’ meaning they have always lived and interacted with a digitally social world, they are much better at utilizing and adapting to all of the possibilities and benefits online communication can offer,” said Jamie Belinne, Assistant Dean for the Career, and Industry Engagement at the C.T. Bauer College of Business of the University of Houston.

Through social media platforms, younger generations have established diverse social networks, often allowing them to develop more inclusive worldviews at a younger. “In part because of this, they can be more open to ideas related to change and social justice than generations whose youth was defined by a comparably homogenous peer group defined more by geography and ethnicity,” said Belinne.

Challenges to overcome


“We are living in a time where we do not consider ourselves the future because we are aware that we are the present. We, as young people, are fighting to unite all the people in the whole world,” said Hazel Araujo, a member of Semillas del Océano, a Guatemalan NGO dedicated to raising awareness of the oceans.

Although virtual environments are a great ally to the climate movements, Thunberg and others are acutely aware that all the knowledge gained there must be transformed into action. One of the great challenges activists face is knowing how to identify what kind of actions are required depending on where they live. The fight for climate justice will never be the same in Europe or North America, where the basic needs of the majority are covered, as it is in the Global South, where inequality and exclusion are still part of the fabric of society.

“In climate activism, most of the time, you only see young people from the first world, who face different challenges than those we face in developing countries,” said Araujo. Sexism, systematic violence against women, lack of education, and corruption, are among the most common problems in developing countries. They are rooted in the social and political culture of many Latin American, Asian, and African countries, and the lack of funds for rural and community development programs further aggravates the problem.

Learning to speak their language


“Language is constantly evolving, and the communication style of Gen Z is more indicative of future language trends,” said Belinne. She encourages older generations to be open to Gen Z and adapt to new communication styles and strategies for making an impact.

In the case of developing countries, for example, projects like EchoMatcher have found that inclusivity has played a crucial role in incorporating younger generations into their work. “We have had a youth ambassador since last year, a 13-year-old girl, whom we have given a global platform to speak and inspire,” said Fransen.
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Why Gen Z Is Going Plant-Based Faster Than Other Generations
By Karen Asp
June 28, 2022

This story is part of a new original series, Closer Look.


When 22-year-old Cienna Romahn turned 16, she went vegan. She’d already been vegetarian for 10 years, but what started as a moral obligation to the animals became an obligation to the planet. “While animal welfare is still important to me, the environmental impact of my food and lifestyle choices is the number one focus for how I choose to live,” says Romahn who lives in San Francisco and works as an events manager at Hooray Foods.

Although her name may not be as well known as fellow zoomer and climate and environmental activist Greta Thunberg, Romahn is one of the many young individuals hoping to fight climate change one bite at a time. In fact, she and her peers are proving that the adage “with age comes wisdom” holds little merit. In spite of numerous warnings from the EAT-Lancet Commission and the Chatham House that the world needs to shift to a plant-based diet, it’s the youth who are getting the message and changing their diets faster than other generations.

For proof, look no further than a 2020 YouGov survey which found that Millennials are more likely than other generations to say they’ve changed their diet, one reason being to reduce their impact on the planet. According to the survey, they’re also more likely than Gen Xers and Baby Boomers to have tried a vegetarian diet, and more Millennials have gone vegan than older generations. What’s more, a report from the NPD Group shows that the Gen Z and Millennial generations will be almost entirely responsible for the growth of dairy and meat alternatives through 2024.

Of course, the real question is how much impact their dietary changes will have. Is it even possible for one or two generations to make up for the damages caused by previous generations? The answer may be obvious, but that’s not making younger generations lose hope for their future.

The burden can’t rest on Gen Z

Chantal Fülber, a 22-year-old in Frankfort, Germany, is not surprised that young people are leading the plant-based movement. “The older generation seems to not believe in a vegan diet and doubt that it’s beneficial in any way,” says Fülber, who after being vegetarian for nine years went vegan in 2019.

Plus, unlike their parents, younger generations have been hearing about climate change since day one. “That puts us in a unique position in which we’re constantly exposed to both crises and information on how to immediately respond and adapt, creating an ‘act now’ mentality among my generation,” Romahn says.

Given how dire the news about climate change is, that act-now mentality is critical, and while there are numerous lifestyle habits that can help, there’s no denying the power of a plant-based diet. “Plant-based diets are better for the environment than animal-based diets,” says Dana Ellis Hunnes, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D., assistant professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health in California, senior dietitian at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, and author of Recipe for Survival. “Studies show we could save three-quarters of the land we use now for agricultural production, at least half the water we use, and over two-thirds of agricultural emissions by shifting to plant-based diets,” Hunnes says. Plus, much of the land that’s been used for agriculture (and specifically to grow animal feed) could be rewilded. All of these actions would lower greenhouse gases, a driving force behind climate change, she adds.

In fact, a model published in the journal PLoS Climate finds that even “phasing out animal agriculture over the next 15 years would have the same effect as a 68 percent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions through the year 2100,” according to a press release from Stanford University. The impact that shift would have is monumental, providing 52 percent of the net emission reductions necessary to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the minimum threshold required to avert “disastrous climate change,” the release goes on to say.

But it comes with one big caveat. “It’s important to recognize that the damage done by previous generations cannot be undone by mitigating emissions,” says Erica Dodds, Ph.D., CEO of the Foundation for Climate Restoration (F4CR) and sustainability, climate change, and eco-anxiety expert. “Of the trillion tons of excess carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, our annual emissions only make up five percent while 95 percent of the problem is the CO2 already in the atmosphere.” Removing the damage of previous generations will require removing this “legacy” CO2 from the environment as well as reducing new emissions, she adds.

Dodds’ comments suggest that dietary shifts by one generation, two at best, won’t be enough to fix the damage caused by previous generations. “There are eight billion people on the planet, and we can’t have only one-eighth of the world changing their diet and expect it to be enough,” Hunnes says. “It will help, but it’s everybody’s responsibility, and not enough people have changed their diet to make enough of a difference at this point.” Worse, estimates indicate that animal consumption is expected to go up—not down—which will only hurt the planet more.

It’s also unfair to ask the youth to make up for already existing damage, which is why Romahn has reframed how she sees her actions. “Although my generation accepts we’re facing a climate crisis that requires direct action from us, we’re more focused on not worsening it and minimizing our impact versus reversing the harm of past generations,” she says.

Leading by example

You don’t have to be 15 years old to feel like you have no control over the climate crisis, an emotional state often referred to as eco-anxiety, yet young people are particularly susceptible to it. “They can feel like there’s nothing they can do to make a difference and often believe that older generations are not taking the issue seriously,” Dodds says.

The antidote, of course, is action. “Taking actions that are within their control can help relieve this anxiety by giving them a sense of agency,” Dodds says.

That may be one reason younger generations are shifting their diet, a well-timed move now that plant-based products are hitting store shelves in record numbers. “That’s made going vegan or reducing intake from animal foods not only easier but also more exciting,” says Romahn, who holds out hope that her generation’s dietary changes will help quell climate change. “I’ve seen positive ongoing data about the impact of plant-based diets on certain carbon-intensive industries, like the milk industry, which has already been greatly impacted by our dietary changes.”

When these younger generations make the switch, they’re not only impacting climate change directly. They also, serve as a positive force for older individuals. “Older generations in particular associate vegetarianism and veganism with sacrifice, so seeing young people willing to give up so many mainstream and tasty food products in the name of climate restoration sends a powerful message,” Dodds says.

Being a role model is something that Fülber and Romahn embrace. “I want to empower older individuals to make small changes to their lifestyle,” Romahn says. “Whether switching their breakfast bacon to Hooray Foods’ plant-based bacon or mixing lentils into their ground beef, even the smallest changes can make a large impact when we empower enough people to make them.”

That’s a change Hunnes desperately hopes will happen, given that she has an eight-year-old son whose future hinges on what actions people take today. Although she cries frequently about these issues, she knows she can’t give up. “This is his future so I act and do what I can,” she says. “For many younger individuals, changing what they eat is something tangible they can do right now to make a difference—and it actually can make a difference.”

There is, after all, no planet B. You don’t need age on your side to understand that.
Read More

How to Start Eating Plant-Based: A Beginner’s Guide

Choosing Plant-Based Foods Could Have Lasting Impact on Biodiversity

The Problems With Meat Consumption: Here’s What You Need to Know

The Texas coldwave disaster – How cascading risks took out an entire power grid

Author
Jessica Bridger

28 June 2022
Source(s)
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction

Long lines at a grocery store following power outages and frigid

 temperatures in Texas, USA (2021)
Wienot Films/Shutterstock

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.”
Popular American adage

As the switches clicked off one by one, transformers went down, and power went out. At 1:25 am on 15 February 2021, Texas’ independent energy grid, the envy of many, was shutting down in rolling blackouts to prevent total system collapse. The consequences from Winter Storms Shirley and Uri were wreaking unprecedented havoc from Amarillo to Dallas, from El Paso to Houston and Corpus Christi. Power demand spiked as people tried to heat their homes – and just as the power shut down – and just before Winter Storm Viola hit.

Texas was facing a disaster – but the natural hazard was only the trigger. The failure of power grids is a technological consequence: one that can be measured, quantified and ultimately reduced. As a consequence of the lack of preparedness, the collapse of infrastructure essential to basic societal function can trigger a crisis of cascading risks.

The winter storms of mid-February 2021 in Texas led to electricity disruption, first as demand soared beyond supply. The rolling blackouts were instated to prevent catastrophic damage – but a deadly crisis was already unfolding.

A cascade of failures

Texas Coldwave’s weather pattern stretched from 10 to 20 February 2021, as temperatures dipped down to -20C in some places. The record-setting cold was also notable for its duration. Compounding the demand problem and related blackouts, the Texas energy system was not winterised. Power lines snapped and came down in ice and wind. Gas pipelines, equipment and wells froze. Nuclear plants, coal power and wind turbines came to a halt, severely impacting power generation capacity, further interrupting electricity supply.

The Texas grid, long the Lone Star State’s pride, which is unconnected to other grids and runs without a reserve, buckled under the strain. Texas could neither generate sufficient power on its own nor pull power into its grid from other States. An estimated 4.5 million homes and businesses ­– along with various vital services – were completely without power during the peak of the crisis.

Interruptions in power led to water treatment plants dumping untreated sewage in waterways, polluting water supplies. Water supply pumps failed, pipes froze and burst. Residents were asked to boil water for health safety – if they could turn on the taps at all, let alone use their stoves. This cascade spilt over into the food supply. Unrefrigerated food spoiled, and distribution suffered as problems compounded. COVID-19 pandemic response, emergency services, social support networks and more stuttered to a halt and failed. An astounding cascade of linked failures occurred, falling like a set of misery dominoes. Fifty-eight deathswere initially attributed to the cold weather – although later estimates raised the total number of deaths to at least 264 – and the economic impact is estimated at up to US$ 300 billion in losses.

Infrastructure is easily understood as a set of connecting elements within a system – for example, power stations connected by power lines that in turn connect to individual households. Infrastructure is in turn interconnected: power, water and sewage services all interact with one another dynamically. Each essential service is further connected to all functioning parts of a greater societal system. When one service breaks down – or even comes under significant stress – other services are negatively impacted. The failures in Texas began with an electricity demand peak – and led to a breakdown in the supply of basic necessities, such that local grocers had to step in to donate food and distribute clean water.

A new paradigm

The Texas Coldwave of 2021 has become a classic example of cascading failure and systemic risk in the cannon of disaster risk reduction. But it is not only be a horror story – it is also a cautionary tale that illustrates the need for resilient infrastructural systems investment and design, coupled with a shift in how we assess, plan for and respond to systemic risk.

Following the 2021 Coldwave, the political establishment took at least some of these lesson on board. In June 2021 Texas passed Senate Bill 3, establishing an emergency alert system to notify residents of upcoming power outages, and requiring power plants to ensure their equipment and withstand extreme weather. However, some critics remain concerned that these measures don’t go far enough, and put too much of the financial burden on the consumer.

A holistic understanding of the risk spectrum and pre-emptive actions are increasingly required. To this end, UNDRR established the Global Risk Assessment Framework (GRAF), stating in the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction:
“A transition is needed from one paradigm to another – from managing disasters to managing risk – and from managing "conventional" hazards to engineering an improved understanding of the dynamic interactions with systemic risks.”

Developing practical knowledgeof the interactions between hazards will require unprecedented collaboration between stakeholders. Utility operators, climate researchers, insurers and reinsurers, social services providers and other stakeholders will increasingly be called upon to apply their disciplinary expertise in advance of crisis events to prevent disasters stemming from systemic risk factors compounding as they did in Texas.

Such a multidisciplinary approach could allow planners to map out how various systems interact, identify key dependencies and forecast what must be done to minimize risk in each system – as part of the larger whole.

Social vulnerability

Disasters like those set off by the Texas Coldwave expose more than planning failures and insufficiencies in physical systems – they reveal where those system fails to deliver to entire sectors of the population, exposing inequalities and their consequences.

Those who suffer the most lack access to capital to invest in risk insurance or the resources to respond once a disaster has struck. Poor quality housing, limited mobility access, lost work, and a lack of financial buffers all expose poorer communities to more damaging and enduring consequences. Social safety nets, long-term resilience planning for lives and livelihoods, and other interventions are needed. Both physical and social infrastructure require reinforcement against to risk– comprising a holistic system design for resilience.

The business case

The approach to building resilient infrastructure and systems also has to take into account market-based failures, oversights and trade-offs.

The decentralized Texas grid was excellent at delivering cheap energy and driving innovation in production modalities. This has been for renewable power generation and delivery, as well as fossil fuels. However, the preoccupation with lowering prices and investing in production gains meant that producers neglected to secure the grid for extremes in weather (winterisation) or demand (storage and grid connections or redundancies).

Gains in supply were seen as investment worthy – but securing against cold weather risk was not. As early as 2011 this was made evident, when a winter storm exposed the weakness of the system to cold weather events. There were recommendations to harden the system, but the low historical probability of weather impact was hard wired into owners and operators. Both financial and regulatory incentives were still absent – the events that unfolded a decade later have shown this response to be lethally shortsighted.

What happened in Texas need not stay in Texas. The disaster revealed market failures and failures within markets. A major challenge for changing market dynamics – one which also presents opportunities –is incorporating externalities associated with risk into pricing structures, and creating markets for risk-related eventualities.

One thing is abundantly clear: improving infrastructure resilience is more cost effective than responding to disasters that result from failures.

Building resilience

Resilience must be built into new and existing systems, from the infrastructure through to the consumer.

Texas energy is delivered through its centralized grid system, and there are few redundancies. Regions such as Texas that do not connect to neighbouring grid systems must take simple steps to make each element of its grid more resilient to weather and other hazards. The impact of breakdowns of energy grid elements – from generation to delivery –is the same regardless of its cause.

Beyond hardening all grid elements against weather and other hazards, creating redundancies in supply and storage can make power generation and delivery resilient.

Modernization of the grid, including the adoption of emerging technologies, can complement established technologies and processes. Micro, district and smart grids – introduced community by community – could Texas offer another way forward. . Decentralized energy transmission – and generation – rely on localized infrastructure interwoven into dynamic systems that can exchange and forward power. The chance of cascading failure is smaller as systems have both autonomy and interdependency, making them flexible.

Elements of a “smart grid” can also be retrofit into existing systems, wherein power districting enables more fine-tuned control of distribution, including getting networks back on line after crisis events. Energy storage in batteries is a current topic of research and market development – the costs for utility-scale battery storage have fallen significantly, dropping 70% from 2015 to 2018 – just as storage capacity has improved. This gain carries over to consumer-scale energy storage, just as electric cars popularize home-based batteries of considerable capacity.

On the consumer side, many improvements can be made. Building-based energy generation, including solar panels and geothermal heat pumps, could relieve pressure on grid systems. Energy-efficient and energy-saving building materials and architecture, appliances and wiring systems can also contribute substantially to better management of power supplies.

Nearly all infrastructure can be made more resilient to hazards and cascading failures. The water system failures that Texans experienced can also be addressed, to ensure their safe operation. Hardening the systems, including burying pipes and using backup generators and storage would go a long way toward ensuring safe water provision and wastewater management.

New and existing technologies

New technology – and the installation of established technology – could help to make existing infrastructure more resilient. This would ultimately contribute to entirely new resilient systems, helping fulfil various Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets. The interlinked nature of the SDGs can also help to guide understanding systemic risks and systemic benefits to addressing them.

Significant investment will be required in countries across the development spectrum – requiring capital, capacity building and other resources. The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) promotes resilience in new and existing infrastructure by increasing awareness, knowledge, capacity building and assistance. Through its advocacy, research, and technical support CDRI is an active partner and resource for sustainable development to create resilience to systemic risk.
Communicating and planning a better future

There is a clear need for better communication about risk and resilience – and not only to a technical audience. Interdisciplinary engagement is required, involving both community information campaigns to inform the public and targeted communication to engage stakeholders.

Better data, including risk probability, could better inform risk management ahead of disasters. Systems need to be designed around projections of future conditions – including increases in extreme weather events – rather than on past history.


The world must plan to adapt to an uncertain future – the alternative would be a plan to fail.


Jessica Bridger is an urbanist trained at Harvard GSD. She operates as a consultant and journalist, active in resilient and sustainable development issues within the UN system and externally with corporate and institutional clients.

New Mexico’s landmark coal transition law faces an uncertain timeline

Despite momentum in 2017, drought and supply chain problems are complicating the shift from fossil fuels.

Jonathan Thompson

June 28, 2022

LONG READ

This story is co-published with the Energy News Network, a nonprofit news organization that covers the nation’s transition to clean energy.

New Mexico was on track to become a model for phasing out coal power without abandoning those who have worked, lived or breathed under its smokestacks.

The state’s largest utility had already announced plans to divest from coal. A new state law would hold it to that pledge while also providing millions of dollars in funding for workers and affected communities.

“This is a really big deal,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said at the bill signing. “The Energy Transition Act fundamentally changes the dynamic in New Mexico.”


Shiprock, a sacred site to the Diné (Navajo People) is seen in the distance, the view mired in a smoky haze, in San Juan County, New Mexico.
Jeremy Wade Shockley for the Energy News Network

The 2019 law has withstood political and legal challenges, but three years later it still faces a major test. Ongoing drought, supply chain issues and rising natural gas prices threaten to complicate or delay its rollout by prolonging the life of the state’s largest and most polluting coal-fired power plant.

Advocates for a so-called just transition from fossil fuels are confident the legislation will eventually achieve its goals, but they may still face months or years more uncertainty about its timeline and implementation.
Early momentum

Lujan Grisham was elected in 2018 as part of a cohort of “Green New Deal” Democrats elected across the country. As soon as her term began, she and fellow Democrats in the statehouse, with the backing of state and regional environmental groups, set out to craft a sort of miniature Green New Deal, reviving legislation that previously had perished. 

 
New Mexico’s ‘mini’ Green New Deal, dissected

Momentum was on their side. The state’s largest utility, Public Service Company of New Mexico, known as PNM, had already said in 2017 that it was washing its hands of coal power and would close down its San Juan Generating Station in June 2022. Soon thereafter, Arizona Public Service indicated it would shut down the Four Corners Power Plant, just eight miles from the San Juan plant, in 2031.

The two facilities — originally having a combined nameplate capacity of more than 3,000 megawatts — were among half a dozen large coal plants built on the relatively sparsely populated Colorado Plateau during the 1960s and ‘70s to quench burgeoning hunger for electricity in the Southwest. The smokestacks have spewed thousands of tons of harmful particulates, including the potent neurotoxin mercury, into nearby, predominantly Navajo, communities, while shipping nearly all of the power to far-off cities.

The Energy Transition Act aims to address both the pollution and injustice. The law mandates that New Mexico electricity providers get 80% of their power from renewable sources by 2040, and 100% from carbon-free sources by 2045 — ambitious goals for a state that currently gets half its electricity from coal and a third from natural gas.

It allows a utility to take out “energy transition bonds” to cover costs associated with coal plant abandonment. That includes up to $30 million for coal mine reclamation, and up to $40 million to help displaced workers and affected communities, to be shared by the Energy Transition Indian Affairs Fund, Economic Development Assistance Fund and Displaced Worker Assistance Fund.

While the funds don’t match the estimated $100 million or more in economic impact from the closure, “it’s a good first step and gives us something for the Four Corners communities to build on,” said Robyn Jackson, interim executive director of Diné CARE, an environmental group that has held the plants’ owners to account for four decades.


Robyn Jackson, interim executive director of Diné CARE, 

on a recent tour of an abandoned oilfield near the 

San Juan Generating Station.
Jonathan Thompson

Farmington’s Republican state lawmakers, Rep. Rod Montoya and Sen. William Sharer, ardently worked to kill the bill, transition funds and all. Before its passage, they tried to require PNM to keep running the San Juan plant five years longer than planned. And, in concert with fossil fuel advocacy groups such as Power the Future, a national group calling itself “the voice of energy workers advocating for their jobs and communities, and pushing back on the radical environmental movement,” they have continued to attack it ever since, even though the act was a reaction to the plant’s closure, not its cause. In February, Montoya co-sponsored a bill that would have extended the life of the San Juan plant and included natural gas plants under state clean power sources. It didn’t pass.

Opposition has also come from an unexpected place: New Energy Economy, a Santa Fe clean energy group that has also been PNM’s most outspoken adversary on a number of issues. New Energy has said it supports the mandates to decarbonize but it is not keen on the fact that PNM’s ratepayers, not shareholders, ultimately would pay for the abandonment and just transition funds through the bonds. It argued in a 2019 court challenge that the act unconstitutionally took away state regulators’ oversight of monopoly electric utilities.

In January, New Mexico’s Supreme Court rejected New Energy’s challenge and affirmed the Public Regulation Commission’s decisions regarding abandonment and securitization. The ruling ended the legal battle over the act and cleared the way for the closure of the coal plant and the transition to clean energy.
Coal plant’s revival

But several factors have collided over the last year that could complicate and delay — perhaps for years — the transition from fossil fuels.

The summer of 2021 was brutally hot and dry across the West, dealing a one-two punch to the power grid as drought depleted hydropower supplies and the heat increased electricity demand. With a high likelihood of a repeat this year, and with solar projects delayed by a federal probe into Asian solar imports and pandemic-related supply chain constraints, PNM opted to keep one of two San Juan plant units running through September, three months past the scheduled retirement date.

Meanwhile, a virtually unknown company emerged to buy the power plants with plans to install carbon capture equipment. Enchant Energy now has more time to get its regulatory ducks in a row and to sell power from the plant — which has become more cost-competitive due to high natural gas prices. Enchant’s plant takeover is anything but a done deal, but if it were to transpire, and the plant were to continue running, it could affect the implementation of the Energy Transition Act.

Enchant Energy CEO Cindy Crane said keeping the plant open would preserve high-wage jobs at the plant and mine, about 40% of which are held by Navajo workers, while also adding hundreds of union construction jobs to build the carbon capture equipment. It also would give local officials more time to prepare for the demise of the coal industry and the economic transition it necessitates.

PNM says it will abandon the plant later this year, regardless of what happens with Enchant, and will then pay the transition funds to the state. But delivery of a portion of those funds to the affected communities could be delayed by inconsistent language in the act, said Cydney Beadles, New Mexico clean energy program manager for Western Resource Advocates Beadles, who previously was the legal division director at the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission.

The act treats “close” and “abandon” synonymously, indicating that the authors did not account for a scenario in which the plant continued to run after abandonment. The act does not specify how the funds are distributed if the plant continues operations and workers are not displaced after PNM’s abandonment, meaning the legislature probably would have to step in and decide.

Meanwhile, PNM also was making a move that could extend the life of the Four Corners Power Plant beyond APS’s 2031 exit. It proposed not just to divest from the plant, but to pay the tribe-owned Navajo Transitional Energy Company $75 million for it to take over PNM’s 13% share. Helmed by coal industry veterans, the company owns a trio of huge coal mines in the Powder River Basin.
The fight for an equitable energy economy for the Navajo Nation
Read more

More significantly, in 2013 it purchased the Navajo Mine, which feeds the Four Corners plant, meaning the company “has a self-serving interest to keep the plant running as long as possible,” according to Tó Nizhóní Ání’s Nicole Horseherder, the leader of the effort to get a just transition at the Navajo Generating Station. “And the longer that coal-generated capacity is part of the energy mix, the longer the delay in producing the economic benefits of transitioning to low-cost renewable energy.”

Even more egregious to the environmental community was that PNM proposed paying for its abandonment of Four Corners with Energy Transition Act bonds, even though it would be transferring its ownership. In other words, the utility wanted to delay or even derail its transition from coal using a law intended to expedite that same transition. State regulators rejected PNM’s proposal in December, but the utility has appealed.
“The longer that coal-generated capacity is part of the energy mix, the longer the delay in producing the economic benefits of transitioning to low-cost renewable energy.”

Meanwhile, a proposal to a committee vetting funding requests for the just transition funds could divert money back toward the fossil fuel industry.

The “consolidated proposal” by San Juan College includes pitches for a solar charging station manufacturing facility, a pumped hydropower energy storage facility, a medical waste incinerator and a retail business park in the Navajo community of Shiprock. But it also includes proposals to produce hydrogen using the area’s abundant natural gas. And a plan for a “green certification” program that would train students to be able to offer third-party green certification to oil and gas companies. While the end goal is to make oil and gas production less carbon-intensive, this sort of certification is also a form of greenwashing, according to many environmentalists, that perpetuates the fossil fuel economy.

San Juan College’s partner in this endeavor is Western States and Tribal Nations, an organization dedicated to opening up foreign markets to natural gas from the Interior West by supporting the construction of an LNG export terminal in Mexico. The organization’s chairperson is Jason Sandel, the executive vice-president of Aztec Well, a family-owned oilfield services company based in the San Juan Basin and a big hydrogen hub booster. He also helms the Energy Transition Act advisory committee, meaning he’ll be involved in vetting the proposals for funding.

Members of the environmental community say the Energy Transition Act has proven durable and will continue to do what it was meant to do as the coal economy fades.

“Coal is dying because it’s expensive and dangerous, and renewables are cheap and safe, and they are what we need to prevent the unthinkable,” said Camilla Feibelman, director of the Sierra Club’s Rio Grande chapter. “A changing economy, the impacts locally of polluting industries, and the global impacts of climate change are profoundly difficult for everyone involved, but if we work together as an integrated community to find solutions we may get there.”

Jonathan Thompson is a contributing editor at High Country News. He is the author of Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands. Email him at jonathan@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

Pipeline Technique triples workforce with US acquisition

PIPELINE TECHNIQUE

An Aberdeenshire pipeline firm serving the energy industry has tripled its workforce to more than 1,000 with an acquisition in America.

Pipeline Technique (PTL) is buying the welding, coating and fabrication arm of Stanley Black and Decker.

It will service customers in oil and gas, renewables and carbon capture.

PTL said the deal would see turnover reach $200m (£163m) and grow its headcount from about 350 people to more than 1,000.

The firm will acquire the three groups of companies that make up the oil and gas division - CRC-Evans, Pipeline Induction Heat (PIH), and Stanley Inspection.

Frederic Castrec, chief executive officer of PTL, described it as a "transformational" deal.

He said: "With a strengthened welding, coating, and inspection service offering, we are now a company that can service every area in the energy value chain - from oil and gas to renewables and carbon capture - in any location in the world.

"This deal is a major step forward and the timing of this acquisition could not be better as the sector undergoes significant change."

Bill to legalize ‘magic mushrooms’ in N.J. rolled out by Senate president

2022/6/30 
© Advance Local Media LLC.

Senate President Nicholas Scutari unveiled a new bill on June 23 that would legalize the use of psilocybin, aka "Magic Mushrooms," to treat mental health disorders. 

Photo by Emily Bingham | MLive.com

A year and a half ago, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law authored by state Sen. Nicholas Scutari that reduced the penalties for possession of psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms, in New Jersey.

Now Scutari, who has since become Senate president, wants to legalize the psychedelic drug for adults to treat depression, anxiety, and other disorders in the state.

As the state Legislature was wrapping up details of a new $50.6 billion state budget last week, Scutari, D-Union, introduced a new bill that would set up a legal, regulatory, and therapeutic framework for using psilocybin to treat mental health in the state.

The bill, S2934, called the Psilocybin Behavioral Health Access and Services Act, would make it legal for New Jersey adults 21 and older to “possess, store, use, ingest, inhale, process, transport, deliver without consideration, or distribute without consideration, four grams or less of psilocybin.”

Adults would also be allowed to grow, cultivate and process plants or fungi capable of producing psilocybin for personal use as long as they keep it away from minors.

“This bill is a recognition of evolving science related to psilocybin and its medical uses related to mental health, and if science can provide relief in any fashion with this natural substance under a controlled environment then we should encourage this science,” Scutari told NJ Advance Media.

Some psychedelic drug experts said this is a progressive proposal that takes psilocybin policy reform to the next level.

An insert in the New Jersey bill that allows home grow of psilocybin mushrooms is drawing comparisons to cannabis.

Only licensed operators can grow cannabis in New Jersey — even for medical use — which puts the psilocybin bill ahead on that front.

“I think it’s a very good idea that you can cultivate mushrooms at home, and I support cultivation of cannabis at home,” Noah Potter, principle at Legal Market Strategies, a New York psychedelic sector consulting firm. “It doesn’t make any sense to include criminal prohibitions when cultivating a naturally occurring substance.”

Potter said there was a contradiction in permitting psilocybin cultivation from home and not cannabis.

“The question is, `What’s the rationale — other than trying to protect the for-profit commercial sector?” said Potter.

It’s a question others say could surface as the mushrooms bill advances through Trenton — much like the massive cannabis bill that Gov. Phil Murphy signed in February 2021 after a five year journey. New Jersey launched legal weed on April 21. So far 16 locations are selling adult weed with at least three more dispensaries pending: Verano in Neptune, Ascend in Montclair and TerrAscend in Lodi.

“This is an extremely progressive bill,” said Potter. “It reflects the evolution of state level psilocybin bills since 2019.”

Dan McKillop, a partner at Scarinci Hollenbeck who co-chairs the Psychedelics Law Subcommittee of the New Jersey State Bar Association, noted the connection between legalizing marijuana and legalizing magic mushrooms.

“Psychedelic law is where cannabis was a half dozen years ago, following an inevitable trend into the mainstream legal use,” said McKillop. “It is interesting the way it’s (Scutari’s bill) set up. There are a lot of similarities to the way the adult use cannabis market is being constructed and is now being implemented.”

McKillop also noted the eye-catching home grow provision.

“This bill not only decriminalizes and expunges past offenses involving psilocybin, but it also actually at least opens the door towards a home grow aspect,” said McKillop. “It goes beyond the cannabis bill and the cannabis program.”

Scutari, the chief architect of both the state’s medical marijuana and adult recreational adult cannabis laws, inserted an amendment to reduce penalties on mushrooms to the marijuana decriminalization measure in late 2020. But backers decided to sever the psilocybin legislation from the marijuana legalization measure and make them two separate bills. The bills passed in both chambers by huge majorities.

Murphy signed the mushroom bill into law on Feb. 4, 2021, that reclassified possession of psilocybin as a disorderly-persons offense from a third-degree crime in New Jersey. With that law, possession of a small amount subjects individuals to a maximum fine of $1,000 and up to six months in prison.

Psilocybin policy reform started in state legislatures in 2019 and gained steam as the psychedelic earned some credibility.

The federal Food and Drug Administration designated the psychedelic as a “breakthrough therapy” for treating major depressive disorder based on preliminary clinical trials.

Oregon voters approved a historic ballot initiative in 2020 to make psilocybin legal for adults. A bill in the California State Legislature would legalize psilocybin possession and distribution in specified amounts.

Scutari’s new psilocybin measure calls for the development of an 18-member Psilocybin Behavioral Health Access and Services Advisory Board within the New Jersey Department of Health. The board would “provide advice and recommendations to the (Department of Health), upon request or upon the board’s own initiative, concerning the implementation of the bill,” according to the legislation.

“It’s a bold and needed step in the right direction; albeit somewhat confusing considering we still have not addressed cannabis home grow and re-sentencing for the associated drug manufacturing charge,” said attorney Beau Huch, former senior aide to Sen. Declan O’Scanlon, R-Monmouth, who worked on both medical and recreational cannabis bills.

But McKillop is predicting the bill could start a new round of dialogue.

“If the home grow provision of the psilocybin bill survives the legislative process and is actually enacted into law, folks who are arguing for home grown cannabis would have a stronger argument,” said McKillop.

The 50-page bill was referred to the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee, which will likely take it up in the fall.

It would need to be passed by the Democratic-controlled state Senate and Assembly and signed by Murphy, a Democrat, to become law.

Suzette Parmley may be reached at sparmley@njadvancemedia.com or follow her on Twitter: @SuzParmley

UCP & TORYS IN CANADA

The right-wing attack on higher education is about the difference between free speech and academic freedom

Rod Graham
June 30, 2022

Teacher in a classroom (Shutterstock)

Rightwing Republicans have since at least the 1960s accused college campuses of indoctrinating students with leftist ideologies. They call for more free speech (read: rightwing speech) in order to combat such indoctrination. And, recently, the calls have been getting louder.

The most visible manifestation of this is Turning Point USA (TPUSA). TPUSA maintains a website called the Professor Watchlist. TPUSA’s list includes academics who are well-known, including Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis. Some are lesser-known. The list also includes lesser-known but vocal academics such as Dr. Anthea Butler, whose authorship of White Evangelical Racism and frequent contributions to MSNBC are tailor-made to catch TPUSA’s eye.

On the TPUSA’s ProfessorWatchlist “about” page, one sees this passage (I bolded key points):
TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right of professors to say whatever they believe; however students, parents and alumni deserve to know the specific incidents and names of professors that advance a radical agenda in our lecture halls.”

READ MORE: Hardening' schools is conceding defeat to violence and death

This statement could have come from any rightwinger.

From my perspective, as an academic, it boils down to a choice.

Do we want our academics to continue teaching and researching according to professional standards? Or do we want academics to compromise those standards in the name of free speech (read: rightwing speech). This understanding hinges on the difference between freedom of speech and academic freedom.

On freedom of speech and academic freedom

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has some ideas. In a webinar earlier this year that can be found on YouTube, DePaul University professor Dr. Valerie Johnson describes the differences between academic freedom and freedom of speech. These ideas, often used interchangeably, are quite distinct.

Freedom of speech and civic engagement is based on the equality of ideas. It is an individual right regulated by law. All speech, at least theoretically, is given equal protection. At a civic meeting, the wealthy Ivy-league educated corporate executive and the working-class custodian have the equal right to express themselves.

By contrast, academic freedom and the classroom experience are based on an inequality of ideas. As Dr. Johnson explained, academic freedom protects activities “manifesting disciplinary competence.”

An academic’s discipline generates knowledge. This knowledge is taught in classrooms. Their discipline has standards for generating new knowledge. These standards apply when conducting research. Academics are protected when research falls within these standards.

When an academic’s activities “manifest disciplinary competence,” they are free to pursue those activities. They can choose their research paths and course content. Teaching certain courses is required, but they choose readings and teaching strategy.

So what conservatives see as indoctrination is simply academics relaying those elevated ideas as determined by their discipline to their students. Sure, the students should be able to have discussions and bring in their perspectives – left, right and center. But ultimately the professor must teach the conclusions from their discipline.

Therefore, threats to academic freedom take a specific form: any group or individual who does not have disciplinary expertise attempting to regulate what academics do violates their freedom.

With this understanding of the difference between free speech and academic freedom, we can look more closely at why this rightwing push for free speech in classrooms (read: rightwing speech) will ultimately force academics to choose competence or conservatism.

Competence or conservatism

While academics tend to be liberal politically, they are bound by professional standards. Third-party accreditation bodies periodically review their course offerings (my university is going through this right now). Moreover, the specific content of a course will always be couched within the consensus from their disciplinary area.

Suppose a professor is teaching Introduction to Sociology. Certain ideas and concepts must be taught for the course to be considered a proper Introduction to Sociology course. The professor’s politics will certainly color some classroom discussions, but ultimately the core content of that course is determined by the discipline.

TPUSA has Faryha Salim on their watchlist. Salim, an adjunct professor at Cypress College, was recorded in a zoom classroom session clashing with a student about police and policing.

The student described police as heroes. Salim countered by claiming that American policing grew out of slave patrols and that police have committed atrocious acts toward citizens and gotten away with it.

Salim also said she would not call the police if in danger because she does not trust them. Her life would be in more danger. The video of that exchange went viral. Salim was removed from the class.

I believe that Salim’s tone could have been better. Students should be able to articulate their viewpoints before the professor relays their discipline’s findings. I can see the concern in that direction.

But the claims that Salim makes are widely accepted within the discipline. The claim that US policing grew out of slave patrols is at this point well understood and a standard claim in criminology. She’s also right that police have done horrible things to citizens and gotten away with it. Finally, the notion that people of color are in more danger in the presence of police is a bit hyperbolic for my taste, but she’s hardly alone in that regard.

 It’s boilerplate in criminology.

Indeed, if a student today graduates with a degree in criminology and does not know the ideas Salim is relaying to her student, ideas that are not hers alone, that degree program has failed that student.

Or consider Dr. Betsey Stevenson, an economist from the University of Michigan. Dr. Stevenson conducted research showing that the vast majority of people found in economics textbooks were male and that this could explain why few women pursue the field of economics.

This is considered a “radical agenda” by TPUSA.

So Dr. Stevenson is on their watchlist.

In reality, Dr. Stevenson is a paragon of professional competence. According to a write-up by her university, she, along with her co-author, presented this work at the annual American Economic Association conference and published this study in a peer-reviewed journal. Her work was then summarized in The Economist.

So what does TPUSA want Dr. Stevenson to do?

She asked a research question acceptable within her field, used the proper methods to generate an answer, presented their findings for critique by peers and colleagues, and then co-published the work.

The examples of Salim and Stevenson point to a question TPUSA and conservatives generally must answer. Do they want professional competence or do they want academics to compromise their standards in order to add more content that conservatives will like?

Choose academic freedom, not free speech

I focused on TPUSA because of its visibility. But they are emblematic of a conservative push in state legislatures across the country.

According to a report by PEN America, 54 separate bills intended to restrict teaching and learning in educational institutions were introduced between January and September 2021. Indeed, on the day that I am finishing this piece, Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin signed our state budget. He pushed for a provision that “requires each public college to adopt an official policy on academic freedom and begin reporting on the state of free expression and diversity of thought on their campus.”

Conservatives are calling for more free speech in order to force professors to consider unsupported conservative ideas. Progressives need to push back on this and advocate for more academic freedom.

Choosing academic freedom is choosing competence.

Rod Graham is a sociologist. A professor at Virginia's Old Dominion University, he researches and teaches courses in the areas of cyber-crime and racial inequality. His work can be found at roderickgraham.com. Follow him @roderickgraham.

Eight killed in Sudan as protesters rally on uprising anniversary

2022/6/30 
© Reuters


KHARTOUM (Reuters) -At least eight protesters were shot dead in Sudan on Thursday, medics said, as large crowds took to the streets despite heavy security and a communications blackout to rally against the military leadership that seized power eight months ago.

In central Khartoum, security forces fired tear gas and water cannon in the afternoon as they tried to prevent swelling numbers of protesters from marching towards the presidential palace, witnesses said.

They estimated the crowds in Khartoum and its twin cities of Omdurman and Bahri to be at least in the tens of thousands, the largest for months. In Omdurman, witnesses reported tear gas and gunfire as security forces prevented protesters from crossing into Khartoum, though some later made it across.

The protests in the capital and other cities marked the third anniversary of huge demonstrations during the uprising that overthrew long-time autocratic ruler Omar al-Bashir and led to a power-sharing arrangement between civilian groups and the military.

Last October, the military led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan toppled the transitional government, triggering rallies demanding the army quit politics.

Some of Thursday's protesters carried banners calling for justice for those killed in previous demonstrations. Others chanted, "Burhan, Burhan, back to the barracks and hand over your companies," - reference to the military's economic holdings.

In the evening, protesters in Bahri and Khartoum said they were starting sit-ins against Thursday's deaths, one of the highest single-day tolls to date.

June 30 also marks the day Bashir took power in a coup in 1989.

"Either we get to the presidential palace and remove al-Burhan or we won't return home," said a 21-year-old female student protesting in Bahri.

It was the first time in months of protests that internet and phone services had been cut. After the military takeover, extended internet blackouts were imposed in an apparent effort to weaken the protest movement.

Staff at Sudan's two private sector telecoms companies, speaking on condition of anonymity, said authorities had ordered them to shut down the internet once again on Thursday.

BRIDGES SHUT

Phone calls within Sudan were also cut and security forces closed bridges over the Nile linking Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri - another step typically taken on big protest days to limit the movement of marchers.

On Wednesday, medics aligned with the protest movement said security forces shot dead a child in Bahri during neighbourhood protests that have been taking place daily.

Thursday's eight deaths, six in Omdurman, one in Khartoum and another child in Bahri brought the number of protesters killed since the coup to 111. There were many injuries and attempts by security forces to storm hospitals in Khartoum where they were being treated, the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors said.

There was no immediate comment from Sudanese authorities.

The United Nations envoy in Sudan, Volker Perthes, called this week on authorities to abide by a pledge to protect the right of peaceful assembly.

"Violence against protesters will not be tolerated," he said.

Military leaders said they dissolved the government in October because of political paralysis, though they are yet to appoint a prime minister. International financial support agreed with the transitional government was frozen after the coup and an economic crisis has deepened.

Burhan said on Wednesday the armed forces were looking forward to the day when an elected government could take over, but this could only be done through consensus or elections, not protests.

Mediation efforts led by the United Nations and the African Union have so far yielded little progress.

(Reporting by Khartoum bureau; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Alex Richardson, Mark Heinrich and Daniel Wallis)

India's women water warriors transform parched lands

Agence France-Presse
June 30, 2022

India is struggling to meet the water needs of its 1.4 billion people -- a problem worsening as climate change makes weather patterns more unpredictable 

SANJAY KANOJIA AFP

As the monsoon storms bear down on India, a dedicated group of women hope that after years of backbreaking labour, water shortages will no longer leave their village high and dry.

The world's second-most populous country is struggling to meet the water needs of its 1.4 billion people -- a problem worsening as climate change makes weather patterns more unpredictable.

Few places have it tougher than Bundelkhand, a region south of the Taj Mahal, where scarce water supplies have pushed despairing farmers on the plains to give up their lands and take up precarious work in the cities.

"Our elders say that this stream used to run full throughout the year, but now there is not a single drop," said Babita Rajput while guiding AFP past a bone-dry fissure in the earth near her village.

"There is a water crisis in our area," she added. "All our wells have dried up."

Three years ago, Rajput joined Jal Saheli ("Friends of Water"), a volunteer network of around 1,000 women working across Bundelkhand to rehabilitate and revive disappeared water sources.

Together they carry rocks and mix concrete to build dams, ponds and embankments to catch the fruits of the June monsoon, a season which accounts for about 75 percent of India's annual rainfall.

Agrotha, where Rajput lives, is one of more than 300 villages where women are chalking out plans for new catchment sites, reservoirs and waterway revitalizations.

Rajput said their work had helped them retain monsoon rainwater for longer and revive half a dozen water bodies around their village.

Though not yet self-sufficient, Agrotha's residents are no longer among the roughly 600 million Indians that a government think-tank says face acute water shortages daily.

The women's efforts provide a rare glimmer of hope as national shortages worsen.

Water utilities in the capital New Delhi fail to meet demand in summer, with trucks regularly traveling into slums to supply residents unable to draw water from their taps.

India's NITI Aayog public policy centre forecasts that around 40 percent of the country's population could be without access to drinking water by the end of the decade.

'Government has failed'

Erratic rainfall patterns and extreme heat have been linked to climate change in Bundelkhand, which has suffered several long dry spells since a drought was declared at the turn of the century.

Civil society activist Sanjay Singh helped train women in Agrotha to harvest and store rainwater after the surrounding land was desiccated by drought.

By doing so he helped the village rediscover knowledge that was lost decades earlier, when water went from being a community-managed resource to one administered by India's government.

"But government has failed to ensure water to every citizen, particularly in rural areas, pushing villagers to go back to the old practice," he told AFP.

Before Agrotha's irrigation project began, women had to walk miles every day in a desperate and often fruitless search for a well that was not dry.

In India's villages, fetching water is traditionally the responsibility of women, several of whom have faced violence from their husbands after being unable to find enough for their households, Singh said.

He added that drought had brought big social changes to the region, pushing men to move to cities and leave their families behind.

But since it was founded in 2005, the Jal Saheli initiative has helped more than 110 villages become self-reliant for their water needs and aided in reversing the outward flow of people.

Dust bowl to oasis

In the nearby Lalitpur district, the elderly Srikumar has seen the initiative transform her community from a dust bowl into an oasis.

She heard about the volunteer group a decade ago after suffering through years of water shortages, by the end of which every well and hand pump in her village of 500 people had run dry.

Most of the farms in the area had turned barren because of a lack of irrigation, and dehydrated cattle herds were dying in summer temperatures close to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit).

"Villagers suffered a lot during those days," Srikumar said. "Farming was impossible and men were fleeing their homes to cities to earn a living."

With the help of Singh's charity, Srikumar and a dozen other volunteers dug a football field-sized reservoir near the village that holds up to 10 feet (three meters) of water after the monsoon rains arrive.

The village now has enough water reserves to meet its needs year-round and replenish the earth that had dried out before their intervention.

"Things have changed for good. We have enough water now, not just for our homes but also for our cattle," she told AFP.

"Our lives would have been miserable without this pond," she added. "It would have been very difficult to survive."

© 2022 AFP