IOWA

Proposed 350-mile carbon capture pipeline would go through Johnson County. Here's what you need to know.

IT'S BUILDING A PIPELINE CAUSES DAMAGE, DOESN'T MATTER WHAT IT TRANSPORTS

George Shillcock, Iowa City Press-Citizen
Thu, July 7, 2022 

A sliver of northeastern Johnson County is included in the latest proposal for a carbon capture pipeline in Iowa after two much larger projects completely avoided the area.

A map of a proposed pipeline filed with the Iowa Utilities Board shows the main artery of the 350-mile project would extend from an Archer Daniels Midland Co. location in Cedar Rapids, cutting southeast through Johnson, Linn, Cedar, Clinton and Scott counties. A second lateral line would run north from Davenport to another ADM location in Clinton.

Wolf Carbon Solutions, based in Denver, is partnering with ADM on the proposed pipeline. The company announced in January that it intended to build a pipeline in Iowa. A news release from the companies said the pipeline will transport carbon dioxide from ADM’s ethanol and cogeneration facilities in Clinton and Cedar Rapids to be stored permanently underground at ADM’s already-operational sequestration site in Decatur, Illinois.

While the main line wouldn't go directly through Johnson County, the proposed route's 2-mile corridor does include the northeastern part of the county. Other pipeline proposals in Iowa have avoided running through Johnson County, where opposition is expected.

"This is an exciting opportunity for ADM to connect some of our largest processing facilities with our carbon capture capabilities, advancing our work to significantly reduce our CO2 emissions while delivering sustainable solutions for our customers," ADM president of carbohydrate solutions Chris Cuddy said in the release. "These efforts are core to our purpose, our culture and our growth, and we look forward to working with Wolf Carbon Solutions to finalize this agreement and further decarbonize our operations and our industry.”

Nick Noppinger at Wolf Carbon Solutions told the Press-Citizen in an email statement that the company's goal is to reach voluntary agreements through respectful and open discussions with all landowners along this proposed route. He said the proposed 2-mile corridor, with one mile on each side of a proposed center line, would enable them to cooperatively work with landowners to determine the best possible route.

“Wolf Carbon Solutions is committed to building and maintaining meaningful relationships with landowners," Noppinger said.

The proposed 350-mile carbon capture pipeline from Wolf Carbon Solutions US, LLC

This pipeline is one of several proposed in the Midwest that would run through Iowa, drawing criticism from environmental groups and landowners amid fears that eminent domain will be used to take property for the construction of pipelines.

Other critics argue the pipelines don't do enough to lower carbon emissions and say Iowa should focus on transitioning the state's farming economy away from producing renewable fuel, and the corn and soybean crops needed to make it.

Three companies — Summit Carbon Solutions, Navigator CO2 Ventures and ADM-Wolf — want to build pipelines that run through Iowa that will be used to move carbon dioxide captured from ethanol, fertilizer and other agricultural industrial plants.

The Johnson County Board of Supervisors and other county governments and elected officials and also signaled strong opposition to these projects.

More: What we know about three carbon capture pipelines proposed in Iowa
Company claims to push for carbon-neutrality, but critics questions eminent domain tactics and environmental impact

The 350-mile pipeline would include both a main line running west to east from Cedar Rapids into Illinois, and a lateral line running south to north from just north of Davenport to Clinton.

The company would use pressure to liquefy the carbon dioxide, and the pipelines would transport it and then inject it deep underground where it will be permanently sequestered. Summit Carbon plans to sequester carbon in North Dakota; Navigator CO2 and Wolf-ADM plan to do so in Illinois.

ADM and Wolf expect to transport 12 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.

The news release from Wolf-ADM states that ADM’s carbon capture and sequestration capabilities in Decatur have allowed it to safely and permanently store more than 3.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide 1½ miles underground and have paved the way for increased decarbonization of the company’s operations. The company announced plans to construct a zero-emissions power plant adjacent to the company’s Decatur corn complex, and wants to achieve the wheat milling industry’s first carbon-neutral footprint.

This map, based on information in March 2022, shows the proposed route of the 2,000-mile Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline that will carry pressurized carbon dioxide from ethanol plants to a sequestration site a mile underground in central North Dakota. About 470 miles of the pipeline would be located in South Dakota.

The release said the pipeline would have significant spare capacity to serve other third-party customers looking to decarbonize across the Midwest and Ohio River Valley.

To build the pipeline, Wolf-ADM will either have to purchase land from many private property owners along the 350-mile route or acquire permission from the Iowa Utilities Board and county governments to use eminent domain to acquire the land, regardless or the support of private landowners.

While landowners can refuse to voluntarily give up their land for this type of project, Summit, Navigator and ADM-Wolf can ask the three-person Iowa Utilities Board to grant eminent domain powers if they're determined to serve a public purpose. That would force unwilling landowners to grant easements at fair market values.

Eminent domain is a power a government entity or its agent can use to take private property for public use while compensating landowners. In this case, if the board grants eminent domain powers, it would force unwilling landowners to sell ADM-Wolf the rights to build across their property.

The Des Moines Register reported that several experts are skeptical of the environmental impact of these pipelines, despite the White House saying that carbon sequestration projects likely will be needed to meet President Joe Biden's climate goal of net-zero emissions economywide by 2050.

The proposals have drawn bipartisan ire from politicians and became an issue prior to the primary elections, including for four of the six Republicans who ran for a Iowa House of Representatives seat, and others throughout the state. As recently as March, a large group of people opposing a pipeline project gathered in the Iowa Capitol.

Wolf-ADM is asking for several informational meetings to take place in September. The company could bypass the need to use eminent domain by reaching out to landowners along the proposed route and attempting to negotiate easements.

More: Iowa official asks Summit Carbon Solutions for more information about possible pipeline leaks, dangers

Johnson County Supervisors express opposition to carbon capture pipelines

The Johnson County Board of Supervisors has already taken a strong stance against carbon capture pipelines, months before any route was officially proposed to run through the county.

The board sent two letters opposing the other two pipeline projects using eminent domain, even though they would not run through Johnson County.

On Wednesday, Supervisor Jon Green told the board about the Wolf-ADM project and said he would like to see the Supervisors send an additional letter stating the county's opposition. The rest of the board signaled its support for an additional letter.

Green, in April, speculated that such a pipeline would eventually make its way to Johnson County and suggested the board should put its "finger on the scale." The other Supervisors agreed and the letter was sent.

When The Cedar Rapids Gazette first reported about this proposed pipeline Tuesday, Green tweeted his opposition to it running through Johnson County.

Michael Daly, a resident of Cedar Township in Johnson County, said at the April meeting that a potential pipeline could cut into his land. It is unclear if this proposal would

"My interest now is more urgent to find some solution," he said. "About the only thing we can do is object."

Supervisor Lisa Green-Douglass said in April that eminent domain should be used for "the greater good and not for private enterprise or private profit, which is what this would be."

The latest version of Navigator Co.'s proposed Heartland Greenway carbon capture pipeline.

The Linn County Supervisors also signed a letter in January opposing using eminent domain for pipelines.

Johnson County Board of Supervisors Executive Director Mike Hensch said in April that he wanted to remind the public that, even if eminent domain is exercised, objections from landowners will go to a county compensation commissions. Hensch is a member of the compensation commission and said he was not taking a position on the issue.

"Each county, in the compensation commissions, can refuse the amount of money that is being recommended. And the step beyond that is district court. We're years away," he said.

More: Advocacy group estimates carbon capture pipelines crossing Iowa will get $23 billion at public expense

Wolf-ADM requests public meetings in September

ADM-Wolf is proposing five public informational meetings in the counties that the pipeline would go through, and a sixth that would be virtual.

"Wolf is committed to transparent, two-way communication throughout this process and is enthusiastic about bringing the economic and environmental benefits of this carbon capture and storage project to Iowa," its letter read.

The letter said that once dates are confirmed, the company will make reservations for suitable locations in each county. Each location will have Wi-Fi capabilities and will be ADA-compliant.

More: Tech giants like renewable energy, but question cost of MidAmerican's $3.9 billion wind, solar plan

George Shillcock is the Press-Citizen's local government and development reporter covering Iowa City and Johnson County. He can be reached at (515) 350-6307, GShillcock@press-citizen.com and on Twitter @ShillcockGeorge

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Where a carbon capture pipeline could run through Johnson County

Tear gas: Senators decry lack of federal safety assessment

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — In 2020, Black Lives Matter protesters were doused with tear gas, making them gasp for breath, their eyes feeling as if they were on fire. Bystanders, including children and pregnant women, were also exposed.

Andrew Selsky, The Associated Pressa

FILE - A demonstrator kneels and uses a makeshift shield as federal agents launch tear gas during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, Ore., on July 29, 2020. Questions posed by lawmakers, medical workers and experts about the safety of tear gas remain unanswered, even after more than a dozen U.S. senators asked a congressional watchdog to look into the issue. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — In 2020, Black Lives Matter protesters were doused with tear gas, making them gasp for breath, their eyes feeling as if they were on fire. Bystanders, including children and pregnant women, were also exposed.

As police responded to mass protests across the nation two years ago with tear gas and other chemical munitions, more than a dozen U.S. senators asked the congressional watchdog to find out whether federal agencies have assessed how safe they are.

But the report by the Government Accountability Office skipped that question, dedicating only three paragraphs to the effects of “chemical irritants” and flash-bangs. Both of the U.S. senators from Oregon — where the Trump administration deployed militarized federal agents — believe the report leaves too many questions unanswered and are calling for regulation of the tear gas industry.

The GAO report noted there were incidents in which less-lethal force may have been used by federal agents in violation of policy, but provided no details.

“This report is completely inadequate,” U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, one of the report requesters, said through spokeswoman Molly Prescott. “Congress and the American people deserve to know the details to better understand the significant issues and damage done by inappropriate use of less-lethal force."

Portland, Oregon’s largest city, was an epicenter of the protests, with months of nightly, often violent demonstrations and vandalism following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. Portland police used tear gas and pepper balls against protesters, and the Trump administration sent militarized federal agents to the city, starting in July 2020.

At least 1,315 federal officers were deployed to Oregon, according to a redacted document obtained by U.S Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, from the Department of Homeland Security. They used more than a dozen different types of crowd-control devices, including 40 mm canisters loaded with tear gas or an oily extract of pepper plants, 40mm “direct impact rounds” loaded with tear gas or pepper compounds, smoke grenades and foggers that emit chemical irritants, the document showed.

Law enforcement officials say tear gas, if used properly, is an effective tool for crowd control. On Sunday, police in Akron, Ohio, used tear gas against people protesting the shooting of Jayland Walker, a Black man who was killed by police on June 27 in a hail of gunfire.

Wyden isn’t satisfied with the GAO report and will keep pressing for answers, spokesman Hank Stern said.

Gretta Goodwin, a director of the GAO and lead author of the report released late last year, said her office was unable to answer the senators’ question on whether federal agencies have assessed the safety and effectiveness of tear gas and other chemical munitions, or their impacts on underlying health conditions.

“We start out by looking to see what information is out there,” Goodwin said over the phone. “We weren’t really able to find anything.”

Instead of government oversight, the multi-billion-dollar industry regulates itself, a situation Wyden believes must end.

“He will push ... for the appropriate federal agencies to oversee the manufacture of tear gas in our country, as well as to undertake an urgently needed non-industry and neutral study into the impact of these weapons on human health and the environment,” Stern said.

The Associated Press previously found few studies exist on the health effects of tear gas, with many being old and focusing on military personnel, who tend to be healthier and in better physical condition than the general public.

The GAO found that three federal agencies — the Marshals Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Secret Service — don’t even document when officers violate their agencies’ policies while using these weapons.

“That needs to be known. That needs to be more transparent,” Goodwin said.

Among controversial tactics and actions taken by law enforcement during Black Lives Matter protests: "Kettling,” in which police seal off escape routes while blanketing people in tear gas and firing pepperballs; and firing projectiles point-blank at people. Donavan LaBella suffered severe injuries while peacefully protesting in Portland when he was hit in the face by a projectile fired by a federal officer.

Samira Green, pregnant at the time, found herself enveloped by tear gas fired by Portland police on June 2, 2020.

“Literally, you cannot breathe anything. It is clenched,” Green said, describing how her lungs seemed to seize up.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that “long-lasting exposure or exposure to a large dose of riot control agent, especially in a closed setting” may cause blindness, glaucoma, severe chemical burns to the throat and lungs, respiratory failure and death.

The GAO report footnoted a 2016 study by Physicians for Human Rights and the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations on health consequences of crowd-control weapons.

But the congressional watchdog agency should have noted that “our data is quite limited because there is no transparency about the weapons,” said Rohini Haar, co-author of the 2016 study.

Tear gas, which is banned in warfare by the Chemical Weapons Convention, is getting more powerful, Haar said. Silicon is sometimes added to make tear gas last longer in the air and on surfaces, even though its health effects are unknown, said Haar, an emergency room physician and researcher at the University of California School of Public Health in Berkeley.

Haar said it’s time for the U.S. government to either do its own research on riot-control agents or support others to conduct it.

Andrew Selsky, The Associated Press

Serial Collapses of Ancient Pueblo Societies Offer a Stark Warning For Today's World

Tessa Koumoundouros 

In the area where the Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexican borders now meet, ancestral Pueblo societies thrived and then collapsed several times, over the span of 800 years.


© Daniela DuncanPuebloans Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde, Colorado.

Each time they recovered, their culture transformed. This shifting history can be seen in their pottery and the incredible stone and earth dwellings they created. During 300 of those years, some Pueblo peoples, who also used ink tattoos, were ruled by a matrilineal dynasty.

As in the collapse of other ancient civilizations, ancestral Pueblo social collapses align with periods of changing climate – but Pueblo farmers often persevered through droughts, suggesting that there was more to their collapses than just environmental conditions.

So last year archaeologists took a closer look at what was happening in these societies, before 1400 CE, leading up to their times of upheaval. Using tree-ring analyses of wood beams for building construction allowed the researchers to construct a time series of the Pueblo societies' productivity.

Peak construction periods were clustered around good maize growing seasons, even though these times, on average, were not climatically better for growing maize than when there was a lull in said construction.

The recent research found that while the societies often bounced back fairly quickly after construction lulled, there were distinct slow-downs in recovery that coincided with increased signs of violence.

This sort of system slowdown can be seen in other regional collapses of ancient societies like the Neolithic Europeans, that had no link to changing climates. It's also a feature of complex systems as diverse as the tropical rainforest and the human brain.

"Those warning signals turn out to be strikingly universal," said Wageningen University complexity scientist Marten Scheffer. "They are based on the fact that slowing down of recovery from small perturbations signals loss of resilience."

Scheffer and colleagues suspect slowly accumulating social tensions - like wealth inequality, racial injustice, and general unrest - wore away at social cohesion until all it took was a bit more pressure from another drought to tip them over the edge. This appears to have happened to the Pueblo peoples around 700, 900, and 1140 CE.

However, during the late 1200s, a combination of drought and external conflict spurred the ancestral Pueblo peoples to permanently leave the region.

"Societies that are cohesive can often find ways to overcome climate challenges," explained Washington State University archaeologist Tim Kohler back in 2021.

"But societies that are riven by internal social dynamics of any sort – which could be wealth differences, racial disparities or other divisions – are fragile because of those factors. Then climate challenges can easily become very serious."

The ancient Pueblo peoples did find a way to thrive elsewhere, possibly by dramatically transforming their culture once more, and today their descendants live on tribal lands surrounding the empty places that were once the center of the Pueblo world. Their history provides us with a significant warning.

"Today we face multiple social problems including rising wealth inequality along with deep political and racial divisions, just as climate change is no longer theoretical," Kohler said. "If we're not ready to face the challenges of changing climate as a cohesive society, there will be real trouble."

If we want to avoid repeating history, we'd better pay attention.

Their research was published in PNAS.

AN APPRAISAL

Remembering James Caan and His Potent Mix of Swagger and Delicacy

“The Godfather” helped open up a range of roles for the actor that allowed him to play against type and expectation in wonderful ways.

James Caan’s career may have risen and fallen, but he brought a greatness to it overall.

Credit...Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images


By Manohla Dargis

July 8, 2022

I’m not sure who owned the book, but eventually it ended up in my sweaty young hands. Someone at school had told me about the scene in Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather,” the one in which Sonny Corleone, the reckless eldest son with a Cupid face and a massive endowment, steals off with one of his sister’s bridesmaids. I remember racing through the passage (“her legs were wrapped around his thighs”). It’s no wonder that when I saw Francis Ford Coppola’s film, I was more than ready for James Caan.

He was unforgettably perfect — carnal, wild, exciting. Caan may not be the actor you first think of in relation to “The Godfather,” with its astonishment of legends, but the film is impossible to imagine without his volatile, kinetic performance. Quick to anger, quick to fight, Sonny embodies his family’s terrifying violence in its purest, most unpredictable form, the kind that churns from inside, boiling up like magma. Sonny’s anger will be the death of him; it’s preordained: He must die so that his youngest brother, the deliberate, mercilessly disciplined Michael, can take over the family’s murder business.

Not every star finds as perfect a vessel as “The Godfather.” Talent counts, yes, and as an actor, Caan was more gifted and nuanced than suggested by his tough-guy persona. But the vagaries of both life and the movie business mean that few actors and fewer stars have long, creatively unimpeachable runs. Timing also matters as does taste, greed, grit and representation. Caan, who died on Wednesday at 82, has two supreme masterpieces in his filmography: “The Godfather” (1972) and Michael Mann’s “Thief” (1981). We can argue about the sweep of his career, but there’s no debating the greatness that he brought to it.

As Sonny, opposite Al Pacino’s more coolheaded Michael, Caan embodied the mob family’s most unpredictable violence.

Credit...Paramount Pictures, via Associated Press

Caan’s career emerged from the ashes of the old studio system. Following what was then a familiar career trajectory, he started in TV before moving into film, and was soon terrifying Olivia de Havilland in the schlocky 1964 thriller “Lady in a Cage.” Looking at the film now (don’t bother), their roles are almost comically emblematic of the era’s upheavals. De Havilland was classical Hollywood personified, an elegant emissary of the old studio system, while Caan would soon be among the upstarts who helped create and define that short-lived, creatively intoxicating miracle known as New Hollywood.

“Lady in a Cage” is ridiculous, but it helped set Caan’s career in motion. It would take a while for him to find material worthy of his gift, and the performance is less memorable than his outfit, which includes sandals, a tropical shirt that he later loses, exposing the rug that carpets his torso, and villainy’s de rigueur accessory: a women’s stocking pulled over his face. Notably, he’s also wearing snug-fitting jeans, which, like the sandals, were probably meant to signal his thug’s menacing nonconformity but mostly just draw attention to his body. Tight jeans, as attentive fans know, were a staple of Caan’s onscreen closet.

It was Howard Hawks, one of the geniuses of the old studio system, who shortly thereafter set Caan on his way by casting him first in “Red Line 7000” (1965) and then, more important, in “El Dorado,” a western headlined by John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. “I was this little punk working with Wayne and Mitchum,” Caan said later, recalling how, during the shoot, he and Wayne almost got into it on set. Mitchum brokered the peace, and the stars and the film came together beautifully. It opened in 1967, the same year that “Bonnie and Clyde” shook up the industry and audiences, and swept aside old Hollywood with its violence, daring and bad attitude.

By the time Caan made “The Godfather,” he had established his range in movies as different as Coppola’s directing debut, “The Rain People” (1969), and the 1971 made-for-TV movie “Brian’s Song,” a wildly popular melodrama in which he played the N.F.L. halfback Brian Piccolo, who died young of cancer. Caan also played a tragic football player in “The Rain People,” about a woman (Shirley Knight) who embarks on one of the era’s existential road trips. En route to self-discovery, she picks up Caan’s Kilgannon, a sweet, guileless, brain-damaged former player whose tragically inapt nickname is Killer.

Playing a brain-addled football player opposite Shirley Knight in “The Rain People.”

Credit...Warner Bros., via Alamy

With his thick neck and trapezoidal torso, Caan looked like the athlete he plays, but little about the performance in “The Rain People” is obvious. It’s a heavy role — Killer is the story’s sacrificial lamb — yet Caan, working with Coppola, imbues the part with a subtle, persuasive innocence that doesn’t patronize the character or sanctify his disability. As an actor, Caan certainly could go big and externalize a character’s inner workings (he does a lot around the eyebrows), and Kilgannon has his outsize moments. Yet what makes the character work is the poignant impassiveness that conveys just how brutally life has hollowed him out.

Caan’s ability to convey delicacies of feeling wasn’t a singular gift, but, in his finest roles, it worked contrapuntally with his swaggering physicality and the implied roughness telegraphed by his Bronx-and-Queens-cultivated accent. He sounded like a tough, a delinquent, a bad, potentially dangerous guy, even if his better characters were sometimes more complicated. As Caan’s reputation grew (he was a longtime favorite of this paper’s film critics) and a range of roles opened up to him, he played to and against type and expectation, becoming one of the defining faces of New Hollywood.

It may come as a surprise just how big Caan was in the 1970s, particularly if you’re really only familiar with “The Godfather.” Two years after Coppola’s film blew up, in an essay on “The Last Detail” that consecrated Jack Nicholson as a major star, The Times’s Vincent Canby also named Caan as one of the era’s other young notables alongside Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Caan’s frequent co-star, Robert Duvall. There are different reasons Caan’s reputation dimmed in the ensuing decades; for one thing, while Nicholson was solidifying his fame as a sailor in “The Last Detail,” Caan was repping the Navy in “Cinderella Liberty” (1973).

I love “Cinderella Liberty,” but it hasn’t been canonized like “The Last Detail,” written by Robert Towne and directed by Hal Ashby. But “Cinderella” deserves love, partly because Caan is terrific in it as a sailor who, during an unplanned leave, suddenly becomes involved with a good-time broad (a glorious Marsha Mason). They’re loose and funny and sexy, and together create a raw, unpredictable, memorable romance. Given how aggressively male-dominated so many 1970s classics were, it’s worth remembering that Caan was good with women in more ways than were hinted at in “The Godfather.”

THIEF Credit...MGM, via Alamy

There are all sorts of reasons the decades that followed were not always kind to Caan, including the end of New Hollywood. He made good and forgettable movies, disappeared, re-emerged and matured into avuncular roles. He was discovered by newcomers like Wes Anderson (“Bottle Rocket”) and Christopher McQuarrie (“The Way of the Gun”). For me, though, the second half of Caan’s career is demarcated by “Thief,” the 1981 thriller in which he plays a master burglar. It’s an action film with guns and violence, blowtorches and lots of tough guys, but because this is quintessential Michael Mann, it’s also a romance.

When the film was released, some critics objected to what was seen as its softer, mushier side, which feels like critic-speak for the fact that it features a woman. When Caan’s character isn’t cracking safes or skulls, he is having a tender affair with Tuesday Weld’s skittish restaurant hostess. The two fall in love, have one of Mann’s signature soul-baring conversations across a table and adopt a baby. It’s complicated. It’s also beautiful and it gets me every time I watch it. And while the film doesn’t end happily — though maybe it does — it ends happily for any viewer who’s open to it, its deep humanity and to Caan’s transcendent performance.


Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic of The Times since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. @manohladargis

MY FAVOURITE CAAN FILM

 

FINISH KXL INSTEAD

Biden Administration Signals Support for Controversial Alaska Oil Project

The administration issued an environmental review that represents a key step toward starting the Willow project. Opponents say drilling would violate Biden’s pledge to rein in fossil fuels.

A ConocoPhillips test well in 2005 in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

By Lisa Friedman

New York Times
July 8, 2022

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration took a key step toward approving a huge oil drilling project in the North Slope of Alaska, angering environmental activists who said allowing it to go forward would make a mockery of President Biden’s climate-change promise to end new oil leases.

The ConocoPhillips project, known as Willow and located in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, was initially approved under the Trump administration and was later supported by the Biden administration but was then was blocked by a judge who said the environmental review had not sufficiently considered its effects on climate change and wildlife.

On Friday, the Biden administration issued a new environmental analysis.

In that analysis, the Department of Interior said the multibillion-dollar plan would at its peak produce more than 180,000 barrels of crude oil a day and would emit at least 278 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions over its lifetime from the burning of the oil produced, as well as from construction and drilling activity at the site.

The oil company’s plan calls for five drill sites, a processing facility, hundreds of miles of pipelines, nearly 40 miles of new gravel roads, seven bridges, an airstrip and a gravel mine in a region that is home to polar bears, caribou and migratory birds. Project opponents have argued that the development would harm wildlife and produce dangerous new levels of greenhouse gases.

In a statement, the Interior Department said that the new analysis included several options, including a reduction in the number of drilling sites as well as an option for “no action” — or no drilling at all — and did not represent a final decision on the Willow project. The agency will take comments from the public for 45 days and is likely to make a final decision later this year.

The Biden Administration’s Environmental Agenda

President Biden is pushing stronger regulations, but faces a narrow path to achieving his goals in the fight against global warming.

Supreme Court Ruling: By limiting the Environmental Protection agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions, the court made it much harder for the president to achieve his climate goals.

Nuclear Power: President Biden is among several political leaders who are taking a fresh look at nuclear energy, extending the life of existing reactors and building new ones.

Defining ‘Habitat’: The Biden administration is doing away with a Trump-era definition of the term that was at odds with the conservation purposes of the Endangered Species Act.

Electric Vehicles: The transportation secretary outlined proposed regulations that would require charging stations built with federal dollars to be located no more than 50 miles apart.

Sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter Your must-read guide to the climate crisis. Get it in your inbox.

Yet just by issuing the analysis, the Biden administration signaled its support for the project, opponents said. Willow is a priority for Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a moderate Republican who is frequently the most likely senator to break with her party and support Democratic appointees and some policy compromises.

Ms. Murkowski, in a statement, welcomed the move, calling it a “major announcement” and adding that she planned to hold the administration “accountable to their commitment to see this additional environmental review through so that construction can begin this winter.”

In a statement, ConocoPhillips said that the Willow project would “create employment opportunities for union labor and contribute local tax revenue that benefits communities on the North Slope, as well as significant state and federal tax revenue for many years.”

The announcement comes as Mr. Biden seeks to show voters that he is working to increase the domestic oil supply as prices surge in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Just last week, the administration opened the door to more offshore oil and gas leasing in coastal waters over the next five years, all but ensuring significant new fossil fuel extraction.

Yet as a candidate, President Biden pledged to end new federal oil and gas leasing as he sought to assure younger voters and others concerned about climate change that he would pivot the country away from fossil fuels.

The burning of coal, oil and gas is responsible for putting vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which is leading to dangerous increases in global temperatures.

“Totally furious that @DOI is one proforma step away from approving the ConocoPhillips Willow project,” Christy Goldfuss, the senior vice president for energy and environment policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank that is strongly supportive of the Biden administration, wrote on Twitter late Friday using the Department of the Interior’s initials.

“This oil and gas project will be a hub for development for DECADES in a place that climate change is rapidly MELTING,” she wrote.

Over the past 60 years, Alaska has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the United States. Arctic ecosystems are in disarray, sea ice is disappearing, sea levels are rising, and the ground is thawing. At one point, ConocoPhillips announced plans to install “chillers” into the permafrost — which is melting because of climate change — to keep it solid enough to support the equipment to drill for oil.

The federal judge who last year blocked the project, Sharon L. Gleason of the United States District Court for Alaska, had sent the decision back to the government to redo. There was no deadline for the Biden administration to reissue a new analysis.

The Willow project is in the northeastern portion of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an area the federal government set aside for oil and gas development. The initial discovery of oil in the Willow area was made by ConocoPhillips Alaska in 2017, and the company has said the project is expected to create more than 1,000 jobs during peak construction and more than 400 permanent jobs.

The new analysis includes a new alternative that Interior Department officials said would reduce the potential size of the project by removing two of the five proposed drill sites from consideration, including the elimination of the northernmost proposed drill site and associated infrastructure in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area, important calving grounds for the Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd.

That alternative produces only slightly fewer emissions — 278 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions equivalent over the project’s 30-year lifetime — than ConocoPhillips’ preferred plan. According to the analysis, the oil company’s plan would create 284 million metric tons of emissions.

Lisa Friedman reports on federal climate and environmental policy from Washington. She has broken multiple stories about the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal climate change regulations and limit the use of science in policymaking. @LFFriedman

Suncor replaces CEO Mark Little after fatality at oil sands mine

Robert Tuttle, Bloomberg News

Suncor Energy Inc.’s chief executive officer stepped down on Friday after a series of fatalities at the company’s oil sands sites shook confidence in its management. 

Mark Little agreed to step down as president and CEO and resign from the board of directors “effective immediately,” the company said in a release. Kris Smith, executive vice president for downstream, has been named interim CEO.

Little’s resignation came a day after a worker was killed at Suncor’s Base Plant mine in northern Alberta, the latest in a series of accidents that has prompted calls for change. 

“Suncor is committed to achieving safety and operational excellence across our business, and we must acknowledge where we have fallen short and recognize the critical need for change,” Board Chair Michael Wilson said in the release.

In April, Suncor investor Elliott Investment Management LP called for five directors to be added to the producer’s board and sought a management review after operational mishaps and accidents at its oil-sands projects caused the company to miss production targets. Elliot Investment said in an email Friday that it had no comment. 

A truck accident in January killed a contractor and injured two others at the Base Plant mine. In June of last year, a person was killed at the Syncrude mine, and two deaths occurred in December 2020 at the Fort Hills mine. 

Suncor’s safety record has been a contributing factor to its poor investment returns. Over the past two years, the company’s share price has risen less than the four other major Canadian oil sands producers Cenovus Energy Inc., Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Imperial Oil Ltd. and MEG Energy Corp.

Suncor’s board has formed a committee to carry out a global search for the next CEO, the company said. External and internal candidates will be considered for the role.

Little took over leadership of the Canadian energy giant three years ago, replacing Steve Williams. He steered the company through the pandemic, when oil demand collapsed and West Texas Intermediate futures prices briefly went negative. 

Covid-19 also posed unique operational challenges for oil sands producers such as Suncor, which struggled to stem the rapid spread of the virus among thousands of workers often living and working in close quarters in remote camps. 

Little also tried to improve his company’s image within the investment community by focusing, along with other oil sands producers, on reducing the industry’s carbon emissions.

Washington is on the clock as WNBA star Brittney Griner languishes in Russian custody

Fri, July 8, 2022 

WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medallist Brittney Griner is escorted to a courtroom for a hearing, in Kimki, Russia, on Thursday. Griner faces up to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to drug possession charges. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/The Associated Press - image credit)

This is a column by Morgan Campbell, who writes opinion for CBC Sports. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

It's a point of fact that Brittney Griner is guilty of the drug charges levelled against her in Russia.

The WNBA star and two-time Olympic Gold medallist has spent every day since Feb. 17 in pretrial custody after Russian authorities found a small quantity of cannabis oil in her luggage at the Moscow Airport. Her trial was set to start this week, but instead the 31-year-old all-star power forward entered a guilty plea, and hinted at an explanation while requesting clemency from the famously austere Russian legal system.

"There was no intent," Griner reportedly told a Russian judge while entering her plea. "I didn't want to break the law."

Her lawyer, Alexander Boikov, explained that she had packed her suitcase in a hurry, and accidentally brought along the tainted cartridge.

It's also a point of common sense that Griner, who plays with UMMC Ekaterinburg during the WNBA off-season, is a pawn, caught between Russia and the U.S. during a particularly tense time in the relationship between the two superpowers. Even if Griner actually did what Russian authorities alleged, we should look skeptically at everything they're telling us.

Griner was charged with importing a "significant amount" of drugs into Russia. The cartridge in question contained 0.7 grams of cannabis.

WATCH | WNBA star Brittney Griner faces 10 years in prison fro drug charges in Russia:

This is the charge and the allegation Russia expects the rest of us to reconcile? A decade in a prison colony for a quantity of drugs that clearly qualifies as "for personal use"?

To paraphrase the old saying, many of us following Griner's case were born at night, but we weren't born last night. Russian cops could have charged Griner with something more in line with her alleged offence, threatened her with the local equivalent of a light sanction and moved on. But they pressed ahead with a process that defies any sense of proportion between potential punishment and alleged crime, while conveniently putting the U.S. in a sticky diplomatic position.

So where to from here?

U.S. president Joe Biden's administration said in a statement released earlier this week it will "pursue every avenue to bring Brittney home." But if those avenues don't lead to a prisoner swap that brings Griner home quickly, what are we even doing?

To recap, the Russian government has reportedly proposed freeing Griner in exchange for Viktor Bout, a convicted arms dealer, nicknamed "The Merchant of Death," currently serving 25 years in federal prison. Given Bout's resumé, any apprehension U.S. officials feel about a straight-up trade is understandable. Bout sold actual weapons that can kill and maim actual people. Griner had a little hash. Not even the most prudish anti-cannabis crusader would put those two offences in the same league.

Once released from prison, Bout might slide back into his old networks, old habits and old crimes.

Griner? She would — likely, hopefully — work her way back into a lead role in the WNBA, where she was named an honourary All-Star starter on Thursday morning.

WATCH | Brittney Griner won't get fair trial, expert says:

So if the Biden administration isn't already on the phone trying to arrange a swap, maybe they've deduced, reasonably, that the two people involved aren't of equal value. Maybe exchanging the wrongfully-detained Griner for the justifiably-imprisoned Bout looks like a win for a Russian regime that's been dealing in bad faith ever since Griner was first hauled into custody.

But the Russians also win if the U.S. lets her languish in custody.

The U.S. basketball community gets it, which is why they've worked so hard to keep Griner in the spotlight this season. Every WNBA player's jersey is adorned with a patch bearing Griner's number 42. Earlier this month, Dawn Staley, head coach of the women's team at the University of South Carolina, added a pointed Twitter message at President Biden to her long series of public statements in support of Griner.

"#FreeBrittneyGriner 138 days our friends and sister @brittneygriner has been wrongfully detained in a Russia prison," Staley tweeted. "@POTUS can you please read her recent cry to you and prioritize as if she was one of your kids…please."

Russian authorities, predictably, aren't impressed. Earlier this week, a Russian diplomat named Sergei A. Ryabkov accused the White House, along with Griner's supporters, of "fomenting hype," hoping to sway judicial opinion.

"The American side's attempts to … make noise in the public environment are understandable," Ryabkov told reporters in Russia. "But they don't help to practically resolve issues."

But the initial publicity, stirred up by Griner's supporters, wasn't for Russia's benefit. If the will of the American people could sway the Russian regime's behaviour, Vladimir Putin would never have sent troops into Ukraine, or co-signed on to the country's widespread interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

@NBA/Twitter

That activism has always been aimed at a domestic audience. To raise awareness among sports fans that an elite American athlete is facing 10 years in prison for a crime that might trigger a fine in North America. To signal to the public that the quiet diplomacy U.S. officials pursued in the weeks immediately after Griner's arrest hadn't budged the Russians. And to jolt the U.S. government into action.

In late June, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow tried to arrange a phone call between Griner and her wife, Cherrelle. It would have been their first conversation since Griner's arrest, but the call dropped and they never spoke. A technical glitch, for sure, but hardly a sign that U.S. diplomats were treating this case with the urgency it deserved.

Public pressure isn't a miracle cure, but it helps in general, and has been useful in keeping Griner's plight front-of-mind.

Still, there's the process.

Russia wants to swap prisoners but has made clear it wouldn't negotiate until Griner's court case was settled. Griner and her lawyers could have undertaken a long and costly trial, but in a country where the odds of an acquittal are even more remote than they are in the U.S., fighting this case likely looked like a waste of several weeks and countless dollars. If a conviction was inevitable, a guilty plea serves the same purpose in less time, and fast-forwards us to this point.

Which point?

The point where the U.S. can call Russia's bluff, because they also have something Russia wants. If Bout is that valuable, Moscow can hand Griner over so she can recover from this trauma, rebuild her life, her marriage, and, hopefully, her basketball career.

We in the sports media like the idea of a trade. We understand those deals. We speak that language.

But it's also a little like a draft.

And Washington is on the clock.

‘We're with you’: Megan Rapinoe to Brittney Griner l ABCNL

 

ABC News’ Gio Benitez spoke with soccer star Megan Rapinoe about receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Brittney Griner’s detainment, and her fiance Sue Bird's WNBA retirement.

Opinion | Take the Deal: Brittney Griner in Exchange for the ‘Merchant of Death’

Viktor Bout is responsible for unspeakable atrocities. But at this point, it’s not worth keeping him imprisoned if Biden can secure an innocent’s freedom.


In February 2022, Brittney Griner, the legendary WNBA basketball player,

 was arrested in Moscow for allegedly having illegal vape cartridges. 

| Mike Mattina/Getty Images


Opinion by DOUGLAS FARAH
07/08/2022 0
Douglas Farah is president of IBI Consultants, LLC, and co-author of Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible.

In November 2011, the notorious Russian weapons trafficker Viktor Bout was sentenced by a New York court to 25 years in prison for his crimes. In February 2022, Brittney Griner, the legendary WNBA basketball player, was arrested in Moscow for allegedly having illegal vape cartridges. Now Russia is reportedly asking for an exchange — the Merchant of Death for the All-Star.

Bout provided tons of guns and ammunition to some of the most vicious warlords in the world and empowered them to carry out unspeakable atrocities. He is responsible for enabling murderous groups to kidnap and train thousands of child soldiers; use rape as a systematic method of terror and control; torture through the mass amputations of arms, legs, ears and lips; slaughter civilians, and help the Taliban take power in Afghanistan. Griner may have been carrying vape cartridges that were banned in Russia but not in much of the world.

There is no parity in the negotiations or symmetry in the lives or actions of the two potential protagonists. But President Joe Biden should take the deal.

I covered the wars and victims of Bout’s weapons trade in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Democratic Republic of Congo as a correspondent for the Washington Post. The Nicolas Cage movie “Lord of War” was loosely based on Bout, and I co-wrote with Stephen Braun a non-fiction account of the savagery he enabled. There are no words to describe the human toll of Bout’s activities on thousands of people, from the armless child amputees in refugee camps to the scorched rural hamlets burned to the ground by marauding children traumatized into killing their own families.

White House on Brittney Griner: Using ‘everything in our disposal’ to bring her home

Bout ran an aviation and weapons empire from the fall of the Soviet Union until his arrest in Thailand in 2008. He built his business by ferrying lethal weapons by the ton to buyers in exchange for cash, diamonds and timber. He was acting, his brother said, as merely a taxi service — a chauffeur with no responsibility to know the contents of the passenger’s baggage he was carrying. But he knew exactly what he was doing.

In addition to arming the worst sectors of humanity, Bout made a fortune flying for the U.S. military in Iraq during the war there. Ultimately, he was arrested while attempting to sell weapons to undercover Drug Enforcement Administration informants posing as buyers for Colombia’s notorious FARC guerrillas. In the meeting before his arrest, Bout offered an array of sophisticated weapons, helpfully adding they could be used to kill U.S. military advisers in Colombia.

Griner, in contrast, was in Russia to play professional basketball just before Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. Having proven herself to be one of the best players of all time, the ill-fated timing of her trip transformed her into a terrified young woman illegally detained in brutal conditions for what at best would be a minor misdemeanor. And a pawn that the Russians immediately recognized the value of. (Griner pleaded guilty on Thursday to carrying cannabis oil, but her ultimate fate remains unclear.)

Brittney Griner pleads guilty in Russia drugs trial, Russian media reports

So why even consider the potential offer? First, Bout is a spent force who will be out of jail in a few years anyway. His business depended on personal relationships and trust among the parties. After being out of the business for more than a decade, Bout has neither of those left in the shadowy world in which he once operated. Second, Bout needed access to a global network stretching from Afghanistan to Europe, Africa and South America. That network has morphed through several generations of new actors, markets and gatekeepers. Bout has no currency in that world now.

Finally, Bout depended in the early years on the gross negligence of the former Soviet states to allow him to simply fly out aircraft and weapons in a spree of de facto privatization of one of the world’s most advanced arsenals. In his later years, he was reined in by the Russian state under Putin, no longer able to freelance at will and without unfettered access to massive caches of weapons. It is unlikely he would have any freedom of movement in the weapons trade unless he was in the direct service of the Russian intelligence services, and now he is burned beyond the ability to be useful in any significant capacity.

Many of those who carried out the operation to end Bout’s ability to enable crimes against humanity will not agree with me. The hunt for Bout was long and arduous, and the operation that led to his arrest was the stuff of the best spy thrillers. The diplomatic and Department of Justice efforts to get Bout to the U.S. to stand trial were a testament to how a whole of government approach can work when done well. And the trial showed the world at least a small piece of who Bout is and the monstrous nature of his crimes.

There should be no mercy for Bout and only his victims could offer forgiveness. But there is now a chance for an act of compassion for an innocent life; his low-risk release would be a fitting finale for someone who has caused so much harm. Bout has already lost what he most valued — his ability to move freely across the globe and act with impunity as an agent of chaos in the service of his Russian handlers and his own interests. His freedom could not restore that, and he will be forever known as the Merchant of Death, a stain he will never be able to remove.

If Griner regains her freedom, she regains the family fighting for her release, a spouse working tirelessly on her behalf, and, I hope, her rightful place among the basketball pantheon of great players. It may not be perfect justice, but it’s a closer version of it than having an innocent person wrongfully imprisoned simply to confine a guilty person who can no longer inflict much more damage.

Who is Brittney Griner and why is her case causing waves in Washington and the Kremlin?

By Gabriel Rule

Experts say tensions between the US and Russia have made Brittney Griner's situation worse.

(AP Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko)

US basketballer Brittney Griner has pleaded guilty to a drugs charge in a Russian court.

Ms Grinner says she had "no intent" to break the law, and has appealed directly to President Joe Biden to step-up US efforts to bring her home.

The current political climate — where the US has imposed sanctions against Russia after its military invasion of Ukraine — has seen her transformed from a lucrative sports star to a potential bargaining chip in President Vladimir Putin's conflict with the West.

At the moment Ms Griner is facing up to 10 years in prison.

Here's what we know.

Who is Brittney Griner?

At 205 centimetres tall and with two Olympic gold medals under her belt, Ms Griner — or "BG" as she is known to basketball fans — is one of the most recognisable figures in American basketball. Currently, she plays centre in for Phoenix Mercury.

She's also a fierce advocate for LGBT rights.

Basketball journalist and author Tamryn Spruill said Ms Griner was an "icon" of the game whose openness about her sexuality had prompted lasting improvements in the sport's treatment of LGBT players.

Brittney Griner played for the US team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.(Reuters: Sergio Perez)

What happened to her?

For the past seven years, Ms Griner has flown to Russia during the US Women's National Basketball Association's (WNBA) off-season to play for a Russian team, which usually made her an additional $US1 million ($1.36 million) per season.

Earlier this year, she made her now annual trip overseas in search of her pay cheque. However, her trip didn't go as planned.

On March 6, Russian Customs officials said they had detained an athlete who arrived at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on a flight from New York on February 17.

The agency released a video showing what it said was a security screening of a "US citizen, two-times Olympic basketball champion".

It was Ms Griner.

In a statement, the Russians claimed vape cartridges containing "liquid with hashish oil", a substance illegal in Russia, were found in her luggage and that a criminal case had been opened. Ms Griner has been held in custody ever since.

Since then she's pleaded with Mr Biden to secure her release. She's even sent him a handwritten note.

"As I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey, or any accomplishments, I'm terrified I might be here forever," she wrote in the letter.


"I realise you are dealing with so much, but please don't forget about me and the other American detainees. Please do all you can to bring us home".

Mr Biden said he was doing "everything in his power" to bring Ms Griner home.

Ms Griner faced a Russian court on July 6.

"I'd like to plead guilty, your honour," she told the judge.


"But there was no intent. I didn't want to break the law."
Why is this an international issue?

It's all about timing.

The Russians say Ms Griner was arrested less than a week before Russia invaded Ukraine, when tensions between Moscow and Washington reached boiling point. The US had imposed sweeping sanctions on Moscow, and Russia had raised the spectre of nuclear war as American weapons flooded into Ukraine.

Some experts are worried Ms Griner is now caught in a much broader geopolitical battle.

The fear is she might be a "pawn" for the Kremlin in a new cold war.

"It is an extremely serious situation," Tom Firestone — a Washington-based lawyer who spent eight years working for the Department of Justice at the US embassy in Moscow — told the ABC.

"The current political situation makes her situation much worse."

Mr Firestone said he was not sure whether Ms Griner's arrest was connected to the situation in Ukraine, especially if, as the Russians say, it occurred on February 17, before Russia's invasion on February 24.

He also said the current political atmosphere meant Ms Griner could be treated differently than other detainees.

"That may get special attention from law enforcement. They may be more reluctant to negotiate a plea agreement with her, or to dismiss the case, because she's an American," he said.

 

Brittney Griner is escorted before a court hearing on July 7. 

(Reuters: Evgenia Novozhenina)

What happens next?

That's still murky.

The next court hearing has been scheduled for July 14, when Ms Griner is likely to testify.

There is talk of a potential prisoner swap between the Kremlin and the US, but a top Russian official indicated no steps could be taken until the case was complete.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has said Ms Griner could appeal her sentence or apply for clemency once a verdict has been delivered.

In the meantime, the Phoenix Mercury say "they love and support Brittney" and are most concerned about securing her safe return home.



US basketballer Brittney Griner pleads guilty to drugs charge in Russian court