No room for religious liberty in abortion debate? Since when are we a one-faith nation?

Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY
Tue, January 24, 2023 

I lived in Ireland for a year in the 1970s, when both contraception and abortion were illegal. I still remember the news story about a young German couple whose birth control was confiscated as they entered the country for their honeymoon. Welcome to Ireland!

Contraception became legal in Ireland in 1979 and widely available in 1985. But the tide on abortion did not start to turn until the 2012 death of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist carrying a doomed 17-week fetus.

In a BBC interview at the time, her husband said she was told she could not end the pregnancy because it was against the law in Catholic Ireland. She said she was Hindu, not Catholic, and asked “why impose the law on her,” said her husband, Praveen. The answer she received: “ ‘I'm sorry, unfortunately it's a Catholic country' and it's the law that they can't abort when the fetus is live." By the time the fetus’ heart stopped, it was too late for Savita. She died of septicemia.

There's no consensus on abortion

Make no mistake, the abortion debate is about religion. For some believers, it's simple: Abortion amounts to murder.

In reality, that word is fraught and harder to define than it seems. Our laws consider many circumstances: Was a killing premeditated, impulsive, accidental, committed in self-defense?

Capital punishment is legal killing. So is war, except when it's not – for instance if a party targets civilians or uses weapons of mass destruction. Some people oppose even “legal” war killings due to their moral or religious principles and may be granted conscientious objector status.

Confused by abortion laws, anxious about intimacy? The answer is clear. We must ban sex.



Author Amy Bloom’s husband had Alzheimer’s disease and he did not want to deteriorate until it killed him. She researched assisted suicide for months – how to do it (Do-it-yourself suffocation? Pentobarbital?) and where to do it (Dignitas in Zurich was the only real option). In her book “In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss,” she describes supervising his application process, watching him drink the fatal potion and holding his hand as he embarked on his “long journey, miles and miles of Nought.”

Was Bloom an enabler, an accessory to a crime? Not in Zurich. Is assisted suicide considered murder? Not in the 11 U.S. jurisdictions that allow it. What about other types of euthanasia? When you have a vet put your terminally ill pet out of its misery, is that murder – or mercy?

No consensus among religions

Is abortion murder? It depends on when you think life begins. Is it at conception, at viability, at birth? Arthur Caplan, a New York University bioethicist, talks of symmetry: “We agree that people are dead and no longer exist when their brains have ceased to function. So, I think a key landmark is when a brain is able to totally function.”

He and other scientists say that happens at 24-25 weeks. That’s when a fetus develops the coordinated "brain activity required for consciousness,” Dr. Tomás Ryan, an associate professor at Dublin's Trinity College Institute of Neurosciences, wrote in 2018.

Abortion-rights supporters outside a Catholic church in downtown Manhattan on May 7, 2022, in New York City.

10-year-old rape victim: Here's what happens to a victimized child when the singular focus is on saving babies

There is no consensus among religions on these questions. In fact there is no consensus among Muslims, says Asifa Quraishi-Landes, a professor of U.S. constitutional law and modern Islamic constitutional theory at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Quranic verses can be interpreted in many ways and “Muslims simply select whichever sharia school of thought they want to follow,” she wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle. “That means it is normal for some Muslims to oppose abortion while others insist on its legitimacy.”

Interview
Friend of Satan: how Lucien Greaves and his Satanic Temple are fighting the religious right

The National Council of Jewish Women says a fetus is considered “a physical part of the pregnant individual’s body” until labor and childbirth. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, the council’s scholar in residence, posted a Twitter thread quoting from the Talmud and Orthodox authorities to show Judaism permits abortion for many reasons – among them preventing disgrace, preserving dignity, keeping “domestic peace” and sparing people emotional and physical pain. To save a pregnant person’s life, Ruttenberg wrote, “it’s required.”

Freedom to follow your faith

For nearly 50 years, Roe v. Wade created space for disagreement on abortion. Caroline Mala Corbin, a constitutional law professor at the University of Miami School of Law, put it to me this way: “Each person is able to live their religious truth when abortion is legal.”

You’d think that right would be guaranteed in America by the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In other words, the people have religious liberty and the government can’t establish an official religion or favor one religion over another.

Four-year degree worth the cost? Yes, but government should pick up the tab.

But Corbin notes that in a 1980 case about abortion restrictions, the Supreme Court ruled that the restrictions did not favor a particular religious view – they just happened to coincide with it. On top of the court’s rulings last month that abortion cannot be “deemed fundamental” like other rights and that a football coach has the right to pray publicly on the field (an Establishment Clause “wrecking ball,” Corbin says), national prospects appear dim.

Some states have explicit constitutional or statutory rights to privacy, and they are the basis of many legal challenges. Religious freedom is also a right in some states and it is in play in at least two lawsuits, in Florida and Ohio.
An abortion law signed in a church

Ten days before Roe was overturned, a Florida synagogue filed suit on June 14 claiming that the state’s 15-week limit on abortion “prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and this violates their privacy rights and religious freedom.” The rabbi noted with anxiety that Gov. Ron DeSantis had signed the law in an evangelical Christian church.

In Ohio, a coalition of Jewish groups said last week that it would join the ACLU in challenging the state’s six-week ban on freedom-of-religion grounds.

Jill Lawrence is a USA TODAY Opinion columnist.

Ideally, Congress would pass a law setting a national minimum standard for abortion rights and access. For Ireland, it took tragedies, traumas and pressure from groups like the European Convention on Human Rights, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the U.N. Human Rights Committee. In 2018, Irish voters overwhelmingly repealed a 1983 constitutional amendment that gave equal weight to “the right to life of the unborn” and “of the mother.” A new law establishing a legal right to abortion took effect in 2019.

Patients are increasingly at risk as doctors try to navigate new laws and stay out of jail. The plight of Ohio's 10-year-old rape victim has dramatically defined the impact of Roe v. Wade's demise. Maybe this child will be this country's Savita Halappanavar – shocking enough consciences to blast America out of the 18th century and back into the 21st.





More from Jill Lawrence:

►Interstate abortion travel bans? We're supposed to be a free country, not East Germany.

►Supreme Court month of horrors on guns, abortion and climate

Jill Lawrence is a columnist for USA TODAY and author of "The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock." Follow her on Twitter: @JillDLawrence

AMERIKA

If you care about your country and your rights, don't vote for any Republicans in 2022

Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY
Tue, January 24, 2023 

Now that primary season is over there is a simple test for voters, especially Republicans and independents: If you care about the future of America, democracy and your own rights, don’t vote for Republicans. Any of them. Even the officeholders who have stood up to Donald Trump and the newcomers who pitch themselves as reality-based and results-oriented.

I feel terrible thinking this, much less writing it. I’ve covered many Republicans whom I admired. I spent months reporting on political negotiations and how deals get made in Congress. I believe policy debates and compromises are healthy, and the Democratic-led Congress has produced solid bipartisan results this year in gun safety, infrastructure, industrial policy and other areas.

Even so, the Republican Party is on a dark path and should not hold power anywhere until it comes back into the light. That’s especially true on Capitol Hill.

Congressional math is unforgiving. If there is just one more Republican than Democrat in the House or Senate, a power-obsessed party in thrall to election deniers and conspiracists will control committees, agendas, investigations and leadership positions.

We sued the FEC: Hold Trump accountable for raising money

The Trump-MAGA threat is real

Republican voters are key to the outcome. About 8% of them voted for Democrats in 2018, TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier, a Democratic data and polling expert, told me in an email. If that rises to 15% this year, he added, “the GOP has no chance of taking back either the Senate or the House.”

That’s not an unrealistic goal given the percentage of Republicans who voted for abortion rights last month in Kansas (roughly 30%, Bonier said Wednesday at a New Democrat Network webinar) and the chunk of GOP voters alarmed by Trump and his "Make America Great Again" loyalists. A new poll found a quarter of Republicans agree that Trump's MAGA movement threatens democracy.

President Joe Biden accurately summarized that threat in a recent speech: “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.”

As national security expert Tom Nichols wrote afterward in The Atlantic, “We should be deeply troubled that Joe Biden had to give this speech at all.” And he had to. Because even now, after the Trump mob’s insurrection attempt on Jan. 6, 2021, two impeachments, years of election lies, escalating legal problems and the FBI recovery of top secret government documents from Mar-a-Lago, Trump is not a spent force.

Former President Donald Trump and ally Doug Mastriano, the GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governor, at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Sept. 3, 2022.

Hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on their deadly quest to block Congress from finalizing Biden’s win, 147 Republican lawmakers went ahead and objected to certified election results from Arizona, Pennsylvania or both. Over 18 months later, the party is still with Trump. Polls show roughly 70% of Republicans don’t view Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 election, and most Republicans want Trump as their 2024 nominee.

In fact, Maggie Haberman reports in her upcoming book, “Confidence Man,” Trump never intended to leave the White House – though he lost to Biden by more than 7 million votes.

'I picked 15 weeks': Sen. Lindsey Graham mansplains his federal abortion ban

Believers of Trump’s Big Lie that he was the true winner have elevated so many delusional Republicans that 60% of voters will find election deniers on their 2022 ballots, according to FiveThirtyEight. Its analysis of GOP nominees for House, Senate, governor, secretary of state and attorney general found at least 200 of 552 say the 2020 election was illegitimate. If they win, they could influence and possibly even overturn elections in 40 states.

Some of these races are out of reach for Democrats. In U.S. House contests, FiveThirtyEight found that “118 election deniers and eight election doubters have at least a 95 percent chance of winning.”

At the same time, Real Clear Politics counts eight toss-up Senate races, 11 toss-ups for governor and 34 in the House. Concerned conservatives and moderates could make the difference in these contests – particularly if they vote Democratic no matter what kind of Republican is running.

This seems unfair to Republicans who have shown principled independence. By my count, 20 in the House made it to the fall ballot despite voting for an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the violent Capitol riot. Two of them, California's Rep. David Valadao and Washington state’s Rep. Dan Newhouse, also voted to impeach Trump for inciting the rioters.

The Future of the Republican Party: What to do now with 'hot mess' that is the GOP?
Alarmed GOP voters are the fail-safe

Valadao’s tight race could be one of the few that determine House control. Does he deserve to be reelected? Maybe. But could America survive a GOP-controlled House unscathed? Also maybe, and that’s not good enough.

The same argument holds for candidates like Senate nominee Joe O’Dea in Colorado, who says he'd be an "independent-minded" senator, and House nominee Allan Fung in Rhode Island, who says he’d work with Democrats to solve problems. That’s commendable, but voting for them could produce a Republican House or Senate.

I wouldn’t even bet on fact-based Republican governors. Some could face veto-proof legislatures dominated by MAGA fantasists. And some could fold. Look at New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who a month ago declared that “Trump won the election. … I'm not switchin' horses baby. This is it." Sununu called Bolduc a “conspiracy theorist-type” and “not a serious candidate” for the GOP Senate nomination. But right before Tuesday's primary, Sununu said he'd endorse Bolduc if he won.

The upshot: Bolduc won, he and Sununu shared a public hug at a post-primary GOP unity breakfast, and then – in a shocking plot twist – Bolduc went on Fox News and said he had concluded that “the election was not stolen.”

A MAGA-driven America is a grim prospect. Would future Republican candidates admit defeat if they lost, or would they make sure, through legislation and manipulation, that they'd win? Would they cement minority rule and further restrict fundamental rights like voting and abortion?

Biden has correctly distinguished between “mainstream Republicans” and Trump’s extreme “MAGA Republicans.” They are different, and mainstream GOP politicians holding the line deserve credit. Nevertheless, when it comes to who controls Congress and the levers of power in states across the country, all that counts right now is the “R” after their names.

Jill Lawrence is a columnist for USA TODAY and author of "The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock." Follow her on Twitter: @JillDLawrence

NASA gets best look yet at the "deepest, coldest ices" in space

Li Cohen
Tue, January 24, 2023

An international team of astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has obtained an in-depth inventory of the deepest, coldest ices measured to date in a molecular cloud. 

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and M. Zamani (ESA)

Before stars become massive glowing bodies of hot gas and planets develop conditions that can sustain life, they start out as a deep-space plate of tiny, icy ingredients. And now, NASA has gotten the best look at those ingredients yet.

"An international team of astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has obtained an in-depth inventory of the deepest, coldest ices measured to date in a molecular cloud," NASA said in a news release on Monday. " ... This is the most comprehensive census to date of the icy ingredients available to make future generations of stars and planets, before they are heated during the formation of young stars."

That census was captured in the Chamaeleon I molecular cloud, which lies about 500 light-years away from Earth and is currently developing "dozens" of stars. This region is part of the 65-light-year-wide Chamaeleon Cloud Complex, which was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope last year.

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures one of three segments that comprise a 65-light-year wide star-forming region named the Chamaeleon Cloud Complex. The segment in this Hubble composite image, called Chamaeleon Cloud I, reveals dusty-dark clouds where stars are forming, dazzling reflection nebulae glowing by the light of bright-blue young stars, and radiant knots called Herbig-Haro objects. / Credit: NASA, ESA, K. Luhman and T. Esplin (Pennsylvania State University), et al., and ESO; Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)More

Using the telescope, astronomers were able to take a deeper look at the "frozen forms" of various molecules, including carbonyl sulfide, ammonia, methane and methanol. Those molecules contain the essential elements – mostly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur – that are needed to form planets and stars. Those elements, plus phosphorus, are essential for living organisms.


Astronomer Melissa McClure said that the results help paint a fuller picture of the "dark chemistry stage" of ice formation on interstellar dust grains. That stage, she said, is what leads to the "centimeter-sized pebbles" that eventually turn into planets.

"These observations open a new window on the formation pathways for the simple and complex molecules that are needed to make the building blocks of life," she said.

They also found more complex molecules deep in molecular clouds for the first time ever, a discovery that suggests many stars and planets in the particular cloud studied could inherit advanced molecules. It also suggests that this is a common occurrence after stars are formed that extends beyond Earth's own solar system.

The findings, which were published Monday in Nature Astronomy, were part of the James Webb Space Telescope's Ice Age project, which seeks to learn more about the molecular ingredients that start out as ice forms and eventually evolve into life itself.

"This is just the first in a series of spectral snapshots that we will obtain to see how the ices evolve from their initial synthesis to the comet-forming regions of protoplanetary disks," said McClure. "This will tell us which mixture of ices — and therefore which elements — can eventually be delivered to the surfaces of terrestrial exoplanets or incorporated into the atmospheres of giant gas or ice planets."

Protecting Amazon a tough task, says Brazil's environment minister

Paula RAMON
Tue, January 24, 2023 


Brazil's environment minister Marina Silva knows she has her work cut out to protect the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest that is shared among nine countries.

"It will be difficult," Silva acknowledged in an interview with AFP on Monday night.

Just three weeks into the job, Silva said the environmental situation in her country, which is home to more than 60 percent of the Amazon, was "worse than expected."

When left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva appointed this emblematic figure in the environment struggle to her position, he signaled that the planet was a clear priority for the new administration after four years of far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro's governance, which saw deforestation hit record levels.


"The reality is a lot worse than we imagined," said Silva, 64, who was born in the heart of the jungle.

"We will have to make a great effort" because the ministry "has been largely dismantled."

Lula's focus on the environment is "in line with what is happening elsewhere in the world."

He has set 2030 as a target for reaching zero deforestation.

"It will not be an easy road ... but we will try to recover lost time," said Silva.

- 'Convincing people' the key -

Within Lula's government, 17 ministers will be involved in environmental policies.

But when it comes to deforestation, Silva says achieving target numbers is not enough, "we have to convince people that it is not a good idea to destroy the forest."

"We will invest in biotechnologies, tourism, low-carbon emissions agriculture and in other revenue sources," she said. "Our aim is to restart preventative actions and the fight against deforestation."

But Silva warned against expecting too much too soon during Lula's four-year term.

"We will see what can be achieved in this short space of time. Only populist governments can guarantee they will solve such massive problems in four years," she said with irony.

"We hope to arrive at the COP30 in 2025 as a country that has fulfilled its obligations."

Brazil has submitted a bid to host the 2025 climate conference in Belem, a city on the edge of the Amazon.

Brasilia will not be able to pull off miracles without international help, said Silva, who was previously environment minister during Lula's first two terms as president (from 2003 to 2010) before quiting in 2008 in protest against what she called a lack of funding.

One of Lula's first acts as president was to reactivate the Amazon Fund -- whose main contributors were Norway and Germany. It had been suspended under Bolsonaro due to a scandal related to forest fires in the Amazon.

"We are talking to the United Kingdom, France, Spain and several other countries that can contribute to the Amazon Fund. We don't want it to be just Norway and Germany," said Silva.

- 'A life of dignity' -

Negotiations are also well advanced with businesses and philanthropic organizations, said Silva.

But she says the international community still needs to make more of an effort.

"This collaboration with developed countries must also translate into the opening of markets for sustainable products" so that "what is legally produced can serve as a source of income for the Amazon's 25 million inhabitants."

"We must guarantee to these populations a life of dignity," said Silva, adding that the fight against the commercialization of illegally extracted gold and logs needs to be multilateral.

But, she warned, "if developed countries do not also reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, the Amazon will be destroyed."

pr-pt/sf/bc/dw

Mexico's Pemex Plans Bond Sale With Billions in Payments Due




Michael O'Boyle and Amy Stillman
Tue, January 24, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- Petroleos Mexicanos plans to issue bonds in the coming weeks as the indebted Mexican state oil company looks to pay off maturities coming due in the first quarter, according to three people familiar with the situation.

The company will issue bonds in order to help pay off billions of dollars worth of debt amortizations due before the end of March, the people said, asking not to be identified commenting on private plans. Pemex, as the company is known, is likely to seek at least $2 billion in new issuance and needs to go to the market before a blackout period starting Feb. 12, one of the people said.

The issuance comes as Pemex faces almost $10 billion in bond amortization payments due this year — a sum that neither the company nor the government included in their annual budgets. Of that amount, between $5.5 billion and $6 billion is due in the first quarter alone, according to Pemex Chief Executive Officer Octavio Romero Oropeza.

A Pemex representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Mexico’s Presidency and the Finance Ministry also didn’t immediately comment when contacted on Tuesday.

The company’s bonds fell on Tuesday, extending declines after Bloomberg reported the plan to sell new debt. Notes due in 2050 fell a cent to 74.9 cents on the dollar, according to Trace bond-trading data.

“We are getting to the point where the indebtedness of the company is getting outrageous,” Luis Maizel, co-founder of LM Capital Management in San Diego. “They said there would be no new issuance. But when you have no option, you have to get the money somewhere.”

The Mexican government stopped covering Pemex’s debt amortizations in the second half of 2022 as oil prices surged. Yet President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said that the government could provide additional financial aid if Pemex can’t meet its debt obligations. In addition to the issuance, the oil producer could receive a capital injection from the government or delay paying its profit-sharing duty, known as DUC, to free up cash, one of the people said.

The government-owned oil giant has seen its oil production decline almost every year for the past decade and a half, while its debt has soared to $105 billion, the highest of any oil company. Lopez Obrador’s nationalist energy policies have added to its woes as the company is pressured to focus on refining more crude domestically instead of exporting it.

The decline in oil prices since the second half of last year also worked against Pemex. Still, as volatility in global markets has abated in the new year, so issuers in Mexico should take advantage, Maizel said. The government already sold $4 billion in bonds.

“Mexico is now the darling for many,” Maizel said. “It is the right time to take advantage of this.”

Still, the company’s bonds have handed investors returns of 6.9% so far this year, outperforming a Bloomberg index of dollar-denominated debt from corporations and countries in Latin America, which has returned 4.4% during that time.

--With assistance from Max de Haldevang, Maria Elena Vizcaino and Sydney Maki.

Two energy giants, two green projects: 

one double-booking in North Sea



Mon, January 23, 2023 
By Rowena Edwards and Shadia Nasralla

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil major BP plans to build a vast carbon capture project beneath the North Sea that would be crucial to Britain hitting its emissions targets. Power giant Orsted aims to build a huge offshore windfarm to help the country meet renewable goals.

The problem is, the seabed's double-booked, and something has to give.

Britain granted preliminary licences for both proposed projects more than a decade ago, when an overlap of about 110 sq km on the sea floor wasn't seen as posing an insurmountable obstacle to either technology, according to planning documents reviewed by Reuters, the companies involved and UK authorities.

Now, though, a dispute is unfolding between BP and Orsted over primacy in this "Overlap Zone" shared by the Hornsea Four windfarm and Endurance carbon capture and storage (CCS) sites off the English county of Yorkshire.

The standoff has been fuelled by studies that highlighted the risk of boats used to monitor carbon leaks colliding with wind turbines fixed to the sea floor. Last year the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which regulates offshore energy activity, concluded that large crossovers between such ventures were unfeasible with current technology.

"At the time these rights were granted, it was unclear how the emergent technologies would develop," England's Crown Estate licensing agency told Reuters, referring to the windfarm and CCS licences the government awarded in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

BP is unwilling to switch to a costlier boat-free monitoring system and Orsted to cede territory, with both saying such concessions would hit their commercial prospects.

This largely unreported clash risks undermining Britain's drive to meet its climate goals, according to the companies involved and a North Sea green transition expert. Endurance's capacity alone could account for at least half of the 20-30 million tonnes of CO2 the nation aims to capture a year by 2030.

"Resolution of the conflict between the renewable technologies, and having a due process that determines whether a windfarm, carbon store or other source of energy has primacy in an area of overlap, is crucial if the UK is going to achieve its net-zero targets," said John Underhill, geoscientist and director for Aberdeen University's Centre of Energy Transition.

The BP-Orsted showdown could also presage similar disputes elsewhere in an increasingly crowded North Sea, the experts told Reuters.

Britain's eastern seaboard, which boasts the favourable geological formations for carbon storage and the shallow waters for fixed-bottom offshore windfarms, is shaping up to be a key battleground for the competing green technologies in coming years, they said.

"Offshore wind has obviously come forward quite quickly since 2015, this has resulted in an increased pressure for sea floor space," said Chris Gent, policy manager at the European carbon capture trade association CCSA, adding that this presented a real challenge for licensing authorities.

Britain's BP and Danish renewables company Orsted say they are committed to finding a solution to their dispute, which is coming to a head in the coming months; British authorities are due to decide whether to give Hornsea Four the final go-ahead on Feb. 22, while BP and its partners plan to make a final investment decision on Endurance this year.

It's not just climate targets that are at stake, there's also a lot of money riding on the projects, which would together cover about 500 sq km of the seabed. BP didn't give a cost estimate for Endurance, while Orsted pegged its windfarm at up to 8 billion pounds ($9.9 billion).

BATTLE FOR THE OVERLAP ZONE

The British government acknowledged the problem.

When asked about how two such projects can end up in the same area, the Department for Business, Energy and Industry told Reuters the government had set ambitious targets for deploying offshore CCS and windfarms, which were both key to its efforts to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

"We are aware that in some cases there may be technical challenges to the coexistence," it added.

In an effort to resolve conflicts and avoid future ones, UK authorities set up an offshore wind and CCS forum of regulators and industry figures in 2021 to develop better coordination.

BP, Orsted and Crown Estate told Reuters they had been discussing solutions to coexistence for several years, though they didn't comment on how their views had evolved over the past decade on the overlap risks associated with the technologies.

An Orsted planning document published by UK authorities on Jan. 17 included a report by a group representing BP and its Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) project partners, in which the CCS scheme ruled out sharing the territory.

"It was originally anticipated that it could be possible for Hornsea Project Four and the NEP Project to co-exist in the Overlap Zone," said the report by Net Zero Teesside, dated July 2022. "However, after extensive analysis, BP and its NEP partners have concluded that coexistence across the entirety of the Overlap Zone is not feasible."

BP has expressed scepticism a compromise can be found in time, saying it needs certainty about the fate of the zone ahead of its final investment decision to enable CO2 injection to start at the project in 2026 as planned.

"It is not realistic for any new robust and reliable solution to come forward within this or a comparative timescale," it said in a March 2022 submission to UK authorities. "NEP will be unable to attract debt financing if the risks attached to the project's financial viability are high," it added in another March 2022 submission.

Orsted said in its planning documents, published the same month, that a sparser turbine layout that could mitigate boat access issues would reduce Hornsea Four's annual energy production by 2.5%.

"This would have the impact of making the project far less commercially competitive," it added.

The windfarm's planned capacity of 2.6 gigawatts (GW) would help Britain move towards its goal of increasing offshore wind capacity from 11 GW in 2021 to 50 GW by 2030, a drive requiring huge investment in new offshore infrastructure in the North Sea.

PRICEY OCEAN BOTTOM NODES

Despite the obstacles, talks continue.

BP said it was committed to a mutually acceptable outcome through ongoing commercial discussions, while Orsted said it was confident an agreement could be reached to allow both projects to move forward.

There is hope on the horizon for wind and CCS projects that share ground, say regulators and industry experts.

Even when the NSTA regulator poured cold water on big shared areas, it stressed that technical advances could change the calculus. It added that alternative methods of CO2 monitoring were still in development stages or more expensive, increasing costs in a CCS sector where profits are already elusive.

The leading contender, ocean bottom nodes (OBN) fixed to the seabed, could do much of the work of the seismic data boats. However Ronnie Parr, senior geophysicist at the NSTA, said that while OBN costs were expected to fall, they would probably still cost three or four times more than using boats.

The regulator was clear.

"Based on current technologies, large physical overlaps between carbon storage sites and windfarms are presently considered not to be feasible," it said in its August 2022 report.

NEIGHBOURS IN NORTH SEA

A key moment looms next month when government planners are due to decide whether to grant the final green light to Hornsea Four.

While Endurance and its umbrella project, the East Coast Cluster, also face regulatory hurdles, the cluster was earmarked by the government in 2021 for a speedier development process.

With no breakthrough in sight between the companies, the same problem might rear its head elsewhere, according to Underhill at Aberdeen University, who highlighted the need for further CCS sites if Britain is to hit carbon-capture targets.

Other similar co-location sites include the planned Acorn carbon project off Scotland, which has an overlap with the MarramWind offshore windfarm, according to the NSTA and Underhill.

Shell and ScottishPowerRenewables, which secured initial rights to develop MarramWind a year ago, said discussions with Acorn were ongoing. Shell, also a developer on Acorn, added both projects were at a very early stage and that the overlap was not of a significant scale.

Underhill also pointed to decommissioned gas field Pickerill as a potential CCS site in the future but said existing plans to construct the Outer Dowsing windfarm could create problems.

David Few, Outer Dowsing's project director, said the windfarm was on track to power 1.6 million homes by the decade's end.

(Reporting by Shadia Nasralla and Rowena Edwards in London; Editing by Pravin Char)

Mexico's top cop was being paid by El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel, feds say at New York trial


John Annese, New York Daily News
Mon, January 23, 2023 

NEW YORK — Mexico’s one-time top cop played the part of a drug-fighting hero, adding more than 30,000 officers to the country’s federal police force, but it was all a front, federal prosecutors say — Genaro Garcia Luna was really taking money from Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman's feared Sinaloa cartel to keep drugs flowing to the United States.

”He also had a second job, a dirtier job, a more profitable job,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Pilmar said in his opening argument Monday at Garcia Luna’s trial in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Garcia Luna, 54, Mexico’s ex-secretary of public security, is accused of taking briefcases full of cash from the Sinaloa cartel while it was run by the notorious drug lord Guzman.

From 2006 to 2012, under then-President Felipe Calderón, he ran Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI, consolidating his power by swelling the ranks of the federal police, Pilmar said.


The cartel kept its billion-dollar drug operation humming by paying “to buy off the federal police, to put them on the payroll, to make them them part of the organization,” Pilmar said. “The defendant took their cash and betrayed his oath to his country.”

Guzman was convicted at the end of his 2018 trial and sentenced to life plus 30 years in 2019.

At Guzman’s trial, cartel turncoat Jesus Zambada Garcia testified to personally delivering briefcases with millions in cash to Garcia Luna in a Mexican restaurant.

In exchange, Pilmar said, Garcia Luna leaked sensitive law enforcement information on pending arrests, let cocaine pass through checkpoints and turned his federal police officers into bodyguards, drug couriers and “armed mercenaries” for the cartel.

“Members of the jury, the evidence will show that the defendant, the person who was supposed to be in charge of fighting the Sinaloa cartel, was actually its most valuable asset,” Pilmar said Monday.

But defense lawyer Cesar de Castro said Garcia Luna actually did his crime-fighting job too well — and that the government’s case is based on the word of ruthless criminals seeking revenge for being locked up by his client.

“What better revenge than to bury the man who led the war against the cartels?” de Castro said. “These murderers, torturers, kidnappers literally get to kill two birds with one stone.”

De Castro said that the cartel members who will testify are hoping for lighter sentences and the possibility of a new life in the U.S. Prosecutors will show the jury “no money, no photos, no videos, no email, no texts, no recordings, no documents” to back up their allegations of bribery, he said.

Over his career, Garcia Luna met with top American law enforcement officials in the FBI, DEA and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as members of Congress, Sen. John McCain, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and President Barack Obama, de Castro said.

He also helped bring in technology and equipment from the U.S. and helped implement a “huge database” called Plataforma Mexico to fight the cartels.

“This will be a very public and angry display by your government abandoning a strategic partner for years,” de Castro said. “The government will help the cartels exact the ultimate revenge on those responsible for their capture.”

———

MUSK'S WAR ON ESG

Elon Musk Accuses Two Influential Firms 

of Controlling the Stock Market

Tesla CEO says investor-advisory firms ISS 

and Glass Lewis have enormous power.

• LUC OLING STREETWATCH JAN 24, 2023

Elon Musk likes to attack circles of power. It's as if he's on a mission.

Nothing seems to motivate him more than slapping a revered institution or icon. He seems to be committed to challenging all forms of representations of power.

During the past few weeks, the Techno King, as he's known at Tesla  (TSLA) - Get Free Report, has lashed out at Anthony Fauci, the immunologist who was the face of America's response to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

This despite the risks that such an attack could backfire on Musk, and more specifically on some of his companies, like Tesla. The electric-vehicle leader's customer base is made up largely of progressives, who in turn are often ardent defenders of Fauci.

But none of that has stopped Musk, who has said he wants Dr. Fauci prosecuted.

Via his Twitter microblogging platform, he even promised covid files that would denounce what he considers the totalitarianism of the health authorities as they responded to the pandemic. These covid files were also supposed to expose Dr. Fauci.

Musk then attacked the World Economic Forum, the last convention of which has just concluded in Davos, Switzerland. The billionaire accused the forum of acting like an unpopular world government. He has thus taken up the discourse of the anti-elite and anti-globalists of all political stripes. 

"WEF is increasingly becoming an unelected world government that the people never asked for and don’t want," the tech tycoon blasted out on Jan. 18.

ISS, Glass Lewis Have 'Far Too Much Power': Musk

His charge against Davos has amped up criticism of the gathering of global economic and political elites and civil-society figures. 

If Musk, the second richest man in the world, strongly criticizes a circle made up of people just as rich as he is, forum critics say, his remarks serve to prove that Davos is not fulfilling the mission it set for itself.

"The World Economic Forum meeting in Davos has become largely irrelevant, little more than an exercise in self-congratulation for the world’s elites to convince themselves that they’re making a difference," blasted Patriotic Millionaires, an association of rich individuals fighting for "equal political representation, a livable minimum wage and a fair tax system."

If the billionaire does not expect his targets to immediately fall from their pedestals under his blows, he hopes to have at least permanently weaken them.

But while his attacks on Davos are still hot, the global CEO is targeting two other entities that also symbolize power. 

These are the two largest proxy-advisory firms: Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass-Lewis. For Musk, ISS and Glass Lewis are the real masters of the stock market. In his eyes, their power is disproportionate. 

The two firms provide advice to shareholders on executive compensation and the voting for board members. Their advice is both considered and ignored.

"Far too much power is concentrated in the hands of 'shareholder services' companies like ISS and Glass Lewis, because so much of the market is passive/index funds, which outsource shareholder voting decisions to them," Musk criticized on Jan. 24. 

As a result, "ISS and Glass Lewis effectively control the stock market."

As often with Musk, the first attack aims to set the stage and take the ambient temperature. In coming days or weeks he can be expected to multiply his attacks against the two firms, which encourage the implementation of ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) norms. Musk has made ESG his No. 1 enemy.

ISS and Glass and Lewis did not respond to separate requests for comment.

'What Does ISS Think About That?'

Musk's charge against them, on the other hand, was welcomed by Twitter users.

"These 'governance solution' companies are very disconcerting," commented a Twitter user. "The words 'recommends vote against/for' is a thinly disguised threat that they are in control and you better go along with them. I would never delegate my vote to them. 97% market share voting advice = complete control."

"Ouch!" quipped another user.

"It is so important to vote as an individual investor rather than leave it up to these 'shareholder services' companies that manipulate the stock market," said one Twitter user.

There is bad blood between Musk and the two firms. ISS and Glass Lewis had, for example, recommended that shareholders vote against the generous compensation package Tesla granted to its charismatic CEO in 2018. 

A trial on Musk's pay was held last November. A Tesla holder had filed a complaint to protest his compensation, estimated at more than $50 billion but conditioned on the company’s financial and stock-market performance. The trial ended in mid-November. Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery has not yet issued a ruling from the bench.

According to Jim Woodrum, clinical professor of executive education at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, muted criticism of ISS and Glass Lewis can be heard in the boardrooms.

"If you ask experienced directors about their biggest complaint about the changes in the boardroom over the last 20 years, I think many would grumble and then say something about Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis," Woodrum said. 

"To some, these entities have taken the fun out of being a director, as creativity has been replaced by an increased focus on compliance."

Woodrum then explained how the two consulting firms operate and how they gain power.

"Both firms have created models of what they think good governance looks like. And both use various algorithms to determine whether a given company is deserving of a 'yes' vote on Say on Pay, and whether individual board members should be supported," he continued.

"Many institutions follow their recommendations, while others subscribe to the services yet also employ their own staff to determine how they should vote their shares. 

"The most interesting thing about these firms is that their business model requires them to change their guidelines on a regular basis. After all, if they had a straightforward set of rules and all companies adopted them, there would then be no need for ISS or Glass Lewis to exist."

But boardrooms have become dependent on ISS and Glass Lewis, Woodrum warned.

The most popular boardroom conversation is, he says, "'What does ISS think about that?'

"This has also led to a homogenization of boardroom practices, as more and more companies come into compliance with the latest edict from ISS and/or Glass Lewis," the professor said.

The professor believes that there is a way for the boards of directors and the two consulting firms to coexist.

Answer Man: As Duke builds renewable energy, how long do solar panels, wind turbines last?

Andrew Jones, Asheville Citizen Times
Tue, January 24, 2023 

ASHEVILLE - Power is infinite, right? Electricity doesn’t run out unless you stop paying the bill, right?

Not right. Today’s question probes something we often forget about: How long does power-providing equipment last? Moreover, with state and nationwide moves toward renewable energy, how long do emerging energy tools last?

Got a question for Answer Man or Answer Woman? Email Interim Executive Editor Karen Chávez at KChavez@citizentimes.com and your question could appear in an upcoming column.

Question: Duke Energy in our area is increasing the amount of solar energy that they are producing. Duke also has indicated that it plans to produce wind turbine energy offshore on the North Carolina coastline. What is the life expectancy of solar panels and wind generators before they need to be replaced? What types of routine maintenance is required to maximize the amount of energy generated?

Let’s hone in specifically on Duke Energy’s answers to these questions, starting with solar power.

The company has a helpful crash course on renewable energy maintenance titled, fittingly, “Sustainable Life-Cycle Management for Renewables.”

DESS eBook Sustainable Life... by Andrew Jones

“The typical lifespan of solar PV panels is approximately 20-30 years,” Duke’s e-book explains. “The life span for solar power inverters is upwards of 10 years.”

To be clear, “PV” stands for photovoltaic and a panel is what you picture in your head when you think of solar power.

You may not be familiar with “power inverters,” so allow the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy to explain:

“An inverter is one of the most important pieces of equipment in a solar energy system. It’s a device that converts direct current (DC) electricity, which is what a solar panel generates, to alternating current (AC) electricity, which the electrical grid uses.”

Related:Buncombe votes for expansion of NC's largest public solar cluster, zero-emission vehicles

So, inverters need to be replaced more often than panels and solar power owners are looking at a few decades before the equipment may need complete replacement.

However, that’s not the only option.

According to Duke’s e-book, there is “decommissioning,” which means removing and entirely replacing a system in some cases and there is “recommissioning” or “repowering” which is essentially maintenance.

“Recommissioning or repowering is the process of finding and replacing underperforming – and potentially non-working – components of existing solar PV and/or battery energy storage systems,” the e-book explains. “If the system is failing systemically, a full system replacement is probably the right way to go. However, most systems are in better condition than their performance might suggest.”

Duke extols the “value” of “great maintenance schedules” that include cleaning solar panels and taking advantage of equipment warranties.

Then there’s the wind turbine, a monster of a tool for generating clean energy and the star of some of Duke’s sustainability marketing.

Again, to narrow the scope here, let’s focus on Duke and one of its latest endeavors, an offshore wind energy lease in the Carolina Long Bay, just southeast of Wilmington. A Duke subsidiary in May 2022 was named a provisional winner of a $155 bid to lease turbines there.

According to a news release, the company could begin “site assessment” there in 2023 and “could support up to 1.6 gigawatts of potential offshore wind energy, enough to power nearly 375,000 homes.”

Fully assembled wind turbines undergoing tests and adjustments before being towed out to the site of the Hywind Tampen wind farm, about 85 miles off the Norwegian coast.

Construction will take at least 10 years, Duke estimates.

The turbines at this site could have roughly 15-megawatt output. It’s not immediately clear what brand of turbine this project will use, but turbines have a roughly 20-30-year lifecycle.

Page 19 of a report titled “Building North Carolina's Offshore Wind Supply Chain” references a 30-year lifespan.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management concurs.

In a helpful overview of offshore wind farms titled “Navigational, design, and decommissioning concerns for offshore wind facilities: Fact Sheet,” the BOEM addresses the lifespan question.

“A typical offshore wind lease is valid for approximately 30 years,” the fact sheet states. “Before facilities may be installed under an approved Construction and Operations Plan, a lessee must provide financial assurance that covers the decommissioning of all structures, cables, and obstructions.”

Andrew Jones is an investigative reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at @arjonesreports on Facebook and Twitter, 828-226-6203 or arjones@citizentimes.com. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: As Duke Energy grows, how long do solar systems, wind farms last?

Los Angeles Times Letters to the Editor: 

When will Americans admit, 'It's the guns, stupid'?

Wed, January 25, 2023 

A police officer stands in the street at the scene of a mass shooting in Monterey Park on Jan. 22. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

To the editor: Thank you for one of the best editorials I've read concerning gun violence. Your point about killers having one thing in common — they have guns — reminds me of an exchange I heard years ago: In reply to "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," someone said, "People with guns kill people."

I read some initial reporting about the Monterey Park suspect having some anger issues. Whether or not that turns out to be true, it reminds me of Homer Simpson being told he had to wait for a background check before purchasing a gun. Frustrated, he replied, "But I'm mad now!"

Reducing gun violence requires we continue to consider many issues. In the meantime, how many deaths will it take, how many years will it take, until we and the people we elect admit, "It’s the guns, stupid"?

John Saville, Corona

.
To the editor: In addition to guns, mass killers have more important things in common — desires for notoriety, and to inflict as much misery on society as they have suffered in their lives.

The Times' front-page stories on the Monterey Park shooting and your coverage of the suspect and the terror he allegedly inflicted surely fulfill these desires. Furthermore, The Times' coverage (and that of countless other newspapers and broadcasters) will assure other monsters that their future acts of horror will achieve similar outcomes.

More than 70 million Americans are gun owners, and 99.9% of them never use a firearm to take a life. Yes, America needs to stop the carnage of the 0.01% of gun owners who commit these atrocities.

Editorials would be more useful if they focused on outlawing removable magazines holding more than six shots, red-flag laws that operate quickly and cheaply, and laws creating consequences for people failing to report an atrocity they know is being planned.

David A. Walsh, Manhattan Beach

..
To the editor: This is sick. We are sick as a society to tolerate this all so folks can have their guns. Guns have become the golden calves that are worshiped and defended against any sensible laws.

Oh, we have to obey the 2nd Amendment and make sure we have guns for "2nd Amendment remedies." That part of the Constitution was written when we had muskets that had one shot and took a few moments to reload.

Our forefathers could not have imagined today's assault weapons, and the purpose of the 2nd Amendment certainly wasn't to give citizens the means to overthrow the government if they thought it was out of control.

When will this insanity stop and we say enough is enough? I would give up my right to own a gun because the safety of our communities is more important.

Anne Earhart, Corona del Mar

Newsom renews call for federal action on gun safety after 2 mass shootings in California


Lara Korte
Tue, January 24, 2023

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom angrily denounced Republicans for refusing to adopt gun safety measures as he renewed calls for federal action after two mass shootings in California left 19 people dead.

Newsom also called out fellow Californian, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, for not making a public statement after the shootings in Monterey Park and in Half Moon Bay.

“Where’s he been on gun safety reform? Where’s the Republican Party been on gun safety reform?” the governor said, appearing visibly shaken after meeting with families of victims of the second shooting. “Shame on them. Shame on those that allow and perpetuate that to be rewarded politically.”

California has some of the most stringent gun policies in the nation, which the governor says helps explain why the state has a gun death rate 37 percent below the national average. Some of those restrictions, however, are in jeopardy following a Supreme Court decision in June on a concealed carry law in New York that invited challenges on a wide range of firearm laws.

Even with California's laws, people can just bring weapons into the state from elsewhere — which is why Congress should take actions such as restricting the size of magazines and banning assault weapons, Newsom said.

“We can’t do this alone,” Newsom said. “And with all due respect, we feel like we are.”

The governor made the trip to Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, after the killing of seven farmworkers Monday, apparently by another worker. It came less than 48 hours after the attack by a gunman at a dance hall during a Lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park, a small city east of downtown Los Angeles.

Newsom had harsh words for McCarthy, who represents the Bakersfield area, for not making any public statements addressing either shooting.

“I’m still waiting for Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the House of Representatives, who purports to represent the people of the state of California,” he said. “We haven’t heard one damn word from him, not since Monterey Park, not what happened here, not one expression of prayers, condolences, nothing, and it should surprise nobody.”

The Speaker addressed the shootings at a press gaggle on Tuesday in the Capitol, around the same time Newsom was speaking in Half Moon Bay.

"Let me begin by expressing my condolences to the families in California with the recent violence over the last couple days," McCarthy told reporters.

Newsom said he was in the hospital in Southern California visiting victims and family members when he was pulled aside and informed of the second shooting in Half Moon Bay.

The governor, like others in his party, has doubled down on the need for gun restrictions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision. Last year the Democrat-dominated legislature passed a dozen more restrictions, and new bills are in the works for this year.

While the state does have a lower rate of gun death than the national average, it’s been impossible to insulate it from tragedies like the ones seen this week. Increasingly, California Democrats have been looking to Washington to place protections in areas that state policies simply can’t cover.

“We can figure this out — we can,” Newsom said. “We know what to do. It’s not complicated. We do. And we don’t have to do this again and again and again.”