Army blocks Israeli rally supporting torched West Bank town






Israeli border police officers block hundreds of Israeli left-wing activists from staging a solidarity rally in the Palestinian town that was set ablaze by radical Jewish settlers earlier this week, next to the West Bank town of Hawara, Friday, March 3, 2023. On Monday scores of Israeli settlers have gone on a violent rampage in the northern West Bank town of Hawara, setting cars and homes on fire after two settlers were killed by a Palestinian gunman. 

(AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

MAJDI MOHAMMED and ISABEL DEBRE
Fri, March 3, 2023 

HAWARA, West Bank (AP) — Israeli troops fired stun grenades and tear gas on Friday to block busloads of Israeli left-wing activists from staging a solidarity rally in a Palestinian town that was set ablaze by radical Jewish settlers earlier this week, protesters said.

The soldiers shoved protesters to the ground in the occupied West Bank town of Hawara, activists said, pressing their knees into their necks and backs before briefly detaining them. According to Sally Abed from the group Standing Together, at least two protesters were briefly arrested. The army threw them to the ground, kicking and handcuffing them, she said.

In another case, a group of soldiers violently pushed former Israeli parliament speaker, Avraham Burg, until he stumbled to the ground.

The Israeli army said it had decided to declare Hawara a closed military zone because of the soaring tensions following Sunday's settler-led attack. When Israeli and Palestinian activists attempted to violate the military order, security forces used tear gas and other means to disperse the crowds and maintain order, the military said.

Spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said that the military would pursue “a de-escalation policy in the region” after “this complex and tragic week for all sides.” He did not elaborate.

Hundreds of settlers, some armed with knives and guns, rampaged through Hawara on Sunday and torched dozens of homes and businesses after two Israeli brothers were shot and killed nearby. One Palestinian was killed in the mob assault.

“It is ridiculous that the army allows settlers to enter Hawara as we speak, but we — Israeli Jews and Arabs who wish to show our solidarity — are told that there is no entry,” Standing Together said. The group said the rally was coordinated with the local council and residents.

On Friday, some 500 people holding signs of solidarity and Palestinian flags — mostly older men and women, both Jews and Arab citizens — stepped off buses that were stopped by Israeli soldiers and headed down the highway toward Hawara.

Palestinian motorists honked in support. The protesters chanted, “No to occupation” and “End Jewish terror.” Facing the mass of police and troops deployed to halt their peaceful protest, they shouted, “Where were you when Hawara happened?” — referring to the intense rampage that went largely unchecked and unpunished.

Unlike Palestinian cities like Ramallah that are under the control of the Palestinian Authority, Hawara is mostly under Israeli security control. The Israeli army has said that the ferocity and scope of the settler mobs earlier this week caught them by surprise. The Defense Ministry has sent two suspected ringleaders of the violence to administrative detention.

A town of 7,000 Palestinians surrounded by ideological settlements, Hawara long been a flashpoint for violence between Israelis and Palestinians

Earlier on Friday, a delegation of European diplomats toured the town to survey the damage and denounce the mayhem.

A chorus of condemnations over the rampage has poured in from around the world, particularly after Finance Minister and settler leader Bezalel Smotrich said Wednesday that Hawara "should be erased." Smotrich, whose party wants Israel to formally annex large parts of the West Bank, later backtracked on the comment.

Egypt's Foreign Ministry on Friday lambasted Smotrich's remarks as a “dangerous and unacceptable incitement of violence.”

___

DeBre reported from Jerusalem.

The unique free rein U.S. rail companies enjoy has led to disastrous accidents. Now they’re preparing to ship even more hazardous materials through our communities


NTSB - Xinhua - Getty Images

Maya van Rossum
Fri, March 3, 2023

The Norfolk Southern freight train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio on Feb. 3, 2023, was an unmitigated disaster that inflicted tremendous harm on people’s health, safety, and our environment. It’s time our government serves the interests of our communities and stops cowering to the demands of the railway industry.

There are plenty of opportunities for the government to cast their vote in support of our environment, such as saying “no” to special permits for more hazardous substances transported by rail and “yes” to needed regulations.

Despite the devastating consequences resulting from train accidents, incidents, and derailments involving hazardous substances, and the known lack of critical protections to minimize or avoid these catastrophic consequences, the railway companies have been seeking special permits that will allow them to bring more hazardous substances by rail into our communities–including dangerously hazardous and flammable liquified natural gas and cryogenic ethane.

Special permit applications are currently under consideration at the Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) that would allow these additional dangerous substances to barrel through our communities on rail lines and under the primary oversight of the rail companies, not government officials. However, the rail companies have proven themselves untrustworthy–it’s literally like the fox guarding the henhouse. The Norfolk Southern derailment should give all in government pause–and at this critical juncture convince PHMSA that there must be no special permits for new or additional hazardous substances transported by rail.

At the very same time, the railway companies, including Norfolk Southern, have been forcefully opposing essential regulatory upgrades designed to protect local communities and the environment, including opposing regulations that would make the transportation of hazardous substances on our rail lines less dangerous.

Sadly, government decision-makers have been listening and either failed to put in place obvious and needed regulatory mandates to protect our communities and environments–or even rolled back existing protections. It’s time to turn that tide.

We know what protections are needed to improve the safety of transport by rail. Among the gaps in protection under the current regulatory scheme that may have prevented the devastating outcomes in East Palestine are:

There are no requirements for electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brake systems that help multi-car trains brake more evenly, quickly, successfully, and safely.


There is no obligation for rail lines to join any unified command formed in response to a catastrophic event that joins the rail company response with emergency responders and government leaders so they can jointly assess the impacts, threats, and most appropriate safety precautions for both people and the environment–and more effectively put those decisions into action.


There is no obligation to immediately notify all responsible government agencies and entities when an incident or accident has occurred, including providing full and accurate information on any dangerous substances or conditions involved.


There is no obligation to work with communities and first responders across their system to create and practice emergency response plans, including sharing basic information on the hazardous substances emergency responders need to be prepared to deal with.


Rail workers lack basic protections that better support optimal performance, such as paid sick leave and sufficient staffing to carry out essential safety checks, which are becoming ever more important as the rail lines continue running longer and heavier trains with an increasing number of cars carrying a multitude of dangerous chemicals and substances.

All of this sounds like basic common sense, doesn't it? As Norfolk Southern and other rail line catastrophes have demonstrated, unless these kinds of basic and common-sense protections for communities and the environment are codified as legal mandates, the companies will never implement them, even if it ensures public safety

The rail companies are certainly not the only industry transporting hazardous substances where catastrophic events inflict devastating harm. What sets them apart is their unilateral decision-making authority in the face of a disaster–and unwillingness to coordinate with first responders and government agencies to protect the greater good. These problems are largely unique to the rail companies’ operating standards.

The value of mandatory reporting, advance emergency planning, ongoing preparedness, obligatory coordination as part of a unified command, and basic advance safety precautions is well demonstrated when it comes to shipping tankers on the water.

For example, when the Athos I oil spill discharged 265,000 gallons of crude oil into the Delaware River, the mechanisms in place allowed for the proper response in terms of containment and cleanup, as well as public safety and information. This included the mandate for full participation by all responsible parties in a unified command structure, including an established pathway of communication between all parties and with the public, the obligation of immediate and ongoing notifications and information-sharing by the company responsible for the spill, advance emergency planning and regular drills practicing appropriate response for when the inevitable catastrophic accident does occur, well-developed relationships among government and emergency response personnel, strategically placed and accessible emergency gear, and response personnel assured by the industry through membership in an entity like the Delaware Bay and River Cooperative.

The collaboration allowed for a swift and comprehensive emergency response with regular pathways of communication to the impacted and concerned public. This comprehensive, experienced, and well-rehearsed response action was not unique to the Athos I spill–it is a reflection of the regulatory mandates and clear lines of responsibility enshrined in law for catastrophic spill events on our nation’s navigable waterways.

Certainly, communities and the environment suffer when there is an on-water catastrophe like an oil spill. However, the kind of misinformed chaos where the responsible industry is given almost carte blanche to hide information and undertake a self-serving response is not the norm across industries. It’s only the norm when it comes to railway companies.

Norfolk Southern representatives have said: “We are going to learn from this terrible accident and work with regulators and elected officials to improve railroad safety.”

“From day one I’ve made the commitment that Norfolk Southern is going to remediate the site,” CEO Alan Shaw asserted. “We’re going to do it through continuous long-term air and water monitoring. We’re going to help the residents of this community recover and we’re going to invest in the long-term health of this community and we’re going to make Norfolk Southern a safer railroad.”

Independent government assessments of the company’s response make it hard to give such claims much credence. In a Feb. 14 correspondence addressed to Shaw, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro characterized the company’s response as giving “inaccurate information and conflicting modeling” that made protective action more difficult, that it was unwilling to work with government agencies and first responders in ways that made them less able to respond effectively. He went so far as to characterize the company as being driven by “corporate greed, incompetence and lack of care for … residents.”

Given the industry’s proactive efforts and investment in preventing essential protective regulatory protections that could have avoided the harm, the promise of support for improved safety mandates moving forward rings hollow–and at the very least is way too little given way too late.

After the devastation inflicted on the communities and environments of East Palestine, Ohio and Beaver County, Pennsylvania, it’s time for stronger regulatory protections with regard to the rail lines traversing the communities of our nation. The authorities should reject all requested special permits that would allow additional hazardous substances–such as the liquified natural gas and/or cryogenic ethane permit application currently under consideration by PHMSA.

For those interested in learning more or taking action to challenge plans to transport more LNG by rail, you can learn more and act here.

Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper, is the leader of the regional (4-state) Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and founder of the national Green Amendments For The Generations.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

East Palestine Derailment Triggers ‘an Uneasy Feeling’ in a Growing Petrochemical Hub

Eve Andrews, Grist
Fri, March 3, 2023

A truck turns down an alleyway on N. Market Street as dusk settles in on February 25, 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio.

This story was originally published by Grist. 

Chris Laderer was 34 days into his tenure as chief of the volunteer fire department in Darlington, Pennsylvania, when the station received a call that a train had caught fire in the neighboring town of East Palestine, just over the state border in Ohio. Laderer assumed that an engine had overheated, but as the crew pulled out of the station he saw signs of something far more disastrous.

“We could see the glow and plume of smoke from our station, and we’re 4 miles from the scene,” he recalled. “We realized we’re getting something much bigger than what we anticipated.”

When Laderer’s team arrived, alongside the fire departments from roughly 80 other towns across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, they found 38 cars of a 150-car train splayed along the tracks, with some emitting flames that smelled, as Laderer described it, of burning plastic. They would learn in the days that followed that 11 cars contained hazardous chemicals, including the highly toxic compounds vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate, which are used in the manufacturing of common plastics.

By Monday, three days after the February 3 derailment, the Norfolk Southern railroad company had sent in their own officials and contractors to perform a controlled burn-off of the vinyl chloride. The tactic was meant to prevent, as much as possible, more than 100,000 gallons of vinyl chloride from evaporating into the air and seeping into the soil and creek beds surrounding the train, although an as-yet-unknown quantity of it already had. (“Either we were going to blow it up, or it blows up itself,” Trent Conaway, the mayor of East Palestine, explained at a town hall the next week by way of illustrating a frustrating lack of options.)

But the burn didn’t go quite as planned. A towering, bulbous cloud of black smoke erupted from the train in the explosion and then spread over the surrounding area like a pool of oil, where it hung in the low atmosphere for hours and hours. Experts have attributed the smoke’s stubborn refusal to dissipate to a weather phenomenon called an inversion, where warm air that rises into the atmosphere after a sunny day traps the cold air coming off the ground as night falls. “The smoke that was supposed to stay up started banking down a bit on the area,” Laderer explained.

Jeremy Woods, a mechanic for the Darlington-based trucking company and repair shop Lync, described the scent that permeated the air all of Monday night as that of charred PVC pipe, but with a hint of chlorine that reminded him of the YMCA pool. Trisha Blinkiewicz, whose home sits about 4 miles east of the derailment, went to dinner in nearby Chippewa, Pennsylvania, on that same Monday evening. She found the town buried in a low-lying fog that felt thick on the skin, with a distinct, abrasive smell of burnt plastic.

The train that crashed in East Palestine derailed about 20 miles northeast of its destination of Conway, Pennsylvania, one of the industrial towns and small cities that line the Ohio River as it flows west from its mouth in Pittsburgh. The Upper Ohio River Valley — which stretches, roughly speaking, from that mouth down to where West Virginia meets the tip of Kentucky — has been the site of proliferating petrochemical development over the past decade, as oil and gas companies turn their attention away from fuel and toward a much richer prospect: plastics.

Ethane gas fracked from the Marcellus Shale, which extends across Pennsylvania into the eastern edge of Ohio and northern West Virginia, can be “cracked” into ethylene, a flammable gas critical to the production of plastics used for packaging, bottles, and electrical insulation, among other products. And all of the infrastructure that is required for every step of plastic production and transport — wells, pipelines, refineries, ports, plants — has spread like a spider’s web over the region.

Read Next: The train derailment in Ohio was a disaster waiting to happen

The accelerating petrochemical development is simply the newest incarnation of industrial exploitation for a region that has been plagued by legacy pollution since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The pressing question is whether the people who have lived here for generations have hit their breaking point, and whether they feel empowered to demand more from the corporations that threaten their homes and the politicians that enable them.

“Honestly, I never expected this big an incident to happen in my entire life, let alone my first month as fire chief,” said Laderer. “And Norfolk Southern are not telling us a lot, and they’ve got me questioning things.”

The unique Appalachian topography of the greater Ohio Valley tends to fortify the pollution created within it, as if the geology that had endowed the region with such bountiful fossil fuel and mineral reserves also cursed it to suffer more for them. Major industrial facilities and railroad hubs are usually established on the river, for ease of both transportation and waste disposal, and the emissions that they produce get trapped by the steep hillsides that frame the tributaries.

The Shell cracker plant, which began operations in the fall of 2022, is a sprawling behemoth on the edge of the Ohio River in Monaca, Pennsylvania, directly across the river from the derailed train’s destination in Conway. The plant, which is widely considered to be a grim arbiter of future petrochemical development in the region, takes locally fracked gas and breaks it down at a molecular level to manufacture the ethylene “nurdles” — translucent plastic pellets the size of a grain of arborio rice — that make up many household and single-use plastics.

Residents of eastern Beaver County, which is quite rural, say that they have not personally felt the adverse effects of the Shell plant. They do not smell chemicals in the air or see nurdles floating in the creeks near their homes, unlike those who live downstream of the plant. They are more or less protected by the same topography that traps pollution around the facilities that create it, with a buffer of hills and hollers that rise and fall between their communities and the plant itself. But the derailment in East Palestine on February 3 brought the more disastrous consequences of plastic production far closer to home.

Ron Stidmon moved from New York City to Enon Valley, Pennsylvania, in 2003, seeking stillness and solitude after having lost several friends in the 9/11 attacks. Enon Valley, which sits a few miles northeast of East Palestine on the border between Beaver and Lawrence counties, is secluded and quiet, dotted with both Amish farms and sprawling properties. Stidmon bought a farm, unsuccessfully tried to make a lot of different crops work, and finally cracked the code of profitability with garlic. He has steadfastly committed to organic practices on his land for 20 years, to the extent where he grumbles when a neighbor burns a tire on an adjacent property.

When Norfolk Southern performed the controlled burn-off of vinyl chloride on February 6, Stidmon recalled, “it looked like the end of the world with the smoke coming up.” He’s now watching the wells and ponds on his property daily, with no other option than to simply wait for testing to learn if carcinogenic chemicals from the derailment have leached into the aquifer. He’s optimistic that his water supply will be spared of contamination, simply because he’s upstream of the crash.

“If we were a mile or so west, it would be completely different. If the winds had been blowing a different direction, it would have been different,” he said. “It’s a matter of luck — has nothing to do with having a plan, or setting up that we’re safe.”

Stidmon had been anticipating a disaster like this for years. In 2016, he was on the Darlington Township’s Board of Supervisors, where he began to raise the issue of railroad safety. He was concerned by the sheer volume and frequency of trains routed along the track that wraps around Darlington, running north through the village of New Galilee, east across Enon Valley, and over the state border into East Palestine. According to Stidmon, he spent a year trying to get Norfolk Southern to simply provide the number of trains that came through in a day. When months went by and the company never answered, he and a few neighbors got together to stay up for 24-hour shifts, watch the tracks, and count. The figure at which they arrived was 60.

“[Norfolk Southern] won’t do anything to address the people’s concerns, to address legitimate problems. They have such a cavalier attitude: ‘This is our track, our business.’ It’s discomfiting to know that anything can happen, with practically no repercussions,” said Stidmon. “You can live your own life as clean as you want, but these guys can destroy everything you’ve done to keep it clean for yourself.”

Jason Blinkiewicz owns the trucking company and repair shop Lync, which is located a little over a mile from the derailment. He lives in Enon Valley, where the railroad runs right in front of his house. (On the night of February 3, he and his wife, Trisha, found that the engine of the train that had crashed had “cut and boogied” to come sit on the tracks in their front yard.) He, like most of his neighbors and employees, doesn’t trust Norfolk Southern and assurances from the Environmental Protection Agency that the air and water have been safe to breathe and drink. The borough of Enon Valley commissioned independent testing of wells and streams, and the community is awaiting results.

“It’s normalized to some degree because there’s already low air quality in the area,” Blinkiewicz said. “The cracker plant is putting out volatile organic compounds, or what’s the nuclear power plant doing, or how about the coal plant right behind it that they shut down not that long ago? What about the mills in Midland and the steel plant in Koppel?”

But all of those facilities are far enough from Blinkiewicz’s home and workplace that he hasn’t felt their impacts nearly as acutely as those of the derailment. “I think it’s the first time, in my 46 years on this planet, in this area, that it gives you an uneasy feeling about everything,” he said.

“And as much as it pains me to say, my trust has to lie in our government. Which is hard to do, right? But we have to rely on those government agencies to protect us. That’s what they’re there for.”

On the night of February 15, East Palestine hosted a town hall at the local high school for residents to ask questions of both state and federal EPA officials. (Representatives from Norfolk Southern pulled out hours before the meeting due to “the growing physical threat” to their employees’ safety. Those threats have not been substantiated.) Volunteers with the East Liverpool, Ohio-based community group River Valley Organizing, were standing outside of the high school’s front door passing out flyers for the group’s own town hall to take place the following week.

Amanda Kiger, director of the group, is familiar with the pervasive distrust of government, regardless of political orientation, in the Ohio Valley region. It is hard to have faith in one’s representatives with a centuries-long legacy of politicians whose loyalties have been bought by industry.

“Historical pollution has been just layered on this region for so long,” Kiger said several days later in an interview. Stoneware potteries, coal mines, and steel mills mostly died off to be replaced by refineries, hazardous waste incinerators, unconventional gas wells, and petrochemical facilities. “And when you look at communities that are environmentally devastated, bad and polluting commerce attracts more bad and polluting commerce. They can go: ‘We didn’t do that, they did that, that’s been there for years.’”

Two days before the town meeting, a week after the black cloud of burning vinyl chloride spread over East Palestine and its neighboring towns, residents around the Shell cracker plant about 20 miles southeast started to post reports of a large flame emitting from it.

The flame was evidence of a “flare,” which is a mechanism meant to regulate malfunctioning of the plant’s machinery by expelling excess hydrocarbons into the air. This flaring, while preventing a more disastrous outcome for the plant and its surroundings, pumps volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the atmosphere. In just a few short months since being operational, Shell has already exceeded its annual allowance of VOC emissions as permitted under the Clean Air Act and the Pennsylvania Air Pollution Control Act. That’s in spite of the fact that the facility has the second-highest permit for VOC emissions in the state. In fact, the environmental organizations Clean Air Council and Environmental Integrity Project intend to sue Shell for the plant’s early violations.

Read Next: Amid hopes and fears, a plastics boom in Appalachia is on hold

Due to bureaucratic delays from both Shell (which is required to notify the community of flaring activity) and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, it can sometimes take as long as a month for residents of Monaca and the surrounding towns to learn that a plant malfunction happened. But the resident groups Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community (BCMAC) and Eyes on Shell have asked local “watchdogs” to post whether they’ve observed a flare or felt changes in the scent or feel of the air around the plant.

Anaïs Peterson, a volunteer with Eyes on Shell, notes that in the months prior to the Shell plant’s official opening in November, the group of concerned citizens that she helped convene would see about 40 attendees at their monthly meetings. By January of this year, several months and multiple flaring events into the plant’s operations, that number had tripled.

“Sometimes the bad things that happen in the community are the moments you can bring folks together,” said Kiger. “And it takes the community coming together to push back on federal and state legislators.

“But am I really sick and tired that my community is the casualty, and we have to be the message-bringers? Absolutely. It’s getting overwhelming.”

On the evening of February 23, dozens of residents from within several miles’ radius of East Palestine crowded into a small storefront on the town’s commercial thoroughfare for River Valley Organizing’s town hall event, spilling out of the main room into the lobby and kitchen. A panel of independent experts in environmental cleanup and hazardous chemicals answered questions from the community. The atmosphere darkened as those in the room processed new information: that the EPA had not been testing air, water, or soil samples for dioxins, potential toxic byproducts of the vinyl chloride explosion that can persist in land and sediment for decades without proper cleanup.

As the evening went on, the questions grew more distressed: When I go home tonight, what is the first thing I can do to make sure the air is clean for my children to breathe? How can I protect my livestock and pets that roam land that might be contaminated with dioxins? Is my home ruined forever? And, above all: How do we make sure Norfolk Southern sees justice for what they’ve done to us?

“You would have tripped over your own shoes without a flashlight, the smoke was so thick — like being in a cave,” said one resident of New Springfield, Ohio, a few miles northwest of the derailment, who expressed concern to the experts assembled that he couldn’t safely grow produce and raise livestock on the land that had been contaminated by that smoke. “We’ve been pretty self-sufficient, and now we’re zero self-sufficient. What do you pay property taxes on 40 acres for if you can’t grow a tomato?”

One of the great, enduring appeals of rural American life is the dream of complete independence. You buy property, build a homestead, grow food, raise your family. Your children play in the creek in the summer and ride sleds down sloping white hills in the winter. But when one powerful corporation’s mishap puts all of that at risk, it becomes clear that a so-called independent existence is only protected through the strength of community.

“I don’t care if you’re red or blue, I don’t care if I beat you up in the bar 10 years ago,” said Jamie Cozza, an organizer for River Valley Organizing and lifelong resident of East Palestine, before urging those gathered to contact every elected official in the region. “We need to come together right now and use our voices, because no one else is going to fight for us.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/east-palestine-derailment-has-neighbor-towns-uneasy/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 

Learn more at Grist.org

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U.S. Railroad Managers Told Employees to Ignore Wheel Bearing Problems

Owen Bellwood
Fri, March 3, 2023 

A photo of the Ohio train crash from above with rail cars spread around the scene.

A train carrying hazardous materials crashed in East Palestine, Ohio, last month.

Last month, a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying 20 cars filled with hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. After the crash, safety experts decided the best course of action was to carry out a controlled burn of the toxic chemicals inside the cars, to prevent an enormous explosion that they warned would send shrapnel flying for miles around.

It was a disaster of epic proportions and has since sparked outrage over the handling of the crash and the concerns that were raised in the buildup to the incident. Now, The Guardian has uncovered audio that includes a rail worker being told by their superior to skip certain safety checks that could have uncovered the faulty components that caused February’s rail incident.

According to the outlet, a leaked audio recording heard an employee query their manager about safety checks on wheel bearings. In the clip, the manager is heard telling the employee to stop making such checks and marking cars for repair in order to speed up train times. The site reports:

In late 2016, Stephanie Griffin, a former Union Pacific carman, went to her manager with concerns that she was getting pushback for tagging – or reporting for repair – railcars. Her manager told her it was OK to skip inspections.

Griffin asked if the manager could put that in writing. “That’s weird,” said the manager. “We have 56 other people who are not bad-ordering stuff out there. You’re definitely not going to get in trouble for it.”

Griffin said: “He refused to bad-order [mark for repair] cars for bad wheel bearings. My boss took issue with it because it increased our dwell time. When that happened, corporate offices would start berating management to release the cars.”

A photo of construction equipment clearing the site of the Ohio derailment.

The crash spewed toxic fumes into the air following a controlled burn of the hazardous cargo.

The audio is particularly bad as initial investigations into the Ohio crash have so far found that a faulty wheel bearing could have caused the incident. In the case of the Norfolk Southern derailment, investigators found that wheel bearings on the train were 253°F above ambient temperature in the lead-up to the incident.

The increased temperature on the wheels was detected by hot bearing detectors (HBDs) that lined the train’s route, which should have warned rail workers of the issues onboard. However, Norfolk Southern’s policy to stop trains only when sensors pick up temperatures 170°F or higher meant the issue wasn’t addressed as quickly as it could have been.

What’s more, once rail workers on board did apply the emergency brakes, it came too little too late and the train still crashed.

A photo of train wheels on a Norfolk Southern carriage.

Rail workers were told to skip important wheel checks.

But could tightening up on safety checks have prevented the disaster in the first place? Well, according to The Guardian report, workers are supposed to check vital components on trains before marking any defective carriage for repair. But, it warned that management, “at the behest of corporate,” went out of its way to undermine workers doing the job. The site adds:

[Griffin] said: “The regulation at the time stated that a wheel bearing was bad when it had ‘visible seepage’. But that was very vague, and the bosses used that vagueness to their advantage. For me, it was whenever oil was visible on the bearing. For my bosses, they wanted actual droplets and proof it would leak on the ground.”

Despite the stark findings from The Guardian’s report, and the news that safety measures on railroads were rolled back during the Trump administration, rail operator Union Pacific made steps to assure the site that “nothing is more important than the safety of Union Pacific employees and the communities we serve.”

A photo of smoldering train cars following the Ohio crash.

The train derailed on February 3rd.

In The Guardian’s report, a statement from the rail company said: “Employees are expected and encouraged to report concerns, and have a number of avenues to do so, including a 24/7 anonymous hotline and they are firmly protected from retaliation.”

Of course, the National Transportation Safety Board is still undertaking its investigation into the Norfolk Southern derailment, including focusing on the company’s use of wayside defect detectors, which should have spotted the failed bearing, and its rail car inspection practices.

Jalopnik

World's 1st horseback riders swept across Europe roughly 5,000 years ago

Kristina Killgrove
Fri, March 3, 2023

A Yamnaya grave of a male horse rider found in Malomirovo, Bulgaria. He died between the ages of 65 and 75.

Archaeologists accidentally discovered the world's earliest horseback riders while studying skeletons found beneath 5,000-year-old burial mounds in Europe and Asia, a new study finds.

The ancient riders were part of the so-called Yamnaya culture, groups of semi-nomadic people who swept across Europe and western Asia, bringing the precursor to the Indo-European language family with them. The findings strengthen the hypothesis that the horse played an integral part in the expansion of this group, and therefore, in the spread of the Indo-European language.

The new analysis came from 217 human skeletons from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, a geographical area that runs roughly from Bulgaria to Kazakhstan. For decades, researchers have debated when horses were domesticated. In Kazakhstan, 5,000-year-old horse skeletons show wear on their teeth that could have been from bridles, while others have found possible fenced enclosures. In the same time period, horse milk peptides have been detected in the dental plaque of people from Russia. Importantly, the geographical explosion of the Yamnaya culture — which expanded across 3,000 miles (4,500 kilometers) over a mere century or two — suggests horses may have assisted as transportation animals.

A map of the Yamnaya and Afanasievo distribution in Eurasia about 5,000 years ago.

But there was no direct evidence that the Yamnaya culture regularly domesticated horses.

So archaeologist Martin Trautmann of the University of Helsinki in Finland and his colleagues collected data on six diagnostic skeletal traits that have been collectively called "horsemanship syndrome." Since bone is a living tissue, it responds to stresses placed on it. Consistent horseback riding can cause trauma and spine degeneration, but it can also result in more subtle changes to the leg and hip bones as the human body adapts to regular riding.

Related: 1,400-year-old remains of headless horse and rider discovered in Germany


An Egyptian drawing of the goddess Astarte on horseback that dates to the 19th dynasty, about 1,500 years after the first known Yamnaya riders. This horse has a stock build and is smaller and shorter than modern horses are.


This limestone Egyptian relief shows a messenger on horseback from the Horemheb tomb, Saqqara, late 18th dynasty. Bronze Age riders are usually show a rider position known as

In the skeletons from 39 sites across Eastern Europe, Trautmann and colleagues found that two dozen had at least half of the traits of horsemanship syndrome.

They are most confident, however, about the identification of five Yamnaya culture individuals hailing from what is now Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary as likely equestrians.

"Our findings provide a strong argument that horseback riding was already a common activity for some Yamnaya individuals as early as 3000 [B.C.]," they wrote in their paper.


The Yamnaya people didn't ride Przewalski's horses, but these hoofed animals are likely close to what ancient horses looked like in terms of appearance, color and size.

Birgit Bühler, an archaeologist at the University of Vienna, told Live Science in an email that she is "excited about their research." However, Bühler, who has studied horsemanship syndrome but was not involved in this work, was concerned about the researchers' ability to measure changes to the hip sockets given the poor state of conservation of many of the bones. "Because two major traits are missing, I feel that caution is required in interpreting the evidence," she said.

Most of the skeletons were in such poor condition that horsemanship couldn't be analyzed. Taking that into account, however, "we guess that more than 30% of male adult Yamnaya individuals were riding frequently," Trautmann told Live Science in an email.

The remains of a horse rider found in Malomirovo, Bulgaria.

He had a Yamnaya-style burial, and radiocarbon dating puts him in the 30th century B.C.

Shevan Wilkin, a biomolecular archaeologist at the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich, who was not involved in this study, told Live Science in an email that the researchers' findings about the Yamnaya are interesting but "not surprising considering their vast Early Bronze Age expansions." Expanding so quickly and spreading their genes over such a vast area would have been difficult without horses.

Although skeletons with horsemanship syndrome are rarely found, their identification by archaeologists gives us new information about what it was like to live on the eastern steppe five millennia ago. "For now," Trautmann said, "it seems riding was mostly a male activity, probably connected to herding, and training probably started early."

The new discovery was described in an article published Friday (March 3) in Scientific Advances.

The world’s first horse riders

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI

 

IMAGE: GRAVE OF A HORSE RIDER DISCOVERED IN MALOMIROVO, BULGARIA view more 

CREDIT: MICHAŁ PODSIADŁO

The researchers discovered evidence of horse riding by studying the remains of human skeletons found in burial mounds called kurgans, which were between 4500-5000 years old. The earthen burial mounds belonged to the Yamnaya culture. The Yamnayans had migrated from the Pontic-Caspian steppes to find greener pastures in today´s countries of Romania and Bulgaria up to Hungary and Serbia.

Yamnayans were mobile cattle and sheep herders, now believed to be on horseback.

“Horseback-riding seems to have evolved not long after the presumed domestication of horses in the western Eurasian steppes during the fourth millennium BCE. It was already rather common in members of the Yamnaya culture between 3000 and 2500 BCE”, says Volker Heyd, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Helsinki and a member of the international team, which made the discovery.

These regions west of the Black Sea constitute a contact zone where mobile groups of herdsmen from the Yamnaya culture first encountered the long-established farmer communities of Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic traditions. For decades, the Early Bronze Age expansion of steppe people into southeastern Europe was explained as a violent invasion.

With the advent of ancient DNA research, the differences between these migrants from the east and members of local societies became even more pronounced.

“Our research is now beginning to provide a more nuanced picture of their interactions. For example, findings of physical violence as were expected are practically non-existent in the skeletal record so far. We also start understanding the complex exchange processes in material culture and burial customs between newcomers and locals in the 200 years after their first contact”, explains Bianca Preda-Bălănică, another team member from the University of Helsinki. 

Horse riding is a pivotal moment in human history

The use of animals for transport, in particular the horse, marked a turning point in human history. The considerable gain in mobility and distance had profound effects on land use, trade, and warfare. Current research has mostly focused on the horses themselves. However, horse-riding is an interaction of two components – the mount and its rider – and human remains are available in larger numbers and more complete condition than early horse remains. Since horseback riding is possible without specialized equipment, the absence of archaeological finds with regard to earliest horsemanship does not come unexpected.

Traces of horsemanship can be found in the skeletons

“We studied over 217 skeletons from 39 sites of which about 150 found in the burial mounds belong to the Yamnayans. Diagnosing activity patterns in human skeletons is not unambiguously. There are no singular traits that indicate a certain occupation or behavior. Only in their combination, as a syndrome, symptoms provide reliable insights to understand habitual activities of the past.”, explains Martin Trautmann, Bioanthropologist in Helsinki and the lead author of the study.

The international team decided to use a set of six diagnostic criteria established as indicators of riding activity (the so-called “horsemanship syndrome”):

1. Muscle attachment sites on pelvis and thigh bone (femur);

2. Changes in the normally round shape of the hip sockets;

3. Imprint marks caused by pressure of the acetabular rim on the neck of the femur;

4. The diameter and form of the femur shaft;

5. Vertebral degeneration caused by repeated vertical impact;

6. Traumata that typically can be caused by falls, kicks or bites from horses.

To increase the diagnostic reliability, the team also used a stricter filtering method and developed a scoring system that takes into account the diagnostic value, distinctiveness and reliability of each symptom. Altogether, out of the 156 adult individuals of the total sample at least 24 (15.4%) can be classified as 'possible riders', while five Yamnaya and two later as well as two possibly earlier individuals qualify as 'highly probable riders'. “The rather high prevalence of these traits in the skeleton record, especially with respect to the overall limited completeness, show that these people were horse riding regularly”, Trautmann states.

If the primary use of horseback riding was as a convenience in a mobile pastoral lifestyle, in allowing a more effective herding of cattle, as means of swift and far-ranging raids or just as symbol of status needs further research.

Could it all have happened even earlier?

“We have one intriguing burial in the series” remarks David Anthony, emeritus Professor of Hartwick College USA and also senior co-author in the study.

“A grave dated about 4300 BCE at Csongrad-Kettöshalom in Hungary, long suspected from its pose and artifacts to have been an immigrant from the steppes, surprisingly showed four of the six riding pathologies, possibly indicating riding a millennium earlier than Yamnaya. An isolated case cannot support a firm conclusion, but in Neolithic cemeteries of this era in the steppes, horse remains were occasionally placed in human graves with those of cattle and sheep, and stone maces were carved into the shape of horse heads. Clearly, we need to apply this method to even older collections.”

CAPTION

Overview of the archaeological excavations in Malomirovo, Bulgaria

CREDIT

Michał Podsiadło

 

Short fact box: Who were the Yamnayans?

The Yamnayans were a population and culture that evolved in the Pontic-Caspian steppes at the end of the fourth millennium BCE.

By adopting the key innovation wheel and wagon, they were able to greatly enhance their mobility and exploit a huge energy resource otherwise out of reach, the sea of steppe grass away from the rivers, enabling them to keep large herds of cattle and sheep. Thus committing to a new way-of-life, these pastoralists if not first true nomads in the world expanded dramatically within the next two centuries to cover more than 5000 kilometers between Hungary in west and, in form of the so-called Afanasievo culture, Mongolia and western China in the east. Having buried their dead in grave pits under big mounds, called kurgans, the Yamnayans are said to be the first having spread proto-Indo-European languages.

More information on the research:

https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/the-yamnaya-impact-on-prehistoric-europe

---

JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.ade2451 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

First bioanthropological evidence for Yamnaya horsemanship

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Mar-2023

THE GREAT DRAGON SMAUG

An Unexpected Reason It'll Be Harder to Breathe as Earth Warms

Angely Mercado
Fri, March 3, 2023

A huge cloud of Sahara dust reached Cuba on June 25, 2020.

As global temperatures and emissions rise, it’s going to become harder to breathe. Air quality issues won’t just come from human activity, though—the natural world could also release more pollution in a rapidly warming world.

A recent study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment found that a warming planet means more particles in the atmosphere, including dust and organic aerosols from plants. While we usually think of plants for their benefits to the environment, in certain circumstances they can actually release compounds that aren’t great for our respiratory systems.

Researchers at the University of California Riverside examined how air quality could change over time as temperatures and carbon dioxide increase. They looked at data from 13 models that participate in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, which compares climate data outcomes. Results from the models showed that increases in CO2 and hotter temperatures will create more global average concentrations of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5. The two largest contributors will come from dust and organic aerosols from plants. PM2.5 is particularly bad for humans: Long-term exposure is linked to lung problems, heart disease, and premature death.

If global temperatures increase by 4 degrees Celsius, then dust and plant emissions are predicted to increase as much as 14%, according to the study. But if the world manages to stay within 2 degrees Celsius of warming, that increase in PM2.5 is about 7%. “The more we increase CO2, the more PM2.5 we see being put into the atmosphere, and the inverse is also true. The more we reduce, the better the air quality gets,” James Gomez, UC Riverside doctoral student and lead author of the study, said in a press release.

All plants produce chemicals that are called biogenic volatile organic compounds, or BVOCs (if you’ve ever smelled a freshly mown lawn, you’ve experienced these compounds). The BVOCs oxidize in the atmosphere and form organic aerosols; an increase in BVOCs could create public health issues. “Really anybody that has respiratory issues could be negatively impacted by air pollution,” Gomez told Earther. “Even an average healthy person who breathes in excessive amounts of air pollution could be negatively affected and develop respiratory issues.”

Change in PM2.5 surface concentration after 4 degrees C of warming. Black dots symbolize statistically significant changes.

The second largest contributor to the increase in naturally occurring air pollution would come from the Sahara Desert in Africa. Results from the models showed that a warmer world means changes in wind patterns. Remember the large dust cloud from the Sahara that traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and hovered over the southern U.S. and the Caribbean in 2020? Now imagine a bigger dust cloud. “We looked at the magnitude of the change,” Gomez said. “The dust events that do occur will be more likely to be stronger…The ones that happen would probably be larger.”

The study did not consider other forms of air pollution caused by the natural world, like wildfire smoke, because that’s harder to place into climate models, according to Gomez. Because of that omission, he thinks the results are underestimating how bad PM2.5 pollution could become if emissions and global warming aren’t reigned in.

And that’s not even talking about human-caused pollution. Gomez pointed out that, even though human pollution was not calculated for here, human activity has led carbon dioxide to increase in our atmosphere. “Indirectly, we are causing these changes in the natural system,” Gomez said. “Nature is making the air pollution worse, as a result of our net actions.”

Gizmodo

PERHAPS IT WAS APOPHIS

'Prehistoric' mummified bear discovered in Siberian permafrost isn't what we thought

Harry Baker
Fri, March 3, 2023 

Close-up of the bear's head.

A perfectly preserved, mummified bear found entombed in the Siberian permafrost in 2020 isn't what scientists thought it was, a new analysis reveals. It turns out that the eerily intact carcass is much younger than first assumed and belongs to an entirely different species.

Reindeer herders unearthed the remains, which include the bear's intact skin, fur, teeth, nose, claws, body fat and internal organs, on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, a remote Russian island located in the East Siberian Sea. Researchers named it the Etherican bear, after the nearby Bolshoy Etherican River.

When the Etherican bear was first uncovered, researchers at the Lazarev Mammoth Museum Laboratory at North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) in Yakutsk, who have led the analysis of the remains, thought that the mummy was an extinct cave bear (Ursus spelaeus). Fossils of this long-lost species suggest that the enormous ancient bears, which are closely related to brown bears (Ursus arctos) and polar bears (Ursus maritimus), grew to around 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) tall and weighed a whopping 3,300 pounds (1,500 kilograms). U. spelaeus went extinct around 22,000 years ago, toward the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest part of the last ice age, so the researchers believed that the mummy was at least this old.

However, subsequent analysis revealed that their assumptions about the Etherican bear were way off: In reality, the beast was a brown bear that dated to around 3,460 years ago, the NEFU team said in a statement in December 2022.


Researchers discuss heir findings.


Researchers surround the bear.

Image 3 of 4

The bear's corpse from behind.

Image 4 of 4

A researcher removes the bear's brain.

The NEFU team recently conducted a full necropsy, or animal autopsy, on the Etherican bear, which has revealed even more about the mysterious mummy, Reuters reported.

The bear was a female that was 5.2 feet (1.6 m) tall and weighed around 172 pounds (78 kg), suggesting it was likely around 2 to 3 years old when it died. It is unclear how the bear perished, but its mummy showed signs of significant spinal injuries that likely contributed to its demise.

The Etherican bear was so well preserved that its stomach contents were still partly intact, which revealed that the bear had been dining on a mix of unidentified plants and birds, some of whose feathers were still inside the bear's belly. This fits with what we know about living brown bears that are omnivores, meaning they have a mixed diet of plants and animals.

Researchers sew the bear's skull back up.

The researchers also removed the bear's brain after cutting through its skull, which they hope to study in the future.

One of the biggest remaining mysteries about the Etherican bear is how it ended up on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island.

The island is currently separated from the mainland by around 31 miles (50 kilometers) of water, so the most likely explanation is that brown bears moved to the island when it was still connected by sea ice during the Last Glacial Maximum, according to Reuters. But if this was the case, then researchers would have expected to find many more brown bear remains on the island, which is a hotspot for paleontological treasures, including mammoth remains.

Mexico hopes to avoid sanctions on vaquita's near extinction

This undated file photo provided by The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows a vaquita porpoise. Mexico announced in the first week of March 2023, that it is seeking to avoid potential trade sanctions for failing to stop the near-extinction of the vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise and most endangered marine mammal. Studies estimate there may be as few as eight vaquitas remaining in the Gulf of California, the only place they exist and where they often become entangled in illegal gill nets and drown. 

(Paula Olson/NOAA via AP File) 

MARK STEVENSON
Fri, March 3, 2023 

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico is seeking to avoid potential trade sanctions this week for failing to stop the near-extinction of the vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise and most endangered marine mammal.

Studies estimate there may be as few as eight vaquitas remaining in the Gulf of California, the only place they exist and where they often become entangled in illegal gill nets and drown.

The government submitted a protection plan this week to the international wildlife body known as CITES, which had rejected an earlier version. It lists establishing “alternative fishing techniques” to gillnet fishing as one its top priorities.

In reality, the government’s protection efforts have been uneven.

The administration of President Andrés Manuel López has largely refused to spend money to compensate fishermen for staying out of the vaquita refuge and to stop using gill nets. The nets are set illegally to catch totoaba, a fish whose swim bladders are a delicacy in China worth thousands of dollars per pound.

The activist group Sea Shepherd, which has joined the Mexican Navy in patrols to deter the fishermen and to help destroy gill nets, says the efforts have successfully reduced the gillnet fishing.

But the Mexican government has not spent the money needed to train and compensate fishermen for using alternate fishing techniques such as nets or lines that won’t trap vaquitas.

“What is needed is fewer plans and bureaucracy, and more concrete actions in the vaquita’s habitat,” said Alex Olivera, the Mexico representative for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Olivera noted that CITES, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, could recommend trade sanctions if Mexico doesn’t take reasonable action.

“There is no alternative fishing gear” being offered, said Lorenzo Rojas, a marine biologist who has headed the international committee to save the vaquita. “The fisheries authorities have been notable for their absence,” leaving the effort to change practices up to civic groups and fishermen.

The Mexican government banned the use of gill nets in the area in 2017, with the understanding it would provide support payments and training on using less dangerous fishing methods.

Sea Shepherd has for years posted ships in the Gulf of California to try to discourage the illegal fishing and remove abandoned “ghost nets” that keep trapping vaquitas.

Sea Shepherd says its joint efforts with the Mexican Navy — which have sunk about 193 concrete blocks onto the bottom of the Gulf to snag illegal nets in the reserve area — has resulted in a 79% reduction in the amount of time small boats spent illegally fishing in the protected area.

It dropped from 449 hours between Oct. 10 and Dec. 5 2021, to 164 hours in the same period of 2022.

But that’s still a lot of fishing time spent in an area that’s supposed to be totally off-limits.

“We have to do better,” said Pritam Singh, the Sea Shepherd chairman.

A fisheries trade magazine, Notipesca, has reported that the Mexican government plans to fund a study examining teeth of vaquitas gathered in the past in hopes of proving they once lived in an estuary habitat fed by the Colorado River containing a mix of salt and freshwater.

Little freshwater comes down to the Mexican waters since the United States began building dams on the river the 1930s. According to one theory, the United States — not Mexico — would be responsible for the vaquitas’ decline, by cutting off the flow.

However, experts note that vaquitas found dead typically have died by drowning in nets, not from malnourishment or other causes.

In 2020, the Mexican government publicized efforts to crack down on what it called “The Cartel of the Sea,” arresting a fisherman named Sunshine Rodriguez and accusing him of being the leader of an a crime ring that trafficked in totoaba swim bladders.

But prosecutors lacked evidence, and Rodriguez — who denied trading in fish swim bladders — was acquitted of the charges against him in February after spending 2 years and 3 months locked up.

The time awaiting trial did have one effect: Rodríguez now says “I’m not going to be involved in the negotiations” between fishermen and the government, adding “Sunshine Rodríguez is standing down.”

Can millions of genetically modified trees slow climate change?

Tim Fernholz
Fri, March 3, 2023 

Planting a tree, as environmental solutions go, comes in and out of fashion.

In 1970, US president Richard Nixon made Arbor Day a national holiday, urging people to get out and put saplings in the ground. Today, however, there is ongoing debate over whether a trillion new trees can meaningfully slow global warming, and whether incentives meant to protect forests actually do the job.

What is clear is that the fight against climate change is not just about reducing carbon emissions. Scientists estimate that to keep Earth’s climate at stable temperature, some 10 gigatons of carbon in the atmosphere must be removed each year by the middle of this century.

Engineers are developing machines that suck carbon out of the air, and power plants that can store it deep underground, but so far neither method has been proven efficient at scale. That’s why some think it’s time for nature’s greatest carbon-hoovering creation to get an upgrade.

Living Carbon, a start-up in San Francisco, raised $21 million earlier this year with that exact approach: For its first product, it modified the genetics of poplar trees to grow 50% faster and capture 27% more carbon than before, at least in greenhouse conditions. Now the company is planting as many as 5 million of these trees—likely the first widespread use of genetically modified trees in the US.

The business model is to take advantage of incentives for carbon reduction provided by governments and nonprofits. Living Carbon wants to work with people and companies who own land that is environmentally degraded from industrial or agricultural use, some 133 million acres in the US. Living Carbon will pay to plant its trees on the land, and then work with third parties like Watershed to measure the carbon impact of those plantings. Then, it can sell credits for that stored carbon to corporations seeking to offset their carbon emissions. Or, companies can partner with Living Carbon directly and use the trees for their own internal carbon calculations.

The company’s CEO and founder, Maddie Hall, was a former OpenAI employee who saw an opportunity in giving world class plant biologists the same opportunities as AI researchers to pursue frontier science at commercial scale.

“We can plant enough trees by 2030 to remove a gigaton of carbon,” she told Quartz last month.

But whether these modified trees can sustain both a profitable business and a net reduction in emissions will only be proven after these trees have spent years growing in the wild.

“What Living Carbon is trying to do has never been done before at all,” said Steve Strauss, a professor of forest biotechnology at Oregon State University, who has partnered with Living Carbon on its research, including a field trial of more than 600 trees. “It’s very bold and I told them that ... everything about this is high risk, in my view.”
How to make a carbon-hungry tree

Altering plant genetics to produce better outcomes has been a part of human history since the dawn of agriculture. But these days generational breeding programs have been supplanted by a modern understanding of how to manipulate genetic information.

Living Carbon’s trees take advantage of natural evolution. Photosynthesis — when plants convert carbon dioxide, water and sunlight into fuel for growth—can accidentally produce toxic byproducts. Many trees have to spend their energy on biological systems that remove this waste, but other plants have evolved more efficient forms of photosynthesis. Living Carbon uses a method called “particle bombardment” to incorporate genetic material from more efficient plants into the poplar trees it plans to plant in the wild. The technique also allows the company to avoid regulation by the USDA and forestry standards groups that look askance at planting trees with genes modified by other techniques in the wild.

The company started with poplars, which are a popular tree for environmental remediation because of their ability to reduce and destroy industrial toxins. In lab conditions, Living Carbon’s poplars have grown much faster and larger than unmodified trees, suggesting that they will speed carbon storage in the field. Hall hopes that the fast-growing trees will also be useful for combatting invasive species and creating forest canopy to promote the return of native plants. Vince Stanley, a Georgia farmer who is working with Living Carbon, has planted 10,500 of their poplar trees on his property and says that being able to harvest them more frequently than the current 50-year rotation schedule promises more profits.

Living Carbon is also developing its own version of the Loblolly Pine, which is frequently grown commercially as a lumber source. It also wants to develop trees that accumulate more metals into their wood, slowing rotting and allowing them to store carbon for longer.

Poplar shoots grow in a petri dish at a Living Carbon laboratory.

Forestry experts told Quartz that Living Carbon’s results were plausible, but whether the new trees will have a useful environmental impact depends on many factors over a long timescale. Ultimately, the trees will eventually die and return their carbon to the ecosystem, or be harvested, with the fate of their carbon tied to the use of the lumber. If they wind up burned, or dumped, that won’t be that helpful in the long run.

Some wondered whether the tree species would be suited to the areas where they are planted, or if their fast growth would require too much water. They also noted that plantation-style tree growth focused on a small number of species could be susceptible to pest and pathogens.

“It would probably make more sense to plant trees that historically grew in places and are relatively adapted to them and to the pests and pathogens that occur there,” said Andrew Morris Latimer, a professor at the University of California, Davis.

The scientists were less concerned about the genetically altered trees leading to unexpected consequences in local ecosystems. Hall says the company is now only planting low-flowering female trees to limit wild reproduction. Strauss argues that given the global climate emergency, it’s irresponsible not to explore whether biotechnology can play a role in halting global warming.

But he adds an important caveat: It takes years to demonstrate that traits seen in trees grown in the controlled environment of the greenhouse will take root in the field. It’s too early to know if Living Carbon’s lab results will hold true across millions of trees planted in sites around the country.
A solution in search of a market

“The most surprising thing to me about building this company has been the challenges coming from the collective action problems from carbon removal projects,” Hall says. “The technology and the land partners weren’t that difficult.”

Namely, those collective action problems are figuring out how to reliably and independently measure the carbon savings of a project like planting trees on degraded land, and in turn assigning it a monetary value. The company depends on these efforts — “Living Carbon’s trees would not be planted or exist without carbon credit markets,” Hall says — even as questions about their reliability emerge. A recent investigation into Verra, an international carbon standards organization, found that many of its projects were likely not offsetting carbon emissions, and could have been worsening them.

Hall notes that the Verra projects under scrutiny were focused on halting deforestation and improving existing tree stands, which requires more complex assessment than planting new trees. She sees her company as a hybrid between nature-based solutions to climate change, like slowing deforestation, and engineering solutions, like the development of machines to capture carbon out of the air.

“Both have their challenges...engineered solutions are challenged by getting to scale [and] with nature-based solutions, it’s much more on the transparency and the durability and the quality of the projects,” Hall says. She is heartened by the push for better models that link what’s actually happening on the land to financial results, with verification through remote-sensing.

“There’s no question that trees suck C02 out of the atmosphere and store it for long periods of time,” Strauss says. “Whether that matters in the big picture, whether it’s big enough to matter, is a whole other question.”


One plausible estimate finds that there are about 228 million trees in the US. Major forestry companies plant tens of millions or billions of trees annually, Strauss says, and the millions of trees Living Carbon is planning to sew are likely to cover just hundreds of acres.

“My way to think about what they’re doing [is] see if it works at scale and in the kinds of environments they are putting them in,” Strauss says. “We need to be patient, we don’t really know what we have.”

Quartz