GOP's speaker once filed lawsuit seeking public cash for Ken Ham's creationist Ark museum

Brad Reed
October 26, 2023 

Ark Encounters under construction (Facebook)

Newly minted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has a long history of advocating on behalf of right-wing causes, including total bans on abortion, cutting Social Security and Medicare, and filing lawsuits aimed at keeping former President Donald Trump in office despite losing the 2020 election.

Daily Dot has flagged another aspect of Johnson's resume that appears to go beyond standard Republican policy positions, however: His advocacy on behalf of an organization that pushes for the teaching of creationism.

Last decade, Johnson filed a lawsuit against the state of Kentucky aimed at helping creationist Ken Ham secure public subsidies to construct his Ark Encounter museum – a gigantic replica of the biblical Noah's Ark that even features models of dinosaurs, despite the fact that dinosaurs had become extinct 65 million years before the Bible was even written.

In an editorial published in favor of subsidizing the ark, Johnson argued that Kentucky would certainly benefit from the massive amount of tourist revenue that the creationist-themed museum would purportedly deliver to state coffers.

"Kentucky officials are smart to enthusiastically embrace the Ark Encounter, and the millions of tourists the park will welcome to the area from every viewpoint, race, color, religion and creed," he wrote in the editorial.

He also praised Answers in Genesis, Ham's organization that teaches Noah carried pet tyrannosaurs with him on the boat for forty straight days, as aiming "to encourage critical thought and respectful public debate."

'Lunatic' Speaker Mike Johnson blasted for tying mass shootings to teaching evolution

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
October 27, 2023 

Then-President Donald Trump is greeted by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) before the State of the Union address in the House chamber on Feb. 4, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Leah Millis-Pool/Getty Images

Newly sworn-in Speaker Mike Johnson's record is being rapidly unearthed and critics are expressing anger and outrage that House Republicans have elevated what some are calling a far-right Christian nationalist to become the third most-powerful elected official in the country.

"While preaching a sermon in 2016," MeidasTouch Network reports Thursday, "Johnson blamed mass shootings on the teaching of evolution."

During his sermon at the Christian Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, Johnson said: "Some of you were around in the late 60s, you remember that what that was about? The counterculture revolution, Woodstock, and drugs and peace and free love and all that, but," he claimed, it was "more about the undermining of the foundations of religion and morality."

"Because if you remember in the late 60s we invented things like no-fault divorce laws. We invented the sexual revolution. We invented radical feminism. We invented legalized abortion in 1973, where the state government sanctioned the killing of the unborn," he said.

"All these things happened because as collectively as Americans, we began to get together in growing numbers and thumb our nose at the creator and say, 'We don't believe that anymore, we're rejecting the founders natural law philosophy in favor of moral relativism, and we're going down another path.' "

"Now, what we tolerate in moderation our children excuse in excess. What happens when you fast forward another 30 or 40 years?" he asked. "We know that we're living in a completely amoral society. And people say, 'How can a young person go into their school house and open fire on their classmates?' Because we taught a whole generation, a couple of generations now, of Americans that there is no right and wrong. That it's about survival of the fittest and you evolved from the primordial slime, why is that life of any sacred value because there's nobody sacred to whom it's owed."

"None of this should surprise us," Johnson claimed.

Critics blamed the new House Speaker.

Chris Harris, vice president of communications for Giffords, the anti-gun violence group founded and led by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, responded by saying, "You know what doesn’t lead to gun deaths in schools? Teaching kids science. What does? Giving kids easy access to guns."

The Atlantic's Norman Ornstein responded with one word: " Lunatic."

And The Daily Beast's Goldie Taylor served up this response: " Speaker Froot Loops."

Watch at this link.

Christian right cheers new House speaker, conservative evangelical Mike Johnson, as one of their own

Evangelical Christian conservatives have long had allies in top Republican leadership in Congress. But never before have they had one so thoroughly embedded in their movement as new House Speaker Mike Johnson, a longtime culture warrior in the courthouse, in the classroom and in Congress.

Religious conservatives cheered Johnson's election Wednesday, after which he brought his Bible to the rostrum before taking the oath of office. “The Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority ... each of you, all of us," he said.

“Someone asked me today in the media, ‘People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue?’” Johnson said Thursday in a Fox News interview. “I said, ’Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’”

But progressive faith leaders are sounding the alarm about Johnson’s opposition to LGBTQ rights and his rallying of Republicans around former President Donald Trump’s legal effort to overturn the 2020 election results. And, more broadly, they are concerned about Johnson's “desire to impose his narrow religious vision upon the rest of us," in the words of Paul Raushenbush, president of Interfaith Alliance, a broad coalition of progressive religious groups.

Related video: Rep. Mike Johnson, a staunch conservative from Louisiana, elected House speaker (The Associated Press)  Duration 1:42  View on Watch

To be sure, Christian conservatives have held the House speakership with Republican majorities in the past, from Catholics such as Paul Ryan and John Boehner to Newt Gingrich, who was Southern Baptist when he was speaker in the 1990s and later converted to Catholicism.

In fact, the 2023 House speaker drama has been in some ways an intra-church affair starring Southern Baptists — including Johnson himself, short-term speaker Kevin McCarthy and the representative who led the revolt to oust McCarthy, Matt Gaetz.

But Johnson is a bona fide culture warrior, with a resume reading like a roadmap of powerful institutions of the religious right.

He has served as professor at the government school of Liberty University in Virginia, a Christian school and conservative bastion.

From 2004 to 2012, Johnson served on board of the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, whose 13 million members comprise the nation's largest Protestant denomination. During his tenure with the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, it rallied members to place strong emphasis on "values voting." Such activism helped reinforce Republicans' opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights.

Brent Leatherwood, the commission's current president, said he met with Johnson in the early days of his own tenure. “It was clear to me he carries an abiding devotion to our convention of churches, subscribes to the principles that are dear to so many Southern Baptists, and has a deep pride in our nation," Leatherwood said.

Johnson served as an attorney with what's now known as Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the foremost legal advocates of causes valued by many on the religious right.

With the ADF, Johnson championed a 2004 Louisiana ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage, writing in the Shreveport Times that “homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural” and that society should not approve “such a dangerous lifestyle.” In 2003, after the U.S. Supreme Court nullified state laws banning same-sex sexual relations — which the ADF had urged it to retain — Johnson lamented the decision, writing that by “closing these bedroom doors, they (the justices) have opened a Pandora's box.”

Johnson's own public interest law firm, called Freedom Guard, helped win a legal battle regaining tax incentives on behalf of a Noah’s Ark theme park in Kentucky, overcoming state concerns that the project’s mission had shifted from tourism to ministry.

Johnson recently led a congressional hearing on transgender issues, saying in a statement, ”Gender affirming care’ is anything but 'affirming’ and ‘caring.’ It is adults deciding to permanently alter the bodies of children who do NOT have the capacity to make life altering decisions on their own.”

Religious conservatives embraced Johnson as one of their own as they cheered his election as speaker.

“His commitment to unity and passion for protecting freedom will benefit all Americans,” ADF president Kristen Waggoner said on X (formerly Twitter).

The Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, welcomed Johnson’s speakership not only because of his conservative political record, but also because he is a “a self-consciously committed evangelical Christian.”

“He has somehow pulled off the task of being very convictional and I believe right on most of these issues, and at the same time considered to be respectful and gracious even well-liked by members of his own party, and presumably by members of the other party as well,” Mohler said on his podcast.

Johnson invoked images cherished by Christian conservatives as he ascended to the speakership, pledging “servant leadership,” leading fellow Republicans in a prayer, touting the national motto, “In God We Trust” and highlighting the Declaration of Independence's statement that humans "are endowed by their Creator” with rights.

John Fea, who studies religious conservatives and is a professor of history at Messiah University in Pennsylvania, said Johnson is a Christian nationalist, part of a movement that fuses Christian and American values, symbols and identity and sees the United States as having a divine destiny similar to the biblical Israel. Johnson has paid tribute to the “profound influence" of Wallbuilders, an organization promoting the view that America was created as a Christian nation, on his own career.

“We should not be fooled by his aw-shucks style,” Fea added in Current, an online journal. “He is a culture warrior with deep connections to the Christian Right. One might call him a happy warrior.”

Progressive faith leaders expressed alarm at Johnson‘s election, and his remarks on Wednesday evoking the Bible as saying authorities are chosen by God.

“He must remember that he was elected by the people, not by God,” Raushenbush said.

Similar concerns were expressed by the Rev. Nathan Empsall, executive director of Faithful America, an online Christian community advocating for social justice.

Empsall, in a statement, depicted Johnson as “an insurrection-supporting politician who will do anything to grab power, no matter who it hurts, simply to enforce his brand of right-wing Christianity on the rest of us.”

After the 2020 election, Johnson organized more than 100 House Republicans to file a brief supporting Trump's challenge to President Joe Biden's election — a challenge that appalled many legal observers and that the Supreme Court rejected.

On Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress prepared to certify Biden’s win and just before Trump’s supporters overran the Capitol, Johnson tweeted: “We MUST fight for election integrity, the Constitution, and the preservation of our republic! It will be my honor to help lead that fight in the Congress today.”

He later tweeted a condemnation of the rioters who beat police and broke into the Capitol. He still voted with most House Republicans to overturn Biden's victories in two states.

Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said via email that Johnson “has an obligation to serve all Americans," those of all faiths and none.

“Johnson’s brand of Christian nationalism is bad American history and a betrayal of the historic Baptist commitment to religious freedom,” Tyler added.

___

AP journalists David Crary and Holly Meyer contributed to this report.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Peter Smith, The Associated Press

Mike Johnson once agreed to speak at 'Kill the Gays' pastor’s conference

Story by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement • 

U.S. Department of Agriculture© provided by AlterNet

He’s now the most powerful elected Republican in the nation, second in line to the presidency, and the third most-powerful elected official in the country, but just five years ago Mike Johnson was a freshman U.S. Congressman from Louisiana who had made a name for himself as an attorney fighting for far-right Christian causes.

In 2018, U.S. Rep. Johnson was scheduled to deliver the keynote speech at a Bible conference hosted by infamous “Kill the Gays” Pastor Kevin Swanson, as this social media post from Brian Tashman, formerly of Right Wing Watch/People for the American Way showed in April of that year:



Swanson, who supported Uganda’s “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” that called for LGBTQ people to be executed or face life in prison, made headlines in 2015 for saying gay people should be put to death.

Related video: Who is the new House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA)? (MSNBC)

Duration 5:11   View on Watch

As Right Wing Watch has reported, Swanson has called HIV/AIDS, “God’s retribution.” He has “defended Uganda’s kill-the-gays bill, warned that the Girl Scouts, women’s soccer and movies like ‘Frozen’ turn girls into lesbians, and accused gay people of causing devastating floods and hurricanes.”

Swanson also “frequently claimed that the government should put gay people to death,” Right Wing Watch had also reported, “and blamed natural disasters on gay people and women who wear pants.” He urged “people to hold up signs telling gay couples to die on their wedding day, and agreed “that gay marriage is like the Sandy Hook school massacre.”

Johnson had been slated to deliver a speech titled, “The Bible: Equipping the Man of God for Politics and the Culture War,” at Swanson’s Bible Family Conference. He also has ties to at least two groups designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as anti-LGBTQ hate groups: the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council.

“Throughout my career,” Johnson wrote in a 2018 Facebook photo, standing with anti-gay hate group leader Tony Perkins, “I have worked tirelessly to support legislation that protects conservative values of faith, family and freedom.”

“This week, I was honored by the Family Research Council with the True Blue Award for my vote on critical bills that protect life and promote fiscal responsibility.”

READ MORE: ‘Lunatic’ Speaker Johnson Blasted for Tying Mass Shootings to Teaching Evolution and ‘Inventing’ No-Fault Divorce

NCRM published a report on May 1, 2018, on Congressman Johnson being scheduled to deliver the keynote address, and before publication reached out to the Congressman’s office but did not receive a response – until after our article ran.

Here’s the update we published the following day, May 2, 2018:

Rep. Johnson’s office responded to our inquiry. They first claimed:

“Congressman Johnson was invited to speak to a Christian conference in August. He was unaware of Mr. Swanson’s participation and of his previous comments. Once this was brought to the congressman’s attention, he immediately denounced those comments and withdrew his participation.”

When NCRM replied, noting there was no record of Rep. Johnson denouncing Swanson’s remarks, Johnson’s office responded: “The Congressman was asked by a friend not associated with Swanson or his organization to join a Bible conference in D.C. Once he learned of Swanson’s connection to the conference he immediately withdrew his participation.”

After NCRM’s article ran, Johnson’s name was removed from the schedule at Swanson’s Bible Family Conference.

It does not appear Speaker Johnson has ever denounced extremist anti-LGBTQ hate.

In a separate May 2 article, NCRM reported, “Rep. Johnson still appears to support the anti-LGBT movement. Last week he posted praise for his ‘good friend, law school classmate and former colleague, Kyle Duncan, on his confirmation today to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.'”


READ MORE: New GOP Speaker: Separation of Church and State Is Only a ‘Shield for People of Faith’

LGBT civil rights group Lambda Legal calls Duncan, “a lawyer who has built his career around pursuing extreme positions that target members of the LGBTQ community.”

This week, on Thursday, speaking to Fox News, Johnson said: “Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘Curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview, that’s what I believe.”

Watch Johnson’s remarks below or at this link.




Related Articles:

・'Somewhat weak speaker': Analyst explains why Mike Johnson will need Steve Scalise’s help

・House Republicans privately warned Mike Johnson of 'populist rage' the day before January 6

・Speaker nominee Mike Johnson is a 'virulent Christian nationalist' and anti-LGBTQ 'MAGA extremist': critics

Earth close to ‘risk tipping points’ that will damage our ability to deal with climate crisis, warns UN

Analysis also warns of further tipping points on horizon such as drying up of groundwater vital for food supplies


Damian Carrington Environment editor
@dpcarrington

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 25 Oct 2023 

Humanity is moving dangerously close to irreversible tipping points that would drastically damage our ability to cope with disasters, UN researchers have warned, including the withdrawal of home insurance from flood-hit areas and the drying up of the groundwater that is vital for ensuring food supplies.

These “risk tipping points” also include the loss of the mountain glaciers that are essential for water supplies in many parts of the world and accumulating space debris knocking out satellites that provide early warnings of extreme weather.

A new report from the UN University (UNU) in Germany has set out a series of risk tipping points that are approaching, but said having foresight of these meant that it remained possible to take action to prevent them. Tipping points are triggered by small increases in their driving force but rapidly lead to large impacts.

The risk tipping points are different from the climate tipping points the world is on the brink of, including the collapse of Amazon rainforest and the shutdown of a key Atlantic Ocean current. The climate tipping points are large-scale changes driven by human-caused global heating, while the risk tipping points are more directly connected to people’s lives via complex social and ecological systems.

“As we indiscriminately extract our water resources, damage nature, and pollute both Earth and space, we are moving dangerously close to the brink of multiple risk tipping points that could destroy the very systems that our life depends on,” said Dr Zita Sebesvari, at UNU’s Institute for Environment and Human Security. “We are changing the entire risk landscape and losing our tools to manage risk.”

The report examines six examples of risk tipping points, including the point when building insurance becomes unavailable or unaffordable. This leaves people without an economic safety net when disasters strike, compounding their difficulties, particularly for the poor and vulnerable.

The climate crisis is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather and, for example, a major insurer has already stopped insuring properties in California, due to “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure”, particularly wildfires. Insurance premiums have also soared in Florida, and six insurers in the state have gone bust due to climate-related floods and hurricanes. The report also said half a million Australian homes are estimated to be uninsurable by 2030, primarily due to increasing flood risk.

Another risk tipping point examined in the report is when groundwater aquifers are overexploited to the point that the wells run dry. Aquifers currently prevent half the losses to food production caused by droughts, which are expected to become more frequent due to global heating, the report said.

More than half of the world’s major aquifers are already being depleted faster than they can be naturally refilled, the report said. If they suddenly dry up, entire food production systems are at risk of failure.

The groundwater risk tipping point has already been passed in some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, and is close in India, the report said. Saudi Arabia was a major wheat exporter in the 1990s but now imports the cereal after the groundwater wells were exhausted.

The other risk tipping points covered by the report were the point when water supplies from melting mountain glaciers start to decline; when Earth’s orbit becomes so full of debris that one collision with a satellite sets off a chain reaction; when heatwaves pass the point when natural sweating can cool the human body; and when losses of interdependent wildlife species snowball into the collapse of an ecosystem.

“You might not know [about risk tipping points] now, but you will,” said Caitlyn Eberle, also at UNU. “In five years, 10 years, 20 years, they will be there. But we do not have to suffer these impacts, they are really in our power to change.”

“Real transformative change involves everyone,” said Sebesvari. In the case of home insurance, for example, owners can increase flood resilience, municipalities can improve planning, governments can offer state-backed insurance and global action from countries and companies can cut carbon emissions.

Sebesvari said values need to change too: “One of our examples is “being a good ancestor”, which sounds flowery but we think the rights of future generations should be very concretely built into decision making processes.” She said a practical demonstration of this would be using lower discount rates when making decisions based on the future benefits of investments.

Prof Tim Lenton, at the University of Exeter, UK, said: “These authors are using a different definition of a tipping point to the one I have been popularising, which emphasises strong reinforcing feedback.”

“Much of what they describe are threshold responses, which certainly pose important risks – especially human exposure to extreme heat and humidity which as we saw in the tragic Asian heatwave earlier this year, can be fatal,” he said. “One could call that a true tipping point at the level of the individual when our natural self-regulation of temperature by evaporating sweat fails us.”

America mysteriously hit a deadly tipping point -- and no one knows why

This infrared satellite image shows Hurricane Tammy as it lashes the Caribbean’ s northern Leeward Islands on Saturday, Oct. 21, 2023. - 

National Hurricane Center/National Hurricane Center/TNS

And you know something is happening here

But ya' don't know what it is

Do you, Mister Jones?

— Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man

Sometime in the past year, this tiny planet we live on in an obscure corner of our Milky Way galaxy went through some sort of tipping point, a “state change” of sorts, and now things are different from how they’ve been at any other time in the 300,000 year history of the human race.

Nobody knows for sure what that change or tipping point is.

— One theory is that variations in dust concentrations in the Northern Hemisphere’s atmosphere — a function of the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean allowing more or less fine dirt to be picked up and carried aloft from northern Africa — are changing the reflectivity of the atmosphere and trapping more of the sun’s heat.

— Another theory follows the January, 2022 eruption of the volcano at Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai, which injected so much water vapor (146 million tons) and sulfur dioxide (420,000 tons) into the stratosphere that scientists were predicting soon after it happened that there would be a year or two of unusual heat signatures across the planet.

— Some scientists argue it was caused by a change in worldwide regulations mandating ships at sea burn cleaner diesel fuel, reducing the soot-type particles they’re emitting that previously formed heat-reflective clouds.

— And, of course, the current El Niño ocean pattern appears to be drawing heat from the ocean up to the surface where it’s transferred to the atmosphere in unprecedented amounts.

But regardless of the why/how, something has definitely happened in the past year or so that has pushed our atmosphere’s state of equilibrium out of an older, stable range and into a newer, warmer, and apparently far less stable state.

It’s so dramatic and so shocking that scientists — typically not prone to hyperbole — publishing in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience about this anomaly open their article with:

“Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory.

“For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

“Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold. We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.”

Looking at 35 different “vital signs” that signal the health of our planet and its atmosphere, 20 of which have deviated from their norms so badly as to alarm researchers, the scientists who wrote for BioScience warn us all:

“We are venturing into uncharted climate territory.”

In just the past 24 hours, a tropical storm that nobody thought was a threat blew up into a full-on Category 5 hurricane and is, as you’re reading these words, devastating Acapulco. Not one weather agency predicted it: this is how unpredictable and violent our weather has become because we’re still burning fossil fuels.

While wind and solar power grew 17 percent worldwide between 2021 and 2022, and both are now cheaper that any unsubsidized fossil fuels, humanity is still using fossil fuels at a 15:1 ratio against renewables. Life on earth won’t be safe until those numbers are reversed.

Our forests worldwide are not only under assault from loggers and poachers; climate change has now altered their environment enough that hundreds of millions of acres of trees are suffering from beetle infestations, drought, dieback, and forest fires. While the world needs to reverse the trend toward deforestation by 2030 (we’re currently losing around 22 million hectares of forest and jungle a year), we’re still a long way away from that goal.

All over the planet glaciers are in retreat, as are the ice shelves and glaciers covering Greenland and Antarctica. Coral reefs are bleaching and dying, and fish and marine mammal species are undergoing radical shifts in their habitat and range as waters warm, driving most ambulatory animals toward the north and south poles.

Deadly storms, derechos, flash flooding, bomb cyclones, rapidly-forming hurricanes, severe/damaging hail, tornadoes in areas that had never before seen them: all these are creating vast swaths of human misery and costing hundreds of billions worldwide.

Given that the cost of the damages inflicted by climate change are so much higher than the profits the worldwide fossil fuel industry is making selling us their destructive products it’s surprising that more governments haven’t ended hydrocarbon subsidies and begun to directly bill these corporations for the climate change destruction their products are causing.

There’s a huge issue of economic and social justice associated with the climate crisis. The top 10 percent of the world, wealth-wise, produce fully 48 percent of the world’s emissions. The bottom half of humanity, wealth-wise, produces a mere 12 percent.

Yelling at poor people that they need to turn lights off (if they even have lights) and insulate their houses (when they have houses) will never have even a fragment of the impact that could be achieved by imposing a carbon tax on private jets, yachts, and mega-mansions.

Along those same lines, economists need to come up with new ways to model the health and success of societies and their economies that don’t rely only or even primarily on growth (as most do now). Instead, indices of sustainability and quality-of-life should be pushed front-and-center as alternatives to growth are developed and publicized.

Last year over 700 million people experienced chronic — regular, long-lasting — hunger, an uptick of over 100 million people over the previous two years. Driving this are climate extremes that are wiping out crops, failing soil exhausted by factory farming, and armed conflicts.

Producing a single pound of beef takes 1,700 gallons of water (compared with 39 gallons for a pound of vegetables): if everybody in America were to simply adopt “Meatless Mondays,” it would save the nation 70 million gallons of gas every year (“enough to fill up every car in Canada and Mexico and then some”) and free up an amount of land twice the size of Delaware.

It would also measurably reduce the rates of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and obesity. Cutting meat down to once a week or once a month — well within what human diets require — we’d have enough food left over to end world hunger while taking a bite out of climate change as well.

The fossil fuel industry would prefer we focus on talking about recycling, turning off lights, keeping our homes cool, and yelling at friends who fly for vacation. But the real power to change the future is in Congress and state houses across the country.

Making fossil fuels and meat more expensive (while subsidizing public transportation and healthy food for low-income people) is something that can only be done by government bodies, and will have a far greater impact than any amount of complaining or accusing people around their individual actions.

And there’s never been a better or more important time than now to join climate actions and lobby your elected representatives for large scale, long-term solutions to our fossil fuel addiction.

While nobody is exactly sure why we’ve hit this year of sudden anomalies, scientists are certain it’s a blinking red neon warning that we must change our course or suffer an unimaginable catastrophe. And we still have the tools to solve this crisis of our own making: we just have to use them before it’s too late.

MADNESS OF THE MARKET
Electrolux turns to profit in Q3 but sales down, 3,000 jobs to be cut
2023/10/27

The Electrolux logo at the IFA electronics fair. Fabian Sommer/dpa

Swedish home appliance major Electrolux reported on Friday that its third-quarter income amounted to 123 million Swedish kronor ($11 million), compared to last year's loss of 605 million kronor.

Earnings per share were 0.46 krona, compared to loss of 2.23 kronor a year ago.

Net sales amounted to 33.43 billion kronor, 5% lower than prior year's 35.24 billion kronor. The organic sales decline was 7.9 percent, mainly driven by continued weak market demand and consumers shifting to lower price points.

Separately, the company announced a new organizational setup amid continued weak consumer demand and competitive pressure in the market, which is expected to affect approximately 3,000 positions.

This would result in a restructuring charge in the fourth quarter of 2023 of 2 billion kronor to 2.5 billion kronor.

Electrolux said it is stepping up its cost reduction efforts to restore margins. The actions are expected to result in net cost savings of 10 billion kronor to 11 billion kronor in 2024 vs 2022, compared to the previous cost reduction target of over 7 billion kronor, the company said.

For 2023, the target is to reach cost reductions of approximately 6 billion kronor year-over-year, compared to the previous target of at least 5 billion kronor.

The company will reorganize into three regional business areas and two global product lines reporting to the CEO.

The new product line structure announced today will be effective as of November 1, and the new business area structure as of January 1, 2024.

© Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH

The UAW wanted to win back what it lost. Here's how the Ford deal measures up

LONG READ

2023/10/26

Jesse Jackson, bottom center, after a rally for striking workers at UAW Local 551 on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023, in Chicago. - John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/TNS

The United Auto Workers' tentative agreement with Ford Motor Co. marks significant steps toward the Detroit-based union's stated goal of winning back concessions made during the automotive bankruptcies and Great Recession.

The record deal that would last through April 2028 would secure double-digit wage increases, hike starting pay, reintroduce cost-of-living adjustments, shorten the timeline to the top wage, and boost retirement contributions. The union's Ford council is expected to vote on the agreement on Sunday to send to the roughly 56,000 members employed by the Blue Oval for ratification.

Autoworkers' wages haven't kept up with inflation — a fact touted by the union and acknowledged by the automakers themselves. In previous negotiations to help the companies survive, the union gave up COLA, instituted an eight-year timeline to get to the top wage and gave up pensions and retirement health care coverage in exchange for 401(k)s for employees hired after 2007.

Workers say they want and deserve those items back, though the companies have warned they can't go back to pre-bankruptcy labor costs, or else they won't be able to compete with nonunionized manufacturers.

"It’s really good compared to the other contracts I've been a part of," said Brittany Eason, 38, of Romulus, a 12-year UAW member who works as a team leader at Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne. "The strike has lasted long, but it's OK because we were fighting for what we believe in.

"It's partially there," she continued about the gains. "This is Shawn Fain's first time. He may not be able to sweep everything through. They succeeded on some points. They've been fighting for COLA as long as I've been there. It’ll help build our economy."

Ultimately, she hopes the tentative agreement will allow her to give up her Instacart side hustle and accelerate her plans to get a food truck or brick-and-mortar space to expand her cooking and baking business. She currently works as an in-home chef on the side.

UAW President Shawn Fain had said he understood the union wouldn't get everything it wanted in one round — and it didn't in the Ford deal, even though there is more value for members in each individual year of it than the entirety of the 2019 agreement, according to the union.

"For months, we've said record profits mean record contracts," Fain said in a video announcing the agreement. "And UAW family, our stand-up strike has delivered."

Following years of major profits, an employment rate below 4%, high rates of inflation and an EV transition that represents significant uncertainty, the environment was a perfect storm to make some big moves in pursuit of its demands.

"A couple of the companies already have revised production plans for EVs downward," said Marick Masters, a management professor at Wayne State University. "The growth and demand for it is unclear, certainly. It doesn’t appear to be as profitable. They may very well be in a difficult situation four years from now where they might not get anything. That’s got to be the fear."

The union announced the deal with Ford on Wednesday, the 41st day of its unprecedented simultaneous strike against the Detroit Three. At Ford, it had directed workers to walk out of the Bronco and Ranger Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne on Sept. 15, Explorer and Lincoln Aviator plant in Chicago on Sept. 29 and the Super Duty, Expedition and Lincoln Navigator plant in Louisville, Kentucky, on Oct. 11. The union sent those workers home after announcing the tentative agreement to keep up pressure on General Motors Co. and Stellantis NV.

In a statement on Wednesday, Ford said it was pleased to have reached the deal, and it was working to return its 20,000 employees affected by the strike back to work. It declined to characterize the specifics of the contract.

The UAW, in previous talks, had bargained back some concessions. Full-time workers hired after 2007 have the same health care coverage while employed as legacy workers do. Lost holiday and legal aid benefits returned in 2015. Additionally, new and improved benefits in previous contracts included better health care coverage, stronger, uncapped profit-sharing formulas and full-time conversion commitments for temporary workers at GM and Ford.

Perhaps the biggest miss for the union was the hope to extend pensions and health care coverage in retirement to all autoworkers. Workers hired after 2007 have 401(k)s. The request alone would have cost the companies billions of dollars, according to analysts. Ford agreed on improvements for current retirees, workers with pensions and those who have 401(k) plans.

"It isn’t a surprise," said Cindy Schipani, a business law professor at the University of Michigan. "That gets to be so expensive and so unpredictable. It sounds like a fair settlement.

“It’s not everything," she continued. "I don’t think the auto companies could give back what was lost. Look what happened. They went into bankruptcy. They can’t set themselves up to have a repeat of the disasters of the past. It does make sense to give more right now, especially in light of what CEO and executive pay looks like.”

The union also didn't win back the jobs bank, one of the policies blamed during the bankruptcies at General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC. It envisioned the Working Family Protection Program to pay laid-off workers to do community service in the event of a plant shutting down. The UAW, however, did get the right to strike over plant closures for the first time. Ford previously said it had committed product to each of its U.S. plants.

The union did get back COLA as it was in 2009 when it was suspended. It also returned the timetable to get to the top wage to three years, where it was until 2007, down from eight. It originally sought 90 days, the length of time it was until the mid-'90s.

There are issues unique to 2023 compared to previous negotiation years. Namely, the union wants to see workers at new electric-vehicle battery plants included in its master agreement with the automakers, receiving at least the same pay, benefits and protections as workers in assembly and powertrain plants. GM has offered to include Ultium Cells LLC battery plant workers in its master agreement, though details of that arrangement haven't been shared.

It's unclear where this issue stands in the Ford deal. The automaker doesn't have a battery plant up and running yet, let alone one with an organized workforce.

Some UAW demands also went beyond what it has ever had. It ended up withdrawing its request for a 32-hour work week, though discussions of such a proposal date to the 1970s in UAW publications.

“Because of the sacrifices that we made in the past, the company’s in a position that it is now to make these record profits," said Jeremy Ladd, 47, who has worked for GM since the mid-1990s, first at the now-shuttered Lordstown Assembly Plant in Ohio, and now at the truck plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana. "Now it is time for equitability. It's time for us to have the fair share of what we sacrificed to bring them.”
Autoworker wages

The issue top of mind for many workers on the picket line was wages. Ford agreed to a 25% not-compounded wage increase through April 2028. With COLA, it's estimated to bring the current top production pay up more than 30% to more than $40 per hour from the current $32.32, according to the union.

The UAW didn't provide a year-by-year breakdown except to say that there would be an immediate 11% wage hike upon ratification. That alone would bring that max rate to about $35.87.

In the 2019 contract, autoworkers got 3% raises in two of the years and 4% lump sums in the other two. Full-time workers, however, did receive a $9,000 signing bonus that year.

The UAW's original request was for a 46% compounded wage increase (40% not-compounded). That broke down to a 20% immediate wage increase upon ratification, and 5% additional wage increases over the next four years. That would've brought the max wage to $47.14 per hour before the end of 2027.

Randy Harvard, a quality driver at Stellantis' Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in Michigan, has worked for the company for 36 years. Rising costs in recent years, he said, are hard on families.

"We pay $36 for two steaks," said Harvard, 66. "You've got a family of four; you've got to split the steak. And that's still not enough."

In the 1980s and '90s, autoworkers generally received wage increases annually between 2.25% to 3% or lump-sum bonuses of a similar size. The contract in 2003 marked the first agreement with a two-year base wage freeze, followed by a four-year wage freeze in the 2007 contract, which instituted "the second tier." Workers hired after ratification started at about half of what legacy workers were making and didn't have a pension, retirement health care coverage or, at the time, the same health care benefits.

The top wage then at GM for those legacy workers was $28.69 per hour and $28.12 at Ford, which would be $42.10 and $41.27, respectively, today when adjusted for inflation. That year, the union and automakers agreed to a four-year base wage freeze for legacy autoworkers, but ultimately, they wouldn't see a wage increase until the 2015 contract.

In 2019, UAW top-wage production earners received $30.46 per hour — $36.25 today adjusted for inflation. That means even with the immediate raise that production workers would see if they ratify Ford's agreement, top wage earners still would have less buying power than they had four years ago.

With some of the best health care coverage in the country and thousands of dollars in additional profit-sharing and bonuses, however, wages only represent a part of autoworkers' compensation.

Ford's total labor costs for an hourly worker in 2007 were $68.35 per hour, which was $100.31 in 2023 dollars. Last year, its hourly labor costs were $64 per hour ($66.54 this year), according to a Ford source, similar to the costs at its crosstown rivals.

An hourly labor cost hasn't been shared for the new Ford tentative agreement. Industry sources have said the union's original demands for the 46% wage increase, COLA, pensions and retirement health care coverage and more would've raised costs to more than $150 per hour.

CEO and president pay

A 25% wage increase at Ford would accomplish the union's goal of besting the compensation increase of its CEO over the past four years.

The union said it had derived its original request for a 40% not-compounded wage hike from a 40% average increase in Detroit Three CEO compensation since 2019. It's a figure pulled higher by Stellantis' CEO following a 2021 merger that nearly doubled the company's size.

“They’re absolutely rolling in the money," Fain said in a UAW strike campaign video on CEO compensation. "They’re competing for who gets the biggest executive compensation package."

Across industries, CEO compensation fell 14.8% year-over-year in 2022, though CEOs were paid 344 times as much as a typical worker in contrast to 1965 when they were paid 21 times as much, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

"The CEO job is nothing like a rank-and-file job in terms of the types of stress, the responsibilities, and the risks are completely different," said Schipani, the UM business law professor. "But a company can’t claim they are poor if they are able to give the CEO that type of raise. Extraordinarily, the CEO-to-average-worker pay has only been going up. It shows there is money there."

Ford

At Ford, total CEO compensation rose 21% between 2019 and 2022. CEO Jim Farley last year received a package valued at $21 million ($21.8 million today). That included a $1.7 million base salary ($1.8 million today).

In 2019, then-CEO Jim Hackett made $17.36 million in total compensation, or $20.66 million today. His base salary of $1.8 million was $2.1 million with inflation today.

"Since 2019, Ford’s CEO salary is down 6%," Ford spokesperson Dan Barbossa said in an email. "Total CEO compensation is up 21%, not 40%."

Ford CEO Alan Mulally's compensation in 2007 beats both Farley and Hackett when inflation is factored in. He received $21.67 million — $31.8 million today. His salary was $2 million, or $2.9 million today.

GM

At GM, though, CEO Mary Barra's compensation rose 34% between 2019 and 2022. Last year, she received $28.97 million ($30.12 million in 2023 dollars) in total compensation. Her base salary was $2.1 million ($2.2 million in 2023).

That was her same base salary in 2019, which would be $2.5 million today. Her total compensation that year was $21.6 million ($25.7 million today).

When asked about her compensation last month by CNN, Barra said: “When you look at the overall structure and the fact that 92% (of Barra’s compensation) is based on performance, and you look at what we’ve been doing with sharing of the profitability (with UAW-represented workers) when the company does well, I think we have a very compelling offer on the table.”

In 2007, GM CEO Rick Wagoner received total compensation of $15.7 million, which would be around $23 million today. Wagoner's compensation included a $1.6 million salary, or around $2.3 million with inflation.

Stellantis

Chrysler LLC split from DaimlerChrysler in 2007. Under majority owner private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, Chrysler was private and didn't need to disclose publicly its CEO compensation, though it was reported widely that CEO Robert Nardelli's annual salary was $1, or $1.47 today. It, however, wasn't clear if Nardelli had received other income from Cerberus.

In 2006, Tom LaSorda, Chrysler president and CEO, had collected compensation of $3.175 million ($4.79 million today), including a $946,000 salary ($1.428 million today).

Following a bankruptcy and tie-up with Fiat SpA, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV CEO Mike Manley in 2019 received a remuneration package of $14.4 million, or $17.1 million today. His direct compensation that excluded retirement and fringe benefits was $12.46 million, or $14.83 million today. His base salary was $1.56 million, or $1.96 million today.

After FCA combined with French automaker Groupe PSA in 2021, Stellantis is now the fourth-largest automaker in the world by volume. The company recorded a 2022 compensation package for CEO Carlos Tavares totaling $24.8 million ($25.8 million today), which included stock grants that would only be vested based on future performance. That was 72% more than Manley's package in 2019 compared to a 64% increase in the company's annual revenue.

Tavares' cash and vested equity awards were $15.8 million ($16.4 million today), and his base salary was $2.11 million ($2.19 million today). Shareholders approved Tavares' compensation in April with more than 80% support.

In a statement, spokesperson Shawn Morgan noted that Stellantis last year achieved a record adjusted operating income margin of 13% that was among the best in the industry and resulted in $2.1 billion in payouts to workers around the globe.

"Both employees and shareholders depend on senior management, in particular the CEO, to successfully integrate a large, global merger and set forth a strategic direction for the ongoing company’s sustainability and future," Morgan said. "The annual remuneration report requires Stellantis to value the equity based on accounting costs, not received.

"Finally, it is important to underline that Stellantis’ executive compensation program is driven by performance — 90% linked to (key performance indicators) and reflects competitive market-based practices. When considering company performance, the total compensation of our CEO is competitively aligned with other CEOs in our peer group, which consists of a selected list of 12 U.S. and 12 European companies."
UAW president

Meanwhile, then-UAW President Ray Curry last year received $267,126 ($277,742 today), including his $219,996 salary ($228,739 today). Fain, an administrative representative in the Stellantis Department last year, received $160,130 ($166,494), including his $146,446 salary ($152,266 today).

The UAW’s president salary is listed at $206,676.77 in the union’s constitution, though a 3% increase supported by delegates for the international executive board members took effect in March. The hike brings the total to around $212,877. Fain was sworn in as the first directly elected international president on March 26.

The total articulated in the constitution would put Fain, who wore an "Eat the Rich" T-shirt during a Facebook livestream, in the top 10% of U.S. household incomes. In 2021, the 90th to 99th percentile averaged $167,639, according to EPI. Still, Fain's total is roughly 1% or less than the compensation packages of the Detroit Three CEOs.

In 2019, President Gary Jones received $340,539 in compensation ($405,314 today), including a $276,591 salary ($329,201). That compensation was 22% more than Curry's in 2022; however, Jones resigned Nov. 20, 2019, amid efforts by the International Executive Board to oust him over stealing member dues for personal luxuries, for which he has been convicted in federal court.

Rory Gamble took over from Jones after serving as vice president. He received $215,548 ($256,548 today) in compensation in 2019 for both roles, including a $197,600 salary ($235,185 today).

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger in 2007 received $163,075 in total compensation, which would be $239,323 in 2023. That included a $150,763 gross salary, which is $221,253 today.

Contract history

Wages are just one demand of the union. Here is a breakdown of what was gained and lost during previous auto talks.
2007: Second tier introduced

—Legacy workers saw a four-year base wage freeze

—Lump sums of 3% in the last three years of the contract

—Debut of the eight-year progression to the top wage for workers hired after the contracts were ratified. These workers became known as the "second tier." Starting pay was roughly half that of legacy workers, and the new hires weren't eligible for the same health care benefits, pensions or retirement health care coverage.

—Pension increase

—Independent UAW Retirees Medical Benefits Trusts created. The voluntary employees' beneficiary associations, or VEBAs, were funded by the companies but came under independent management starting in 2010.

—Companies closed eight plants, while product allocation was made to other plants
2009: Talks reopened at all three amid bankruptcies at GM and Chrysler

—Lump sums bargained in 2007 were suspended

—Cost-of-living adjustments were suspended

—The jobs bank program was suspended

—Legal aid benefits lost

—One holiday lost

—Buyouts and early retirement offers made

—VEBA cash commitments replaced with company equity

—Institution of strike moratorium until 2015
2011: Bargaining under strike moratorium

—Wage increases for the second year, but not for legacy workers

—Improvements in health-care coverage

—Improved profit-sharing formula

—Jobs bank was eliminated

—Buyouts for legacy workers

—Product commitments
2015: Legacy workers get a pay raise

—First pay increases for legacy workers since 2006 were 3% wage increases in the first and third years. The second tier also saw wage increases

—Four-percent lump sums in the second and fourth years

—Second tier health care coverage was brought to the equivalent of legacy workers at GM and Ford

—Lost holiday and legal aid benefits resumed

—COLA language cut in Ford and Chrysler agreements

—Plant and product investments
2019: GM workers strike for 40 days

—Legacy workers received 3% wage increases in the second and fourth years.

—Lump sums of 4% in the first and third years

—Full-time workers on payrolls upon ratification would be brought up to the top wage by the end of the four-year deal

—The second tier at FCA got health care parity with legacy workers

—Temporary employees at GM and Ford would become full-time workers after two years, while they received preferential hiring treatment at FCA

—Legacy worker buyouts

—Plant and product investments

© The Detroit News

Restoring Cuyamaca's tree canopy is years away. Some birds may never return

2023/10/27

Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune/TNS

SAN DIEGO — It is a 2.6-mile hike up Lookout Road to reach Cuyamaca Peak from Paso Picacho Campground.

The paved path winds its way upward, gaining more than 1,600 feet of elevation as it passes through endless thickets of shrubs dotted with snags, those blackened and sun-bleached vertical reminders that this used to be a forest trek.

Twenty years after the Cedar fire ripped through Cuyamaca Rancho State Park in eastern San Diego County, there is a lot more sunshine and a lot less birdsong. The dappled shade of tall conifers has long ago given way to broader views of the surrounding mountainside after the fire took in hours what nature required centuries to build.

Those who keep pushing toward the peak, through that endless ocean of ceanothus bush, arrive at a true shrine in the wilderness, 100 acres on a ridge that leads to the peak. Here are pines and cedars and firs that survived the fire, their trunks still visibly scorched down low, a testament to the fact that the blaze passed through, largely because there was not enough brush present for it to make the devastating climb into upper branches that killed more than 95 percent of the park's conifers.

On a recent morning, state parks service environmental scientist John Lovio said he makes sure he visits this spot now and then to remind himself of the big picture, the point of the multimillion-dollar reforestation effort that has sprouted and planted about a quarter-million saplings grown from the seeds of the few remaining trees that made it through the firestorm.

In the years since the fire, and even as recently as a few years ago, ecological advocacy groups have pushed back against replanting these mountainsides, arguing that long-term trends in climate change will make the future decades too arid to sustain broad stands of stately pines and firs.

Standing in this remnant of the old forest, Lovio gestured to towering sugar and Jeffrey pines, then to saplings at their bases. Here, in one tableau, all ages and stages can be found thriving 20 years after the Cedar fire passed through. Here, he notes, the forest still has the ability to drop seeds and see them grow.

"This is what we're trying to emulate," he said. "If you have a canopy, you'll get reproduction. I mean, look at the varied age structure; we've got little trees, big trees, these little guys on the right are sugar pines.

"We know, climate change or not, we're getting conifer reproduction."

But this stand exists above 6,000 feet where air is cooler and moisture more available. Will this survivability translate down slope, at lower elevations?

Nobody knows for sure though the walk up to the peak presents endless opportunities to check in on the progress of those saplings planted in recent years. Some pockets of planted trees can be seen poking up above the ubiquitous shrubs in some locations — that's the exception. It's necessary to go off the path to find many of these transplants and many are surrounded, often even shaded, by quick-growing shrubbery.

As the climate changes, science suggests that mountains are warming for complex reasons that go far beyond rainfall alone. However, in terms of moisture, records show that the period after the Cedar fire, as measured at nearby Lake Cuyamaca, has been only somewhat drier than those that came before. Data published by the San Diego County Water Authority show an average of 26.49 inches of precipitation was measured per year from 2004 to 2022 compared to an average of 30.97 in the 19-year period before the fire.

On the ground, results are mixed.

In one location, Lovio stops and locates three trees planted in 2021 that are growing, albeit slowly. Not far away, upslope, another cluster of trees is dead. One key difference is that the survivors were planted in a location that was mechanically cleared of brush and the remaining plant material was burned. The areas where there were fewer survivors just got manual brush removal, but no controlled burning.

"Generally, we're finding that burning is better," Lovio said.

Overall, he said, a little under half of new plantings don't make it, though official attrition figures weren't available. Overplanting, the ecologist added, is designed to help the project survive even though many young trees won't make it.

But it has been remarkable how quickly stands of ceanothus return. Ground cleared and subjected to a controlled burn in 2021 is already full of the bushes with many slower-growing trees now overshadowed. Plans are in the works, Lovio said, to prune bushes away from young trees, though an extensive pruning effort would require additional funding.

Pulling back to the big picture, though he said he believes that the project has a good chance of producing a new forest, no one expects that to be the case anytime soon. Counting rings on pines that burned, he noted, indicates that many were 80 to 100 years old.

"I'm thinking we're not going to see a serious forest here for about that amount of time, 80 or 100 years," Lovio said.

And, until that day, it's unlikely that this region will sound like it used to. The white-headed woodpecker used to inhabit this forest, which was on the southernmost end of its range. Owls and a small songbird called the brown creeper are among those species that have disappeared, Lovio said.

"There has been a measurable loss of wildlife species and, for many of them, we need a forest to bring them back," Lovio said.

It could, adds San Diego State University landscape ecologist Janet Franklin, be even longer. Having done research in the area for the parks service after the fire, she said that 150 years might not be an unreasonable guess as to how long it might take to reestablish an overhead forest canopy similar to the one that the Cedar fire burnt away.

And there are signs that a different species, the Coulter pine, may end up making up a larger percentage of the new forest in Cuyamaca. This species, known for its massive spiky cones that are often called "widowmakers," actually benefits from fire and did have spontaneous saplings springing up shortly after the Cedar fire at a time when other species were simply snuffed out.

"The Coulter, it's kind of a small pine, it doesn't get as big and grand as the Jeffrey's or the Pondorosa, but it's more fire tolerant and just a little bit better of a competitor," Franklin said. "Fifteen years ago, when I was out there doing research and counting them as seedlings, now they're almost 20-year-old trees and they're maybe 15, 20 feet tall."

While there are surely many who yearn for this missing forest, many report that the changes it has undergone have not turned the public away.

Firefighters were able to defend Paso Picacho Campground, Lake Cuyamaca and other key areas from the Cedar fire, keeping their original trees intact. Those remnants have seemed to be enough to keep crowds flooding in during the busy summer season and on the weekends into the fall.

On a weekday morning, Don Rodriguez and Michelle Layton came from Mission Viejo to enjoy the post Labor Day peace and quiet that becomes available once kids are back in school.

Stopping on Lookout Road to chat, Rodriguez, a retired firefighter, said he has returned again and again after being assigned to help fight the Cedar fire, diverted from his regular beat in downtown Los Angeles.

Over the past 20 years, he said, it has been amazing to watch nature reclaim what for several years looked like a bomb went off.

The landscape, especially in October, he said, delivers what many are really looking for, a little solitude.

"I just like it here at this time of year because, on a weekday, there's nobody here," Rodriguez said. "It's peaceful."

© The San Diego Union-Tribune

1.6 million acres of Great Plains grasslands were destroyed in 2021 alone, World Wildlife Fund says

2023/10/26

Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Over the course of 12 months, an area of Great Plains grasslands bigger than the state of Delaware was erased from the map.

In 2021 alone, 1.6 million acres were plowed across the United States and Canada to make way for primarily row crop expansion, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s annual Plowprint Report, released Thursday.The report analyzed grasslands plow-up in North America using government data and satellite imagery from the past two years.

Since 2012, the region has had 32 million acres of its landscapes destroyed. But the land most suited for farming in the Great Plains was plowed up decades ago, according to WWF, and newly plowed land is not likely to produce significant yields.

Yet grasslands continue to be treated as useless until they are converted into fields for agricultural use.

Clay Bolt, manager of communications for WWF’s Northern Great Plains program, said the importance of the grassland ecosystem is hard for people to grasp because much of the work is happening underground.

Bolt said that grasslands have large and ornate root systems that resemble something like “an upside-down forest” and trap carbon underground. When these plants are plowed, the soil is turned over and that carbon is released into the atmosphere. Crops that are grown in their place, such as corn or soybeans, typically have shallow roots and do not have the capacity to store carbon.

“It’s a loss to those areas that normally in the past would have been like a bank for storing that carbon,” Bolt said.

Most grassland plowing has been occurring on private land as landowners have the option to plow, whether to make room for crops or commercial development.

For instance, in March the Rockford International Airport began construction in the Bell Bowl Prairie, home of the endangered rusty patched bumblebee,to make way for a roadway.

Meanwhile, very little federal-owned land can be plowed, Bolt said. In Illinois, the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, about an hour outside Chicago, serves as an example of nearly 9,000 acres of protected grassland.

Once grassland is plowed, habitats can be destroyed for good, Bolt said, as it “takes a tremendous amount of effort” or is impossible to restore the ecosystem.

With a new farm bill in the works to govern agricultural sector policy for the next five years, and with the introduction of the North American Grasslands Conservation Act, advocates and experts hope they will see new resources and strategies dedicated to supporting Great Plains producers and farmers and slowing grassland conversion rates. The WWF points to the wetlands bill as a potential blueprint for grassland conservation legislation.

In the last few years, climate change, a pandemic, supply chain disruptions and inflation have significantly challenged the food and farm systems in the country.

These hurdles have motivated farmers and workers to advocate for financial investment and protections in legislation, such as the next farm bill, that will allow them to fund conservation programs and increase crop resiliency.

Conservation programs that encourage climate change mitigation would, in turn, help improve water quality, keep carbon in the soil and minimize soil erosion in farmland and grasslands across the country.

© Chicago Tribune

Australian prime minister renews efforts in US to have Assange freed

2023/10/27

US President Joe Biden (R) and Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hold a press conference at Rose Garden in the White House. 

Lenin Nolly/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

During his state visit to the US, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese renewed his efforts for the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, imprisoned in the United Kingdom.

He said he had directly addressed US President Joe Biden during informal talks this week about his concerns for the 52-year-old Australian, who has been held in a London prison for four and a half years. The prime minister confirmed this to the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper on Friday.

"I’ve made it clear that enough is enough — that it’s time it was brought to a conclusion," the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper quoted the prime minister as saying on Friday.

Albanese did not comment on the direct content of the talks or Biden's reaction.

Assange has been in a British prison since April 2019, and before that he had been stuck in Ecuador's embassy in London for seven years, to avoid arrest and extradition to the US.

The United States accuses Assange, together with US whistleblower Chelsea Manning, of stealing and publishing classified material from military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the US says put the lives of in-country informants at risk. If extradited, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison.

Supporters of Assange see him as a courageous journalist who brought war crimes to light. The government in London has agreed to the extradition, but the legal tug-of-war is not yet over.

Albanese has repeatedly campaigned for Assange's release since he took office last year.

Assange's brother Gabriel Shipton said he was "full of anxiety" for him after a recent visit to the prison. "He’s still fighting, he’s hanging in there despite what he’s been through and despite the adversary he’s taken on," Shipton said. "He’s not the same man he was a year ago or even before that —it’s really taken its toll on him," he said.

US President Joe Biden holds a press conference with Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (not pictured) at Rose Garden in the White House. Lenin Nolly/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese holds a press conference with US President Joe Biden (not pictured) at Rose Garden in the White House. Lenin Nolly/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

© Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH

German archaeologists uncover more parts of medieval castle complex

2023/10/27

An excavation participant uncovers a tomb from the Carolingian period on the grounds of the Royal Palatinate of Helfta. Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of outer castle fortifications, pit houses and a later castle in Germany at the site of a former medieval imperial palace in the eastern town of Helfta, near Eisleben. Jan Woitas/dpa

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of outer castle fortifications, pit houses and a later castle in Germany at the site of a former medieval imperial palace in the eastern town of Helfta, near Eisleben.

"In the two outer castles of the fortified imperial palace, there was evidence of dense settlement with numerous pit houses," project leader Felix Biermann with the Saxony-Anhalt State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and Archaeology told dpa at the conclusion of this year's excavations.

"This is an important insight into the infrastructure of the imperial palace and the areas where ordinary people lived, worked and created the economic foundations for the Carolingian-Ottonian centre of power," Biermann said.

In addition, archaeologists also uncovered two graves of a hitherto unknown Carolingian-period cemetery.

"The buried bodies of a man and a woman, presumably a married couple, lived in the 9th Century," Biermann said. With the man lay several iron grave goods, including a knife, a belt set and the fitting of what is known as a staff of office.

"So the man might have been a socially higher-ranking person," said the archaeologist.

An excavation participant uncovers a tomb from the Carolingian period on the grounds of the Royal Palatinate of Helfta. Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of outer castle fortifications, pit houses and a later castle in Germany at the site of a former medieval imperial palace in the eastern town of Helfta, near Eisleben. Jan Woitas/dpa

© Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH