Could Vienna’s approach to affordable housing work in California?


Housing costs and homelessness are on the rise in California. In the Austrian capital, people of all income levels live in subsidised housing – and more is being built

THAT'S SOCIALISM


Kirsty Lang in Vienna
Tue 30 Apr 2024 

THE GUARDIAN

Imagine a beautiful city where a centrally located two-bedroom apartment can cost you as little as $600 a month. For many US policymakers, it’s a pipe dream. And yet in Vienna, it’s a reality.

In the past two years, at least four delegations of housing experts and political leaders from California have visited the Austrian capital, hoping to unlock the secrets of why Vienna regularly comes top in surveys of the world’s most livable cities.


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They’re struck by the absence of homeless encampments, and marvel at the sheer scale of the subsidised housing developments which include shared amenities such swimming pools, gyms, workshops, communal gardens and spacious roof terraces.

And they wonder how they can bring some of it home to a region gripped by an unaffordability crisis that lands long-term residents out of state or on the streets.


Last year, California counted more than 180,000 people living on the streets, a 40% rise in five years. Housing costs in the state are now double what they are in the rest of the US. Average monthly payments for a newly purchased mid-tier home are more than $5,500 a month and wages have not kept pace with rising rents. “You now need to earn $200,000 a year to have a comfortable middle-class life in California,” said Jennifer LeSar of the Global Policy Leadership Academy, which organises the trips to Vienna.

The foundation of Vienna’s success is a housing policy that ensures all people live in dignified circumstances at affordable rents in homes they can keep for their lifetime and even pass on to their children. It’s not just for the poorest but the middle class as well. Sixty per cent of people in Vienna live in subsidised housing, compared with just 5% of Californians.

“This is incredible. The US sucks man. Why can’t we do this?” said Ruben Mendoza, a young activist from Uplift San Bernardino, shaking his head in disbelief as he was shown around a mixed housing development near the city centre with communal facilities and affordable rents. Mendoza said one of the reasons he became a housing advocate was because he feared never being able to own a home in the community he grew up in. Like most Californians, he spends more than 50% of his disposable household income on rent. In Vienna, residents on average spend 27% of their income on housing.


There are some obvious differences. Vienna is densely built, with the majority of residents living in relatively small apartments within easy distance of the city centre. Most Viennese are renters, and use the well-connected public transport system to move around. Most Californians live in owner-occupied single-family homes in the suburbs. Public transportation systems are underfunded, and most residents use their car to travel.
Unfortunately, in my city, some people think finding room for cars is more important than building homes for peopleGleam Davis, a Santa Monica councilmember

But the biggest difference is how much new affordable housing is going up in Vienna. “Just look at all the cranes,” said Adam Briones from California’s Community Builders, a research and advocacy organization working to close the racial wealth gap through housing. The city of Vienna builds about 6,000-7,000 new units of subsidised housing every year as it tries to keep up with rising demand. “They’re just building more housing than us. It’s not rocket science,” said Corey Smith of San Francisco’s Housing Action Coalition.

Vienna is the fastest-growing capital in Europe. Half of its residents were either born outside Austria or have parents who were, so city planners are constantly anticipating future demand. Until the 1990s, this once grand imperial capital was in the doldrums, stuck out on the edge of western Europe. It was once the centre of the Habsburg empire and the cultural and intellectual capital of Europe. Two world wars, fascism and the brutal destruction of the city’s once-vibrant Jewish population put an end to that. The artists and the intellectuals had left. It was an ageing city, full of ghosts and the remnants of a fallen empire.

Two historic shifts at the end of the last millennium changed Vienna’s fortunes. Communism collapsed in 1989, the iron curtain came down and Austria joined the European Union six years after that. Young people from across central and southern Europe moved to Vienna, attracted by the wide availability of housing, its relative affordability, job opportunities and its position at the centre of a new enlarged European Union. Since then, its population has grown by 25%. Today 2 million people live there, and their number is growing year on year.

Nimbyism was a recurring topic during the week-long visit, with the Californians complaining that often when new developments are planned, small groups of residents try to block them through the courts, which makes the construction process slower and more expensive. Gleam Davis, a Santa Monica city councillor and former mayor, said that when her city tried to build affordable housing on parking lots, residents protested. “Unfortunately, in my city, some people think finding room for cars is more important than building homes for people.” Even within her own city council, there is strong opposition to building more housing, she said. “Some of my colleagues think we can police ourselves out of this or build our share of affordable housing in the desert and move those people out there.”

Vienna has a more top-down approach to tackling nimbyism. As the delegation toured Seestadt Aspern, a new town built on a former military airfield outside Vienna, the urban planner Kurt Hoftstetter explained that they had held up to 20 meetings in the nearby villages before they began construction. “We did this to inform residents of our plans and ask them how we could make it more acceptable to them. But we did not ask their permission.”


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Vienna’s affordable housing system is supported by a 1% tax on all salaries which provides a permanent funding stream for new construction. This goes back 100 years to the end of the first world war, when the city was overflowing with refugees and homeless people. The Habsburg empire had collapsed, and Vienna became a city state with its own tax-raising ability inside the new federal Republic of Austria. “Red Vienna”, as it was known in the 1920s, has been a social democrat bastion within a largely conservative, Catholic country ever since (apart from 12 years under fascist rule) and providing permanently affordable housing became part of its DNA.

The housing tax currently generates about $250m annually and the city gets a further $200m in rental income and loan repayments. Since the 1990s, most new developments are built by limited-profit housing associations, which benefit from 1% government loans. They also benefit from building on land sold to them by Vienna’s landbank (Wohnfonds Wien), a quasi-governmental body that buys up land to build new neighbourhoods with a mix of private and subsidised housing.

Inspired by the Vienna model, Los Angeles launched its own landbank in 2022 aimed at setting aside city land for affordable housing construction. And the city passed a new measure increasing property taxes on homes over $5m. The hope is that this “mansion tax” will create a permanent funding stream for affordable housing. “A lot of people who worked on that measure visited Vienna,” says Jackson Loop from the Southern Californian Association of Nonprofit Housing. “But we’re getting push-back from the real estate lobby who are trying to overturn the tax increase in the courts, so it’s in a legal limbo right now.”
The mayor likes to say that you cannot tell if a person is rich or poor in Vienna from their addressChristian Shantl

Property taxes, both residential and corporate, are comparatively low in California, said Loop. That’s because of proposition 13, he explained – a provision that passed back in the late 1970s and limited taxes to 1% of a property’s value, including for large landowning corporations such as Disney.

Another key difference is the way Vienna chooses to spend its annual housing budget. Most of it goes into subsidising construction, whereas in the US it mostly goes to directly subsidising residents through vouchers and housing benefit schemes. In other words, Vienna focuses on supply whereas the US focuses on demand. “I’d love someone to do a calculation of how much the US is spending on housing vouchers nationwide and see whether some of this money could be transferred into building new homes instead,” said Davis, the Santa Monica city councilmember.


One of the biggest cohorts in the delegation was from San Diego, where the number of unhoused residents has risen significantly in recent years. San Diego has seen dramatic increases in home and rent prices, making the county increasingly unaffordable for longtime residents. The median home sale price for an existing single-family home in the county clocked in at $980,000 in February, according to the local NBC affiliate, up from $925,000 the previous month and $878,000 one year ago.

“There’s about 10,000 people living on our streets” says Elyse Lowe, director of development services. “We have families living in their cars, tented communities, and open drug use. This is impacting businesses downtown. People don’t want to see that. We also have many people living from paycheck to paycheck which means they are at high risk of homelessness.”

Inspired by what she has learnt in Vienna, Lowe wants to start a discussion in San Diego about “re-evaluating” city land. “I’ve never heard anyone ask the question: is the small municipal airfield in the city centre that only serves small planes the best use of our land when we are trying to put people first?” she said.

Heidi Vonblum, San Diego’s planning director, said her biggest takeaway was the cleanliness and sense of stability in a city like Vienna. “Lack of affordable housing isn’t just an individual problem, it’s a problem for the whole community,” she observed. “What I notice here is that housing is seen as a means of providing social stability for lower-income communities, and it is very family-orientated. All their policies start from a base of how we best support children and families?”


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All the visitors were surprised by how the subsidised housing has been dispersed throughout the city. “The mayor likes to say that you cannot tell if a person is rich or poor in Vienna from their address,” says Christian Shantl from the Vienna housing department. He said the city focused on creating mixed-income neighbourhoods with all the necessary services for the poorest as well as middle-class families. They’re particularly keen on helping young people, so those between 18 and 30 still living with their parents can get on the housing list.

The last four California delegations were brought to Vienna by the Global Policy Leadership Academy (GPLA), which aims to educate leaders who want to tackle deep-rooted societal problems. Its CEO, LeSar, said she wanted “to get a conversation going back home about building affordable homes on a large scale”.

“I think that is happening,” she added. “We had two legislators from California who came here in the first delegation and they’re now sponsoring bills.”

Helmi Hisserich, a former GPLA executive who is now director of housing for Portland, Oregon, has accompanied all four delegations and says participants often get emotional. “We have had delegates weeping when they see what is on offer in Vienna. It tends to be the younger ones, the under 40s who can only dream of getting on the housing ladder in California.”

Beatriz Stambuk-Torres, a young GPLA researcher and city planner who moved to Vienna a year ago, told the group how she used to spend over 50% of her income on rent while living in Irvine, California. Now she has a nice apartment near Vienna’s city centre and spends 25% of her salary on rent and doesn’t need a car. “I had a good job and a master’s from one of our best universities, but I couldn’t save because of housing costs and my student loans. When I had a medical bill, I had to borrow from friends and family. I did everything right and I still was struggling to make ends meet.” As she spoke about doing “everything right” her voice cracked, and her eyes filled with tears. Discussing housing policy can be dry and technical but the impact on people’s lives is profound.

Developed countries accused of bowing to lobbyists at plastic pollution talks

Campaigners say last-minute compromise plays into the hands of petrostates and industry influences


Sandra Laville

Environment correspondent

THE GUARDIAN

Tue 30 Apr 2024


Campaigners are blaming developed countries for capitulating at the last minute to pressure from fossil fuel and industry lobbyists, and slowing progress towards the first global treaty to cut plastic waste.

Delegates concluded talks in Ottawa, Canada, late on Monday, with no agreement on a proposal for global reductions in the $712bn (£610bn) plastic production industry by 2040 to address twin issues of plastic waste and huge carbon emissions.

They agreed to hold more discussions before the last summit on the treaty in Busan, South Korea, in November.

But two years on from a historic agreement in Nairobi to forge a global treaty to cut plastic waste, delegates said countries were just wasting time. A proposal from Peru and Rwanda to address for the first time the scale of plastic production in order cut waste was supported by 29 countries including Australia, Denmark, Nigeria, Portugal, the Netherlands and Nigeria, who signed a declaration, “the Bridge to Busan”, calling on all delegates to ensure plastic production was addressed.

The UK and US did not support the proposal to cut plastic production.

Juliet Kabera, the director general of the Rwanda environment management authority, said: “Rwanda’s vision for the treaty is to achieve sustainable production of plastics. We need a global target based on science to measure our collective actions.”

But as talks headed into the night on Monday, there was no agreement on putting plastic production at the centre of the treaty.

David Azoulay, the director of environmental health at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said while a handful of countries had taken a stand to keep ambitious proposals alive, most countries accepted a compromise at the last minute that played into the hands of petrostates and industry influences.

“From the beginning of negotiations, we have known that we need to cut plastic production to adopt a treaty that lives up to the promise envisioned … two years ago,” he said. “In Ottawa, we saw many countries rightly assert that it is important for the treaty to address production of primary plastic polymers.

“But when the time came to go beyond issuing empty declarations and fight for work to support the development of an effective intersessional programme, we saw the same developed member states who claim to be leading the world towards a world free from plastic pollution, abandon all pretence as soon as the biggest polluters look sideways at them.”

The US was singled out for criticism for blocking talks on cutting plastic production.

“The United States needs to stop pretending to be a leader and own the failure it has created here,” said Carroll Muffett, the president of CIEL. “When the world’s biggest exporter of oil and gas, and one of the biggest architects of the plastic expansion, says that it will ignore plastic production at the expense of the health, rights and lives of its own people, the world listens.”

He said that despite signalling at the G7 summit this month that it would commit to reduce plastic production, in Ottawa the US failed to follow through on its promises.skip past newsletter promotion

The failure to pursue ambitious cuts to plastic production came after a record number of fossil fuel and petrochemical lobbyists attended the summit in Canada.

Graham Forbes, Greenpeace’s head of delegation to the global plastics treaty negotiations, said: “The world is burning and member states are wasting time and opportunity. We saw some progress, aided by the continued efforts of states such as Rwanda, Peru, and the signatories of the Bridge to Busan declaration in pushing to reduce plastic production.

“However, compromises were made on the outcome which disregarded plastic production cuts, further distancing us from reaching a treaty that science requires and justice demands.”

Rich Gower, a senior economist at the NGO Tearfund, said: “An ambitious and effective treaty is still possible, but negotiations are on a knife-edge: time is short and strong opposition remains from the petrochemicals industry and states connected with it, even as their products pile up on street corners and in watercourses around the world.”

Representatives of the petrochemical industry said they were committed to a global treaty to cut plastic waste. But they pushed back on reductions in plastic production, an industry worth $712bn in 2023.

Chris Jahn, the council secretary of the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA), speaking on behalf of the industry group Global Partners for Plastics Circularity, said: “Our industry is fully committed to a legally binding agreement all countries can join that ends plastic pollution without eliminating the massive societal benefits plastics provide for a healthier and more sustainable world. We will continue to support governments’ efforts by bringing forth science-based and constructive solutions that leverage the innovations and technical expertise of our industry.”


Countries consider pact to reduce plastic production by 40% in 15 years

Motion sets out worldwide target in alignment with Paris agreement to limit global heating to 1.5C


Sandra Laville 

Environment correspondent

THE GUARDIAN

Mon 29 Apr 2024 

Countries are for the first time considering restrictions on the global production of plastic – to reduce it by 40% in 15 years – in an attempt to protect human health and the environment.

As the world attempts to make a treaty to cut plastic waste at UN talks in Ottawa, Canada, two countries have put forward the first concrete proposal to limit production to reduce its harmful effects including the huge carbon emissions from producing it.

The motion submitted by Rwanda and Peru sets out a global reduction target, ambitiously termed a “north star”, to cut the production of primary plastic polymers across the world by 40% by 2040, from a 2025 baseline.


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It says: “The effectiveness of both supply and demand-side measures will be assessed, in whole or in part, on their success in reducing the production of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels.”

The proposal calls for the consideration of mandatory reporting by countries of statistical data on production, imports and exports of primary plastic polymers.

A global plastic reduction target would be similar to the legally binding Paris agreement to pursue efforts to limit global temperature increase to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, Rwanda and Peru said.

“The target should align with our objectives for a safe circular economy for plastics by closing the circularity gap between production and consumption,” the countries said.

“It should also align with our objective in the Paris agreement to limit warming to 1.5C. To this end, one such global reduction target could be a 40% reduction by 2040 against a 2025 baseline.”

Global plastic production soared from 2m tonnes in 1950 to 348m tonnes in 2017. The plastic production industry is expected to double in capacity by 2040.

About 11m tonnes of plastic leaches into the ocean each year, and by 2040 the scale of this marine plastic waste pollution is likely to triple.

Plastic production is a significant driver of climate breakdown, as most plastic is made from fossil fuels. A study by scientists at the US-based Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has estimated that by 2050 plastic production could account for 21-31% of the world’s carbon emission budget required to limit global heating to 1.5C.skip past newsletter promotion


A 2021 analysis by Beyond Plastics found that the US plastics industry will be a bigger contributor to the climate crisis than coal-fired power in the country by 2030.

Countries agreed at UN talks in 2022 in Nairobi, Kenya, that a treaty to cut plastic waste must address the full life cycle of plastic. They promised to forge an international legally binding agreement by 2024.

The Ottawa talks, which are due to finish on Monday, aim to get 175 countries to agree the draft text of the treaty.

Graham Forbes, the global plastic projects leader at Greenpeace USA, who was at the Ottawa talks, said: “This is not an ambitious enough target for Greenpeace but it is an important first step to an agreement to limit global plastic production. You cannot solve the pollution crisis unless you constrain, reduce and restrict plastic production.”

Big oil privately acknowledged efforts to downplay climate crisis, joint committee investigation finds


Internal documents revealed by committee show companies lobbied against climate laws they publicly claimed to support


Dharna Noor

Tue 30 Apr 2024 

Big oil has privately acknowledged its efforts to downplay the dangers of burning fossil fuels, US Democrats have found.


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Major fossil-fuel firms have also pledged support for international climate efforts, but internally admit these efforts are incompatible with their own climate plans. And they have lobbied against climate laws and regulations they have publicly claimed to support, documents newly revealed by the committee show.

The tranche of subpoenaed communications were unveiled on Tuesday morning by Democrats on the House oversight committee before a Wednesday hearing.

“For decades, the fossil-fuel industry has known about the economic and climate harms of its products but has deceived the American public to keep collecting more than $600bn each year in subsidies while raking in record-breaking profits,” said Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, who chairs the committee.

The documents are part of an investigation launched in 2021 by the House committee on oversight and accountability, which disbanded when Republicans took control of the chamber in 2022.

“The evidence uncovered by oversight committee Democrats shows that big oil has run campaigns to confuse and mislead the public,” said Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, ranking member on the committee. “Today’s joint report demonstrates that big oil continues to conceal the facts about their business model and obscure the actual dangers of fossil fuels.”

The documents, summarized in a committee report, come from big oil firms Exxon, Shell, BP and Chevron, as well the lobbying organizations the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the US Chamber of Commerce. They date back to 30 November 2015 – just weeks before the signing of the Paris climate accord.

Most previous public documents illustrating big oil’s climate deception are from the 1960s and 1970s, said Geoffrey Supran, a University of Miami associate professor who studies fossil-fuel industry messaging and will testify at Wednesday’s hearing.

“This is our best post-Paris agreement look at these companies’ ongoing duplicity,” he said.

The new revelations build on 2015 reporting from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that Exxon was for decades aware of the dangers of the climate crisis, yet hid that from the public.

At the time, Exxon publicly rejected the journalists’ findings outright, calling them “inaccurate and deliberately misleading.” And when questioned by the House oversight committee in 2021, Exxon chief executive Darren Woods said he did “not agree that there was an inconsistency” between what Exxon told the public and what Exxon scientists were warning privately.

But in internal communications, Exxon confirmed the validity of the reporting. In a December 2015 email about a potential public response to the investigative reporting, Exxon communications advisor Pamela Kevelson admitted the company did not “dispute much of what these stories report”.

Discussing a draft opinion piece the following year, Exxon again confirmed the reporters’ findings. “It’s true that Inside Climate News originally accused us of working against science but ultimately modified their accusation to working against policies meant to stop climate change,” Alan Jeffers, then a spokesperson for Exxon, wrote in a 2016 email to Kevelson. “I’m OK either way, since they were both true at one time or another.”

View image in fullscreen

The South Belridge oil field near McKittrick, California. Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images

In recent years, big oil has largely stopped explicitly denying that climate change is real and human-caused, instead shifting to a more sophisticated strategy of “deception, disinformation, and doublespeak”, the report says.

“What’s the Shakespeare line about a ‘rose by any other name?’ This is climate denial by any other name,” said Supran. “It’s more subtle, and it’s more insidious, but it’s the same thing actually.”

Though big oil firms have made showy climate pledges and voiced support for the Paris climate agreement, their internal communications call the validity of those statements into question, the report says.

In a 2019 memo to the CEO, for instance, an Exxon official suggested removing reference to the Paris accord from a document because referencing it “could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris agreement goals”.

And in February 2020, BP announced plans to become a net zero emissions company by 2050 or sooner and to “help the world get to net zero”. Private emails sent months before, however, indicate that company top brass may have doubted that goal was achievable.

“Personally, I think it goes a bit too far to state or imply support for net zero by 2050, because that would require policy likely to put some existing assets at risk, and we haven’t discussed that internally,” BP’s global sustainability and climate policy lead said in a June 2019 email discussing how to respond to a Guardian request for comment.

In the same email, the policy lead said it was important for BP to “stand by our public support for the Paris goals and the achievement of net zero” – something it has done consistently. But other internal communications sent the same year demonstrate a lack of support among BP leadership for emissions cuts aligned with the Paris agreement’s targets.

“Just wanted you to be aware as reducing emissions by half in 2035 sounds pretty out there!” BP’s vice-president of strategic planning said in email to colleagues. Such a reduction would be consistent with Paris agreement targets.skip past newsletter promotion

In an emailed comment, BP head of communications JP Fielder said the company “committed to transitioning from an international oil company to an integrated energy company”.

Shell, meanwhile, pledged in 2016 to reach net zero emissions by 2050. But in 2018, a the company’s external relations manager expressed doubt that the goal was achievable, suggesting it might take until 2060 or 2070, the report says. And in a 2020 internal presentation about approved messaging on net zero emissions, Shell instructed lobbyists and employees not to “suggest” that net zero is a “Shell target”.

To preserve their business models, fossil-fuel companies have also sought to portray gas as a climate-friendly fuel. But they have internally acknowledged that its use is not compatible with international climate goals.

A March 2018 draft presentation from BP that is marked “Confidential”, for instance, focuses on the “challenge” facing the company as journalists increasingly report that natural gas is a planet-heating fossil fuel, the report says. The presentation describes a forthcoming BP communications campaign to “advance and protect the role of gas – and BP – in the energy transition”.

A key aspect of the company’s campaign strategy, the presentation says, is to “harness excitement” about renewable energy by saying gas provides a good backup for wind and solar power, despite the climate risks associated with the fuel.

The document recommends the company fund white papers from Princeton University and Imperial College which spotlight the “role of gas as a friend to renewables”. It’s one of several emails showing that oil companies “establish funded partnerships with academic institutions to enhance their credibility”, the report says.

The company also privately acknowledged the climate risks of gas usage, as shown in in comments on a draft outline for a 2017 speech by BP’s then chief executive Robert Dudley. “You don’t say anything about concerns about … the idea that, once built, gas locks in future emissions above a level consistent with 2 degrees, at least without [carbon capture],” a comment reads.

Companies also claimed to support certain climate policies while lobbying against them behind the scenes, the report says.

When the Trump administration said in 2019 it would roll back an Obama-era regulation on methane emissions, for instance, BP and other oil companies publicly opposed the move, yet API, the biggest US oil lobbying group, backed the proposal. And in a 2019 email regarding the EPA’s legal plan to enact the rollback, a BP executive said the proposal was “aligned with our thinking”.

Shell, meanwhile, has long publicly supported a carbon tax, but documents show it fought such a policy in Washington state. In a 2018 email about the proposal, a company media manager explained that the company wished to maintain its “status as a global champion for a carbon price” and appear “neutral” on the policy, but said that “was made complicated” when the Seattle Times asked Shell about its membership in the Western States Petroleum Association, which lobbied against the bill.

The newly revealed documents also show that the companies refused to comply with the congressional investigation. “Several thousand documents that the companies produced were substantially redacted to obscure clearly relevant and potentially critical information, or they were just withheld outright,” Raskin said in a video detailing the findings.

The new documents come as big oil faces an increasing number of lawsuits for allegedly lying about the dangers of using fossil fuels. Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, which has supported the litigation, said the revelations could “provide new material evidence for the cases” and “push them along”.

Lawsuits filed by Chicago, Pennsylvania’s Bucks county, Puerto Rico and the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe have cited the House oversight committee’s previous subpoenaed documents as evidence of their claims.

“This is the most important thing that Congress is doing right now on climate change,” Wiles said.

In an emailed statement about the report, API spokesperson Andrea Woods said: “At a time of persistent inflation and geopolitical instability, our nation needs more American energy – including more oil and natural gas – and less unfounded election-year rhetoric.”

The Guardian view on the women of Iran: still resisting repression

The regime wants to crush resistance. But those it rules continue to push back against its brutality

Editorial
Tue 30 Apr 2024

The protests that exploded across Iran following Mahsa Amini’s death in custody in September 2022 were a turning point. The young Iranian-Kurdish woman had been detained by the “morality police” for “improper hijab”. Not only did young women take to the streets and cast off their scarves in fury, but parents and grandparents came too. The protests were strikingly socially diverse. Critically, men joined the cries of “woman, life, freedom”. The regime reacted with predictable fury, killing hundreds and arresting thousands. It succeeded in suppressing the demonstrations. But many women refused to return to obeying the strict dress code.

It was inevitable that the Iranian leadership would strike back. Its quarrel is not only with women’s liberties, but with the precedent set for defiance. It is determined to crush opposition as it crushed the street protests, with a court sentencing a popular rapper to death – not for violence but simply dissent. Toomaj Salehi, courageous in supporting the nationwide protests in 2022, was found guilty of “corruption on Earth”. He had previously been sentenced to six years over his role, before being freed by a court citing a technicality.

The authorities were already trying to redraw the boundaries. Harsh “hijab and chastity” legislation is on its way. Authorities have used traffic camera footage to fine women driving bareheaded or in hats, confiscate their cars or sentence them to morality classes or flogging. Others have been denied access to public transport or banks by officials accusing them of flouting the dress rules. Businesses have been closed for not enforcing the law for employees or customers.

But with international attention focused on the conflict in Gaza and its widening regional repercussions, pressure has suddenly intensified. A brutal new enforcement campaign of the hijab rules was launched on the same day that Tehran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel, in retaliation for its strike on an Iranian facility in Damascus.

The white vans of the morality police are out in force once more. Videos show women and girls being dragged from the streets, and detainees report being beaten and abused. Fresh details of the case of Nika Shakarami, reportedly sexually assaulted and killed by men working for the security forces in 2022, provide further evidence of their brutality. Her family said last week that her sister Aida had just been arrested for breaching the dress code.

Supporters of the jailed Nobel peace laureate Narges Mohammadi said she had sent a message from prison urging Iranians to protest against what she described as a “war against women”. States rely on terror when they lack legitimacy. But it appears that at least some parts of the regime worry that hijab enforcement is inflaming the public mood. In several of the videos of women being detained, crowds of bystanders can be seen protesting.

Iranians know that they are facing ruthless and intransigent rulers. Some women who had given up the hijab, or interpreted dress rules much more loosely, have begun to cover themselves again. But the battle over the dress code represents the fundamental contradiction between a corrupt, brutal and ageing hardline regime and the young people it controls, who long for social and political freedoms as well as desperately needing a brighter economic future. Though the cries on the streets of “woman, life, freedom” have been stifled, their echoes will continue to be heard.

Why hasn’t the US called for an investigation into mass graves in Gaza?

Nothing screams ‘covering up war crimes’ like insisting that there should absolutely not be an independent investigation

Opinion
THE GUARDIAN

Arwa Mahdawi
Tue 30 Apr 2024 

Did you know that the Palestinians are the very first people in the world to ethnically cleanse and mass murder themselves? I know it sounds weird, but – as American and Israeli politicians keep reminding us – these are “savages” that we are talking about here. Normal rules don’t apply, you’ve got to follow the Palestine Rules.

The Palestine Rules dictate you do the following: ignore every international agency if that agency says anything remotely critical about Israel. Certainly don’t listen to international aid agencies like Oxfam when they argue that the government of Israel is “deliberately blocking and/or undermining the international humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip”. Nope, the fact that babies in Gaza are dying of malnutrition is all their fault. The fact that children in Gaza are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known is nothing to do with Israel, it’s the fault of those pesky Palestinians.

The fact that there are an unprecedented number of child amputees in Gaza is the Palestinians’ fault. Let’s be very clear here: if every single Palestinian had fled the land they were born in back in 1948, when Israel was founded, if they’d just completely renounced their Palestinian identity, none of the horrors currently unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank would be happening. Can’t argue with that logic, can you?

You know what’s also the Palestinians’ fault? Those mass graves that have recently been discovered at the ruins of hospitals in Gaza. “Among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands … tied and stripped of their clothes,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, last week.

It shouldn’t be remotely controversial to say that when you discover evidence suggesting gross violations of international law have occurred, then there should be an immediate independent investigation. And yet, the Palestine Rules have kicked in once again: Israel has said they didn’t do anything wrong – arguing that it’s all “fake news” and saying the Palestinians dug their own graves. The Biden administration, meanwhile, has said it trusts Israel to look into its own affairs.

While US officials have called for Israel to “thoroughly and transparently” investigate reports of mass graves they have refused to call for an independent investigation. Why, one has to wonder, the reluctance to investigate? If it’s really all “fake news” then Israel and the US should welcome a proper investigation. Nothing screams “covering up war crimes” like insisting that there should absolutely not be an independent investigation.

I was supposed to write this column a couple of days ago but every time I sat down at my desk and tried to write about the horrors in Gaza, I felt physically sick and had to stop. How can anyone be OK with our tax dollars funding this, I keep asking myself? How can anyone be OK with the fact that innocent children are suffering unimaginable horrors and Americans are helping to pay for it? How can anyone be OK with the fact that Gaza has basically been rendered uninhabitable? How can any journalist be OK with the fact that nearly 75% of journalists killed in 2023 died in Israel’s war on Gaza?

The answer to those questions is and always has been: Palestinians simply don’t count. They certainly didn’t seem to count to the attendees of the glitzy White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday. The annual event has long been criticized for making the press look too chummy with the politicians they are supposed to be holding to account and Saturday’s event certainly seemed to reinforce that idea. In the middle of what many people argue is a US-funded genocide in Gaza – one in which Joe Biden has repeatedly expressed zero empathy for Palestinians – comedian Colin Jost stood up and told the room what a decent guy the president is.

“[My grandfather] voted for you,” Jost told Biden. “And the reason that he voted for you is because you’re a decent man. My grandpa voted for decency, and decency is why we’re all here tonight. Decency is how we’re able to be here tonight. Decency is how we’re able to make jokes about each other, and one of us doesn’t go to prison after – we go to the Newsmax after-party.”

A child is killed on average every 10 minutes in Gaza. By the time that Jost had finished his speech, finished waxing lyrical about decency, there were a couple more dead kids killed by Biden administration bombs. By the time they’d finished their little after-party, another dozen kids would be dead. This, people like Jost want us to think, is what decency looks like. And he’s not the only one: American elites are obsessed with toxic notions of decency and civility. All of which tends to be code for: keep quiet and accept the status quo. We must reject this idea. There is nothing more indecent than staying silent in the face of injustice.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist

US campus protests


‘This machine bonks fascists’: US student protester’s water jug BOTTLE becomes symbol of resistance

A pro-Palestine demonstrator used a jug to defend against officers. Now the image has become a meme of the movement


Alaina Demopoulos

Tue 30 Apr 2024 

HE GUARDIAN

As college students across the US demand administrators divest from Israel and support Palestinian freedom, scenes of brutal arrests have spread across social media. But in recent days, a more playful meme has emerged: the water-cooler jug as an icon of resistance.

Last week, students at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, barricaded themselves inside of a campus building after police showed up to their protest in riot gear. The situation turned tense: while the students held the line against the police, who struck them with batons, one anonymous protester decided to fight back, bonking a cop on the helmet with a water jug that had originally been used as a drum.

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Cal Poly Humboldt students made stickers of the water cooler meme. Photograph: Ryan Hutson at Humboldt Freelance for Redheaded Blackbelt News

Bonk, bonk, bonk quickly got the meme treatment. One Pro-Palestine activist group posted a mock-up on Instagram that showed Columbia students from its 1968 anti-war occupation handing a water jug to present-day Cal Poly Humboldt protesters. In Portland, activists knighted each other with empty water jugs.

Owen Carry, an associate editor at Know Your Meme, a website that documents online phenomena, said he’s seen catchphrases such as “jug of justice” and “bonk the police”. In one Photoshop edit, a designer changed a photo of Malcolm X looking out of his window while holding a machine gun to depict the civil rights icon holding a water jug. When Arizona State University turned lawn sprinklers on in an effort to disperse a pro-Palestinian protest, one student just placed a water jug over the faucet.


“Internet users are already taking notice of the replicated, real-life usage, calling it a ‘revolutionary icon’, further implying the likely lasting impact of the water jug,” Carry said.


Ryan Hutson, an independent journalist who covers the northern California region where Cal Poly Humboldt is located for outlets including the Redheaded Blackbelt, was inside the protest when the bonk took place. She says police tried to storm inside the building as Indigenous protesters were burning sage and other herbs to start a traditional prayer service. “Let us pray,” they chanted as the police moved in, ultimately leading to the water jug moment seen round the world.

“It’s such a regular, everyday object,” Hutson said. “I think it’s kind of emblematic of the student’s resolve. It’s the opposite of a weapon, it’s something that’s aligned with daily life, and drinking, the most simple of things going up against a very harsh and potentially violent force.”

Hutson added that it was jarring to see protesters use a water jug against cops’ more dangerous batons. Since the incident, she’s seen chalk messages that read “all cops are bonkable”, a play on the longstanding anti-police slogan “all cops are bastards”, as well as signs reading “this machine bonks fascists”, a joking reference to the message on the activist Woody Guthrie’s guitar, and “come and take it”, a historic slogan of defiance, next to water jugs on the public university’s campus.

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Flyers on the Cal Poly campus. Photograph: Ryan Hutson at Humboldt Freelance for Redheaded Blackbelt News


The water jug isn’t the only arresting visual coming out of the nationwide campus protests: videos and photographs of students and faculty being violently arrested by cops have also gone viral. At Emory University, police slammed down and handcuffed a faculty member after she tried to protect a student. The University of Texas at Austin called in police and state troopers on horseback to disrupt student encampments and make arrests. In an echo of the 1968 occupation, Columbia University protesters took over the campus’s Hamilton Hall on Monday night, renaming it Hind Hall after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by gunfire in January.

Police were unable to breach the Cal Poly Humboldt students’ barricade for a week; the students occupied two buildings until early on Tuesday morning, when administrators announced the buildings had been secured by law enforcement and about 35 protesters had been arrested “without incident”. Administrators had closed the campus for the rest of the semester.

The water jug meme inspired Noshu, a rapper currently based in Mexico who writes anti-police lyrics, to put out The Bonk Song, a three-minute ode to the water jug and pro-Palestine student protesters. Sample lyrics include: “Oh yeah, and I know we gon’ win bro / ’Cause the holy water jug is a symbol / Very versatile if you know how to use it / first you bonk up a cop and then you go and quench your thirst.”

Noshu wrote the song after seeing “water jug art” take over his corner of social media. “We know that we can’t win against them by force, but we get creative,” he said. “Police don’t have creativity, they all show up in the same exact uniform, the same exact colors, with just a number identifying them. And we’re all these weird people being ourselves with water jugs. It just shows how different we are.”

Playfulness has long played a role in protest movements, helping frontline activists combat tension, burnout and disillusionment – from the students who danced at Tiananmen Square in 1989 before the military rolled in, to the Aids activists who unfurled a giant condom over a homophobic senator’s home in 1991.

Noshu cited an adage that’s often attributed to the anarchist Emma Goldman, but was really crafted by the 1970s anarchist printer Jack Frager: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” By writing The Bonk Song, Noshu said, “I want to show the importance of being able to laugh in the face of absurdity, tyranny and ridiculousness.”

Why are US campuses facing an orgy of state repression in the ‘land of the free’?

The right has painted nonviolent protests against the war on Gaza as hotbeds of ‘woke’ terrorism. It’s a pretext for repression

Cas Mudde
Tue 30 Apr 2024

THE GUARDIAN

Across the world people have been shocked by social media footage of heavily armed law enforcement officers arresting peacefully protesting students and professors at university campuses around the United States. The so-called “land of the free and home of the brave” looks neither free nor brave – except for the brave protesters who continue to stand up to state and university repression.

Although government repression of student protests is not unique to either the US or this particular period, the current orgy of state repression is very much an illustration of the current crisis of liberal democracy as it is squeezed by both illiberalism and neoliberalism.

What will happen if the ICC charges Netanyahu with war crimes?
Kenneth Roth

But let’s take a step back. Ever since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, many university campuses have been on edge. As Israel’s retaliation in Gaza reached what the United Nations has called genocidal levels, student protests started to appear at some university campuses. Although there were troubling incidents of antisemitism – and Islamophobia – the protests, overall, are neither antisemitic nor violent. This notwithstanding, the far right has jumped on them to intensify its attack on universities.

The far right has portrayed universities as “hotbeds of terrorist sympathizers” and “wokeness” that threaten core “American values” like freedom of speech. In far-right propaganda, universities are the dystopian future of the whole country, where women, non-whites and LGBTQ+ people oppress “real Americans”, ie white, Christian conservatives. And their propaganda has paid off. When Donald Trump launched his campaign, the public image of universities in the US was already not in great shape.

In 2015, a modest majority of 57% of Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education. Since then, it has plummeted to just 36% in 2023. Although the biggest drop was among Republicans (-37%), confidence also decreased among independents (-16%) and Democrats (-9%). This is not that surprising, given how far-right talking points are feverishly amplified by “liberal” media like the Atlantic and the New York Times.

Ironically, the mismatch between perception and reality couldn’t be greater. Academia has always been a thoroughly conservative industry and universities have rarely been hotbeds of radicalism, particularly in the global north. But since the rise of the neoliberal university in the 1980s, higher education has become highly commodified and universities have been turned into “edufactories”, run by professional administrators on the basis of market principles.
Let there be no doubt that the current attacks on US universities are a major political victory for the far right

Although there are fundamental differences in financial and political dependence between perversely rich private universities like Harvard, with an endowment of almost $50bn, and poorer public universities like the many community colleges across the country, the neoliberal logic of contemporary higher education has made university administrators increasingly submissive to assertive private donors and public politicians (who are, predominantly, advocating for rightwing causes).

What sets the current student protests and state repression apart is not just the intensity but the scope. While the rightwing attacks in the past decade have mainly targeted public colleges in Republican-dominated states such as Florida, the past week saw state repression of protesting students at such universities (like the University of Texas at Austin), but also at private universities in Republican-dominated states (like Emory University in Atlanta), and even at private universities in Democratic-governed states (like Columbia University and the University of Southern California).

The starting signal for the current repression was the congressional hearing on antisemitism last December, in which Republican politicians grilled three flustered presidents of Ivy League universities on the allegedly antisemitic protests at their campuses. Afterwards, far-right activists intensified their accusations of antisemitism and plagiarism and with success: two of the three university presidents that testified – Claudine Gay of Harvard and Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania – resigned nearly a month after the hearing.skip past newsletter promotion

Encouraged by this success, another congressional hearing was organized in April, in which Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, president of Columbia University, did not even try to defend her faculty and students. In fact, she threw several faculty under the bus. The lead of her antisemitism task force said they believed that student slogans like “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “long live intifada” were antisemitic. Outraged students responded by intensifying their protests, which again increased rightwing pressure to “act”, to which Shafik quickly responded by inviting the NYPD onto campus.

As so often, state repression of a relatively small and localized protest gave rise to the rise of a much bigger and broader protest movement that spread across the country – from New York to California and from Michigan to Texas. Moreover, given that graduation season is only weeks away, university administrators are going into full panic and repressive mode. The University of Southern California has already canceled its main graduation ceremony, which was supposed to feature a speech by a Muslim valedictorian, out of “security concerns”.

Let there be no doubt that the current attacks on US universities are a major political victory for the far right. Not only do they mobilize and unify the conservative base, they also divide that of the liberal opposition. But there are also major lessons for liberal democrats in the country. First, neoliberal universities are no match for illiberal politics. Second, no university is safe: this is not a private versus public university or red state versus blue state issue. And, third and finally, the current attacks are just a small prelude to what the return of Trump will mean for liberal democracy in general and higher education in particular.

Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today

Revealed: Tyson Foods dumps millions of pounds of toxic pollutants into US rivers and lakes


Nitrogen, phosphorus, chloride, oil and cyanide among the 371m lb of pollutants released by just 41 plants in five years


Nina Lakhani in Dakota City and Lexington, Nebraska. 

Graphics by Alvin Chang

Tue 30 Apr 2024 

THE GUARDIAN

Tyson Foods dumped millions of pounds of toxic pollutants directly into American rivers and lakes over the last five years, threatening critical ecosystems, endangering wildlife and human health, a new investigation reveals.

Nitrogen, phosphorus, chloride, oil and cyanide were among the 371m lb of pollutants released into waterways by just 41 Tyson slaughterhouses and mega processing plants between 2018 and 2022.

GRAPHIC

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According to research by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the contaminants were dispersed in 87bn gallons of wastewater – which also contains blood, bacteria and animal feces – and released directly into streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands relied on for drinking water, fishing and recreation. The UCS analysis, shared exclusively with the Guardian, is based on the most recent publicly available water pollution data Tyson is required to report under current regulations.

The wastewater was enough to fill about 132,000 Olympic-size pools, according to a Guardian analysis.

The water pollution from Tyson, a Fortune 100 company and the world’s second largest meat producer, was spread across 17 states but about half the contaminants were dumped into streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands in Nebraska, Illinois and Missouri.

The midwest is already saturated with nitrogen and phosphorus from industrial agriculture – factory farms and synthetics fertilizers – contributing to algal blooms that clog critical water infrastructure, exacerbate respiratory conditions like asthma, and deplete oxygen levels in the sea causing marine life to suffocate and die.

Yet the UCS research is only the tip of iceberg, including water pollution from only one in three of the corporation’s slaughterhouses and processing plants, and only 2% of the total nationwide.

The current federal regulations set no limit for phosphorus, and the vast majority of meat processing plants in the US are exempt from existing water regulations – with no way of tracking how many toxins are being dumped into waterways.

“There are over 5,000 meat and poultry processing plants in the United States, but only a fraction are required to report pollution and abide by limits. As one of the largest processors in the game, with a near-monopoly in some states, Tyson is in a unique position to treat even hefty fines and penalties for polluting as simply the cost of doing business. This has to change,” said the UCS co-author Omanjana Goswami.

The findings come as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must decide between robust new regulations that experts say would better protect waterways, critical habitat and downstream communities from polluting plants – or opt for weaker standards preferred by the powerful meat-processing industry.
The EPA should listen to communities whose wells, lakes, rivers and streams have been contaminated and put people over corporate profitsOmanjana Goswami

A 2017 lawsuit by environmental groups has forced the EPA to update its two-decade-old pollution standards for slaughterhouses and animal rendering facilities, and the new rule is expected by September 2025. The agency has said that it is leaning towards the weakest option on the table, which critics say will enable huge amounts of nitrates, phosphorus and other contaminants to keep pouring into waterways.

“The current rule is out of date, inadequate and catastrophic for American waterways, and highlights the way American lawmaking is subject to industry capture,” said Dani Replogle, an attorney at Food and Water Watch. “The nutrient problem in the US is at catastrophic levels … it would be such a shame if the EPA caves in to industry influence.”

The meat-processing industry spent $4.3m on lobbying in Washington in 2023, of which Tyson accounted for almost half ($2.1m), according to political finance watchdog Open Secrets. The industry has made $6.6m in campaign donations since 2020, mostly to Republicans, with Tyson the biggest corporate spender.

“We can be sure Tyson and other big ag players will object to efforts to update pollution regulations, but the EPA should listen to communities whose wells, lakes, rivers and streams have been contaminated and put people over corporate profits,” said Goswami.

“Meat and poultry companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars to comply with EPA’s effluent limitations guidelines,” said Sarah Little from the North American Meat Institute, a trade association representing large processors like Tyson. “EPA’s new proposed guidelines will cost over $1bn and will eliminate 100,000 jobs in rural communities.”

Tyson did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The American Association of Meat Processors said the EPA’s one-size-fits-all approach could put its small, family-owned members out of business.


Nebraska is a sparsely populated rural state dominated by agriculture – an increasingly consolidated corporate industry which wields substantial control over the economy and politics, as well as land and water use.

Millions of acres in Nebraska are dedicated to factory farming, with massive methane-emitting concentrated animal feeding operations (Cafos) scattered among fields of monocropped soybean, corn and wheat – grown predominantly for animal feed and ethanol. Only a tiny fraction of arable land is dedicated to sustainable agriculture or used to grow vegetables or fruits.

Tyson’s five largest plants in Nebraska dumped more than 111m lb of pollutants into waterways between 2018 and 2022, accounting for a third of the nationwide total. This included 4m lb of nitrates – a chemical that can contaminate drinking water, cause blood disorders and neurological defects in infants, as well as cancers and thyroid disease in adults.

Tyson’s largest plant is located in Dakota City on the Missouri river – America’s longest waterway which stretches 2,300 miles across eight states before joining the Mississippi. It’s a sprawling beef facility, which generates a nauseating stench that wafts over neighboring South Sioux city, known locally as sewer city, where many plant workers live. (Another beef processing plant is located next to Tyson.)

Earlier this month, the Guardian saw multiple trucks waiting to offload cattle for slaughter – after which the carcasses are rendered, processed and packaged in different parts of the facility. The plant produces vast quantities of wastewater which is stored (and treated) in lagoons on the riverbank, before being released into the Missouri river which provides drinking water for millions of people.

The Dakota City plant is a major local employer and Tyson’s single largest polluter, dumping 60m lb of contaminants into waterways between 2018 and 2022, according to UCS analysis.

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Every year in November around 30,000 Sandhill Cranes begin their annual migration from the North Platte River in Nebraska to Southern Arizona. Photograph: Christopher Brown/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

“This Tyson plant helped put me through college and supports a lot of migrant workers, but there’s a dark side like the water and air pollution that most people don’t pay attention to because they’re just trying to survive,” said Rogelio Rodriguez, a grassroots organizer with Conservation Nebraska, which is part of a coalition pushing for stronger state protections for meat processing plant workers.

“If regulations are lax, corporations have a tendency to push limits to maximize profits, we learnt that during Covid,” said Rodriguez, whose family works at the plant. A deadly Covid outbreak at the Dakota City plant in April 2020 sickened 15% of the workforce and led to substantial community spread.

A few miles south of the Dakota City Tyson plant, the Winnebago tribe is slowly recuperating and reforesting their land, as well as transitioning to organic farming.

“We’re investing a lot of money to look after the water and soil on our lands because it’s the right thing to do, yet a few miles north the Tyson plant lets all this pollution go into the river. Water is our most important resource, and the Missouri river is very important to our culture and people,” said Aaron LaPointe, a Winnebago tribe member who runs Ho-Chunk Farms.

The water problem – and lack of accountability – goes beyond Tyson.

Last year Governor Jim Pillen, whose family owns one of America’s largest pork companies, was widely criticized for calling a Chinese-born journalist at Flatwater Free Press a “communist” after she exposed serious water quality violations at his hog farms. Earlier this month, the Nebraska supreme court ruled that the state environmental agency could charge the same investigative news outlet tens of thousands of dollars for a public records request about nitrates.

Big ag’s influence on state politics is “endemic”, according to Gavin Geis from Common Cause Nebraska, a non-partisan elections watchdog.


We found unhealthy pesticide levels in 20% of US produce – here’s what you need to know

“The big money spent on lobbying and campaigns by corporate agriculture has played a major role in resisting stronger regulation – despite clear signals such as high levels of nitrates in our groundwater and cancers in rural communities that we need more oversight for farmers across the board,” said Geis.

“We’ve created a system with no accountability that doesn’t protect our ecosystem – which includes the land, water and people of Nebraska,” said Graham Christensen, a regenerative farmer and founder of GC Resolve, a communication and consulting firm. “The political capture is harming our rural communities, we’re in the belly of the beast and need help from federal regulators.”


Indigenous Americans lived and farmed sustainably along the Missouri River until white colonial settlers forcibly displaced tribes, and eventually dammed the entire river system – mostly for energy and industrial agriculture. Today, major river systems like the Missouri River – and its communities – face multiple, overlapping threats from dams, the climate crisis, overuse and pollution.

Oxygen depleting contaminants like nitrogen and phosphorus from Tyson plants in the midwest have been shown to travel along river-to-river pathways, causing fish kills and contributing to dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. When the river is drier due to drought or high temperatures, pollutants become more concentrated and can form sediments – which are then dislodged during floods and taken miles downstream.

Global heating is making extreme weather increasingly common, and as droughts dry up underground aquifers, tribes will probably need to turn to the Missouri for drinking water, according to Tim Grant, director of environmental protection for the Omaha tribe. “We’re very concerned about what’s in the river, it’s an important part of our culture and traditions,” said Grant, who has started testing the fish for toxins.

The UCS research also found Tyson plants located close to critical habitats for endangered or threatened species – including the whooping crane, the tallest and among the rarest birds in North America.

There are currently only 500 or so wild whooping cranes – up from 20 birds in the 1940s – which stop to feed and rest along a shallow stretch of the Platte River, a tributary of the Missouri in central Nebraska, as they migrate between the Texas Gulf coast and Canada. The majestic white birds feed in the cornfields that surround the Platte River, outnumbered by the slate gray sandhill cranes that also migrate through Nebraska each spring.

Tyson’s sprawling Lexington slaughterhouse and beef processing plant is situated less than two miles from the Platte River – among four federally designated critical habitats considered essential to conservation of the whooping crane.

“The cumulative effects of exposure to these industrial toxins could pose a long-term threat to the cranes’ food sources, reproductive success and resilience as a species,” said George Cunningham, a retired aquatic ecologist and Missouri River expert at Sierra Club Nebraska.

“Poor environmental regulation is down to the stranglehold industrial agriculture has on politics – at every level. It’s about political capture.”

How climate policies are becoming focus for far-right attacks in Germany


Politicians fear perceived costs of green transition are driving poor and rural voters to parties such as AfD

Ajit Niranjan

Europe environment correspondent

THE GUARDIAN

Tue 30 Apr 2024 

Raising his voice above the pounding drums and honking tractors, Lutz Jankus, a city councillor from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), distanced himself from the furious protest unfurling before him.

“They’re rightwing extremists,” he said about Free Saxony, a loose political movement that includes neo-Nazis and skinheads, as his colleagues began to pack up their tent on the side of the square in the centre of Görlitz.


“We don’t want anything to do with them, but we’re here because there’s also a lot of people who vote AfD.”

In Saxony, an eastern German state whose intelligence agency has declared both groups extreme, support for the far right extends deep into the mainstream.

Polls put the AfD on track to win the most votes in its regional elections in September, as well as those of neighbouring Brandenburg and Thüringen.

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A far-right demonstration in Görlitz, a far-right stronghold on the Polish border. Photograph: Adam Sich/The Guardian

Free Saxony, a smaller but more radical network, promotes weekly rallies against the government in a Telegram group with 140,000 subscribers.

At the marches held in Görlitz, a stronghold of the far right on the Polish border, and other towns across Germany every Monday night, supporters of both parties vent their fury at immigration, coronavirus restrictions and military aid to Ukraine. But one group bears the brunt of the blame.

“The Greens are our main enemy,” said Jankus, describing the AfD as a party of freedom and the Greens as a party of bans. “We don’t want to tell people how to heat their homes. We don’t want to tell people what kind of engine should be in their car.”

As climate action has moved from abstract ideals to tangible changes, European leaders have started to roll back policies that may push voters away at elections in June.

Although fears of a societal “greenlash” – backlash to green policies – are largely unfounded, survey data suggests, climate policies and the Greens have become a focal point for far-right attacks.

“Our main takeaway is that there’s no widespread green backlash,” said Markus Kollberg, a political scientist at Humboldt University Berlin who co-authored a recent study of attitudes to climate policy among 15,000 voters in France, Germany and Poland.

“What we actually find in the data is a very clear polarisation along party lines.”

The AfD, which became a political powerhouse for its views on immigration, has continued to question scientific facts about global heating long after fossil fuel companies stopped denying them.

On the surface, its supporters have little interest in talking about extreme weather. “Climate, climate, climate,” said one black-clad man with heavy rings at the Monday night rally, shaking his shaved head. “Fuck the climate, man, the world will always change one way or the other.”

While surveys show AfD voters are less likely to care about climate breakdown than the average German, they are more likely to say measures to stop it have gone too far.

When Kollberg and his colleagues showed people a list of 40 policies to cut planet-heating pollution, they found AfD voters barely supported four of them, while Green voters wanted them all.

The most negative reactions were to policies that affected gas boilers, a law aiming ban new gas boilers was described in the media as a “heating hammer”, and combustion engine cars.

On the grand streets of Görlitz, a historic town whose buildings have served as the backdrop for films such as The Grand Budapest Hotel and Inglourious Basterds, residents complain that change is happening too fast, that the Greens are too radical, and that Germany cannot save the world on its own.

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Görlitz, seen from the Polish side of the river. Photograph: Adam Sich/The Guardian

“You can’t change a whole system by suddenly doing everything differently in one country,” said one woman in the market square. “You have to start in China,” said another.


The abandoned buildings that pepper Görlitz suggest an economic reason for the resistance to green measures. Factories that used to churn out carriages and capacitors now stand empty on streets speckled with neo-Nazi stickers and antifa graffiti.

“If there’s no prosperity, the AfD does well,” said one young owner of an industrial engineering company, who fears the party’s success will make it harder for businesses to attract workers and investment. “There’s not much industry here, and very little capital.”

Although the average income in the Görlitz region is lower than in most of Germany, it has soared since reunification to hit a level greater than in Spain and close behind that jn France and Italy.

Adjusted for the cost of living, the annual GDP per person in 2021 was €9,200 higher in Görlitz than in Zgorzelec, the Polish side of the city that lies just over the bridge.

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An abandoned factory in Görlitz. Photograph: Adam Sich/The Guardian

Politicians who have grown anxious about making people pay for their pollution – spooked by farmers’ protests that erupted across Europe this year – fear the perceived costs of the green transition are driving poor and rural voters to radical parties.

Researchers are sceptical. “We don’t find much evidence for that in our data,” said Kollberg. “It’s ideology that drives the differences, not income.”

For the Greens, who rode a wave of support for climate action to secure a spot in a three-way coalition in 2021, the unpopular policies are a natural consequence of promises to stop extreme weather from growing more violent.

At the last federal election, shortly after deadly floods which were made stronger by climate breakdown killed more than 180 people across the country, every major party except the AfD committed to keeping the planet from heating 1.5C (2.7F) above preindustrial levels by the end of the century.

But since then, the Greens have become a punching bag in the media, and victims of far more aggression in real life than other parties.skip past newsletter promotion

Local Green politicians have been attacked across the country; the economy and climate minister, Robert Habeck, was met by a mob when he left a ferry in January; and co-leader Ricarda Lang was stopped from leaving a party meeting in February by farmers who lit fires and blocked roads with tractors.

Outside the Görlitz Greens’ office, which lies on the route of the weekly demonstrations, the party speaker Carolin Renner said she and her colleagues had had death threats screamed in their faces, white-pride stickers stuck to their door and a daily barrage of hateful comments posted on their social media channels.

Shortly before Christmas, protesters dumped horse manure in front of the Greens’ office in nearby Zittau.

“It’s scary,” said Renner. “When you work here [in the office], you have nowhere else to go.”

The Greens are not only a target of the far right. Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative opposition, described the Greens as the party’s “main enemy” in the government, while Michael Kretschmer, the conservative premier of Saxony who co-governs with the Greens, derided his coalition partners as “these people” whom he doesn’t much like.

Climate activists across the country – mostly young women – have been subject to abuse they say gets worse when mainstream politicians call them “eco-terrorists” and the “climate Taliban”.


At a public event two years ago, the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, appeared to compare a group of radical climate activists to Nazis, a charge he denied but repeatedly refused to explain.

“I don’t think [the national rhetoric] directly influences how people in Görlitz are responding to us,” said Renner, who moved to Dresden last year because of the threats. “But in the long run, it normalises violence and going at your opponents in this manner.”

From an office in the centre of Görlitz, Sebastian Wippel, an AfD lawmaker in the Saxon parliament, said all three parties in the federal government bore responsibility for its policies, not just the Greens.

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Sebastian Wippel said AfD voters ‘have little fear of climate change’. Photograph: Adam Sich/The Guardian

But in many ways, he added, the Greens represented “an ideological worldview that completely contradicts ours”.

“Our voters have little fear of climate change,” said Wippel, who nearly became mayor of Görlitz in 2019, adding that AfD supporters cared about energy policies driving up living costs and weakening their wallets.

“You get the impression that the government is, as we say in Germany, shooting sparrows with cannons,” he said.

In its latest review of the scientific research, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that humans were responsible for all of the observed 1.2C rise in temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.

Wippel said the spectrum of views within the AfD ranged from those who did not think the climate was changing, to those who thought it was changing but that humanity’s contribution was unknown, right up to those “who follow, let’s say, this Green narrative”.

People in the last group were few and far between, he added, “but they do exist”.

The AfD’s climate views do not appear to trouble its core supporters but may cause problems for the party as it seeks to broaden its appeal.

The vast majority of Germans accept that humans are changing the climate – though their views on how to stop it getting worse and willingness to do so vary widely – and voters who worry most about migration may question the outcome of allowing temperatures in Africa and Asia to rise to increasingly intolerable levels.

“I don’t see that,” said Wippel. “The issue of migration is not the climate, but rather the different living conditions that already prevail in the countries.”

Where the Greens and the AfD agree is that neither party sees much sense in trying to poach votes from the other, preferring instead to convince people in Germany’s political centre.

And while their climate policies are unlikely to attract voters on the other side of the political spectrum, they are also unlikely to put off their own supporters, Kollberg’s research suggests.

“We think of polarisation as a bad word but our results are actually positive in a way,” said Kollberg. “Progressive parties can enact ambitious climate politics without having to expect massive backlash from their own voters.”