Climate Dealmakers Brace for China Showdown Over Money at COP29

John Ainger
Thu, June 13, 2024 


(Bloomberg) -- With just five months to go before the COP29 climate summit, the biggest fights are set to be over how to channel trillions of dollars from developed nations to emerging markets — and how China fits into the equation.

Negotiators representing more than 190 countries convened in Bonn, Germany, this week for a meeting that typically sets the tone for the annual talks. While the atmosphere was more positive than last year — where the controversial appointment of an oil executive to lead COP28 overshadowed discussions — the gathering also made clear the scale of the challenge facing Azerbaijan, a relatively small player on the international stage that stepped in to host COP29 at the last minute.

The key goal of November’s summit in Baku is to agree on a new post-2025 goal for raising money to speed up the green transition in developing nations and protect them from more extreme weather. The world's poorest and most climate-vulnerable states are loathe to accept anything less than trillions, with some pushing for up to $1 trillion a year coming from public funds. Meanwhile, developed countries are trying to broaden the donor base to ease pressure on their strained budgets.

“Trillions will be needed,” said Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands. “We need an overhaul of the international financial system to address the persistent inequities that punish rather than support the most vulnerable.”

Analysts estimate that between $1 trillion and $6 trillion a year will be required to meet the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious goal to keep global temperatures in check. Negotiators in Bonn suggested any climate finance deal would likely resemble an onion, with a headline figure of what’s needed, including from the private sector, and an amount that will come from the public coffers of developed nations. Further layers could include contributions from countries that haven’t previously been donors, like China, and multilateral development banks.

This year’s climate talks are taking place against a less-than-ideal backdrop. COP29 will kick off just days after the US presidential election, and negotiators are already bracing for the possibility of a Trump victory. Wars in Ukraine and Gaza have pit the world’s biggest economies against each other. It’s also unclear how cooperative China, currently the world’s biggest emitter, will be as it faces fresh trade restrictions on green technologies from both Washington and Brussels.

Still, “there is a unanimous understanding that the current status quo is not viable,” Yalchin Rafiyev, the lead negotiator for Azerbaijan, said in an interview. “The current flow of finance is not sufficient. This is a moment of truth for the international community.”

Disputes over money come down to a fundamental tension that underpins global climate negotiations: What do the countries most responsible for climate change — those that industrialized first and added billions of tons of carbon to the atmosphere — owe the nations that are now paying the price in weather damages.

Attempts by developed countries to shift some of the burden to developing countries like China at COP29, would "severely undermine the effectiveness of global cooperation on climate change," Lin Jian, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Thursday at a press briefing in Beijing.

Developing countries and small island states say the likes of the US and the European Union have so far fallen way short of the mark. A commitment made by rich countries to deliver $100 billion of public finance per year by 2020 — a fraction of what’s needed to protect billions of people — was only met two years later. India is leading calls for that figure to be 10 times higher as part of the new post-2025 “New Collective Quantified Goal.”

“If money makes the world go round, today’s unequal financial flows are sending us spinning toward disaster,” United Nations General Secretary Antonio Guterres said last week. “Climate finance is not a favor. It is fundamental to a livable future for all.”

But developed nations don’t want another albatross like that hanging around their neck, according to one European negotiator, who requested anonymity to discuss details of sensitive talks. China’s economy has grown so much in the last three decades that it needs to contribute, as does Saudi Arabia, whose production of fossil fuels significantly adds to global warming, the person said.

“China will always be a member of the Global South and the developing world,” President Xi Jinping said in a video speech to a UNCTAD event Wednesday, repeating a frequent argument that the nation shouldn't be ranked alongside industrialized economies.

The China question will likely to be one of the toughest to navigate, according to Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington. The uncertainty of the November election, bitterness over trade measures and loss of the close personal connection between former US and China envoys John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua, who both stepped down last year, could make progress difficult.

“There is a way to get China to play a role, but traditional donors still need to pay their fair share,” Li said. “The climate finance issue is particularly thorny and the politics this year are very challenging.”

For Li, whether Azerbaijan provides the leadership needed is the wildcard for COP29. The nation has so far given few clues on the path it sees to delivering the enormous sums of money required. Rafiyev said officials have gone back to the drawing board on its signature initiative to place a levy on producers of oil, gas and coal amid pushback on the proposal in its current form.

Mukhtar Babayev, the Azeri minister set to preside over COP29, has expressed optimism that countries will ultimately reach a comprehensive climate finance deal. “Details will come later,” he said in a June 4 interview in Baku. “Now it’s time to talk.”

--With assistance from Jess Shankleman, Jing Li and Lucille Liu.

(Updates with China foreign ministry spokesman comment in ninth paragraph.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

The UK Green Party struggles to be heard in an election where climate change is on the back burner

THEY HAVE CHANCE AT FOUR SEATS 

REFORM UK HAS NET ZERO CHANCE

Jill Lawless
Thu, June 13, 2024 

BRIGHTON, England (AP) — There’s lots of talk of change in Britain’s election campaign, but little talk about climate change.

The U.K.’s July 4 vote to choose a new government comes after one of the wettest and warmest winters on record, part of trends that scientists attribute to global warming. But discussion of climate and the environment has taken a back seat to Britain’s sluggish economy, high cost of living and creaking health care system — and whether, as polls suggest, the governing Conservatives’ time is up after 14 years in power.

That frustrates the Green Party, which is battling a political system that makes it hard for small parties to win seats in Parliament, and a political climate that discourages expensive, long-term environmental promises.

“I think they are very wrong, the other parties, to ignore climate change and the big investment that’s needed,” said Sian Berry, one of 574 Green candidates running in England and Wales for the 650-seat House of Commons – and one of the few with a good chance of winning. The party held just one seat in Parliament before the election.

“I think people these days do recognize that to solve climate change is not something you do on the side, it has to be part of all your policies,” Berry said over the sound of screeching seagulls in the seaside city of Brighton on England’s south coast.

The governing Conservatives boast that Britain is a leader in embracing renewable energy and cutting the carbon emissions that fuel climate change. U.K. greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by half from 1990 levels, mainly because coal has largely been eliminated from electricity generation.

But environmentalists say the U.K. has recently gone into reverse.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is battling to close a polling gap with the opposition Labour Party, has criticized “unaffordable eco-zealotry,” approved new North Sea oil drilling and pledged to build more gas-fired power plants, while insisting the U.K. can still meet its goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Labour leader Keir Starmer has scrapped the party’s pledge to invest 28 billion pounds ($36 billion) a year in green projects if elected, replacing it with a smaller commitment. He blames the parlous state in which the Conservatives have left the public finances.

The lack of action alarms climate scientists, more than 400 of whom wrote to the political parties to warn that any leader “who does not make stronger climate action a priority for the next five years and beyond will place the prosperity and well-being of the British people at severe risk.”

The Green Party embraces that message, but faces a struggle to be heard, and to convince voters that it’s not just about the environment. The party’s 44-page election manifesto, released on Wednesday, includes policies on housing, health care, education, employment and defense as well as green issues.

Its pledges are expensive, including 24 billion pounds a year to insulate homes and 40 billion pounds a year invested in the green economy. The party is upfront about the tax increases needed to pay for them, including a carbon tax, a wealth tax on the very rich and an income tax hike for millions of higher earners.

The Greens’ challenge is that while research suggests climate ranks among voters’ top five priorities, it often comes well behind everyday issues like housing costs or healthcare waiting lists.

War in Ukraine and surging migration also have elbowed the green agenda aside in Britain and beyond. Green parties lost ground in countries including France and Germany in elections for the European Parliament this month, amid a surge for the far right.

In the town of Dartford, southeast of London, 27-year-old construction worker Harry Colville said he thinks climate change is important, but “I’m more worried about my life right now. More about the near future for myself.”

Emma Jade Larsson, who is about to graduate in medical neuroscience from the University of Sussex in Brighton, said she understands why the cost of living is a top concern.

“Food banks are becoming more and more of a need in this country,” she said. “A lot of people are going through really difficult times right now. So I do understand the focus on it, but I think there is also definitely a need to focus on more than one issue at this moment, and look after people now but also people to come.”

Unlike many European countries, the U.K. does not use a system of proportional representation. Its first-past-the-post electoral system, in which the candidate who gets the most votes in a constituency wins, favors the two big parties. The Greens got just 2.7% of votes cast in the 2019 election.

Even so, Greens have won hundreds of seats on local councils, and are targeting up to four seats in Parliament, including Berry’s constituency of Brighton Pavilion. Part of a city renowned for its pebbly beach, independent streak and vibrant alternative culture, it was represented for 14 years by Britain’s first -- and so far only -- Green lawmaker, Caroline Lucas.

When Berry visits the steep streets of Brighton’s Round Hill district, many of the Victorian houses have Vote Green signs in their windows.

Roger Ballance, a university worker who has voted both Labour and Green in the past, said the Greens “present a different side, it’s refreshing.”

“You need diverse voices in Parliament," he said. "If it’s just binary, it lets both of them be way too narrow in their political thinking.”

Matt Brown is skeptical that Britain’s politicians are grasping the scale of the environmental challenge. He’s new projects director at the Brighton Energy Cooperative, which installs rooftop solar panels on schools, businesses, soccer stadiums and other businesses.

It’s a growing business, but Brown says “it’s literally a drop in the ocean."

“We need gigawatts and gigawatts of power. We need to generate it in a renewable manner, and we need to do it now,” he said.

“I would like to see the upcoming government grab the issue by the horns,” he added. "We’re staring down the barrel of a gun, and we need to do something about it.”

__

Associated Press journalists Kwiyeon Ha in Brighton and Laurie Kellman in Dartford, England contributed to this story.

Jill Lawless, The Associated Press













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The UK Green Party struggles to be heard in an election where climate change is on the back burner

The UK election and climate change: Where do political parties stand on 6 key issues?

Rosie Frost
Fri, June 14, 2024 


The UK election and climate change: Where do political parties stand on 6 key issues?


After one of its warmest and wettest winters on record, a general election has been called in the UK for 4 July.

Climate has been on the back burner when it comes to campaigning so far. There has been a greater focus on the cost of living, healthcare and security from most politicians. Pledges, policies and plans to tackle the climate crisis haven’t been easy to find.

Though the consensus is generally that emissions need to be cut, renewables need to grow and pollution must be reduced, approaches from each of the different parties vary.

We’ve taken a look at six of the most pressing climate issues the UK is currently facing and how some of the biggest political parties plan to respond to them.

6. Reaching the UK’s emissions targets on time

The UK’s independent climate change watchdog, the Climate Change Committee, has warned that the country is not on track to meet its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 68 per cent before the end of the decade. So what does each party plan to do about it?

Labour: Labour plans to keep the UK’s current target of reaching net zero by 2050. The party wants to “restore the strong global leadership” needed to tackle the climate crisis, aiming to create a new “Clean Power Alliance” which it hopes would bring together a coalition of countries at the cutting edge of climate action.

Conservatives: The party’s full manifesto says it will keep the UK’s 2050 net-zero target but emphasises Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s desire to do this without additional costs for households. It calls this an “affordable and pragmatic” transition without any new green levies or charges.

Liberal Democrats: The Lib Dems say they will “take the action needed now” to reach net zero by 2045. That includes meeting the UK’s commitment under the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions by at least 68 per cent by 2030.

Green Party: The Green Party has said it wants to reach net zero by 2040 at the latest, ideally more than a decade ahead of the current 2050 target. The party aims to reach this goal “as fast as is feasibly possible” while leading global efforts to transition away from fossil fuels. It has pledged to spend £40 billion (€47.5 billion) a year for this transition to a green economy.


5. Transitioning away from fossil fuels

Countries pledged to move away from fossil fuels at COP28 in Dubai last year. It’s time for action, but the UK is still largely dependent on oil and gas. In 2022- the latest year with the most complete data - fossil fuels accounted for 78.4 per cent of primary energy consumed in the country.

Labour: Labour is backing a windfall tax on oil and gas companies - increasing it by three percentage points - until at least 2029.

Though the party will honour existing oil and gas licenses in the North Sea, it won’t approve any new projects. No new coal licenses will be granted either and it says it will ban fracking for good.

Conservatives: Like Labour, the Conservatives are also backing a windfall tax on oil and gas companies until at least 2029. But the party’s manifesto says rejecting new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea would put “200,000 jobs and billions of pounds of tax receipts at risk”, leaving the UK more dependent on foreign powers for imported gas.

Liberal Democrats: The Lib Dems have promised to help people with the cost of living and energy bills by implementing a “proper” one-off windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies. The party’s manifesto says it will maintain the ban on fracking, introduce a new ban on coal mines and bring an end to fossil fuel subsidies.

Green Party: The Green Party says it will cancel recent fossil fuel licenses including the one for the controversial Rosebank project - the biggest undeveloped oil and gas field in the North Sea. It will also end all new fossil fuel extraction projects in the UK and remove all oil and gas subsidies.

The party also wants to introduce a carbon tax on fossil fuel imports and domestic extraction that is based on the greenhouse gas emissions produced when the fuel is burned.

Britain's Labour Party leader Keir Starmer speaks on stage at the launch of The Labour party's 2024 general election manifesto. - AP Photo/Jon Super

4. Ambitious renewable energy policies

To reach these net-zero targets and transition away from fossil fuels, most parties agree that renewable energy needs a major boost. But they’re divided over onshore wind projects, nuclear power and the future of oil and gas.

Labour: The Labour Party wants to make Britain a “clean energy superpower” pledging £8 billion(€9.5 billion) over five years to a new publicly owned Great British Energy Company. It claims it wants to “cut bills, create jobs and deliver security with cheaper, zero-carbon electricity by 2030”.

It wants to double onshore wind, triple solar power and quadruple offshore wind by 2030. The party’s manifesto also includes pledges to invest in hydrogen and wave energy. Nuclear power will be part of the mix too with plans to extend the life of existing plants and speed up the construction of existing projects.

Despite promises not to approve new oil and gas projects, Labour leader Kier Starmer has emphasised that oil and gas will be part of the UK’s energy mix for “decades to come”.

Conservatives: The Conservative party has said it will accelerate the rollout of renewables. This includes promises to treble offshore wind. Solar will also be boosted with 70 additional gigawatts by 2035. Historically under the Tories, there has been little ambition for onshore wind with just one project currently under construction in England.

The party has also pledged to fast-track the approval of small modular nuclear power stations.

But the manifesto stresses that energy security is the priority and that means more licensing for oil and gas production in the North Sea as well as new gas power stations.

Liberal Democrats: The Lib Dems say they will speed up the deployment of solar and wind with the aim of ensuring 90 per cent of the country’s electricity comes from renewables by 2030.

The party has promised to remove restrictions on new solar and wind power put in place by the Conservatives. In particular, it wants to support investment and innovation in tidal and wave power.

Green Party: The Greens are planning a massive rollout of renewable energy. That includes a push for 80 gigawatts of offshore wind, 53 gigawatts of onshore wind, and 100 gigawatts of solar by 2035.

They back the expansion of offshore wind like most parties but, unlike others, they want to see more growth in onshore wind and solar power projects which have been controversial. In total the party hopes that 70 per cent of UK electricity will come from wind by 2030.

The party also wants to phase out nuclear power entirely which it says is “unsafe and much more expensive than renewables”. It says the development of nuclear power stations is “too slow given the pace of action we need on climate”.

Super election year: What are candidates in the UK, US and Australia planning on the climate?

3. Cutting emissions from home heating

Ensuring homes are more energy efficient is one of the biggest climate challenges the UK faces. The country has the worst insulted homes in Europe.

Labour: Labour’s manifesto promises to double money for insulting UK homes, offering grants and low-interest loans for improvements like insulation, low-carbon heating and solar panels. It says it will also ensure that all privately rented homes meet energy efficiency standards by 2030.

Conservatives: The Conservatives have made a pledge to introduce a new energy efficiency voucher scheme that would be open to every household in England. This would provide funding for improved insulation and other additions like solar panels. It doesn’t give much more detail like a launch date or budget for said scheme.

Liberal Democrats: A 10-year emergency upgrade programme would see the Lib Dems bring in free insulation and heat pumps for those on low incomes. The party has also promised incentives for others to install heat pumps that cover the “real costs”.

They also want to ensure that all new homes are zero-carbon, including by fitting them with solar panels.

Green Party: The Greens say they will push for a plan led by local authorities to insulate existing homes, provide clean heat and adapt buildings to more extreme climate conditions.

This includes £29 billion (€34.4 billion) over the next five years for home insulation, £4 billion (€4.7 billion) over the next five years to insulate other buildings to a high standard and £9 billion (€10.7 billion) over the next five years for low-carbon heating systems such as heat pumps for homes and other buildings.

Green Party supporters carry placards at their General Election Manifesto launch. - AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth

2. Cleaning up the UK’s waterways

The UK’s lakes, beaches and rivers are facing a sewage spill crisis that has outraged the public. In the last year, the number of sewage discharges has skyrocketed by 54 per cent and many parties have made pledges to clean up waterways in their manifestos.

Labour: Labour has said it will put failing water companies under special measures. It promises regulators will be given new powers to block bonuses for “executives who pollute our waterways”.

The party’s manifesto also pledges to bring criminal charges against water firms that persistently break the law. It says it will impose automatic and severe fines for wrongdoing while ensuring independent monitoring of sewage spills.

Conservatives: The Conservative Party has said it will continue working with regulator Ofwat to hold water companies accountable - including banning bonuses for bosses if there is a serious criminal breach. It has also pledged to use fines from water companies to invest in river restoration projects.

Despite an increasing problem with spills, however, the party’s manifesto claims that 90 per cent of bathing waters were classified as ‘good’ or ‘excellent last year, up from 76 per cent in 2010.

Liberal Democrats: The Lib Dems have revealed plans to replace the current industry watchdog Ofwat with a “tough new regulator” called the Clean Water Authority. It would be given the power to ban bonuses for water company bosses, force companies to publish data on sewage spills, remove the licences of firms that are performing badly, make water companies put local environmental experts on their boards and set legally binding targets for sewage spills.

“Through a tough new regulator, we will make sure water companies put the environment and their customers first instead of lining the pockets of their shareholders,” Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said.

Green Party: The Greens want to end the sewage crisis by bringing water companies back into public ownership. Many campaigners and environmentalists blame the current situation on escalating issues that started with their privatisation in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher.

The party’s efforts to ensure the protection of nature also include a pledge to introduce a new Rights of Nature Act that would give rights to nature itself.

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'Sounding the alarm': World likely to temporarily pass 1.5C limit by 2028, UN weather agency warns

1. Reducing emissions from transport

Transport emissions are tough to tackle and the UK is no exception. A ban on petrol and diesel cars was pushed back by the Conservative government last year and each party has its own thoughts on the best way to decarbonise transport.

Labour: Labour is planning to reinstate the 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars. It says in its manifesto that this would provide “certainty for manufacturers”. The party also wants to accelerate the move to electric vehicles by investing in the rollout of charging points and support buyers of second hand cars by standardising information about the condition of batteries.

It has also pledged to end “30 years of privatisation” bringing railways back into public ownership.

Conservatives: Rishi Sunak announced last September that he would be pushing back a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to 2035. What this announcement didn’t include was an obligation for manufacturers to ensure that 80 per cent of car sales are electric by 2030 which will continue despite the ban being pushed back.

Liberal Democrats: The Lib Dems also plan to restore the ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030. This is complemented by ways of making it “easier and cheaper” for drivers to switch, including the rapid roll-out of charging points and the introduction of grants.

The party’s manifesto also promises investment in active travel and public transport like boosting bus services and freezing rail fares, the electrification of Britain's railways and plans to reduce the climate impact of flying.

Britain's Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader, Rishi Sunak, delivers a speech to launch the Conservatives' general election manifesto. - Benjamin Cremel, Pool Photo via AP

Green Party: The Greens want to stop new petrol and diesel car sales as early as 2027 and end the use of petrol and diesel vehicles on UK roads by 2035. They plan to do this with an extensive vehicle scrappage scheme and major funding for the rollout of electric vehicle charging points.

The Green Party’s plan also includes boosting investment in public transport, £2.5 billion (€3 billion) a year for new cycleways and footpaths, and subsidies that would include free bus travel for under 18s. And it wants to bring Britain's railways back into public ownership.

The party manifesto also includes promises to introduce a frequent flyer levy, ban domestic flights that take less than three hours, add VAT to jet fuel, and stop all airport expansion. An economy-wide tax on carbon-producing activities would also impact airlines.

Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic

Chris Bing and Joel Shectman
Fri, June 14, 2024 

LONG READ

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.


“COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don’t trust China!” one typical tweet from July 2020 read in Tagalog. The words were next to a photo of a syringe beside a Chinese flag and a soaring chart of infections. Another post read: “From China – PPE, Face Mask, Vaccine: FAKE. But the Coronavirus is real.”

After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.

The U.S. military’s anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law.

The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.

The U.S. military is prohibited from targeting Americans with propaganda, and Reuters found no evidence the Pentagon’s influence operation did so.

Spokespeople for Trump and Biden did not respond to requests for comment about the clandestine program.

A senior Defense Department official acknowledged the U.S. military engaged in secret propaganda to disparage China’s vaccine in the developing world, but the official declined to provide details.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said the U.S. military “uses a variety of platforms, including social media, to counter those malign influence attacks aimed at the U.S., allies, and partners.” She also noted that China had started a “disinformation campaign to falsely blame the United States for the spread of COVID-19.”

In an email, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it has long maintained the U.S. government manipulates social media and spreads misinformation.

Manila’s embassy in Washington did not respond to Reuters inquiries, including whether it had been aware of the Pentagon operation. A spokesperson for the Philippines Department of Health, however, said the “findings by Reuters deserve to be investigated and heard by the appropriate authorities of the involved countries.” Some aide workers in the Philippines, when told of the U.S. military propaganda effort by Reuters, expressed outrage.

Briefed on the Pentagon’s secret anti-vax campaign by Reuters, some American public health experts also condemned the program, saying it put civilians in jeopardy for potential geopolitical gain. An operation meant to win hearts and minds endangered lives, they said.

“I don’t think it’s defensible,” said Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine. “I’m extremely dismayed, disappointed and disillusioned to hear that the U.S. government would do that,” said Lucey, a former military physician who assisted in the response to the 2001 anthrax attacks.

The effort to stoke fear about Chinese inoculations risked undermining overall public trust in government health initiatives, including U.S.-made vaccines that became available later, Lucey and others said. Although the Chinese vaccines were found to be less effective than the American-led shots by Pfizer and Moderna, all were approved by the World Health Organization. Sinovac did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Academic research published recently has shown that, when individuals develop skepticism toward a single vaccine, those doubts often lead to uncertainty about other inoculations. Lucey and other health experts say they saw such a scenario play out in Pakistan, where the Central Intelligence Agency used a fake hepatitis vaccination program in Abbottabad as cover to hunt for Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. Discovery of the ruse led to a backlash against an unrelated polio vaccination campaign, including attacks on healthcare workers, contributing to the reemergence of the deadly disease in the country.

“It should have been in our interest to get as much vaccine in people’s arms as possible,” said Greg Treverton, former chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, which coordinates the analysis and strategy of Washington’s many spy agencies. What the Pentagon did, Treverton said, “crosses a line.”
'We were desperate'

Together, the phony accounts used by the military had tens of thousands of followers during the program. Reuters could not determine how widely the anti-vax material and other Pentagon-planted disinformation was viewed, or to what extent the posts may have caused COVID deaths by dissuading people from getting vaccinated.

In the wake of the U.S. propaganda efforts, however, then-Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte had grown so dismayed by how few Filipinos were willing to be inoculated that he threatened to arrest people who refused vaccinations.

“You choose, vaccine or I will have you jailed,” a masked Duterte said in a televised address in June 2021. “There is a crisis in this country … I’m just exasperated by Filipinos not heeding the government.”

When he addressed the vaccination issue, the Philippines had among the worst inoculation rates in Southeast Asia. Only 2.1 million of its 114 million citizens were fully vaccinated – far short of the government’s target of 70 million. By the time Duterte spoke, COVID cases exceeded 1.3 million, and almost 24,000 Filipinos had died from the virus. The difficulty in vaccinating the population contributed to the worst death rate in the region.

A spokesperson for Duterte did not make the former president available for an interview.

Some Filipino healthcare professionals and former officials contacted by Reuters were shocked by the U.S. anti-vax effort, which they say exploited an already vulnerable citizenry. Public concerns about a Dengue fever vaccine, rolled out in the Philippines in 2016, had led to broad skepticism toward inoculations overall, said Lulu Bravo, executive director of the Philippine Foundation for Vaccination. The Pentagon campaign preyed on those fears.

Signage that reads "No Vaccine No Ride" (L) is seen on the windshield of a passenger jeepney in Quezon City, suburban Manila on January 17, 2022, as the Philippine government banned unvaccinated people from using public transport amid a record surge in coronavirus cases.

“Why did you do it when people were dying? We were desperate,” said Dr. Nina Castillo-Carandang, a former adviser to the World Health Organization and Philippines government during the pandemic. “We don’t have our own vaccine capacity,” she noted, and the U.S. propaganda effort “contributed even more salt into the wound.”

The campaign also reinforced what one former health secretary called a longstanding suspicion of China, most recently because of aggressive behavior by Beijing in disputed areas of the South China Sea. Filipinos were unwilling to trust China’s Sinovac, which first became available in the country in March 2021, said Esperanza Cabral, who served as health secretary under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Cabral said she had been unaware of the U.S. military’s secret operation.

“I’m sure that there are lots of people who died from COVID who did not need to die from COVID,” she said.

To implement the anti-vax campaign, the Defense Department overrode strong objections from top U.S. diplomats in Southeast Asia at the time, Reuters found. Sources involved in its planning and execution say the Pentagon, which ran the program through the military’s psychological operations center in Tampa, Florida, disregarded the collateral impact that such propaganda may have on innocent Filipinos.

“We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,” said a senior military officer involved in the program. “We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”
A new disinformation war

In uncovering the secret U.S. military operation, Reuters interviewed more than two dozen current and former U.S officials, military contractors, social media analysts and academic researchers. Reporters also reviewed Facebook, X and Instagram posts, technical data and documents about a set of fake social media accounts used by the U.S. military. Some were active for more than five years.

Clandestine psychological operations are among the government’s most highly sensitive programs. Knowledge of their existence is limited to a small group of people within U.S. intelligence and military agencies. Such programs are treated with special caution because their exposure could damage foreign alliances or escalate conflict with rivals.

Over the last decade, some U.S. national security officials have pushed for a return to the kind of aggressive clandestine propaganda operations against rivals that the United States’ wielded during the Cold War. Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in which Russia used a combination of hacks and leaks to influence voters, the calls to fight back grew louder inside Washington.

In 2019, Trump authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media aimed at turning public opinion in China against its government, Reuters reported in March. As part of that effort, a small group of operatives used bogus online identities to spread disparaging narratives about Xi Jinping’s government.

COVID-19 galvanized the drive to wage psychological operations against China. One former senior Pentagon leader described the pandemic as a “bolt of energy” that finally ignited the long delayed counteroffensive against China’s influence war.

The Pentagon’s anti-vax propaganda came in response to China’s own efforts to spread false information about the origins of COVID. The virus first emerged in China in late 2019. But in March 2020, Chinese government officials claimed without evidence that the virus may have been first brought to China by an American service member who participated in an international military sports competition in Wuhan the previous year. Chinese officials also suggested that the virus may have originated in a U.S. Army research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. There’s no evidence for that assertion.

Mirroring Beijing’s public statements, Chinese intelligence operatives set up networks of fake social media accounts to promote the Fort Detrick conspiracy, according to a U.S. Justice Department complaint.

China’s messaging got Washington’s attention. Trump subsequently coined the term “China virus” as a response to Beijing’s accusation that the U.S. military exported COVID to Wuhan.

US President Donald Trump holds a news conference with members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the COVID-19 outbreak at the White House on February 26, 2020.

“That was false. And rather than having an argument, I said, ‘I have to call it where it came from,’” Trump said in a March 2020 news conference. “It did come from China.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said in an email that it opposed “actions to politicize the origins question and stigmatize China.” The ministry had no comment about the Justice Department’s complaint.

Beijing didn’t limit its global influence efforts to propaganda. It announced an ambitious COVID assistance program, which included sending masks, ventilators and its own vaccines – still being tested at the time – to struggling countries. In May 2020, Xi announced that the vaccine China was developing would be made available as a “global public good,” and would ensure “vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.” Sinovac was the primary vaccine available in the Philippines for about a year until U.S.-made vaccines became more widely available there in early 2022.

Washington’s plan, called Operation Warp Speed, was different. It favored inoculating Americans first, and it placed no restrictions on what pharmaceutical companies could charge developing countries for the remaining vaccines not used by the United States. The deal allowed the companies to “play hardball” with developing countries, forcing them to accept high prices, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University who has worked with the World Health Organization.

The deal “sucked most of the supply out of the global market,” Gostin said. “The United States took a very determined America First approach.”

To Washington’s alarm, China’s offers of assistance were tilting the geopolitical playing field across the developing world, including in the Philippines, where the government faced upwards of 100,000 infections in the early months of the pandemic.

The U.S. relationship with Manila had grown tense after the 2016 election of the bombastic Duterte. A staunch critic of the United States, he had threatened to cancel a key pact that allows the U.S. military to maintain legal jurisdiction over American troops stationed in the country.

Duterte said in a July 2020 speech he had made “a plea” to Xi that the Philippines be at the front of the line as China rolled out vaccines. He vowed in the same speech that the Philippines would no longer challenge Beijing’s aggressive expansion in the South China Sea, upending a key security understanding Manila had long held with Washington.

“China is claiming it. We are claiming it. China has the arms, we do not have it.” Duterte said. “So, it is simple as that.”

Days later, China’s foreign minister announced Beijing would grant Duterte’s plea for priority access to the vaccine, as part of a “new highlight in bilateral relations.”

China’s growing influence fueled efforts by U.S. military leaders to launch the secret propaganda operation Reuters uncovered.

“We didn’t do a good job sharing vaccines with partners,” a senior U.S. military officer directly involved in the campaign in Southeast Asia told Reuters. “So what was left to us was to throw shade on China’s.”
Military trumped diplomats

U.S. military leaders feared that China’s COVID diplomacy and propaganda could draw other Southeast Asian countries, such as Cambodia and Malaysia, closer to Beijing, furthering its regional ambitions.

A senior U.S. military commander responsible for Southeast Asia, Special Operations Command Pacific General Jonathan Braga, pressed his bosses in Washington to fight back in the so-called information space, according to three former Pentagon officials.

The commander initially wanted to punch back at Beijing in Southeast Asia. The goal: to ensure the region understood the origin of COVID while promoting skepticism toward what were then still-untested vaccines offered by a country that they said had lied continually since the start of the pandemic.

A spokesperson for Special Operations Command declined to comment.

At least six senior State Department officials responsible for the region objected to this approach. A health crisis was the wrong time to instill fear or anger through a psychological operation, or psyop, they argued during Zoom calls with the Pentagon.

“We’re stooping lower than the Chinese and we should not be doing that,” said a former senior State Department official for the region who fought against the military operation.

While the Pentagon saw Washington’s rapidly diminishing influence in the Philippines as a call to action, the withering partnership led American diplomats to plead for caution.

“The relationship is hanging from a thread,” another former senior U.S. diplomat recounted. “Is this the moment you want to do a psyop in the Philippines? Is it worth the risk?”

In the past, such opposition from the State Department might have proved fatal to the program. Previously in peacetime, the Pentagon needed approval of embassy officials before conducting psychological operations in a country, often hamstringing commanders seeking to quickly respond to Beijing’s messaging, three former Pentagon officials told Reuters.

But in 2019, before COVID surfaced in full force, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper signed a secret order that later paved the way for the launch of the U.S. military propaganda campaign. The order elevated the Pentagon’s competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat, enabling commanders to sidestep the State Department when conducting psyops against those adversaries. The Pentagon spending bill passed by Congress that year also explicitly authorized the military to conduct clandestine influence operations against other countries, even “outside of areas of active hostilities.”

Esper, through a spokesperson, declined to comment. A State Department spokesperson referred questions to the Pentagon.
U.S. propaganda machine

In spring 2020, special-ops commander Braga turned to a cadre of psychological-warfare soldiers and contractors in Tampa to counter Beijing’s COVID efforts. Colleagues say Braga was a longtime advocate of increasing the use of propaganda operations in global competition. In trailers and squat buildings at a facility on Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base, U.S. military personnel and contractors would use anonymous accounts on X, Facebook and other social media to spread what became an anti-vax message. The facility remains the Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda factory.

Psychological warfare has played a role in U.S. military operations for more than a hundred years, although it has changed in style and substance over time. So-called psyopers were best known following World War II for their supporting role in combat missions across Vietnam, Korea and Kuwait, often dropping leaflets to confuse the enemy or encourage their surrender.

After the al Qaeda attacks of 2001, the United States was fighting a borderless, shadowy enemy, and the Pentagon began to wage a more ambitious kind of psychological combat previously associated only with the CIA. The Pentagon set up front news outlets, paid off prominent local figures, and sometimes funded television soap operas in order to turn local populations against militant groups or Iranian-backed militias, former national security officials told Reuters.

Unlike earlier psyop missions, which sought specific tactical advantage on the battlefield, the post-9/11 operations hoped to create broader change in public opinion across entire regions.

By 2010, the military began using social media tools, leveraging phony accounts to spread messages of sympathetic local voices – themselves often secretly paid by the United States government. As time passed, a growing web of military and intelligence contractors built online news websites to pump U.S.-approved narratives into foreign countries. Today, the military employs a sprawling ecosystem of social media influencers, front groups and covertly placed digital advertisements to influence overseas audiences, according to current and former military officials.

China’s efforts to gain geopolitical clout from the pandemic gave Braga justification to launch the propaganda campaign that Reuters uncovered, sources said.
Pork in the vaccine?

By summer 2020, the military’s propaganda campaign moved into new territory and darker messaging, ultimately drawing the attention of social media executives.

In regions beyond Southeast Asia, senior officers in the U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations across the Middle East and Central Asia, launched their own version of the COVID psyop, three former military officials told Reuters.

Although the Chinese vaccines were still months from release, controversy roiled the Muslim world over whether the vaccines contained pork gelatin and could be considered “haram,” or forbidden under Islamic law. Sinovac has said that the vaccine was “manufactured free of porcine materials.” Many Islamic religious authorities maintained that even if the vaccines did contain pork gelatin, they were still permissible since the treatments were being used to save human life.

The Pentagon campaign sought to intensify fears about injecting a pig derivative. As part of an internal investigation at X, the social media company used IP addresses and browser data to identify more than 150 phony accounts that were operated from Tampa by U.S. Central Command and its contractors, according to an internal X document reviewed by Reuters.

“Can you trust China, which tries to hide that its vaccine contains pork gelatin and distributes it in Central Asia and other Muslim countries where many people consider such a drug haram?” read an April 2021 tweet sent from a military-controlled account identified by X.

The Pentagon also covertly spread its messages on Facebook and Instagram, alarming executives at parent company Meta who had long been tracking the military accounts, according to former military officials.

One military-created meme targeting Central Asia showed a pig made out of syringes, according to two people who viewed the image. Reuters found similar posts that traced back to U.S. Central Command. One shows a Chinese flag as a curtain separating Muslim women in hijabs and pigs stuck with vaccine syringes. In the center is a man with syringes; on his back is the word “China.” It targeted Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, a country that distributed tens of millions of doses of China’s vaccines and participated in human trials. Translated into English, the X post reads: “China distributes a vaccine made of pork gelatin.”

Facebook executives had first approached the Pentagon in the summer of 2020, warning the military that Facebook workers had easily identified the military’s phony accounts, according to three former U.S. officials and another person familiar with the matter. The government, Facebook argued, was violating Facebook’s policies by operating the bogus accounts and by spreading COVID misinformation.

The military argued that many of its fake accounts were being used for counterterrorism and asked Facebook not to take down the content, according to two people familiar with the exchange. The Pentagon pledged to stop spreading COVID-related propaganda, and some of the accounts continued to remain active on Facebook.

Nonetheless, the anti-vax campaign continued into 2021 as Biden took office.

Angered that military officials had ignored their warning, Facebook officials arranged a Zoom meeting with Biden’s new National Security Council shortly after the inauguration, Reuters learned. The discussion quickly became tense.

“It was terrible,” said a senior administration official describing the reaction after learning of the campaign’s pig-related posts. “I was shocked. The administration was pro-vaccine and our concern was this could affect vaccine hesitancy, especially in developing countries.”

By spring 2021, the National Security Council ordered the military to stop all anti-vaccine messaging. “We were told we needed to be pro-vaccine, pro all vaccines,” said a former senior military officer who helped oversee the program. Even so, Reuters found some anti-vax posts that continued through April and other deceptive COVID-related messaging that extended into that summer. Reuters could not determine why the campaign didn’t end immediately with the NSC’s order. In response to questions from Reuters, the NSC declined to comment.

The senior Defense Department official said that those complaints led to an internal review in late 2021, which uncovered the anti-vaccine operation. The probe also turned up other social and political messaging that was “many, many leagues away” from any acceptable military objective. The official would not elaborate.

The review intensified the following year, the official said, after a group of academic researchers at Stanford University flagged some of the same accounts as pro-Western bots in a public report. The high-level Pentagon review was first reported by the Washington Post, which also reported that the military used fake social media accounts to counter China’s message that COVID came from the United States. But the Post report did not reveal that the program evolved into the anti-vax propaganda campaign uncovered by Reuters.

The senior defense official said the Pentagon has rescinded parts of Esper’s 2019 order that allowed military commanders to bypass the approval of U.S. ambassadors when waging psychological operations. The rules now mandate that military commanders work closely with U.S. diplomats in the country where they seek to have an impact. The policy also restricts psychological operations aimed at “broad population messaging,” such as those used to promote vaccine hesitancy during COVID.

The Pentagon’s audit concluded that the military’s primary contractor handling the campaign, General Dynamics IT, had employed sloppy tradecraft, taking inadequate steps to hide the origin of the fake accounts, said a person with direct knowledge of the review. The review also found that military leaders didn’t maintain enough control over its psyop contractors, the person said.

A spokesperson for General Dynamics IT declined to comment.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda efforts are set to continue. In an unclassified strategy document last year, top Pentagon generals wrote that the U.S. military could undermine adversaries such as China and Russia using “disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities [to] weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government.”

And in February, the contractor that worked on the anti-vax campaign – General Dynamics IT – won a $493 million contract. Its mission: to continue providing clandestine influence services for the military.

A Reuters investigation: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China

UPDATED

Justice Dept. Scathing Report: Native Americans Face Discrimination by Phoenix Police

In a report released on Thursday by the U.S. Dept of Justice, the Phoenix Police Department use discriminatory practices against Native Americans in Phoenix. (Photo/Phoenix Police Department)

BY LEVI RICKERT 

 

JUNE 14, 2024

NATIVE NEWS

In a 126-page scathing report released on Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Phoenix Police Department (PhxPD) was found to discriminate against Native Americans, Blacks, and Hispanics, unlawfully detain homeless people and use excessive force, including unjustified deadly force.

The investigation of the police force in the country’s fifth-largest city began on August 5, 2021.

The findings of the report were announced by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who oversees the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

“The findings that we have issued are severe,” Clarke said, adding, “This is one instance where we can’t count on the police to police themselves.”\

The American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) population of Phoenix is just over 39,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the DOJ report, the AI/AN population was referred to as the Native American population.

In its executive summary, the Justice Department’s report finds that:

• PhxPD uses excessive force, including unjustified deadly force and other types of force.
• PhxPD and the City unlawfully detain, cite, and arrest people experiencing homelessness and unlawfully dispose of their belongings. This is the first time the Department has found a pattern or practice of conduct that focuses on the rights of people experiencing homelessness.
• PhxPD discriminates against Black, Hispanic, and Native American people when enforcing the law.
• PhxPD violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech and expression.
• PhxPD and the City discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities when dispatching calls for assistance and responding to people in crisis.

Native American Issues

For much of the report, Native Americans are often included in references to Blacks and Hispanics; however, Native Americans were singled out numerous times when addressing specific offenses. The Native community members faced higher incidences of being stopped by the police, given citations, and arrested.

• Native Americans in Phoenix were 44 times more likely than white people to be cited or arrested for possessing or consuming alcohol. For Blacks, the rate was five times more likely than white people for alcohol-related offenses.
• ​​Native American people are cited almost six times more often than white people for crossing a street against a “Don’t Walk” signal. 
• On a per capita basis, Native American people in Phoenix were 26 times more likely than white people to be cited or arrested for remaining at a bus stop for over one hour in an eight-hour period, though Native American people make up only approximately 7% of the local homeless population while white people make up 68%. 
• PhxPD officers were 14.5% more likely to book Native Americans for trespass-related offenses, while they cited or released white people stopped for the same violation.

The report cites that the PhxPD seems to be oblivious to the problem. The report states: 

“Earlier this year, PhxPD claimed that the department was ‘unaware of any credible evidence of discriminatory policing.This statement is troubling in light of the stark disparities described above. But it is also unsurprising—we saw no evidence PhxPD engages in self-assessment to identify potentially discriminatory policing patterns. However, community groups have raised concerns about PhxPD’s relationship with communities of color. For years, Black and brown communities in Phoenix have had a strained relationship with PhxPD.”

After Thursday’s release of the report, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said in a statement that city officials would meet on June 25 to seek legal advice and discuss the next steps.

The report states that the PhxPD maintains inadequate internal controls, including through data review or misconduct investigations that would identify discriminatory policing. The report says PhxPD’s data collection practices have been deficient; the agency did not require all officers to document police stops that did not result in citations or arrests until after we opened our investigation

"I will carefully and thoroughly review the findings before making further comment, "Gallego said.

Victims cited in DOJ report on Phoenix police brutality call on city to implement mandated reforms
Terry Tang
Fri, June 14, 2024 





PHOENIX (AP) — Phoenix residents who have spoken out against police brutality hailed on Friday a scathing U.S. Justice Department report outlining a pattern of excessive force and racial discrimination, saying it lays blame not just at the feet of law enforcement but the leaders of the nation’s fifth-largest city.

Jarrett Maupin, a Phoenix-based activist known for working with victims of police violence, said the city owes the impacted families an apology and financial compensation.

“The city owes these families an apology. And more than that, they owe them, literally and figuratively, millions of dollars because of the injuries sustained, the deaths they’ve sustained, the losses they’ve sustained,” Maupin said.

The sweeping civil rights investigation found “overwhelming statistical evidence” that Phoenix police discriminate against Black, Hispanic and Native American people, as well as unlawfully detain homeless people and use excessive force. The report says investigators found stark contrasts in how officers enforce certain — especially low-level — crimes depending on a person's race and that officers tended to fire their weapons unnecessarily or “unreasonably delay” aid to those they injured.

Dravon Ames, who received a payout from the city after officers pointed their guns at him and his pregnant fiancée in 2019, told reporters Friday that he finally felt like his voice was being heard. At the time police cited having shoplifting suspicion, but no one was ever charged. The couple says that, unbeknownst to them, their young daughter had taken a doll from a store. He hopes the city of Phoenix will go along with federal court-ordered reforms.

“I think if they sign a decree and get monitoring and get on the right path, there will be a change to happen,” Ames said. “That’s the whole point of their findings. They (the DOJ) have let them know there’s a problem, you know, and it’s 126 pages of problems.”

Ben Crump, the Florida-based attorney who has become the voice for Black people killed at the hands of police and vigilantes, represents the family of Akeem Terrell, a man who died in a jail in Phoenix in 2021. He said he hopes the report's recommendations will mean improving the policing culture.

“While we are still fighting for justice for Akeem, we continue to also fight for those who are still here with us. There shouldn’t be another Akeem Terrell," Crump said in a statement. "It is critical that police departments follow guidance like that of the DOJ to better protect our communities.”

The report does not mention whether the federal government is pursuing a court-enforced reform plan known as a consent decree, but a Justice Department official told reporters that in similar cases that method has been used to carry out reforms. Litigation is an option if the Department is unable to obtain a consent decree.

Interim Phoenix Police Chief Michael Sullivan said in a statement that the force needs time to thoroughly review the findings, and Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said in a statement that city officials would meet June 25 to get legal advice and discuss next steps.

Meanwhile, Darrell Kriplean, president of a local police union, called the Justice Department investigation a “farce” and said it is “only interested in removing control of local police from the communities.”

Phoenix is the fifth-largest city in the country. Similar DOJ investigations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Baltimore and elsewhere have found systemic problems related to excessive force and civil rights violations, some resulting in costly consent decrees that have lasted years.

Maupin believes calling for police accountability, even if it means prosecuting officers, is not anti-police.

“Let me say this clearly, we’re not anti-police,” Maupin said, with some supporters nodding in agreement. “We’re not standing here saying ‘defund the police’ and all that. We want a police department that knows how to be police, protect and serve.”

He also warned that inaction by local Democratic politicians like Mayor Kate Gallego could drive Black voters away.

“I suggest that we think long and hard before we vote for anybody on that city council and including the mayor, who is up for election,” Maupin said. “And I think we vote long and hard about what’s in our best interest.”

Sandra Slaton, a civil rights attorney representing several people in lawsuits against the city over excessive force, acknowledged the Biden administration deserved some credit for the Justice Department following through with the report.

“I am convinced there isn’t any doubt in anybody’s mind that this would not be happening under a Trump Justice Department,” Slaton said.

Terry Tang, The Associated Press

US finds Phoenix Police Dept violates civil rights of city residents

Report predicts Hudson Bay polar bears could disappear in a few decades

CBC
Fri, June 14, 2024 

A mother polar bear and cub near Churchill, Man. (Elisha Dacey/CBC - image credit)


Two subpopulations of polar bear in Hudson Bay will disappear in the next few decades if the world isn't able to cap global warming at 2 C, according to a new multi-disciplinary study.

The report, published in the journal Nature, Communications Earth and Environment on Thursday, looks at various scenarios of warming and what it would do to sea ice, seals, and polar bears.

Julienne Stroeve, a professor at the University of Manitoba and the report's lead author, said with more than two degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels, both the southern and western populations of the Hudson Bay polar bear will become extirpated. That means they'd be extinct locally.


Experts have warned for years that the Hudson Bay polar bear population could go extinct within a few decades. The latest study concludes with what it calls a more "alarming outlook" — that the local extinction is expected to happen sometime between the 2030s and 2060s.

A pair of maps show the range of the western and southern Hudson Bay polar bear sub-populations.

A pair of maps show the range of the western and southern Hudson Bay polar bear sub-populations. (Submitted by Annie Edwards)

"I think we need to start telling people, sadly, the harsh realities of what's to come if we don't do anything," said Stroeve. "It's going to transform the entire Arctic region beyond contemporary recognition."

Elder says polar bears not as fat as they used to be

David Kuptana, an elder from Ulukhaktok, N.W.T. who shares his home with different polar bears, said this past hunting season was "really good."

The N.W.T. is home to the Southern Beaufort Sea, Northern Beaufort Sea and Viscount Melville Sound polar bear subpopulations. A limited number of tags to hunt from each subpopulation are given out each year.

Kuptana said his family brought in a number of bears of a good size — a sign, he says, that the population living in his region is doing well. But he has noticed some things that cause him to worry.


David Kuptana is an N.W.T. hunter.

David Kuptana, an elder from Ulukhaktok, N.W.T., said this past polar bear hunting season was 'really good' — but he is noticing some things that cause him to worry. (Submitted by David Kuptana)

For example, their stomachs are nearly empty.

"The bears we used to catch long ago used to be very healthy, very fat," he said. Now, they don't have as much fat. He's worried the open water around his Arctic home is making it hard for them to hunt.

"If they can't find food, they will keep breaking into cabins and looking for something to eat or coming into town," he said.

Kuptana said he also didn't see any polars bears with cubs this year, though he did spot their tracks.

Geoff York, the senior director of research and policy at Polar Bears International, said polar bears are showing up on shore more often because of changes happening out on the sea ice.

"That can definitely give the impression that there are more bears in general, and without question, there are more bears around communities in some cases," he said.

Stroeve said some subpopulations of polar bear may be able to migrate to areas where thick ice may last longer — the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, north of Ellesmere Island, is expected to be one of the those places — but the bears in Hudson Bay don't have that option.

"There's really not any place for those bears to go, in part because the way that the sea ice drifts with the winds," she said.

Climate change brings too long a fasting period, study says

Sea ice is integral to a polar bear's life — it's where they hunt, breed, and raise their young. Stroeve's study looks at how long Hudson Bay will be ice-free in the summer, and whether polar bears will be able to survive the summer fasting period, which is particularly challenging for nursing mothers.

Julienne Stroeve, studying sea ice during an expedition. She is the lead author of a multi-disciplinary study which predicts Hudson Bay polar bears won't be able to survive a lengthening fasting period if climate warming isn't stopped.

Julienne Stroeve, studying sea ice during an expedition. She is the lead author of a multi-disciplinary study which predicts Hudson Bay polar bears won't be able to survive a lengthening fasting period if climate warming isn't stopped. (Lars Barthel)

During that time, polar bears move to land. Though they may find food there, scientists say it doesn't contain enough energy for them to maintain their bodies.

York pointed to a recent study which found the energy polar bears derive from food found on land is barely offset by the energy they expend trying to find it.

Even at 1.6 degrees of warming — which the world is currently teetering on the brink of — Stroeve found that the southern Hudson Bay polar bears may not survive.

Under two degrees of warming, ice free periods in that region are expected to last between 174 to 182 days. Stroeve said most ecologists think polar bears would not be able to survive a fasting period longer than 180 to 200 days long.

The bears in the western region of the bay have a bit more time, because freeze up happens there earlier, she said. Even so, under two degrees of warming, their ice-free period will be 163 to 168 days long.

Accounting for all pledges countries have made to reduce emissions, Stroeve said the planet is still headed for 2.7 degrees of warming by the end of the century. If that happens, she said, there will certainly be no polar bears left in Hudson Bay.

"There's a general sadness that comes along with that," said York.

"The things we need to be doing as societies to help turn this around, reducing greenhouse gas emissions just aren't keeping up with the realities on the ground. We're not doing enough quickly enough."