THE POSTMODERN STATE NEVER TIRES

UN schedules additional global climate summit for September 2023

OF BLAH, BLAH, BLAH

The UN has confirmed that it will convene a new ‘Climate Action Summit’ next September, recognising that commitments from nations do not yet align with the Paris Agreement and that a more joined-up approach to climate mitigation, adaptation and nature is needed.

Sarah George
Published 20th December 2022



Pictured: The UN's headquarters in New York

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres confirmed the event on Monday (19 December) during an end-of-year speech delivered to those at the organisation’s headquarters in New York. The speech saw Guterres reflecting on the recent 15th biodiversity COP in Canada, which wrapped up in the early hours of Monday, as well as proceedings at climate COP27 in Egypt last month.

He called the agreement struck at COP15 a sign that humanity is “finally starting to form a peace pact with nature”, with nations agreeing to end destruction and degradation this decade. Under the top-line pledge, the agreed treaty includes steps to mobilise billions of dollars of finance; reform damaging subsidies; improve corporate disclosures on nature impacts and increase the proportion of land and water-based habitats designated as protected.

While acknowledging that there is still much work to do to shift to a nature-positive future, Guterres said he had hope for the implementation of the new post-2020 biodiversity treaty. In general, he stated, 2022 has been “a time for resolve, determination, and – yes – even hope”. He elaborated: “Because despite the limitations and long odds, we are working to push back against despair, to fight back against disillusion and to find real solutions.”

On climate, specifically, however, the Secretary-General was extremely blunt about how mitigation and adaptation efforts to date have fallen far short of what science tells us is needed – storing up economic, social and environmental risks for the future.

The UN’s latest synthesis report assessing the national climate commitments made by nations under the Paris Agreement concluded that, if all commitments were delivered in full, the global temperature increase between 1900 and 2100 will be 2.5C. This far exceeds the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C and 2C trajectories. The UN has also recorded that global emissions continue to increase year-on-year, whereas steep reductions are needed this decade to deliver the Paris Agreement.

Efforts on climate adaptation have also, the UN has emphasised, fallen short so far. The organisation’s latest ‘adaptation gap report’ confirmed that international adaptation finance flows to developing nations are at least five times below estimated needs. With estimated needs set to grow to at least $160bn by 2030 and $315bn by 2050, there needs to be a concerted effort to scale this type of finance.

This is why the new ‘Climate Action Summit’ will be held in September, ahead of the start of the 28th climate COP in Dubai.

At the summit, Guterres said, nations will be asked to put forward “ credible, serious and new climate action and nature-based solutions that will move the needle forward and respond to the urgency of the climate crisis”. Without these plans, nations will not be able to attend.

In the lead-up to COP27, most nations failed to update their Paris Agreement commitments despite pledging to do so at COP26.

Guterres said that the Summit would be “no nonsense” with “no room for back-sliders, greenwashers, blame-shifters or repackaging of announcements of previous years”.

“Going forward, I will keep pushing for a Climate Solidarity Pact, in which all countries make an extra effort to reduce emissions this decade in line with the 1.5C goal and ensure support for those who need it,” Guterres said. “I have pulled no punches on the imperative for all of us to confront this existential threat. And I will not relent.”

Summit specifics

The Summit will be convened alongside an opening week summit for the UN General Assembly, at which the theme will be taking stock of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The exact dates and the location of the event are yet to be confirmed by the UN.

Non-state actors including businesses, cities, regions, the finance sector and civil society groups are set to be invited to participate in the new Summit. Guterres has said that these organisations need to “step up” as well as nations “to accelerate the pace of change”.

Book Review: This Is Only the Beginning: The Making of a New Left, From Anti-Austerity to the Fall of Corbyn by Michael Chessum

'The left will face its chance again, but not soon, and until then we have not yet built up the institutions or the common strategies which would entitle us to govern.'

David Renton

23 December, 2022 
Left Foot Forward

Why should we need another book about Corbynism? Labour insiders Len McCluskey and Andrew Murray have published memoirs. Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire have interviewed the Labour right. Books by left-wing journalists Owen Jones, Richard Seymour, Mike Phipps, Alex Nunns, and Oliver Eagleton mix memoir and analysis of Corbyn’s defeat.

Michael Chessum’s This is Only the Beginningdistinguishes itself in two ways. First, unlike Pogrund and Maguire, the message is celebratory, that Corbyn unleashed a generational longing for socialism, and one which had until then been primarily expressed in anti-parliamentary activism. In contrast to several of the other books I have mentioned, his is lively, well-written and optimistic. It opens with the Millbank student protests in December 2010 and the protests which followed, in which the author became a sabbatical officer at the University of London Union. It was in 2010, Chessum argues (rightly), that Corbynism’s future cadres had their first collective experience of struggle. If you want to see again in your mind’s eye the graffiti on Westminster, hear once more the police sirens, this is the book for you.

Second, Chessum draws on his experience as a member of the Momentum steering committee and then full-timer for Another Europe is Possible, to suggest where Corbynism went wrong.

The first half of the book is more successful, reflecting the way in which its author was closer to the centre of events. That said, even in the early material, there are a number of gaps, where you feel that other members of Chessum’s generation were involved in big events, and the author was not, but has failed to make good that gap through sufficient interviews: the Occupy movement, the 2011 London riots, and the public sector pension strikes whose defeat brought an end to hopes that the Conservatives would be driven easily from office.

When writing about student activists, it feels as if Chessum either knew everyone at the time (Solomon, Bergfeld…) or has interviewed them since (Sarkar, Butler, Bastani…). When it comes to older activists, which is particularly important when considering the rise and defeat of Corbyn, the author leans too heavily on Jeremy Gilbert and Hilary Wainwright.

In reality the five decades between 1960 and 2010 produced more than two generations of leftists, who contributed to the movement, even if the author does not see them. So, for example, in telling the story of the deradicalisation and then defeat of Corbynism, he focuses on events at Momentum where a series of decisions were taken: in 2016 to structure membership on an “open” basis rather through the affiliation of groups, in January 2017 to dismantle its constitution at a strike, to set up and then later close down its youth organisation, and consistently to use the organisation to win internal Labour party battles, each of which Chessum presents as drawing energy out of the Corbyn project.

The lack of feel for older left generations means that Chessum ignores the first and most essential of bureaucratic coups: that Momentum was itself a successor to a more grassroots movement, Jeremy for Leader, which had helped Corbyn win the first leadership contest. The activists from that campaign were dispersed without recognition or thanks in order to create something new, a campaign with a single membership list that could be owned and controlled by a single person, Jon Lansman. Undoubtedly, Corbynism became more top-down over time, but the desire for central control was there from the beginning.

The book also has relatively little to say about the 2017 election, which is a weakness, because when historians look back on Corbyn’s leadership, this is likely to be what most interest them: the contrast between the unanimity of opinion which told us that a left Labour candidate could only lose votes and the success of a left-led party in winning over the public.

Chessum largely ducks Labour’s antisemitism crisis. He does writes at length, though, about the politics of the Brexit referendum and its aftermath.

Of the books I mentioned at the start of this review, only one other has a clear narrative of Brexit, Eagleton’s, in which Corbynism was let down by the leader’s weak commitment to the righteous cause of a Socialist Britain outside Europe. Successively pulled to the right (i.e. towards positions on Brexit which allowed for the possibility of a second referendum), Corbyn confused ordinary voters who had voted to Leave and now just wanted to get the referendum done. The left suffered a terrible betrayal at the hands of anti-Brexit leftists who became the naive dupes of liberals, the capitalists, and Keir Starmer.

This is Only the Beginning presents a rather different narrative of events, one with the political values reversed. Like Eagleton, Chessum portrays Corbyn’s inner circle as apathetic and naïve about the referendum. He quotes Laura Parker, Corbyn’s private secretary complaining that in there was no “understanding of what was at stake in the core team, or any of that determination or energy or connection to what our people must have been feeling on the ground”.

Like Eagleton, Chessum grasps that Leave camp had a democratic aspect (Remain was led, after all, by George Osborne and David Cameron – how else could people show opposition to them except voting to Go?). Unlike Eagleton, Chessum insists that Brexit was a mechanism to spread nationalist ideas, exulted in anti-foreigner racism, and was to give over the next four years the Conservatives a clear path to renewal while offering Labour nothing similar.

Unlike Eagleton, and thankfully, Chessum is uninterested in recriminations. He wants the left to win. He is little, if any, interest in settling scores.

Chessum’s generous account begins and ends with messages of optimism. Just as austerity created its opponent (the radical students of 2010-11) so future right-wing attacks will teach new generations of protesters the necessity of struggle. A Labour right which is bereft of ideas and nostalgic for a political conjuncture (the 1990s) which is thirty years past, must eventually concede that it offers voters nothing and give way to the left, which will revive itself by offering people what they want, a much greater degree of control over their own lives.

For myself, I fear that the defeat of 2019-20 will last longer than Chessum hopes. Previous generations of student protesters have been defeated and dispersed. If Starmerism in government is going to disappoint, and 30 months of his leadership all point in that direction, it took the British public 15 years to tire of the Conservatives. The left will face its chance again, but not soon, and until then we have not yet built up the institutions or the common strategies which would entitle us to govern.

A group of neo-liberal elites have captured the British state

Taming the elites is a necessary condition for transformation of the British economy, but no political party is willing to shackle the power of the elites.

Prem Sikka 23 December, 2022 
Left Foot Forward
Opinion
Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.

What ails the British economy? Even after the loss of empire, superpower status, and a seat at the top-table in Europe, the elites continue to believe that they have a right to riches, at the expense of the less well-off. They have transformed the state to strip millions of economic security. Taming the elites is a necessary condition for transformation of the British economy, but no political party is willing to shackle the power of the elites.

In 2016, just before the Brexit referendum, the UK economy was 90% the size of Germany’s, but by late-2022 it declined to less than 70%. Brexit has not delivered the promised benefits and the government is yet to secure a free trade agreement with any major trading block or country. Amongst the G7 countries, the UK economy is the only one still below its pre-pandemic size.

The public debt at the end of November 2022 is £2.478tn, equivalent to 98.7% of GDP. In February 2020, just before the pandemic, it was £1.791tn, or 79.1% of GDP. In May 2010, when the Conservative government came to office, it stood at £1.03tn, equivalent to 65% of GDP. The pandemic and the energy crisis have taken a toll but despite massive increase in debt the state has not invested in new industries. Due to under-investment, public services are in a mess. In England, a record 7.2 million people are waiting for a hospital appointment.

The elites have transformed the state. Instead, of an entrepreneurial state which once invested in biotechnology, aerospace, information technology and other emerging industries, it now guarantees corporate profits to enrich a few. Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and outsourcing of state functions was an early bonanza. Successive governments have handed publicly-owned industries to corporations at knock-down prices. This includes, oil, gas, railways, ports, prisons, mail, aerospace, information technology, biotechnology, shipping, mining, steel, automobiles, social care and large parts of the National Health Service. Yet there has been no economic renaissance. The homeless and poor can’t be housed because council houses sold by the government have not been replaced by affordable homes.

There isn’t much left to sell to feed rentier capitalism. So, the obedient state is impoverishing workers. The UK has become a poor country with a lot of very rich people in it. Just 250 people have wealth of £710.723bn whilst average real wage of workers is less than what it was in 2007. Some 16.65 million live in poverty. The poorest 20% in Ireland have a standard of living almost 63% higher than the equivalent poorest in the UK. Most people don’t have the spending power to rejuvenate the economy and no major political party is pursuing equitable distribution of income and wealth.

Since the 1980s, the government allowed the manufacturing industry to wither. By 2021, its share of economic output shrank to just 9.7% compared to 27% in 1970. The government pinned its hopes on the finance industry. The light-touch regulation facilitated the 2007-08 crash and the state provided £1,162bn of financial support, £133bn cash and £1,029bn in guarantees, to rescue ailing banks. One study estimates that between 1995 and 2015, the finance industry made a negative contribution of £4,500bn to the UK economy. Such is the grip of financial elites on policymaking that the government is set to further deregulate the finance industry.

Too many people feel that the UK has become an unfair and unjust society, but political parties addicted to funding from corporations and the rich are disconnected from the daily struggles of normal people. During 2015-2019, concerned citizens, especially the young, flocked to the Jeremy Corbyn led Labour party which promised to break away from the shackles of neoliberalism, bring essential industries into public ownership, rebuild public services, democratise institutions of government and promote equitable distribution of income and wealth. Army generals threatened a coup. Neoliberals unleashed hate campaigns and even senior Labour politicians joined-in to prevent a Labour election victory.

The triumph of neoliberalism is incubating the disintegration of the UK. In Scotland, young people have flocked to the Scottish Nationalist Party and are demanding independence, effectively a break-up of the UK. The London-centred political parties have long neglected the regions, often the poorest, and they voted heavily for Brexit and have become fertile recruiting ground for the far-right groups.

Authoritarian leaders of the Conservative and Labour parties do not favour public ownership of essential infrastructure, higher public spending or equitable distribution of income/wealth. Both parties are experiencing a significant decline in membership, but leadership is hardly bothered. Members are seen as trouble because they want to shape policies and may overturn the preferences of neoliberal elites. Many of the disaffected citizens have joined trade unions and are fighting back by taking industrial action to secure higher wages.

Labour is currently leading in the opinion polls, but that is partly due to revulsion at corrupt government policies rather than attraction of its policies. Such support will evaporate if, in office, Labour continues with Tory-like policies. Indeed, that would alienate many of its own traditional supporters.

Without a fundamental shift in UK politics, there is little chance of arresting economic decline.

UK

Rishi Sunak slammed for appointing old-Etonian banker and Tory donor as new ethics adviser

“The social distance between us - an old Etonian, in 21st century?"



The Prime Minister has been condemned for appointing an old-Etonian and banker as his new ethics adviser, after a six-month delay in filling the post.

Sir Laurie Magnus, the chair of Historic England, takes on the role following the departure of Christopher Geidt, who resigned under Boris Johnson.

Lord Geidt stepped down over proposals to break international law on trade policy but was known to be unhappy about Johnson’s role in lockdown-breaching No 10 parties.

Sunak promised to govern with integrity and professionalism after a series of scandals involving the Tory party, including lockdown breaking parties, cronyism with Covid contracts, and allegations of bullying and sexual misconduct levelled at a number of Tory MPs.

Yet the prime minister’s choice of appointment for ethics adviser has proved controversial. Sir Magnus was not given his title by the Queen, his title is hereditary.

Sky news reports: “Mr Sunak has turned to a former merchant banker who serves on half a dozen quangos and whose long business career involved links with disgraced retail tycoon Sir Philip Green and the late tycoon Robert Maxwell.”

House of Commons records also show that Magnus gave the Conservative MP Nick Boles £3,000 in December 2017 to support researching and writing a book.

Crucially, Sir Magnus will not be able to launch his own investigations, meaning that he will be unable to launch his own inquiry into the conduct of Dominic Raab who faces bullying allegations or into Home Secretary Suella Braverman who is accused of ignoring legal advice.

Reacting to the news of Sir Magnus to the role, Green Party peer Natalie Bennett tweeted: “Rishi Sunak has appointed an Old Etonian investment banker as his ethics adviser.”

“Well, of course. Irony is dead”

Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts tweeted: “The social distance between us – an old Etonian, in 21st century?

“They really don’t get it, do they?”

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

From Mattea Roach to nuclear fusion: 10 not-terrible things in 2022

MARSHA LEDERMAN

PUBLISHED DECEMBER 23, 2022

Amid an ongoing pandemic, overflowing hospitals, war in Ukraine, the loss of reproductive rights for U.S. women, soaring inflation, and the inexplicable rise of the “butter board,” there must have been some good news this year, right? Does Elon Musk blowing up Twitter count? Nope. Turns out we were pretty attached to that hellish site after all.

But fret not – after much brain-racking, I’ve come up with a list of 10 not-horrible things from 2022.

Wordle might sound like a cheat, since it became available to the public in late 2021. But it didn’t catch on for some time – and it was in the dark days of January when I first gave it a shot. I was immediately and forever hooked. Made by a Welsh software engineer named Josh Wardle for his partner, it went viral and was bought by The New York Times. It has produced many offshoots, including Heardle, Worldle and Quordle. It also helped save a woman’s life: In February, when the daughter of an 80-year-old Illinois resident noticed that her mom hadn’t texted her Wordle score that day, as was their custom, she became concerned and had a neighbour look in on her. Turns out the woman had been locked in her basement by an armed intruder, who was still upstairs. The woman was saved, the man arrested. Wordle for the win.

The Canadian federal government’s legislation criminalizing ”conversion therapy” went into effect in January, making it illegal to subject people to this horrific sham, which claims to be able to change a person’s sexual or gender identity. The discredited practice has been used – and is still being used elsewhere – to “convert” LGBTQ2S+ people to a heterosexual orientation or to change their gender expression to match the sex they were assigned at birth. The legislation also makes it illegal to promote the service, or financially benefit from it, and it passed unanimously in the House of Commons. Bravo.

The actor Betty White dying at the age of 99 last New Year’s Eve was a bummer – especially for People magazine, which had already published a celebratory “Betty White Turns 100!” cover story. But here’s a nice thing that came out of it: Ms. White loved animals. So fans devised a social-media challenge for Jan. 17, which would have been her 100th birthday. Donations to animal shelters and rescue organizations in Ms. White’s honour were encouraged. According to Meta, the challenge raised US$12.7-million on Facebook and Instagram alone. Canadian animal shelters also reported a surge in donations. It was a sweet way to honour the death of a lifelong animal lover.

Speaking of animals, let’s take a moment to applaud the rulings against Alex Jones, who was ordered this year to pay nearly US$1.5-billion to the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, for lying about the 2012 massacre that killed 26 people, including 20 children. Mr. Jones declared it had been staged as a gun-control scheme. He and his company have since declared bankruptcy. His moral bankruptcy has been evident for some time.

On the polar opposite end of the mensch meter, 2022 gave us Yvon Chouinard. The founder of outdoor-apparel company Patagonia transferred his company – valued at about US$3-billion – to a trust and non-profit organization, ensuring its profits are used to fight climate change. “Earth is now our only shareholder,” he declared.

The climate catastrophe was once again responsible for plenty of terrible news this year. But among a few little bright spots was the loss-and-damage-deal struck at COP27, the United Nations Climate Change Conference. It will see wealthier countries compensate vulnerable nations suffering from the severe effects of climate change.

And at the COP15 UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal this month, the federal government announced $800-million over seven years for large, Indigenous-led conservation projects in Ontario, B.C., Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. Once completed, Ottawa said, these projects could protect additional land of up to one million square kilometres. Another island of good news in a rising sea of bad.

At a time when so many of us do not have the answers to oh so many questions, along came Mattea Roach. Ms. Roach, a brainy young LSAT tutor originally from Halifax, gave Canadians something to cheer for last spring. The then-23-year-old Torontonian’s 23-game winning streak put her in the Jeopardy! top five players of all time and made her the most successful Canadian to play the game formerly hosted by another great Canadian, the late Alex Trebek. Her excellent showing saw her return in the fall for the Tournament of Champions. In both her final regular match, and in the tournament’s semi-final, she lost by one dollar.

Sticking with pop culture, Sarah Polley is another Canadian who gave us good things in this rotten year. Author and auteur, Ms. Polley published a terrific book, Run Towards the Danger, and released a haunting film, Women Talking (adapted from the Miriam Toews novel, which was inspired by a true story). Run Towards the Danger won the Toronto Book Award and Women Talking is getting lots of Oscar buzz.

Finally, there is the nuclear-fusion breakthrough announced this month by a U.S. lab. The development involved a Dec. 5 test that produced more energy than it took to create the reaction. This energy source has its detractors, and it will be “probably decades,” the lab’s director said, before this kind of energy is widely available. But this milestone offers some hope for a large-scale, long-term supply of clean energy – which means we can at least say we’re ending 2022 with a bang.

 SCI FI TECH

The False Hype Around Nuclear Fusion

December 21st 2022

by Allan Grain 

minby @allan-grain



The internet has been awash with reports of a “major breakthrough” in nuclear fusion technology that could change the way we produce energy, moving from dirty fossil fuels to clean, green energy.

In a historic first, the team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (LLNL), recently announced that they managed to create a surplus of nuclear fusion energy by bombarding hydrogen isotopes with powerful lasers.

But according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the reports are misleading and major hurdles to a fusion-powered world remain.

The fusion achievement that the US Energy Department has announced is scientifically significant but does not relate primarily to the generation of electricity.

Replicating the process that gives the Sun its energy — turning hydrogen into helium - is not as simple as the media outlets may have it sound.

It is true that carbon-free, fusion-powered electricity generation is everyone’s dream but not everyone was paying close attention to what has been said and what the truth is.

The focus was on what Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in the news conference but few people paid attention to National Nuclear Security Administration Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs Marv Adams who noted that while the science is there, the practicality of using it to replace fossil fuels is still not relevant.

The fact is that the project, carried out in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), focuses more on protecting nuclear stockpiles than it does on producing clean energy, but you wouldn’t know that from Granholms’ press conference, the media reportage, or comments made by public figures.

Granholm said this new breakthrough will provide “invaluable insights into the prospects of clean fusion energy, which would be a game-changer for efforts to achieve President Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy.”

While she did say that nuclear fusion would “help us solve humanity’s most complex and pressing problems, like providing clean power to combat climate change” she also mentioned that it would help in “maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing.”

US government officials are also guilty of misconstruing the news in what seems to be their over-excitement that the use of fusion energy could halt or even reverse the negative effects of climate change.

U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell said, “This breakthrough will ensure the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile, open new frontiers in science, and enable progress toward new ways to power our homes and offices in future decades.”

“This monumental scientific breakthrough is a milestone for the future of clean energy,” said U.S. Senator Alex Padilla.

We still have a long way to go, but this… could help fuel a brighter clean energy future for the United States and humanity,” said U.S. Senator Jack Reed.

“This astonishing scientific advance puts us on the precipice of a future no longer reliant on fossil fuels but instead powered by new clean fusion energy,” U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer.

But again, the possibility of nuclear fusion replacing fossil fuels wasn’t the real news.


According to Molly Glick at Inverse, “the National Ignition Facility team emphasized that, while the recent feat is worth celebrating, we can’t expect large-scale fusion plants to power our homes anytime soon.”

She quotes Mark Herrmann, deputy director for fundamental weapons physics at LLNL, who said, “The laser wasn't designed to be efficient. The laser was designed to give us as much juice as possible to make these incredible conditions possible happen basically in the laboratory.”

Yes, the National Ignition Facility at LLNL finally attained “fusion ignition” – a long-awaited achievement for nuclear fusion researchers around the globe, but fusion ignition for consumer electricity generation is only one part of what NIF does.

NIF was built for two missions: performing research in support of the Stockpile Stewardship Program - its foremost duty - and to further our quest to understand and harness energy from nuclear fusion.

Its second mission, having reached a certain level of success now, is what made headlines, but it is mostly hype and a lot less fact that you will see in the media.

According to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), one of its core missions is to ensure the United States maintains a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear stockpile through the application of unparalleled science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing.

The Office of Defense Programs carries out NNSA’s mission to maintain and modernize the nuclear stockpile through the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program.

According to experts with knowledge of what NIF does, the machine to create nuclear fusion used approximately 400 megajoules to operate during the experiment and lost about 99% of the power it consumed.

That difference in energy is considerably far from what anyone would consider a net energy gain.

Another problem with the hype about nuclear fusion soon replacing fossil fuels is that the machine used for the experiment takes a number of hours until it can be reused. It took years to perfect the process and the ability to use the machine at all.

In order to generate consumer-level energy, the machine would need to accomplish this feat 10,000 times faster and scientists and engineers would need to perfect a way to extract the energy in the form of heat for practical use.

According to Tom Hartsfield at Big Think, there is also a supply problem. The pellets used to produce fusion contain deuterium and tritium.

While deuterium is plentiful, unfortunately, the world’s entire supply of tritium is somewhere around a pithy 50 pounds and the market cost of tritium stands at around $1 million per ounce.

Clearly, fusion energy to create consumer-ready electricity production is far off. As with anything in the news, be aware of the hype and read the small print. Yes, nuclear fusion as a clean energy source may be the future. But not yet.

by Allan Grain @allan-grain.

Avid reader of all things interesting to mankind. Futurist, artist, pianist, realist.

Nuclear fusion reactors could change the way we live. Are they also a path to riches?

Some say the global fusion market will be worth $40 trillion, but the fusion reactor market could also become a giant money pit.


By David Olive

Star Business Columnist
Thu., Dec. 22, 2022


For a nanosecond on Dec. 5, nuclear fusion researchers near Silicon Valley unleashed enough power with a fusion reaction to power most of the world.

In that flash, the physicists at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory also gave an enormous boost to the nascent and potentially immense field of fusion investing, one with all the promise and perils for investors in any new life-changing technology.

After decades of toil dating from the 1950s, U.S. nuclear physicists were at last successful earlier this month in igniting a nuclear fusion reaction that generated more energy than it consumes.

In doing so, they proved the viability of generating “net gain” energy from a fusion reaction. And at least technically, that paves the way to fusion nuclear reactors that could power the world.

Fusion, of course, generates energy by fusing atomic particles, in contrast to the fission used in conventional nuclear power production, where atoms are split apart to create energy.

The science is fascinating. But the topic here is what fusion means for investors.

If nuclear fusion can be taken out of the lab and scaled up — the Herculean task for engineers over the next decade — it could decarbonize most of the planet.

Energy from nuclear fusion could supplant most of the world’s energy assets with a form of energy whose fuel, usually hydrogen, is inexhaustible; whose waste, usually helium, isn’t radioactive; and whose reactor footprint is far smaller than hydro, wind and solar installations.

Because that potential seems fantastical, and the first prototype fusion reactors won’t be ready for testing until the early 2030s, fusion is still dismissed in many quarters as lacking commercial viability.

But fusion is now taken seriously.

In recent years, governments have ramped up their investments in fusion. And private enterprise has become a major player in a field until recently dominated by government sponsors.

Almost $5 billion (U.S.) has been committed to about 35 fusion startups this year. Conventional energy firms including oil giants Chevron Corp. and Italy’s ENI are investing in fusion research.

Among the most prominent independent fusion companies is B.C.-based General Fusion Inc., founded 20 years ago. Among its principal backers are Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, Shopify Inc. founder and CEO Tobias Lütke, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek and a large U.S. state pension plan.

General Fusion claims to be “pursing the fastest and most practical path of commercial fusion energy,” It expects to have its first nuclear fusion reactor ready for testing in the early 2030s.

General Fusion was able in its latest funding round, in November 2021, to raise $130 million to finance its expanded operations in B.C., London, U.K., and Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The main caveat expressed since the fusion breakthrough is that even prototype fusion reactors are at least a decade away, and that’s assuming some of the most challenging engineering problems in history can be solved.

This space is concerned with another caveat, the potential for fusion to become a giant money pit, pulling investment dollars into legitimate and dubious fusion projects alike.

Fusion is a “disruptive” technology, meaning it could change the way we live. Following a familiar pattern, fusion could spur the kind of overbuilding excesses of the early era of railways, or the irrational exuberance of the dot-com boom and bust a century later.

Now imagine a single new industry that combines the wealth-creation potential of the nascent rail, steel, auto, airlines, telecommunications, computing and internet technologies.

That’s fusion, which could exert unprecedented investor allure as it gets closer to commercial viability.

There’s no saying for certain that fusion will even achieve that viability. It is certain, however, that later this decade, fusion companies will go public, offering shares in the fusion revolution to investors.

Investors will be invited to buy fusion stocks, fusion mutual funds, fusion energy futures and other fusion securities.

How much money will be at stake? A year ago, Bloomberg News calculated that the global fusion market could achieve a market valuation of about $40 trillion.

An unimaginable number, you say? Not really. It’s less than two years’ worth of U.S. economic activity.


And if fusion’s ultimate valuation turns out to be “just” $10 trillion, that still more than 10 times bigger than the global crypto market.

So consider this a distant early warning.

Not this year, but over the rest of the decade, fusion could be on the tip of every investment adviser’s tongue. And there will be pressure on you to invest in it, no different from the run-up in hyped high-risk tech stocks and crypto.

We at least have a heads up about this new investment class before it becomes all too easy to invest in. We have time, as regulators, investors and money managers, to devise safeguards against dubious fusion investments.

You might not be interested in fusion. But there’s a good chance it soon will be interested in you.

David Olive is a Toronto-based business columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @TheGrtRecession

Cambridge company's specialist material helps with nuclear fusion breakthrough

A Cambridge-based manufacturer of specialist metals and materials is playing a key role in the nuclear fusion breakthrough that could change the way we power the world.

Goodfellow Ltd, who supplies over 6000 customers across the world, provided materials to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for the eagerly awaited experiment.

On Tuesday 13th December 2022, researchers confirmed that they have overcome one of the major barriers to producing clean energy from fusion: producing more energy from the experiment than was put in.

Nuclear fusion has long been heralded as the future of clean energy. It is the opposite of nuclear fission, the technology currently used in nuclear power stations, but fission produces a lot of waste and radiation that can be dangerous.

In contrast, fusion is a much cleaner solution, does not contribute to climate change and produces a more abundant energy. There are many challenges to the successful production of nuclear fusion but, before this announcement, no experiment has successfully produced more energy output than the amount put in.

“We know there’s a long way to go before nuclear fusion powers our homes,” said Goodfellow’s CEO Simon Kenney.

“However, we’re excited to have been able to partner with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to supply some of the crucial materials used in this fascinating and successful experiment.”

Dr Aphrodite Tomou, Goodfellow’s Head of Technical, added her support: “It is a great success for the National Ignition Facility at LLNL! This is the breakthrough everybody has been waiting for and it is exciting to have played a small, but critical part in supporting them on their journey to this discovery.”

Goodfellow is a supplier of specialist metals and materials to the scientific and industrial manufacturing sectors and have partnered with many businesses to support their research and development departments.

Many of the company’s materials have been used in landmark projects, including the Cassini Huygens probe that landed on Saturn’s moons, Covid-19 vaccine development and medical devices including aiding hearing in deaf children.

Witness to Paradise Lost: My Year in the Dying Amazon

The mass rainforest extermination is a climate catastrophe—and much more.

JONATHAN WATTS

DECEMBER 24, 2022
Mother Jones


Burning of the Amazon rainforest. Fernando Souza/ZUMA

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

I thought it was a blood moon at first. The dark orange glow appeared at dusk on the far side of the shimmering silver band that is the Xingu River. It was just before 8pm, after the parrots had squawked back to their nests and the insects and frogs were noisily starting the forest nightshift. A flash of lightning from a cloud appeared above almost the same location but the rest of the sky was clear. How could there be a storm? I peered more intently and took a photograph that I could magnify. And there was the answer—a fire, which grew fiercer as I watched, the flames spreading sideways and upwards, flickering red and yellow, billowing smoke into the sky, sparking flashes of lightning every couple of minutes.

I felt sick to the stomach. The Amazon rainforest was being destroyed in front of my eyes. I have been writing about the climate crisis for 16 years, always with a sense of horror but until now, mostly with a sense of distance. This was the first time I had seen it from my home, and it was stranger than I expected. I had not realized until that moment that fire can create its own lightning storms, by creating pyrocumulonimbus, which scientists describe as “the fire-breathing dragon of clouds.”

There was no immediate danger—the fire was several miles away on the other side of one of the world’s biggest rivers—but it felt personal. More than 90 percent of fires in the Amazon are started deliberately to clear trees so the land can be used for cattle ranching or crop cultivation. That meant this arson attack against nature was almost certainly carried out by one of my neighbors. I knew it was probably illegal and that, according to climate science, it would nudge the world’s biggest rainforest that much closer to an irreversible tipping point. But there was nothing I could do except watch. The chances of anyone else lifting a finger while Jair Bolsonaro was Brazil’s president were next to zero.

This was on August 27 . The next morning I learned there were several fires in the rainforest that night. In fact, this was one of the most devastating nights for the Amazon in a decade. Landowners and land-grabbers were rushing to burn with impunity before a presidential election that the polls showed was likely to result in a change of power. August, September, and October were months of fire, a human-made season wedged between the driest point of summer and the onset of the winter monsoons. A haze of charred vegetation shrouded many parts of the rainforest for weeks. My asthma returned for the first time in nine months. Viewed from the forest, the contest between Bolsonaro and his main challenger, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was not about tax rises or government spending—it was life or death.

I moved to the Amazon last December. The journey itself was eye-opening. I travelled here with my nine-month-old dog, Frida, who wasn’t allowed on the last leg of the plane journey from Belem to Altamira so we had to do that 500-mile stretch by car along the dusty Trans-Amazonian highway.


This road, the BR230, was the starting point for the past half-century of destruction. When the first section opened in 1972 the president of Brazil’s military dictatorship, Gen. Emílio Garrastazu Médici, marked the occasion in Altamira by cutting down a giant Brazil nut tree to symbolize the conquest of nature. The road was designed to bring in a wave of settlers. “Land without men for men without land” was the misleading slogan of the regime, which had trampled over and often killed the Indigenous communities that had lived there for millennia. The road has since become a vector for land clearance and violence.

As Frida and I passed through, I could see the bio-rich primary forest on the side of the road had been replaced by soy and cacau monocultures. The Tocantins and Xingu rivers were dammed by huge hydroelectric at Tucuruí and Belo Monte. Again and again, along the 12-hour drive, the hillsides were stripped of trees and replaced with pastures scattered with white cows. Beef consumes more of the forest than any other commodity. There are now 90 million cows in the Amazon, grazing on an area of cleared land the size of France.

Few outside Brazil have heard of our destination, Altamira, but it is one of the biggest municipalities on the planet with a surface area of 62,000 square miles, making it larger than half of the world’s countries. It is in the state of Pará, which is the main exporter of cattle and gold in the Amazon, and as a result suffers the worst deforestation and the deadliest violence.Now I am surrounded by forest, I see flames as the death of trees and all the living creatures that depend on them.

Like all frontier towns, Altamira has thrived on the destruction of nature, which has accelerated rapidly in the past five decades. Most of the land used to be covered in forest occupied by Indigenous communities, but waves of invasion have brought ever greater threats in the name of colonization, civilization, or development. First came the Jesuit missionaries in the 18th century, followed by the rubber barons in the 19th, then the big agricultural companies and the road and dam builders in the 20th. Today, it is primarily a cowboy and mining town, with a parade each November of hundreds of ranchers riding through the streets on horseback. In the hardware store, the staff shout out greetings to recognized customers, “Hey, garimpeiro (gold prospector)!”

I remember my first visit here eight years ago to cover the construction of the Belo Monte dam, the biggest hydroelectric plant in the Amazon. “The vast construction site is like something out of Mordor—an immense wall of stone, steel and concrete that towers above a blasted plain,” I wrote at the time, when I thought, rather sniffily, “Who would want to live here?”

The answer, it seems, is me. To my surprise and delight, I have now lived in the rainforest for 12 months. During this time, I have learned much more intimately that, instead of living as part of nature as we should, much of humanity is now at war with it. Fire is the main weapon against the forest; guns and intimidation against its protectors, the Indigenous communities.

Two friends, the land and environment activists Erasmo and Natalha Theofilo, are in hiding for the fifth time since Bolsonaro took power after multiple death threats to them and their children. Another friend, the first woman to be an Indigenous chief, Juma Xipaya, came to dinner with a bodyguard because she, too, has a price on her head after speaking out against illegal mines.

The dangers were made horribly real in June when my friend and fellow journalist Dom Phillips was murdered in the Javari Valley while researching a book entitled How to Save the Amazon. He was killed alongside the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, who was targeted because he had encouraged and trained Indigenous communities to resist illegal fishing in their territory. Dom sent encouraging messages when I arrived in Altamira and he planned to visit. Now he and Bruno are victims of a global war against nature that is almost always one-sided.

I feel different about the fire now that I live here. It is not just that it feels closer. It is because I realize how much loss of life is involved. When I wrote about forest clearance from afar, I would calculate the damage in the sterile terms of carbon tons or real estate. But now I am surrounded by forest, I see flames as the death of trees and all the living creatures that depend on them—insects, lichen, fungi, mammals. The burn-off is not just a climate disaster, it is a mass extermination of other species. Two of Brazil’s most respected Amazon research institutes, Imazon and MapBiomas, told me that in the past four years under Bolsonaro’s watch, at least 2 billion trees have been killed in the Amazon, along with up to nearly 4 million monkeys, while 90 million birds and countless other species have died, been injured, or lost their habitat.

To be in the Amazon in 2022 is to live between a tipping point that humanity must avoid and a turning point that we must invent. The world’s rainforest has degraded perilously close to a stage where it can no longer regenerate. As more trees are cleared, the forest is less able to produce its own rain. It starts to dry out, to become more vulnerable to fire and lightning strikes, until it changes into another ecosystem entirely, a savannah, which is less biodiverse, less capable of storing carbon, less powerful in generating the rainfall and storms that keep weather systems moving.

This is already happening along the arc of deforestation in the south and south-east Amazon, where the forest is turning to savannah as it emits more carbon than it absorbs. The rest of the rainforest is heading in the same direction: 17 percent has now been cleared and another 17 percent degraded. Scientists estimate the tipping point will occur when 20 percent to 25 percent of the Amazon is lost, which, at the current rate of ecocide, is more likely to be years rather than decades away.

Being here helps me understand a little better why the forest is sacrificed. Pará is one of the poorest states in Brazil, with a per capita income half the national average, and with dire inequality. Since the opening of the Trans-Amazonian highway there have been four types of settlers in Altamira. First there is an already wealthy white elite, who were invited to migrate and given substantial landholdings on condition they started agricultural businesses that would benefit the town’s economy. Instead, many of them simply kept the property for themselves, became fazendeiros (farmers), and set about expanding their empires through illegal and often violent land grabs.

The second group are white settlers from the south of Brazil who were given state support and cheap credit, which has enabled some of them to thrive. These two groups show little desire to be part of the forest, or to protect it. To them it is “the other,” either a threat or something to exploit. When they acquire a plot of land, their first step is always to “clean” it, which means destroying all traces of life with bulldozers. This creates a semi-sterile perimeter, which can be fenced off and grassed over.The election victory of Lula was a gasp of fresh air. But can he rein back the destructive forces unleashed by Bolsonaro?

About 70 percent of this illegally cleared land is then opened up for cattle ranches. It is these two groups that thrived when Bolsonaro and his ministers gutted the forest protection and Indigenous agencies, which led to a surge of invasions by land-grabbers, illegal miners, loggers, ranchers, and organized crime gangs. These are the people who trot through the streets on horseback during the annual cowboy parade. These are the customers I shop with at the hardware store, which does a booming trade in chainsaws and gold-panning equipment. These are the listeners of Sertanejo, the country music that has pushed samba and funk aside to dominate the Brazilian music industry. These are also the diehard Bolsonarists, who drive through town in their SUVs with a Brazil flag emblazoned on their bonnet.

But Altamira is also a base for those seeking a turning point for social equality and the environment. The third group of residents are descendants of people from the poorer north-east of Brazil, who either arrived as rubber tappers a century ago, or took their chances when the Trans-Amazonian was opened. Many of this group are afro-Brazilians, who were given little or no state support to settle in their new homes. They either work for the wealthy or fend for themselves by farming or mining in more remote areas. Many are under the sway of the evangelical church and criminal organizations, neither of which show any inclination to value the forest. But social activists, such as Daniela Silva, and artists such as Joaka Barros and Soll, are aiming to change this by reconnecting the young from poor urban communities with nature, through rap, art and visits.

They often find common cause with the fourth group: middle-class liberals from São Paulo and other cities who move to Altamira as academics, lawyers, medical professionals or conservation workers. Bold thinkers are looking for a new way of doing things. They include the human rights campaigner Antónia Melo, who led much of the resistance against the Belo Monte dam; doctors such as Erika Pellegrino, who are trying to use medicine to strengthen the remote communities who protect the forest; legal experts like Thais Santi, who are building new legal precedents of ecocide; and entrepreneurs such as Marcelo Salazar, who is searching for new business models to gather and market brazil nuts, acai, babassu oil, and other sustainably produced forest products.

Switching to a new model, something more natural, sustainable and fairer for future generations and other species, requires persistence and patience. That does not come easy, as I have learned in our small community, which is divided between those who are environmentally progressive and those who want to follow the path of carbon capital development that the world has been on for the past 250 years and which has brought incredible advances for human wellbeing at the expense of everything else. The argument between the two, which has manifested in several heated community meetings, is a microcosm of the directions that Brazil and the world are being pulled in.

For the past four years, the farmers have had the upper hand. For anyone who cares about the Amazon, this has been a horrendous period. Bolsonaro and his ministers dismantled much of the forest protection machinery that had been built up over the previous three decades, leading to a 60 percent rise in the rate of deforestation. Meanwhile, Brazil’s congress pushed forward with a package of bills to legitimize land thefts, weaken environmental licensing of new projects, and permit mining inside Indigenous territory. Narco-trafficking gangs have expanded their presence in the forest and started supplying cocaine to remote riverside communities.

Amid this moral and physical haze, the election victory of Lula was a gasp of fresh air. But can he rein back the destructive forces unleashed by Bolsonaro? It will not be easy and it will not be cheap. Tens of thousands of illegal miners will have to be relocated and retrained. The forest communities they have co-opted into land clearance, alcoholism, and prostitution will need support and their traditional practices treated with more respect. The Brazilian economy, which has become ever more dependent on agriculture and mining, will need alternative ways to generate income. Lula will have to find a way to work with a hostile congress and a sceptical agricultural sector, while strengthening forest protection and Indigenous rights. All of this will require one thing that has not happened since the first European colonizers set foot on this continent—the outside world will need to value the forest more alive than dead.

One way or another, this year has to be a turning point. With the firestorm on the horizon, I have seen more than enough of paradise lost. The wild abyss of the Amazon can not go on as it is. The womb of nature must not become her grave.

Should nitrites in meat products be banned? Another study links the preservatives to bowel cancer

Nitrites in processed meat have been linked to increased risk of bowel cancer - Copyright Canva

By Luke Hurst • Updated: 29/12/2022 - 15:00

A leading scientist in the UK has called for the country to ban the use of nitrites in processed meat, after publishing a study that adds to the body of evidence showing the additives can increase the risk of cancer.

Professor Chris Elliott, who led the UK government's food systems review following the 2013 horsemeat scandal, urged the government to enforce a ban on the chemicals, which are used as a preservative.

Earlier this year, France’s health agency ANSES confirmed a link between nitrites and nitrates in ham and charcuterie and the development of colorectal cancer - otherwise known as bowel cancer.

The French government has since begun planning the reduction or phasing out of nitrites from processed meats in the country.

Elliott, along with colleagues from Queen’s University Belfast, conducted a pork meat consumption study on mice over eight weeks.

The mice were given a diet consisting of 15 per cent of either nitrite-free pork, nitrate-free sausage, or nitrite-containing sausage in the form of a frankfurter.

The mice were compared against a control group, which was fed a diet consisting entirely of chow - a balanced diet consisting mainly of cereals.

Mice eating the nitrite-containing frankfurters were found to have 53 per cent more gastrointestinal tumours than the control group.

The study authors noted that while 15 per cent nitrate-pork in the diet was “a relatively high intake of processed meat,” all previous preclinical trials had used a minimum of 50 per cent processed meat in the diet.

“It clearly demonstrates that lower dietary quantities can exacerbate the disease,” they wrote.

Bye bye, pink ham: Nitrates in cured meats linked to cancer, French health agency finds

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‘Very real risk to public health’

Colorectal cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers across Europe, and one of the leading causes of death.

Many health bodies already advise lowering the risk of developing this cancer by eating a healthy diet, and avoiding processed meat and red meat.

The UK’s NHS recommends that anyone who eats more than 90g of red or processed meat a day should cut down to 70g, which could help to reduce the risk of bowel cancer.

Professor Chris Elliott called on the UK government to ban the use of nitrites “as they have done already in France”.


“The results of this new study make the cancer risk associated with nitrite-cured meat even clearer. The everyday consumption of nitrite-containing bacon and ham poses a very real risk to public health,” he said.

Dr Brian Green, another of the report authors, said: “The results from our study clearly show that not all processed meats carry the same risk of cancer and that the consumption of nitrite-containing processed meat exacerbates the development of cancerous tumours”.

THEY DID NOT VETO IT

China urges caution as UN Security Council adopts first resolution on Myanmar in 74 years

By Global Times

Published: Dec 22, 2022

In this Sept 12, 2019 photo, China's Permanent Representative to the UN Zhang Jun speaks at the UN headquarters in New York.(Photo: Xinhua)

China's ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Zhang Jun stressed that the UN Security Council must always act with extra caution while making explanatory statement after abstaining from voting on the council's first-ever resolution on Myanmar on Wednesday, which demanded an end to violence and urged the military junta to release all political prisoners, including ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

China still holds concerns about the draft resolution that has just been put to a vote. In terms of form, China believes that it is more appropriate for the Security Council to adopt a presidential statement under the current circumstances. In terms of the content of the draft, although it has been revised, the tone is still unbalanced. Therefore, China had to abstain in the voting, Zhang explained.

There is no quick-fix solution to the Myanmar issue, let alone an external solution. Both democratic transition and national reconciliation will require time, patience and pragmatism. The international community should stick to the correct direction of promoting peace talks, and play a constructive role in promoting rational dialogue among all parties in Myanmar and bridging differences on the premise of respecting Myanmar's sovereignty, political independence, territorial integrity and unity, Zhang noted.

He stressed that Myanmar is a member of the ASEAN family, and ASEAN has unique advantages in dealing with issues related to Myanmar. The international community should continue to listen to ASEAN's opinions, respect the "ASEAN Way," support ASEAN's unity and leadership, create necessary conditions and allow time and space for ASEAN to build consensus and play an active role.

"The UN Security Council must always act with caution. Blindly using the Security Council to exert pressure or even threaten sanctions will only intensify contradictions, intensify confrontation, complicate the situation and prolong the crisis, which the Security Council has learned a lot from dealing with Libya and other hotspot issues," Zhang said.

China and Myanmar are linked by mountains and rivers, and China's friendly policy toward Myanmar is geared toward all Myanmar people. China sincerely hopes that Myanmar will have political and social stability, its people will live and work in peace and contentment, and the country will develop and revitalize, Zhang said.

Since the political situation in Myanmar changed, China has always upheld an objective and fair attitude, worked hard to promote peace talks, and did its best to help Myanmar fight the epidemic and improve people's livelihood. China expects the Security Council to stick to the correct direction of political settlement and do more things that are conducive to safeguarding the fundamental interests of the Myanmar people and regional prosperity and stability, he noted.

Myanmar has been in crisis since the army took power from Suu Kyi's elected government on February 1, 2021, detaining her and other officials and responding to pro-democracy protests and dissent with lethal force, according to Reuters.

The resolution passed on Wednesday is the UN Security Council's first resolution on Myanmar in 74 years. The 15-member Security Council passed it with 12 yes votes and three abstentions from China, India and Russia.

Climate change is forcing cities to rethink their tree mix

2022/12/27

A blue medallion is pinned to an Ash tree in Chicago, which indicates it has been treated with pesticide to kill the Emerald Ash Borer and keep the tree alive is viewed on June 29, 2016. - 

Nova Safo/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS

Cities need to plant more trees. But not just any trees.

As communities prepare for a massive influx of federal funding to support urban forestry, their leaders say the tree canopy that grows to maturity 50 years from now will need to be painted with a different palette than the one that exists today.

“You need a tree that’s going to survive the weather of today and the climate of the future,” said Pete Smith, urban forestry program manager with the Arbor Day Foundation, a Nebraska-based nonprofit that supports tree planting and care.

Forestry experts say trees are critical infrastructure that can help cities withstand the effects of climate change by providing shade, absorbing stormwater and filtering air pollution. But to do that, the trees themselves need to be resilient.

“We’re developing planting lists that are diverse, that look at tolerance to drought, storm events and flooding, heat, changes to the highs and lows,” said Kevin Sayers, urban forestry coordinator with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “The extremes in the weather are really going to limit us.”

While arborists look for trees that will thrive in the climate conditions they’re likely to face in the coming decades, scientists say they can’t simply count on a handful of climate “winners.” Many cities, for example, have lost vast amounts of their tree canopy because they relied too heavily on one tree type that was later wiped out by a pathogen or pest, such as Dutch elm disease or the emerald ash borer.

“Unless we start diversifying the urban forest, we're going to end up losing quite a bit of it again,” said John Ball, South Dakota State University Extension forestry specialist and South Dakota Department of Agriculture specialist on forest health.

Ball urges cities not to plant more than 5% of any one genus of tree, but many communities have struggled to reach the diversity goals that he and other forest health experts recommend. Foresters say it takes effort to determine which trees will grow in challenging urban conditions, and nurseries often lack the less common trees they’re looking for.

Amid those challenges, cities and states are preparing to receive $1.5 billion in urban forestry funding approved by Congress earlier this year as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Forestry leaders say that the newfound support will be transformative, but turning the money into a healthy tree canopy decades from now will be a complicated task.

“The pressure is on, but in a good way,” said Kesha Braunskill, urban forestry coordinator with the Delaware Forest Service. “This is a once-in-a-career opportunity for all of us in urban forestry, and how we use it is going to impact those who are in our positions 50 years from now.”

‘A Little More Picky’

Some cities already are making changes.

Jeremy Harold, green space manager for Harrisonburg, Virginia, said the city once took a “cookie cutter” approach to tree planting, but is now working to broaden its species mix. The city sits in the Shenandoah Valley within the Appalachian Mountain range, but it has added trees such as willow oak and sweetgum from Virginia’s coastal plain region.

“I’m putting them in our inventory now, because as temperatures rise, those trees will be adapted,” Harold said. “We’re looking for species that can tolerate those temperatures and survive.”

In Seattle, many of the city’s bigleaf maples and western red cedars are struggling in urbanized areas. Foresters are now careful to plant them in favorable microclimates, with conditions such as good soil moisture and north-facing slopes that remain cooler.

“We’re being a little more picky about where we put them on the landscape,” said Michael Yadrick Jr., plant ecologist with Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Meanwhile, the city is planting more Pacific madrone and Garry oaks that tolerate hotter, drier conditions. And within individual tree species, it’s adding trees grown from seeds taken from further south in their range, with the goal of adding resilient genotypes to the mix.

State officials in Texas operate a genetic improvement program that has produced nine “Texas Tested, Texas Tough” tree species that are adapted to handle difficult conditions, including Shumard oaks and bald cypress.

“They've gone through this iterative process for decades and have proven to perform in this harsh environment that is Texas urban areas,” said Gretchen Riley, Forest Systems Department head with the Texas A&M Forest Service.

The agency provides seedlings to communities and is working to offer seeds to growers who can produce their own supply. It’s also working with six other states in the region to exchange species and genetic lines and test their viability in various conditions.

Scientists at the University of Florida are working to determine which trees best withstand high winds. They’re hoping to expand an existing Florida-based classification system by looking at research from hurricane-prone communities worldwide.

“We'd like to see this list used to target wind-resistant species in areas where a tree falling over could damage property or harm people or infrastructure,” said Allyson Salisbury, a researcher at the university.

Foresters say their preparations won’t result in a complete makeover of the trees they plant. They emphasize that such decisions are an inexact science that could carry unintended consequences.

“People say we should bring species up from Southern locations,” said Lydia Scott, director of the Chicago Region Trees Initiative, a partnership of organizations and agencies dedicated to improving the area’s urban canopy. “That's fine until we get a two-week cold snap in the winter that kills off all those trees that are not adapted to the cold.”

A Need for Seed

Above all, experts say that diversity is the best way to ensure that many trees survive the changes that are coming, rather than pinning all their hopes on guesstimates of which trees might thrive. In most communities, the existing tree canopy is far from that goal.

“Many cities are dominated by a small number of species or genera,” said Mark Ambrose, a research assistant with the North Carolina State University College of Natural Resources. Ambrose, whose position is funded by the U.S. Forest Service, has researched the makeup of the country’s existing urban tree canopy.

Elm trees once were among the most prominent trees in America’s urban forests. When Dutch elm disease wiped out many of those trees, many cities replanted with ash. Now they’re taking down millions of trees that have been ravaged by the emerald ash borer. Today, maples proliferate in cities, and foresters are casting a wary eye toward any threats to those trees.

“You could plant elm and ash anywhere on any soil and grow them,” said Ball, the South Dakota forestry specialist. “Now we’re done with the easy trees. You better know what your soils are like. You’ve got to understand the micro-environments in your community and fine-tune your plantings.”

Urban forestry leaders say they want to plant a greater diversity of trees, but getting the seedlings they need has proven to be challenging.

“Nurseries have a shortage of the species diversity we’re looking for, and that’s tough to crack because it’s the private sector,” said Keith Wood, a contractor with the National Association of State Foresters who staffs the group’s committee on urban and community forestry.

Arborists cite a feedback loop wherein nurseries grow only what sells, and cities buy only what’s available. Some have gotten around that loop by contracting with nurseries in advance to grow the seedlings they’ll need in the coming years. The Chicago Region Trees Initiative plants 54 tree species, some of which it pays for over a five-year period as nurseries grow them.

“We're getting the species we want, the sizes we want, the numbers we want, all when we want them,” said Scott, the Chicago-area leader.

Some cities are reluctant to contract for trees years in advance, unwilling to take on inflexible cost obligations amid unpredictable budget cycles.

But nurseries need some certainty if they’re going to grow less-marketable and harder-to-cultivate species on a large scale, said Nancy Buley, communications director with J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co., a large nursery in Oregon that supplies many urban planting efforts.

“For the cities and nonprofits to get the more unusual trees to meet their species diversity goals,” she said, “they’re really going to need to contract in some way.”