What Is Phiomicetus Anubis? Fearsome Ancient Whale With Four Legs Discovered

Ed Browne 

Scientists have discovered a fossil that once belonged to a previously unknown type of four-legged whale that lived tens of millions of years ago.

The researchers also found that the whale's mouth was better-designed for a "strong raptorial feeding style" than was usual for other types of early whale-like animals and that it would have been a fearsome predator.

The evolution of whales is thought to have proceeded at a rapid pace millions of years ago—so fast that over a period of 10 million years the ancestors of whales evolved from "deer-like" herbivores that lived on land into carnivorous marine animals, according to the researchers' study published in the Proceedings Of The Royal Society B.

The fossil that the team have investigated is thought to have come from a protocetid, a type of early whale from the Eocene era which started 56 million years ago and ended 33.9 million years ago.

The researchers have named the newly discovered extinct whale species Phiomicetus anubis. The first part of the name refers to the Fayum Depression in Egypt's Western Desert where the fossil was found, and the second part refers to Anubis, the ancient Egyptian god of the afterlife.

The fossil is 43 million years old. In a press release documenting the team's work, lead author Abdullah Gohar at Mansoura University in Egypt called it "a critical discovery for Egyptian and African paleontology."

The animal, estimated to have had a body length of about 10 feet and a body mass of about 1,320 lb, would likely have been a top predator in its community at the time, like the killer whale of today.

There is still much to be learned about early whale evolution in Africa and researchers hope that studying the region could uncover more about how early whales changed from animals that spent time both in and out of the water to animals that lived in the water all the time.

The fact that the early whale ancestors walked on four legs is nothing new. Indeed, scientists think that a four-legged goat-sized animal known as Pakicetus was one of the first cetaceans—the family of marine animals including dolphins and whales—ever to exist.

But it is the evolutionary pathway from these four-legged ancestors to the fully water-based animals we know today that intrigues researchers, according to an article on four-legged whales by the the U.K.'s National History Museum.

Other aspects of Phiomicetus anubis that set it apart from other protocetids include an elongated temporal fossae, or shallow depression on the side of the skull, and a difference in the placement of the pterygoid bones.

The study abstract concludes: "The discovery of Phiomicetus further augments our understanding of the biogeography and feeding ecology of early whales."

Previously Unknown Four-Legged Whale Species Discovered In Egypt And Dubbed ‘God Of Death’

By Kaleena Fraga | Checked By Erik Hawkins
Published August 26, 2021

Forty-three million years ago, the fearsome four-legged whale stalked prey both underwater and on land.

The four-legged whale called Phiomicetus anubis used its powerful jaws to kill prey.

Ancient monsters once roamed the Earth. Paleontologists in Egypt just came across one such creature, a four-legged whale so fearsome that they named it Phiomicetus anubis, after the Egyptian god of death.

“It was a successful, active predator,” said Abdullah Gohar. A graduate student at the Mansoura University Vertebrate Palaeontology Centre, Gohar is the lead author of a recent paper describing the discovery.

“I think it was the god of death for most animals that lived alongside it.”

In a nod to the whale’s jackal-like head and ability to kill, paleontologists called it Phiomicetus anubis. Anubis, of course, was the Egyptian god of death. Phiomicetus categorizes the whale with other similar fossils, which straddle the species’ transition from land to sea.

“Phiomicetus anubis is a key new whale species, and a critical discovery for Egyptian and African paleontology,” explained Gohar.

Paleontologists found a number of the whale’s bones in an area of Egypt famous for sea life fossils.

A team of paleontologists first came across Phiomicetus anubis in 2008. Then, while searching through Egypt’s Fayum Depression — an area teeming with sea life fossils — they found remnants of the 43-million-year-old monster in middle Eocene rocks.


With a body length of almost 10 feet and weighing close to 1,300 pounds, paleontologists are confident that the four-legged whale once dominated the animal kingdom.

“We discovered how [its] fierce, deadly, and powerful jaws were capable of tearing a wide range of prey,” Gohar said. His study called the whale’s feeding style “raptorial.”

The study went on to describe how the whale used its incisor and canine teeth to “catch, debilitate and retain faster and more elusive prey items (e.g. fish) before they were moved to the cheek teeth to be chewed into smaller pieces and swallowed.”


As the four-legged whale stalked prey — both on land and underwater — it also likely caught and killed crocodiles and calves of other whale species.

Abdullah Gohar, center, with bones from Phiomicetus anubis.

The discovery of the four-legged whale is an exciting moment for more reasons than one. For starters, not much is known about ancient whales’ transition from land to sea. Though today’s whales are strictly aquatic, their ancient ancestors were amphibious.

The earliest known whale, Pakicetus attocki, lived in the shallow ocean near present-day Pakistan some 50 million years ago. Like Phiomicetus anubis, it had four legs.

However, paleontologists have much to learn about how ancient whales spread across the world.

“This fossil really starts to give us a sense of when whales moved out of the Indo-Pakistan ocean region and started dispersing across the world,” noted Jonathan Geisler, an associate professor of anatomy at the New York Institute of Technology.

But the discovery of the four-legged whale is significant for another reason. It marks the first time that an Arab team discovered, described, and named a whale fossil.

“This paper represents a breakthrough for Arab paleontologists,” Goher said.

“This science remained the preserve of foreign scientists for a long period of time, despite the richness of the Egyptian natural heritage with important fossils of the ancestors of whales.”

For now, paleontologists like Gosar will continue to explore the Fayum Depression. They hope to better understand how ancient whales evolved and moved around the world.

And the Fayum Depression certainly holds more keys to the past. Once, the sea covered this swath of the Egyptian desert. But now, its million-year-old rocks — rich with fossils — are exposed to the sun.

Paleontologists discover four-legged whale fossil, name it Phiomicetus anubis after Egypt's god of death

Posted Wed 25 Aug 2021 

The Phiomicetus anubis was a "successful, active predator"

.(Supplied: Robert Boessenecker)

Scientists have discovered a 43-million-year-old fossil of a previously unknown amphibious four-legged whale species in Egypt.

Key points:

The fossil was unearthed from middle Eocene rocks in the Fayum Depression in Egypt's Western Desert

The new whale was about 3m long and weighed about about 600kg

It has been named Phiomicetus anubis, after the Egyptian god of death

The newly discovered whale belongs to the Protocetidae, a group of extinct whales that falls in the middle of their transition from land to sea, the Egyptian-led team of researchers said in a statement.

Its fossil was unearthed from middle Eocene rocks in the Fayum Depression in Egypt's Western Desert — an area once covered by sea that has provided a rich seam of discoveries showing the evolution of whales — before being studied at Mansoura University Vertebrate Palaeontology Centre (MUVP).

The new whale, named Phiomicetus anubis, had an estimated body length of about 3 metres and a body mass of about 600kg, and was likely a top predator, the researchers said.

Its partial skeleton revealed it as the most primitive protocetid whale known from Africa.

"Phiomicetus anubis is a key new whale species, and a critical discovery for Egyptian and African paleontology," said Abdullah Gohar of MUVP, lead author of a paper on the discovery published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"It was a successful, active predator," Mr Gohar told Live Science. "I think it was the god of death for most animals that lived alongside it."

The whale's genus name honours the Fayum Depression, and its species name refers to Anubis, the ancient Egyptian canine-headed god associated with mummification and the afterlife.

Despite recent fossil discoveries, the big picture of early whale evolution in Africa has largely remained a mystery, the researchers said.

Work in the region had the potential to reveal new details about the evolutionary transition of whales from being amphibious to fully aquatic.

The father of #Phiomicetus, @Gohar_A_S hanging his new publication on #Sallam_Lab’ wall of honor!!!! pic.twitter.com/3DmMCVBgva— Hesham Sallam (@heshamsallam) August 25, 2021

With rocks covering about 12 million years, discoveries in the Fayum Depression "range from semi-aquatic crocodile-like whales to giant fully aquatic whales", said Mohamed Sameh of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency, a co-author.

The new whale has raised questions about ancient ecosystems and pointed research towards questions such as the origin and coexistence of ancient whales in Egypt, said Hesham Sellam, founder of the MUVP and another co-author.

Reuters

Ice Hunt, p.12
James Rollins

She stood, surrounded by ice, but the back half of the chamber was solid rock. A bowl of stone encompassed the far wall and overhung the ceiling.

Something touched her elbow, startling her. It was only Dr. Ogden. He drew her eyes back to him, his lips moving.

“It’s the remnant of an ancient cliff face. At least according to MacFerran,” Henry said, naming the head of the geology team. “He says it must have broken from the landmass as the glacier calved and formed this ice island. It dates back to the last ice age. He immediately wanted to blast away sections and core out samples, but I had to stop him.”

Amanda was still too stunned to speak.

“On just cursory examination, I found dead lichen and frozen mosses. Searching the cliff pockets more thoroughly, I discovered three bird’s nests, one with eggs!” He began to speak more rapidly with his excitement. Amanda had to concentrate on his lips. “There were also a pack of rodents and a snake trapped in ice. It’s a treasure trove of life from that age, a whole frozen biosphere.” He led the way across the cavern toward the stone wall. “But that’s not all! Come see!”

She followed, staring ahead. The wall was not as solid as it had first appeared. It was pocked with cubbies and alcoves. Some sections seemed broken and half tumbled out. Deep clefts also delved into the rock face, but they were too dark to discern how far they penetrated.

Amanda crossed under the arch of stone and eyed with trepidation the slabs precariously balanced overhead. None of it seemed as solid as it had been a moment ago.

Dr. Ogden grabbed her elbow, squeezing hard, stopping her. “Careful,” he said, drawing her eye, then pointing to the floor.

A few steps ahead lay an open well in the ice-rink floor. It was too perfectly oval to be natural, and the edges were scored coarsely.

“They dug one of them out from here.”

Amanda frowned. “One of what?” She spotted other pits in the ice now.

Henry tugged her to the side. “Over here.” He slipped a canteen of water from his belt. He motioned her down on a knee on the ice. They were now only a few yards from the shattered stone cliff. Hunched down, it was almost like they were on a frozen lake with the shore only a few steps away.

The biologist whisked the ice with his gloved hand. Then placed his flashlight facedown onto the frozen lake. Lit from on top, the section of ice under them glowed. But details were murky because of the frost on the ice’s surface. Still, Amanda could make out the dark shadow of something a few feet under the ice.

Henry sat back and opened his canteen. “Watch,” he mouthed to her.

Leaning over, he poured a wash of water over the surface, melting the frost rime and turning the ice to glass under them. The light shone clearly, limning what lay below in perfect detail.

Amanda gasped, leaning away.

The creature looked as if it were lunging up through the ice at her, caught for a moment in a camera’s flash. Its body was pale white and smooth-skinned, like the beluga whales that frequented the Arctic, and almost their same size, half a ton at least. But unlike the beluga, this creature bore short forelimbs that ended in raking claws and large webbed hind limbs, spread now, ready to sweep upward at her. Its body also seemed more supple than a whale’s, with a longer torso, curving like an otter. It looked built for speed.

But it was the elongated maw, stretched wide to strike, lined by daggered teeth, that chilled her to the bone. It gaped wide enough to swallow a whole pig. Its black eyes were half rolled to white, like a great white lunging after prey.

Amanda sat back and took a few puffs from her air warmer as her limbs tremored from the cold and shock. “What the hell is it?”

The biologist ignored her question. “There are more specimens!” He slid on his knees across the ice and revealed another of the creatures lurking just at the cliff face. This beast was curled in the ice as if in slumber, its body wrapped in a tight spiral, jaws tucked in the center, tail around the whole, not unlike a dog in slumber.

Henry quickly gained his feet. “That’s not all.”

Before she could ask a question, he crossed and entered a wide cleft in the rock face. Amanda followed, chasing after the light, still picturing the jaws of the monster, wide and hungry.

The cleft cut a few yards into the rock face and ended at a cave the size of a two-car garage.

Amanda straightened. Positioned against the back wall were six giant ice blocks. Inside each were frozen examples of the creatures, all curled in the fetal-like position. But it was the sight in the chamber’s center that had Amanda falling back toward the exit.

Like a frog in a biology lab, one of the creatures lay stretched across the ice floor, legs staked spread-eagle. Its torso was cut from throat to pelvis, skin splayed back and pinned to the ice. From the frozen state of the dissection, it was clearly an old project. But she caught only a glimpse of bone and organs and had to turn away.

She hurried back out onto the open frozen lake. Dr. Ogden followed. He seemed oblivious to her shock. He touched her arm to draw her eyes.

“A discovery of this magnitude will change the face of biology,” Henry said, bending close to her in his insistence. “Now you can see why I had to stop the geologists from ruining this preserved ecosystem. A find like this…preserved like this—”

Amanda cut him off. Her voice brittle. “What the hell are those things?”

Henry blinked at her and waved a hand. “Oh, of course. You’re an engineer.”

Though she was deaf, she could almost hear his condescension. She rankled a bit, but held her tongue.

He motioned back to the cleft and spoke more slowly. “I studied the specimen back there all day. I have a background in paleobiology. Fossilized remains of such a species have been discovered in Pakistan and in China, but never such a preserved specimen.”

“A specimen of what, Henry?” Her eyes were hard on the biologist.

“Of Ambulocetus natans. What is commonly called ‘the walking whale.’ It is the evolutionary link between land-dwelling mammals and the modern whale.”

She simply gaped at him as he continued.

“It is estimated to have existed some forty-nine million years ago, then died out some thirty-six million years ago. But the splayed out legs, the pelvis fused into the backbone, the nasal drift…all clearly mark this as distinctly Ambulocetus.”

Amanda shook her head. “You can’t be claiming that these specimens are so old. Forty million years?

“No.” His eyes widened. “That’s just it! MacFerran says the ice at this level is only fifty thousand years old, dating back to the last ice age. And these specimens bear some unique features. My initial supposition is that some pod of Ambulocetus whales must have migrated to the Arctic regions, like modern whales do today. Once here, they developed Arctic adaptations. The white skin, the gigantism, the thicker layer of fat. Similar to the polar bear or beluga whales.”

Amanda remembered her own earlier comparison to the beluga. “And these creatures somehow survived up here until the last ice age? Without any evidence ever being discovered?”

“Is it really so surprising? Anything that lived and died on the polar ice cap would have simply sunk to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, a region barely glimpsed at all. And on land, permafrost makes it nearly impossible to carry out digs above the Arctic Circle. So it is entirely possible for something to have existed for eons, then died out without leaving a trace. Even today we have barely any paleological record of this region.”

Amanda shook her head, but she could not dismiss what she had seen. And she couldn’t discount his argument. Only in the past decade, with the advent of modern technology and tools, was the Arctic region truly being explored. Her own team back at Omega was defining a new species every week. So far, the discoveries were just new, unclassified phytoplankton or algae, nothing on the level of these creatures.

Henry continued, “The Russians must have discovered these creatures when they dug out their base. Or maybe t  hey built the base here because of them. Who knows?”

Amanda remembered Henry’s early claim: It’s the reason the station was built here. “What makes you think that?” She flashed back again to the discovery on Level Four. This new discovery, amazing as it was, seemed in no way connected to the other.

Henry eyed her. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Amanda scrunched her brow.

“Ambulocetus fossils were only discovered in the past few years.” He pointed back to the cleft. “Back in World War Two, they knew nothing about them. So, of course, the Russians would come up with their own name for such a monster.”

Her eyes grew wide.

“They named their base after the creature,” Dr. Ogden explained needlessly. “A mascot of sorts, I imagine.”

Amanda stared down at the frozen lake, at the beast lunging up at her. She now knew what she was truly seeing. The monster of Nordic legend.

Grendel.

Ice Hunt - James Rollins

https://jamesrollins.com/book/ice-hunt

James Rollins invokes the polar environment so vividly you can hear the wind shriek and feel the ice forming on your nose, and the scientific/medical puzzles at the story's heart may remind you of Michael Crichton's best. The characters, while mostly familiar hero or villain types, are crisply drawn and in some cases quite sympathetic, but it's ...

What we know about why Canada 'waited until the 11th hour' to rescue Afghans
Tyler Dawson 

© Provided by National Post A U.S. Marine assists at an Evacuation Control Check Point during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 26, 2021. 

U.S. Marine Corps/Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla/Handout photo

Canada’s efforts to evacuate Afghanistan lasted 22 days.

A final flight from Kabul , the capital, left overnight Thursday.

Eight hours later, government officials announced it was over — Canada was done flying people out.

“We wish we could have stayed longer and rescued everyone who was so desperate to leave. That we could not is truly heartbreaking,” Lt.-Gen. Wayne Eyre, acting chief of defence staff, said Thursday .

What remains unclear is why the Canadian government — and several other Western nations — waited until Afghanistan was on the brink of collapse, as the Taliban re-took the nation, to begin getting its allies and citizens out of the country.

“We had four-and-a-half months to do the right thing, and we only had a plane on the ground in early August,” Andrew Rusk, with Not Left Behind, a Canadian group advocating for Afghan interpreters and other allies, told the National Post.

In a briefing to reporters on Friday morning, government ministers repeatedly praised the programs and special visas brought in for fleeing Afghans, saying they were “groundbreaking” and that Canada was the first in the world to make such announcements — work, they said, that would not cease.
Last holdouts against Taliban look to Canada — and Quebec — as model for a new Afghanistan
Taliban fighters stand guard along a street near the Zanbaq Square in Kabul on August 16, 2021. Inside Afghanistan — the first seven days of life under the Taliban

Marco Mendicino, the immigration minister, said the government began developing its extraction programs — the ones announced in late-July and mid-August — in the spring.

“We put them into operation very quickly … over the course of the last number of weeks,” Mendicino said. “Canada has been a safe haven for Afghan refugees for years.”

A senior government source told the Post on Friday that prior to the last few months, there hadn’t been considerable demand for a mass refugee strategy for those who had worked for Canada.

“The one offs worked, people came, Afghan refugees claimed asylum,” the source said.

When it became clear such a program was needed, the source said, ministers pushed hard to get it done.

“There were challenges … it was really political leadership that even got a program established to begin with,” the source said.

Over the course of what ministers said was “the largest airlift in history,” Canada managed to get some 3,700 Canadians, permanent residents, vulnerable Afghans and citizens of other countries out of Afghanistan, between Aug. 4 and Aug. 26.

Still, the evacuation program has been plagued with controversy and delays, with news reports suggesting people struggled to reach destinations given by Canadian consular officials as evacuation points, or arrived only to hear nothing further from the government; others report being turned away for insufficient paperwork.

The senior government source said the problems that had emerged, such as requiring scanned documents, were addressed as they came up.

“There was actually a good amount of flexibility, it was just under a lot of pressure and a very compressed time,” the source said.

Other criticisms, the source said, ignore logistical issues like the American control of the airport, limiting Canadian access, and the obvious issue of the hostile Taliban preventing access to the airport.

Rusk said Canadians are owed an explanation about why the government was “so late and relatively under-resourced” to help those who are being targeted by the Taliban.

© Stringer/Reuters Taliban forces block the roads around the Kabul airport, while a woman passes by, August 27, 2021. After Canada announced its last flight out of Afghanistan, many cooks, guards and translators who had helped Canadians were left stranded.

If Canada had begun its evacuations earlier, said Rusk, they could have used commercial airlines to get people out while flights were still operating.

“Instead we waited until the 11th hour when the military was required, and we never had enough time or the right resources in order to bring the volume of Afghans that have a rightful claim to come to Canada to safety,” Rusk said.

Officials were unable to say this week how many permanent residents, Canadian citizens and Afghan allies remain in the country.

Daniel Mills, assistant deputy minister with Canada’s immigration department, said visa applications for Afghan citizens who applied for them are still being processed.

The department received 8,000 applications under its special program for Afghans and 2,600 of those people made it out of Afghanistan, he said. But that doesn’t mean the rest are still trapped inside the country, because some of those applicants have already fled to third countries.

These 8,000 all applied to leave under the special program for Afghan allies, not the August announcement for 20,000 refugees.

Kabul has been in chaos in recent days , with thousands of Afghans flocking to Hamid Karzai International Airport and trying to get aboard evacuation flights prior to the final withdrawal of U.S. troops, announced in April by U.S. President Joe Biden, and scheduled for Tuesday, Aug. 31st.

The senior source told the Post work on a refugee program began immediately after Biden’s announcement.

“The thing started small and really grew,” the source said. “We’ve taken a lot of criticism from the folks in the military … but I don’t think anyone had a good handle on how many people this entailed.”

The drama, which escalated sharply on Thursday, with suicide bombings near the airport that left 13 U.S. soldiers and at least 90 Afghans dead, has been playing out while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigns for re-election.

“Our priority has been from the very beginning, and will always be, getting Canadians to safety,” Trudeau said Friday. “Yes, there are thousands of Afghans to whom we owe a duty of care, and we are doing tremendous things to get them to safety as well.”

The perception that his government has botched its evacuation efforts, or left them to the last minute, has plagued the Liberal leader on the campaign trail.

Erin O’Toole, the Conservative party leader, said the Liberals “wasted months with inaction” on the file.

“It’s heartbreaking,” O’Toole said Thursday. “The Trudeau government has failed to act and they have abandoned people on the ground in Afghanistan.”

Eyre told reporters on Thursday that officials were surprised by the speed of the Taliban takeover.

“I’m sure there will be much ink spilt about this, but we have to look at going forward now,” Eyre said.

In early July, three retired generals wrote to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, urging officials to move more quickly on re-settling Afghan allies. Among them was retired Maj.-Gen. Dave Fraser, who told the Post Friday that the government didn’t seem to have the impetus to respond until the Taliban began taking over.

“In this case, the government responded as it would normally to any situation by saying, ‘Fill out these four forms, and put your application in to IRCC and we’ll get back to you,’” Fraser said. “It doesn’t work for an Afghan who doesn’t have wifi or a cellphone, and definitely without a passport, and it doesn’t work very well when you’re running for your life.”

Since July, the government has pointed reporters to a resettlement program introduced in 2009, under then-immigration minister Jason Kenney, as evidence Canada has long been a friend to Afghans.

The program, which ended in 2011, was roundly condemned at the time for its rigid conditions, which included requiring evidence applicants’ lives were at risk and a consecutive 12-month employment record with Canada. It only approved two out of three applicants.

Between that, and another effort in 2012 at relocating Afghan allies, Canada brought some 800 people to safety. Statistics from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada show that between 2010 and June 2021, some 29,000 Afghans have come to Canada, around 21,000 of them either refugees or “protected persons,” those who might fear persecution at home.

In late July, the government announced a special visa program for those who had assisted Canadian troops, and then, on Aug. 13, ministers announced Canada would take in another 20,000 Afghan refugees who had already fled Afghanistan, among them humanitarian workers, LGBTQ Afghans and women’s rights advocates.

The bulk of those evacuated from Afghanistan got out in the final few days of the mission.

On Wednesday, the government said roughly 2,700 people had been evacuated, 1,447 of them between Sunday and Tuesday. By Thursday, the total was around 3,700.

Earlier this week, Sajjan said the government took “appropriate” and “quick” action to evacuate people. Mendicino has called Canada’s actions in Afghanistan “nothing short of miraculous.”

A volunteer with a non-governmental organization working to get people out of Afghanistan told the Post that endless red tape hampered the ability of those to get out.

“There was this huge, huge over-promise (by the federal government) and a massive under-delivery,” said the volunteer, who asked to withhold his name because of his work with government officials.

With additional reporting by Tom Blackwell, Christopher Nardi and The Canadian Press

Good news: The most popular material on Earth is great for storing CO2




More proof that we can fight global warming . . . but it’s going to require work.

[Source Photos: DanielPrudek/iStock and wingedwolf/iStock]

Our Earth is heating up because of all the carbon dioxide in the air. But even if we can suck that much CO2 out of the atmosphere, there’s still a problem: What do we do with all of it once it’s recaptured?

The short answer is, put it into products. The longer answer is, put it into the right products. Specifically, concrete. This seemingly innocuous substance that holds up our buildings is actually the most used material of the modern era. More than 10 billion tons of concrete are produced each year. And luckily, scientists are showing that it’s our most promising place to stick all of that CO2, too.

The finding comes from new research out of the University of Michigan, which analyzed more than 20 separate CO2 utilization technologies. Of that pile, researchers found that only four technologies had a better than 50% chance of benefiting the environment. And the most promising two were in concrete.

But why concrete? Of course it’s a popular material in terms of scale, but what about concrete makes it a good place to store CO2? As Greg Keoleian, an author on the paper and director of the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan, explains, it comes down to the actual molecule of CO2.

CO2 enters the atmosphere whenever we burn fossil fuels, like gas and coal. Once it’s made, it sticks around because CO2 has a stable structure that requires energy to change. Depending on exactly what you want to turn CO2 into, that can take more or less energy. If you put too much energy into turning CO2 into something else, it’s simply not worth it. Why? Because most energy we generate today causes CO2 emissions. And it doesn’t make sense to spend more CO2 to capture CO

“In many cases, you’re going to get a greater benefit by taking that . . . energy and feeding it into the grid,” Keoleian says. Even if you use green energy to reutilize old CO2, again, you have to consider what the benefits would have been to using that green energy to heat homes or turn on lights instead.

But the most promising concrete technologies utilize very little energy to incorporate CO2. That’s because when CO2 is incorporated into concrete, it’s literally piped into the mix. The natural tumbling motion of churning concrete is all the energy that’s needed to transform the CO2 into a calcium carbonate, a substance that doesn’t just act as filler but also actively strengthens the concrete mix. All of this tough calcium carbonate means the concrete needs less cement in its mix, which is another environmental savings, since cement is the worst polluting component of concrete.

“It’s a double win,” says Dwarak Ravikumar, a research fellow at the Center for Sustainable Systems who contributed to the paper.

Now, this isn’t to say CO2-filled concrete is an immediate miracle cure for our environment. While some CO2-based concrete is already commercially available, the University of Michigan researchers stress that each method of making it needs to be validated. Furthermore, construction is a highly polluting process. Buildings are responsible for a majority of all greenhouse gas emissions. And concrete itself is increasingly being viewed as a problematic substance to our infrastructure. While it’s a common material, concrete has been criticized for its sometimes unpredictable nature as it ages—which has led to the collapse of several buildings in the past few years, including a high-rise condo near Miami in June.

We do have other, more direct means of capturing carbon, Keoleian says, noting that responsibly grown lumber, which is replanted after harvest, is also a building material that sequesters carbon out of our atmosphere. (One company is even engineering “supertrees” to pull extra CO2 from the air.) But even still, it’s hard to ignore the potential lurking in concrete—one of many tools we’ll need to exploit to save our planet.

“In terms of materials, concrete is the most widely used material on the planet,” Keoleian says. “When you scale that up [with CO2], it can have a significant benefit.”


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Wilson is a senior writer at Fast Company who has written about design, technology, and culture for almost 15 years. His work has appeared at Gizmodo, Kotaku, PopMech, PopSci, Esquire, American Photo and Lucky Peach

Hurricane and COVID-19 set to Collide on the Gulf Coast. It Didn’t Have to be This Way.
August 27, 2021

COAST GUARD NEWS

Kristy Dahl
Senior Climate Scientist

UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS

A storm system currently named Tropical Storm Ida is expected to strengthen into a hurricane and make landfall in Louisiana early next week after bringing life-threatening rain and flooding to Cuba and other Caribbean islands. For Louisiana communities still rebuilding from three hurricanes­–Laura, Delta, and Zeta, which struck the coast last year–the latest forecast threatens to bring additional damage to the region and set recovery efforts back. But with new COVID-19 cases currently at some of their highest rates yet in Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states, and with hospitals already overwhelmed, public officials are worried about the region’s ability to maintain public safety in the face of a hurricane.

Louisiana weathered three hurricane strikes last year, when the pandemic was raging and vaccines were not yet available. This year, despite the availability of vaccines for people ages 12 and up and despite the presence of the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus, COVID-19 vaccination rates in Gulf Coast states remain stubbornly below national averages. So we’re about to find out what it looks like when the peak of hurricane season coincides with the crest of the latest wave of COVID-19.
Yes, this is kind of like Groundhog Day

It was almost exactly one year ago this week that Louisiana was struck by Hurricane Laura, the strongest hurricane on record to strike southwest Louisiana. Evacuees from coastal communities returned to their neighborhoods after the storm to begin rebuilding their homes and lives. As they did, they were met with a heat wave in which the heat index reached roughly 110°F, power outages that lasted for weeks, and, in many cases, a lack of access to drinking water.

In August, 2020, Hurricane Laura (left) made landfall near Lake Charles, Louisiana. Almost exactly one year after Laura and 16 years after Hurricane Katrina, the region is again bracing for a strike from Hurricane Ida (right). Source: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

The Atlantic hurricane season tends to peak in early September. Between that and the fact that 91 hurricanes have affected Louisiana since record keeping began in the early 1850s, it is not terribly surprising that Louisiana is facing a hurricane strike this month. Statistics aside, though, four hurricane strikes in the span of 13 months is brutal. And while the heat index is not forecast to be particularly high along the Gulf Coast next week, even typical levels of heat in the region can become dangerous if the power is knocked out and residents do not have access to fans or air conditioning.

But what is particularly worrisome about this latest storm’s path is that the COVID-19 landscape is now notably worse along the Gulf Coast than it was when hurricanes struck last year.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30, but the frequency of storms is highest in late August and early September. Source: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/

With COVID-19, it’s worse than Groundhog Day

When Hurricane Laura hit, Louisiana was in between COVID-19 waves, averaging about 600 new cases per day, and no COVID-19 vaccine was available. The latest statistics (as of August 25, 2021) show that Louisiana is now averaging more than 4,500 new cases per day, with 99% of cases caused by the Delta variant as of the week of August 15th. Hospitalizations have also peaked at rates well above the surges that occurred this past winter.

Compared with the growth rate of COVID-19 cases in Louisiana during the summer of 2020, cases have been growing much more rapidly during the summer of 2021. Data compiled by The New York Times. Source: https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data

Rates of cases, deaths, hospitalizations, and vaccinations in states along the Gulf Coast are currently much worse than the national average. COVID-19 case rates are twice the national average and death rates nearly three times the national average in Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Hospitalization rates are twice the national average in Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana. And in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, 40% or less of the population is vaccinated.

Data compiled by The New York Times show that rates of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in Gulf Coast states currently outpace national averages, as does the percentage of the population that remains unvaccinated. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
It did not have to be like this

Hurricane season is predictable: We know when during the year hurricanes can usually be expected, and with NOAA’s seasonal forecasts, we also know whether we can expect the hurricane season to be more or less active than normal.

The result of widespread vaccine resistance in a state is also predictable: Recent data from the Department of Health and Human Services showed that COVID-19 hospitalization rates were nearly four times higher in the 10 states with the lowest vaccination rates than in the 10 states with the highest vaccination rates. In Louisiana, roughly 9 in 10 hospitalizations and nearly all COVID-19 deaths in recent weeks have been among unvaccinated people.

But there’s an important difference between hurricanes and waves of COVID-19: preventability. We cannot prevent a hurricane from happening, but we can prevent serious COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths with widespread vaccination. It did not have to come to this, where we’re anticipating a hurricane bearing down on a state in which roughly one in 10 residents currently has COVID-19. It’s one of the many scenarios of concern my colleague, Adrienne Hollis, outlined in a post at the start of hurricane season this year, but it did not have to come to pass.

With just a few days between now and when Ida is expected to come ashore, it’s time for Gulf Coast residents to be heeding local warnings and preparing—including by making plans for staying COVID-safe over the course of the storm.

To prevent future collisions of COVID-19 and hurricanes, though, vaccination is critical. If you’re still unsure about the COVID-19 vaccines, check out our COVID-19 vaccines FAQ. But vaccinated or not, our hearts are with those on the Gulf Coast. Stay safe.

US Gulf Coast Braces for Category 4 Landfall of Hurricane Ida After Cuba Takes Hit

Reuters

Aug 28, 2021

Hurricane Ida battered Cuba with roof-ripping force on Friday as it churned toward a weekend U.S. landfall along the Louisiana coast, prompting evacuations of flood-prone New Orleans neighborhoods and oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

By late on Friday, Ida was packing sustained winds of up to 80 miles per hour (129 kph), according to the National Weather Service, which expected the storm to intensify significantly before coming ashore as a major hurricane in southeastern Louisiana on Sunday afternoon or evening.

Forecasters said Ida would likely make U.S. landfall as a robust Category 4 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, generating steady winds nearing 140 mph, heavy downpours and a tidal surge expected to plunge much of the Louisiana shoreline under several feet of water.

Inundation from Ida’s storm surge—high surf driven by the hurricane’s winds—will likely reach between 10 and 15 feet around the mouth of the Mississippi River, with lower levels extending east along the adjacent coastlines of Mississippi and Alabama, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Scattered tornadoes, widespread power outages, and inland flooding from torrential rain across the region were also expected.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards urged residents to ready themselves for the hurricane immediately.

“Now is the time to finish your preparations,” he told a Friday afternoon news conference. “By nightfall tomorrow night, you need to be where you intend to ride out the storm.”

New Orleans officials ordered residents to evacuate communities outside the city’s levee system, and posted voluntary evacuation notices for the rest of the parish.

Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston Broome signed an emergency disaster declaration and said the city had pre-positioned sand and sandbags at eight strategic locations as part of storm preparations.

Lifelong Gulf resident Hailey DeLaune, 29, told Reuters she and her fiance spent Friday evening boarding up the windows of his house in Gulfport, Mississippi, and gathering provisions to ride out the storm.

“Hurricanes have always been part of my life,” said the high school theology teacher, who was born during 1992’s Category 5 Hurricane Andrew. “You just run through your list and hope for the best.”

Edwards declared a state of emergency on Thursday, and on Friday President Joe Biden issued a pre-landfall federal emergency declaration at Edwards’ request. It authorized the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts in the state.

Edwards also said he had authorized activation of all 5,000 troops in the Louisiana National Guard for emergency deployments as needed.

Energy companies racing to complete evacuations of offshore platforms in the Gulf ahead of the storm had reduced petroleum production by nearly 60 percent and gas output by almost half, federal regulators said.

Caribbean Takes First Hit

Soon after being upgraded from tropical storm to hurricane status, Ida smashed into Cuba’s small Isle of Youth, off the southwestern end of the Caribbean island nation, toppling trees and tearing roofs from dwellings.

The streets of Havana, the capital, were empty as residents shuttered themselves at home ahead of Ida’s arrival, which government forecasters warned could bring storm surges to Cuba’s western coastline.

Jamaica was flooded by heavy rains, and there were landslides after the passage of the storm. Many roads were impassable, forcing some residents to abandon their homes.

Ida, the ninth named storm and fourth hurricane of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, may well exceed the strength of Hurricane Laura, the last Category 4 storm to strike Louisiana, by the time it makes landfall, forecasters said. But it pales in comparison to Katrina, the monster Category 5 storm that devastated the region in August 2005, claiming more than 1,800 lives.

Officials in U.S. coastal areas preparing for the storm urged residents to move boats out of harbors and encouraged early evacuations.

Officials in Louisiana’s Lafourche Parish said they would enact a voluntary evacuation, especially for people in low-lying areas, mobile homes, and RVs.

By Maria Caspani and Steve Gorman

Millions face loss of their homes in wake of US Supreme Court ruling overturning eviction moratorium

Chase Lawrence, Barry Grey
an hour ago
WSWS

On Thursday night, the US Supreme Court overturned the national moratorium on evictions of renters put in place as a pandemic relief measure. The six-to-three ruling, with the right-wing bloc solidly aligned against the nominally liberal minority, upheld an emergency petition brought by realtors’ groups in Alabama and Georgia to terminate an extension of the eviction ban enacted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) early this month following the July 31 expiration of a prior ban.


People from a coalition of housing justice groups hold signs protesting evictions during a news conference outside the Statehouse, July 30, 2021, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

The right-wing majority on the court had already signaled its intention to terminate the eviction ban, which, in any event, was slated to expire on October 3. Under conditions of an out-of-control pandemic, surging housing costs and consumer prices, and the expiration of federal unemployment benefits set for early September, the ruling by the unelected court marks a dramatic escalation of the class war policies being pursued by the corporate-financial oligarchy and all of its official institutions and parties.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the number of adults living in households that are behind on their rent could exceed 11 million.

According to data from a Census Bureau survey, 6 percent of renters nationwide—more than 3.5 million people—say they are unable to pay their full rent due to the pandemic and are “likely” or “very likely” to face eviction. In several Southern and Midwestern states, including Missouri, North Carolina and Louisiana, almost one in five renters say they are worried about getting evicted.

The Wall Street Journal bluntly summed up the situation in an article headlined, “Renters Prepare for Eviction After Supreme Court Ruling.” It explained that landlords, with the exception of those in a handful of states and cities that have their own restrictions, can immediately go to court to obtain evictions for unpaid rent. In most courts, delayed eviction cases will now go forward. In others, already approved evictions will now be carried out by marshals and sheriffs.

The savagery of the ruling was underlined by its being carried out under an expedited “shadow docket” procedure that omits oral hearings, does not require signed opinions and, in general, curtails standards generally associated with due process.

The majority opinion, unsigned, declared that the CDC was overreaching its legal powers by ordering the eviction ban on public health grounds, citing the increased risk of COVID-19 infections and deaths resulting from a surge in homelessness. The ruling said the moratorium could not be maintained without congressional action.

The dissent, authored by Justice Stephen Breyer, denounced the use of the “shadow docket” procedure to decide such a socially consequential matter and cited the explosive spread of the pandemic with the proliferation of the Delta variant. He essentially argued that it was an inopportune time to terminate the eviction ban, writing: “The public interest strongly favors respecting the CDC’s judgment at this moment, when over 90 percent of counties are experiencing high transmission rates.”

The Biden White House, which had been prepared to accept the expiration of the eviction ban at the end of July and has made clear it will not seek to extend the federal unemployment benefit, signaled that it would not fight the court ruling. It and the Democratic Party are focused on forcing millions of unvaccinated children and hundreds of thousands of teachers into unsafe schools, even as infections and deaths hit new highs, rising most rapidly among school-age children.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday that the administration would not seek to pass legislation to block evictions, and instead would seek to facilitate the distribution of $46.5 billion that had previously been appropriated to aid distressed renters and homeowners. The Treasury Department reported on Wednesday that only some $5.1 billion of this money had actually been disbursed by states and localities as of the end of July. Entire states, including New York, have not distributed a penny in renter relief funds.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi similarly said the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives would seek to expedite the flow of rental-aid funds and said nothing about reinstituting a halt to evictions.

Even were the entire amount allocated to be immediately disbursed, it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the depth of the housing crisis. Responding to the court ruling, President and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) Diane Yentel said the result would be “millions of people losing their homes this fall and winter, just as the Delta variant ravages communities and lives.” She added that “evictions further burden overstretched hospital systems and make it much more difficult for the country to contain the virus. Evictions have been shown to increase the spread of, and potentially deaths from, COVID-19.”

According to an NLIHC report released in July, titled “Out of Reach 2021: The High Cost of Housing,” in “no state, metropolitan area, or county can a full-time minimum-wage worker afford a modest two-bedroom rental home, and these workers cannot afford modest one-bedroom apartments in 93 percent of US counties.” The report continues: “Over 7.5 million extremely low-income renters are severely housing cost-burdened, spending more than half of their incomes on housing.”

“More than 226,000 people in the US experienced homelessness on sidewalks or other unsheltered locations on a given night in 2020,” the report notes, “and another 354,000 experienced homelessness in emergency shelters, with limited ability to self-isolate. In addition, more than 2.7 million renters live in overcrowded housing conditions.”

Another NLIHC report issued in July states that many who have remained caught up on rent “may have done so by unsustainable means,” such as “using credits cards or loans, selling assets or drawing down savings, or borrowing from friends and family…” Of those who had fallen behind in rent, a majority reported delaying bills and cutting back on food, while more than a quarter had forgone medical care.

Moreover, in much of the country, evictions continued even before the ending of the moratorium, which was poorly enforced and frequently defied by right-wing judges. The Princeton University Eviction Lab reported over 6,500 evictions last week in the six states and 31 cities it tracks. Since March 2020, 480,000 eviction cases have been filed. Some cities are already up to or above pre-pandemic levels of evictions, including Las Vegas, Nevada and Gainesville, Florida.

John Jopling, director of housing law at the nonprofit Mississippi Center for Justice, told the Washington Post, “You hear a lot of people talk about this cliff that we’re headed for as far as evictions, but really, I think, it’s more of a rolling tide—and we’re already in the middle of it.

“These tenants, they’re going to wind up in cars, they’re going to wind up on top of relatives, which is not what they need to be doing especially now in intergenerational households with all the variants of COVID that are spreading out there. They’re going to wind up on top of elderly relatives because of that immediate removal.”

The social and economic interests that dictate government policy were underscored by the concurrence of the Supreme Court attack on hard-pressed working-class families and the speech delivered the following morning by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Giving the keynote address at the annual Jackson Hole, Wyoming meeting of Fed officials and world central bankers, Powell reassured Wall Street that the flood of money into the financial markets by means of zero interest rates would continue indefinitely, and any tapering of quantitative easing purchases of financial assets—currently at the rate of $120 billion every month —would be carried out slowly, despite the highest rates of US inflation in 30 years.

The result was a further surge in stock prices, with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 indexes closing at new record highs.

MARYLAND

Advocates Call For State, Federal Action After Supreme Court Blocks CDC Eviction Protections

By

 Bennett Leckrone

 -

August 27, 2021

The Supreme Court building. Photo from stock.adobe.com.

Local leaders and advocates are calling for state and congressional action on evictions after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked federal protections for tenants Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued limited eviction protections based on COVID-19 transmission levels earlier this month after more sweeping protections expired at the end of July. President Biden acknowledged at the time that the emergency protections would be “likely to face obstacles,” since the Supreme Court had previously indicated that Congress would need to pass any future protections.

Those protections essentially allowed tenants an affirmative defense in certain types of eviction cases including failure to pay rent. Fair housing advocates have cautioned against characterizing the order as a “moratorium,” since it requires tenants to show up to court and successfully raise the affirmative defense to temporarily avert an eviction.

Similar state-level protections from Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) phased out earlier this month. Those protections also provided tenants with an affirmative defense. Local leaders have urged Hogan to reinstate those protections in recent weeks, to no avail.

“Baltimore has millions of dollars coming to us from the state and federal governments to help renters pay their rent. We need more time and tools to distribute the funds. This resolution calls on Governor Hogan to do the right thing,” Baltimore City Councilmember Odette Ramos (D), the lead sponsor of a resolution calling on Hogan to extend state protections, said in a statement earlier this month.

In an unsigned majority opinion issued Thursday, justices argued that the CDC didn’t have the authority to take such sweeping action.

“It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken,” the opinion reads. “But that has not happened. Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination. It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.”

The court’s liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented. The trio wrote that the CDC’s more granular protections, which vary based on local transmission rates, are within the health agency’s purview.

“The public interest is not favored by the spread of disease or a court’s second-guessing of the CDC’s judgment,” the justices wrote in their dissenting opinion. “The CDC has determined that ‘[a] surge in evictions could lead to the immediate and significant movement of large numbers of persons from lower density to higher density housing. . . when the highly transmissible Delta variant is driving COVID–19 cases at an unprecedented rate.’”

Some members of Maryland’s congressional delegation pledged to take action on evictions when Congress returns. Congressman Anthony G. Brown (D-Md.) said he would vote to extend the federal eviction protections, and also urged Hogan to extend state protections.

“I stand ready to vote to extend the federal eviction moratorium and call on my Republican colleagues to end their opposition and put the needs of American families first,” Brown said in a statement. “I urge Governor Hogan to immediately extend our state’s now expired moratorium on evictions to protect working families and reiterate my call for state and local leaders to expedite the disbursement of federal funding through the American Rescue Plan’s Emergency Rental Assistance program to support Marylanders in need. What we do in the next several weeks can mean the difference in families’ lives.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) likewise said in a statement that Congress should extend the eviction protects.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to end the eviction moratorium puts thousands of Marylanders at risk of losing the roofs over their heads, but it’s also unacceptable that only a small share of the $753 million in federal funds for Maryland COVID-19 emergency rent payments have been used to help keep folks in their homes,” he said. “Federal, state, and local officials must cut the red tape and distribute these funds promptly so renters can stay in their homes and landlords can pay their own bills. In the meantime, as the Delta variant continues to spread, Congress should take action to extend the eviction moratorium.”

Efforts by congressional Democrats to extend the eviction protections previously fell short before they recessed for August.

Uncertainty for tenants

Fair housing advocates have long warned that, despite the now-expired federal and state protections, tenants have been facing eviction throughout the pandemic. There are roughly 129,000 households behind on rent in Maryland, according to the National Equity Atlas. An estimated 78% of the households are people of color, 62% have an income of less than $50,000 per year, and 42% are unemployed.

The end of federal and state eviction protections mean that Maryland courts will begin moving forward with judgements that have been reserved in cases where tenants have successfully raised those affirmative defenses. Maryland District Court Chief Judge John P. Morrissey said in an Aug. 4 communication that “cases where a reserved judgment was entered as a judgment for possession between August 1, 2021 and August 3, 2021, are stayed for as long as those counties are subject to the new CDC agency order.” With both state and federal protections now ended, the court will begin processing reserved judgements.

State and federal elected officials, alongside advocacy groups for tenants and landlords alike, have called on local governments to quickly distribute rent relief funding. Local jurisdictions have been tasked with distributing federal relief funding throughout the pandemic, but some local officials say red tape and cumbersome applications mean that rent relief has been slow to get out the door.

“The federal government managed to create guidelines that make it harder to get money out, even though they gave us the money,” Montgomery County Executive Marc B. Elrich (D) previously told Maryland Matters. “It still wasn’t like we could just use our existing programs and keep pushing money out through the windows or programs we already had. We had to reconfigure this.”

Jurisdictions’ approach to distributing rent relief varies. In addition to individual applications, some local governments have partnered with United Way to work with landlords and bundle large number of eligible tenants together in an effort to streamline rent relief. That program started in Baltimore County, but recently expanded to include other jurisdictions.

Elrich and other local leaders asked Hogan in May to institute a 90-120 day moratorium on all evictions to give them more time to get rent relief funding to tenants and landlords, but no such order was put in place. The Biden administration has recently ramped up efforts to speed up rent relief distribution, including more lenient treasury guidance issued earlier this week.

Court backlogs due to prior pandemic-related closures could mean that newly filed eviction cases take months until they’re heard, Adam Skolnik, the executive director of the Maryland Multi-Housing Association, said. While some fair housing advocates worry that courts will try to rapidly work through that backlog, Skolnik said the delays practically amount to a “de facto moratorium.”

He added that loosened Treasury Department guidance and allowing local governments for flexibility in distributing rent relief will be “hugely important” in preventing evictions.

Ramos said even one eviction caused by the pandemic or a pandemic-related loss of income is one too many.

“We’re not seeing a mass of evictions because the courts are slow, but we are still seeing evictions,” Ramos said.

She added that she wants to see rental assistance reaching tenants and landlords before the eviction process begins.

“We want to make sure that everybody who is having a COVID impact is helped, and landlords are part of that,” Ramos said. “That’s why we need more time to be able to get rental assistance out the door.”

Zafar Shah, an attorney with the Public Justice Center, said many local protections for tenants are “dwindling” because they were tied to the statewide catastrophic health emergency or state of emergency. He also noted that local jurisdictions don’t have the authority to institute their own eviction moratoriums.

Tenants would have received additional protections that would’ve lasted for months after Maryland’s catastrophic health emergency expired under legislation from Del. Jheanelle K. Wilkins (D-Montgomery), but that proposal failed to pass before the end of the 2021 legislative session earlier this year.

“We could have acted to put policy in place to ensure that policy protections and law would be there at this critical moment for residents,” Wilkins previously said. “We wouldn’t have to depend on Congress and the president and the governor. We had the opportunity during session to … put this in place, and it stalled in the Senate and that’s very disappointing.”

Advocates call for special session 

In addition to calling for congressional action and for Hogan to extend state protections, some tenant advocates said Friday that the General Assembly should call a special session to address eviction prevention and rent relief. Legislative leaders are already tentatively planning a special session in December to handle congressional redistricting.

“This doesn’t have to happen,” a Friday statement from Baltimore Renters United and Renters United Maryland reads. “Congress can extend the CDC Order. Governor Hogan can issue an order that pauses evictions when a rental assistance application has been filed. The General Assembly can call a special session and do the same.”

Baltimore Renters United and Renters United Maryland also urged lawmakers to fund the access to counsel initiative passed by the General Assembly earlier this year. A bill that would have raised certain surcharges and court filing fees to pay for that access to counsel failed to pass before the end of the 2021 legislative session.

Shah said he believes a special session on housing would be “warranted.” He said he has little confidence that Congress will act on eviction protections. He also warned that waiting until December or January to act in Maryland could lead to a surge of evictions. He said that, according to district court data, more than 40,000 eviction cases were filed in July.

Shah said it’s important to not only extend eviction protections for tenants, but foreclosure protections for homeowners as well. The state is facing “twin trains” of eviction and foreclosure happening at the same time,” he said.

“We really do need Annapolis to act, to respond,” Shah said. “That’s what everyone expects right now.”

The Supreme Court has put more than 7 million people at risk of eviction

THE RIGHT WING PRAISED ITS DEFENSE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY

Igor Derysh, Salon
August 27, 2021

Millions of Americans are at risk of eviction and homelessness after the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration's eviction ban extension on Thursday.

The court issued an unsigned eight-page opinion saying the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded their authority by issuing an eviction moratorium extension, which was aimed at areas with "substantial" COVID spread.

"It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken. But that has not happened," the opinion said. "Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination. It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts."

The court said "if a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it."

The court's three liberals dissented.

"The CDC targets only those people who have nowhere else to live, in areas with dangerous levels of community transmission," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. "These people may end up with relatives, in shelters, or seeking beds in other congregant facilities where the doubly contagious Delta variant threatens to spread quickly."

The opinion was part of the court's "shadow docket," where the justices hand down largely unsigned short opinions without going through standard hearings, deliberations, and transparency. Such cases had been mostly limited to uncontroversial petitions or rare emergencies but the shadow docket has dramatically grown under the increasingly conservative Supreme Court, alarming legal experts. "If (the justices) can make significant decisions without giving any reasons, then there's really no limit to what they can do," David Cole, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, told Reuters.

Breyer in his dissent argued that the questions about the eviction moratorium were too big for the shadow docket.

"These questions call for considered decisionmaking, informed by full briefing and argument," he wrote. "Their answers impact the health of millions. We should not set aside the CDC's eviction moratorium in this summary proceeding. The criteria for granting the emergency application are not met."

The court's ruling effectively allows eviction proceedings to resume, putting more than 7 million Americans who have fallen behind on rent at risk.

The Trump administration first issued the ban last September after Congress failed to extend the moratorium included in the first round of pandemic relief. The Supreme Court allowed the moratorium to continue in June after conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the deciding fifth vote, said the CDC likely exceeded its authority but let the ban stay because it was set to expire last month. The Biden administration planned to let the ban expire before calling on Congress to extend it amid pressure from lawmakers. House moderates ultimately killed a last-minute effort to pass an eviction ban, which would have been doomed in the Senate regardless, prompting the CDC to issue a revised extension more tailored to areas hardest hit by COVID. Biden acknowledged at the time that the extension may not hold up but "by the time it gets litigated, it will probably give some additional time while we're getting that $45 billion out to people who are, in fact, behind in the rent and don't have the money."

But the distribution of rental assistance has been woefully slow. Congress approved $46 billion in rental aid since December but just $5.1 billion was distributed through July, according to the Treasury Department. With only 11% of the funds distributed, the federal government has tried to pressure state and local officials to move faster and issued new rules to make it easier for applicants to seek aid. But many state and local governments have struggled to set up a system to distribute the funds and some landlords have balked at accepting the aid because it requires them to agree not to evict the tenant for another year.

The eviction ban has provided a lifeline to struggling families since the pandemic began.

"Over the last 11 months, while this eviction moratorium has been in place, we estimate that there have been at least 1.5 million fewer eviction cases than normal," Peter Hepburn of the Princeton University Eviction Lab told NPR. "This has really helped to keep an extraordinary number of families in their homes."

The Biden administration said it is "disappointed" in the Supreme Court's ruling.

"As a result of this ruling, families will face the painful impact of evictions, and communities across the country will face greater risk of exposure to COVID-19," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., who slept on the Capitol steps earlier this month to protest the expiration of the earlier moratorium, said the court "failed to protect" millions of people from "violent eviction in the middle of a global pandemic" and again called on Congress to act.

"We already know who is going to bear the brunt of this disastrous decision," she said, "Black and brown communities, and especially Black women."

Ohio housing advocates disappointed by U.S. Supreme Court eviction moratorium ruling
Updated: 2:21 p.m. | Published: 2:17 p.m.


In this Aug. 4, 2021, file photo, housing advocates protest evictions in New York. The Supreme Court is allowing evictions to resume across the United States, blocking the Biden administration from enforcing a temporary ban that was put in place because of the coronavirus pandemic.

 (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)AP

By Sabrina Eaton, cleveland.com


WASHINGTON, D.C. - Advocates of halting evictions during the coronavirus pandemic said they were disappointed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Thursday night ruling that overturned an Aug. 3 Centers for Disease Control moratorium on evictions for tenants in parts of the country with substantial or high levels of COVID–19 transmission.

The CDC action had continued a moratorium that expired on July 31. It was issued after a U.S. Supreme Court opinion from Justice Brett Kavanaugh said Congress would have to act to extend the old moratorium. Thursday’s ruling said Congress did not authorize the CDC’s action, and said it put millions of landlords around the country “at risk of irreparable harm by depriving them of rent payments with no guarantee of eventual recovery.”

“Despite the CDC’s determination that landlords should bear a significant financial cost of the pandemic, many landlords have modest means. And preventing them from evicting tenants who breach their leases intrudes on one of the most fundamental elements of property ownership—the right to exclude,” the ruling said.

When the moratorium extension was issued, federal authorities said it would provide more time for $47 billion in emergency rental assistance that was allotted in coronavirus relief bills to reach those who need it, and give more people a chance to get vaccinated. A fact sheet the White House released Wednesday said state and local agencies have spent more than $5.1 billion in Emergency Rental Assistance funds to help households at-risk of eviction.

A joint statement from the The Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO) and the Ohio Poverty Law Center (OPLC) said the moratorium provided tenants with more time to apply for federal Emergency Rental Assistance, and without it, more families could get evicted while waiting for their applications to be processed. Emergency Rental Assistance can cover up to 12 months of rent and utilities arrears and three months forward for tenants affected by the pandemic.

The statement noted that Ohio Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor recently sent a letter to local judges recommending they help tenants and landlords access Emergency Rental Assistance to prevent evictions for nonpayment of rent, and urged judges to delay individual eviction cases until the applications are processed. It said eviction filings in Ohio dropped when the pandemic first took hold in 2020, but have since risen to roughly 65 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

“We shouldn’t rush to evict, especially now that assistance is available and the delta variant is spreading so rapidly in Ohio,” said a statement from OPLC attorney Graham Bowman.

A statement from Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge said the Supreme Court’s decision put millions of Americans at risk of losing their homes while the delta variant heightens risk of exposure to COVID-19. Fudge’s statement said many of the Americans at risk for eviction include senior citizens, people with chronic illnesses, young children and families with the lowest incomes.

“I pledge that the Department of Housing and Urban Development will continue to use every tool at our disposal to protect those people whose health and well-being are now in jeopardy,” said Fudge, a former U.S. Congress member from Warrensville Heights. “We can help preserve the safety and security of millions of Americans if we act with urgency—and with compassion in the midst of crisis. HUD is determined to do our part. We call on others to do their part as well.”

A statement from U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, called the decision “shameful, especially when the troubling rise of the delta variant means families need protection now more than ever.

“It is vital that state and local governments join us in preventing evictions, including connecting renters with the assistance we passed so that families can stay in their homes as we work to put this public health crisis behind us,” Brown’s statement continued.

Republicans said they weren’t surprised by the decision and urged Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to take bipartisan action to help renters and property owners across the country.

“This was entirely avoidable, especially if the Administration properly managed and ensured the rental assistance Congress had already passed was sent to people who needed it,” said a statement from the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Washington’s Cathy McMorris Rodgers.

A letter Pelosi sent to congressional Democrats on Friday called the court’s decision “immoral” and “a serious public health threat” as the delta variant continues to spread. The letter pledged to keep working with the Biden administration and communities to halt evictions and ensure disbursement of rental assistance designed to stop evictions, and said new Treasury Department guidance to state and local grantees will speed up the flow of money to those in need.

“Families must be protected during the pandemic, and we will explore every possible solution,” said the letter, which said the House is assessing possible legislative remedies.

TRUMP'S 

US Supreme Court ends Biden's pandemic eviction moratorium

Issued on: 27/08/2021 - 

Around 3.5 million people in the US told the Census Bureau they face eviction in the next two months 

Ed JONES AFP/File

Washington (AFP)

The US Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the extension of a federal moratorium on evictions, ending a protection granted to millions who have struggled to afford rent during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court sided with homeowners who claimed to be victims of unwarranted measures, and argued that any renewal of a moratorium must be decided by Congress and not health officials.

The court's unsigned majority opinion said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had exceeded its authority with its latest order temporarily halting evictions in areas where coronavirus cases were surging.

"It is up to Congress, not the CDC, to decide whether the public interest merits further action here," read the eight-page majority opinion.

The court's three liberal justices dissented, citing fears that evictions could exacerbate the spread of the Delta variant.

The case was prompted by the CDC's latest, two-month-long moratorium, rolled out on August 3.

An earlier, September 2020 moratorium issued by the CDC expired after a Supreme Court ruling in June said it could not continue beyond July 31 without authorization from Congress.

President Joe Biden's administration had urged Congress to approve an extension, but US lawmakers failed to do so before summer recess.

Under pressure from Democrats, the CDC ordered a new moratorium, citing public health risks posed by the pandemic.

The Supreme Court has now ended that moratorium.

At the White House, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the administration "is disappointed" that the court blocked the eviction moratorium "while confirmed cases of the Delta variant are significant across the country".

The moratorium "saved lives by preventing the spread of the Covid-19 virus throughout the pandemic," Psaki said in a statement.

The White House had expected the moratorium to be challenged in court, but hoped the extra time would allow for emergency rental assistance funds approved by Congress to reach those in need.

But much of that money is still caught in red tape, even as around 3.5 million people in the US told the Census Bureau they face eviction in the next two months.

In light of the ruling "and the continued risk of Covid-19 transmission, President Biden is once again calling on all entities that can prevent evictions... to urgently act to prevent evictions," Psaki said.

© 2021 AFP

FAUX NEWS FAUX OUTRAGE
Democrats attack Supreme Court for blocking Biden eviction moratorium

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio attacked the Supreme Court as a 'group of right-wing extremists'

By Houston Keene | Fox News

Democrats are lashing out at the Supreme Court for blocking President Biden's eviction moratorium.

"If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue," the ruling said about the moratorium Biden imposed as a means of protecting renters financially affected by the coronavirus, "Congress must specifically authorize it."

DEMOCRATS RENEW PUSH TO PACK SUPREME COURT


Democrats quickly mobilized to delegitimize the court's ruling.

House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries claimed the "Supreme Court does not have a scintilla of credibility" after the decision.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio attacked the Supreme Court as a "group of right-wing extremists" that ruled to "throw families out of their homes during a global pandemic."

"This is an attack on working people across our country and city," de Blasio tweeted Thursday. "New York won’t stand for this vile, unjust decision."


"Squad" member Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., claimed that if the Supreme Court "thinks this partisan ruling is going to stop us from fighting to keep people housed, they’re wrong."


Rep. Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., used the ruling to push the far-left idea of packing the Supreme Court.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer — the three liberal justices on the Supreme Court — dissented with the conservative majority’s ruling.

This marks the Biden administration’s second judicial defeat in the Supreme Court this week, after the body effectively reinstated former President Trump’s "Remain in Mexico" immigration policy for asylum seekers awaiting their hearings.

Andrew Mark Miller contributed reporting

Cori Bush Urges Congress to Act as Supreme Court Ends Eviction Moratorium

Rep. Cori Bush sits outside near her former employers' building and recounts her time as a young, unhoused mother of two on August 11, 2021, in St. Louis, Missouri.

JOE MARTINEZ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

BYJake Johnson, Common DreamsPUBLISHEDAugust 27, 2021


Millions of people across the U.S. are once again at imminent risk of losing their homes after the conservative-dominated Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the Biden administration’s eviction moratorium, siding with a coalition of landlords and real estate companies that challenged the critical lifeline.

In an unsigned opinion, the 6-3 conservative majority ruled (pdf) that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not have the authority to implement the eviction moratorium, the latest version of which was put in place earlier this month in response to pressure from progressive lawmakers and activists.

Writing for the three dissenting liberal justices, Stephen Breyer slammed the high court’s conservatives for rushing their massively consequential decision on the eviction ban without a “full briefing and argument.” The moratorium on evictions for non-payment of rent was originally intended to run through October 3.


“The public interest strongly favors respecting the CDC’s judgment at this moment, when over 90% of counties are experiencing high [coronavirus] transmission rates,” Breyer wrote, noting that the real estate coalition’s earlier argument against the eviction moratorium — that Covid-19 infections were trending downward — no longer holds.

The high court’s ruling came just a day after the U.S. Treasury Department released figures showing that 89% of rental assistance funds approved by Congress have not yet been distributed — a problem that some critics have attributed to the faulty design of the federal aid program.

Housing experts and advocates estimate that total rental debt in the U.S. currently amounts to around $21.3 billion, with households that are behind on rent owing $3,300 on average.

Congress has approved $46.5 billion in emergency rental assistance.

In a statement late Thursday, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) called the Supreme Court’s ruling “disastrous” and said that “Congress must act immediately to prevent mass evictions.”

Earlier this month, Bush and other progressive lawmakers camped out on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building to protest the expiration of a previous CDC eviction moratorium. Days after the demonstration began, the CDC authorized a new eviction ban that covered around 90% of the country.

“We are in an unprecedented and ongoing crisis that demands compassionate solutions that center the needs of the people and communities most in need of our help,” Bush said Thursday. “We didn’t sleep on those steps just to give up now… I urge my colleagues to reflect on the humanity of every single one of their unhoused, or soon-to-be unhoused, neighbors, and support a legislative solution to this eviction crisis.”

While some cities and states still have moratoria in place, the Supreme Court’s decision means that millions of renters who are behind on payments are set to lose their last remaining protections, setting the stage for a wave of evictions as coronavirus infections surge across the country.

“This is cruel and wrong,” tweeted Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “If the public health crisis hasn’t ended, then the relief to survive it shouldn’t either. We must immediately do everything possible to keep people in their homes. This is a matter of life and death.”

According to a recent analysis by Eviction Lab, U.S. neighborhoods with the highest eviction filing rates typically have the lowest levels of vaccination against Covid-19. In some Southern states, landlord-friendly laws and procedures allow evictions to be fast-tracked, meaning the consequences of the high court’s decision could be felt in the very near future.

Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, warned that “the tragic, consequential, and entirely avoidable outcome of this ruling will be millions of people losing their homes this fall and winter, just as the Delta variant ravages communities and lives.”

“Evictions risk lives and drive families deeper into poverty,” said Yentel. “During a pandemic, evictions further burden overstretched hospital systems, and make it much more difficult for the country to contain the virus. Evictions have been shown to increase spread of, and potentially deaths from, Covid-19. For families and individuals, evictions are profoundly traumatizing and destabilizing. For the country, evictions are expensive. The tragic consequences of this decision will reverberate for years.”

It is not yet clear what specific steps the White House and Congress — which is currently on recess — intend to take in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling. In a statement, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration was “disappointed” by the decision and urged “all entities that can prevent evictions — from cities and states to local courts, landlords, cabinet agencies — to urgently act.”

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), chair emeritus of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, argued late Thursday that “Congress should immediately come back into session and extend the moratorium.”

“The Supreme Court blocking the eviction moratorium while the pandemic is killing 1,000 people a day is appalling,” said Pocan.