Opinion

Conservative Supreme Court majority rewriting basic understandings of U.S. law

Morgan Marietta, University of Texas at Arlington
Fri, September 15, 2023 

The Conversation

In the recent 2022-23 term, the U.S. Supreme Court again addressed religion and the power of the federal bureaucracy, also adding race as a major area of controversy in a decision that ended affirmative action in college admissions. Photo by Fred Schilling/Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States


Sept. 15 (UPI) -- In a 2006 episode of the television show Boston Legal, conservative lawyer Denny Crane asserted that he had a constitutional right to carry a concealed firearm: "And the Supreme Court is going to say so, just as soon as they overturn Roe vs. Wade."

That was a joke, an unimaginable event, when the show aired 17 years ago. Then in 2022, the court announced both changes, shifting the butt of a joke to the law of the land in a brief span of years -- and signaling the start of what is sometimes called a "constitutional revolution."

Scholars describe a constitutional revolution as "a historic constitutional course correction," or a "deep change in constitutional meaning."

As Constitution Day is celebrated this year on Sept. 17 -- the anniversary of the signing of America's basic law in 1787 -- I believe a shift of that magnitude is clearly occurring in the recent rulings of the Supreme Court.

Revolutionary rulings

In the 2021-22 term, the Supreme Court's dramatic rulings focused on abortion, guns, religion and the power of federal agencies. In a nutshell, the justices removed the recognition of a constitutional right to abortion, expanded gun rights and religious rights and restricted the power of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency to craft regulations.

In the recent 2022-23 term, the court again addressed religion and the power of the federal bureaucracy, also adding race as a major area of controversy in a decision that ended affirmative action in college admissions.

The core rulings on these disputes were all 6-3, with the court's new supermajority of conservative justices on one side and the three remaining liberals in dissent.

Here are the three major cases from the past term expanding the constitutional revolution:

Race: Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard College

This case challenged the constitutionality of affirmative action programs at American universities. Unlike previous affirmative action cases, which featured White applicants who claimed to have been discriminated against in favor of minority students, this lawsuit focused on another minority -- Asians -- who believed they were treated worse than other minorities and Whites in the Harvard admissions process.

The heart of the controversy is about the meaning of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment: "No state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The court ruled that the equal protection principle means public institutions may not take race into account, even when they are using racial preferences to the advantage of minority groups who suffered a history of oppression.

The Harvard case effectively overrules a prior decision in 2003 that allowed universities to use racial preferences in order to achieve a degree of diversity on campus.

The new constitutional rule is that the equal protection clause is a promise to treat all citizens of all races the same, rather than the alternative understanding of the clause's promise to move society toward equity among racial groups, which allows or even encourages the differential treatment of some groups in order to make up for past injustices.

Religion: 303 Creative vs. Elenis

This case asked whether the First Amendment's protections of religion and speech override the protections for LGBT citizens in state laws. Does a business owner who wants to provide only wedding websites for celebrations that comport with their religious convictions have to provide the same service for couples whose unions they do not endorse?

The court ruled that regardless of the religious component, it is a violation of free speech for the government to compel the expression of any messages inconsistent with one's beliefs, even in the context of a business transaction.

While technically a ruling on speech, this is a controversy about religious citizens demanding exemptions from anti-discrimination laws. The ruling is part of a long trend expanding religious liberty.

The new rule in this case extended the previous term's dramatic change in the constitutional law of religion in the praying coach case, Kennedy vs. Bremerton. In that case, the court ruled that the religion clauses at the beginning of the First Amendment have a clear meaning: The government may not coerce any citizen when it comes to religion -- either toward or away from religious beliefs. If any action of the government is pushing someone to abandon or embrace religious behavior, that is not allowable.

In the case of the praying coach, this meant a public school could not block his display of prayer at a sporting event, something that would have been seen as an unconstitutional entanglement of government with religion under previous courts. The new interpretation of the First Amendment explained in this line of rulings -- giving the benefit of the doubt to religious believers whenever there is a judgment call -- dramatically increases the protections for religious citizens.

Administrative state: Biden vs. Nebraska

The justices in this case struck down President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness program, which would have eliminated up to $20,000 of debt for millions of Americans, with a total price tag of about $430 billion. The decision to bar the administration's program was grounded in a new principle known as the "major questions doctrine."

This principle diminishes the power of many federal agencies. It first appeared in the court's rulings during the COVID-19 pandemic, halting the Biden administration's eviction moratorium and vaccine mandate. The clearest statement of the doctrine came in 2022 in West Virginia vs. EPA, limiting the agency's ability to introduce new regulations curbing greenhouse gas emissions and shifting energy production toward cleaner sources.

The doctrine asserts that an administrative agency -- like the Department of Education, which initiated the loan forgiveness program -- cannot decide what the court sees as a major political question, which includes doing something with a large price tag or making a dramatic change in policy, unless the agency has explicit authorization from Congress.

The justification for the new doctrine, expressed most clearly by Justice Neil Gorsuch, is that only Congress wields the authority delegated by the voters, who can reward or punish those members of Congress in the next election. Federal agencies are not limited by the same control through elections, and are wielding the delegated authority of Congress rather than their own inherent power. The major question doctrine argues that if agencies are allowed to make major policy decisions, we do not have representative government as demanded by the Constitution.

This constitutional revolution could lead far beyond abortion, guns, race, religion or the administrative state. What is known on this Constitution Day is that the revolution will likely continue, expressed in Supreme Court opinions crafted by the new supermajority of conservative justices.


Morgan Marietta is a professor of political science at the University of Texas at Arlington.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO MARX AND ENGELS

OMG I AGREE WITH HAWLEY

As Musk and Zuckerberg visit the Senate to advise on AI policy, Josh Hawley blasts ‘the biggest gathering of monopolists since the Gilded Age’

Paolo Confino
Thu, September 14, 2023 

Chip Somodevilla

Silicon Valley’s biggest executives went to Washington this week to talk shop with lawmakers as artificial intelligence and its regulation take on an urgent focus on the Hill.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) invited some of the most prominent figures in tech—Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—for an event he billed as a critical initial step in drafting future AI legislation. The three-hour closed-door meeting Wednesday focused primarily on future AI regulations, attendees told reporters.

The use of artificial intelligence is an increasingly urgent issue for policymakers as the technology, popularized by free tools like ChatGPT, threatens to displace millions of workers, destabilize elections, and make billions for companies that successfully harness it. The emerging technology remains poorly understood, making technical expertise critical in outlining possible regulations. But some senators slammed tech companies’ prominent role in the process.

“This is the biggest gathering of monopolists since the Gilded Age, and I’m disappointed it isn’t happening in public and not in a real hearing,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told the New York Times. Hawley, a vocal critic of big tech, made similar claims in his book The Tyranny of Big Tech, which accused the industry’s biggest companies of operating like “robber barons.” (When reached for comment, Hawley’s press secretary pointed Fortune to previous public comments in which he suggested AI could lead to censorship, election interference, and have adverse effects on children.)

Hawley has proposed multiple AI-focused bills this week. On Tuesday, along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), he introduced a proposal to regulate AI that includes privacy and licensing requirements and penalties for violating civil rights, and creates a new federal agency that would oversee AI, according to a press release. On Wednesday, the day of the closed-door confab, Hawley introduced a bill banning the use of “materially deceptive” AI-generated content in political ads.

Hawley expressed reservations that the companies that created AI could play a significant role in regulating it. “The idea that it is some great breakthrough to hear from the biggest monopolists in the world—and that they are going to share with us their great wisdom—I just think the whole framework is wrong,” he said, according to NBC.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) likewise criticized the meeting’s private nature, saying, “I do not understand why the press has been barred from this meeting." She told Axios that Big Tech was getting “special treatment” by being shielded from the public eye. “All of the senators are sitting there, and ask no questions, that's what's happening," Warren said.

Schumer defended the decision by citing the need to hear from experts in a highly technical and scientific field. He likened the process to the one used last August to create the CHIPS and Science Act, which provided around $280 billion in funding to increase U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. The Senate majority leader has repeatedly called on Congress to move quickly in regulating AI.

While tech leaders agreed that AI regulation is necessary, they offered reporters differing views on what it would look like.

Their recommendations largely tracked with their companies’ interests. Zuckerberg touted the importance of keeping AI open-source. “Open source democratizes access to these tools, and that helps level the playing field and foster innovation for people and businesses,” Zuckerberg said. Meta made its Llama 2 large language model free to the public in July.

Musk, who in July announced his own AI firm, xAI, stuck to his habit of framing technological innovation in broad, existential terms. “There’s some chance—above zero—that AI will kill us all,” he said, according to CNN, adding that the meeting “may go down in history as being very important for the future of civilization.” And Bill Gates, who founded one of the world’s biggest charities, reportedly emphasized AI’s ability to help solve humanitarian issues, like world hunger.

The gathering is the latest development after months of Senate hearings amid growing public angst surrounding AI, ever since ChatGPT thrust it into the public consciousness. In May, Altman, who leads ChatGPT maker OpenAI, testified before Congress. During that hearing he surprised some observers by openly calling for regulation on AI, calling it "essential.” In July, Microsoft, Alphabet, OpenAI, and Anthropic—several of the most high-profile AI companies—formed the Frontier Model Forum, a trade organization to discuss and craft AI legislation.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

US Fed losses breach $100 billion as interest costs rise

Fri, September 15, 2023 
By Michael S. Derby

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal Reserve losses breached the $100 billion mark, central bank data released on Thursday showed, and they're likely to go a lot higher before the red ink stops.

The U.S. central bank is continuing to pay out more in interest costs than it takes in from the interest it earns on bonds it owns and from the services it provides to the financial sector. While there's considerable uncertainty around how it will all play out, some observers believe Fed losses, which began a year ago, could eventually as much as double before abating.

William English, a former top central bank staffer now at Yale University, said he sees a "peak" loss of around $200 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, Derek Tang of forecasting firm LH Meyer said the loss is likely to be between $150 billion and $200 billion by next year.

The Fed captures its losses in what it calls a deferred asset, an accounting measure that tallies what it will eventually have to cover in the future before it can return to its normal practice of returning its profits to the Treasury. Losing money is very rare for the Fed. But at the same time, the central bank has cautioned many times that the situation in no way impairs its ability to conduct monetary policy and to achieve its goals.

A money-losing Fed has not been a surprise given its aggressive campaign to raise interest rates, which has taken the benchmark overnight interest rate from the near-zero level in March 2022 to its current 5.25%-5.50% range. With inflation pressures ebbing, it's widely expected that the Fed is done with its rate increases, or close to it.

LIQUIDITY DESTRUCTION

But that doesn't mean that the losses will stop mounting, as the current level of short-term rates will drive up the net negative income for quite some time. Instead, the losses will eventually stop primarily due to the Fed's ongoing process of shrinking its balance sheet, which complements its rate hikes.

The Fed bought bonds aggressively during the coronavirus pandemic and its immediate aftermath, and in just over the last year it has shed about $1 trillion in Treasury and mortgage bonds. Fed officials have suggested there's more to do on this front, and because of that, the central bank will have to spend less on interest because it is removing liquidity from the financial system. Financial markets are eyeing a stop in the second or third quarter of 2024.

The liquidity targeted by the Fed primarily exists in the form of bank reserves and in inflows to the central bank's reverse repo facility. Through these tools, the Fed pays a mix of banks, money managers and others to park cash on its books, so if liquidity shrinks, it costs the central bank less to tie up what remains, even if its policy rate doesn't change.

"The pace of losses will come down, even if interest rates stay high, because reserves and (reverse repos) are declining as securities run off, and new purchases of securities are earning the new, higher, rates," English said. But he acknowledged "that's all very rough" given how many factors and uncertainties are at play.

Bank reserves have fallen about $1 trillion from their peak at the end of 2021 and stood at $3.3 trillion as of Wednesday. Meanwhile, the reverse repo daily outstanding levels have fallen from more than $2 trillion a day between June 2022 and the end of June this year to $1.5 trillion on Thursday. Money market trading firm Curvature Securities said in a research note this week that it's possible all the money will be out of reverse repos by the end of next year, returning the facility to where it stood just over two years ago.

POLITICAL PRICE

For some time the Fed has returned substantial amounts of money back to the Treasury, and this money has been used to lower government deficits.

James Bullard, the former head of the St. Louis Fed, said in an interview on Wednesday that he's "worried" about the central bank's losses and "it would be better not to do this." He said it likely would have been better for the Fed to have kept some of the $1 trillion it has given the Treasury over the last decade to cover the sort of losses it is now navigating, but he noted that's not the system Congress has set up.

Whenever the Fed does stop losing money, it will take years before it is able to take the deferred asset off its books and start returning cash to the Treasury. In 2022, the Fed handed back $76 billion, after returning $109 billion in 2021.

What's more, those high levels of earnings were tied to the very low rates then in place. It remains an open question whether the Fed will be able to get back to that landscape, although some in the central bank, notably New York Fed President John Williams, are optimistic that can happen.

(Reporting by Michael S. Derby; Editing by Paul Simao)

ABOLISH GOP SPLIT DEMOCRATS
House Dems cross party lines, demand Biden admin expand oil drilling

Thomas Catenacci
Thu, September 14, 2023 

A group of House Democrats penned a letter Thursday to several top Biden administration and White House officials, demanding the immediate continuance of uninterrupted offshore oil and gas leasing.

The Democrats — led by Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas — called for the Department of the Interior (DOI) to immediately issue its legally mandated plan for offshore fossil fuel lease sales, which the agency has delayed for more than 12 months. The lawmakers noted that the Inflation Reduction Act tethers new wind leases to oil and gas leases, meaning the former could be threatened without consistent fossil fuel leasing.

"As members of Congress representing Americans across six districts in three states, we write to urge the U.S. Department of the Interior to take immediate action necessary to hold uninterrupted offshore oil and gas lease sales under the pending 2023-2028 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program to avoid the now expected offshore wind leasing cliff," they wrote in the letter.

"Limiting oil and gas sales to one per year eliminates much needed flexibility and opens the possibility for unforeseen circumstances that would delay or cancel lease sales, including the possibility of future administrations holding offshore wind leasing hostage," the Democrats continued.


Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas, is pictured outside the Capitol on September 15, 2022.

Under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the federal government is required to issue plans every five years laying out prospective offshore oil and gas lease sales. The most recent plan, which was implemented in 2017, expired in June 2022

On July 1, 2022, the DOI published a draft proposal for a replacement five-year plan, which laid out multiple options for leasing between 2023 and 2028. The plan included an option with no lease sales during the time span and a maximum option of 11 lease sales. The plan ruled out any lease sales in the Atlantic or Pacific, mainly proposing Gulf of Mexico sales.

MANCHIN, OTHERS TORCH BIDEN FOR BANNING OIL DRILLING ACROSS MILLIONS OF ACRES: 'ASSAULT ON OUR ECONOMY'

"We urge the Department to quickly release a full five-year oil and gas leasing program that includes all eleven proposed sales and promptly take action to hold these sales without interruption," Gonzalez and the other lawmakers wrote.

"Following through on its Congressionally mandated obligations as passed in the IRA is the only way to ensure offshore wind energy has a clear path to leasing, permitting, development, and production," they added. "This means holding oil and gas lease sales under a robust, timely, and functioning five-year program as well."

The delay in issuing a finalized plan represents a departure from precedent set by both Republican and Democratic administrations, which have historically finalized replacements immediately after previous plans expired. The option to hold no lease sales over the course of five years also represents an unprecedented departure.

The Biden administration has repeatedly delayed issuing a legally mandated plan for future oil and gas lease sales.

The most recent two plans, both formulated under the Obama administration, included more than 10 offshore oil and gas lease sales each. The Trump administration sought to hold a total of 47 lease sales across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska's coasts between 2022 and 2027.

"NOIA expresses our gratitude towards Congressman Gonzalez and his fellow Members of Congress for pushing for the timely completion of the next federal offshore oil and gas leasing program," National Ocean Industries Association President Erik Milito said in a statement Thursday.

"The reinstatement of consistent and predictable offshore oil and gas lease sales is paramount, safeguarding against potential disruptions to future offshore wind opportunities during this pivotal juncture for the industry," Milito continued. "Sound energy policy stands as a cornerstone of our nation's prosperity and should always serve as a unifying issue."

The DOI is expected to propose its five-year offshore leasing plan in the coming weeks and finalize it either later this year or early next year.

In addition to Gonzalez, Reps. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, Lizzie Fletcher, D-Texas, Jim Costa, D-Calif., Marc Veasey, D-Texas, and Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, signed the letter. The letter was sent to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and copied to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and White House Deputy Chief of Staff John Podesta among others.

OVERPRODUCTION IS CAPITALI$T CRISIS

Why Dusty Military Boneyards Have Become a Purgatory for Expensive  U.S. Aircraft

Kyle Mizokami
Fri, September 15, 2023

• The concept of a warplane “boneyard,” where old planes go when they retire, is actually pretty rare.

• While the Pentagon maintains the world’s largest boneyard, the concept is relatively unknown to other countries.

• Most countries fly planes until they are no longer useful, but America’s four air forces retire planes that are still useful all the time.

---

The “boneyard” is a macabre term that has come to stand for places—that are usually dry and dusty—where airplanes are sent to wait. Sometimes, the planes are waiting to fly again; sometimes the planes are waiting to go to the scrapyard. But by and large, the military aircraft boneyard is an American phenomenon, in which a combination of geography and the world’s largest air force creates a stable supply of planes that the U.S. government isn’t quite sure what to do with. Here’s everything you need to know about them.

End of Life


Most aircraft at Davis Monthan, including these A-10 Warthogs, are shrink-wrapped to keep the elements out.Getty Images

Military aircraft have varying lifespans. In wartime, the life of a fighter, bomber, or transport plane could be measured in minutes, as attrition grinds down a fighting air force. Warplanes have always been semi-disposable assets in wartime; until as recently as Vietnam, air armies have fully expected to lose planes in combat.

Peacetime is a different story. The use of steel and aluminum over wood and fabric dramatically increased the service life of warplanes, to the point that almost all eventually become technologically obsolete long before they become worn out by the stresses of flight operations. The average U.S. Air Force aircraft is about 30 years old, and the service must contend with eight fleets over the age of 50.

All of this means that warplanes can last for decades, and then remain structurally viable for several decades more. Entire fleets of airplanes have received mid-life updates designed to increase their service lives: the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is receiving the vital Block III upgrade, the A-10 Warthog fleet received new wings, and the F-16 Fighting Falcon is in the process of getting a radar makeover. The potential for upgrades, combined with plane fleets that keep flying for decades or more, make it worthwhile to keep old planes around …for a little while, anyway.

Rich Country Problems


The B-52 Stratofortress bomber, “Wise Guy,” tail number 60-034, as it appeared before a 2019–2021 refurbishment that returned it to active flying duty.U.S. Air Force

The U.S. military, including the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Army, currently operates about 13,000 aircraft of all types. This runs a broad gamut from fighter jets like the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II to planes like the C-17 transport and Guardrail intelligence-gathering aircraft. The worldwide fleet is adding and subtracting planes every day. Some aircraft are cut because they are worn out, others succumb to budget cuts. All are still useful as scrap, but many are a little more useful than that, ranging from still being flyable to having useful parts, such as ejection seats, that can still be harvested from an unflyable plane.

Since World War II, the U.S. military has used the southwestern desert to keep planes in a post-retirement holding pattern. At Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, thousands of aircraft sit awaiting their eventual fate. The lack of rainfall and humidity slows their deterioration in the outdoors, making recovering parts and equipment decades after retirement a viable proposition. Some planes eventually re-enter service: in 2021 the B-52H bomber “Wise Guy” rejoined America’s bomber fleet after a lengthy refurbishment, though it may have had a scorpion or two hiding in the wheel wells.

The bottom line is, the United States is a rich enough country to avoid cutting up planes for scrap value as soon as they leave service, wisely keeping them around just in case.

The Rest of the World

A collection of military hardware at Moscow’s Central Aviation Museum, including a Mi-24 Hind-A attack helicopter, S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile and launcher, and Sukhoi Su-7 fighter.Getty Images

Other countries, even NATO allies, have relatively few aircraft and retire planes in much smaller numbers. The United Kingdom, for example, has only 142 fighter jets, while France has 266, and Germany has 209. These fleets are relatively small, grow slowly, and planes are retired infrequently. These countries also lack the arid conditions to store jets in good condition. In Europe, the closest thing to a boneyard is the private fighter jet collection of vintner Michel Pont.

Russia has the capacity to store warbirds, but most of the fleet was likely cut up for scrap during the 1990s and 2000s. One location with military aircraft is the Central Aviation Museum outside of Moscow. Aside from the usual Mikoyan-Gurevich and Sukhoi jets, the museum hosts a Tu-22 “Backfire” bomber, Mi-26 “Halo” heavy lift helicopters, a Mil V-12 twin-rotor superheavy helicopter, Yak-28 “Brewer” attack jets, and at least one intact Yak-38 “Forger” vertical takeoff and landing fighter. Zhukovsky International Airport is another location with a mix of well-known and not-so-well-known aircraft, including the experimental Sukhoi Su-47 Berkut (“Golden Eagle”) swept-wing fighter and the MiG 1.44 prototype fighter.

China’s air forces, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force and People’s Liberation Army Navy Air Force, have undergone rapid expansion over the past two decades. China is known to have held onto large numbers of J-6 fighters, and there are suggestions the planes are being modified to act as unmanned aerial vehicles. There is the China Aviation Museum north of Beijing with a modest collection of 20th-century Chinese warplanes. China does not appear to have an official boneyard of Chinese air power, but if it exists it is probably in the hot, dry, Xinjiang province.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

Biden’s offshore wind target slipping out of reach as projects struggle


Biden’s offshore wind target slipping out of reach as projects struggleWorkers look out from a construction barge next to the first jacket installed to support a turbine for a wind farm in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean off Block Island

Updated Fri, September 15, 2023 
By Nichola Groom

(Reuters) - President Joe Biden’s goal to deploy 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind along U.S. coastlines this decade to fight climate change may be unattainable due to soaring costs and supply chain delays, according to forecasters and industry insiders.

The 2030 target, unveiled shortly after Biden took office, is central to Biden's broader plan to decarbonize the U.S. economy by 2050. It is also crucial to targets of Northeast states hoping wind will help them move away from fossil fuel-fired electricity.

"It doesn't mean that there can't still be excellent progress towards this technology that's going to do great things for our nation," said Kris Ohleth, director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, an independent organization that provides guidance and research to the industry.

"It's just not going to be that size by 2030. It's pretty clear at this point."

In recent months soaring materials costs, high interest rates and supply chain delays have led project developers including Orsted, Equinor, BP, Avangrid and Shell to cancel or seek to renegotiate power contracts for the first commercial-scale U.S. wind farms with operating start dates between 2025 and 2028.

Companies say they remain committed to the projects, which have a combined capacity of more than 6,000 megawatts. Yet delays have resulted from the need to strike new contracts and secure specialized equipment in demand all over the world.

"The U.S. will not reach the 30 GW by 2030 target," Samantha Woodworth, North American wind analyst at Wood Mackenzie said in an email, citing "recent upheaval." The energy research firm expects 21 GW of offshore wind along U.S. shores in 2030, breaking 30 GW by 2032.

Developers began raising doubts this summer.

"Thirty gigawatts is now unfortunately not something that the developers are really aspiring to," Michael Brown, U.S. country manager for Ocean Winds, an offshore wind joint venture between France's ENGIE and Portugal's EDP Renovaveis, said at a Reuters Events conference in July. "We want to meet as high a gigawatt target as possible, but it's not going to be possible to meet those 30 GW."

Ocean Winds spokesperson Kelly Penot-Rousseau would not comment this week on Brown's remarks. But in the two months since he spoke, the U.S. industry has suffered a string of additional blows.

Last month, an Ocean Winds-Shell project, SouthCoast Wind, agreed to pay $60 million to cancel contracts with Massachusetts utilities.

The same week, Orsted warned it could see impairments of $2.3 billion on three U.S. projects and the industry largely failed to show up for a Biden administration sale of offshore wind leases in the Gulf of Mexico. White House spokesperson Michael Kikukawa said the administration "is using every legally available tool to advance American offshore wind opportunities and achieve the goal of 30 GW by 2030." He noted industry investments have increased by $7.7 billion since Biden last year signed the Inflation Reduction Act, containing tax credits for clean energy.

Still, offshore wind developers including Orsted have said the IRA’s subsidies are insufficient for projects to thrive in the current environment, and are lobbying the administration for additional concessions.

STATESIDE SETBACK

Installing 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030, enough to power 10 million American homes, was an aggressive goal that sparked confidence in the market that the U.S. was serious about offshore wind after years of lagging Europe and Asia.

The nation currently has just two pilot-scale offshore wind farms capable of producing 42 megawatts of electricity.

In a U.S. Department of Energy report in 2022, just one of two independent forecasts predicted the U.S. would have at least 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030. In this year's report, published last month, 2030 forecasts by market research firms 4C Offshore and BloombergNEF were ratcheted down to 26.6 GW and 23.3 GW, respectively.

Those levels lag installation forecasts for nations like China and the United Kingdom over the next decade, according to the DOE report.

DOE spokesperson Samah Shaiq said the 2030 goal "is still within striking distance" and the speed of development would depend on regulatory efficiency, availability of vessels and port infrastructure, grid planning and new turbine technology.

The administration is working on initiatives to address those issues, Shaiq added.

Northeastern states such as Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York need wind power to meet ambitious targets. New York, for example, has a goal to power its grid with 70% renewable energy by 2030.

“The real reason that the Biden administration could set 2030 objectives for offshore wind is because of the U.S. northeastern states," said Doreen Harris, president of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), which is implementing the state's offshore wind mandate of 9 GW by 2035.

NYSERDA warned the state's utility regulator last month that delays in deploying offshore wind could threaten that target and asked the New York State Department of Public Service to approve price increases to contracts with Equinor, BP and Orsted.

Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources Commissioner Elizabeth Mahony said she was confident in the future of offshore wind. The state has a target of procuring 5.6 GW of offshore wind contracts by 2027, with 2.8 GW in operation by 2030, according to the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. A spokesperson for the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities said the state was moving forward with solicitations to reach the state's goal of 11 GW of offshore wind by 2040.

Stephanie McClellan, executive director of the offshore wind advocacy group Turn Forward, said making sure the first fleet of projects succeeds was more important than a particular timeline.

"That's where the attention needs to be placed," she said. "Not what's going to happen in 2030."

(This story has been refiled to remove an extra word in paragraph 4)

(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by David Gregorio

'Young people are freaked out': Weekend climate change protests planned around US, globe

Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
Fri, September 15, 2023 

After a summer of record-smashing global warming events, advocates hope this weekend will bring some of the largest climate protests in years nationwide, including marches, school walk-outs and a major mobilization effort in New York City on Sunday.

"This summer has been unprecedented," said Xiye Bastida, a 21-year-old climate activist from Philadelphia. "Not only the heat waves, we've had the hottest days in 125,000 years, hurricanes where they aren't supposed to be. The skies turned red in New York due to the smoke. We can't keep up with all the things we've seen."

She will be one of what advocates hope will be hundreds of thousands of people participating worldwide in what's being called global days of action between Friday and Sunday. More than 200 protests are scheduled globally.

In Berlin, Germany as many as 24,000 protesters marched through the city on Friday, calling for stronger efforts to curb climate change


A Climate Clock installation in New York City, counting down the time remaining to prevent global warming from rising above 1.5°C based on data from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

What do climate change protest organizers want?

Multiple groups are sponsoring and organizing but the main US focus is a call for the Biden Administration to reject new fossil fuel projects, phase out fossil fuels and declare a climate emergency.

Organizers predict the U.S. marches will be the largest climate protests in the last five years.

"People don't want to march against something, they want to march for something," said Bastida, who is Mexican-American and a member of the indigenous Otomi community. "These marches have a very specific all to action."

Last week the United Nations warned that the world is "heading in the wrong direction" when it comes to climate change.

Globally, the protests are focusing on calls for political leaders to rapidly phase out fossil fuels.

“Floods, droughts, heat waves, extreme storms and wildfires are going from bad to worse, breaking records with alarming frequency," said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, in a statement. "There is nothing natural about the new scale of these disasters. They are the price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction."

The activism is also linked to the United Nations General Assembly session scheduled for Sept. 20 on global participation and collaboration on climate action along with the fifteenth annual Climate Week New York City.

Organizers from multiple activist groups are calling for a new urgency after a summer that so alarmed Guterres that he said in July, “The era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived.”

“Young people are freaked out by climate change,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, deputy campaigns director for the Sunrise Movement, whose website proclaims "We are the Climate Revolution."

Increasingly drastic, but non-violent, action

As more people are impacted by climate change, Noah Gordon, co-director of the climate program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC., expects an increase in large public demonstrations. But there is also an uptick in small efforts aimed at getting the public to take notice.

"If you think it's the end of the world, it makes sense to act. You're starting to see more drastic action, people gluing themselves to a highway or at car dealerships," he said.

In Europe, climate protesters have defaced art, while during the US Open semifinal match on Sept. 7, protesters wearing T-shirts that said "End Fossil Fuels" interrupted the match for 49 minutes and one glued his feet to the cement floor.

Gordon noted that while such protests inconvenienced some people, they have stayed overwhelmingly non-violent.

A growing movement

Climate protests have been taking place for years but became more urgent with the emergence of Climate Strikes, a movement begun in September 2018 when Swedish high schooler Greta Thunberg skipped school for three weeks, running to stand outside the Swedish parliament and calling for lawmakers to address climate change.

In 2019 the organization she helped found, Fridays for the Future, held a massive Global Climate Strike. In New York City, as many as 250,000 marched. Large groups also turned out in San Francisco (40,000), Denver (7,500) Boston (7,000), Chicago (3,000), Portland (2,000) and Washington, D.C., among other cities.

The COVID pandemic somewhat slowed the movement's momentum, making the 2023 protests the first major show of activity in many cities.

"It's a very big deal," said Gordon. He maintains a climate protest tracker and expects this to be a major weekend for climate protests after the pandemic lull.

Despite years of concern about global warming, the reality is staring humanity in the face, he said. The warning signs have spanned generations and decades, but now those abstract, expert predictions are increasingly becoming a world-shaping reality.

"I would expect there to be large protests, especially with the summer we just had," he said.

Analysis-Strikes knock another leg out from under Australia’s LNG throne

Emily Chow and Yuka Obayashi
Thu, September 14, 2023 

FILE PHOTO: A general view of Chevron-operated Gorgon project


By Emily Chow and Yuka Obayashi

SINGAPORE/TOKYO (Reuters) - Long before labour unrest at liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants threatened to disrupt supplies, Australia was on track to lose its crown as the world's top exporter due to green government policies, measures to protect domestic energy needs and expansion plans from Qatar and the United States.

Workers at two LNG platforms owned by Chevron, and that account for over 5% of global supply, plan to escalate the rolling strikes they began last week after failing to resolve disputes over pay and conditions.

While the industrial action has rattled European gas markets, buyers of the Australian super chilled fuel say they're more worried about a series of measures introduced by the government to meet domestic energy needs, manage soaring gas prices and reduce emissions.

"There is a concern that the willingness to invest in Australia and confidence in the country may decline," said a spokesperson for Japan's Kyushu Electric Power, which has long-term contracts with Chevron's strike-hit Wheatstone plant and Woodside Energy Group's North West Shelf facility off the coast of Western Australia.

Australia was the world's top LNG exporter last year, sending out 80.48 million metric tons according to Kpler data, but export volumes have fallen behind the United States and Qatar for the first eight months of 2023.

China and Japan are Australia's main buyers, followed by South Korea and Taiwan.

Japan's top energy producer Inpex, which is considering expanding its Ichthys LNG project in Australia, said the government measures "could reduce investment in Australian LNG projects, which may have a significant impact on the development and growth" of the industry.

"We will continue to call on the Australian government to maintain and improve an appropriate investment environment," a spokesperson said.

Asked about these concerns, a spokesperson for federal Minister for Resources Madeleine King said Australia was committed to remaining a long-term, reliable supplier of resources and energy to its trading partners, and was committed to being a stable and secure destination for investment.

CONSIDERABLE COMPETITION

LNG buyers are particularly sensitive to anything that affects the security of their supplies, especially after Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent European buyers scrambling for alternatives to Russian piped gas, triggering a surge in prices.

For Australia, the supply concerns coincide with plans by the United States, which has the world's largest liquefaction capacity, and state-owned QatarEnergy to ramp up production.

"We've certainly seen Australia's reputation being affected as some existing buyers expressed interest in diversifying their suppliers for long-term supply," said Ryhana Rasidi, LNG analyst at analytics firm Kpler.

"This is somewhat reflected in the fact that a lot of the new contracts we've seen being signed have been with Oman, Qatar and the U.S. - whereas very little has been with Australia."

QatarEnergy, which plans to boost capacity by over 60% to 126 million metric tons per year in 2027, has signed deals to supply major Chinese buyers.

"Australia is the closest gas supplier we can get. By far, Australia, U.S. and Qatar are the three pillars in LNG supply chain. If any of them is having problems, we would indeed be nervous," said Jane Liao, vice president at state-run energy firm CPC Taiwan.

As well as its political stability, its proximity to Asia might be Australia's saving grace, industry analysts say.

Japanese LNG importers including Tohoku Electric Power, Kyushu Electric Power and Osaka Gas say Australia is and will continue to be a stable and important supplier, company spokespersons said.

"Ties are very strong between North Asia and Australia as a legacy supplier, so many participants are keen to continue the relationship," said Kaushal Ramesh, LNG analyst at Rystad Energy.

"Regulatory annoyance aside, there are still a lot of advantages."

(Reporting by Emily Chow in Singapore and Yuka Obayashi in Tokyo, additional reporting by Muyu Xu in Singapore, Andrew Hayley in Beijing, Joyce Lee in Seoul and Lewis Jackson in Sydney; Editing by Florence Tan and Miral Fahmy)

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are 'coming to the end' but together and 'in love,' their grandson shares

Marina Pitofsky, USA TODAY
Updated Fri, September 15, 2023

Former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter’s grandson said his grandparents remain together and in love, even as they face health challenges.

“They're coming to the end, as we know,” Jason Carter, chairman of the Carter Center’s Board of Trustees and an attorney, told USA TODAY on Thursday.

The Carter Center, the longtime charity created by the former first couple, announced earlier this year that the former president was entering hospice care. In May, the Carter family revealed the former first lady was diagnosed with dementia

“He's been in hospice now for several months, but they are happy,” Jason Carter said. “They are together. They are at home. They're in love, and I don't think anyone gets more than that. I mean, it's a perfect situation for this time in their lives.”

And he added that despite his grandmother’s diagnosis, this time marks “a very joyful moment for her in a lot of ways.” Rosalynn Carter turned 96 last month.

“They're both doing as well as can be expected,” Jason Carter said.

He added that his grandfather, whose 99th birthday falls on Oct. 1, faces “really significant physical challenges,” but he does spend time watching baseball games and seeing family “almost every day.”

Jason Carter with his grandfather, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, in Plains, Georgia, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a solar farm.

The former president and President Joe Biden also "still communicate today on a relatively regular basis," Jason Carter said, and the president has written to Jimmy Carter "just to let him know that he's continuing to think about my grandfather, pray for him."

Asked why he believes Jimmy Carter and the president remain close, Jason Carter explained that, of his grandfather's nearly 99 years, "he really only spent eight in big-time elected office," including his term as president and his term as the governor of Georgia.

"He has lived in Plains, Georgia, in the same house that he built in the 1950s. And their ability to stay grounded in who they are, despite all of the things that they've done in their life, is remarkable," Jason Carter said. "And I think, frankly, Biden has that same kind of connection to who he was in, like simpler and more humble times despite having spent his entire life in Washington."

FILE - Former President Jimmy Carter, right, is seen with Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Ahead of the former president’s birthday, The Carter Center is calling on the public to share messages and well wishes to be featured in a “digital mosaic for President Carter, his family, and communities around the world to enjoy,” The Carter Center shared in a news release. Individuals can share photos or wishes with The Carter Center or use the hashtag #JimmyCarter99 on social media.

“President Carter has dedicated his life to making the world a better place, and we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to send him love and to thank him for all he has done,” said Paige Alexander, chief executive officer at The Carter Center.