The American Journal of Health Economics releases a special issue on health equity

FOR PROFIT HEALTH CARE 

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS

The May 2024 issue of the American Journal of Health Economics collects articles on the topic of health equity. The edition was inspired in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, writes guest editor Mónica García-Pérez, and the ways in which that “health crisis exposed the sources of disparities among different US populations that affect access to health care, quality of care, and final health outcomes.”

Consisting of five papers, the issue devotes particular attention to the topics of “race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability topics in health economics.”

“Access to Gender-Affirming Care and Transgender Mental Health: Evidence from Medicaid Coverage” discovers a positive correlation between gender-affirmation coverage and the mental health of low-income transgender people.

“Gender Identity, Race, and Ethnicity-Based Discrimination in Access to Mental Health Care: Evidence from an Audit Correspondence Field Experiment” identifies a pattern of discrimination by mental health providers against patients with Black or Latino-sounding names.

“Same-Sex Marriage and Employer Choices about Domestic Partner Benefits” finds that the expansion of same-sex marriage has led, conversely, to a reduction in same-sex domestic partner benefits offered through private employers.

“Administrative Burdens and Child Medicaid and CHIP Enrollments” describes how increased administrative burdens like eligibility checks and automatic disenrollment lead to diminished insurance access for the children of Hispanic, immigrant, and non-citizen parents.

Finally, “Heterogeneous Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Emergency Department Visits and Payer Composition among Older Adults by Race and Ethnicity” reports the effect of Affordable Care Act expansion on Black and Hispanic patients, concluding that states with no expansion saw a greater number of emergency room visits.

The special edition, notes García-Pérez, fills several gaps in health equity scholarship. Additionally, the issue aligns itself with the commitment of the health equity discipline to “addressing the upstream influences of detrimental socioeconomic conditions,” and to giving all people “a fair opportunity to reach their health potential.”

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JOURNAL

American Journal of Health Economics

 

Research explores ways to mitigate the environmental toxicity of ubiquitous silver nanoparticles

OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Silver has long been used to thwart the spread of illness and in recent years silver nanoparticles have been incorporated into products ranging from sanitizers, odor-resistant clothes and washing machines to makeup, food packaging and sports equipment.

Nanoparticles are tiny pieces of material ranging in size from one- to 100-billionths of a meter. In addition to their antimicrobial properties, silver nanoparticles are industrially important as catalysts and in electronics applications.

Despite their ubiquity, little is known about their environmental toxicity or how it might be mitigated.

Researchers at Oregon State University have taken a key step toward closing the knowledge gap with a study that indicates the particles’ shape and surface chemistry play key roles in how they affect aquatic ecosystems.

The findings, published in Nanomaterials, are important because they suggest silver nanoparticles can be produced in formats that preserve their beneficial properties while limiting environmentally negative ones.

Scientists led by Marilyn Rampersad Mackiewicz and Stacey L. Harper assessed how spherical and triangular-shaped silver nanoparticles with five different surface chemistries affected their uptake and toxicity in a laboratory microcosm of bacteria, algae, Daphnia and embryonic zebrafish.

Daphnia are tiny crustaceans, and zebrafish are a small freshwater species that go from a cell to a swimming fish in about five days.

Zebrafish are particularly useful for studying the development and genetics of vertebrates, including the effects of environmental contaminants and pharmaceuticals on early embryonic development. They share a remarkable similarity to humans at the molecular, genetic and cellular levels; embryonic zebrafish are of special interest because in addition to developing quickly, they are transparent and can be easily maintained in small amounts of water.

The authors note that hundreds of tons of silver nanoparticles are produced every year for commercial uses, meaning it’s inevitable some will end up in aquatic environments.

“Silver nanoparticles are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and not much is known about their toxicity except for the free silver ions that can result from surface oxidation of the nanoparticles,” said Mackiewicz, assistant professor of chemistry. “Free silver ions are known to be toxic and in this paper we found a way to study the toxicity of silver nanoparticles and how they impact the environment irrespective of poisonous silver ions.”

Mackiewicz, Harper and collaborators in the OSU colleges of Science, Engineering and Agricultural Sciences found silver nanoparticles negatively affect some species but not others.

“For example, there is a decrease in bacterial and Daphnia growth, and the size and shape of the particles can contribute to that, but the nanoparticles didn’t affect zebrafish,” she said. “And nanoparticles coated in lipids, organic compounds found in many natural oils and waxes, did not release significant amounts of silver ions – but they exhibited the greatest toxicity to Daphnia magna, the most sensitive species in the microcosm.”

Overall, Mackiewicz said, the study showed that silver nanoparticles’ shape and surface chemistry can be manipulated to achieve specific objectives necessary for better understanding and mitigating the risks associated with silver nanoparticles. A related study awaiting publication, she added, shows that small, spherical nanoparticles are more toxic than triangles or cubes.

Nanoparticles are the latest format, Mackiewicz notes, for an element that throughout history has been used to restrict the spread of human disease via incorporation into items used in everyday life. Its earliest recorded use for therapeutic purposes dates back 3,500 years.

During the Middle Ages, wealthy families used so many silver vessels, plates and other products that they developed bluish skin discolorations known as argyria, a condition believed to have led to the term “blue blood” as a description for members of the aristocracy.

Collaborating with Mackiewicz and Harper on the study were OSU researchers Bryan Harper and Arek Engstrom.

The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health provided funding for the research.

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JOURNAL

Nanomaterials

DOI

10.3390/nano14080654 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Impacts of Differentially Shaped Silver Nanoparticles with Increasingly Complex Hydrophobic Thiol Surface Coatings in Small-Scale Laboratory Microcosms

 

Net zero plans show limited climate ambition on ‘residual’ emissions

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

New research by the University of East Anglia (UEA) reveals what countries think will be their most difficult to decarbonise sectors when they reach net zero, with agriculture expected to be responsible for the largest remaining emissions.

Once countries have taken the ‘easy’ steps to get to net zero - such as switching to more renewable electricity, electric cars, and heat pumps for homes - they are still left with some sources of emissions. 

These ‘residual’ emissions continue to be emitted at the point of net zero - but their effect is cancelled out or moved elsewhere, for example by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere using methods of carbon dioxide removal, or to other countries via international offsets.

Harder to decarbonise areas include aviation, agriculture, and industry, with fewer alternatives to fossil fuels. Residual emissions are expected to come from these ‘hard-to-abate’ sources, which face technical barriers to reducing them beyond a certain level.

By sector, emissions from agriculture, mainly from livestock, are anticipated to be the largest contributor - on average 36% of the total for developed countries. The findings are published today in the journal One Earth.

The team, from the Schools of Environmental Sciences, Global Development and Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at UEA, analysed national climate strategies for 71 countries. Only 26 quantify residual emissions, with most aiming to reach net zero by 2050.

The researchers mapped the reasons why a country claims a certain emission source is residual or otherwise hard-to-abate, finding that many see residual emissions as an inevitability, instead of a focus of further climate policy efforts, innovating further solutions or exploring other policy options, such as reducing demand.

Lead author Harry Smith, a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholar at UEA, said current plans showed limited ambition in dealing with residual emissions: “Net zero targets have rapidly become the new norm of national climate policy. They imply a need to compensate for the remaining residual emissions through the deployment of carbon dioxide removal methods. Yet governments are only now exploring what this balance could or should be.  

“High residual emissions, paired with greater deployment of carbon dioxide removal, may allow countries to retain or expand fossil fuel use and production. Given the limits of carbon dioxide removal, this risks the credibility of their target and may jeopardise global climate goals.

“Similarly, treating residual emissions as an inevitability, risks de-emphasising these emissions, locking-in high emitting activities and infrastructure, and locking-out other ways to reduce emissions.”

The study is the first to look in this level of detail, and for this number of net zero plans that describe what countries think will be their difficult to decarbonise sectors, and how low they aim to get their emissions before cancelling out the remainder with carbon dioxide removal. 

The authors found that some countries, such as the UK and Spain, are ambitious, including scenarios that reduce their emissions by upwards of 90% compared to when their emissions started falling, leaving less than 10% of their emissions as residual and cancelled out by carbon dioxide removal.

However, others, such as Canada, are less ambitious and have drawn up scenarios that retain greater fossil fuel use and production, reducing their emissions by just over a half before cancelling out the remainder.  

For developed countries, residual emissions are sizeable, on average 21% when compared to when their greenhouse gas emissions started falling. This average hides a large range, however: they could be as low as 5% or as high as 52%.

As well as making up the majority of residual emissions, agriculture represents the sector which sees the least progress between now and net zero, with a reduction of only 37% on average for the same countries. Meanwhile industrial emissions from the manufacturing of goods, emissions commonly discussed as residual and hard-to-abate, are reduced by 70% on average.

“Our study shows that countries vary greatly in how they envision what getting to net zero means for them,” said co-author Dr Naomi Vaughan. “Some use the reporting of emission and carbon removals together to hide their weaker emissions reduction ambition by betting on currently very niche carbon removal methods. We suggest that strengthening the reporting requirements would improve transparency. 

“This work highlights that what emissions remain when countries aim to reach net zero should be put under more scrutiny. A better understanding is needed of which emissions are truly ‘difficult to decarbonise’ and which could be addressed through changes to demand, for example dietary changes, reducing flying, the circular economy, alongside more investment in research and innovation.”

The study examined all national climate strategies submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change before October 2023, as well as similar strategies submitted to the European Commission.

‘Residual emissions in long-term national climate strategies show limited climate ambition’, Harry Smith, Naomi Vaughan and Johanna Forster, is published in One Earth on May 9.

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JOURNAL

One Earth

DOI

10.1016/j.oneear.2024.04.009 

ARTICLE TITLE

Residual emissions in long-term national climate strategies show limited climate ambition

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-May-2024

‘I am starting to panic about my child’s future’: climate scientists wary of starting families


A fifth of female climate scientists who responded to Guardian survey said they had opted to have no or fewer children

Damian Carrington
Fri 10 May 2024 
THE GUARDIAN 

“Ihad the hormonal urges,” said Prof Camille Parmesan, a leading climate scientist based in France. “Oh my gosh, it was very strong. But it was: ‘Do I really want to bring a child into this world that we’re creating?’ Even 30 years ago, it was very clear the world was going to hell in a handbasket. I’m 62 now and I’m actually really glad I did not have children.”

Parmesan is not alone. An exclusive Guardian survey has found that almost a fifth of the female climate experts who responded have chosen to have no children, or fewer children, due to the environmental crises afflicting the world.


Such decisions were extremely difficult, they said. Dr Shobha Maharaj, an expert on the effects of the climate crisis from Trinidad and Tobago, has chosen to have only one child, a son who is now six years old. “Choosing to have a child was and continues to be a struggle,” she said.

Maharaj said fear of what her child’s future would hold, as well as adding another human to the planet, were part of the struggle: “When you grow up on a small island, it becomes part of you. Small islands are already being very adversely impacted, so there is this constant sense of impending loss and I just didn’t want to have to transfer that to my child.”

“However, my husband is the most family-oriented person I know,” Maharaj said. “So this was a compromise: one child, no more. Who knows, maybe my son will grow up to be someone who can help find a solution?”

The Guardian approached every contactable lead author or review editor of all reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2018. The IPCC’s reports are the gold standard of climate knowledge. Of the 843 contacted, 360 replied to the question on life decisions, a high response rate.

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“When I was making my choice, it was very clear in the ecological community that human population growth was a problem” Camille Parmesan, who is based in France, said she was happy with the decision she made not to have children. Photograph: Lloyd Russell / University of Plymouth

Ninety-seven female scientists responded, with 17, including women from Brazil, Chile, Germany, India and Kenya, saying they had chosen to have fewer children. All but 1% of the scientists surveyed were over 40 years old and two-thirds were over 50, reflecting the senior positions they had reached in their professions. A quarter of the respondents were women, the same proportion as the overall authorship of the IPCC reports.


The findings were in response to a question about major personal decisions taken in response to the climate crisis by scientists who know the most about it, and who expect global temperatures to soar past international targets in coming years. 7% of the male scientists who responded said they had had either no children or fewer than they would otherwise have had.

Most of the female scientists interviewed had made their decisions about children in past decades, when they were younger and the grave danger of global heating was less apparent. They said they had not wanted to add to the global human population that is exacting a heavy environmental toll on the planet, and some also expressed fears about the climate chaos through which a child might now have to live.


‘Hopeless and broken’: why the world’s top climate scientists are in despair

The role of rising global population in the destruction of nature and the climate crisis has been a divisive topic for decades. The publication of The Population Bomb by Prof Paul Ehrlich in 1968, mentioned by several of the scientists in their survey responses, was a particular flashpoint. The debate prompted past allegations of racism, as nations with fast-rising populations are largely those in Africa and Asia. Compulsory population control is not part of today’s population-environment debate, with better educational opportunities for girls and access to contraception for women who want it seen as effective and humane policies.


Parmesan, at the CNRS ecology centre in France, said: “When I was making my choice, it was very clear in the ecological community that human population growth was a problem: preserving biodiversity was absolutely dependent on stabilising population.”

Prof Regina Rodrigues, an oceanographer at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil, who also chose not to have children, was influenced by the environmental destruction she saw in the fast-expanding coastal town near São Paulo where she grew up.

“The fact of the limitation of resources was really clear to me from a young age,” she said. “Then I learned about climate change and it was even more clear to me. I’m totally satisfied in teaching and passing what I know to people – it doesn’t need to be my blood. [My husband and I] don’t regret a moment. We both work on climate and we are fighting.”

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“It is honestly only now that I am starting to panic about my child’s future” Prof. Dr. Lisa Schipper Photograph: Friederike Pauk / GIUB

Prof Lisa Schipper, an expert on climate vulnerability at the University of Bonn in Germany, chose to have one child. She said that coming from the global north, where each person’s carbon footprint is much bigger than those living in the global south, there is a responsibility to think carefully about this choice.


“It is honestly only now that I am starting to panic about my child’s future,” she said. “When she was born in 2013, I felt more optimistic about the possibility of reducing emissions. Now I feel guilty about leaving her in this world without my protection, and guilty about having played a part in the changing climate. So it’s bleak.”

An Indian scientist who chose to be anonymous decided to adopt rather than have children of her own. “There are too many children in India who do not get a fair chance and we can offer that to someone who is already born,” she said. “We are not so special that our genes need to be transmitted: values matter more.”

She said rich people who choose to have large families were “self-centred and irresponsible in current times”, citing low infant mortality and the huge gap between the emissions of the rich and the poor.

The links between environmental concerns and fertility choices are complex and research to date has found little consistency across age groups and nationalities. According to a recent review, choosing to have fewer or no children for environmental reasons could be the result of fears about the future, population levels or not having the resources needed to raise the children.

A study of Americans aged 27 to 45 – younger than the IPCC scientists surveyed – found concern about the wellbeing of children in a climate-changed world was a much bigger factor than worries over the carbon footprint of their offspring. However, a focus group study in Sweden across all ages found few had changed or would change their plans for children owing to climate fears.

There has been almost no research in the global south. Many researchers noted that some women do not have the freedom or ability to choose if they have children, or how many.

On the debate on the role of population growth in environmental crises, Schipper said: “How many people we have is irrelevant if only a small percentage are doing most of the damage.” Parmesan disagreed, saying the total impact is the combination of people’s level of consumption and the total number of people: “Don’t cherrypick half of the equation and ignore the other half.”

Record-breaking increase in CO2 levels in world’s atmosphere


Experts issue warning after finding global average concentration in March was 4.7ppm higher than same period last year

Oliver Milman

Thu 9 May 2024 

THE GUARDIAN 

The largest ever recorded leap in the amount of carbon dioxide laden in the world’s atmosphere has just occurred, according to researchers who monitor the relentless accumulation of the primary gas that is heating the planet.

The global average concentration of carbon dioxide in March this year was 4.7 parts per million (or ppm) higher than it it was in March last year, which is a record-breaking increase in CO2 levels over a 12-month period.

The increase has been spurred, scientists say, by the periodic El Niño climate event, which has now waned, as well as the ongoing and increasing amounts of greenhouse gases expelled into the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

“It’s really significant to see the pace of the increase over the first four months of this year, which is also a record,” said Ralph Keeling, director of the CO2 Program at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “We aren’t just breaking records in CO2 concentrations, but also the record in how fast it is rising.”


The global CO2 readings have been taken from a station perched upon the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii since the measurements began in 1958 under Keeling’s father, Charles. The concentrations of CO2 have increased each year since, as the heat-trapping gas continues to progressively accumulate due to rampant emissions from power plants, cars, trucks and other sources, with last year hitting a new global record in annual emissions.


World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target

In June, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that global concentration of CO2 had hit 421ppm, a 50% increase on pre-industrial times and the highest in millions of years. The latest reading from Mauna Loa shows the world at around 426ppm of CO2.

Before the point where humans starting expelling huge volumes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, CO2 levels were around 280ppm for almost 6,000 years of human civilization.

The rapid rise in the heat-trapping gas threatens the world with disastrous climate breakdown in the form of severe heatwaves, floods, droughts and wildfires. Recent research has suggested that CO2 levels were last this high around 14m years ago, causing a climate that would appear alien to people alive today.

The previous record annual rise in CO2 took place in 2016, amid another El Niño event, which temporarily causes a spike in global temperatures. A more standard annual increase of around 2-3ppm will likely return following the end of this latest El Niño, but this is little cause for comfort, according to Keeling.

“The rate of rise will almost certainly come down, but it is still rising and in order to stabilize the climate, you need CO2 level to be falling,” he said. “Clearly, that isn’t happening. Human activity has caused CO2 to rocket upwards. It makes me sad more than anything. It’s sad what we are doing.”

‘A handgun in every nightstand’: US art installation shines light on gun violence

YOUTH ELECTION ISSUE 2024 


Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg’s artwork features a US flag bearing names of 1,039 people killed in mass shootings since Columbine

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Alienable Right to Life features the names of 1,039 people killed in mass shootings since the Columbine high school massacre in 1999. Photograph: Alienable Right to Life

David Smith in Washington

Fri 10 May 2024 20.4
THE GUARDIAN 


On Capitol Hill there is no shortage of politicians who wrap themselves in the Stars and Stripes and founding documents when seeking to defend the right to bear arms. But any who walk up Pennsylvania Avenue in the next 10 days will be confronted by an inversion of these patriotic symbols and an urgent plea to tackle gun violence.

Alienable right to life is a public art installation at Freedom Plaza that features a massive American flag bearing the names of 1,039 people killed in mass shootings since the Columbine high school massacre 25 years ago.

“I, sadly, have left one panel blank on the northeast corner of this artwork in case there is yet another mass shooting while this art is on exhibition,” artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg said on Friday at a rainy launch event attended by congressional Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Jamie Raskin and gun safety advocates.

The piece, made of scaffold wrapped with vinyl, is 35ft long, 25ft high and 12ft wide and secured by 32,000lbs of ballast. Nestled behind the flag is a giant facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, which takes the assertion that all men are created equal with certain unalienable rights, magnifies the word “unalienable” and puts a red cross through “un”, leaving only “alienable”.

Nearby is an interactive circular mural, representing an upside down Stars and Stripes (a sign of imminent danger or distress) for visitors to share personal stories.

“Kids shouldn’t be afraid to go to school!” one says.

The structures are surrounded by trappings of the nation’s capital: historic quotations about Washington inscribed on the upper terrace; a statue of Casimir Pulaski, a general in the Continental army, on horseback; the executive office of the mayor and the council of the District of Columbia; the National Theatre, about to stage Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar.

In her remarks on Friday, Firstenberg, 64, described her motives for creating alienable right to life, noting that gun violence has become the leading cause of death for American children.

“America has become a dangerous place,” she said. “It used to be a place where we talked about a chicken in every pot and now it’s a handgun in every nightstand.

“This art is meant to broaden the dialogue regarding gun access from a singular focus on the right to bear arms to the individual right to life that emanates from the Declaration of Independence. I’m just going to go there, folks: if people are willing to fight for the rights of frozen embryos in Alabama, we should fight for the rights of America’s children.”

The artist told how a friend named Andrea recently bought a 9mm handgun and used it to end her life. Firstenberg has added her name to the circular mural, where the public are invited to use black stickers to add their reflections or the names of loved ones lost.

“The image of our American flag will disappear under those stories of gun violence,” Firstenberg said.

Alienable right to life, privately funded, was made possible with the help of the National Park Service and DowntownDC Business Improvement District, will be on display until 20 May.

Firstenberg added: “Let us all commit that we will not let our children die in car seats, in math class, at the movies, or sitting on a kerb watching a Fourth of July parade. We must stop adding names to the flag.”

The launch event heard Pelosi and Raskin praise Firstenberg’s work and urge Congress to do more to curb gun deaths, including legislation to ban assault weapons. Chaplain Denise Reid recounted how her life has been affected by gun violence for half a century including when her son, Tavon Waters, was shot at a traffic light in 2006 and left paralysed from the neck down. He died from his injuries three years later at the age of 25.

Reid, a deputy lead of the Baltimore city chapter of the group Moms Demand Action, said: “A senseless act of violence took my precious child from me and senseless acts of gun violence continue to plague our communities. How far to the sky would this flag need to be to include all the names of those needlessly lost? As this art beautifully conveys, the Declaration of Independence clearly expressed 248 years ago that everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Firstenberg is known for poignant installations such as In America: Remember, which blanketed the National Mall with 701,000 white flags for 17 days in 2021, in memory of victims of the coronavirus pandemic. Their stories are now being entered into a database at George Washington University and some of the flags are preserved at her studio in Bethesda, Maryland.

In an interview, the artist said she hopes the scale and prominence of her work can transcend political divisions.

“Words are going unheard because we’re all existing more and more every day in our own echo chambers so public art is one of the few ways in which we can reach people without prior intention on their part of choosing what information they get,” she said.

“Public art gives us a way to have free expression and hope that people see it. Will it change minds? I can only hope. We have to start comparing ourselves to other countries rather than just thinking we’re the best. We have to pull back and understand what’s happening here.”

America’s unseen book bans: the long history of censorship in prisons

Tens of thousands of books are banned in US prisons, in an often arbitrary process that limits education opportunities


Antoine Davis and Kevin Light-Roth
Thu 9 May 2024 

THE GUARDIAN


On a Monday night, just after six, Alicia Williams waits for the last stragglers to take their seats in her cramped classroom at the Washington corrections center. Her students braved western Washington’s fall weather to get here and they enter the room still ruffled from the wind, their khaki uniforms flecked with rain.

There is no rush. Instead of the lesson she planned to teach, Williams will be relying on hastily adjusted notes and on-the-spot explanations. She’d just heard she wasn’t allowed to teach the book her class was scheduled to discuss that night.

The course is English 233, children’s literature. The offending text? All Boys Aren’t Blue, a book recommended for adolescents ages 16 and up.

Republicans will do anything to ban books, even saying they cause porn addiction
Arwa Mahdawi

For many Americans, the concept of book banning until recently brought up images from earlier, more oppressive societies – grainy black-and-white film of Nazi book burning rallies, photos of McCarthy-era crowds exuberantly hurling books and political pamphlets now considered laughably tame on to bonfires.

But in recent years, books have again become a flashpoint in civic discourse, and book banning and censorship in the education system have made a comeback. Nearly every state has seen conflict over school curricula and public library catalogues.

Groups such as the pressure organization Moms for Liberty have scrutinized school libraries, hunting books that examine race or LGBTQ+ issues and demanding their removal. Conservative commentators have dedicated lengthy segments to the purported dangers of certain books, and have persuaded large swaths of Americans that critical race theory, a graduate-level college course, is being widely taught in US grade schools. Video of fistfights breaking out at PTA meetings and tirades during town halls have racked up millions of internet views. Book banning has entered the talking points of political campaigns, infusing the dynamics of everything from city council elections to gubernatorial and presidential debates. School book bans ballooned 33% between 2022 and 2023, according to the Freedom to Read Foundation, a first amendment defense organization. Authors whose books have been targeted include Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner and James Joyce.

Few people are aware, however, that book banning is a widespread and longstanding practice in US prisons. Carceral facilities scrutinize what books and magazines can be offered in their libraries, can be taught in their classes or can be mailed to people on the inside.

In many states, the list of banned publications is long. The Florida department of corrections alone has 22,825 books banned from its libraries, according to an October 2023 report by the non-profit PEN America. The Texas department of corrections is second to Florida with 10,265 bans. The Kansas DOC has banned 7,669 books. Virginia DOC, 7,204. By comparison, in the first eight months of 2023, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom received reports of 1,915 attempts to remove books from public, school and academic libraries.

“Even if you accept the premise that there are dangerous books out there, it strains credulity to suggest there are 10 times as many books that are dangerous for adults than there are books that are dangerous for children,” says Anthony Blankenship, an expert on prison policy at the Washington non-profit Civil Survival. “Florida is the worst when it comes to book banning, but every department of corrections is engaged in it. It’s something educators and incarcerated students have to deal with in every state,” he says.

Particularly troubling, according to PEN America, is the arbitrary way book bans are decided upon by some prison authorities, and the lack of clarity about the qualifications of the people imposing these bans. In a statement, the organization noted that employment at correctional facilities requires only a GED or high school diploma, “which means staff empowered to censor books may have only basic literacy themselves”.

A Washington department of corrections spokesperson said that the agency maintained a publication review committee that approves or restricts books. The spokesperson said that the department created a public list of its banned books, and provided reasons for each ban.

All Boys Aren’t Blue is not on this list.

Additionally, the spokesperson said that restricting All Boys Aren’t Blue from use in classrooms was “a joint decision” made by the department of corrections and Centralia College – the college contracted to teach English 233 – “due to the sexually explicit content in this book”. Williams, the Centralia College instructor, disputes this. She also disputes DOC’s claim that the ban could have been appealed.

“In corrections educations,” she says, “there is no appeal process. I don’t even know who is rejecting content or why.”

Williams says she was told by a department administrator that the book had been banned because the department considers any material relating to homosexuality to be problematic.

Curiously, the reason the administrator cites, Williams says, was that some students may be gay themselves, and that the book could create conflict between straight and gay students. She rejects that rationale.

“If we can’t trust that incarcerated students won’t beat each other up over the identity of book characters, what hope is there for rehabilitation and re-entry into society?”

Williams’s English 233 class guides students in a literary analysis of children’s books across a span of several centuries. The course ordinarily opens with a review of the original Grimm fairytales and works its way through contemporary children’s fiction, including a segment on children’s books that some school districts have recently banned.

“One of the biggest topics in children’s literacy is censorship and book-banning,” says Williams. “Part of the class curriculum is developing a sense of one’s own approach to content selection and censorship.”

Williams, an instructor since 2015, says many students “have never seen or read content that has been banned”, and before taking her class assume books are banned only when they contain extraordinarily explicit sexual content or promote racial conflict. After exposure to banned material, students often come to view the bans as absurd.
What’s likely to happen if someone is exposed to this material? I would say the most likely answer is empathyAlicia Williams

“The real growth happens when students have to confront material that is likely to cause discomfort and material from voices that significantly differ from the reader’s,” says Williams.

“Talking about censorship without viewing what has been censored is like going to culinary school without ever tasting the food.”

Education opportunities in prison are a key tool in reducing recidivism, says Blankenship, the prison policy expert. “The more [schooling] you have, the more your recidivism drops. By the time you get to a bachelor’s degree the chances of you going back to prison are basically zero. The department of corrections should be bending over backwards to make education accessible and to avoid interfering with it,” he said.

Not only are books critical to prisoners’ education, they can help many incarcerated people heal from the intense childhood trauma that put them on the path toward prison. Introducing prisoners with histories of adverse childhood experiences to trauma-related literature “helps them look within themselves, and gives them a baseline for how to deal with their trauma”, says Rion Tisino, an ethnic minority mental health specialist at the Washington department of social and health services. “It’s almost like a recipe for dealing with trauma.”

Devonte Crawford, a student in Williams’s children’s literature course, spent much of his life in need of such a recipe. At the age of 10, he was sexually assaulted by an older family member, he says, and the abuse went on for several years. It engendered in him what he describes as “a consuming darkness”. “I started to become a very troubled kid,” says Crawford. As a teen he was drinking and taking drugs “to cover the pain and hatred”. He recalls moving to the west coast for a fresh start, only for his destructive behavior to escalate once he arrived. He was soon serving a 30-year sentence for armed robbery.


It wasn’t until he was 26 and in prison that Crawford discovered a trauma-centered program – created and facilitated by other prisoners – and came to see that his trauma was the primary force driving his self-loathing and aggressiveness. Slowly, he began to heal. He wishes he had encountered a class like that sooner.

“I truly believe that had I been able to see or read about someone going through very similar situations then things would be much different today. It would have been incredible to know that I was not alone.”

For people like Crawford, banning books from prison education “stunts the rehabilitative process”, Tisino says. Trauma-centered literature and programs “help you see the root causes of your negative behaviors and … understand how they perpetuate harm. This is the beginning stage of accountability. But when DOC bans literature that contains traumatic experiences, accountability can be difficult for a person to arrive at.”

Alicia Williams wants prison administrators to weigh education outcomes and the potential for emotional growth when determining which books to permit incarcerated students to study. The point of education, she says, isn’t just to increase knowledge. It also builds a student’s ability to see things from the perspectives of others – a skill that books like All Boys Aren’t Blue are designed to develop.

“What’s likely to happen if someone is exposed to this material? I would say the most likely answer is empathy.”

Sam Levin contributed reporting

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin audiobook review – from the civil rights frontline

Law & Order’s Jesse L Martin narrates two powerful essays examining the Black experience in the US, the first in a series marking the author’s centenary year

Fiona Sturges

Fri 10 May 2024 

THE GUARDIAN 

First published in 1963 at the height of the US civil rights movement, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time comprises two astonishing essays examining the Black experience in the United States and the struggle against racial injustice.

The first, My Dungeon Shook, takes the form of a letter to Baldwin’s 14-year-old nephew, and outlines “the root of my dispute with my country … You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.”

The second, Down at the Cross, is a polemic examining the relationship between race and religion, and finds Baldwin reflecting on his Harlem childhood, his encounters with racist police, and a spiritual crisis at the age of 14, which, triggered by his fears of getting drawn into a life of crime, “helped to hurl me into the church”. There, he was filled with anguish “like one of those floods that devastate countries, tearing everything down, tearing children from their parents and lovers from each other”.

The essays are narrated by the Law & Order actor Jesse L Martin, who highlights the rhythmic nature of Baldwin’s prose, and channels his anger and devastation at the unceasing suffering of Black Americans. This audiobook is one of several new recordings of Baldwin’s writing being published over the next few months, to mark the influential author’s centenary year, which also include Go Tell It to the Mountain, Another Country, Giovanni’s Room and If Beale Street Could Talk.

Available via Penguin Audio, 2hr 26min

Further listening

Fire Rush
Jacqueline Crooks, Penguin Audio, 11hr 3min
Leonie Elliott narrates this coming-of-age story set in the late 1970s about the daughter of a Caribbean immigrant who finds kindred spirits and thrilling new sounds at an underground reggae club.

Two Sisters
Blake Morrison, Harper Collins, 10hr 28min
A tender account of the life of Gill, Morrison’s younger sister who died from heart failure caused by alcohol abuse, and his half-sister, Josie. Read by the author.

UK has moved out of recession, official figures show

GDP rose by 0.6% in first quarter of 2024 but forecasters expect economy to grow slowly this year

Phillip Inman

Fri 10 May 2024

The UK is officially out of recession after figures showed the economy grew by 0.6% in the first three months of the year.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the period from January to the end of March marked a return to growth after a mild recession in the second half of 2023. It was the strongest rate of quarterly growth since the end of 2021, and a better performance than expected by economists, who forecast growth of 0.4% in the first quarter.

The downturn came to an end after an increase in activity across the services sector, which has flourished since the turn of the year as wages have outstripped inflation, easing pressure on consumers.

However, forecasters expect the UK to grow slowly this year as high interest rates and last year’s inflation surge continue to take their toll on disposable incomes.

The Bank of England has predicted that a lack of momentum in the economy means gross domestic product (GDP) will grow by only 0.5% this year. The Bank kept interest rates unchanged at 5.25% on Thursday but indicated it may begin cutting them from June.

The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said: “There is no doubt it has been a difficult few years, but today’s growth figures are proof that the economy is returning to full health for the first time since the pandemic.”

Speaking after a trip with Hunt to a Siemens factory near Oxford, Rishi Sunak said it would take time for people to “really feel better”.

“Of course there’s more work to do,” said the prime minister. “And I get that. And that’s why I’m keen to stick to our plan and keep delivering for people. But I think today’s figures show that we now have momentum.”

Hunt said the UK had the best outlook among European G7 countries over the next six years, “with wages growing faster than inflation, energy prices falling and tax cuts worth £900 to the average worker hitting bank accounts”. However, apart from Germany, other eurozone countries avoided a recession last year.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said last week that the UK would be the worst performing economy in the G7 next year, as high interest rates and the lingering effects of last year’s surge in inflation drag on growth.

Responding to the first-quarter GDP numbers, the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said it was a case of going “from no growth to low growth”.

She said: “This is no time for Conservative ministers to be doing a victory lap and telling the British people that they have never had it so good. The economy is still £300 smaller per person than when Rishi Sunak became prime minister.”

The ONS said consumer spending and business investment recovered in the first quarter after declines across the second half of 2023.

An increase in transport and storage services was the biggest driver of the 0.7% increase in the services sector. The boom in private healthcare and renewed activity in the NHS after a series of strikes last year were among the other factors pushing up services sector growth.

Construction activity fell in response to a decline in housebuilding, while the manufacturing sector benefited from a recovery in car production.

Textile factory output fell by 3.6% to register the sixth consecutive quarter fall.

Energy production increased between January and March. However, the ONS said growth in this sector and manufacturing was partly offset by a fall of 2.4% in the output of activities associated with the big water companies, including sewage and waste management.

Ruth Gregory, an economist at the consultancy Capital Economics, said the increase in GDP showed the economy had been recovering from last year’s contraction with more strength and momentum than was previously understood. But she doubted the increase in GDP would prevent the Bank of England from making its first interest rate cut in the summer.

“At this stage we doubt the recovery will be strong enough to prevent inflation from falling further and the Bank from cutting rates to 3% next year,” she said.

GDP per head is estimated to have increased by 0.4% in the first quarter of 2024, after seven consecutive quarters without positive growth. It is estimated, based on ONS projections of the UK’s rising population, that GDP per head is 0.7% lower compared with the same quarter a year ago.

Brazil is reeling from catastrophic floods. What went wrong – and what does the future hold?


In the country’s south, up to half of the annual predicted rain fell in just 10 days – the third such event in a year. Experts say it is time to plan for a new normal

Jorge C Carrasco in Porto Alegre, Brazil

Fri 10 May 2024 
THE GUARDIAN 
Photographs by Daniel Marenco

When the torrential rain began to swallow her city block, Cristiane Batista, 34, grabbed her three children, a couple of backpacks and her smartphone and waited at the door, hoping to be picked up by the municipal trucks preparing to evacuate the population of Muçum, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

“I was terrified. The house was about to flood. We had to get out of there,” she says.

Batista, her husband, Jeferson, 34, and their children – who range in age from one to eight – had already been victims of the extreme weather of Brazil’s southernmost state twice last year. In September 2023, Muçum and its nearly 5,000 inhabitants were at the centre of the devastation caused by floods, which left scores of people – including 15 people in a single Muçum house.

“We lost everything,” she says.

Two months later, the city was hit by another fierce bout of rain. The storm destroyed furniture and appliances and left walls stained with mud. After losing everything for the third time, she says she no longer has the strength to live in the city.

Rio Grande do Sul, a state home to almost 11 million people, has witnessed the most extensive climate catastrophe in its history and one of the greatest in Brazil’s recent history.




Over the course of 10 days at the end of April and beginning of May, the region recorded between a third and almost half of the yearly rainfall predicted – between 500 and 700 millimetres, depending on the area, according to measurements by Metsul Meteorologia.

The storm caused the Taquari, Caí, Pardo, Jacuí, Sinos, and Gravataí rivers – tributaries of the Guaíba – to overflow.

According to the Civil Defence, there are more than 100 people dead, more than a 130 missing, and nearly 400 people injured in 425 affected municipalities.

At least 232,125 people have left their homes: 67,542 are in shelters, and 164,583 are homeless or temporarily staying with family or friends. Cities such as Eldorado do Sul, Roca Sales, and Canoas were partly flooded, and villages such as Cruzeiro do Sul were devastated in what the state governor, Eduardo Leite, described as “the greatest catastrophe of all”.

Porto Alegre, the state capital and one of Brazil’s largest urban centres, is one of the worst-affected cities. On 5 May, the level of the Guaíba River, which runs through the city, reached a record of 5.35 meters, surpassing the 4.76 meters reached during the historic floods of 1941.
Aerial footage shows scale of flooding in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul – video


Neighbourhoods close to the river were submerged. The airport closed, and power and water-treatment plants went down, causing electricity and drinking water shortages in several areas. A dam in a northern suburb failed and flooded a large portion of the city.

Viewed from an army helicopter, the neighbouring city of Eldorado do Sul looks like a set of canals stretching along narrow strips of land and buildings. About 90% of the city is underwater. Along the BR-290 highway, one of the most critical roads in the country’s south, hundreds of people are waiting for transport to shelters.

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An aerial shot of central Porto Alegre reveals the extent of flooding around the public market and city hall

“We knew it would be a unique event, and the river would overflow within a few days. We did simulations with the data we recorded, and the result was terrifying. So we alerted the authorities,” says Joel Goldenfum, the director of the Institute of Hydraulic Research at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, who is leading research on the unfolding catastrophe in Porto Alegre.

Infrastructure is key to understanding what happened in the state capital, says Goldenfum, explaining that an extended network of 42 miles (68 kilometres) of dykes, gates, a containment wall at the dock, and more than 20 drainage pumps prevented a more severe situation. However, the lack of maintenance of the flood protection system over the years may have been a factor.


“This system has worked well, but it has already shown sealing problems,” he says. “The gates and pump houses have already shown weaknesses. There have been maintenance problems, so the system hasn’t held up.”

Extreme floods were relatively uncommon in Rio Grande do Sul. However, scientists believe that climate factors are now accelerating such events.

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Flooding in Praça da Alfândega, Porto Alegre’s central square

These include an intense wind current in the region, which destabilised the climate; an atmospheric block, which emerged after a heatwave that made the centre of Brazil drier, concentrating the rain in the country’s northern and southern extremes; and a moisture corridor from the Amazon, which strengthened the torrential rain.

Twenty years ago, a study produced by the climate researchers José Antonio Marengo and Wagner Rodrigues Soares identified a significant increase in precipitation in southern Brazil and warned of its consequences.

A more recent study published by the National Institute of Meteorology (Inmet) indicated that the number of days Porto Alegre suffers “extreme precipitation” – rainfall above 50 millimetres – has more than doubled since the 1960s. From 1961 to 1970, there were 29 days a year. This number increased to 44 days between 2001 and 2010 and rose to 66 days from 2011 to 2020.

“These climate events gain power as we have El Niño and La Niña periods. Over time, we have seen that the rainfall regime and temperatures are different,” s Marcelo Dutra da Silva, a professor of ecology at the Federal University of Rio Grande and one of the country’s leading figures warning about climate effects. “This is creating climate and ecological troubles and an economic problem.”

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Shoulder-deep in water, a man pulls a boat through the flooded streets of São Leopoldo, a suburb of Porto Alegre

In June 2022, Dutra warned public authorities that cities in the southern region were not prepared for natural disasters. “There is no planning for risk areas, for flood areas. There is absolutely no environmental planning to consider the climate changes and events happening,” he said.

Carlos Nobre, a renowned climatologist, principal investigator at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IEA) of the University of São Paulo, and the co-chair of the Science Panel for the Amazon, says climate models had already indicated the risk of increased rainfall in southern Brazil.

The higher the average temperature, the more intense the ocean’s evaporation, bringing more water into the atmosphere and thus facilitating the occurrence and increasing the frequency of extreme weather events, he says.

“What we have seen happen is absolutely devastating,” Nobre says. “We have data on this in Brazil: due to climate change, the forecast is for increased rainfall [in the southern regions].”

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The Humaitá neighbourhood, showing the flooded pitch of the Arena do Grêmio, home to one of the two main football clubs of Porto Alegre

For Nobre, a critical problem for regions suffering climate events such as extreme floods is that “the infrastructures were built for a climate that no longer exists”. He says it is time for governments to reconsider planning better adaptation to avoid future catastrophes.

Another study, produced in 2015 during the administration of President Dilma Rousseff, showed projections that now seem closer to our climate reality: heatwaves, water scarcity in south-east Brazil and intense rainfall in the south.


Natalie Unterstell, an expert in climate change policy and negotiations and one of the study’s authors, says the extreme floods in the Rio Grande do Sul are precisely what she has been warning about for years. “What is happening today in Rio Grande do Sul is our new reality and not a ‘sad exception’,” she posted on Instagram.

Brazil’s presidency says that it is not possible to estimate the exact extent of the current damage and how much reconstruction will cost as the water has not receded.

“The country will spare no effort to assist in the reconstruction and resettlement of people who have lost their homes,” itsaid in a statement. “It’s likely that there will be properties that cannot be rebuilt in the same location due to the risk of new floods.”

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Rescue teams and volunteers come to the aid of those affected by flooding in the Menino Deus neighbourhood, just to the south of central Porto Alegre

However, on Thursday the state governor announced his first estimate of the damage : about 19bn reals (£2.9bn), which is expected to rise in the coming days and weeks.

Leite – who has relaxed nearly 500 environmental protection regulations since 2019 when he took office – says his administration will develop a housing plan for people affected by the flood. He had previously said that the state would need “a Marshall plan” to recover, referring to the American programme to rebuild after the second world war.

The mayor of Porto Alegre, Sebastião Melo, says his administration has carried out maintenance but acknowledged that the flood prevention system “is old”.

Amid increasing public pressure for political leaders to be held accountable for their indifference to adapting to the climate crisis, Melo says his efforts are focused on the rescue operations and the displaced shelter. “It’s not time to look for culprits,” he ,says. “It’s time to seek solutions.”