Who Was Behind the Killing of Haiti's President?

CARIBBEAN/9 JUL 2021BY PARKER ASMANNEN\

Two days on from the nighttime assassination of Haiti President Jovenel Moïse in Port-au-Prince, competing theories have failed to provide any real motive for the high-profile hit.

A commando of what Haitian Police Chief Léon Charles called well-armed “mercenaries” broke into the president’s residence early July 7 and shot him 12 times, killing him and seriously wounding First Lady Martine Moïse. She survived and is in critical but stable condition after being transferred to a hospital in Florida, according to the Miami Herald.

On July 8, the police chief said during a press conference that authorities have so far identified at least 28 suspects in the attack: 26 Colombians - six of them retired soldiers - and two Haitian-Americans. The government identified one of the Haitian-Americans as James Solages, a Florida entrepreneur who formerly worked as the "chief commander of bodyguards" at the Canadian Embassy in Haiti, according to the website of a non-governmental organization he was part of.

Officials reported that 17 of the suspects had been arrested, while eight others were still at large.


SEE ALSO: Haiti President Assassinated in Port-au-Prince

Shortly after the assassination, Charles said officers had tracked down and confronted the hit squad, preventing them from leaving the neighborhood of Pétion-Ville around the crime scene in the hills above Port-au-Prince.

Early police reports suggested between four and seven people had been killed during a firefight with police, but Charles later said three had died.

On July 9, Haitian media cited a judicial official as saying that certain mercenaries had been in Haiti for three months, while others had joined from the Dominican Republic at a later date. Over that time, they had amassed an arsenal of weapons as well as vehicles, cash and equipment.
InSight Crime Analysis

There is one certainty about the raid that killed the Haitian president: it was a well-organized, well-financed tactical operation strategically carried out by individuals outfitted with sophisticated, high-powered weapons.

The suspected killers were pretending to be members of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), shouting that the attack was a “DEA operation." The Haitian Embassy in the United States called the murder a “well-coordinated attack by a highly trained and heavily armed gang.”

There is precedent for so-called mercenary activity in Haiti’s recent history. In February 2019, Haitian police arrested a team of foreign mercenaries armed with assault rifles at a police checkpoint. Their clandestine mission reportedly involved “escorting the presidential aide, Fritz Jean-Louis, to the Haitian central bank, where he’d electronically transfer $80 million from a government oil fund [PetroCaribe] to a second account controlled solely” by President Moïse, according to The Intercept.

The men were charged with being part of a criminal conspiracy in Haiti, but five US citizens in the group were quickly flown back to the United States, where they faced no criminal charges.

There are likely plenty of actors in Haiti with the capacity to hire a foreign mercenary team, from sitting politicians to private security companies and powerful criminal actors. Some experts at the Center for Analysis and Research on Human Rights (Centre d’analyse et de recherche en droits de l’homme - CARDH) have questioned how the attackers could have planned and carried out the killing so easily without a single member of the president's security team being hurt. Prosecutors will be bringing those officers in for questioning.


SEE ALSO: G9 and Family Profile

In the past, politicians have been implicated in colluding with gangs and politically connected militias in exchange for support in the neighborhoods they control. President Moïse himself was accused of supporting the G9 and Family gang alliance. The gangs allegedly got official protection in exchange for expanding support in strongholds of the political opposition, a similar strategy that other Haitian leaders have used. However, in Moïse's absence, the G9 coalition could weaken if political power is claimed by others that don't see any benefit in engaging with the alliance.

Recent evidence suggests that official support for the gang alliance may have been waning. In late June, G9 leader ​​Jimmy Chérizier, alias “Barbecue,” called for a revolution against both the opposition and President Moïse’s Tèt Kale Party (Parti Haïtien Tèt Kale - PHTK), among others in Haiti.

Since its inception, the gang alliance has struggled to quell internal rivalries that existed prior to the nine gangs’ decision to join together. Those battles boiled over last month, displacing thousands of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire from the capital city amid a serious spike in COVID-19 cases.

Given the symbiotic relationship that politicians and armed gangs have long relied on in the past, the president’s assassination is likely to create a period of extreme uncertainty where different criminal actors may try to exert further power over physical territory and position themselves to benefit from those who will succeed Moïse in public office.

*InSight Crime investigators Douwe den Held, Juliana Manjarrés and María Paula Saenz contributed reporting to this article.

(Top Photo: AP, Joseph Odelyn)

In stunning call, Haiti’s interim leader requests US to deploy troops

By Danica Coto and Joshua Goodman
July 10, 2021 — 

Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Haiti’s interim government said it asked the US to deploy troops to protect key infrastructure as it tries to stabilise the country and prepare the way for elections in the aftermath of President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination.

“We definitely need assistance and we’ve asked our international partners for help,” Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph said in a phone interview late on Friday (Saturday AEST). “We believe our partners can assist the national police in resolving the situation.”

The US has rebuffed the request, with a senior US administration official telling Reuters there were “no plans to provide US military assistance at this time”.


A Haitian police asks a woman to move away from a gate at the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.CREDIT:AP

The stunning request for US military support recalled the tumult following Haiti’s last presidential assassination, in 1915, when an angry mob dragged President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam out of the French Embassy and beat him to death.

In response, President Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines into Haiti, justifying the American military occupation — which lasted nearly two decades — as a way to avert anarchy.

But the Biden administration has so far given no indication it will provide military assistance.

RELATED ARTICLE

Crime
Haiti arrests 17 suspects in President’s assassination; manhunt continues

For now, it only plans to send FBI officials to assist with the ongoing investigation into a crime that has plunged Haiti, a country already wracked by gaping poverty and gang violence, into a destabilising battle for power and constitutional standoff.

On Friday, a group of lawmakers declared loyalty and recognised Joseph Lambert, the head of Haiti’s dismantled senate, as provisional president in a direct challenge to the interim government’s authority. They also recognised as Prime Minister Ariel Henry, whom Moïse had selected to replace Joseph a day before he was killed but who had not yet taken office or formed a government.

Joseph expressed dismay that others would try to take advantage of Moïse’s murder for political gain.

“I’m not interested in a power struggle,” said Joseph, who assumed leadership with the backing of police and the military. “There’s only one way people can become president in Haiti. And that’s through elections.”

Joseph spoke as more details emerged of a killing that increasingly has taken the air of murky, international conspiracy involving a Hollywood actor, a shootout with gunmen holed up in a foreign embassy and a private security firm operating out of a cavernous warehouse in Miami.



Haiti is a country on edge tonight after the President of the small Caribbean nation was assassinated in his own home.

Among those arrested are two Haitian Americans, including one who worked alongside Sean Penn following the nation’s devastating 2010 earthquake. Police have also detained or killed what they described as more than a dozen “mercenaries” who were former members of Colombia’s military.



Some of the suspects were seized in a raid on Taiwan’s Embassy where they are believed to have sought refuge. National Police Chief Léon Charles said another eight suspects were still at large and being sought.

The attack, which took place at Moïse’s home before dawn Wednesday, also seriously wounded his wife, who was flown to Miami for surgery. Joseph said he has spoken to the first lady but out of respect for her mourning has not inquired about the attack.

RELATED ARTICLE


Crime
‘Presumed assassins’ of Haiti’s President arrested after gunmen ‘posed as US agents’

Colombian officials said the men were recruited by four companies and travelled to the Caribbean nation in two groups via the Dominican Republic. US-trained Colombian soldiers are heavily sought after by private security firms and mercenary armies in global conflict zones because of their experience in a decades-long war against leftist rebels and powerful drug cartels.

In an unexplainable twist would have surely outed any highly sensitive mission, some of the men posted on Facebook photos of themselves visiting the presidential palace and other tourist spots in the Dominican Republic, which shares Hispaniola Island with Haiti.



It’s not known who masterminded the attack. And numerous questions remain about how the perpetrators were able to penetrate the president’s residence posing as US Drug Enforcement Administration agents, meeting little resistance from those charged with protecting the president.

Besides the Colombians, among those detained by police were two Haitian Americans.

Investigative Judge Clément Noël told Le Nouvelliste that the arrested Americans, James Solages and Joseph Vincent, said the attackers originally planned only to arrest Moïse, not kill him. Noël said Solages and Vincent were acting as translators for the attackers, the newspaper reported on Friday.


US soldiers stand guard on the rooftop of the US Embassy.CREDIT:AP

Solages, 35, described himself as a “certified diplomatic agent,” an advocate for children and budding politician on a now-removed website for a charity he started in 2019 in south Florida to assist resident of his home town of Jacmel, on Haiti’s southern coast.



He worked briefly as a driver and bodyguard for a relief organisation set up by Penn following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that killed 300,000 Haitians and left tens of thousands homeless. He also lists as past employers the Canadian Embassy in Haiti. His Facebook page, which was also taken down following news of his arrest, features photos of armoured military vehicles and a shot of himself standing in front of an American flag.


Haitians outside the U.S. Embassy amid rumors on radio and social media that the US will be handing out exile and humanitarian visas. CREDIT:AP

Joseph refused to finger any attackers but said that Moïse had earned numerous enemies while attacking powerful oligarchs who for years profited from overly generous state contracts.

Some of those elite insiders are now the focus of investigators, with authorities asking that presidential candidate and well-known businessman Reginald Boulos and former Senate president Youri Latortue meet with prosecutors early next week for questioning. No further details were provided and none of the men have been charged.

Analysts say whoever plotted the brazen attack likely had ties to a criminal underworld that has flourished in recent years as corruption and drug trafficking have become entrenched. Even before Moïse’s murder, Port-au-Prince already had been on edge due to the growing power of gangs that displaced more than 14,700 people last month alone as they torched and ransacked homes in a fight over territory.

AP

Haiti requests US troops after president's assassination, as more details of suspects emerge

Seventeen of the Colombian suspected mercenaries had retired from the army, investigators in Colombia say.

Saturday 10 July 2021

SKY NEWS UK

Image:Police in Haiti patrol the streets amid a state of emergency


Haiti's interim government has asked the US to deploy troops to protect key infrastructure as it tries to stabilise the country and prepare the way for elections in the aftermath of President Jovenel Moise's assassination.

"We definitely need assistance and we've asked our international partners for help," Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph told The Associated Press.

"We believe our partners can assist the national police in resolving the situation."

Haiti at boiling point after assasination

Haiti's in a state of turmoil after the impoverished country's President was shot dead in his home.


But US President Joe Biden's administration has so far given no indication it will provide military assistance to the Caribbean island.

For now, it only plans to send FBI officials to assist with the ongoing investigation into a crime that has plunged Haiti into a destabilising battle for power and constitutional stand-off.


Colombia will also send its national intelligence directorate and intelligence director for the National Police to help Interpol with its investigations, President Ivan Dunque wrote on Twitter.


Police in Haiti say Mr Moise was executed by a commando unit of 26 Colombian and two Haitian-American mercenaries.

Image:Several of the suspects were paraded at a media briefing on Thursday. Pic: AP

Seventeen of them were captured and paraded in front of journalists at a news conference in Port-au-Prince on Thursday.

National Police chief Leon Charles said the two Americans - James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55 - had come from Florida.

One of them had worked as a bodyguard at the Canadian embassy in Port-au-Prince, he added.

Image:Jovenel Moise was found dead at his home in the early hours of Wednesday

Colombian investigators have said that 17 of the suspects had retired from the Colombian army between 2018 and 2020.

Jorge Luis Vargas, director of Colombia's National Police, said 11 of the suspected Colombian mercenaries had travelled to Haiti via Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.

Two others flew from Panama to the Dominican capital Santo Domingo before landing in Port-au-Prince, he said.

Guns and passports were also shown at Thursday's news conference. Pic: AP

Solage and Vincent were among the 17 captured following a gun battle with Haitian authorities near Mr Moise's suburban home where he was found dead in the early hours of Wednesday.

Mr Moise, 53, was discovered lying on his back in his bedroom with 12 bullet wounds and his left eye damaged, local tribunal judge Carl Henry Destin said on Friday.

The front door of his home was riddled with bullets and had been forced open, with other rooms in the house ransacked, he added.

Mr Moise's wife Martine, 47, was seriously injured in the attack but is now in a stable condition after being flown to Florida for treatment.

Colombia's director of the National Police Jorge Luis Vargas

As well as the 17 in custody, three other suspects were killed in the struggle with police, and eight are on the run, the Haitian police said.

They are still hunting the mastermind behind the assassination.

Thousands of Haitians gathered outside the US embassy in Port-au-Prince on Friday amid rumours America would be granting people asylum.

The island nation is in a 15-day state of emergency as it grapples with the violent crisis.

You Don’t Believe COVID-19 Exists? 'It’s Not a Natural Virus. It Was Engineered With American Funding'


This week at the Tel Aviv airport: A retired historian who believes COVID-19 is a manipulation that serves 'transparent rulers'

Dorit Gad.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum


Shir Reuven

HAARETZ
JUL 9,2021

Dorit Gad, 70; lives in Kfar Vradim, flying to the United States

Hi, can I talk to you? It’s for a column in Haaretz – we talk to someone who’s flying out and someone who’s just landed.

Yes, I know the column. It’s the only thing I look at on Fridays, because I’ve stopped reading newspapers.

Why?


I don’t like propaganda. You know, everything that’s said is a lie, a lie and another lie. I live in a world of truth, not in a world of lies.

Where do you find truth?

What do you do?


I am happily retired. I was a historian.


What led you to take up history?



Get breaking news and analyses delivered to your inbox

Email *Please enter a valid email addressSign Up


When you grow up in a home with parents who are Holocaust survivors and you don’t understand why the Holocaust happened, and then you start learning history in school and you see that the Jews were only persecuted and persecuted, and you still don’t get answers from anyone – you start to investigate by yourself. Within me there was a great scream that asked what it means to be a Jew, especially as I was born into an atheistic home. God only entered our home to be told that he was not behaving well.


So you’re not an atheist.


I don’t want to define myself. The word “define” comes from a root meaning “fence” [in Hebrew], and I don’t want to fence myself in. We have not come here in order to be restrained. The system is constantly trying to build fences and put people into little boxes, and it’s a mistaken system. I know the system from the inside: I trained teachers for 30 years.



What does the system actually do?



It fills you up and wants you to regurgitate. The big questions of why there is actually life on Earth – that’s what needs to be asked, that’s what’s truly fascinating. Let’s say we received the gift of shekerona [roughly, “corona lie”] so that we will stop living within the lie.


You don’t believe that the coronavirus exists?


There is shekerona. It’s not a natural virus in the way of other viruses on the planet; this is a multiyear manipulation. It was engineered with American funding. Why? Because there is what’s known as the transparent rulers, who manage things here, and everything we play at in the game of democracy is just a game. These things are part of an attempt to give people the feeling that it is only this Earth that is populated – when actually the whole cosmos is populated, and the galaxies are full of life.


Really?


Certainly.


That’s not a popular view.


Take the story of Noah, which is ostensibly a splendid myth, but which today we know that, both geologically and climatologically, and with all possible logical explanations, actually happened – and which by the way can soon be expected here, too. Noah built the ark in the course of so many years, and all the people came and looked at the conspirator and ridiculed him, and in the end he was the one who was chosen, because he was a righteous man in his generation.


Would you term yourself a conspiracy theorist?


To begin with you have to define the term “conspiracy theory.” It’s something that essentially entered discourse by means of the CIA, and it’s very important to examine what the CIA is. I’ll leave that question open, so the readers will also have something to investigate, but let’s say that the CIA is not a paragon of virtue.


Have you seen evidence of the shadow rulers in your own research?


We know that history is written by the winners, and winners will write history as they would like it to be perpetuated in our memory, which in any case is not so terrific. We are stricken with amnesia from the moment we come into the world. We arrive as souls that take the form of a flesh-and-blood body. What is unique about this planet is that we are made to forget infinite knowledge. As a soul we are infinite, eternal; we know things from beginning to end. There is an interesting experiment taking place on this planet, and there are planets with other experiments.


Which?



That’s for the next time that I sit here and you ask me questions.


Will there be a next time?


Let’s put it this way: The universe is infinite. Even at the level of those who are here. There are very, very, very old souls here, and there are souls of novices – of people who got here 2,000, 3,000, 5,000 years ago.


I’m interested in what you were like as someone who trained teachers.


I allow the dynamic to remain within me. The question is how far the conventions hemmed me in, and I can definitely say that there was always an internal struggle within me between what I was going through inside and what is right.


You said you studied history because you wanted to understand why the Holocaust happened. Did you come to any conclusions?


No. I left the Holocaust. Death frightened me very much, because I grew up in a home filled with the dead. That was my doctoral thesis, the attitude toward death in the era of the Bible and the Talmud. It was a journey of eight years of hope.


What will you be doing in the United States?


Taking a journey to the light. We are now at the outset of a period which it’s beyond us to even imagine how good it will be, because imagination is also based on fragments of experiences. But we are going toward a wonderful world. “And there was light.”


So there’s nothing to fear?


Fear is the absence of love. When you live in love there’s nothing to fear. What is there to be afraid of, tell me.

Did lead poisoning cause downfall of Roman Empire? The jury is still out

A new video from the American Chemical Society revisits longstanding academic debate

JENNIFER OUELLETTE - 7/5/2021

Ancient Rome’s emperors did some pretty bizarre stuff—bursting into uncontrollable fits of laughter, appointing a horse as a priest, dressing in animal skins and attacking people… the list goes on. Why did they act this way? Possibly… lead poisoning.

There are any number of factors that contribute to the demise of an entire civilization, like the collapse of the Roman Empire circa 476 AD. The empire's slow decline is typically attributed to barbarian invasions, failed military campaigns, economic challenges, government corruption, and an over-reliance on slave labor, among other factors. But it's also been suggested that the toxic effects of lead poisoning on increasingly erratic rulers may also have contribute to its demise—a debate that has been revisited in a new Reactions video from the American Chemical Society.

Lead has a number of properties that make it attractive for practical use. It's cheap, widely available, corrosion resistant when exposed to air and water, has a low melting point, and is highly malleable, which means it's easy to fashion into a wide range of products. But lead is also highly toxic if it finds its way into the human body, which is why we use it far less these days compared to even 100 years ago. Common symptoms of lead poisoning include anemia, nerve disorders, memory loss, inability to concentrate, and even infertility. Lead exposure may also be a factor in malaria, rickets, gout, and periodontal disease.

Since 1943, scientists have known that lead can have adverse effects on neurological development in children, leading to behavioral problems and lowered intelligence. That's because it can easily replace calcium. Calcium is how neurons in the brain communicate, and if lead replaces it, there is either too little communication among neurons, or too much. This can cause erratic mood swings, or difficulty processing information, for instance.

As the Reactions video points out, the ancient Romans loved their lead. They used it in pipes, to line coffins, in their pots, and their utensils. They also used lead acetate as a sweetener, in an era where cane sugar and honey were quite scarce. They did have an abundance of grapes, and used to boil down the juice in their lead pots. Lead ions would leach into the juice and combine with the acetate from the grapes. The resulting syrup was very sweet and used in wines and a wide variety of foods. In fact, of the 450 recipes in a cookbook from that era (the Apicius cookbook), 100 called for those syrups. The Romans also loved their wine, with aristocrats consuming between 1 and 5 liters every day. Researchers who recreated some of the syrups found lead concentrations around 60 times higher than the EPA allows in public drinking water.Advertisement


The current debate about lead poisoning's potential role in the downfall of the Roman Empire dates back to a 1983 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine by Jerome Nriagu, who was studying the diets of Roman emperors between 30 BC and 220 AD. Nriagu noted that 19 of the 30 emperors showed a preference for "lead-tainted" food and wine, concluding many likely suffered from gout and lead-poisoning as a result.

FURTHER READING  Stabbing, crucifixion, eaten by eels: Learn all about murder the Roman way

Claudius, for instanced, is described as exhibiting "disturbed speech, weak limbs, an ungainly gait, tremor, fits of excessive and inappropriate laughter and unseemly angry, and he often slobbered." Legend has it that Caligula once wished to appoint his horse, Incitatus, as a consul—although historians generally believe this was politically motivated gossip, or that Caligula intended it as a prank. Nero was said to mutilate people in the arena while dressed in animal skins.

But was lead poisoning the cause of all those symptoms, and hence the eventual collapse of the empire? Nriagu's hypothesis earned the support of geochemist Clair Patterson, whose work convinced governments to ban lead in gasolines in 1975. But it was hotly disputed by others, most notably the classicist John Scarborough, who accused Nriagu of sloppy research. Nriagu in turn told the Washington Post in 2016 that Scarborough "knows nothing" about lead poisoning.
Enlarge / Ancient Roman sewer pipes stacked against a stone wall
iSidhe/iStock/Getty Images

There have been many scientific papers in the ensuing decades looking at various aspects of the lead poisoning question. For instance, in 2014, French researchers studied how the lead pipes used in the Roman aqueducts might have contaminated the water consumed by ancient Romans. Specifically, they measured concentrations of lead isotopes in sediment from the Tiber River and Trajanic Harbor, and compared those levels to the amount of lead isotopes found in ancient Roman pipes.

While their estimates revealed that the water from those pipes could have had as much as 100 times lead than spring water from the region, the team nonetheless concluded that these concentrations weren't likely to have caused serious health issues. The authors added that, in their opinion, Nriagu's theory that lead poisoning led to the fall of the Roman empire had been largely debunked.Advertisement


Of course, there could be other, just as likely factors for the legends surrounding the strange behavior and ailments of ancient Roman rulers, such as traumatic brain injuries, strokes, or tumors. But there is some evidence that lead poisoning was an issue for the ancient Romans, even if it didn't directly contribute to the collapse of the empire. For instance, a 2010 study of dental enamel taken from more than 200 burials at 33 sites in Britain, Ireland, and Rome (circa the first to fourth centuries AD) found a marked increase in lead levels in the British samples, and a wide range of lead levels in the Roman enamel samples.
Enlarge / A 2019 study found 400 times more lead in skeletal remains from the Roman Empire than in samples from the Iron Age.
YouTube/American Chemical Society

In a 2019 study, archaeologists examined several skeletons from London during the Roman era for signs of exposure to toxic levels of lead. The team sampled 30 thigh bones, as well as 70 bones from the Iron Age as a control. They found that the Iron Age skeletons contained just 0.3 to 2.9 micrograms of lead per gram, whereas the ones from the Roman empire had between 8 to 123 micrograms per gram. Those are sufficiently high levels to cause widespread health effects, including hypertension, fertility issues (and subsequent population decline), kidney disease, neural damage, gout, and so forth.

That said, according to archaeologist Janet Montgomery of the University of Durham, bone also absorbs lead and other metals from the soil, so it can be challenging to rule out post-burial contamination as a source for these higher levels of lead. "You do not know if the lead you are measuring [in bone] has accumulated from fairly low level exposure over a long time, or derives from one period of high exposure many years in the past, or something in between," she told Chemistry World.

Archaeologist Kristina Killgrove, writing at Forbes, pointed out there were no lead coffins, or many lead grave goods, at these sites that could have contributed to this kind of contamination. But she did note that it's unclear if skeletons of people who lived in Rome during the same period (as opposed to London) would also show high levels of lead, which requires additional study. "While the question of the effects of lead poisoning on the Roman Empire is far from settled, [this] research adds to the growing body of scientific data drawn from multiple sources that show human-created lead pollution was a serious problem two thousand years ago," Killgrove concluded.

Listing image by iSidhe/iStock/Getty Images

GOING WITH THE FLOW —
Reconstructing Roman industrial engineering
How a special design increased the efficiency of an ancient watermill.

ALICE MCBRIDE - 7/8/2021, 4:45 AM

Enlarge /

 Given the present state of the watermills, reconstructing their operation wasn't simple.

The Colosseum’s arches, the Pantheon’s dome, the Barbegal watermill’s... elbow flumes? Roman architecture is known for elegance and ingenuity. A curious relic, pieced together in a museum basement, shows that Roman design also boosted the efficiency of an ancient industrial complex built to function rather than impress.

The 2nd-century Barbegal watermill complex in southern France was no soaring monument meant to awe the masses. But neither was it a run-of-the-mill mill. It was the most formidable concentration of mechanical power known to have existed in ancient times—an array of 16 waterwheels, capable of grinding an estimated 55,000 pounds of flour on a daily basis.

Getting that array to work effectively required careful engineering thousands of years ago. And in the present day, with the mill complex in ruins, an international team of experts in archaeology, geology, and fluid mechanics was needed to piece together clues to the system of wooden chutes that channeled water efficiently through the complex. The key component the research team uncovered was an oddly shaped water gutter, unique in its design: the elbow flume.
Efficient engineering

Maximizing efficiency in the Barbegal mill complex would have been a tricky conundrum, because it was such an elaborate system. A series of aqueducts brought water from the closest river to the top of the hill into which the mill complex was built. The water then flowed over the waterwheels, which were arranged in two rows of eight running in parallel down the hillside. The waterwheels themselves were set into basins hewed from the rock.

“The mill complex is special,” said Cees Passchier. He’s a lead author on the study as well as a retired professor of structural geology and tectonics at the University of Mainz in Germany. “It is the only example we know of a Roman multi-mill complex. Normally you only find small mills.”

An ordinary mill has a single reservoir. Water from the reservoir runs via a flume to a waterwheel downstream. It’s easy to manipulate the water depth in the reservoir with a dam and a sluice gate. This means the flow of water is already under fine-tuned control before it enters the flume, and the flume itself can be a simple, straight gutter that directs water toward the wheel.Advertisement


But the multitiered Barbegal complex didn’t have a single reservoir. Instead, it had those rows of carved-out basins set in a line running downhill. The basins served a dual purpose: catching the water that fell from one wheel, and simultaneously acting as the source of water for the next wheel in the series. Compared to a single reservoir, the water depth in these basins was harder to control. Passchier and his colleagues think the carefully shaped elbow flume—a roughly seven-foot-long gutter bent up at one end like the tip of a hockey stick—was designed to address this unique challenge.

“No such shapes are known from modern mills or from medieval mills,” Passchier said.
Reconstructing the mill

It almost wasn’t known from the Barbegal mills, either. Of the entire industrial complex, only a skeleton remains. The wooden waterwheels and other pieces of machinery have long since rotted away, leaving the inner workings of the Barbegal mills largely a mystery. But clues to the system remain because the mineral-rich water of the area left something behind: calcium carbonate, an old ally of archaeologists.

“Even though the wood itself was gone, because being organic it was all deteriorated, the mineral deposits—being a hard ceramic, essentially—remained,” said John Lambropoulos, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Rochester, who was not involved in the research.

Enlarge / The Barbegal mill complex was an industrial complex for food production.
Carole Raddato/Musée de l'Arles antique

Over the years, these carbonate deposits had become a stone-like layer built up in the rock basins and molded onto the wooden machinery. When the mill complex was first excavated in the 1930s, some of these carbonate deposits helped researchers make inferences about the internal machinery, like the dimensions and placement of the waterwheels. But many of the carbonate casts were just fragments, broken up in the intervening centuries. Fortunately, even these were saved—dutifully hauled away and stored in the archaeological museum in Arles, the closest city.

“For 80 years, these fragments had been there, somewhere in the giant basement of the museum,” Passchier said. Broken though they were, the carbonate fragments still held the key to the shapes of the wooden machinery they had formed on. Passchier and his colleagues cleaned and organized them. “We found that some fragments fitted together into this elbow shape. And it was clearly part of a water gutter.”Advertisement


To understand where this strange gutter fit into the Barbegal mill complex, the research team looked at the patterns of the carbonate layers—which provide information about how the water flowed—and the dimensions of both the fragments and the mill complex itself. They modeled different possibilities, calculating how the water might have flowed through the mill, and concluded that the elbow-shaped flume had been used to direct water from the basin at the bottom of one waterwheel to the top of the next waterwheel down.

But with the fluctuating water depth of the mill complex’s multiple basins, just directing the water wasn’t enough—the flumes at Barbegal are needed to regulate the flow. The flumes had to be steep, so the water would reach a high speed as it dropped away from the basin, Passchier said. But they also had to be shallow, so the water would fall onto the wheel at the correct angle.

“You cannot have a steep and a shallow gutter at the same time—so the solution is to make the elbow.”
Giving it the elbow

A sharp drop near where the water exited the basin provided the acceleration for a rapid flow. The bend of the elbow then controlled that flow, the water moving nearly horizontally along the flume’s longer leg until it reached the next wheel.

Enlarge / The elbow flume accelerates the water quickly before bringing it over the water wheel through a long, flat stretch.
John Timmer

It was a simple, elegant answer to a complex design puzzle. According to Hubert Chanson, senior professor in hydraulic engineering at the University of Queensland in Australia, it suggests the ancient Romans had a better grasp of fluid mechanics and hydraulic engineering than has sometimes been assumed by scientists and historians.

“[Passchier and his colleagues] are basically proposing an idea that the Romans in fact had some understanding that they could improve their efficiency overall,” said Chanson, who reviewed an early draft of the elbow flume manuscript but was otherwise not involved in the research. “Whether it’s correct, who knows? But certainly it’s a very solid approach.”

In the modern day, the discovery of the elbow flume is unlikely to have much of an impact on current water management—technology has advanced well beyond the scope of the Barbegal mills in the past two millennia. But to Passchier, teasing out the lost workings of ancient technology is worthwhile nonetheless.

“[The elbow flume] is not going to change the way in which we see the world—but there could be other things in archaeology which can help us to find some cheap solutions to problems we have,” Passchier said. “What it shows is that, also in antiquity, people were creative. They had a problem, and they had to find a creative solution.”

Alice McBride is a writer and ecologist from Maine. She is currently pursuing a degree in science writing at MIT.

Listing image by Wikimedia Commons

Barely out of a pandemic, here’s why Jason Kenney’s government is picking a fight with Alberta nurses

By Kieran LeavittEdmonton Bureau
Thu., July 8, 2021

EDMONTON—After 15 long pandemic months during which health-care workers were largely heralded as front-line heroes, the news this week that Alberta wants to roll back wages for nurses landed with a thud.

Premier Jason Kenney’s government is proposing a three per cent wage rollback for nurses as part of long-running and contentious contract negotiations.

Union president Heather Smith calls the move “incredibly insulting” to an “exhausted workforce,” and says her United Nurses of Alberta are getting ready for a potential strike.

So why would a provincial government choose this moment to pick a fight with a group of workers still riding high in ranks of public esteem following an unprecedented health crisis?

Looming large in that conversation are the province’s finances — and Kenney’s political future.

Kenney, during a Thursday news conference, said nurse compensation is, on average, 5.6 per cent higher than the rest of Canada and that “we have a $16-$17 billion deficit.”

“This government is not going to squeeze more money out of taxpayers by raising their taxes to deal with that,” he said, touching on a question ever present in Alberta about whether it should finally introduce a provincial sales tax.

NO THEY WOULD RATHER GIVE OUR TAXES TO THEIR PALS; BIG OIL

“We just need to operate more efficiently.”

The United Conservative government has had its eyes on reining in public-sector spending since it was first elected in 2019. Post-secondary workers and doctors have already faced similar government moves — nurses are just the latest cohort.

One political observer said Kenney is trying to make cuts like it’s the 1990s.

Ralph Klein, the long-serving and storied conservative premier of the province — often invoked by Kenney when he explains his decisions — is partly remembered for cutting public-sector wages and reining in finances during that era.

University of Calgary political science professor Lisa Young says Kenney’s government appears to buy into that ideology.

“There is a view in conservative circles in Alberta that the public sector is compensated in too generous a way, that we pay too much for public services in Alberta and get too little in return,” she said.

However, she called the timing of the proposed wage rollback “politically disastrous.”

Recent polling suggests that if an election were held today, Kenney’s government would at least struggle to hold onto power, if not get beaten by Rachel Notley’s NDP. Many in Alberta have been angry with public-health restrictions, the handling of the pandemic and several ethical faux pas that have plagued the United Conservatives.

Young says Kenney faces a problem of whether to appeal to his base on the right, which could be favourable to public-sector cuts that could help deal with his province’s current deficit, or play to the centre to try and win over voters who could go to the Opposition NDP.

“This is sort of an existential question for this government,” she said.

That said, “in pursuing wage rollbacks, particularly for nurses at this moment, it’s very clear the choice that the government is making. They are choosing to try to win back the supporters on the right flank,” added Young.

“What you end up doing is alienating those probably urban voters who are centrist, who see it as crass and unkind.”

Trevor Tombe, a University of Calgary economist, said Alberta’s health-care spending — it spends about $23 billion a year — is by far its largest line item, much like other provinces, and that wages are largest expense and thus a natural place for a government to look to make cuts.

The previous NDP government also had “difficult negotiations” with public-sector unions while it sought to bar wage increases, Tombe said.

However, “They also didn’t really engage publicly in the overt political way that the current government is doing,” Tombe said. “If things would just be kept at the bargaining table, or if conversations were less confrontational, let’s say, then the level of controversy might be a little bit less.”

Tombe said Alberta “has options” on the revenue and spending side in that it could bring in new taxes or cut program spending.

“The Alberta government has fiscal capacity that is the envy of every other provincial government in the country,” he said.

Smith, the United Nurses of Alberta president, says the government doesn’t have a spending problem at all.

“It is a revenue problem which they want to solve on our backs,” she said.

Negotiations between the union and Kenney’s government, along with the province’s health authority, Alberta Health Services, have been on-and-off for months, but Smith said that “the government is calling the shots” at the table.

“Throughout the pandemic, we have worked with less than adequate staffing, meaning that the staff who are here have had increased demands, forced labour, in effect, mandatory overtime,” she said.

“They’re physically and mentally exhausted and now being told that after all of this, they are actually worth less value to Alberta and Albertans than they were 18 months ago.”

Smith echoed Kenney’s logic around compensating similarly to other provinces: “We are the only province without a sales tax. If we had comparable taxes to other comparators, we wouldn’t even have deficits here.”

Kieran Leavitt is an Edmonton-based political reporter for the Toronto Star. Follow him on Twitter: @kieranleavitt

OPINION
As the heat dome takes lives, Canadian banks must acknowledge their role in climate change

By Ali Wines

Contributor
Fri., July 9, 2021


In the week before Canada Day, over 700 people in British Columbia died in Western Canada’s record-breaking heat wave — triple the number that would normally occur.

In the same period, 10 people in the province died from COVID-19.

Fewer people are being lost to COVID, because we listened to scientists. We saw a disastrous wave cresting and, globally, our full attention and resources were directed to stopping it, by trusting those with the knowledge and expertise to keep us safe. We wore masks, we kept our distance and, after a year of uncertainty, welcomed the astonishing solution of not one but four different vaccines.

We need to treat the climate crisis with the same level of determination as we have the pandemic. Because if this week has taught us nothing else, climate change is a public health emergency. A dire one, and we should be alarmed.

Historically, we have thought of climate change as something that will happen at a distant time in the future, something we can put off worrying about while we address more important issues. It’s seemed, also, to be something that happens, conveniently, somewhere else. The Arctic, or Pakistan, or a tiny Pacific island whose name we don’t know. Yet, here it is — searing our towns with temperatures of over 48 blistering degrees, buckling roads, causing power outages and, tragically, taking lives.


It should now be apparent to all of us that this isn’t something that means pleasantly warmer temperatures and slightly fewer polar bears: the climate crisis threatens our quality of life, and the lives of the most vulnerable Canadians.

The pandemic taught us that global solutions require the collaboration of governments, academia and the private sector. The climate emergency is no different: if we are to prevent disasters like the heat dome, we need to see a level of action from Canada’s corporations that goes well beyond current commitments. First and foremost must be our banks, who currently play an outsize role in funding climate change.


In 2016, Canada joined 197 countries around the world in signing the Paris Agreement. Since then, our Big Five banks have given over $500 billion to fossil fuel projects. That’s equivalent to $1.4 million dollars a day, for the last 1,000 years. Every one of Canada’s major banks is in the top 25 highest funders of fossil fuels globally. At the current rate of financing, it will not be possible to meet our commitments under the Paris Agreement, or halt catastrophic global warming.

Recently, the International Energy Agency (the body oil and gas companies rely on for lobbying and policy guidance) set out a time frame for ending fossil fuel dependence, if we are to keep global heating under the point-of-no-return mark of 1.5 degrees. This included a requirement that new coal, oil and gas projects cease being funded this year.

Canadian banks are lagging their global peers in the move to divest from fossil fuels. In April, 160 financial firms formed the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), spearheaded by Mark Carney, committing to reach net-zero emissions across lending portfolios by 2050. Not one Canadian bank joined.

The risk is not only an environmental and public health one, but an economic one also. As climate policy begins to outpace corporate action, banks risk sitting on billions of dollars of stranded assets that would decimate their bottom line and dramatically impact shareholder value. In fact, the Bank of Canada issued a warning that debt and equity prices for carbon-intensive industries “fail to adequately factor in the risks of climate change, leaving investors exposed to the potential of sudden losses in value.” Many industry experts have noted that the fossil fuel industry is in irreversible decline. TD’s own chief economist, Beata Caranci, recently told the New York Times that “this industry is not going to be turning around.”

That’s why Protect Our Winters (POW) Canada, a non-profit which unites the outdoor community in the fight against climate change, is calling on Canada’s banks to divest from fossil fuels. POW aims to highlight the importance of winter and a stable climate to the well-being of this country. Without a reliable snowpack, industries from tourism to agriculture to shipping face an uncertain future. This year, the Prairies received so little snow that farmers were planting into dust come spring.

While banks fund fossil fuels, they jeopardize the viability of industries that employ millions of Canadians and are critical to GDP. Divestment doesn’t mean abandoning energy workers. It means planning for a transition that supports the well-being — financial, social and physical — of all Canadians, while protecting the climate and wild spaces of this astonishingly beautiful country for future generations.

This year, we listened to the science, and it worked. As deadly heat waves continue to scorch the country, we are asking, will Canada’s Big Five banks take their heads out of the (oil) sand and divest from fossil fuels? Canadian lives are depending on it.

Ali Wines is a Toronto-based writer, communication adviser and a campaign lead for Protect Our Waters Canada.

CHARM, GOODWILL, AND EXECUTIVE ORDERS —

“Bad mergers” and noncompete clauses targeted in Biden executive order

Sweeping order tries to counter rising corporate consolidation.

TIM DE CHANT - 7/9/2021, 10:22 AM

Enlarge
Getty Images | Bloomberg

President Joe Biden announced his anticipated executive order today, and it’s a sweeping document that seeks to counter rising corporate consolidation and foster greater competition in everything from labor markets to mergers, banking, healthcare, device repairs, transportation, broadband, and more.

“For decades, corporate consolidation has been accelerating,” the White House said in a statement. “In over 75 percent of US industries, a smaller number of large companies now control more of the business than they did twenty years ago. This is true across healthcare, financial services, agriculture and more.” (We published a separate article today that dives into the broadband portions of the executive order.)

With the order, Biden appears to be positioning himself as an antitrust champion, name-checking famed trust-buster Teddy Roosevelt. That’s no surprise—his appointment of Lena Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission telegraphed that he would be taking an aggressive approach to consolidation and anticompetitive practices.
Labor market overhaul

Some of the order’s broadest and most immediate effects will be felt in the labor market. Biden encourages the FTC to outright ban or substantially limit noncompete agreements in employee contracts. The practice was once largely limited to top executives who were highly paid and had broad insight into a company’s inner workings, but over the years, it has trickled down to prevent employees in a variety of industries from taking new jobs with competitors, including sub sandwich makers, janitors, and summer camp counselors.

FURTHER READINGSenators propose near-total ban on worker noncompete agreements

The practice also pops up in the tech industry, and while many noncompete clauses may not hold up in court, their presence can have a chilling effect, leading many prospective job seekers and potential employers to err on the side of caution. Some states, like California, refuse to enforce noncompete clauses, and others, like Massachusetts, have enacted legislation recently that prohibits the practice. Congress has attempted to step in, with senators proposing similar bans.

The order also encourages the FTC to use antitrust laws and regulations to prevent employers from collaborating to suppress wages or reduce benefits, which is often done by sharing wage and benefit information with each other. Biden is pushing the FTC to restrict “unnecessary occupational licensing” that can create barriers to entry—sometimes costly ones—for people seeking to enter a new field.Advertisement

Pushing back on platforms

Following the trend of growing antitrust sentiment, particularly of Big Tech, the Biden administration said it would be closely scrutinizing mergers, “especially by dominant Internet platforms, with particular attention to the acquisition of nascent competitors, serial mergers, the accumulation of data, competition by ‘free’ products, and the effect on user privacy.” The order also encourages the FTC to create rules that would regulate the gathering and use of personal information and related data


FURTHER READING  Biden’s right-to-repair order could stop companies from blocking DIY fixes

When the White House previewed the order earlier this week, they said they would be taking steps to give consumers more latitude in how they repair cell phones and tractors, and those steps are present in the new executive order. Though tractors and mobile phones may seem like an odd couple, they’ve both been at the heart of the right-to-repair movement that has sprung up over the last decade. Farmers have been pushing back against EULAs imposed by equipment manufacturers like John Deere that require authorized technicians for repairs. And tech enthusiasts have been lobbying for the ability to execute DIY repairs or to select independent repair shops to fix broken phones and more. This order promises to make right-to-repair more accessible and enforceable.
Other changes

The rest of the order is a bit of a grab bag, covering banking, airlines, and rail transportation, among others. With respect to banks, the White House is encouraging the Department of Justice and other bank regulators to more closely scrutinize mergers, and it's urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to issue rules that will guarantee customers downloadable access to their records.

For airlines, the new order attempts to rein-in fees, which have taken off in the last decade, rising from $1.2 billion in 2007 to over $35 billion in 2018. Airlines will have to clearly disclose baggage, change, and cancellation fees, and they’ll have to refund those fees when services aren’t delivered—if baggage is delayed, for example, or if the in-flight Wi-Fi is broken. Advertisement


Passenger rail also gets a boost under the order. The president, who has been nicknamed “Amtrak Joe,” is pushing the Surface Transportation Board to force freight train companies and other track owners to follow through on the rights of way that passenger trains are supposed to receive. Amtrak, which had typically settled disputes with freight companies quietly, has grown increasingly vocal in recent years about the problems it has had with delays caused by freight trains. By law, Amtrak trains are supposed to be given preference, but in practice, that’s not always the case. Biden’s executive order could help Amtrak get its trains back on time.
“Encouraging” order

Many parts of the executive order “encourage” different agencies to take action. There’s a reason for that—though the document is called an “order,” the president cannot force independent agencies, including the FTC, FCC, and others, to follow his every word. “The executive cannot make an agency do anything, because we do not have a command-and-control government,” Shane Greenstein, a professor at Harvard Business School, told Ars. “The executive branch does not even make the budget. It just proposes one, and Congress takes it apart and makes its own. It can only hire and fire the people at the top of an agency—and even then, its ability to fire is pretty limited.”

“So what does the executive branch have? Its charms and goodwill. Its executive orders,” he added. “Since it is still early in the administration, most political appointees will want to play nice. And in any event, most of them largely agree with the general direction, albeit, perhaps not the details and specifics.”

JAPAN HAS A PLAN TO PROTECT THE OLYMPICS FROM COVID-19. BUT CAN IT PROTECT ITSELF FROM THE OLYMPICS?

Japan Has a Plan to Protect the Olympics From COVID-19. But Can It Protect Itself From the Olympics?


BY AMY GUNIA
JULY 9, 2021 


The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has insisted that the Olympics, which begin in two weeks, will be “safe” from COVID-19. But a fresh surge of virus cases in Japan is casting doubt over just how safe the event will be—particularly for the Japanese people.

On Thursday, the Japanese government imposed a COVID-19 state of emergency on Tokyo just three weeks after lifting restrictions—as daily infections hit a two-month high. The order ensures the entire 2020 Tokyo Olympics will take place with the host city under emergency measures. Authorities also canceled an earlier plan to allow up to 10,000 Japanese spectators at events; athletes will compete in Tokyo without crowds.


Despite the latest COVID-19 countermeasures, and the safety precautions in place for the 60,000 athletes, coaches, journalists and others who will travel to Japan for the Games, health experts—who have been warning with increasing fervor for months about the risks—say that they’re concerned that the Olympics could be the catalyst for a major outbreak across the country.

“Medically speaking, I’m not very worried about the Games per se, particularly for athletes,” says Kentaro Iwata, an infectious disease expert at Japan’s Kobe University. “But it might create the atmosphere to spread the disease all over Japan.”
Concern over the virus remaining inside Olympic bubbles

Olympic organizers have created a playbook of guidelines for those traveling to Japan for the Games, relying on frequent testing, masking wearing, social-distancing measures and requirements to stick to isolation bubbles as much as possible.

IOC president Thomas Bach has assured athletes that they should travel to Tokyo with “full confidence” that the Games will be safe for them and that they will not jeopardize the health of the Japanese people. Bach was upbeat after landing in Tokyo Thursday, the same day the Japanese government announced the state of emergency. “What can I say? Finally we are here,” he said, at a virtual meeting which he attended from his hotel, while isolating. “I have been longing for this day for more than one year.”

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach waves to media as he arrives at an accommodation ahead of the delayed Tokyo Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan on July 8, 2021.
Eugene Hoshiko—Pool/Getty Images

Iwata says the safety measures in place and the fact that athletes are young and healthy—meaning they are less vulnerable to the worst effects of the disease—reduces the COVID-19 risk to people associated with the Games. About 80% of Olympics visitors are also expected to be vaccinated.

But only around 15% of Japan’s population has been fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data. And many of those are people over the age of 65, leaving younger adults susceptible to the virus.

READ MORE: Tokyo’s Plan to Avoid Pandemic Disaster During the Olympics

Olympics-related events have already spread the virus among those helping to run the event. In May, eight people involved in the torch relay were infected with the virus.

Additionally, one of the first teams to arrive in Japan for the Games provided a worrying example of what may lie ahead. On June 19, a Ugandan coach tested positive when he arrived at the Tokyo airport, despite having two negative tests before his flight. Another member of the team tested positive later, leading the quarantine of the entire team—but not before the athletes met with local officials in the town where they were staying. (No local infections have been reported from the encounter.)


Hiroshi Nishiura, an epidemiologist from Kyoto University who is a member of the health ministry’s expert panel on the coronavirus, questions whether the safety measures will prevent cases from being brought into Japan, or stop cases from the community from infiltrating the Olympics COVID-19 bubbles. “It’s terrifying that we experts are still unsure how strict the travel bubbles will be,” he says.
Olympics could spread COVID-19 across Japan

Hitoshi Oshitani, the virologist who helped devise Japan’s COVID-19 strategy, has concerns about hosting tens of thousands of overseas visitors at a time when many countries are battling new surges of the virus. For example, Indonesia is facing its worst outbreak since the pandemic began—recording more than 30,000 new cases per day. A resurgence of COVID-19 in South Africa is driving record numbers of daily cases; almost 23,000 cases were reported on July 8.

He also worries about the risk of athletes from small Pacific island nations, many of which do not have strong health infrastructure and have kept COVID-19 at bay with strict border controls, spreading the virus when they get home. “It’s not definitely not good timing to have this kind of very, very huge global event,” Oshitani says.

But his biggest concern is that the Olympics will transmit the virus across Japan, as volunteers and staff travel to and from Tokyo—where cases are surging—to pull off the event.

Several events will be held outside of Tokyo, like the marathon races and soccer games, which will take place more than 500 miles north of the capital on the island of Hokkaido. Surfing—which will make its debut at this year’s Games—will be held at a break two hours from Tokyo.

So far, strict border controls have allowed Japan to avoid huge surges seen in places like the U.S. and Europe. The country of 126 million people has recorded about 812,000 coronavirus cases, and 15,000 deaths.

In announcing Tokyo’s fourth COVID-19 state of emergency, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said a major motivation was containing the spread of the more infectious Delta variant, which has been on the rise. The state of emergency includes a request for bars and restaurants to stop serving alcohol—in an effort to keep people from celebrating during the Games.


Read More: Australia Is Nearly COVID-19 Free. Tokyo-Bound Olympic Surfers Are Reaping the Benefits

Experts say it will be difficult to convince Japanese people, who are tired of COVID-19 restrictions, to modify their behavior and stay at home during the summer holiday season, while the government plows ahead with plans to host tens of thousands of overseas visitors.

“Many people see this state of emergency as just for the sake of the Olympics,” says Oshitani, “and that is a big challenge for us.”

Many experts say that canceling or postponing the Games remains the safest option. And many Japanese agree. A poll of almost 1,500 people by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper on June 19-20 found that 62% supported another postponement or the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics.

I’m tired of watching the world end. 

It’s time to get radical on the climate crisis


OPINION
By Alyssa Scanga

Contributor
Fri., July 9, 2021

The all-time heat record in Canada was shattered three days in a row by Lytton, a small town in British Columbia. That town is now mostly gone, burned to the ground.

Raging across the province are wildfires so large that they are producing their own lightning. Hundreds of people died in a heat wave where temperatures reached 25°C above average. A drought-induced famine in Madagascar threatens over one million people with starvation. A pipeline spill in the Gulf of Mexico resulted in the literal ocean burning like the Eye of Sauron. In June, ground temperatures in Arctic Siberia topped 48°C, and earlier this year the warming Arctic destabilized the polar vortex and resulted in a Texas deep freeze.

Every morning I wake up and watch the world end.

I’m aware this seems melodramatic. However, it’s the cold, hard truth. We use the phrases “climate crisis” and “climate emergency” not because we wish to ignite fear, but because they are accurate.

I was born into a world facing an existential crisis. And yet, I’m one of the lucky ones. My life has been touched by the climate crisis, as all of ours have. But it has not ended because of it, and for that I am more fortunate than many.


I feel the heat and check the air quality each day, planning my life around when the world is most hospitable for my disabled body. For breakfast I consume toast with jam and an endless stream of news about the latest climate disaster. I read the latest press releases, promising action on climate — in 30 years. (Meanwhile, those in charge subsidize fossil fuels, chop down the last old-growth forests in the country and call themselves climate leaders.) I play political whack-a-mole: every time we manage to smack down one short-sighted, environmentally destructive project, two more pop up to take their place.

I am fighting with adults — adults who are supposed to protect me — for the right to not die. I am nineteen and I am so, so tired.

I’m not going to bother re-explaining climate science here, for two main reasons. One, people much smarter than me have already devoted their lives to exactly that. If you are still denying the reality of anthropogenic climate change, my small article won’t change your mind. Two, doing so would legitimize the idea that climate science is up for debate. This is an op-ed, but climate science is not my opinion. It is a fact, and thinking otherwise is extremely dangerous.

Being confronted with disaster and then being expected to go to class like nothing’s wrong does something to you. When people praise individual action and applaud incremental change nowhere near enough to save us from climate disaster, I feel it in my chest like an ache. We as a society know what must be done to mitigate and adapt to this crisis. The fact that we refuse to do so is a betrayal of the highest order.

Too often, the steps we must take to curb the climate crisis are dismissed as too radical, too costly, too inconvenient. Compared to what? Is making ecocide an international crime more radical than allowing the ocean to catch fire because it’s profitable for Big Oil? Is stopping fossil fuel subsidies more radical than logging 2,000-year-old cedars on Vancouver Island? Is investing in a just transition to a sustainable economy for all workers more radical than bulldozing sacred sites and forcing oil pipelines through Indigenous burial grounds at gunpoint?

If so, then I suppose I am radical — and you should be too.

The word radical is derived from Latin and means “of or pertaining to the root.” For change to be radical, it needs to tackle a problem at the root, the very thing causing the crisis. It doesn’t matter with how much care you prune its branches — a tree without roots will blow over the second the wind blows. All the tree planting and carbon offsetting in the world won’t fix the fact that fossil fuel dependency is rapidly destabilizing the Earth’s climate.


World leaders, we are begging you to dig deep and pursue real solutions. Solutions that align with the best available science, hold Big Oil accountable for their deceit and greed, remove systemic inequalities and prioritize Indigenous liberation.


Let’s get radical.

Alyssa Scanga is an organizer with Climate Justice Durham and Climate Strike Canada. She studies environmental science at Trent University.