WALES

Our agreement with Plaid Cymru will help deliver a radical socialist agenda

Mick Antoniw

Welsh Labour Party

The Welsh parliament elections delivered an equal best ever result for Welsh Labour. Contrary to all expectations, and in sharp contrast to local elections in many parts of England, Welsh Labour increased the number of seats held to 30, exactly half the total in the Senedd, enabling it to form another Welsh Labour government.

Labour has now been in power in Wales for over 20 years and for the entirety of devolution. It is a remarkable success story and Mark Drakeford has become the most well-known and popular Welsh politician in recent generations. With an electoral system consisting of 40 constituency seats elected by first-past-the-post and a further 20 seats elected via a proportional top-up system (as is also the case in Scotland), it is virtually impossible for a political party to win an outright majority.

Welsh Labour has won every election since 1999 but has always depended on support from another political party in order to govern. This has normally been in the form of some sort of partnership agreement with the Lib Dems or, as in 2007 when Labour went down to 26 seats, a formal ‘One Wales’ coalition with Plaid Cymru – and the compact with them in 2016 that secured a Labour First Minister with an agreed policy and legislative programme for 18 months.

It should therefore come as no surprise that cooperation talks with Plaid Cymru have taken place and have now delivered an agreement. It is not a coalition and it is very different to the agreement between the SNP in Scotland and the Greens, where they have been given two ministerial positions. There will be no Plaid Cymru ministers.

Instead, it is a cooperation agreement, based on the common policy commitments of both Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru, to work together for the people of Wales to deliver on the progressive policies both parties have promised in their manifestoes. It will be facilitated by access to the civil service in appropriate areas, joint working and the appointment by the First Minister of two special advisers to assist. It will be a different way of working collaboratively on the areas of the agreement, but formal portfolio responsibilities will remain with government ministers.

Political cooperation in Wales has changed over the past two decades, and for the better. When the people of Wales voted a quarter of a century ago for self government, they were promised a new type of progressive politics – a democracy and government that would work inclusively and cooperatively. This agreement is the latest fulfilment of this progressive political transition.

During the Tony Blair years, Welsh Labour adopted a ‘clear red water’ identity to distinguish its more overtly socialist agenda from the direction of the party in England. The manifesto on which Welsh Labour was elected in May of this year is no less progressive and has continued the tradition of a radical Welsh socialist agenda on issues attuned with the aspiration and identity of Welsh communities, many of whom have suffered from Tory austerity and welfare cuts and are also still recovering from the impact of the Tory policies of the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher and deindustrialisation.

The agreement builds on that manifesto and will enable it to be delivered, as it will for parts of the Plaid Cymru manifesto. It commits to working together to deliver a number of radical policies that would take pride of place in any Labour manifesto. Extending free school meals to all primary school pupils with the commitment that no child should go hungry. Extending childcare to all two-year-olds and strengthening  Welsh medium childcare. Joint work will be undertaken to establish a national care service, free at the point of need, with progress towards a better integrated health and social care system and work towards parity of recognition and reward of health and care workers.

Action will be taken to address the proliferation of second homes and the issue of unaffordable housing with a commitment to a white paper to establish a right to adequate housing, fair rents and an end to homelessness. As well as the policy agenda, the agreement will facilitate the Welsh government’s own legislative programme in these and other areas and, importantly, will enable a smooth three-year budgetary process.

The alternative is a government that would otherwise have to devote much of its time to negotiating and arguing, line by line, all its key legislation and a budgetary process where there could be no certainty from one year to the next.

At a time when devolution is under assault from a right-wing centralising government and a three-year austerity financial settlement, which will leave Wales £3bn worse off in real terms by 2024 than it was in 2010, the agreement will enable the Welsh government and the Senedd to focus on protecting and improving services, tackling poverty and improving the quality of life of our communities. It will provide an example of progressive government and an alternative to the sleazy, right-wing politics of the Tories in Westminster.

The agreement does not end scrutiny and challenge to the Welsh government. That will continue. Welsh Labour will continue with its other manifesto commitments in respect of radical electoral reform, public ownership of Welsh railways, the constitutional commission that has been set up, the social partnership bill and our commitment to legislate in areas of clean air, single use plastic and environmental protection.

The agreement will require trust and goodwill from both parties, and it will not always be easy. The temptation for both to resort to the political comfort of division and conflict is always there. But, as we work together to get through the pandemic, seek to rebuild our economy and deliver social justice, the prize is too great to fail. The overwhelming endorsement of the Welsh Labour executive committee and the national executive of Plaid Cymru is confirmation of this. We know we can make this work. We have done it before and we can do it again.

As the only current bastion of Labour parliamentary government in the UK, this agreement to work together, to take Wales forward, is the best and most effective way of delivering the progressive policies and services the people expect from a Welsh Labour government.

Mick Antoniw

Mick Antoniw is the Welsh parliament member for Pontypridd and chair of the legislation, justice and constitution committee of the Welsh parliament.

Giant 'toothed' birds flew over Antarctica 40 million to 50 million years ago


Peter A. Kloess, Doctoral Candidate, Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley
Sun, November 21, 2021, 

Picture Antarctica today and what comes to mind? Large ice floes bobbing in the Southern Ocean? Maybe a remote outpost populated with scientists from around the world? Or perhaps colonies of penguins puttering amid vast open tracts of snow?

Fossils from Seymour Island, just off the Antarctic Peninsula, are painting a very different picture of what Antarctica looked like 40 to 50 million years ago – a time when the ecosystem was lusher and more diverse. Fossils of frogs and plants such as ferns and conifers indicate Seymour Island was much warmer and less icy, while fossil remains from marsupials and distant relatives of armadillos and anteaters hint at the previous connections between Antarctica and other continents in the Southern Hemisphere.

There were also birds. Penguins were present then, as they are now, but fossil relatives of ducks, falcons and albatrosses have also been found in Antarctica. My colleagues and I published an article in 2020 revealing new information about the fossil group that would have dwarfed all the other birds on Seymour Island: the pelagornithids, or “bony-toothed” birds.

Giants of the sky

As their name suggests, these ancient birds had sharp, bony spikes protruding from sawlike jaws. Resembling teeth, these spikes would have helped them catch squid or fish. We also studied another remarkable feature of the pelagornithids – their imposing size.

The largest flying bird alive today is the wandering albatross, which has a wingspan that reaches 11 ½ feet. The Antarctic pelagornithids fossils we studied have a wingspan nearly double that – about 21 feet across. If you tipped a two-story building on its side, that’s about 20 feet.

Across Earth’s history, very few groups of vertebrates have achieved powered flight – and only two reached truly giant sizes: birds and a group of reptiles called pterosaurs.

A model of an enormous prehistoric bird is mounted outdoor in the middle of a river. The wingspan reaches from bank to bank.

Pterosaurs ruled the skies during the Mesozoic Era (252 million to 66 million years ago), the same period that dinosaurs roamed the planet, and they reached hard-to-believe dimensions. Quetzalcoatlus stood 16 feet tall and had a colossal 33-foot wingspan.
Birds get their opportunity

Birds originated while dinosaurs and pterosaurs were still roaming the planet. But when an asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, dinosaurs and pterosaurs both perished. Some select birds survived, though. These survivors diversified into the thousands of bird species alive today. Pelagornithids evolved in the period right after dinosaur and pterosaur extinction, when competition for food was lessened.

The earliest pelagornithid remains, recovered from 62-million-year-old sediments in New Zealand, were about the size of modern gulls. The first giant pelagornithids, the ones in our study, took flight over Antarctica about 10 million years later, in a period called the Eocene Epoch (56 million to 33.9 million years ago). In addition to these specimens, fossilized remains from other pelagornithids have been found on every continent.

Pelagornithids lasted for about 60 million years before going extinct just before the Pleistocene Epoch (2.5 million to 11,700 years ago). No one knows exactly why, though, because few fossil records have been recovered from the period at the end of their reign. Some paleontologists cite climate change as a possible factor.
Piecing it together

The fossils we studied are fragments of whole bones collected by paleontologists from the University of California at Riverside in the 1980s. In 2003, the specimens were transferred to Berkeley, where they now reside in the University of California Museum of Paleontology.

There isn’t enough material from Antarctica to rebuild an entire skeleton, but by comparing the fossil fragments with similar elements from more complete individuals, we were able to assess their size.

Photo of a fossil fragment of a jawbone section that has worn toothlike projections. Line drawing around it illustrates where in the jaw it would have fit.

We estimate the pelagornithid’s skull would have been about 2 feet long. A fragment of one bird’s lower jaw preserves some of the “pseudoteeth” that would have each measured up to an inch tall. The spacing of those “teeth” and other measurements of the jaw show this fragment came from an individual as big as, if not bigger than, the largest known pelagornithids.

Further evidence of the size of these Antarctic birds comes from a second pelagornithid fossil, from a different location on Seymour Island. A section of a foot bone, called a tarsometatarsus, is the largest specimen known for the entire extinct group.

These pelagornithid fossil findings emphasize the importance of natural history collections. Successful field expeditions result in a wealth of material brought back to a museum or repository – but the time required to prepare, study and publish on fossils means these institutions typically hold many more specimens than they can display. Important discoveries can be made by collecting specimens on expeditions in remote locations, no doubt. But equally important discoveries can be made by simply processing the backlog of specimens already on hand.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Peter A. Kloess, University of California, Berkeley.

Read more:

Ancient bird skull found in amber was tiny predator in the time of giant dinosaurs


What makes some species more likely to go extinct?


Emperor Penguins could march to extinction if nations fail to halt climate change

Peter A. Kloess does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Electric vehicles won't save us — we need to get rid of cars completely


Paris Marx
Sat., November 20, 2021

Electrifying heavy cars like trucks and SUVs causes other issues like air pollution and traffic deaths.Insider


World leaders are focusing on electric vehicles to reduce emissions and combat the climate crisis.


But electrifying vehicles is simply not enough — especially given their large production footprint.


To really make a difference, we need smaller cars, less cars, and more transportation alternatives.


Paris Marx is the host of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast and author of the forthcoming book, Road to Nowhere, about the problems with Silicon Valley's future of transportation.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

Climate change is happening now. Wildfires are getting worse, flooding more common, hurricanes more powerful, and heat waves more deadly. Yet when world leaders met in Glasgow earlier this month, their proposals still had the world on track for 2.4 degrees Celsius of warming — far above the 1.5-degree target. Governments aren't doing enough, but they are beginning to take action, and many are focusing on the opportunity offered by electric vehicles.

Transportation accounts for 29% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and more than half of that comes from passenger vehicles. Since taking office in January, the Biden administration has taken steps toward electrification, but also failed to sign onto a pledge announced at COP26 to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles by 2040.

Electric vehicles are one piece of a strategy to slash transport emissions, but they tend to receive far more attention than proposals to cut car use. The electrification of transportation is essential — there is no doubt about that — but just replacing every personal vehicle with a battery-powered equivalent will produce an environmental disaster of its own. Such a strategy also denies us the opportunity to rethink a near-century of misguided auto-oriented city planning.

SUVs make the problem worse

Since the 1990s, SUVs have gone from being a niche vehicle segment to nearly half of new vehicle sales in the United States. When you add in vans and pickup trucks, that number rises to more than 70% of the market. These large vehicles now dominate North American roads, despite the fact that they're at least twice as likely to kill pedestrians, have contributed to a 30% increase in pedestrian deaths from 2000 to 2019, and make it harder to cut the carbon emitted from transportation.

While fuel economy standards have improved over time, the shift from sedans to SUVs and trucks has partially offset the emissions reductions that should have accompanied those improvements. Plus, when you look at the global picture, SUV sales have also taken off to such a degree that they were the second largest contributor to the increase in global emissions from 2010 to 2018. The commonly stated solution to this problem is not to address the growing size of vehicles or the mass ownership of personal vehicles of any kind, but simply to electrify them. That isn't good enough.

The focus on tailpipe emissions misses the bigger picture, and at a moment when we can see the complex, global nature of supply chains in our everyday lives, we need to think beyond such a limited framing of electric vehicles' environmental impact.

For example, particulate matter created from tire, brake, and road wear, as well as the dust kicked up by cars on the road, does not fuel climate change, but it does create air pollution that's harmful to human health. In the United States, these pollutants are responsible for about 53,000 premature deaths each year, and heavier electric vehicles like SUVs and trucks could actually generate more particulate matter than lighter, non-electric cars.

Yet while health effects are important, the biggest concern is the minerals that are required to make the batteries that power electric vehicles and the mining that has to happen to extract them. It's a reality that seriously dirties their green image, and shows the "zero emissions" branding simply isn't accurate.

The mining behind electric vehicles

Ahead of COP26, the International Energy Agency released its latest World Energy Outlook that estimated achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 will require six times more minerals by mid-century than is necessary today. Yet the majority of those minerals are required for electric vehicles and storage, whose mineral demand is projected to increase by "well over 50 times by 2050" as the demand for batteries to power them grows substantially. As a result, the United States is assessing its own mineral supply chains and working with Canada to expand mining activities to supply battery makers. But all that mining comes with consequences.

In North America, mining activities tend to be located near rural communities or Indigenous lands where the mines face growing opposition over their environmental impacts and the threat they pose to the lives and livelihoods of locals. Canada also isn't free of such concerns; lithium mines in Quebec have already been responsible for environmental accidents, and Indigenous opposition to mining projects is growing.

That's because these mines harm the surrounding environment, use excess amounts of water, and create significant amounts of waste, but they also have consequences for workers and nearby communities who often suffer from much higher rates of illness. In some countries, a more organized opposition to mining activities is forming, including groups in Latin America that call it a form of green extractivism where people and ecosystems are sacrificed in the name of the climate crisis. As plans to extract more minerals escalate, the backlash will only grow, both at home and abroad.

We need to reduce car use

Electric vehicles tend to be more environmentally friendly than those powered by gas or diesel, but they still have a significant footprint of their own that primarily occurs in the production stage rather than during their use. As long as an electric vehicle replaces all the trips a conventional vehicle might take, it will typically produce fewer emissions over its lifetime within a few years. But we need to ensure we're not being misled by industry players that have an incentive to greenwash products that don't do nearly enough to address the problem.

On top of the issues with mining and large vehicle pollution, continuing to have communities built around the assumption that everyone will drive simply isn't sustainable. The automotive industry wants us to replace the vehicle fleet with battery-powered alternatives because they'll make a lot of money in the process, but it's not the best path for the environment, nor for our communities.

As leaders at COP26 were focused on electric vehicles, a network of mayors and the International Transport Workers' Federation released a report arguing that public transit use needs to double by 2030 in order to meet emissions targets. Making transit available within a 10-minute walk of people's homes would not only encourage its use and create tens of millions of jobs, but could begin to transform our relationship to mobility.

There was a moment during the pandemic where it felt that change was not only possible, but was happening in front of our very eyes. Streets were closed to vehicles so people had space to move, and temporary bike lanes were thrown up to encourage cycling. In some cities, those efforts were expanded as the worst of the pandemic lifted so people could leave their cars at home and commit to using bikes or transit. But in other cities, the push to go "back to normal" swept away those spaces, and the SUVs returned.

We should seize this opportunity to challenge the past century of auto-oriented planning and emphasize walking, cycling, and transit use over driving. Not only would people's quality of life improve, but if we're serious about taking on the climate crisis, we need to significantly reduce the number of cars and SUVs on the road — regardless of what powers them.

Sinopec Unveils New Tech For Low-Carbon Petrochemical Production

Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, November 20, 2021,

China's Sinopec has developed a steam-cracking technology to convert oil directly into high-demand petrochemical products such as ethylene and propylene, cutting costs and production times as well as significantly reducing carbon emissions. Could this be the low-carbon answer to petrochemical production, as the global need for these products keeps increasing even as demand for crude wanes?

The China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, or Sinopec, announced this month that is has successfully tested its project, the "Technological Development and Industrial Application of Light Crude Oil Cracking into Ethylene". Through the ‘crude to chemicals’ development, Sinopec hopes to expand China’s petrochemical industry as well as achieving low-carbon operations objectives. This is the first example of successful steam cracking technology in China, with ExxonMobil being the only company in the world to have accomplished the industrial application of steam-cracking technology. Sinopec is currently in the process of applying for domestic and international patents for the technology.

Steam cracking works by skipping the standard crude oil refining process by instead converting the crude directly into chemical products, saving time and resources, and decreasing the release of carbon emissions from the method thanks to the reduced energy consumption required to fuel the process. The new technology is expected to produce almost 500,000 tonnes of chemical products, 400,000 tonnes of which are high-value ethylene, propylene, light aromatics, and hydrogen, from 1 million tonnes of crude oil.

But it’s not just China that is making advances in the crude to chemicals area, as Saudi’s Aramco has also outlined similar plans for converting crude oil to light olefins, such as ethylene and propylene, using a single-reactor system instead of steam cracking. Aramco is working with researchers from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) to develop the technology, investing heavily in the project as demand for petrochemicals is expected to continue rising while demand for traditional fuel decreases in the face of renewable energy developments. Petrochemicals could provide a much-needed use for crude in a world that’s slowly turning its back on fossil fuels.

KAUST Professor of Chemical Engineering and Director of the KAUST Catalysis Centre, Jorge Gascon explains the development. "Altogether, our results demonstrate that the search for alternative reactor-engineering concepts, when accompanied by complementary multifunctional catalyst development, is worth exploring for process intensification." "This new process has the potential to reduce the need for distillation and steam cracking units," he added.

As part of its aim for net-zero carbon emissions by 2060, Saudi Arabia hopes to use carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology as well as low-carbon oil production to support the ongoing expansion of its oil and gas industry. Saudi’s petrochemical company Sabic hopes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2030, on 2018 figures. The development of CCS technology to convert carbon into grey hydrogen, as well as the development of cleaner green hydrogen projects, will support this objective.

Thailand is also making strides in its low-carbon petrochemical development. This month, PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC), the country’s largest petrochemical company, announced plans to invest up to $25 billion to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, hoping to make emissions reductions of 20 percent by 2030.

PTTGC will no longer be building new plants in Thailand but will focus on de-bottlenecking existing operations, enhancing digital technology across the firm, and reducing feedstock consumption to improve output. PTTGC is already investing in CCS technology but greater funding towards new crude to chemical technologies could significantly improve the company’s petrochemical operations while supporting its goal of net-zero.

With analysts predicting petrochemicals will be the big winner in the coming decades, particularly when it comes to the ongoing use of fossil fuels, it’s no surprise several countries are competing for their piece of the pie. Coming out the other side of oil’s toughest year, it surprised many to see that petrochemical company revenues bounced back in the third and fourth quarters of 2020, going on to make profits throughout 2021. This is largely because of the increased demand for consumer packaging, cleaning and hygiene products, and personal protective equipment, requiring ethylene, polyethylene, and polypropylene as part of the manufacturing processes.

Thanks to an increased demand for products requiring petrochemicals, including industrial applications such as construction, automotive, aviation, food, electrical, paint and coatings, and paper, the global petrochemical market could achieve a CAGR of 5.1 percent between 2021 and 2030. The current value of the worldwide petrochemical market was estimated at around $452.9 billion in 2020, a figure that could increase to $729 billion by 2030 if the current trend continues.

With a strong outlook for the petrochemical market and the potential to develop low-carbon petrochemical production methods, on top of low-carbon oil production supported by CCS technologies, energy firms and governments around the world are racing to establish a strong, low-carbon petrochemical portfolio to position themselves securely in the international market as demand climbs.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

Marchers across France decry violence against women

Sat., November 20, 2021


PARIS (AP) — Tens of thousands of protesters marched Saturday through Paris and other French cities to demand more government action to prevent violence against women. The demonstrations come amid growing outrage in France over women killed by their partners and as French women are increasingly speaking out about sexual harassment and abuse.

Protesters marched in Paris behind a large banner saying “Stop sexist and sexual violence.”

“We are always putting the blame on the women," Parisian demonstrator Ghislaine Gireire-Revalier said, expressing sympathy for women who are trapped in violent domestic situations. "What we forget is the phenomenon of being in one’s grip ... little by little it’s like a spider that surrounds you in its web.”

Groups fighting violence against women said at least 101 women have been killed by their partner or ex-partner in France so far this year — about one woman every three days. More than 220,000 women are suffering physical or sexual abuse by their partner each year, according to a 2017 nationwide study.

Activists are urging President Emmanuel Macron's government to dedicate 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) each year to fight violence against women, instead of 360 million ($406 million) spent now, in part to create more shelters.

Demonstrator Meryll Le Goff said “there are measures that have been put into effect like the telephone for those in serious danger,” a special phone with a button to push to alert police. Over 2,500 such phones were being deployed in the country in September, the Justice Ministry said.

“But there aren’t enough for everyone," Le Goff said. "Measures half done, men who are detained temporarily or even imprisoned but are eventually released without any measures that follow ... that's the problem.”

The protests are part of a week of global actions marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

The Associated Press

AOC says it will be 'difficult' for Democratic leaders 'to get votes on anything moving forward' if the Build Back Better Act doesn't pass soon


John L. Dorman
Sun., November 21, 2021,

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) speaks during an event outside of Union Station in Washington, DC, on June 16, 2021.Win McNamee/Getty Images

AOC said that party leaders will have a tough time corralling votes if reconciliation doesn't pass soon.

The congresswoman told the NYT that the process for passing Build Back Better has been "demoralizing for a lot of folks."

The House voted to advance the reconciliation bill, but it faces uncertainty in the Senate.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview published on Sunday that Democrats need to pass their nearly $2 trillion social-spending bill quickly or progressives may not provide the votes for passage of other pieces of legislation.

Speaking with The New York Times, Ocasio-Cortez, who voted against the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill recently passed by the House, and who was deeply critical of the way in which the legislation was handled, said that a lot is riding on President Joe Biden's reconciliation bill being signed into law.

"I think the stakes are really, really high," the New York Democrat said. "The entire reason that the Progressive Caucus gave their votes [for the infrastructure bill] was based on direct promises from the president, as well as direct promises from more conservative Democratic holdouts. And from House leadership as well."

"So if those promises don't follow through, it's going to be very, very difficult for them to get votes on anything moving forward, because the trust that was already so delicate will have been broken," she told the newspaper.

The House on Friday voted to advance the reconciliation bill, a key win for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, but it still faces a vote in the evenly-split Senate.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has not yet committed to supporting the final bill, has expressed concerns about inflation and paid-leave provisions, which could dampen hopes for swift passage of the legislation.

Ocasio-Cortez, one of the highest-profile progressive lawmakers in Congress, also said if the Build Back Better Act is passed in its final form and is similar to the version advanced by the House, then members "have a shot to go back to our communities and say we delivered."

"But that's not to say that this process has not been demoralizing for a lot of folks, because there were enormous promises made. Not just at the beginning, and not just during the election, but that continued to be made," she said.

"And this is where I have sounded the alarm, because what really dampens turnout is when Democrats make promises that they don't keep," she added.

The congresswoman, who laid out her "trust" issues with the handling of the bipartisan bill earlier this month, said during her interview with The Times that she thinks the party must be attentive to passing substantive legislation.

"With the bipartisan infrastructure plan, there's all of these headlines going around. And I understand the political importance of making a victory lap," she said.

"But I think that the worst and most vulnerable position we could be in is to over-promise and under-deliver," she added.

AOC says progressives' help was not wanted in the Virginia governor race, which the GOP won: 'Not a single person asked me to send an email'


Kelsey Vlamis
Sun., November 21, 2021

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).Mario Tama/Getty Images


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said her help wasn't wanted in the high-stakes Virginia governor race.


Republican Glenn Youngkin won the race, which some considered a test of the Democrats' strength.


"I think it's just sad. I think it was a mistake," Ocasio-Cortez told The New York Times.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said her help was not enlisted in the high-stakes Virginia gubernatorial race this month, which Democrat Terry McAuliffe lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin.

"Before the Virginia elections, it was very clear that our help and our participation was not wanted or asked for, which is fine," the progressive New York congresswoman told The New York Times in an interview published Sunday.

She said some House members with close relationships to their political base are viewed as a "liability," presumably referring to progressive Democrats who centrists have argued actually hurt the party.

"I think it's just sad. I think it was a mistake," she said. "And we saw a big youth turnout collapse. Not a single person asked me to send an email, not even to my own list."

She continued: "And then they turn around and say, 'It's their fault.' When I think it was communicated quite expressly that we were unwelcome to pitch in."

Some centrist Democrats have blamed progressive messaging, such as defunding the police, for electoral losses. Meanwhile, progressives have argued centrists aren't doing enough on-the-ground, grassroots campaigning.

The Virginia governor's race was seen as the biggest test of President Joe Biden and the Democratic party's strength since winning back the White House in November 2020 and the Senate in January.

Ocasio-Cortez also told The Times that trust between progressive and centrist Democrats will be totally broken if the $2 trillion social-spending bill does not pass.

Canadian steelmakers embrace 'green steel' as carbon taxes set to rise

Sun., November 21, 2021


TORONTO — The steel industry is at a crossroads, with government policies like carbon pricing designed to combat climate change hitting manufacturers' bottom lines and international pledges likely to seek further concessions from companies that burn fossil fuels.

And the chief executive of Algoma Steel is hoping the company's costly investment to make "green steel" will help to insulate it from the kinds of sector-wide downturns that previously threw it into bankruptcies.

"I would never say never, but we are certainly doing everything in our power to certainly minimize, if not eliminate that risk," says chief executive Michael McQuade, who has plans to reduce the company's carbon emissions by about 70 per cent..

Canada's steel industry is currently in a position of strength as the economy recovers from a COVID-19 pandemic that diminished demand and having emerged in 2019 from a period of punishing tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.

The $15 billion industry produces about 13 million tonnes of primary steel, steel pipe and tube products in more than 30 facilities in five provinces.

Profits are soaring as production destined primarily for sale in Canada and the U.S. fetches elevated prices amid strong demand from an uptick in oil drilling and infrastructure spending. That has not always been the case as rivals have previously flooded the market when transportation costs were lower, sending the commodity price of the metal lower.

Algoma is taking advantage of the current situation to pursue initiatives it says will position it as a low-cost producer in the future.

Just three months after again becoming a public company and three years after emerging from court protection from creditors, the largest employer in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., announced a $703-million plan to go electric by converting its greenhouse-gas spewing blast furnace to an electric arc furnace.

The move, supported by $420-million from the federal government and US$306 million from its merger with Legato, would reduce the 120-year-old company's carbon emissions by about 70 per cent.

The new furnace would primarily convert scrap metal into molten steel using Ontario's electricity grid, which is largely sourced from non-fossil fuel sources.

McQuade said the electric arc furnace is a proven technology that would allow Algoma to adjust output to market demand, something that is not easily achievable with traditional blast furnaces that heat iron ore with coking coal at high temperatures. Its annual capacity would also increase more than 50 per cent to 3.7 million tonnes from its current capacity of 2.4 to 2.5 million tonnes.

A big driver for this conversion is planned increases to carbon pricing by the federal government to spur a reduction in Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon prices are set to rise to about $170 per ton of carbon dioxide by 2030 from $40 currently.

Spending more now to go electric instead of relining its blast furnace would save carbon costs, improve its ESG profile and become a supplier of choice, he said.

Still, the move to electric arc furnaces isn't without concern in the border city where generations of workers have been employed at the plant.

Suspicions have surfaced among local workers that the new technology will further cut employment, which has dipped to 2,500 because of automation. In Canada, direct employment in the steel sector has declined by more than half since the 1970s and stands at about 22,000, from 35,000 in 1990.

"It's possible that there will be very little impact if they do it properly. The problem was that they didn't consult with us, and so there's just a lot of fear among workers, like am I going to lose my job," said Meg Gingrich, assistant to United Steelworkers Canada national director Ken Neumann.

McQuade won't say how many positions will ultimately be shed but he notes hundreds of employees are eligible for retirement. He said the company has been transparent about why the conversion is needed and noted there would be a hybrid phase in which the existing and new technologies will run together and may take until 2029 for a full transition to occur.

Canada's second-largest steelmaker isn't alone as the industry adjusts to what McQuade describes as a new paradigm.

The federal government is also tapping into an $8-billion program supporting industrial decarbonization by investing $400 million in ArcelorMittal Dofasco, which is pursuing a $1.7 billion project to phase out coal-fired steelmaking at its facilities.

Canada's largest producer of flat-rolled steel and the largest private-sector employer in Hamilton said the project would reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by up to three million tonnes per year by 2030.

Canada's steelmakers are already among the greenest in the world but the industry is striving to become net zero by 2050 when global demand is expected to soar by more than a third from current levels. The steel industry is currently estimated to account for about seven per cent of the world's carbon emissions.

"When you have 16 million tons of CO2 emissions per year and $170 carbon price coming at you we know we need to address it," said Catherine Cobden, president and CEO of the Canadian Steel Producers Association.

She said the two conversion projects are part of a journey to net zero that is not going to be easy.

"I think for us it's almost existential. We're living in a country that has got significant climate objectives and strong regulatory and carbon pricing mechanisms to back those objectives."

Cobden said achieving net zero is going to require a lot of investment and additional policy support from government. That includes procurement requirements that support the purchase of low carbon steel and stimulate the transformation even further, she said.

At the recent COP26 environmental summit in Scotland, Canada signed on to the Industrial Deep Decarbonization Initiative, whereby countries would require green factors to be considered for the purchase of materials, including steel.

The United States and the European Union also recently announced a commitment to negotiate the world’s first carbon-based sectoral arrangement on steel and aluminum trade by 2024. The deal, which would be open to other interested countries, would restrict access to their markets for dirty steel and limit access to countries — namely China — that dump steel and contribute to worldwide oversupply.

A carbon-based arrangement is expected to drive investment in green steel production while the new US$1-trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal in the United States holds promise of increased demand for years to come, provided there are no limitations on free trade, said Cobden.

Steel producers currently don't receive a price premium for lower carbon steel but tighter procurement rules could boost demand for it, said Sarah Petrevan, policy director Clean Energy Canada, a think-tank based out of Simon Fraser University.

"Certainly as the market becomes more and more competitive there might be a premium offered to who could ever produce the cleanest at the highest quality," she said in an interview.

Achieving net zero will require the adoption of different clean technologies, particularly the use of green hydrogen, that is at the early stage of technology readiness, Petrevan said.

"Right now, some of those technologies that the steel industry need are not commercially available or they're commercially available, but they're not commercialized to a point where they're readily affordable."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 21, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:ASTL)

Ross Marowits, The Canadian Press

Effects of extreme heat on farmworkers in the Coachella Valley expose the 'climate gap'

Carmen Valencia

·Producer

Tue, November 16, 2021, 

Nomei Solórzano and her husband are agriculture workers in the Coachella Valley, a rift valley in the Colorado Desert, east of Los Angeles. Solórzano’s husband immigrated to the United States from El Salvador as a teenager, and she decided to leave Mexico to follow her father’s footsteps to work the fields in California. Both work from sunrise to sunset, barely scraping by, while raising three children.

In recent years, Solórzano told Yahoo News, the “American dream” she and her husband have worked hard for was starting to come with a heavy price. As both already work in dangerous conditions such as extreme heat, the record-breaking heat waves the region is experiencing have made the working conditions much more difficult.

For residents in the eastern Coachella Valley, a rural area in Riverside County, Calif., the rapid increase in extreme heat is causing farmworkers to become ill and even costing some their lives.

Agricultural fields in the Coachella Valley and the Salton Sea, California's largest inland lake, where severe drought has exacerbated conditions in an area already in decline, in Mecca, Calif., July 4. (Aude Guerrucci/Reuters)

“About a month ago the power went out for three days, we had no electricity during the summer, it was really hot inside the house, there was a lot of humidity. I had a refrigerator that was pretty old, it broke down because of the blackouts, so all of the food I had just bought got spoiled. We couldn’t be in the house during that time, it was really hot. It felt like an oven,” Solórzano said, speaking in Spanish.

“The Coachella Valley is at the forefront of this climate crisis, but at the same time it’s not the only area that’s dealing with these issues,” said Omar Gastelum, a policy advocate with the Coachella Valley’s leadership council, an environmental justice advocacy organization. “The climate crisis is going to affect local communities all over the states, all over the world.”

The disparate impact of climate change on mostly immigrant farmworkers and more affluent residents of the region is an example of what some climate experts are calling the “climate gap” — the fact that low-income communities are the first and worst hit by global warming.

“The Coachella Valley has a lot of inequality issues,” said Cindy Yáñez, a PhD student in earth science at the University of California, Irvine. “And you can see it very clearly from east to west. If you look at satellite images of the Coachella Valley, the western side has lush golf courses and these, like, intricate suburbs and country clubs. While on the east side, a lot of residents live in mobile homes, or they don’t have as much infrastructure and development there.”

Preexisting problems in the valley including unstable energy infrastructure, lack of affordable housing and income inequality are all compounded by rising temperatures. Over the summer, the valley hit an all-time high of 123 degrees Fahrenheit, which is especially hard on the eastern Coachella Valley residents who work the land and those who live in large mobile home parks. The 123-degree reading will go down as the hottest June day ever, surpassing the old record of 122 degrees set on five previous days in the month.

The aging energy infrastructure in the Coachella Valley faces a number of problems, starting with frequent outages caused by downed power lines. In addition, record-breaking heat waves can push the demand for power beyond what’s available and create rolling blackouts.

Preexisting problems in the valley including unstable energy infrastructure, lack of affordable housing and income inequality are all compounded by rising temperatures. (Carmen Valencia/Yahoo News)

“Most of the mobile homes in the area are very old. These were built in the pre-’70s era, before the standards changed to increase better and better regulations and better standards for these homes. So many of these homes have inadequate insulation, which means that during the summer months, during the extreme heat, the home is basically an oven,” said Gastelum.

“When you live in an area with 120-degree weather, and then you have a horrible power outage that lasts three-plus days, it’s all of these experiences, amplified,” said Mariela Loera, another policy advocate with the Coachella Valley’s leadership council.

Without reliable power for air conditioning or drinking water, the affordable housing options seem destined to fall further into disrepair.

“These communities are unincorporated,” said Loera. “They don't have a city. Nobody’s reaching out to them. So if they need anything and if anything is going on in their community, it really has to be initiated by them saying, 'Hey, we need this. How are you going to get it to me?' And we’re already dealing with a community who can’t afford to lose a day of work.”

The tap water used in a lot of homes in the Coachella Valley is not drinkable. Solórzano told Yahoo News that tap water can be used only to wash clothes, to clean the bathroom or to wash dishes. “We have to buy water bottles in order to be able to drink or we fill up these gallons with water so it can last us,” said Solórzano. “The tap water doesn’t taste good.”

Water bottles, now empty, that were donated by community members at Coachella Valley Horse Rescue during a water shortage, on July 11 in Indio, Calif. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

“The lack of adequate energy infrastructure gives them inadequate energy in their homes, which also affects their accessibility to water. Given that a lot of these homes rely on septics, which rely on power,” said Loera.

As summer temperatures continue to rise, conditions in the fields become more dangerous. “This year in the summer, three people who work in the fields died here in the Coachella Valley because of the extreme heat. We know some died because they were afraid to speak up and ask for a break due to fear of losing their jobs, but the reality is they died because of the heat.” said Manuela Ramirez, an outreach organizer with Líderes Campesinas, a grassroots organization dedicated to improving the lives of farmworker communities.

“So they wake up in the morning to polluted water, which may or may not be there because of the possible lack of power,” said Loera. “And then they’re outside working in a really hot temperature. To go back home to a home because of the way that it’s built, it’s like an oven and it’s extremely hot. There’s all of these issues going on, which are only getting worse with climate change. And all of these things are connected to each other.”

Biden briefly transfers power to Harris,
making her the 1st woman in U.S. history
to hold powers of the presidency

Christopher Wilson

·Senior Writer

Fri, November 19, 2021

President Biden briefly transferred the power of the presidency to Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday morning as he underwent a routine physical.

The White House announced that Biden, 78, would be going under anesthesia to receive a colonoscopy at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, making Harris the first woman to hold powers of the presidency.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki released a statement Friday morning with the announcement, stating that Harris would work from her office in the West Wing while the president was sedated. 

Biden entered Walter Reed a little before 9 a.m. local time. 

The White House said Biden formally submitted letters to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., president pro tempore of the Senate, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi informing them of the transfer of power at 10:10 a.m., and resumed his duties at 11:35 a.m.

According to Psaki, the president is "in good spirits" and will remain at Walter Reed as he completes the physical.

Psaki said that the White House would release a “comprehensive written summary” of Biden’s physical later Friday afternoon. 

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday. (Susan Walsh/AP)

After her historic 85-minute stint, Harris traveled from Washington, D.C., to Columbus, Ohio, where she was scheduled to give remarks promoting the bipartisan infrastructure deal that Biden signed into law earlier this week

"As a woman myself I will note that the president, when he selected her to be his running mate, obviously he knew he was making history, making history that was long overdue," Psaki said of Harris, the nation's first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president. "And part of that was selecting someone who could serve by your side as your partner but also step in if there was a reason to and that includes the application of the 25th Amendment that was done this morning.

"She makes history every day," Psaki added. "But certainly today was another chapter in that history. And I think that will be noted for many women [and] young girls across the country."

Former President George W. Bush twice transferred the power to his vice president, Dick Cheney, while undergoing a similar procedure during his two terms in office, each time for a little over two hours. Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, was acting president for about eight hours in 1985 while serving as vice president under President Ronald Reagan, who was undergoing colon cancer surgery.

The ability to temporarily transmit the power via a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate was enacted via the 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967.

In her book released earlier this year, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham strongly implied that former President Donald Trump’s surprise visit to Walter Reed in 2019 — which set off speculation that he was ill — was simply for a routine colonoscopy (without naming the procedure). Trump, she wrote, didn’t want it known that he would be having the procedure done, partly because he refused to transfer power to Vice President Mike Pence for even a short amount of time, and partly because he didn’t want to be made fun of by late night TV hosts.

Jessica Watkins to be first Black woman on International Space Station crew


Denise Chow
Wed, November 17, 2021

When NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins launches to the International Space Station next year, her debut spaceflight will make history.

Watkins is set to become the first Black woman to join the space station crew, and live and work in space on a long-duration mission on the orbiting outpost. The agency announced Tuesday that Watkins will fly to the space station in April 2022, alongside NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Robert Hines and astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency.

They are slated to launch aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission, known as Crew-4, is expected to last six months.

Jessica Watkins (David DeHoyos / NASA)

Watkins, a geologist who earned an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and a doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles, will serve as a mission specialist during the Crew-4 flight. She was chosen to become an astronaut candidate in 2017 and the April mission will be her first trip to space, according to the agency.

Though a handful of Black astronauts have visited the space station over the course of its 21-year history, almost all had short stays typically lasting less than two weeks during NASA's space shuttle program.

Last year, Victor Glover became the first Black astronaut to embark on a long-term mission at the space station, and Watkins is set to become the first Black woman to do the same.

In 2018, NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps was expected to become the first Black astronaut — man or woman — to launch on an extended mission at the space station, but she was unexpectedly replaced less than six months before the flight. NASA did not offer an explanation for the switch and The Washington Post reported at the time that Epps' brother blamed racism at the space agency for the abrupt crew change.

Epps is still scheduled to take part in the first operational flight of Boeing's Starliner space capsule to the space station, though it's not yet known when that might occur. The Starliner capsule has been plagued by development delays and an uncrewed test flight that was to occur in August was pushed back because of issues with several of the spacecraft's propulsion valves.

Last year, Watkins was chosen to join a select group of NASA astronauts leading the agency's multibillion-dollar Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon. As part of the initiative, NASA is expected to land the first woman and the first person of color on the lunar surface by 2025.

In a video released by NASA last December, Watkins spoke about eyeing a moon mission and what it takes to achieve big things.

"A dream feels like a big, faraway goal that is going to be difficult to achieve, and something that you might achieve much later in life," she said. "But in reality, what a dream is — or a dream realized is — is just putting one foot in front of the other on a daily basis. And if you put enough of those footprints together, eventually they become a path towards your dreams."