Study: Loss of threatened vertebrates may lead to drop in functional diversity


Loss of species that play a unique role in the environment could have dramatic effects on the global ecosystem, a new study has found. Photo by Ken Bohn/San Diego Zoo
| License Photo

Aug. 27 (UPI) -- Loss of species currently identified as threatened with extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature could cause up to a 30% decline in their functional diversity in some parts of the world, according to a study published Friday.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found the loss of functional diversity -- which refers to population levels needed for living organisms to perform their essential roles in the environment -- could be particularly severe for five groups of vertebrates, including birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and freshwater fish.

For example, parts of South and Southeast Asia would be the most impacted by the loss of threatened species for mammals and birds, with an up to 20% decrease of functional diversity, the researchers said.

Meanwhile regions of northern Europe, Asia and north Africa would be the most affected by loss of reptiles, amphibians and freshwater fish, with as much as a 30% drop in functional diversity, according to the researchers.

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"Loss [of these species] would strongly imperil those fragile ecosystems," study co-author Aurele Toussaint said in a press release.

"This highlights the need for action required for the biodiversity conservation in Asia," said Toussaint, a research fellow at the University of Tartu in Estonia.

The number of vertebrate species inhabiting the different regions of the world, and those that are threatened, varies, according to Toussaint and his colleagues.

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However, the loss of species refers not only to their respective populations but also on their ecological role, the researchers said.

These roles depend on the characteristics of the species, such as size, weight, shape and reproductive capacity, as well as the food resource they use.

If threatened species have similar characteristics to non-threatened species, their loss due to extinction may be counterbalanced by other species, according to the researchers.

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Conversely, if threatened species have unique characteristics, their loss can have a dramatic effect on the functioning of ecosystems and the services they provide to human well-being.

To understand how the different regions across the world could be functionally impacted by the loss of threatened vertebrates, researchers compiled data on the characteristics of roughly 50,000 vertebrate species -- about 70% of all vertebrates globally -- and their populations.

Then, the researchers assessed whether the loss of threatened species will have similar consequences on the functional diversity in six regions worldwide.

The loss of threatened species will have similar consequences across the world, but with different intensities, according to the researchers.

For mammals, loss in functional diversity is mainly linked with the extinction of primate species such as chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas in Africa or orangutans in Asia, as well as spider monkeys and capuchin monkeys in the tropics.

With birds, any loss of functional diversity in southern Asia would be fueled by population drops of the White-shouldered ibis or the Indian vulture, both of which are close to extinction, mainly due to habitat loss and degradation.

Many large-bodied freshwater fish, such as sturgeons, are threatened in the upper northern hemisphere, while many small-bodied species, such as catfish, are threatened in the global south.

As these species have different levels of functional uniqueness in terms of their roles in the ecosystem, global measures to protect them need to be adapted to each region, the researchers said.

Currently, most conservation plans target species diversity, under the assumption that this approach protects biodiversity.

For example, there are around 300 amphibian species in northern Europe and Asia and more than 1,000 species in tropics, Toussaint said.

Because the amphibian species in the north have more unique functional traits than those in the south, their loss would have a more significant effect on functional diversity, he said.

"Conservation strategies should ... go beyond the sole number of species and target the species with a unique ecological role," Toussaint said.

Overexploitation, Habitat Loss Threaten Migratory Species: CMS Flagship

Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS)
14 February 2024

According to the report, the extinction risk is growing for CMS and non-CMS migratory species alike.

It identifies overexploitation and loss of habitat due to human activity as the two greatest threats to all migratory species, with climate change, pollution, and invasive species posing additional threats.

The report also shows that population and species-wide recoveries are possible and showcases examples of successful policy action.

The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) has launched the first-ever comprehensive assessment of the state of the world’s migratory species. The report warns that almost half of the world’s migratory species are in decline and more than a fifth are threatened with extinction, including nearly all of CMS-listed fish. It provides a set of recommendations for priority action to save migratory animals.

Titled, ‘State of the World’s Migratory Species,’ the report provides an overview of the conservation status and population trends of migratory animals, both CMS-listed species and those not listed in CMS. It presents the latest information on their main threats and successful actions to protect them. The report mainly focuses on the 1,189 animal species that are listed under CMS, but also features analysis of some 3,000 additional migratory species. CMS-listed species are “those at risk of extinction across all or much of their range, or in need of coordinated international action to boost their conservation status,” a press release notes. Globally, 399 migratory species that are threatened or near threatened with extinction – including many albatrosses and perching birds, ground sharks, and stingrays – are not listed under CMS.

According to the report, the extinction risk is growing for CMS and non-CMS migratory species alike, with half of key biodiversity areas of importance for CMS-listed migratory animals lacking protected status and nearly 60% of the monitored sites of importance for CMS-listed species facing “unsustainable levels of human-caused pressure.” In the last 30 years, 70 CMS-listed migratory species have become more endangered. These include the steppe eagle, Egyptian vulture, and the wild camel. Only 14 listed species, including blue and humpback whales, the white-tailed sea eagle, and the black-faced spoonbill, have improved their conservation status.

The report identifies overexploitation and loss of habitat due to human activity as the two greatest threats to all migratory species, both those that are listed in CMS and those that are not. Other threats include climate change, pollution, and invasive species.

At the same time, the report shows that population and species-wide recoveries are possible. It offers examples of successful policy change and positive action, including coordinated local efforts that reduced illegal bird netting in Cyprus by 91% and “integrated conservation and restoration work in Kazakhstan, which has brought the Saiga Antelope back from the brink of extinction.”

“When species cross national borders, their survival depends on the efforts of all countries in which they are found,” said CMS Executive Secretary Amy Fraenkel. “This landmark report will help underpin much-needed policy actions to ensure that migratory species continue to thrive around the world.”

The report recommends that governments prioritize:Strengthening and expanding efforts to tackle illegal and unsustainable taking of migratory species, as well as incidental capture of non-target species;
Increasing actions to identify, protect, connect, and effectively manage important sites for migratory species;

Urgently addressing those species in most danger of extinction, including nearly all CMS-listed fish species;

Scaling up efforts to tackle climate change, as well as light, noise, chemical, and plastic pollution; and
Considering expanding CMS listings to include more at-risk migratory species in need of national and international attention.

Prepared for CMS by conservation scientists at the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), the report features expert contributions from BirdLife International, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), among other institutions. It was launched on 12 February 2024, during the 14th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS COP14). 

[Publication: State of the World’s Migratory Species] [CMS Press Release] [UN News Story][ENB coverage of CMS COP14]

How a Hedge Fund Manager and Right-Wing Donor is Financing an Israeli Influence Op Masquerading as a Journalism Project

BY KEN SILVERSTEIN

JUNE 21, 2024


Vulture capitalist, right-wing financier and all-around shithead Paul Singer.

 Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Paul Singer is a rapacious hedge fund manager and leading donor to the GOP and pro-Israel groups who retains a raft of corporate intelligence firms to slant the news in ways that favor his personal and political interests. In his spare time, he plots to topple governments and beggar citizens in the Third World to increase profit margins at Elliott Investment Management, the investment firm he founded and controls.

Charles Krauthammer, who’s dead, worked for the Carter administration writing bland, dreary speeches for bland, dreary Vice President Walter Mondale before morphing into a right-wing pundit whose columns were as lifeless and dull as the tripe he penned for his former boss in the White House West Wing. A rabid Zionist like Singer, Krauthammer never met an Israeli war crime he couldn’t turn into an op-ed that claimed it never happened, but if it had Palestinians were to blame.

What do you get when you combine Singer and Krauthammer? Voilà! The Krauthammer Fellowship, which awards 15 positions annually to “aspiring writers, journalists, scholars, and policy analysts” under the age of 35 and provides them with “editorial mentorship” and help placing their work. The fellowship is run by the New York-based Tikvah Fund, which runs media, educational, and policy programs in the US, Israel, and other countries as part of its broad goal of building “a new generation” of committed Zionists.

This year’s coterie includes Kassy Dillon, “an opinion journalist and political commentator for the Daily Wire” who previously was the US editor for Jewish News Syndicate and a video journalist for Fox News Digital; Adam Hoffman, a policy advisor on the DeSantis for President campaign who’s written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and National Review; and Zineb Riboua, a research associate and program manager of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, whose work has appeared Foreign Policy and Tablet. If the Israeli government directly handpicked the Krauthammer fellows, it couldn’t have found a more reliable, devoted group of media cheerleaders – which, of course, is the program’s fundamental purpose.

The Krauthammer Fellowship was launched in 2019, a year after his death, and was established to honor his dedication to “pursuing truth through honest, rigorous argument,” in the words of the Tikvah Fund’s website, though that description bears absolutely no resemblance to its namesake’s oeuvre. An egregious hack and one-man state-controlled news outlet, Krauthammer ceaselessly churned out bilge throughout his career, with a heavy focus on “America’s special role” in the world, its superficially similar but somehow entirely distinctive “special place” in the world, and the “special responsibility” the United States must carry on its shoulders as a result, all which he noted in a single sentence of a particularly turgid 2003 Washington Post op-ed.

Independent journalist Charles Krauthammer with his good friend President Ronald Reagan in a 1986 photo taken at the White House. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Krauthammer was lauded by his peers as an expert on the Middle East, which he demonstrated in an article published shortly before the US invasion of Iraq the same year. The US had no choice but to take out Saddam Hussein, he argued, because with the nuclear weapons he was likely to have in his arsenal soon (though it turned out he never came close and wasn’t even trying) along with the weapons of mass destruction he already has (which he didn’t), the Iraqi leader posed a “threat of mass death on a scale never before seen residing in the hands of an unstable madman,” which was “intolerable…and must be preempted.”

A close friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, who described their relationship as “like brothers,” Krauthammer wrote an essay in 2006 that summarized the entire history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a dispute that began six decades earlier “when the UN voted to create a Jewish state and a Palestinian state side by side,” and while “the Jews accepted the compromise, the Palestinians rejected it.” Israel survived, which was its “original sin” and the reason why Palestinians had hated their good-hearted neighbors ever since.

All this makes the Tikvah Fund, which is staffed from top to bottom with Israeli diehards, a logical sponsor of the Krauthammer Fellowship. The organization’s current board includes Elliott Abrams, who ranks near the top of any credible list of most nauseating US government officials of modern times along with the likes of Henry Kissinger and Samantha Power; and Terry Kassel, a major fundraiser for pro-Israel groups who the Jerusalem Post put on its list of “Top 50 Most Influential Jews of 2022,” and who holds a number of positions with Elliott Investment Management and is a director of the Singer Foundation as well.

Elliott Abrams when he worked for President Donald Trump as the US Special Representative for Venezuela. Image enlarged to enhance Abrams’ appropriately ghoul-like appearance. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

The Tikvah Fund isn’t shy about promoting its role managing the Krauthammer Fellowship, which is extensively discussed on the organization’s website. The financing provided by Singer, on the other hand, is only obliquely noted on the Fund’s site, which says it runs the project “in partnership” with his foundation.

For its part, the Singer Foundation makes no mention at all of the Krauthammer Fellowship or the Tikvah Fund on its own website, which is incredibly stingy about providing details about any of its operations and activities. Not a single current or past grant recipient is identified, there’s no information about how to apply, and indeed there’s nothing on the website at all beyond a concise bio of Singer, which says the New York Times has called him “one of the most revered” hedge fund managers on Wall Street, and an equally sparse description of the Foundation that says its priorities include “supporting free-market and pro-growth economic policies, the rule of law, intellectual diversity on campuses, US national security, individual freedom, the future of Israel and the Jewish people.”

The discretion is probably due to Singer’s prominent, and not generally flattering, role in the public spotlight. A textbook vulture capitalist, he’s perhaps best known for buying up the sovereign debt of countries teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar and using his political influence, money and army of lawyers to coerce their governments to pay it back for multiple times more. His most spectacular success came in Argentina, where his hedge fund’s activities over many years ultimately led to the collapse of the government and pushed vast numbers of people into poverty.

Between 2021 and 2022, Singer was the seventeenth largest political contributor in the US and the tenth biggest to the Republican Party, whose political committees and candidates received the entirety of the $22 million he shelled out during that period, according to OpenSecrets.com. He’s also a major donor and past or current board member at many right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups, including the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Claremont Institute, and the Manhattan Institute, which published a vicious anti-Muslim article the day after the Christchurch mass murderer killed more than 50 people at two mosques in 2019, saying he was expressing a “legitimate concern,” as reported here by the Public Accountability Initiative, better known as LittleSis.

Singer has also spent heavily to support conservative publications and reporters, with Commentary and the Washington Free Beacon being two of the outlets he’s financed. Another of Singer’s pet causes is getting information into the press that makes him and his hedge fund look good, and to advance his political and financial interests. One of the ways he’s accomplished the latter is by retaining the services of a variety of Washington private intelligence firms, including Fusion GPS – I’ll be writing more about some of the other companies who’ve worked for Singer a little bit down the road – which he hired during the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign to compile dirt on Donald Trump in order to help Marco Rubio, his No. 1 choice,.

Singer has supplemented the cash he dispenses to conservative causes out of his own deep pockets with money from his foundation, which has assets just north of $1 billion, according to its latest nonprofit tax filing with the Internal Revenue Service. Neither the foundation nor the Tikvah Fund disclose how much Singer has dispensed to underwrite the Krauthammer Fellowship, which initially provided fellows with a “full-time salary” for two years but subsequently reduced the term to nine months and the compensation to a paltry $5,000.

It’s still a pretty sweet gig that pays for fellows to attend retreats and conferences, among a range of sweeteners. The lucky few selected to be Krauthammer Fellows are hard to distinguish based on their bios at the Tikvah Fund’s website. Tuvia Gerin is an Israeli Army Reserve Captain and nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council. Andrew Gabel is a past special advisor to Senator Tom Cotton and research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Daniel Samet is another ex-staffer for Cotton and Graduate Fellow at the Rumsfeld Foundation, which I could add a lot more about, but the name is really all you need to know.

“Student radicals and outside agitators who had watched university administrators capitulate to mob tactics at Columbia, Yale, and other universities thought they could get away with the same antics in Texas,” Samet, a past awardee, wrote in a story published in National Review two months ago that’s listed on the Tikvah Fund’s website as an example of Krauthammer Fellows’ prime work. “Boy were they wrong.” It praised the University of Texas at Austin for approving cracking heads of “pro-Hamas” students protesting Israel’s military assault on Gaza, unlike the namby-pamby liberal administrators at Columbia, Yale, and other universities who chose to “capitulate to mob tactics.”

“What pure evil looks like,” the headline above another story featured by the Tikvah Fund that was co-authored by current fellow Kassy Dillon for Fox News quoted LeElle Slifer, a US citizen who had family members taken hostage by Hamas last October 7. “Israel cares for innocent people, no matter whether they are Palestinian or Jewish,” Slifer told Dillon. “They don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Other articles written by past and present Krauthammer Fellows that the Tikvah Fund promotes include “Harvard Shrugs at Jew Hatred” by J.J. Kimche in the Wall Street Journal; “Why and How to Revive American Anti-Communism” by Gary Dreyer in Commentary; and “In the City of Slaughter” by Daniel Kane in Public Discourse, which needless to say wasn’t a reference to any of the towns in Gaza the Israeli military has turned into graveyards of rubble, but to the collective plight of Israelis and Jews, like the author, who prior to last October 7 had been “cocooned in the security blanket provided by the IDF and the Iron Dome” and falsely imagined “the Jewish people had entered a new chapter of their history…safely divorced from the agony and fear that dominated Jewish life for more than 2,000 years.”

While these stories may not be remembered as historic works of journalism generations from now, that’s not what Singer’s paying for. His goal is to gin up pro-Israel propaganda and apologias for war crimes committed by the Israel Defense Force, and in that regard he’s probably getting a better return on investment than is indicated by the abysmal work product of Charles Krauthammer’s worthy successors.

This story first appeared on Ken Silverstein’s Washington Babylon substack page.


Ken Silverstein is a politically eclectic DC-based investigative journalist and creator of Washington Babylon.

SOLIDARITY FOREVER 

Fran Drescher Gives ‘Hot Labor Summer’ a Shout-Out

By Jennifer Zhan, 

a Vulture news blogger covering TV, movies and music

FEB. 24, 2024

Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

“You are the champions,” SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher told the crowd at the union’s most glamorous meeting of the year. During her nearly four-minute speech at the SAG Awards, Drescher criticized AI, reflected on the importance of women who can lead and “still rock a red lip,” and reminded everyone that we all “hold in our hearts the gentle whisper of true love.” But the majority of her remarks were devoted to praising the members who participated in the longest strike in SAG-AFTRA’s history. “Your collective dignity and perseverance to stand up and say we deserve better because we are better resulted in a historic billion-dollar deal,” she told the room. “Your solidarity ignited workers around the world, triggering what forever will be remembered as the hot labor summer.”

Throughout the night, several nominees and presenters also took time to acknowledge the impact of the Hollywood strikes. While opening the ceremony, Idris Elba took a moment to “honor and appreciate” everyone who “stood up for SAG-AFTRA.” In her acceptance speech, Lily Gladstone noted that it’s been a “hard year” and expressed her pride in having “gotten here in solidarity with all of our other unions.” Sorry, AMPTP, but it looks like the post-strike solidarity is going strong.

SAG Awards: Fran Drescher Says 2023 Strike “Set the Trajectory for Many Generations to Come”

The president of the actors' union also took a shot at AI in her remarks, saying it will "entrap us in a matrix where no one knows what's real."


BY KATIE KILKENNY

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

FEBRUARY 24, 2024

Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

Fran Drescher 

SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher resurfaced the union’s 118-day strike in remarks at the guild’s award ceremony on Saturday night, saying that union members “set the trajectory for many generations to come” during the work stoppage.

Drescher called the actors union’s approximately 160,000 members the “champions” of the night in a speech during the 2024 Screen Actors Guild Awards. “You survived the longest strike in our union’s history with courage and conviction. The journey was arduous, it came with great sacrifice and unrelenting stress,” she said. “Your solidarity ignited workers around the world, triggering what forever be remembered as the hot labor summer.” She added that “this was a seminal moment in our union’s history that has set the trajectory for many generations to come, not afraid but brave, not weak but powered, not peons but partners.”

She also took a shot at AI — which SAG-AFTRA’s 2023 TV/theatrical contract tackles — saying it will “entrap us in a matrix where no one knows what’s real.” Rather, she said, “We should tell stories that spark the human spirit, connect us to the natural world and awaken our capacity to love unconditionally.”

The 2023 actors’ strike was also fresh in the minds of contenders, presenters and union officials at Saturday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards. Noting the past year had been a difficult one due to the strikes, Luther actor Idris Elba took a moment in his opening monologue to “honor and appreciate all of you both here and at home that stood up for SAG-AFTRA in solidarity and support.”

Accepting the best performance by a cast in a motion picture award for Oppenheimer, Kenneth Branagh noted that the SAG-AFTRA ceremony was a “full-circle moment” for the ensemble, because during the film’s London premiere on July 14, 2023 the cast walked out due to the then-upcoming strike. “Thank you, thank you, thank you SAG-AFTRA, thank you for this, thank you for fighting for us. Thank you for every SAG-AFTRA member whose support and whose sacrifice allows us to be standing here better than we were before,” he said.

On the red carpet, Lawmen: Bass Reeves star David Oyelowo emphasized the joy of getting back to work after his union’s strike ended on Nov. 9, 2023. “It’s that thing, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “So of course there’s a level of appreciation and gratitutde that we get to go back and do what we love.” He said he was reminded of the importance of solidarity from the strikes because as an actor it’s a “lonely journey” but “in a moment like this, where everyone was in this thing together as actors, I think that was very galvanizing and brought people together as a community again in a more broad way. I think hopefully we can hold on to a bit of that.”

Succession star Alan Ruck added that the biggest lesson he gleaned from the strike was to “just stand up for what you believe in. If something’s wrong, you need to say something about it.”

Abbott Elementary actor Chris Perfetti noted, “We had a wild year and here we are still celebrating, and we have a lot to celebrate. It’s kind of emotional that we’re all dressing up and carrying on as usual. It’s a good feeling.” He added that the strikes “solidified the fact that this business and any endeavor as an artist is a roller coaster.”

SAG-AFTRA executive vp Linda Powell had a ringside seat to the negotiations, as she served as vice chair of the 2023 TV/Theatrical negotiating committee. On the red carpet, Powell said of the energy in the room at the SAG Awards, “Everybody is ready to celebrate, everybody is looking forward to this year, taking advantage of the wins and the new sense of collective energy that we’ve got going into this.” She added, “One of the big things we talked about throughout the strike was the importance of the humanity that we bring into the room when we go to work, and tonight we celebrate the people who bring a human face to these films.”

The 2024 SAG Awards took place at Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall, and streamed live on Netflix, a little over three months following the end of SAG-AFTRA’s strike

Workers across the US are rising up. Can they turn their anger into a movement?

Steven Greenhouse

So far, increasingly militant workers are lacking something vital: a leader who can unite them all. Will that change?

‘Public approval for unions is the highest it’s been in more than a half century.’ Photograph: Charlie Neibergall/AP
Mon 3 Jan 2022 11.15 GMT


Throughout 2021, American workers stood up and fought back to an unusual degree. Workers went on strike at Kellogg’s, Nabisco, John Deere, Columbia University and numerous hospitals, while non-union “essential” workers – furious about how they’ve been treated – walked out at supermarkets, warehouses and fast-food restaurants. Workers have sought to unionize at Starbucks, Amazon, even the Art Institute of Chicago. And a record number of Americans have been quitting their jobs each month, more than 4 million monthly, fed up and eager for something better.

Millions of workers are angry – angry that they didn’t get hazard pay for risking their lives during the pandemic, angry that they’ve been forced to work 70 or 80 hours a week, angry that they received puny raises while executive pay soared, angry that they didn’t get paid sick days when they got sick.


‘They are fed up’: US labor on the march in 2021 after years of decline

Out of this comes a question that looms large for America’s workers: will this surge of worker action and anger be a mere flash in the pan or will it be part of a longer-lasting phenomenon? The answer to this important question could turn on whether all this anger and energy are somehow transformed into a larger movement. At least for now, America’s labor leaders seem to be doing very little to tap all this energy and hope and to build it into something bigger and longer lasting. Yes, we are seeing unionization drives at this workplace and that one, but we are not seeing any bigger, broader effort to channel and transform all this worker energy and discontent into a new movement, one perhaps with millions of engaged and energetic nonunion workers, that would work in conjunction with the traditional union movement.

Worker advocates I speak to keep wondering: what are labor leaders waiting for? If not now, when?

In Joe Biden, we have the most pro-union president since Franklin Roosevelt, and public approval for unions is the highest it’s been in more than a half century. For decades, union leaders have said they are eager to reverse labor’s long decline – more than 20% of workers were in unions three decades ago, now just 10% are. Unless unions step up and do something bold, they’ll relegate themselves to continued decline.

Many labor leaders evidently think it’s impossible or improbable to turn this year’s energy and anger into a new movement or a big, new group. But building a movement from scratch isn’t impossible. 350.org was founded in 2008 by several college students and environmentalist author Bill McKibben, and within two years, it organized a mammoth Day of Climate Action with a reported 5,245 actions in 181 countries. After the horrific shootings at Marjorie Stoneman high school in Florida in 2018, a handful of students founded March for Our Lives, and within five weeks, their group had organized nationwide rallies with hundreds of thousands of people calling for gun control. Black Lives Matter also grew into a powerful national movement within a few years. None of these movements were one-shot or one-month affairs – they have become powers to contend with in policy and politics.

So why isn’t the labor movement seizing on this year’s burst of worker energy to build something bigger? I was discussing this with friend who is a professor of labor studies, and she said she thought that most of today’s union leaders were “constitutionally incapable” of building big or being bold and ambitious. She said that after decades of being on the defensive, of being beaten down by hostile corporations, hostile GOP lawmakers and hostile judicial decisions, many labor leaders seem unable to dream big or think outside the box on how to attract large numbers of workers in ways beyond the traditional one-workplace-at-a-time union drives.

But building big and outside the box isn’t impossible for labor. Just look at the Fight for $15. The strategists and SEIU leaders behind it had a vision: they wanted to push the issue of low wages into the national conversation and lift the pay floor for millions of workers. They started small, with walkouts by 200 workers at a dozen fast-food restaurants in New York City, and within two years, they built a powerful national movement that held strikes and protests in hundreds of cities. This movement ultimately got a dozen states to enact a $15 minimum wage, lifting pay for over 20 million workers.

Perhaps some brilliant, visionary workers or worker advocates will step forward to seek to channel this year’s burst of worker anger and energy into a new movement. Social media could certainly help build it, perhaps with the assistance of groups like Coworker.org, which has considerable experience engaging and mobilizing disgruntled rank-and-file workers via the internet.

In Joe Biden, we have the most pro-union president since Franklin Roosevelt

For many workers, a big new group or movement could be a waystation toward unionizing: helping educate and mobilize workers to unionize, guiding them on next steps and what their rights are, and promising a pool of ready support if they seek to unionize. This new group or movement could send out bulletins telling members how they could help other workers in their community or nearby communities – perhaps help unionization drives at Amazon or Starbucks or strikers at Kellogg’s or Warrior Met Coal in Alabama or food delivery workers who are cheated out of tips and don’t have access to bathrooms.

Members of this new group could be called on to protest outside the offices of members of Congress or state lawmakers about myriad issues, perhaps raising the federal minimum wage or enacting paid family leave or the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. Or they could join rallies for voting rights or immigrant rights or against police abuses or to combat global warming.

Working America, an arm of the AFL-CIO, does some of this, mainly urging its members to vote and to contact lawmakers. To truly help reverse labor’s decline and capitalize on today’s worker anger, much more will be needed – an organization that is far more connected to workers and does far more organizing, protesting and mobilizing.

America’s labor movement is terribly balkanized, with many unions engaged in turf battles and upset that another union has (perhaps) stepped into its territory. As a result, they too often find it hard to work together. But if America’s unions are serious about wanting to strengthen worker power and reverse labor’s decline, it’s time to put past divisions behind them and figure out how to build back something bigger.

There are three main reasons that America’s labor movement has declined: first, corporate America’s fierce resistance to unions, second, the decades-long slide in factory jobs, and, third, the Republican party’s decades-long fight to weaken unions and make it tougher to unionize.

But there’s another factor behind labor’s decline that is rarely discussed – many labor leaders don’t do nearly enough to inspire workers and expand the union movement. Today’s workers could use some vigorous, visionary leaders like Mother Jones, Sidney Hillman, John L Lewis and A Philip Randolph to lead and inspire, and build something bigger. Perhaps many union leaders haven’t been hearing what I often hear from rank-and-file union members: “Lead or get out of the way.”


Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace. He is the author of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor

Our new year’s resolution for 2022: to rise up and fight back

Corporate greed and class warfare are crushing working people. No one is going to save us – we need to rise up together

‘Working people all over the country, with extraordinary courage and determination, are taking on corporate greed, and they are winning.’ Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Bernie Sanders
Tue 4 Jan 2022

As we begin the year 2022, in these unprecedented times, I know it’s easy to give in to despair.

We are facing a raging pandemic with seemingly no end in sight. We are rapidly moving toward oligarchy and while income and wealth inequality grows, millions struggle to obtain the basic necessities of life. We have a dysfunctional healthcare system with more than 84 million uninsured or underinsured and nearly one out of four unable to afford prescription drugs. Climate change is ravaging the planet and systemic racism and other forms of bigotry continue to eat away at the fabric of our society. We have a corrupt political system in which corporate money buys elections and a mainstream media that largely ignores the pain that ordinary people experience.


And, in the midst of all this, Republicans across the country are working overtime trying to undermine democracy by making it harder for people of color, young people and those who oppose them to vote in our next elections.

In other words, the challenges we face are enormous and it is easy to understand why many may fall into depression and cynicism. This is a state of mind, however, that we must resist – not only for ourselves but for our kids and future generations. The stakes are just too high. Despair is not an option. We must stand up and fight back.
Here is some good news: working people all over the country are taking on corporate greed and they are winning

And here is some very good news. While the corporate-owned media may not be actively reporting it, working people all over the country, with extraordinary courage and determination, are taking on corporate greed, and they are winning.

Workers at John Deere waged their first strike in more than three decades, stayed on the picket lines and eventually won a contract with strong wage increases, a ratification bonus and improved health insurance.

Striking nurses in Buffalo won raises that moved all workers to at least $15 an hour and a reduction in staff shortages. These nurses fought not only for themselves, but their patients – and they won.

Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers won a major victory after rejecting a contract that would have given new workers lower wages and benefits.

Nabisco workers, struggling against forced overtime, inadequate wages and pensions, a two-tier health system and the outsourcing of jobs, went on strike and won. Once again we saw workers fighting not just for themselves, but for the next generation of workers.

More than 1,400 Kellogg’s workers in Michigan, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Nebraska went on strike for months and won, fighting back against a plan to give new workers lower wages and benefits.

Starbucks employees in upstate New York, for the very first time, organized a union shop in a fight against a giant corporation that did just about everything it could to stop them.

Those are just some of the inspiring efforts that took place last year. Let me tell you about what’s happening right now as workers continue to stand up to some of the most powerful corporate interests in the country.

In Huntington, West Virginia, 450 steelworkers at the Special Metals company have been engaged in a major strike for almost 100 days. Special Metals is a profitable company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett, of course, is one of the richest people in the world, with wealth of over $109bn.

While Special Metals made $1.5bn in profits last year and Mr Buffett became over $40bn richer during the pandemic, executives at this company offered workers an outrageous and insulting contract that includes a zero pay increase for this year, and a totally unacceptable 1% pay raise next year, while quadrupling healthcare premiums and reducing vacation time.

Striking Kellogg workers in Battle Creek, Michigan, in December. Photograph: Seth Herald/AFP/Getty Images

Sadly, the corporate greed that is going on in West Virginia is not an aberration. In Santa Fe Springs, California, about 100 bakery workers, who make cakes for Baskin Robbins, Safeway and Cold Stone Creamery, are on strike against the appropriately named Rich Products Corporation at the Jon Donaire Desserts production plant. About 75% of these employees are Latina women who are often forced into mandatory overtime with little to no notice and sometimes work up to 16 hours a day.

This is a company that made $4bn in revenue last year. During the pandemic, Bob Rich, the majority owner of Rich Products, increased his wealth by more than $2bn. While the workers he employs barely make more than California’s minimum wage, Mr Rich currently has a net worth of more than $7.5bn. Yet, despite his billions in wealth, the “best and final offer” Mr Rich has put on the table for his workers is an insulting $1-an-hour wage increase. That is pathetic.

But it’s also not unusual in the world of corporate greed. In Brookwood, Alabama, about 1,100 workers at Warrior Met Coal have been on strike since April. Just like the bakery workers in California and the steelworkers in West Virginia, these are workers who also have worked as many as seven days a week and up to 16 hours per day.



In 2016, under great pressure to keep the company afloat and keep jobs in their community, these coalminers agreed to a $6-an-hour pay cut – more than 20% of their average salary – and a substantial reduction in their healthcare and retirement benefits as part of a restructuring deal made by Wall Street vulture funds like Blackstone and Apollo.

Meanwhile, the executives at Warrior Met and their Wall Street investors made out like bandits. Since 2017, Warrior Met has rewarded $1.4bn in dividends to its wealthy shareholders while handing out bonuses of up to $35,000 to its executives. Yet, while the company has returned to profitability, Warrior Met has offered its workers a measly $1.50 raise over 5 years and has refused to restore the healthcare and pension benefits that were taken away.

The struggles that these workers are experiencing are not unique. There are millions of other Americans in exactly the same position – people who have to fight tooth-and-nail against wealthy and powerful corporate interests for decent wages, healthcare, pensions and safe working conditions. And let’s be clear. Class warfare in this country is intensifying. Greed is on the rise.
The greatest weapon our opponents have is their ability to create a culture that makes us feel hopeless and diminishes the strength of solidarity

What history has always taught us is that real change never takes place from the top on down. It is always occurs from the bottom on up. That is the history of the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the environmental movement and the gay rights movement. That is the history of every effort that has brought about transformational change in our society.

And that is the struggle we must intensify today. At a time when the demagogues want to divide us up based on the color of our skin, where we were born, our religion or our sexual orientation, we must do exactly the opposite. We must bring people together around a progressive agenda. We must educate, organize and build an unstoppable grassroots movement that helps create the kind of nation we know we can become. One that is based on the principles of justice and compassion, not greed and oligarchy.

The greatest weapon our opponents have is not just their unlimited wealth and power. It is their ability to create a culture that makes us feel weak and hopeless and diminishes the strength of human solidarity.

And here is our new year’s resolution. Like the thousands of workers who stood up and fought courageously in 2021, we will do the same. No one individual is going to save us. We must rise up together.

Happy new year.

Bernie Sanders is a US senator and the chair of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont

RED BETWEEN THE LINES --- WASHINGTON POST---JBS MEAT PACKING EXPOSE

CONCENTRATION IN THE MEATPACKING INDUSTRY BEGAN AT THE END OF THE SEVENTIES AND CONTINUED THROUGH THE EIGHTIES AND NINETIES AS CONCENTRATION MOVED TO MONOPOLY THE MEAT PACKING INDUSTRY ALSO BEGAN A FULL SCALE ASSAULT ON HEALTH AND SAFETY REGULATIONS, CREATING TWO TIER WAGES WHICH THEY ATTACKED THE UFCW WITH, USE OF FOREIGN TEMPORARY WORKERS AND IN MANY CASES THE UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS WERE USED AFTER THE RONALD REAGAN'S ASSAULT ON UNIONS LEFT THE MEATPACKING INDUSTRY ABLE TO NOW BRING IN UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS AS TEMP WORKERS.

BUT THE UFCW FOUGHT BACK IN CANADA AND THE USA. THEY ORGANIZED THOSE WORKERS IN CARGILL PLANTS, EVEN IF IT TOOKS DECADES OF STRUGGLE AS IT DID IN ALBERTA WITH THE UFCW ORGANIZING THEIR
PLANT IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA, WITH WORKERS FROM ECUADOR, SOMALIA,
ETHIOPIA, AND OTHER COUNTRIES IN AN ALL WHITE MORMON TOWN.

I WROTE OF THE EARLY CONSOLIDATION AND THE CONCENTRATION OF THE MEATPACKING INDUSTRY IN CANADA DURING THE UFCW MEAT PACKERS STRIKE OF 1978 AND WE PUBLISHED A SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE MELIORIST THE UNIVERSITY OF LETHBRIDGE STUDENT PAPER AND HAD IT DISTRIBUTED TO EVERY HOUSEHOLD IN THE CITY VIA THE POST OFFICE.

THIS STORY OF CONSOLIDATION AND MONOPOLY CAPITALISM IN THE MEATPACKING INDUSTRY IS THE SAME STORY IT HAS BEEN FOR FORTY YEARS

JBS IN CANADA

A NUMBER OF YEARS BACK JBS BOUGHT A FAILED AND CONTAMINATED MEATPACKING HOUSE IN LETHBRIDGE. AFTER IT WAS CLOSED FOR AN E-COLI OUTBREAK IT HAD CREATED BY FAILED SELF REGULATION OF CLEANING AND DISINFECTION PROCEDURES VITAL TO FOOD SAFETY. IT WAS A MAJOR SCANDAL ACROSS CANADA. AND JBS SWOOPED IN AS A ANGEL INVESTOR TO SAVE THE DAY BUT OF COURSE IT WAS IN FACT THE VULTURE CAPITALISM AT WORK ONCE AGAIN FOR A MULTINATIONAL FOOD MONOPOLY.

#JBS COMPETES IN CANADA WITH MAPLE LEAF FOODS IN A MEAT PACKING FOOD INDUSTRY DUOPOLY

This foreign meat company got U.S. tax money. 

Now it wants to conquer America.

President Trump delivers remarks in support of farmers and ranchers at the White House in May. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)


By Kimberly Kindy Washington Post

November 7, 2019

This story has been updated.Two men in cowboy hats stood behind President Trump in May as he announced a $16 billion agricultural bailout. Trump said the financial relief from his trade war with China would help American farmers, reinforcing an earlier tweet when the president said the funds would help “great Patriot Farmers.”

But not all beneficiaries of the taxpayer-funded program are American farmers or patriots. JBS, a Brazilian company that is the largest meat producer in the world, has received $78 million in government pork contracts funded with the bailout funds — more than any other U.S. pork producer.

JBS’s winning hand in securing a quarter of all of the pork bailout contracts is one example of the power a small number of multinational meat companies now hold in the United States. JBS has become a major player in the United States even as it faces price-fixing and other investigations from the federal government.

The company’s explosive growth through acquisitions over the past decade has been a dominant factor in the consolidation of the meat industry by multinational companies.

A dozen years ago, JBS did not own a single U.S. meat plant. Today, JBS and three other food companies control about 85 percent of beef production. JBS and Tyson Foods control about 40 percent of the poultry market. And JBS and three other companies control nearly 70 percent of the pork market.

JBS and the large multinational meat companies, including Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods and Cargill, use their size and global presence to create efficiencies that enable them to produce a variety of quality foods at a lower price. But many agricultural economists and food marketing analysts say when so few companies control the market, they can drive smaller operators out of business, reducing competition and sometimes raising prices for consumers.

[Trump farm bailout money will go to Brazilian-owned meatpacking firm, USDA says]

Such consolidation has been condemned by eight Democratic presidential candidates, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) being the most outspoken. She’s pledged to break up the larger food and meat companies because the companies can use their “economic power to spend unlimited sums of money electing and manipulating politicians” and because they are “leaving family farmers with fewer choices, thinner margins and less independence.”

The candidates have other concerns, including threats to the availability and affordability of the nation’s food supply. Large food companies have in the past reduced supply to drive up the price of their products. The Justice Department is investigating whether JBS and other poultry companies illegally coordinated to do just that.

JBS said in a written statement that its American subsidiary, JBS USA, is a vital part of the agricultural economy. The company employs more than 60,000 people in the United States and buys from more than 11,000 U.S. farmers and ranchers. JBS and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue say the bailout funds JBS received are helping American farmers because the company buys its hogs from them.

“This is no different than people buying Volkswagens or other foreign autos where their executives may have been guilty of some issue along the way,” Perdue said in a statement. “They still buy the cars.”

JBS CEO Gilberto Tomazoni told analysts in August that JBS is “at the best moment in its history.” He said an upcoming stock offering in the United States will allow the company to continue to expand; JBS says expansion efforts “will better position the company to sustainably meet evolving customer and consumer expectations.”

However, U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) recently challenged whether JBS’s entry into the U.S. market should have been allowed.

USDA pilot program fails to stop contaminated meat

Corruption scandals have engulfed JBS in Brazil, the senators wrote to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and company officials have “admitted criminal conduct to secure loans that were used for investment in the United States.” They’ve asked for a review of the purchases.

JBS said it received all “necessary regulatory approvals from the . . . antitrust authorities, including the Department of Justice” before purchasing each of the companies. 

Small farmers and cattlemen are glad some politicians are listening. They say the federal government’s bailout — and JBS’s share of it — are reminiscent of the bank bailouts during the Great Recession. Even though many of the banks were under investigation by the federal government, they still received federal money.

“I think it’s one of those situations where it’s too big to fail,” said Greg Gunthorp, who runs his family hog farm in Indiana. “We are talking about a company that has shown it doesn’t play by the rules.”

Buying spree

JBS purchased its first U.S. meat plants in 2007, using Brazilian bank loans the owners secured illegally, court records show. In a plea deal, brothers Joesley and Wesley Batista told prosecutors how they bribed bank and government officials to receive low-interest loans.

The bank loans and other funding allowed JBS to consolidate five U.S. companies — which produced pork, poultry and beef — into a single company, JBS USA.

In 2007, JBS bought pork and beef producer Swift and Co. In 2008, it purchased the beef operations of Smithfield Foods. In 2009, it acquired poultry producer Pilgrim’s Pride. In 2015, JBS bought Cargill’s pork division. And in 2017, the company purchased poultry producer GNP Co.

“JBS used their ill-gotten gains to dominate the meat market,” said Joe Maxwell, a fourth-generation hog farmer and executive director of the Organization for Competitive Markets, a nonprofit group that fights income disparities in U.S. agricultural markets. The loans, Maxwell said, “allowed them to become the big dogs almost overnight.”

JBS said it did not rebut the plea deal but said it also raised capital by selling company stock.

The bailout payments underscore JBS’s advantage over smaller domestic competitors. Some of its pork plants kill more than 1,000 pigs an hour, enabling JBS to operate off a slimmer profit margin and underbid other companies for the bailout contracts.

JBS is also able to shift production to avoid high tariffs. While U.S. pork exported to China faces a 72 percent tariff, pork from JBS plants in Brazil faces only a 10 to 12 percent tariff.

JBS increased production where tariffs were lower, benefiting twice from the Chinese trade war — first by collecting the bailout money and then by increasing pork production at its plants outside the United States, which JBS announced this year.

How beef demand is accelerating the Amazon’s deforestation and climate peril

JBS has grown and thrived despite multiple federal inquiries. The Agriculture Department said JBS underpaid family farmers and ranchers last year at three slaughterhouses in Colorado, Nebraska and Texas by claiming the cattle weighed less than they did. Domestic cattle owners say they lost millions of dollars.

USDA fined JBS $79,000.

Cattle producers said the fine was an insult to small ranchers. “That’s pennies to them,” said Steve Krajicek, an independent cattle producer who sells to JBS. “They make in excess of $1 million a day at the Nebraska plants. It’s not even enough for them to blink an eye or to reconsider how they are doing business.”

JBS said a software change caused an error in paying sellers and those who were underpaid were later reimbursed.

JBS’s growth has not been slowed by heftier fines for worker safety violations — about $20 million over the past decade, according to records from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

A Washington Post analysis of OSHA data from 2015 to 2018 shows that JBS has the highest rate of serious worker injuries — including those involving amputation and hospitalization — among meat companies in the United States, and the second highest rate of serious injuries among all companies in the United States.

The Post used federal data on the number of serious worker injuries and the number of employees to determine the injury rates. JBS disagreed with The Post’s methodology and said JBS was better than the industry average in other safety metrics using federal data, such as time lost because of injury.

Consumer concerns

Consolidation can lead to benefits for consumers. Trey Malone, an agricultural economist at Michigan State University, said consolidation has led to lower prices and an explosion of new food products. A grocery store in 1995 had about 8,000 options on average. Now, it’s more than 45,000.

“As companies get larger, you get economies of scale. The cost of production per unit decreases,” Malone said. “Companies increasingly compete at quality levels, offering hormone-free meat, Angus beef. They create new products. From a consumer perspective, you have higher quality meat and cheaper meat products.”

But the small number of major players increases the possibility that companies could collude to increase prices, Malone and other economists say. A lawsuit filed in 2016 by a food service firm in New York alleges that JBS-owned Pilgrim’s Pride and other poultry companies intentionally destroyed flocks of breeder hens to reduce the poultry supply.

The coordinated effort resulted in a 50 percent increase in the wholesale price of broiler chickens, the lawsuit claims. The civil suit is on hold as the Justice Department investigates.

JBS denied the accusations in the lawsuit. Lawyers for Pilgrim’s Pride and other poultry companies filed a motion to dismiss the case in January.

JBS said concentration in the meat industry has been “fairly static” since the mid-1990s. Analysts point to data showing the market has become more concentrated; they say companies with plants and processing facilities around the world increasingly dominate.

“This is a consumer disaster because of the amount of power, money and political clout that these companies hold,” said Marion Nestle, a New York University professor who studies the food industry. “If you own everything, you get to set the rules, you get to set the price, because there is no real competition.”

[Inspector General wants to know if USDA concealed worker safety data]

With a few large operators, meat contamination can pose a greater threat because their products end up on plates across the nation. Retail giants Costco, Walmart and Sysco all sell JBS products.

For example, in 2018, JBS ordered the largest recall of ground beef in U.S. history, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 12 million pounds of beef contaminated with a virulent strain of salmonella in 30 states sickened 403 people, of whom 117 were hospitalized. Less than 2 percent of the meat was recovered.

“They can cause a major food safety disaster,” said Tony Corbo, senior lobbyist for Food & Water Watch, a consumer advocacy group. “These plants are bigger, turn out product faster and the federal government has deregulated them, giving plant owners more control over safety inspections.”

JBS said it quickly responded by issuing the recall. The company said it was working with “internal and external food safety experts” to “ensure the safety of our products.”

Rancher complaints

Small cattle ranchers launched a social media campaign in October at a rally called “Stop the Stealin’ ” to protest the power JBS and other large beef processors have over setting prices for cattle. Ranchers said they are being underpaid by about $200 a head. JBS said it offers competitive prices for cattle.

About 400 cattlemen and women attended the rally in Nebraska — some riding on horseback. Younger ranchers downloaded the Twitter app onto the smartphones of the older ranchers, teaching them how to tweet their protests directly to Trump.

“Stop packer collusion!!” tweeted Casey Perman, a small rancher in South Dakota. “Time to help the little guy like you promised . . . #FairCattleMarkets @realDonaldTrump.”

The ranchers and some Democratic members of Congress say the concentrated power of these companies gives them too much leverage over federal regulators. “These multinational corporations are taking over the food supply and federal government has been complicit in this; USDA has been complicit in this,” said Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.).

Since entering the U.S. market in 2007, JBS has spent more than $7.7 million on lobbying, records show, making it the fourth-largest spender in the meat processing industry. It’s also won more than $900 million in government meat contracts, second only to the U.S.-based Tyson Foods, according to a Post analysis of government records.

The company’s reach into the federal government includes the successful recruitment of a top regulator. JBS created a new position — global head of food safety and quality assurance — in 2017, giving the post to a former top food-safety regulator at USDA named Al Almanza.

At USDA, Almanza was viewed by small farmers and food safety groups as an advocate for the big producers; he led efforts to deregulate poultry, pork and beef inspections sought by JBS and other large companies. Three days after leaving USDA, Almanza started at JBS.

In a statement, JBS said Almanza “strongly disagrees with any notion that he had any interest in maximizing industry profits over safeguarding public health during his career of public service.”

Maxwell’s group is also focusing on Perdue and the bailout money he has awarded to JBS. The small ranchers’ campaign is circulating a political cartoon of Perdue and JBS’s Wesley Batista in bed together with Perdue throwing wads of bailout cash into the air.

Andrew Ba Tran and Alice Crites contributed to this report.

These Paintings Reveal How the Dutch Adapted to Extreme Weather During the Little Ice Age

Artists like Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Hendrick Avercamp documented locals’ resilience in the face of freezing winters and food shortages

During the Little Ice Age, which spanned roughly 1250 to 1860, average global temperatures dropped by as much as 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

 Illustration by Meilan Solly / Photos via Wikimedia Commons

HISTORY | JANUARY 30, 2024 
Tim Brinkhof

On the afternoon of January 2, 1565, an iceberg drifted down the harbor of Delfshaven, a fishing village in the Netherlands. According to the inscription on a 16th-century oil painting of the event, the block of ice measured nearly 20 feet tall and 230 feet wide—large enough to cut off the village’s access to the Nieuwe Maas River. No fishers would have been looking to set sail that day, though, as the water was completely frozen over, with boats great and small trapped in the ice.

The fact that artist Cornelis Jacobsz van Culemborch commemorated this iceberg’s arrival with a painting suggests it was not a regular occurrence. Dutch winters were cold, but they were rarely this unforgiving. As it happened, the year 1565 fell in the middle of the Little Ice Age (LIA), a period of widespread cooling that spanned roughly 1250 to 1860. Average global temperatures dropped by as much as 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, possibly due to a combination of volcanic eruptions and a reduction in solar activity.

Cornelis Jacobsz van Culemborch's painting of an iceberg that appeared in Delfshaven in January 1565 

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons


The LIA manifested in a variety of ways. “Many [Dutch people] died in floods that were partly caused by severe storms,” says Dagomar Degroot, an environmental historian at Georgetown University and the author of The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720. “Others froze to death in bitterly cold winters.” Some parts of the world saw frequent flooding, while others suffered from persistent drought. Glaciers expanded; certain pathogens spread more readily; and icebergs floated to regions that had not seen them since the last glacial period (popularly called the Ice Age), which ended more than 11,500 years ago, before the birth of civilization.

Researchers have long been interested in how early modern societies adapted to the changes wrought by the LIA. Written accounts can certainly provide insight into this period of global cooling. Reporting from Paris in 1675, author Marie de Rabutin-Chantal wrote, “It is horribly cold. … The behavior of the sun and of the seasons has changed.” Nine years later, in January 1684, English diarist John Evelyn noted, “The frost continuing more and more severe, the Thames before London was still planted with booths in formal streets, all sorts of shops and trades furnished and full of commodities.”

Frost Fair on the Thames, With Old London Bridge in the Distance, unknown artist, 1684 Yale Center for British Art

But an especially rich source of information on the LIA is art. A 1684 painting by an unknown artist, titled Frost Fair on the Thames, With Old London Bridge in the Distance, illustrates the festival that Evelyn described. Italian artist Gabriel Bella, meanwhile, depicted the frozen canals of Venice in 1708. Other paintings and etchings of the Mediterranean city-state indicate its lagoon froze over at least twice more in the 18th century, in 1789 and 1791.

Even artworks that don’t center on climate anomalies can offer clues about the LIA. Scholars have used paintings of Venice’s historic architecture to track rising sea levels by comparing the positions of algal bands along the buildings’ walls then and now. A 2010 study of a 1571 painting by Paolo Veronese, who likely employed a camera obscura to ensure proportional accuracy, concluded that the sea level outside of the Coccina family’s palace was roughly 30 inches lower at the time than it is at present.

The Madonna of the Coccina Family, Paolo Veronese, 1571 

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Pieter Bruegel the Elder and the Little Ice Age

The LIA coincided with a period of great religious and political upheaval. In the aftermath of the 16th-century Protestant Reform

ation, Northern European artists slowly abandoned Christian imagery of heaven and hell in favor of the here and now. In Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, portraits of kings and saints gave way to paintings of parents and children, soldiers and workers, street scenes, and landscapes.

Dutch artists were especially celebrated for their commitment to realism. In 1882, French painter Eugène Fromentin declared Dutch art a “faithful, exact, complete” representation of the country’s culture; a century later, art historian Svetlana Alpers characterized Northern European painting as “an art of describing” reality, distinct from the narrative art of the Italian Renaissance. Johannes Vermeer’s The Little Street (circa 1658), for example, shows touched-up cracks in the bricklaying of a building in Delft—likely a scar from the 1654 gunpowder explosion that devastated the city and killed one of Rembrandt’s most gifted students, Carel Fabritius.

The Little Street, Johannes Vermeer, circa 1568 

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

As a genre of painting, winter scenes hardly existed in Europe before the LIA. This was partly because harsh winters like the one immortalized by van Culemborch were, at best, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. “The medieval world …. had been much warmer,” with Vikings settling in Greenland and grapes growing as far north as southern England, writes author Benjamin Moser in The Upside-Down World: Meetings With the Dutch Masters. He points out that Europe’s “first notably cold winter” took place in 1564 and 1565, when that iceberg made its way to Delfshaven.

The frost stretched from Rotterdam to Brussels, where its effects were documented by Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder in his painting Hunters in the Snow (Winter). (Art historians use the term “Flemish” to refer to Flemish-speaking towns in the medieval Low Countries, which included parts of modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France and Germany.) Part of a series depicting the seasons, the image captures the hardships of the LIA, especially when compared with other hunting scenes of the time. As journalist Harmen van Dijk writes for Dutch newspaper Trouw, “The hunters do not seem to have had any luck, returning with one little fox. Not exactly a feast. The innkeepers are trying to get a fire going. They might have some food, though that dilapidated sign outside doesn’t look promising.”

Hunters in the Snow (Winter), Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565 

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The LIA confronted the Dutch with challenges they had never faced before. In the Low Countries, rivers and canals were used to transport goods; when they froze, entire villages were cut off from maritime trade. Food shortages were common, and timber was in such short supply that in the winter of 1564 to 1565, a single bushel sold for two weeks’ wages. Households unable to afford these exorbitant prices had no choice but to look for fuel in unexpected places, tearing apart the gallows of their town squares or, if those had already been burned up, their own floorboards.

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Hunters in the Snow contrasts the hard-working hunters with a group of carefree ice skaters playing in the background. Another Bruegel painting, Winter Landscape With Skaters and Bird Trap, also from 1565, lacks this explicit juxtaposition but delivers a similar message through its subject matter. At a time when birds were considered “symbols of the soul,” wrote art historians Linda and George Bauer in a 1984 journal article, the work’s winter setting appeared deliberate, with the skaters representing “the dangerous progress of the soul as it passes through the world.”

Winter Landscape With Skaters and Bird Trap, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Hendrick Avercamp and the Little Ice Age

Bruegel’s moralizing tone—a kind of visual representation of the expression “walking on thin ice”—differs from that of later Dutch and Flemish landscape painters like Hendrick Avercamp, who was active in the early 17th century. If Bruegel’s winters appear harsh and cold, Avercamp’s are warm and fuzzy, both in color and in atmosphere. Sidelining seasonal hardship, his paintings almost exclusively show people enjoying themselves as they skate, sled or play an early form of ice hockey called ijskolf. As Moser writes in The Upside-Down World, “They show a merry Christmassy world of funnily dressed people disporting themselves on frozen canals: paintings I knew from jigsaw puzzles and holiday cards.”

These pleasant scenes may have been shaped by Avercamp’s own experiences: Moser records the oft-repeated possibility that the painter, who was probably born deaf and mute, romanticized an environment he was forced to observe from a distance. But the works also have their roots in history. Avercamp was born in 1585—three years before the Dutch Republic (consisting of seven northern Netherlandish provinces) won independence from Spain in a long and brutal war—and he died in 1634. Over the course of the painter’s life, the republic developed into one of the world’s most powerful and prosperous nations.

Winter Landscape With Skaters, Hendrick Avercamp, circa 1608 

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Degroot argues that the republic’s successes were, in part, a result of the LIA. “Increased precipitation hampered Spanish invasions,” he says, “while changes in atmospheric circulation helped Dutch fleets to sail into battle with the wind behind them, an important tactical advantage in the age of sail. Dutch farmers, sailors, soldiers, entrepreneurs and inventors also found ways to cope with—and even exploit—otherwise disastrous weather.”

Shipwrights, for example, greased and fortified the hulls of their vessels, allowing them to slide past ice. Ice-breaking boats kept domestic waterways open in times of persistent frost and helped maintain a steady supply of ice for wine cellars.

But developments during the LIA weren’t all positive. “Dutch people also suffered from extreme weather that can now be connected to the Little Ice Age,” Degroot says. During bitterly cold winters, “rivers froze over that would otherwise have protected the republic from invasion, and hostile armies took advantage.” Ultimately, the historian concludes, “The Little Ice Age offered more benefits than drawbacks for the republic, but the same cannot be said for many of its citizens.”

Enjoying the Ice Near a Town, Hendrick Avercamp, 1620

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Bustling compositions like Avercamp’s Winter Landscape With Ice Skaters document not only the republic’s increasing resilience but also its growing disregard for traditional social hierarchies. “Frozen water was like carnival,” Moser writes, “an upside-down world when, for a few days, the conventions of daily life relaxed.” The polymath Hugo Grotius, a contemporary of Avercamp, agreed. “Here nobody speaks of rank,” he wrote in a poem, “here we are open and free; here the farm girl joins with the nobleman.” In time, this upside-down world would no longer be restricted to the ice.

Avercamp’s unceasing production of winter landscapes—he hardly painted anything else, leaving behind around 100 such scenes—cemented the season and its corresponding activities as a central aspect of burgeoning Dutch national identity. Today, his paintings provide snapshots of a climate that is gradually disappearing from living memory due to global warming.

“These paintings already have a nostalgic quality to them,” Moser tells Smithsonian magazine, “of sadness or loss,” particularly among Dutch people who grew up skating outdoors. “These images are over 400 years old, and the people in them look different, but we connect to them because we went outside and did the same things they did when we were kids. Now, they are the skeletons of dinosaurs.”


Tim Brinkhof | READ MORE
Tim Brinkhof is a Dutch journalist who covers art, culture and history. He studied comparative literature at New York University and has written for Vox, Vulture, Big Think, JSTOR Daily, Jacobin, New Lines and more.