Trump picks Big Oil ally and drilling enthusiast Doug Burgum for Interior Secretary

Jake Johnson, 

Common Dreams
November 15, 2024 

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum speaks during the third day of the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 17, 2024.(Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP)

President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he has chosen billionaire North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a close ally of the fossil fuel industry and vocal proponent of oil drilling, to serve as head of the Interior Department in the incoming administration, a critical post tasked with overseeing hundreds of millions of acres of federal land and water.

Burgum, a friend of oil billionaire Harold Hamm, served as a kind of middleman between Trump's presidential campaign and the fossil fuel industry during the 2024 race. The Washington Post reported that Burgum's selection as interior secretary will "give Hamm expansive influence over policy related to drilling on public lands, at a time his company stands to benefit from the rule changes Trump envisions."

Burgum and Hamm have already worked to shape Trump's energy policy during the presidential transition, with Reutersreporting Thursday that the pair is leading the push for a repeal of electric vehicle tax credits—a key component of the Biden administration's signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act.


During a fundraiser over the summer, Burgum said Trump could "on day one" move to unleash "liquid fuels," accusing the Biden administration of waging war on "American energy."

"Whether it's baseload electricity, whether it's oil, whether it's gas, whether it's ethanol, there is an attack on liquid fuels," Burgum declared.

"We're ready to fight Burgum and Trump's extreme agenda every step of the way."

Trump campaigned on a pledge to "drill, baby, drill" in the face of a fossil fuel-driven climate emergency that is wreaking deadly havoc in the United States and around the world. While the Biden administration has presided over record oil and gas production and approved many new drilling permits to the dismay of climate advocates, Trump has made clear that he intends to take a sledgehammer to any guardrails constraining the fossil fuel industry.

In Burgum, Trump will have an enthusiastic champion of oil and gas drilling in a Cabinet that is shaping up to be a boon for the fossil fuel industry. Burgum helped organize the dinner at which Trump urged the oil and gas industry to raise $1 billion for his campaign in exchange for tax breaks and large-scale deregulation.

"We're going do things with energy and with land—Interior—that is going to be incredible," Trump said late Thursday.

Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that "Burgum is an oligarch completely out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans who cherish our natural heritage and don't want our parks, wildlife refuges, and other special places carved up and destroyed."

"We're ready to fight Burgum and Trump's extreme agenda every step of the way," Suckling added.

In his current capacity as North Dakota governor, Burgum is pushing a 2,000-mile carbon pipeline project set to be built by Summit Carbon Solutions with the stated goal of capturing planet-warming CO2 and storing it underground. Climate advocates have long derided carbon capture and storage—a method boosted by the fossil fuel industry—as a dangerous scam that can actually result in more emissions.

The Associated Press reported earlier this year that "the blowback in North Dakota to the Summit project has been intense with Burgum caught in the crossfire."

"There are fears a pipeline rupture would unleash a lethal cloud of CO2," the outlet noted. "Landowners worry their property values will plummet if the pipeline passes under their land."

The North Dakota Public Service Commission is planning to meet Friday to vote on the project.

 

Novel electro-biodiesel a more efficient, cleaner alternative to existing alternatives

Washington University in St. Louis

By Beth Miller

Vehicles fueled by diesel lead to substantial carbon emissions that are challenging to decarbonize. In 2022, diesel fuel use made up about one-fourth of total U.S. transportation carbon dioxide emissions and about one-tenth of total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Joshua Yuan, the Lucy & Stanley Lopata Professor and chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, and Susie Dai, a MizzouForward Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Missouri, and their collaborators at Texas A&M University, have used electrocatalysis of carbon dioxide to create an electro-biodiesel that is 45 times more efficient and uses 45 times less land than soybean-based biodiesel production. Results of their work are published online in Joule Oct. 31.

“This novel idea can be applied to the circular economy to manufacture emission-negative fuels, chemicals, materials and food ingredients at a much higher efficiency than photosynthesis and with fewer carbon emissions than petrochemicals,” said Yuan, who began the work with Dai at Texas A&M University. “We have systemically addressed the challenges in electro-biomanufacturing by identifying the metabolic and biochemical limits of diatomic carbon use and have overcome these limits.”

The team used electrocatalysis, a type of chemical reaction initiated by electron transfers to and from reactants on surfaces of catalysts, to convert carbon dioxide into biocompatible intermediates, such as acetate and ethanol. The intermediates were then converted by microbes into lipids, or fatty acids, and ultimately became biodiesel feedstock, said Yuan, also director of the National Science Foundation-funded Carbon Utilization Redesign for Biomanufacturing-Empowered Decarbonization (CURB) Engineering Research Center (ERC).

The novel microbial and catalyst process developed by Yuan, Dai and their teams allowed their electro-biodiesel to reach 4.5% solar-to-molecule efficiency for converting carbon dioxide to lipid, which is considerably more efficient than biodiesel[BM1] . Nature photosynthesis in land plants is normally below 1%, where less than 1% of sunlight energy is converted to plant biomass by converting CO2 to diverse molecules for plant growth, Yuan explained.

“The amount of energy diverted to the biodiesel precursor, lipid, is even lower as lipid has high energy intensity,” he said. “On the contrary, the electro-biodiesel process can convert 4.5% of solar energy to lipids when a solar panel is used to produce electricity to drive electrocatalysis, which is much higher than the natural photosynthetic process.”

To prompt the electrocatalysis, the team designed a new zinc- and copper-based catalyst that produces diatomic carbon intermediates that could be converted into lipids with an engineered strain of the Rhodococcus jostiii (RHA1) bacterium, known to produce high lipid content. This strain also boosted the metabolic potential of ethanol, which could help to prompt conversion of acetate, an intermediate, to the fatty acid.

After developing the novel process, the team analyzed the impact of the process on climate change and found encouraging results. By using renewable resources for the electrocatalysis, the electro-biodiesel process could reduce 1.57 grams of carbon dioxide per gram of electro-biodiesel produced with the by-products of biomass, ethylene and others, giving it the potential for negative emissions. In contrast, conventional diesel production from petroleum produces 0.52 grams of carbon dioxide per gram, and biodiesel production methods produce 2.5 grams to 9.9 grams of carbon dioxide per gram of lipids produced.

“This research proves the concept for a broad platform for highly efficient conversion of renewable energy into chemicals, fuels and materials to address the fundamental limits of human civilization,” Yuan said. “This process could relieve the biodiesel feedstock shortage and transform broad, renewable fuel, chemical and material manufacturing by achieving independence from fossil fuel in the sectors that are fossil-fuel dependent, such as long-range heavy-duty vehicles and aircraft.”

###

Chen K, Zhang P, Chen Y, Fei C, Yu J, Zhou J, Liang Y, Li W, Xiang S, Dai SY, Yuan JS. Electro-biodiesel Empowered by Co-Design of Microorganism and Electrocatalysis. Joule. Online Oct. 31, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2024.10.001

The research is supported by National Science Foundation’s Future Manufacturing Program and Engineering Research Center Program, both awarded to Yuan, Dai and other collaborators.

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Journal

Joule

SPAGYRIC HERBALISM

Exploring the systematic anticancer mechanism in selected medicinal plants

Xia & He Publishing Inc.

Cancer remains one of the leading global causes of mortality, with an estimated increase in cases due to lifestyle, environmental, and genetic factors. Despite advancements in treatment, cancer's complexity and the side effects of conventional therapies necessitate alternative approaches. Medicinal plants, long valued for their therapeutic properties, have shown promise in cancer treatment, attributed to their natural phytoconstituents. This review focuses on the anticancer mechanisms of specific medicinal plants and discusses their potential for future therapeutic development.

Anticancer Mechanisms of Selected Medicinal Plants

Medicinal plants exert anticancer effects through multiple pathways, including cell cycle arrest, apoptosis induction, and disruption of signaling cascades. The mechanisms employed by each plant’s bioactive compounds are varied:

1. Oroxylum indicum - Known for its anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects, its extract has been shown to inhibit cancer progression through the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway and induce apoptosis in oral carcinoma models.
2. Musa paradisiaca (Banana) - This plant’s bioactive compounds, particularly banana lectin, promote apoptosis in cancer cells and arrest the cell cycle at G2/M, indicating a potent anticancer potential.
3. Colchicum autumnale - Colchicine from this plant disrupts microtubule formation, inducing apoptosis and impeding cell division in various cancer cell lines. However, its high toxicity limits its direct clinical application, though modifications are being explored to reduce this toxicity.
4. Catharanthus roseus - The alkaloids vincristine and vinblastine derived from this plant are well-known for their anticancer activities, particularly through the inhibition of microtubule dynamics, which leads to cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in cancer cells.
5. Psidium guajava (Guava) - This plant has shown efficacy in inhibiting the AKT/mTOR signaling pathway, which is crucial in cancer cell survival and proliferation.
6. Mangifera indica (Mango) - Mango extracts have been found to influence cancer cell survival by modulating the PI3K/AKT pathway, AMPK signaling, and NF-κB pathway, all of which are associated with cancer progression.
7. Lagerstroemia speciosa (Banaba) - Its ethanol extracts have demonstrated cytotoxic effects in liver cancer cells by inducing apoptosis and cell cycle arrest.
8. Moringa oleifera - This plant’s extracts induce apoptosis by enhancing p53 expression, a key tumor suppressor protein, and causing G2/M cell cycle arrest, making it a promising candidate for cancer therapy.

Current Development and Future Perspectives

The potential of medicinal plants in cancer therapy is growing, with current research focusing on isolating active phytoconstituents, understanding their mechanisms, and developing drug delivery systems. However, challenges include variability in phytoconstituent concentration due to environmental factors and potential toxicity from heavy metal contamination. Collaborative efforts among researchers, clinicians, and industry stakeholders are essential to integrate medicinal plants into mainstream cancer therapy.

Limitations

While medicinal plants offer promising alternatives, some limitations persist. Variability in plant composition and concerns over environmental contamination highlight the need for rigorous standardization in phytoconstituent extraction and testing.

In conclusion, medicinal plants with anticancer properties hold significant promise as alternatives or adjuncts to conventional therapies, particularly in their ability to target specific cellular pathways and reduce treatment side effects.

Full text

https://www.xiahepublishing.com/2996-3427/OnA-2024-00012

 

The study was recently published in the Oncology Advances.

Oncology Advances is dedicated to improving the diagnosis and treatment of human malignancies, advancing the understanding of molecular mechanisms underlying oncogenesis, and promoting translation from bench to bedside of oncological sciences. The aim of Oncology Advances is to publish peer-reviewed, high-quality articles in all aspects of translational and clinical studies on human cancers, as well as cutting-edge preclinical and clinical research of novel cancer therapies.

Follow us on X: @xiahepublishing

Follow us on LinkedIn: Xia & He Publishing Inc.

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Journal

Oncology Advances

DOI

10.14218/OnA.2024.00012 

Article Title

Exploring the Systematic Anticancer Mechanism in Selected Medicinal Plants: A Review

Alcohol consumption abundant in the natural world, study finds

Ian Sample Science editor

THE GUARDIAN
Tue 29 October 2024 

Male fruit flies turn to alcohol when they are rejected as a mate, while females of a closely-related species become less picky about their mates after imbibing. Photograph: Surapol Usanakul/Alamy


Humans may have turned drinking into something of an art form but when it comes to animals putting alcohol away, Homo sapiens are not such an outlier, researchers say.

A review of published evidence shows that alcohol occurs naturally in nearly every ecosystem on Earth, making it likely that most animals that feast on sugary fruits and nectar regularly imbibe the intoxicating substance.

Although many creatures have evolved to tolerate a tipple and gain little more than calories from their consumption, some species have learned to protect themselves with alcohol. Others, however, seem less able to handle its effects.


“We’re moving away from this anthropocentric view that alcohol is used by just humans and that actually ethanol is quite abundant in the natural world,” said Anna Bowland, a researcher in the team at the University of Exeter.

After trawling research papers on animals and alcohol, the scientists arrived at a “diverse coterie” of species that have embraced and adapted to ethanol in their diets, normally arising through fermented fruits, sap and nectar.

Ethanol became plentiful on Earth about 100m years ago when flowering plants began to produce sugary fruits and nectar that yeast could ferment. The alcohol content is typically low, at around 1% to 2% alcohol by volume (ABV), but in over-ripe palm fruit the concentration can reach 10% ABV.

In one study, wild chimpanzees in south eastern Guinea were caught on camera bingeing on the alcoholic sap of raffia palms. Meanwhile, spider monkeys on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, are partial to ethanol-laden yellow mombin fruit, revealed to contain between 1% and 2.5% alcohol. “Evidence is growing that humans are not drinking alone,” the authors write in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Whether consumption leads to drunkenness is another question. Tales of inebriated animals are abound, from elephants and baboons drunk on marula fruit in Botswana, to a moose found with its head stuck in a tree in Sweden after chomping on fermented apples. But in none of these cases, at least, was alcohol measured in the animals or the fruit.

Many animals seem to have impressive alcohol tolerance. Despite the “prodigious ethanol consumption” of pen-tailed treeshrews, the scientists found no evidence that the animals became intoxicated, but concede it was “unclear how an inebriated treeshrew would behave”.

Animals that regularly eat fermented foods tend to metabolise alcohol rapidly, sparing them its worst effects. But some creatures encounter ethanol less often and can suffer the consequences. Tests on Cedar waxwings, which died from crashing into fences and other structures, found they had been flying under the influence after gorging themselves on the over-ripe berries of the Brazilian pepper tree. “Inebriation is not beneficial in an environment where you are fighting to survive,” Bowland said.

Perhaps the most striking effects of alcohol are seen in insects. Male fruit flies turn to alcohol when they are rejected as a mate, while females of a closely related species become less picky about their mates and have sex with more males after imbibing. Fruit flies lay their eggs in ethanol-rich foods, protecting them from parasites.

Earlier this month, researchers led by Eran Levin at Tel Aviv University found that oriental hornets may be the only animals capable of consuming an unlimited amount of alcohol without suffering ill effects. “They can ingest up to 80% ethanol solution without any negative effects on their mortality or behaviour,” said Dr Sophia Bouchebti, an author on the study.

“Aside from the fruit fly, aye aye and slow loris, it is unclear if animals prefer ethanol-containing food,” said Matthew Carrigan at the College of Central Florida, who worked on the review with Bowland. “One of our next steps is the test whether animals in the wild prefer ethanol-containing food or eat it only when ethanol levels are too low to detect or unfermented fruit is hard to find.”

Alcohol consumption among non-human animals may not be as rare as previously thought, say ecologists

Cell Press

 

image: 

A spider monkey feedings on fruits of spondia mombin

view more 

Credit: Nicholas Chapoy

Anecdotes abound of wildlife behaving “drunk” after eating fermented fruits, but despite this, nonhuman consumption of ethanol has been assumed to be rare and accidental. Ecologists challenge this assumption in a review publishing October 30 in the Cell Press journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution. They argue that since ethanol is naturally present in nearly every ecosystem, it is likely consumed on a regular basis by most fruit- and nectar-eating animals.

“We're moving away from this anthropocentric view that ethanol is just something that humans use,” says behavioral ecologist and senior author Kimberley Hockings (@KJHockings) of the University of Exeter. “It's much more abundant in the natural world than we previously thought, and most animals that eat sugary fruits are going to be exposed to some level of ethanol.”

Ethanol first became abundant around 100 million years ago, when flowering plants began producing sugary nectar and fruits that yeast could ferment. Now, it’s present naturally in nearly every ecosystem, though concentrations are higher, and production occurs year-round in lower-latitude and humid tropical environments compared to temperate regions. Most of the time, naturally fermented fruits only reach 1%-2% alcohol by volume (ABV), but concentrations as high as 10.2% ABV have been found in over-ripe palm fruit in Panama.

Animals already harbored genes that could degrade ethanol before yeasts began producing it, but there is evidence that evolution fine-tuned this ability for mammals and birds that consume fruit and nectar. In particular, primates and treeshrews have adapted to efficiently metabolize ethanol.

“From an ecological perspective, it is not advantageous to be inebriated as you're climbing around in the trees or surrounded by predators at night—that's a recipe for not having your genes passed on,” says molecular ecologist and senior author Matthew Carrigan of the College of Central Florida. “It’s the opposite of humans who want to get intoxicated but don’t really want the calories—from the non-human perspective, the animals want the calories but not the inebriation.”

It’s unclear whether animals intentionally consume ethanol for ethanol’s sake, and more research is needed to understand its impact on animal physiology and evolution. However, the researchers say that ethanol consumption could carry several benefits for wild animals. First and foremost, it’s a source of calories, and the odorous compounds produced during fermentation could guide animals to food sources, though the researchers say it’s unlikely that animals can detect ethanol itself. Ethanol could also have medicinal benefits: fruit flies intentionally lay their eggs in substances containing ethanol, which protects their eggs from parasites, and fruit fly larvae increase their ethanol intake when they become parasitized by wasps.

“On the cognitive side, ideas have been put forward that ethanol can trigger the endorphin and dopamine system, which leads to feelings of relaxation that could have benefits in terms of sociality,” says behavioral ecologist and first author Anna Bowland of the University of Exeter. “To test that, we'd really need to know if ethanol is producing a physiological response in the wild.”

There are a lot of unanswered questions regarding the significance of ethanol consumption to wild animals. In their future research, the team plans to investigate the behavioral and social implication of ethanol consumption in primates and to more deeply examine the enzymes involved in alcohol metabolism.

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This research was supported by the Primate Society of Great Britain, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Canada Research Chairs program, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Bowland et al., “The evolutionary ecology of ethanol” https://cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(24)00240-4

Trends in Ecology & Evolution (@Trends_Ecol_Evo), published by Cell Press, is a monthly review journal that contains polished, concise, and readable reviews and opinion pieces in all areas of ecology and evolutionary science. It aims to keep scientists informed of new developments and ideas across the full range of ecology and evolutionary biology—from the pure to the applied, and from molecular to global. Visit http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.

A capuchin eating fruits

Credit

Julia Casorso

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Journal

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1016/j.tree.2024.09.005 

Method of Research

Literature review

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The evolutionary ecology of ethanol

Article Publication Date

30-Oct-2024

 

Inspired by Spider-Man, a lab recreates web-slinging technology

The stream of liquid silk quickly turns to a strong fiber that sticks to and lifts objects (although not yet villains)

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Tufts University

 

image: 

Liquid stream of silk solution solidifies to a fiber, adheres to and lifts a glass laboratory beaker

view more 

Credit: Marco Lo Presti, Tufts University

Every kid who has read a comic book or watched a Spider-Man movie has tried to imagine what it would be like to shoot a web from their wrist, fly over streets, and pin down villains. Researchers at Tufts University took those imaginary scenes seriously and created the first web-slinging technology in which a fluid material can shoot from a needle, immediately solidify as a string, and adhere to and lift objects.

These sticky fibers, created at the Tufts University Silklab, come from silk moth cocoons, which are boiled in solution and broken down into their building block proteins called fibroin. The silk fibroin solution can be extruded through narrow bore needles to form a stream that, with the right additives, solidifies into a fiber when exposed to air.

Of course, nature is the original inspiration for deploying fibers of silk into tethers, webs, and cocoons. Spiders, ants, wasps, bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, and even flies can produce silk at some point in their lifecycle. Nature also inspired the Silklab to pioneer the use of silk fibroin to make powerful glues that can work underwater, printable sensors that can be applied to virtually any surface, edible coatings that can extend the shelf life of produce, a light collecting material that could significantly enhance the efficiency of solar cells, and more sustainable microchip manufacturing methods

However, while they made significant progress with silk-based materials, the researchers had yet to replicate the mastery of spiders, which can control the stiffness, elasticity, and adhesive properties of the threads they spin. 

A breakthrough came about purely by accident. “I was working on a project making extremely strong adhesives using silk fibroin, and while I was cleaning my glassware with acetone, I noticed a web-like material forming on the bottom of the glass,” said Marco Lo Presti, research assistant professor at Tufts.

The accidental discovery overcame several engineering challenges to replicating spider threads. Silk fibroin solutions can slowly form a semi-solid hydrogel over a period of hours when exposed to organic solvents like ethanol or acetone, but the presence of dopamine, which is used in making the adhesives, allowed the solidification process to occur almost immediately. When the organic solvent wash was mixed in quickly, the silk solution rapidly created fibers with high tensile strength and stickiness. Dopamine and its polymers employ the same chemistry used by barnacles to form fibers that stick tenaciously to surfaces. 

The next step was to spin the fibers in air. The researchers added dopamine to the silk fibroin solution, which appears to accelerate the transition from liquid to solid by pulling water away from the silk. When shot through a coaxial needle, a thin stream of the silk solution is surrounded by a layer of acetone which triggers the solidification. The acetone evaporates in mid-air, leaving a fiber attached to any object it contacted. The researchers enhanced the silk fibroin-dopamine solution with chitosan, a derivative of insect exoskeletons that gave the fibers up to 200 times greater tensile strength, and borate buffer, which increased their adhesiveness about 18-fold.

The diameter of the fibers could be varied between that of a human hair to about half a millimeter, depending on the bore of the needle.

The device can shoot fibers that can pick up objects over 80 times their own weight under various conditions. The researchers demonstrated this by picking up a cocoon, a steel bolt, a laboratory tube floating on water, a scalpel partially buried in sand, and a wood block from a distance of about 12 centimeters.

Lo Presti noted that “if you look at nature, you will find that spiders cannot shoot their web. They usually spin the silk out of their gland, physically contact a surface, and draw out the lines to construct their webs. We are demonstrating a way to shoot a fiber from a device, then adhere to and pick up an object from a distance. Rather than presenting this work as a bio-inspired material, it’s really a superhero-inspired material.”

Natural spider silk is still about 1000 times stronger than the man-made fibers in this study. But with a little added imagination and engineering, the innovation will continue to improve and pave the way for a variety of technological applications.

“As scientists and engineers, we navigate the boundary between imagination and practice. That’s where all the magic happens,” said Fiorenzo Omenetto, Frank C. Doble Professor of Engineering at Tufts University and director of the Silklab. “We can be inspired by nature. We can be inspired by comics and science fiction. In this case, we wanted to reverse engineer our silk material to behave the way nature originally designed it, and comic book writers imagined it.”

Liquid stream of silk solidifies to a fiber, adheres to and lifts glass laboratory beaker

Liquid stream of silk solution solidifies to a fiber, adheres to and lifts several steel bolts from a petri dish filled with sand

When injected into acetone, a solution of silk fibroin with dopamine and other additives spontaneously forms a web-like material

Journal

Advanced Functional Materials

DOI

10.1002/adfm.202414219 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Dynamic Adhesive Fibers for Remote Capturing of Objects

Article Publication Date

9-Oct-2024

Ethics Experts Sound Alarm on North Dakota Governor Candidate’s Oil and Gas Ties

By Jacob Orledge

October 8, 2024

Source: North Dakota Monitor


Image by Kyle Martin for the North Dakota Monitor

When Republican Kelly Armstrong filed his federal financial disclosure after being elected to Congress in 2018, he revealed his extensive ties to the oil and gas industry in his home state of North Dakota. It detailed his income from hundreds of oil wells and his financial relationship with two of the state’s largest oil producers.

Those ties will matter a great deal if, as is likely, he’s elected as North Dakota’s governor next month. Under North Dakota’s system, he will automatically chair two state bodies that regulate the energy industry, meaning Armstrong would be expected to preside over decisions that directly impact companies in which he has financial or familial ties.

As head of both the North Dakota Industrial Commission and the Land Board, Armstrong would have a nearly unmatched level of control and oversight compared with leaders in other states. The former state senator would help set policy at a time when North Dakota — the No. 3 oil producer in the nation — is entering a new phase of energy development. The Industrial Commission has faced criticism in recent years from landowners and legislators, including for being too supportive of corporate interests.

Armstrong wrote in an email, in response to questions from the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica, that he earns nearly all of his personal income from the oil and gas industry. In 2022, Armstrong received up to $50,000 in royalty income from Hess Corp. — a company that has been the subject of 14 votes by one of those bodies in recent years and is likely to be discussed by the boards in the years to come. Similarly, an oil and gas company run by Armstrong’s father had been part of a yearslong, multicompany dispute with the Land Board, which oversees state-owned lands and minerals. Most entities, including his father’s company, have reached negotiated settlements.

The man Armstrong seeks to succeed, Gov. Doug Burgum, has voted about 20 times on issues related to companies with which he has a financial relationship, according to a review of minutes from the Industrial Commission, which is responsible for energy regulation and oversight of state-owned businesses. That includes Continental Resources, one of the region’s largest producers.

These votes were made under North Dakota’s ethics rules, which are significantly weaker than those in other states. Board members have discretion to decide whether they have a conflict of interest, and the boards are effectively self-policing on this front. The state’s Ethics Commission has created conflict-of-interest rules, but it can only take action if a complaint is filed; it also has not implemented consequences for violating those rules.

Most ethics experts contacted for this article said that royalty owners voting on matters involving companies they receive income from is problematic.

“That’s not just an apparent conflict of interest, that’s a real conflict of interest,” said Dennis Cooley, director of the Northern Plains Ethics Institute at North Dakota State University. “Anything that touches on ‘I’m giving you money for this,’ even with the best intentions, and that’s what I’m assuming these folks have, these representatives have, it’s really hard to separate yourself from folks who pay you.”

Scott Skokos, executive director of the environmental conservation group Dakota Resource Council, agreed. “The mechanics of how we’ve done things in North Dakota don’t really make sense from an ethics standpoint,” said Skokos, whose group has opposed some Industrial Commission decisions. Government, he said, is “supposed to work for the people, and what’s happening is the government is working for corporate interests.”

Armstrong, a lawyer whose father has been involved in the oil industry since 1979, sat for an interview this summer at the GOP’s state headquarters to discuss his connections to one of the state’s largest industries. He said he doesn’t believe his financial ties to oil and gas companies will pose a conflict of interest when he’s asked to vote on matters involving those companies. “I would talk to somebody,” he said in the interview, “but I don’t think so.”

Armstrong said he will not divest his oil and gas interests, nor will he place his holdings in a blind trust. And he said his experience dealing with the industry will be an asset in the governor’s role as “promoter-in-chief” for North Dakota’s energy industry.

“It’s the No. 1 driver of our economy in North Dakota, and I have an incredible knowledge base about what it’s like to grow up in western North Dakota in the oil and gas business,” Armstrong said. “I don’t think that’s a conflict. I think that is a benefit.”
Few guardrails

Since he was elected governor in 2016, Burgum has cast about 20 votes on the Industrial Commission involving oil and gas companies that lease minerals from a family venture the governor co-owns and at least one vote that benefited a company in which his wife owns stock.

Those votes covered a range of issues including experimental production technology, disputes between companies and research grants.

But because of North Dakota’s thin financial disclosure requirements, the public wasn’t informed that Burgum and his family held a financial interest in the companies until he ran for president last year.

That’s when Burgum became subject to more stringent federal requirements; his disclosure report revealed that he receives up to $51,000 annually in mineral royalties combined from Continental Resources and Hess, two of the Bakken oil field’s largest oil producers. The income comes from mineral leases signed through the Burgum Farm Partnership, a family venture co-owned by Burgum and five relatives.

A spokesperson for the governor, Mike Nowatzki, said those leases began long before Burgum took office and have not been the subject of any business that has come before the boards.

Those federal disclosures also revealed that his wife, Kathryn Burgum, held stocks in nine energy companies, more than half of which do business in the state.

One of those, Otter Tail Corp., had business before the Industrial Commision and was the recipient of a $4.4 million grant for grid resiliency approved in a 3-0 vote last December. Burgum voted in favor of the grant.

Burgum’s wife held stock valued between $1,001 and $15,000 in Otter Tail. Multiple emails sent to Nowatzki sought the actual value, as well as comment from Burgum’s wife. The spokesman did not provide either.

The exact amount of those holdings matters because the Industrial Commission’s ethics policy prohibits board members from participating in, voting on or attempting to influence any decision on a company they or their spouse owns $5,000 or more equity in if there is a “reasonably foreseeable benefit” to the business from the “matter under consideration.”

Nowatzki asserted that the board’s ethics policy only applies if the governor himself benefited, not the company, and that it’s “absurd” to suggest the grant to Otter Tail “would provide a ‘reasonably foreseeable benefit’ to the governor on a 32-year-old investment valued at under $15,000.”

“The governor has no involvement in management of that account, and it has not factored into any decisions in his official capacity as governor,” Nowatzki wrote in an email.

Richard Briffault, a Columbia University law professor and expert in government ethics, says the stock ownership should have been disclosed prior to any votes. “If a regulator’s spouse has financial interests in one of the entities subject to regulation, that’s as if the regulator himself has a financial interest,” he said.

Had Burgum’s holdings been known, he still might not have been prevented from participating in those votes. The three-member Industrial Commission, which also includes the state attorney general and agriculture commissioner, is one of many entities in North Dakota that uses a version of the “neutral reviewer” process: If a board member discloses a conflict of interest in a matter under consideration, the remaining members vote on whether their conflicted colleague is disqualified. Industrial Commission Executive Director Karen Tyler said the board, which holds open meetings, often does not take a formal vote but has a “discussion and then a consensus whether or not the conflict rises to the level of a disqualifying conflict of interest.”

Three ethics experts told the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica that they’ve rarely, if ever, seen this process used by government boards elsewhere. It is best practice, they said, for officials with a conflict to automatically recuse themselves.

“I find that to be a bizarre system,” said Cooley, who said he had never seen it used until he moved to North Dakota.

Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who studies government ethics, called the system “flawed.” “There’s going to be a lot of pressure on the other board members to say, ‘No, it’s OK for you to go ahead and vote; I don’t think you’ve got a conflict,’” said Painter, who served as President George W. Bush’s chief ethics attorney.

In fact, the neutral reviewer system was used when another member of the Industrial Commission, Doug Goehring, joined a 3-0 vote in favor of a carbon storage permit for Red Trail Energy, a western North Dakota ethanol plant in which he said in an interview that he had invested $60,000.

At the time, in 2021, Goehring verbally disclosed that he was an investor; the minutes of the meeting show that “the Commission did not have any concerns” with his participation in the vote. In a recent interview, he described the commission’s evaluation of conflicts of interest as “housekeeping stuff.”

Goehring, who is also the state’s longtime agriculture commissioner, in 2018 verbally disclosed a conflict and abstained from a vote giving Red Trail Energy a $500,000 grant; he did that, he said in an interview, because the action was an appropriation of taxpayer dollars. By contrast, he said he voted for the permit in 2021 because “anybody is eligible for a permit” if the “geology is appropriate.”

“To think that that’s not a conflict of interest is to hallucinate, in my opinion,” Skokos said. “For him to vote on it, having a financial stake in that company, is alarming.”

Goehring also never disclosed his stake in Red Trail Energy on state financial disclosure reports filed between 2010 and 2022 and reviewed by the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica. Asked about this, he called the omission an “oversight.”

Red Trail Energy is in the process of being sold for $210 million. Initial investors such as Goehring will see a sizable profit from that sale, according to Jodi Johnson, Red Trail Energy’s CEO.
Armstrong’s holdings

The state’s guardrails against conflicts of interest will be tested if Armstrong is elected governor. His oil and gas holdings outstrip — and compose a far greater share of his overall wealth than — those of the current governor.

“Nearly 100% of my non-salary income is from oil and gas,” Armstrong wrote in an email.

As the GOP nominee, Armstrong is the favorite to be North Dakota’s next governor. Democrats last won statewide office in 2012, and the party has been absent from the governor’s mansion since 1992. Democrat Merrill Piepkorn, a state senator from Fargo, and independent candidate Michael Coachman also are running for governor.

Armstrong, the son of oilman Michael Armstrong of Dickinson, owns widespread mineral interests throughout the Bakken. His 2022 income from oil and gas, according to financial disclosures filed by the congressman, was between $426,674 and $2,460,900. He received up to $100,000 from Conoco and up to $50,000 from Hess, two of the largest oil producers in North Dakota. He also owns 11% of The Armstrong Corp., the family’s business that his campaign described as engaging in oil and gas exploration, among other efforts.

Armstrong’s industry interests have grown during his time in Congress. His financial disclosures indicate that the number of wells he earns royalty income from has increased to 475 in 2022, up from 301 in 2018.

He stepped down as vice president of The Armstrong Corp. after being elected to Congress in 2018. He said in an interview he has not made any oil and gas business decisions while serving in Congress.

Armstrong pointed out that states, and not the federal government, have “most of the control over the regulation” of oil and gas production. And he acknowledged the influence he would have if elected in a state where the governor has more sway. By contrast, Texas, the country’s top oil producer, elects members to the body that regulates the industry.

“North Dakota does things very uniquely,” Armstrong said, though he could see benefits to Texas’ approach and would entertain the idea of adjusting his state’s system.

“Ask me after I’ve done it for two years. That’s my answer, we’ll wait and see.”
‘Clearly inadequate disclosure’

The public only got insight into Burgum’s and Armstrong’s financial positions because of a quirk of political circumstances: In recent years, both had to file federal disclosures.

North Dakota’s disclosure requirements for elected officials call for a fraction of what the federal government or most other states do. The state only requires public officials to file financial disclosure reports when they’re running for elected office, which is every four years for most positions. (Most states require the reports annually.) Officials also are not required to report stock ownership nor the value of their assets. The records are not published online, unlike in most states, and there are no penalties enforced for submitting incomplete or inaccurate statements.

There also is no state authority empowered to monitor such disclosures or offer guidance. The statements of interest are submitted to the North Dakota Secretary of State’s Office, but Sandy McMerty, deputy secretary of state, said, “There is no requirement for us to check” on the accuracy of those filings.

“That’s clearly inadequate disclosure,” said Painter, the former White House ethics attorney.

Still, Armstrong and Burgum failed to meet North Dakota’s requirements. Armstrong did not list his ownership stake in several family companies in his 2016 disclosure as a state lawmaker. He did include those companies in his 2018 disclosure while running for Congress. Asked why the reports differed, Armstrong said: “I have no idea.”

Burgum, meanwhile, failed to disclose on his 2020 state financial report both his ownership stake in the Burgum Farm Partnership, which owns the mineral leases his family has, and his wife’s brokerage account. He disclosed the family partnership, but not the leases, in his 2016 report. He is not running for reelection.

In response to inquiries by the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica, Burgum filed an amended version of the 2020 report with the Secretary of State’s Office in September. It now includes the family partnership and the brokerage account, but it does not mention his family’s mineral leases or individual stocks owned by his wife.

Nowatzki said the stocks are managed by Merrill Lynch and the investment account was “inadvertently omitted from previous statements of interest.”

Nowatzki pushed back, however, on any assertion the oil and gas leases should have been disclosed, arguing that that isn’t required of North Dakotans generally. “Tens of thousands of families and mineral owners have similar arrangements,” he said.

Painter said that the leases they held “absolutely” should have been disclosed.

The state’s Ethics Commission was supposed to help mitigate potential conflicts of interest. Created in 2019 as the result of a voter-initiated ballot measure to amend the constitution, three years later the commission instituted conflict-of-interest rules for the legislative and executive branches of government. The rules — which define a conflict of interest and spell out how potential conflicts should be disclosed and evaluated — have proven largely ineffective in part because conflicts are often not disclosed and there are no consequences in the rules for violations.

Rebecca Binstock, executive director of the Ethics Commission, said that body is planning to create new financial disclosure rules and will rectify the lack of what she called “meaningful enforcement.” The commission said last month it’s working with the secretary of state to draft proposed legislation to create a process for enforcing compliance with the state’s financial disclosure requirements.

In 2017, proposed legislation would have required that statements of interest be published online and available to the public for free. (The North Dakota Monitor paid $170 to obtain statements of interest for all candidates on the November ballot.) Ultimately, that effort failed, and the Legislature voted only to commission a study of the issue. Armstrong voted against it. He told the North Dakota Monitor that the study was unnecessary because he thought the Secretary of State’s Office had agreed to publish the disclosures online without a legislative directive. That has not happened.

Armstrong, meanwhile, has campaigned on a promise to “promote and demand transparency.” Still, he said in an interview that he is opposed to increasing the transparency requirements for state legislators.

“Outside the pain in the ass of filing my financial disclosure, I don’t have a problem with doing it at the federal level, but you can’t force that on people here,” Armstrong said. “State legislators would never get it done that way.”

Jacob Orledge is a reporter based in Bismarck through ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. He most recently worked for the Tioga Tribune in Williams County.

Thousands of shipping containers have been lost at sea. What happens when they burst open?

CHRISTINA LARSON, HELEN WIEFFERING and MANUEL VALDES
Wed, October 2, 2024

PHOTO ESSAY

LONG BEACH, Wash. (AP) — Russ Lewis has picked up some strange things along the coast of Long Beach Peninsula in Washington state over the years: Hot Wheels bicycle helmets with feather tufts, life-size plastic turkey decoys made for hunters, colorful squirt guns.

And Crocs — so many mismatched Crocs.

If you find a single Croc shoe, you might think somebody lost it out on the beach, he said. “But, if you find two, three, four and they’re different — you know, one’s a big one, one’s a little one — that’s a clue.”

These items aren’t like the used fishing gear and beer cans that Lewis also finds tossed overboard by fishers or partygoers. They’re the detritus of commercial shipping containers lost in the open ocean.

Most of the world’s raw materials and everyday goods that are moved over long distances — from T-shirts to televisions, cellphones to hospital beds — are packed in large metal boxes the size of tractor-trailers and stacked on ships. A trade group says some 250 million containers cross the oceans every year — but not everything arrives as planned.

More than 20,000 shipping containers have tumbled overboard in the last decade and a half. Their varied contents have washed onto shorelines, poisoned fisheries and animal habitats, and added to swirling ocean trash vortexes. Most containers eventually sink to the sea floor and are never retrieved.

Cargo ships can lose anywhere from a single container to hundreds at a time in rough seas. Experts disagree on how many are lost each year. The World Shipping Council, an industry group, reports that, on average, about 1,500 were lost annually over the 16 years they’ve tracked — though fewer in recent years. Others say the real number is much higher, as the shipping council data doesn’t include the entire industry and there are no penalties for failing to report losses publicly.

Much of the debris that washed up on Lewis’ beach matched items lost off the giant cargo ship ONE Apus in November 2020. When the ship hit heavy swells on a voyage from China to California, nearly 2,000 containers slid into the Pacific.

Court documents and industry reports show the vessel was carrying more than $100,000 worth of bicycle helmets and thousands of cartons of Crocs, as well as electronics and other more hazardous goods: batteries, ethanol and 54 containers of fireworks.

Researchers mapped the flow of debris to several Pacific coastlines thousands of miles apart, including Lewis’ beach and the remote Midway Atoll, a national wildlife refuge for millions of seabirds near the Hawaiian Islands that also received a flood of mismatched Crocs.

Scientists and environmental advocates say more should be done to track losses and prevent container spills.

“Just because it may seem 'out of sight, out of mind,’ doesn’t mean there aren’t vast environmental consequences,” said marine biologist Andrew DeVogelaere of California’s Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, who has spent more than 15 years studying the environmental impact of a single container that was found in sanctuary waters.

“We are leaving time capsules on the bottom of the sea of everything we buy and sell — sitting down there for maybe hundreds of years,” he said.

Nitric acid, plastic pellets and baby seals

This year’s summer winds washed thousands of plastic pellets ashore near Colombo, Sri Lanka, three years after a massive fire aboard the X-Press Pearl burned for days and sank the vessel a few miles offshore.

The disaster dumped more than 1,400 damaged shipping containers into the sea — releasing billions of plastic manufacturing pellets known as nurdles as well as thousands of tons of nitric acid, lead, methanol and sodium hydroxide, all toxic to marine life.

Hemantha Withanage remembers how the beach near his home smelled of burnt chemicals. Volunteers soon collected thousands of dead fish, gills stuffed with chemical-laced plastic, and nearly 400 dead endangered sea turtles, more than 40 dolphins and six whales, their mouths jammed with plastic. “It was like a war zone,” he said.

Cleanup crews wearing full-body hazmat suits strode into the tide with hand sieves to try to collect the lentil-size plastic pellets.

The waterfront was closed to commercial fishing for three months, and the 12,000 families that depend on fishing for their income have only gotten a fraction of the $72 million that Withanage, founder of Sri Lanka’s nonprofit Centre for Environmental Justice, believes they are owed.

“Just last week, there was a huge wind, and all the beaches were full of plastic again,” he said in mid-June.

Lost container contents don’t have to be toxic to wreak havoc.

In February, the cargo ship President Eisenhower lost 24 containers off the central California coast. Some held bales of soon-waterlogged cotton and burst open. Debris washed ashore near Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, a federally protected area.

The ship’s captain informed the U.S. Coast Guard, which worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and California State Parks to remove the debris. Each bale was too heavy to drag away — instead they had to be cut up, each filling two dump trucks.

“A rancid soggy mess,” said Eric Hjelstrom, a chief ranger for California State Parks. “If tidal pools get filled with cotton, that can block out sunlight and harm a lot of organisms.”

One bale landed in an elephant seal nursery, surrounded by baby seals. “You have to be careful how to approach it – you don’t want to injure the seals,” Hjelstrom said. A marine mammal specialist gently escorted 10 pups away before the bale was removed.

Although the operators of the President Eisenhower helped pay for cleanup, neither California nor federal authorities have ordered the company to pay any penalties.

As for the metal shipping containers, only one was spotted on a U.S. Coast Guard overflight, and it had vanished from sight by the time a tugboat was sent to retrieve it, said Coast Guard Lt. Chris Payne in San Francisco.

When shipping containers are lost overboard, “Most of them sink. And a lot of times, they’re just in really deep water,” said Jason Rolfe of NOAA’s Marine Debris Program.

Most sunken containers — some still sealed, some damaged and open — are never found or recovered.

The Coast Guard has limited powers to compel shipowners to retrieve containers unless they threaten a marine sanctuary or contain oil or designated hazardous materials. “If it’s outside our jurisdiction,” said Payne, “there’s nothing that we can do as the federal government to basically require a company to retrieve a container.”

The long-term impact of adding on average more than a thousand containers each year to the world’s oceans — by the most conservative estimates — remains unknown.

Scientists at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California are studying the cascade of changes wrought by a single container found by chance on the seabed.

Their research team was operating a remote-control vehicle at 4,200 feet (1,280 meters) below the surface to study deep-sea corals in 2004 when they were surprised to encounter a metal box. “It’s just serendipity that we found it,” said marine ecologist Jim Barry. Despite multiple spills in nearby shipping lanes, “It’s the only container that we know exactly where it landed.”

“The first thing that happens is they land and crush everything underneath them,” said DeVogelaere, who studied the sunken container. By changing the flow of water and sediment, the container completely changes the micro-ecosystem around it — impacting seafloor species that scientists are still discovering.

“The animals in the deep have felt our presence before we even knew anything about them,” he said.

Labels showed the container came from the Med Taipei, which had lost two dozen boxes in rough seas on a journey between San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 2006, the ship owners and operators reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice to pay $3.25 million for estimated damages to the marine environment.

Steering floating skyscrapers at sea

More than 80% of international trade by volume arrives by sea. All this cargo travels on increasingly vast ships.

“On the modern big ships, it’s like a high-rise building,” said Jos Koning, a senior project manager at MARIN, a Netherlands-based maritime research organization that studies shipping risks.

Today’s largest cargo vessels are longer than three football fields, with cranes required to lift containers and stack them in towering columns. When the industry took off some 50 years ago, ships could hold only about a tenth of the freight that today’s behemoths carry. According to the insurer Allianz, container ship capacities have doubled in just the last two decades.

Greater size brings heightened risks. The largest ships are more difficult to maneuver and more prone to rolling in high waves. And there’s a greater chance that any single box could be damaged and crushed — a destabilizing accident that can send an entire stack of containers cascading into the sea.

In February, the marine insurer Gard published a study based on six years of their claims that showed 9% of ultra-large ships had experienced container losses, compared to just 1% of smaller vessels.

Accidents are often linked to cargo that has been inaccurately labeled, weighed or stored. Investigators determined that the X-Press Pearl’s devastating spill near Sri Lanka, for instance, was the result of a fire that likely started from a poorly stacked container that was leaking nitric acid.

But cargo ship operators don’t have the capacity to verify all container weights and contents, and instead must rely on information that shippers provide.

“It’s just completely impractical to think that you can open every container,” said Ian Lennard, president of the National Cargo Bureau, a nonprofit that works with the U.S. Coast Guard to inspect seagoing cargo.

In a pilot study, the group found that widespread mislabeling and improper stowage meant that nearly 70% of shipping containers arriving in the U.S. with dangerous goods failed the bureau’s safety inspection.

“Despite all these problems, most of the time it arrives safely,” Lennard said.

But when there is a crisis — a ship hits rough weather, or a container carrying a chemical ignites in summer heat — accidents can have catastrophic impacts.

High seas, high losses, but no definitive counts

How often do shipping container spills happen? There’s no clear answer.

Existing tracking efforts are fragmented and incomplete. Although a few shipwrecks and disasters grab headlines, like the March crash of a cargo ship into a Baltimore bridge, much less is known about how often containers are lost piecemeal or away from major ports.

To date, the most widely cited figures on lost shipping containers come from the World Shipping Council. The group’s membership, which carries about 90% of global container traffic, self-reports their losses in a survey each year.

Over 16 years of collected data through 2023, the group said an average of 1,480 containers were lost annually. Their recent figures show 650 containers were lost in 2022 and only about 200 last year.

Elisabeth Braw, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative, said self-reported surveys miss the full picture.

For example, not included in the 2023 tally were 1,300 containers from the cargo ship Angel, which sank near Taiwan’s Kaohsiung port. That’s because the ship’s operators aren’t members of the World Shipping Council.

Lloyd’s List Intelligence, a maritime intelligence company that’s tracked thousands of marine accidents on container ships over the past decade, told AP that underreporting is rampant, saying ship operators and owners want to avoid insurance rate hikes and protect their reputations.

Marine insurers, which are typically on the hook to pay for mishaps, likely have access to more complete data on losses – but no laws require that data to be collected and shared publicly.

World Shipping Council president and CEO Joe Kramek said the industry is researching ways to reduce errors in loading and stacking containers, as well as in navigating ships through turbulent waters.

“We don’t like when it (a container loss) happens,” said Kramek. “But the maritime environment is one of the most challenging environments to operate in.”

Earlier this year, the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization adopted amendments to two global ocean treaties aimed at increasing transparency around lost shipping containers. Those changes, expected to take effect in 2026, will require ships to report losses to nearby coastal countries and to authorities where the vessel is registered.

But with no enforceable penalties, it remains to be seen how extensively operators will comply.

Alfredo Parroquín-Ohlson, head of cargo in the IMO’s maritime safety division, said, “We just encourage them and tell them how important it is, but we cannot be a police.”

What floats above and what lies beneath

It’s not just environmentalists who worry. Some lost containers float for days before sinking — endangering boats of all sizes, from commercial vessels to recreational sailboats.

The sporting body World Sailing has reported at least eight instances in which crews had to abandon boats because of collisions with what were believed to be containers. In 2016, sailor Thomas Ruyant was 42 days into a race around the world when his sailboat’s hull split from a sudden crash with what appeared to be a floating container.

“It gives me the shivers just thinking about it,” he said in a video dispatch from his damaged boat as he steered toward shore.

In Sri Lanka, the consequences of the X-Press Pearl accident linger, three years after the ship went down.

Fishermen have seen stocks of key species shrink, and populations of long-lived, slow-reproducing animals such as sea turtles may take several generations to recover.

For his part, Lewis, the volunteer beach cleaner in Washington state, said he wonders about all the debris he doesn’t see wash up on his shores.

“What’s going to happen when it gets down deep and, you know, it just ruptures?” he said. “We know we’ve got a problem on the surface, but I think the bigger problem is what’s on the seafloor.”

 Long Beach Peninsula in Pacific County, Wash., Monday, June 17, 2024

AP Photos/Lindsey Wasson

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Larson and Wieffering reported from Washington, D.C. Bharatha Mallawarachi contributed reporting from Colombo, Sri Lanka.

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This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.