Group of Peruvian lawmakers submits motion seeking to impeach new president

Anti-government protests in Lima


Wed, January 25, 2023

LIMA (Reuters) -A group of Peruvian lawmakers on Wednesday submitted a motion seeking to impeach President Dina Boluarte after a little over a month in power citing "permanent moral incapacity".

The bid to remove Boluarte comes in the midst of violent protests following the impeachment and arrest last month of her predecessor, Pedro Castillo, in which dozens of people have been killed.

The motion, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, was signed by 28 leftist members of congress who support Castillo. A minimum of 20%, or 26 signatures, was required to file the motion.

The motion must now be approved by 52 votes before it can be debated in Congress where it must win two-thirds of the chamber's support.

"Never in the history of Peru has a government in so little time - a month in governance - killed more than forty people in protests," the motion said, accusing Boluarte of allowing the abuse and disproportionate use of force, among other accusations.

Boluarte's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

She has blamed Castillo, who is in pretrial detention, for promoting political polarization during his nearly 17 months in power.

On Tuesday, Boluarte called for a "political truce". She has also accused drug traffickers and others of stirring up the violence on the streets.

Peru's ombudsman office said there were more than 90 blockades across the country on Wednesday and one person was killed in Cusco city.

At least 47 people have died in clashes since the protests began in December, according to the office, including one police officer, while hundreds have been injured.

Human rights groups accuse police and soldiers of using excessive force, including live ammunition and dropping tear gas from helicopters.

Security forces say protesters, mostly in Peru's southern Andes, used homemade weapons and explosives.

(Reporting by Marco Aquino and Carolina Pulice; Writing by Sarah Morland and Valentine Hilaire; Editing by Robert Birsel)

MINING IS NOT GREEN

We May Not Actually Need All That Lithium

Molly Taft
Wed, January 25, 2023

Lithium mining in Chile’s Atacama desert.

Read any article about the clean energy revolution, and chances are you’ll run into some staggering numbers about how demand for lithium, cobalt, nickel, and other minerals and metals is projected to rise over the next few decades.

But the future isn’t set in stone. The U.S. may need up to 90% less of these materials if it simply prioritizes things like public transit, urban walkability, and smaller cars, according to groundbreaking new research from the Climate and Community Project and University of California, Davis.

The International Energy Agency predicts that demand for lithium could rise by as much as 40 times by 2040; the U.S. alone by 2050 could need three times as much lithium as is currently produced on the global market. Transportation and electric vehicle batteries are a huge factor in these staggering numbers.

But there are some big problems with these materials and their production, from environmentally destructive mining practices to child and forced labor in supply chains to geopolitical conflict. A recent analysis found that over half of the world’s supply of these materials is on Indigenous lands, signaling some significant upcoming conflicts with corporations looking to profit from the increased demand.

Lithium and other minerals are also likely to become big targets for Republicans and politicians opposed to EV tax credits and other clean energy incentives. On Wednesday, Senator Joe Manchin, who has voiced opposition to EV tax credits in the past, introduced a bill mandating that all materials in an EV battery eligible for a tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act be mined either in the U.S. or in a country the U.S. has a free trade agreement with. Automakers say there’s a chance that, given all these requirements, no electric vehicle would actually be eligible for a tax credit.

But most of the forecasts that say we’re going to need huge amounts of materials like lithium are based on a future “that looks like the present except it’s electrified,” said Thea Riofrancos, an associate professor of political science at Providence College and one of the authors of the report. This one-to-one trade of gas vehicles for EVs—a vision that assumes Americans, especially, keep up with their big car obsession—is “easier, it feels more politically feasible, and it’s realistic” to the organizations doing the forecasting.

Riofrancos explained that industries that would stand to gain from a boom in electric vehicles—industries that are also producing their own forecasts—have a vested interest in seeing a car-heavy future.

“Auto companies and mining companies, the last companies on earth anyone would think of as being part of the climate solution, now have the opportunity to present themselves as climate saviors,” she said.

Riofrancos said the idea for this research was born from her own search for different modeling for a less car-heavy future. When she tried to find projections of pathways with different priorities in the U.S.—where there are fewer and smaller cars, denser and more easily navigable residential areas, and more public transit—she discovered they hadn’t yet been modeled in the context of demand for these minerals.

“Auto companies and mining companies... now have the opportunity to present themselves as climate saviors”

To do the modeling, Riofrancos and her research partners put together four scenarios for the U.S. to achieve net-zero emissions through 2050: a business-as-usual scenario, where electric vehicles simply replace the current supply of fossil fuel-dependent cars, and increasingly dramatic scenarios in which more people live in dense, walkable and bikeable areas; take improved public transit; and own fewer and smaller cars, while the government also implements aggressive recycling policies for electric car components. They then calculated the amount of lithium and other metals all these scenarios demand.

The results were surprising, even to Riofrancos. Policies that made cities more walkable and public transit better and more accessible could lower lithium demand between 18% and 66%, while simply limiting the size of EV batteries could cut demand by up to 42%. In the best-case scenario, where multiple types of these policies were implemented, demand for lithium in the U.S. could be more than 90% lower than current estimates.

The situations they lay out aren’t some sort of unrealistic utopian vision. Riofrancos stressed that even in their most aggressively low-car scenario, there are still electric vehicles on the road. “We were trying to keep this within the bounds of what could actually happen over the next 25 years,” she said. Limiting battery size, meanwhile, meant just limiting them to the types of cars popular in other developed nations. “The U.S. is going off on its own to be super big” when it comes to electric vehicles, Riofrancos said. (Ironically, the day before I spoke to Riofrancos, I had a conversation with a friend about the electric Hummer—which he was incredibly excited about, despite its absolutely gargantuan battery size.)

Ultimately, Riofrancos said, she hopes that the research at the very least shows that we have more options to get to net-zero carbon emissions than just over-reliance on EVs and the supply chain problems they bring.

“With just some federal or state level transit money, we could make a big difference in reducing the carbon emissions of transportation,” she said. “There are political challenges around getting Americans out of cars, but we should agree that the science says that that would help a lot to reduce emissions from transportation.”

Gizmodo

Here's a plan for cutting US demand for lithium by up to 90%



Lylla Younes
Thu, January 26, 2023 
This story was first published by Grist.

The effort to shift the U.S. economy off fossil fuels and avoid the most disastrous impacts of climate change hinges on the third element of the periodic table. Lithium, the soft, silvery-white metal used in electric car batteries, was endowed by nature with miraculous properties. At around half a gram per cubic centimeter, it’s the lightest known metal and is extremely energy-dense, making it ideal for manufacturing batteries with long lifespans.

The problem is that lithium comes with its own set of troubles: Mining the metal is often devastating for the environment and the people who live nearby since it’s water-intensive and risks permanently damaging the land. The industry also has an outsize impact on Native American communities — three-quarters of all known U.S. lithium deposits are located near tribal land.

Solutions for soaring lithium demand

Demand for lithium is expected to skyrocket in the coming decades (by up to 4,000 percent, according to one estimate), which will require many new mines to meet it (more than 70 by 2025). These estimates assume the number of cars on the road will remain constant, so lithium demand will rise as gas guzzlers get replaced by electric vehicles. But what if the United States could design a policy that eliminates carbon emissions from the transportation sector without as much mining?

A new report from the Climate and Community Project, a progressive climate-policy think tank, offers a fix. In a paper out on Tuesday, the researchers estimate that the U.S. could decrease lithium demand by up to 90 percent by 2050 by expanding public transportation infrastructure, shrinking the size of electric vehicle batteries and maximizing lithium recycling. The group claims this report is the first to consider multiple pathways for getting the country’s cars and buses running on electricity and suppressing U.S. lithium demand at the same time.

“Conversations [about the dangers of mining] can lead folks to think that there’s a zero-sum trade-off: Either we address the climate crisis or we protect Indigenous rights and biodiversity,” said Thea Riofrancos, an associate professor of political science at Providence College and the lead author of the report. “This report asks the question: Is there a way to do both?”

Riofrancos and the other researchers modeled four scenarios for public transportation in the U.S. that would lead to different levels of lithium demand. In the baseline, the country follows the path it’s currently on, swapping out all gas cars for electric ones by 2050, with few other changes.

Fewer cars, more mass transit and personal mobility options

The other three scenarios consider what happens when more people are walking, biking or taking trains and buses. Cities grow denser, commutes shorten and public transportation expands and is electrified. Governments take away subsidies for owning cars, such as free parking, and limit on-street parking and lots. Assuming that the average battery size stays the same and eight-year battery warranties remain in place, lithium demand drops by 66 percent in the most ambitious scenario as compared to the U.S. staying on its current path. But even the more modest scenarios bring 18 and 41 percent drops in demand for the metal, respectively, largely thanks to expanding mass transit and denser urban areas that allow families to live without cars.

“The scenarios were really informed by what already exists in certain places,” said Kira McDonald, a Princeton University researcher. She and her colleagues used real-life examples for their estimates, looking at success stories in cities such as Vienna, which has slashed car use in recent years through car-free zones, bike-sharing and improvements to pedestrian comfort and safety. London, Lyon and Amsterdam have also all seen steep declines in vehicle ownership after rolling out low-emission zones and adding more bike lanes; in Paris, car use has fallen by about 45 percent since 1990.

Smaller EV batteries and more recycling

The researchers experimented with other variables that could influence lithium demand and were surprised to find that by reducing average battery sizes to 54 kilowatt-hours, close to the capacity of the Nissan Leaf, lithium demand fell as much as 42 percent, even when car use stayed on its current trajectory. While the global average battery is small, with a capacity of around 40 kWh, the bigger batteries used in the United States have an average capacity of around 70 kWh, and the report notes a trend toward even bigger batteries with higher capacities like the 130 kWh models found in some electric trucks and SUVs.

Riofrancos said there’s a way around building big batteries, while allowing that there are reasonable concerns about the availability of charging stations and the need for longer battery ranges in certain areas. “But the solution to that is to build more charging stations, not make enormous electric vehicles.”

Battery recycling — a nascent industry in the U.S. — could also reduce lithium demand, but it’s unlikely to help much for at least a decade, according to experts. Currently, there just aren’t a lot of electric-car batteries to recycle, as most of the early EVs are still on the roads, and some of the batteries that do putter out get reused for solar and wind energy storage. While the European Union will soon require new lithium-ion batteries to use some recycled parts, and China requires battery manufacturers to collaborate with recycling companies, the United States has no such requirements.

The Climate and Community Project report points out that recyclers have also had little reason to recover lithium, as it’s cheaper to mine. Even a fully up-and-running industry that recovers 98 percent of EV battery material could only meet about a third of lithium demand by 2050 if the country continues to rely on cars the way it does now — two-thirds would still come from the earth.

Getting Americans out of their cars, even their electric ones, would require sweeping changes to the country’s infrastructure, the fabric of urban areas and the very culture. Some have described the level of transformation required as unrealistic. But the researchers found examples of successful efforts in big cities around the world, even in the United States. Riofrancos pointed to free bus lines in Providence, Rhode Island, e-bike subsidies in Denver and efforts in other cities to scale back parking lots.

“The conversations are happening, but they’re not connected with congressional funding priorities at all,” Riofrancos said. She added that the Biden administration’s recently released transportation blueprint, with its focus on public transit and land-use planning, is out of step with its emphasis on promoting EVs and domestic lithium mining in the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate legislation Biden signed into law last August.

“I think at this point the question is not whether we decarbonize, but how,” she said. “That’s still an open question, and I think we should be having a broader...social and political debate over the different ways forward on this.”

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/01/capitalim-is-not-sustainable-revealed.html

How China Is Transforming Africa’s Economies

Editor OilPrice.com

Thu, January 26, 2023 

In 2000, China was the leading source of imports for only a few African countries: Sudan, Gambia, Benin and Djibouti.

But as Statista's Martin Armstrong shows in the infographic below, 20 years later, the Asian superpower is now the top supplier of goods for over 30 nations on the continent.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The China-Africa connection has been fostered intensely over the last two decades. As reported by Statista's research expert for Angola, Kenya and Tanzania, Julia Faria:

"The value of Chinese exports to African countries jumped from five billion U.S. dollars to 110 billion".

It's not just a one-way street, however:

"African exports to China also increased, though at a slower pace. In 2020, total export value to China reached nearly 62 billion U.S. dollars, a slowdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The growing Chinese demand for raw materials has found a strong supplier in Africa, with exports valued at around 14 billion U.S. dollars in 2020."

Far beyond being a simple trade relationship, China has been the largest foreign investor in Africa for a number of years now. Additionally, the country was the source of 25 percent of infrastructure funding in the continent in 2018 - the second highest share that year and only second to the financial commitments from national African governments.

By Zerohedge.com

GLOBALIZATION IS FORDISM

Yellen lauds Ford's 100-year history in South Africa, flags more investments





U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visits South Africa

Thu, January 26, 2023
By Andrea Shalal

SILVERTON, South Africa (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday lauded the Ford Motor Co's 100-year history of assembling vehicles in South Africa and underscored Washington's resolve to expand trade ties with countries that it "can count on," including South Africa.

Yellen spoke after touring Ford's plant in Silverton, a suburb of Pretoria, where she got behind the wheel of bright yellow new Ranger pickup truck and spoke with workers and company officials. This is the third leg of her three-country trip across the African continent that is aimed at expanding U.S. economic ties and countering China's influence on the continent.

The plant, which employs 4,000 people, is an example of how deeper ties between the United States and Africa could produce good jobs and boost economic growth for both sides, Yellen told workers and company officials.

"Africa will shape the future of the global economy," she said. "We know that a thriving Africa is in the interest of the United States. A thriving Africa means a larger market for our goods and services. It means more investment opportunities for our businesses."

About 600 U.S. companies operate in South Africa, employing about 220,000 people and generating revenue equivalent to about 10% of South Africa's entire gross domestic product, U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Reuben Brigety said at the event.

Ford, a major U.S. investor in South Africa, is investing $1 billion to expand output at the plant there by 20%, adding 1,200 new jobs, and aims to develop a freight rail link with a seaport 700 miles (1,126.54 km) away.

Yellen said other U.S. companies, including Cisco, General Electric, and Visa also planned big investments, attracted by expanding markets fueled by a demographic boom that will see Africa account for a quarter of the world’s population by 2050.

The U.S. Treasury chief said South Africa had been the biggest beneficiary of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which grants eligible Sub-Saharan countries duty-free access to the U.S. market, but did not spell out what would happen when the legislation expires in 2025.

Yellen said South Africa also had a role to play in U.S. efforts to shift supply chains away from over-reliance on China and other non-market economies to more like-minded countries, an approach she has dubbed "friendshoring."

As in her comments to South Africa's finance minister earlier on Thursday, Yellen did not address South Africa's refusal to take sides over Russia's war in Ukraine or Washington's concern over military exercises it plans with China and Russia.

The massive economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's war against Ukraine underscored the need for resilient supply chains, she said.

"We are addressing the over-concentration of the production of critical goods in certain markets — particularly those that may not share our economic values," Yellen said. "To do so, we are deepening economic integration with the many countries that we can count on. That includes our many trusted trading partners on this continent — like South Africa."

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)

Yellen says Africa to shape world economy as US reengages

MOGOMOTSI MAGOME and GERALD IMRAY
Thu, January 26, 2023 

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen watched Ford cars and pickup trucks being assembled at a plant in South Africa on Thursday, citing it as an example of cooperation between Washington and Africa as she begins the Biden administration's big push to reengage with a continent that has 1.3 billion people and an abundance of economic potential.

“The United States’ strategy towards Africa is centered around a simple recognition that Africa will shape the future of the global economy,” Yellen said at the Ford plant in the suburb of Silverton in the South African capital, Pretoria.

“We know that a thriving Africa is in the interest of the United States. A thriving Africa means a large market for our goods and services. It means more investment opportunities for our businesses like this Ford plant, which can create jobs in Africa and customers for American businesses.”

The 76-year-old Yellen, smiling widely, got behind the wheel of one of the shining new vehicles at one point, and gripped the steering wheel firmly with both hands.


Yellen is nearing the end of a three-country tour of Africa that began in Senegal on the continent's west coast and also took in Zambia. Her visit is the start of the Biden administration's efforts to rebuild ties with Africa in the light of China's rapidly increasing economic presence on the world's second-largest continent, and Russia's military and diplomatic foothold in parts of it.

South Africa, Africa's most developed economy and pivotal to the U.S. plan, has deep ties with both Russia and China, and raised concern at the White House when it announced last week it would host Russian and Chinese warships next month and take part in joint naval drills with them off its east coast. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made an official visit to South Africa on Monday, a day before Yellen touched down.

Yellen has avoided mentioning the naval drills during her trip, or South Africa's neutral stance over the war in Ukraine and decision not to side with the West in condemning Russia. She did say Russia's invasion is to blame for increasing some of Africa’s problems.

“Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine has raised energy prices and exacerbated food insecurity,” she said.

Africa is the world's largest single trade area by number of countries. It has a young population, a burgeoning middle class and is expected to be home to one quarter of the world's population by 2050.

It also has a myriad of problems, and Yellen focused on one of them earlier Thursday when she held morning talks with South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana. The talks partly dealt, Yellen said, with transitioning South Africa from its heavy reliance on coal to greener energy sources.

South Africa relies on coal-fired plants to generate about 80% of its electricity. As well as being a huge polluter, the coal plants have proved unable to meet the country's needs. South Africa is currently embroiled in an electricity crisis, with scheduled rolling blackouts hitting businesses and households and its 60 million people for up to 10 hours a day because of diesel shortages and breakdowns at the state-owned electricity provider’s aging coal plants.

South Africa plans to reduce its reliance on coal to 59% of its electricity production by 2030 and is targeting zero carbon emissions by 2050. The U.S. and other Western nations have committed to help, pledging $8.5 billion in loans to fund South Africa's energy transition.

"South Africa is the first country with a just energy transition partnership to which the United States was proud to commit as a partner,” Yellen said. “This partnership represents South Africa’s bold first step towards expanding electricity access and reliability and creating a low-carbon and climate-resistant economy.”

Yellen's mission to promote American investment and ties comes in the face of China overtaking the U.S. in foreign direct investment in Africa. Trade between Africa and China surged to $254 billion in 2021, up about 35%.

Yellen's trip kicked off U.S. efforts to recover lost ground, while the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, is also on a tour to Africa, and President Joe Biden has said he intends to visit this year, as does Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Biden administration's plans were largely laid out at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington in December, when U.S. Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves said, “We took our eye off the ball so to speak (in Africa), and U.S. investors and companies are having to play catch-up.”

Before his meeting with Yellen on Thursday, Godongwana said that the U.S. still ranks among South Africa’s top trading partners.

“My hope is that this may continue,” he said.

___

Gerald Imray reported from Cape Town.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen looks into the interior of newly build vehicle during her tour at the Ford Assembling Plant in Pretoria, South Africa, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023.

 (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

Anti-abortion protesters break into Walgreens AGM meeting room


Signage is seen outside of a Walgreens, owned by the Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc., in Manhattan, New York City

Thu, January 26, 2023 at 4:51 PM MST·2 min read

(Reuters) - Anti-abortion protesters broke into the room where Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc held its annual shareholders meeting in Newport Coast, California on Thursday for its decision to start selling abortion pills, the pharmacy chain said.

Walgreens and CVS Health Corp said on Jan. 4 that they plan to offer abortion pills following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) decision to allow retail pharmacies to offer the drug in the country for the first time.

"Today, directly after the close of official business of our annual shareholders meeting, a small group of protesters entered the meeting room without authorization," Walgreens Senior Director for External Relations Fraser Engerman told Reuters.

"We are grateful that none of our shareholders, team members and event staff were harmed during this incident," Engerman said in a written statement.

The FDA on Jan. 3 finalized a rule allowing retail pharmacies to sell mifepristone. However, pharmacies must still weigh whether and where to offer the pill given political controversy surrounding abortion in the United States.

"It was a wild annual shareholders meeting," said Walgreens shareholder and AGM attendee John Chevedden. "The protesters knew what they were doing because they found a way to enter the room from behind the podium. It was a complete surprise."

"Upon leaving the meeting there were about 50 noisy protesters with signs just outside of the resort grounds," he said via email.

U.S. abortion rights were curtailed in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to terminating pregnancies when it scrapped a landmark ruling in the 1973 Roe vs. Wade case.

"We believe strongly in the right to peaceful protest, and an area was set aside for this purpose, but unfortunately some protesters took further disruptive actions," said Engerman.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Ross Kerber; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

Faculty calls on embattled Minnesota college head to resign


Hamline University Fayneese Miller during an interview Monday, Jan. 23. 2023 in St Paul Minn. The faculty at the Minnesota college is calling for its president to resign for her handling of a Muslim student's objection to a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad being shown in an ancient art course. Faculty leaders at Hamline University say members voted Tuesday, Jan. 24. 

Jerry Holt/Star Tribune 


Wed, January 25, 2023

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Faculty leaders at a Minnesota college that dismissed an art history instructor who showed depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in a course have overwhelmingly called for the university president to resign.

Faculty leaders at Hamline University said 71 of 92 members who attended a meeting Tuesday voted to call on President Fayneese Miller to resign immediately. They say they lost faith in Miller because of her handling of an objection lodged by a Muslim student who said seeing the artwork violated her religious beliefs.

The adjunct instructor who showed the artwork, Erika López Prater, sued the private liberal arts school last week after it declined to renew her contract.

“It became clear that the harm that’s been done and the repair that has to be done, that new leadership is needed to move that forward,” Jim Scheibel, president of the Hamline University Faculty Council, told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis.

The faculty objected to what they considered a violation of academic freedom.

“We are distressed that members of the administration have mishandled this issue and great harm has been done to the reputation of Minnesota’s oldest university,” the faculty council statement read. It later went on to say, “As we no longer have faith in President Miller’s ability to lead the university forward, we call upon her to immediately tender her resignation to the Hamline University Board of Trustees.”

After criticism from across the country, Miller conceded last week that she mishandled the episode, which sparked a debate over balancing academic freedom with respect for religion.

“Like all organizations, sometimes we misstep,” she said in a joint statement with the chair of the school’s trustees. “In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term ‘Islamophobic’ was therefore flawed.”

A Hamline spokesman told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that Miller and her team were discussing how to respond to the faculty vote.

López Prater showed centuries-old artwork depicting the Prophet Muhammad in an October lesson on Islamic art. She said she knew that visual depictions of him violate many Muslims' faith, so she warned the class ahead of time.

The instructor alleges in her lawsuit that Hamline subjected her to religious discrimination and defamation, and damaged her professional and personal reputation.

The American Association of University Professors, which is devoted to academic freedom, has launched an inquiry and is planning a campus visit next month.

While leaders of some local Muslim groups have criticized López Prater, the national office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations disputed claims that her actions were Islamophobic. The group said professors who analyze images of the Prophet Muhammad for academic purposes are not the same as “Islamophobes who show such images to cause offense.”

LEFT WING MEME

 

CUT NOSE TO SPITE FACE
HIV at center of latest culture war after Tennessee rejects federal funds


Kayla Collins, director of health and wellness at OutMemphis, gets ready to give HIV tests when people drop in for a weekly dinner. The funding for those tests may no longer exist once Tennessee stops accepting federal HIV prevention grants after May 31. (Andrea Morales for The Washington Post)
Ariana Eunjung Cha and Fenit Nirappil, (c) 2023, The Washington Post
Thu, January 26, 2023 at 10:26 AM MST·8 min read

Tennessee has rejected millions of dollars from the federal government for HIV/AIDS prevention - a move that public health experts worry will politicize the response to the disease and has the potential to destabilize decades of progress in getting the epidemic under control.

The controversy, which critics say was triggered by questions about the inclusion of transgender and abortion rights groups, is the latest example of Republican pushback against federal leadership and oversight that has resulted in clashes in areas that once had bipartisan support.

"This is something that is dangerous," said Greg Millett, director of public policy for Amfar, a leading AIDS nonprofit, and a former senior policy adviser in the White House Office of National AIDS Policy until 2014. "This is part of a larger backlash against public health we've been seeing in our country the past few years."

The tensions in Tennessee began in the fall, when Republican Gov. Bill Lee voiced disapproval of two HIV grant recipients spotlighted in conservative media - a task force on transgender health issues and Planned Parenthood. The conflict escalated late last week when the state announced that after May 31, it would no longer accept any money from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing, prevention and surveillance of HIV.

State officials said they would continue to support HIV testing and prevention but would focus on first responders, victims of human trafficking and mothers and children. In contrast, the federal program prioritizes men who have sex with men and transgender people, particularly in communities of color, who are at greatest risk of HIV, according to federal surveillance data.

"It's pretty hard not to think that part of the motivation is to restrict funding to groups we don't like and don't want to support," said Wayne Smith, who runs a faith-based HIV prevention program in Knoxville that will lose about $10,000 for testing each year.

Joseph Cherabie, an infectious-disease physician at Washington University in St. Louis who oversees an HIV prevention program, called the decision "a coordinated effort in order to try to dehumanize and stigmatize the LGBT community."

Those who have long battled HIV say they are fearful about the human cost. Indiana drew national scrutiny in 2015 when one rural county saw 200 new HIV cases in a short period driven by intravenous drug use, at a time when then-Gov. Mike Pence delayed allowing a clean needle exchange program. And in 2017, after then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott returned $54 million in unspent federal funds for HIV, the state saw the highest number of new HIV diagnoses in the United States.

For advocates of the gay and transgender communities in Tennessee, concerns about new disease outbreaks are magnified by the fact that Shelby County, home to Memphis, already has one of the highest rates of new HIV infections in the United States. Nationwide, about 35,000 new cases are reported each year.

Lee told reporters Friday that he still believes HIV prevention is "very important," but that "we think we can do that better than the strings attached with the federal dollars that came our way."

But neither he nor state health officials would explain why they decided to target new groups, how they planned to distribute state funding, or what shape their programs would take.

Health-care groups said the decision to forgo federal funding would allow state officials to elevate conservative organizations whose goals may be more about imposing their values on others because the state would no longer have to follow CDC guidelines on scientific, evidence-based medicine. They drew parallels to how "crisis pregnancy centers" backed by social conservatives advertise themselves as health-care entities but are primarily concerned with preventing women from getting abortions.

Tennessee has received about $8.3 million annually from the CDC for HIV prevention efforts. The governor's office said it is committed to maintaining the same funding levels.

CDC spokesman Scott Pauley said the agency had not received official notification from the Tennessee Department of Health withdrawing from the CDC's funding.

"We would certainly be concerned if the services people in Tennessee need to stay healthy were interrupted, or if public health capacity to respond to HIV outbreaks and bring an end to this epidemic were hindered," he said.

- - -

For several decades, HIV/AIDS had seemed to be insulated from the partisan politics that has created conflict and confusion for other health-care goals - over the coronavirus response, abortion rights, surgery that helps people transition to their self-identified genders, and even the expansion of Medicaid.

It was President George W. Bush who signed legislation in 2003 authorizing Pepfar, or the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which some have described as the most effective government effort ever to address a global disease outbreak.

President Barack Obama helped reorient domestic strategy to focus on PrEP drugs to stop the spread of new infections and provided the means to make those medications available through federal funding and mandating insurance coverage. President Donald Trump continued that tradition in his 2019 State of the Union address, announcing an initiative to stop new HIV infections in the United States by 2030.

Some of the funds coming to Tennessee had in fact been authorized under Trump's plan, which concentrated resources on 50 "hot spots," including Shelby County, that are leading the country in new infections.

Even before Tennessee's decision, there had been other signs of a splintering of the bipartisan coalition supporting federal HIV surveillance and prevention policies.

In Texas, religious employers brought a suit arguing they shouldn't have to pay for HIV-prevention drugs that are mandated by the Affordable Care Act, and in September, a federal judge sided with them, citing the right to religious freedom. And in West Virginia, state and local officials imposed new barriers on sterile-syringe programs targeted at reducing the spread of HIV even as the Biden administration has pushed to expand them.

Jeremiah Johnson, acting executive director of PrEP4All, an HIV advocacy group, pointed out that the lifetime cost of a single new HIV infection is estimated at $500,000.

"It's always disconcerting when we end up being considered less important to invest in, and less important to invest our health-care concerns. It's a slippery slope. . . . Whom does public health serve?" he asked.

But community groups say the battle isn't over.

Molly Rose Quinn, executive director of OutMemphis, Tennessee's largest LGBTQ health organization, said groups across the state are trying to figure out alternative funding and exploring whether the grants could bypass the state and be administered by a county or other municipality that would partner with community groups.

"A state choosing to back away from federal money for health care - if they do get away with it - could introduce a very dangerous pattern," she said. Her group has received $180,000 from the CDC program for HIV testing.

"We're just really freaked out honestly," Quinn added. "We are concerned not only for the people we serve directly, but statewide, the HIV transmission rates are alarming in this part of the country."

- - -

The issue that blew up the Tennessee program was unrelated to HIV prevention.

Groups that relied on the grants said they had operated mostly without controversy until October, when they were pulled into a conservative firestorm over surgeries at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital's transgender care clinic in Nashville that help people transition to the gender that matches how they identify. An article on a conservative news site falsely accused Planned Parenthood's Memphis clinic of conducting such surgeries on youths, as well, and a transgender task force getting CDC funding was accused, again falsely, of starting as an HIV prevention group but then expanding "to promote transgender surgeries and abortion."

Lee, who was running for reelection as governor, promised a "thorough investigation."

He disavowed and defunded the task force, citing its "extreme ideologies." The group had been created in 2018, before he took office, to develop HIV prevention programs for transgender people and sought to provide a guidebook of trans-affirming health-care providers and webinars. It had received $10,000 annually from the CDC grant. Around the same time, Planned Parenthood officials said that they were told they would no longer receive HIV tests from the state to distribute to their patients and that a free-condom program they had managed for decades would lose its $225,000 annual funding.

"The attacks are getting worse and worse, day by day in our community," said Ray Holloman, who chairs the nine-member Task Force for Transgender Health.

Ashley Coffield, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, said that ending the AIDS epidemic requires a coordinated federal strategy, rather than one-off efforts by a single state - especially one that borders so many other states. She worries about new disease outbreaks "not just in the highest risk, but in the general population."

"Walking away from these programs could take HIV back a generation," Coffield said.

In Unexpected Swing, Germany’s Public Now Favors Nuclear Power

Editor OilPrice.com
Wed, January 25, 2023 

For decades, Germany has maintained a love-hate relationship with nuclear power. Currently, Germany has three existing nuclear reactors that produce ~6% of the country's power supply, a far cry from the 1990s when 19 nuclear power plants produced about a third of the country’s electricity supply.

The genesis of the current state of affairs can be traced back to 1998 when a new center-left government consisting of the Greens party and Social Democrats started demanding that the country moves away from nuclear power, a long-held objective of the Greens. The Greens became prominent in the 1980s after they started rallying against the dangers of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons against the backdrop of the Cold War. Indeed, the last new nuclear plants to be built in Germany date back to 2002 after which plans were put in place to phase out all existing plants over the next few decades.

However, the tide turned again in 2010 after a coalition of the liberal Free Democratic Party and the conservative Christian Democrats rose to power and extended the use of nuclear energy in Germany by up to 14 years. But alas, the newfound love for nuclear power was not to last: a year later, explosions and meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan soured the public’s mood on nuclear power and forced Germany to do another about-face on this policy. Berlin then returned to the original plan for a nuclear phaseout by the end of 2022.

But Russia’s war in Ukraine is forcing a rethink of energy security not only in Germany but also by the entire continent. Up until last year, Germany and Russia were major energy partners, with the latter providing the country with the majority of its oil and natural gas. But Russia’s war has led to Europe and Germany scrambling for alternative supplies as winter looms. Germany is now rethinking its nuclear phaseout strategy, and the public is falling in line.

"We will need more electric power in the future. That's a fact. And 6% can be a lot to miss when there is nothing new [to replace it]. We'd be losing 6% when we really will need more,"German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has told Deutsche Welle. Previously, the majority of the public was in favor of the nuclear phaseout in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster; now over 80% are in favor of extending the lifespan of Germany's existing nuclear reactors.

Nuclear energy is seen as a preferable energy source to a fall back to burning coal. According to Dutch-based anti-nuclear group WISE, nuclear plants produce 117 grams of CO2 emissions per kilowatt-hour, much lower compared to burning lignite which emits over 1,000 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour.

Back To Coal

But limiting greenhouse gas emissions is hardly a top priority for energy-starved Europe. According to a report by the Observer Research Foundation, energy supply disruptions triggered by Russia’s war on Ukraine took LNG prices even higher leaving coal as the only option for dispatchable and affordable power in much of Europe, including the tough markets of Western Europe and North America that have explicit policies to phase out coal.

According to the Washington Post, coal mines and power plants that closed 10 years ago have begun to be repaired in Germany. In what industry observers have dubbed a “spring” for Germany’s coal-fired power plants, the country is expected to burn at least 100,000 tons of coal per month by winter. That’s a big U-turn considering that Germany's goal had been to phase out all coal-generated electricity by 2038.

Other European countries such as Austria, Poland, the Netherlands and Greece have also started restarting coal plants.

Meanwhile, China’s coal imports have been surging as power generators increased purchases to provide for peak summer electricity demand. China has the largest number of operational coal power plants with 3,037 while Germany, the largest economy in the EU has 63.

The situation has led to soaring global coal consumption that could reach levels we haven’t seen in a decade, though there will be a limit to growth considering that investment in any new coal-powered plants has stalled. But that only makes the coal market tighter, pushing the energy source into an outperforming category.

Thermal coal, which is the variety used to generate power, has seen a 170% rise in price since the end of 2021–most of those gains made following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

How Environmental Fear-mongering Derailed The Nuclear Energy Boom

Editor OilPrice.com
Wed, January 25, 2023 at 4:00 PM MST·5 min read

Despite high hopes for nuclear power several decades ago, when the development of many large-scale nuclear plants was underway and numerous projects were already up and running, we are living far from the dream once envisioned by nuclear scientists, who were hoping to deliver vast amounts of clean energy to the world and offer a replacement for fossil fuels. Nuclear energy once presented the idea of a fossil fuel-free future, with power plants providing abundant clean energy to populations around the world. However, following a few prolific nuclear disasters, the world quickly turned its back on nuclear, and environmentalists worldwide made sure we never forgot about the high risks involved with nuclear power. Now, as several countries are putting nuclear power back on the agenda, many are questioning whether this fearmongering was really justified, given the major risks involved with continuing fossil fuel operations.

A new documentary, “Nuclear Now,” by Oliver Stone, explores the detrimental effect that environmentalists worldwide had on nuclear power development over the past decades. Stone suggests that actions taken by the environmental movement to derail nuclear power were wrong and contributed to the acceleration of the climate crisis. Stone stated, “We had the solution [nuclear power] … and the environmental movement, to be honest, just derailed it. I think the environmental movement did a lot of good, a lot of good ... [I’m] not knocking it, but in this one major matter, it was wrong. It was wrong.” He added, “And what they did was so destructive, because by now we would have 10,000 nuclear reactors built around the world and we would have set an example like France set for us, but no one … followed France, or Sweden for that matter.”

Oliver Stone is just the latest public figure to slam environmentalists for halting the development of nuclear power, which he believes could have provided clean, safe energy to replace the fossil fuels that continue to pollute the world. The International Energy Agency (IEA) and other major global groups have repeatedly called on governments and energy firms to reduce fossil fuel production in a bid to halt the effects of climate change. But without the renewable energy available to fill the gap, the world still very much relies on oil, gas, and coal. However, many suggest that nuclear power could have provided the energy source needed to wean ourselves off these fossil fuels decades ago.

A range of studies over several decades demonstrates that nuclear power is one of the safest forms of electricity generation. One analysis shows that nuclear power is responsible for 0.03 deaths by accidents and air pollution per terawatt-hour of electricity produced. By contrast, hydropower is responsible for 1.3 deaths, oil for 18.43, and brown coal for a staggering 82.72 deaths.

Yet, the three notable nuclear incidents – Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island – were publicised around the world and led to the widespread fear of other nuclear disasters. The lack of public knowledge of the implications of nuclear power and the failure of governments around the globe to respond appropriately to these incidents created a sense of fear about the continued development of nuclear energy. Conversely, the rate of accidents seen in coal, oil, and gas operations, while high, goes relatively undiscussed in the public forum. While people may be aware of the perilous conditions of coal mining and oil rigs, few see these as a threat to the greater population.

The irony is the very same environmental groups that were once encouraging populations around the globe to support a move away from nuclear are now pushing for the development of new nuclear power plants in a bid to move away from fossil fuels and curb the effects of climate change. In California, in 2016, the environmentalist Michael Shellenberger, the climate scientist James Hansen, and the founder of the crunchy Whole Earth Catalogue Stewart Brand started campaigning to save California’s last nuclear power plant – Diablo Canyon. Surprisingly, this action drove other environmentalists in the area to join the cause, including Kristin Zaitz and Heather Hoff, the founding members of the group Mothers for Nuclear. Zaitz explained, “It's the largest source of carbon-free electricity in the United States… Most people don't know that it produces a lot of electricity on a relatively tiny land footprint.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has spurred greater support for nuclear power, as we face severe energy shortages and rising costs worldwide. Governments are finally making meaningful investments in renewable energy, as well as putting nuclear power back on the agenda. And environmentalists are seeing this as an opportunity to encourage a green transition, even if this means supporting nuclear power. President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act – offering a zero-emission nuclear power production credit of up to $15 per megawatt-hour for the electricity produced by the plants – is widely supported by climate activists. And similar policies from governments around the world are gaining equal support from environmental groups, hoping that the rise of renewables and nuclear energy will lead to a cleaner future. So, despite the strong opposition to nuclear power once seen from environmental groups – leading to decades of delays and the acceleration of climate change – many climate activists are now backing nuclear plants as an important provider of clean energy.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

A global rush is on to reduce cow burps — and help save the world from climate change


Melissa Rossi
·Contributor
Wed, January 25, 2023 

A herd of cows in an alpine pasture above La Clusaz, France. (Jeff Pachoud/AFP via Getty Images)


When a cow belches, it releases methane, around 220 pounds of it every year, into the atmosphere. When more than 1.7 billion cows and buffalo currently on the planet burp, the resulting methane, a potent greenhouse gas contributing to climate change, is a big problem.

Overall, livestock production accounts for roughly 15% of greenhouse gas emissions, with the bulk of that coming from cows and their burps. But in response to that fact, a surprising fix — mixing powdered red algae daily into traditional cow feed — has been discovered, and companies across the globe are rushing to cash in on it. Adding just a single cup of red algae into the feed each day resulted in cows that belched up to 90% less methane.


“The potential of this solution is extremely high,” Fredrik Åkerman, CEO of the Swedish biotech firm Volta Greentech, told Yahoo News. When he was 22, he co-founded Volta Greentech, raising over $5 million of investment for the startup to research red algae and its effects on the digestion of cattle. Now his company is growing the seaweed in ponds and tanks at a land-based facility in Sweden, with plans to become one of the world’s biggest algae farms.

Cow burps have also caught the attention of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. On Monday, Rumin8, an environmental tech company making feed supplements from red algae in Perth, Australia, announced that Gates’s company, Breakthrough Energy, had heavily invested in their $12 million program to run commercial trials of the algae-based supplement in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and the U.S. Last week, dairy manufacturer Danone, which is headquartered in France and works with 58,000 farmers in 20 countries, announced it aimed to slash methane emissions from its dairy cows by 30% by 2030. Danone, too, is underwriting a red algae startup, this one based in Hawaii.

Red algae. (Damsea/Shutterstock)

While news outlets like Fox News have often poked fun at climate change activists and governments like New Zealand’s for their focus on cutting cow emissions, methane is a serious atmospheric problem. It accounts for around 16% of greenhouse gas emissions, but its heat-attracting effects are more intense than carbon dioxide in the short term, trapping 80 times more heat than CO2 in its first 20 years in the atmosphere.

“Over a shorter period, methane is much stronger” when looked at using the global warming potential, said Theun Vellinga, senior researcher at Wageningen Livestock Research, “and it goes up to 80 or 90 times as strong as carbon dioxide. If you average it over the whole period of 100 years, it is still 27 or 28 times stronger. So that’s quite strong.”

Methane levels have been accelerating rapidly in recent years — partly due to increased shale extraction as well as increased thawing of the Arctic permafrost and partly due to the rising number of cows and bulls, according to Vellinga.

Red algae, particularly the seaweed known as Asparagopsis, has been of scientific interest since around 2010, when a Canadian farmer on Prince Edward Island noticed that his cattle near the sea were eating seaweed and seemed healthier than his cattle that grazed elsewhere. He conveyed his observation to a scientist, Rob Kinley, who was working on his PhD at the Dalhousie Faculty of Agriculture in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Studying the cows, Kinley realized that the seaweed-eating cattle emitted far less methane. He later joined the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), an Australian government scientific research agency, which began publishing groundbreaking papers about red algae — which Åkerman read when he was in high school, after hearing about them on Reddit.

Straus Dairy Farm and Blue Ocean Barns demonstrated a climate change solution in the first commercial trial in the U.S. using a specific red seaweed on a dairy farm in 2021. (Business Wire via AP)

Initially studying electrical engineering in college, Åkerman changed course after contacting CSIRO, instead deciding to harvest red algae in Sweden and start a company focused on reducing methane emissions from cows. Now, Volta Greentech, which collaborates with CSIRO and spinoff Australian company Futurefeed, is figuring out how to mass-produce red algae within cost constraints.

Production is “still small scale,” he said, adding, “There’s no way of implementing this if it costs too much.”

The algae works, he explained, by reducing the number of a certain microorganism that breaks down food in the largest compartment of a cow’s complex stomach, the rumen. Sometimes likened to a food processor, the rumen’s microorganisms break down and ferment food, forming methane, which is released when a cow belches.

But not everyone is wowed by the potential of red algae in fighting methane. “Some people are quite enthusiastic, but honestly, I don’t understand it, because it’s a really hazardous material,” said Vellinga, pointing to bromoform, the active ingredient that lowers methane production in cows.

“In high concentrations, the bromoform is toxic,” said Åkerman. “But we and all the different research groups have made sure that the dose that we are actually feeding to the animals are far, far below the regulated limits. And a lot of studies have been done on the toxicity of bromoform to make sure that it is completely safe.”

On Dutch dairy farms, where red algae supplements have not yet been approved for use, another synthetic methane inhibitor, Bovaer, is more widely in use, said Vellinga. On average, Bovaer “reduces enteric methane emissions [cow burping] by 30% from dairy cows and 45% from beef cattle.”

Agribusiness megalith Cargill recently teamed up with U.K. company Zelp to trial “burp-catching masks” — an innovation that oxidizes the methane, reducing it by over 50% — that received $59,000 from Britain's Prince Charles for the Terra Carter Design Lab award last year. In Spain, agricultural research is showing that certain cows release less methane than others, and projects are underway to interbreed cows that are by nature less prone to spew the gas.

A cow with a Zelp burp-catching mask. (Zelp)

But each method faces its own challenges. In order to maintain its effectiveness, Bovaer must be fed to cows several times a day, making it less optimal for cattle that graze in fields. Some people, including Vellinga, consider the burp-catching masks to be inhumane to cattle, and farmers aren’t permitted to use them in the Netherlands. Selectively breeding cows that emit less methane, meanwhile, will take many years to make a significant difference, given the size of existing herds.

Another way to reduce methane emissions from cows is to reduce their overall numbers. The Dutch government has already embarked on a plan to thin the number of cattle by 30% over the next seven years. Part of its controversial $27 billion program consists of buying thousands of cattle farms near protected nature reserves in the hopes of reducing nitrogen compounds and ammonia emitted by cows and their urine.

“The government doesn’t believe in the innovations [in reducing ammonia and nitrogen compounds] anymore,” said Vellinga. “So it means that then the only way to reduce emissions is by reducing the volumes of cows.” And while the decision to reduce the Netherlands' cow stock was made in an effort to curb ammonia and nitrogen compound emissions, it will slash methane emissions as well, he noted.

Eating less meat and dairy products is another means to reduce emissions, simply by reducing demand. While vegans and vegetarians are still a small minority in Europe, more people are becoming so-called flexitarians — eating meat, but less of it.

“A couple of years ago, the big issue was, should we eat beef or become vegetarian,” Ola Thomsson, the purchasing manager at Protos, a Swedish food manufacturer, told Yahoo News. “Now the vegan and vegetarian trend has sort of descended a bit. And now we’re talking more about, perhaps we should eat more vegetables and vegetarian meals, but whatever meat we’re eating should be the right type of meat.”

Black Angus cows in Tankerton, Australia. (EyeEm/Getty Images)

Protos, which brings meat to market, and Volta Greentech teamed up last summer in a pilot project to introduce the world’s first low-methane meat to Swedish stores. It quickly sold out, and more commercial pilot projects are planned.

According to Innova Market Insights, the flexitarian trend is growing, with “30% [of the population] in Germany and 23% in France” espousing flexitarianism. Even in the U.S., the trend might be growing. A 2021 survey by One Poll commissioned by Sprouts Farmers Market indicated that 47% of Americans who were surveyed self-identified as flexitarians.

Whether through food supplements, masks or changing behavior, climate change watchers are urging change and methane slashing quickly. “Reducing human-caused methane emissions is one of the fastest, most cost-effective strategies to reduce the rate of warming and contribute to global efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C,” stated a 2021 report released by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition and the U.N. Environment Program.

Giving red algae to cows appears at first glance to offer one possible mechanism to curb methane emissions. Whether it can be produced fast enough to be fed to the world’s many millions of cows, however, remains to be seen.

“When considering new ways to reduce methane, it’s always complex: Does it reduce methane for a long time or just temporarily, what are the consequences for animal health, milk quality, food safety, is it affordable, is it easily applied?” Vellinga said. When it comes to red algae and the other methane remedies coming onto the market, he remains cautious and not yet fully convinced.