Brazil's Lula to restart housing program for low-income families


Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attends a breakfast with journalists at Planalto Palace in Brasilia

Sun, February 5, 2023

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will this month restart the federal housing program "Minha Casa, Minha Vida" for lower income people, his chief of staff said on Sunday.

Rui Costa said on TV GloboNews that the announcement will be made on Feb. 14 in Bahia state as part of several trips by the leftist president until March to initiate programs that boost the economy and quickly benefit the population.

The focus of the housing program, which means "my home, my life", would be on the resumption of unfinished works and on one that involves greater government subsidy, Costa said.

According to Costa, the program had been "extinct" under the administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Now, around 120,000 unfinished units will be resumed, he said.


Created in 2009 during Lula's second presidential term, the program offers federal subsidies for home ownership, boosting works carried out by homebuilders such as MRV and Tenda.

Costa also said that the president would visit the state of Sergipe on Feb. 15 to resume a highways program.

(Reporting by Marcela Ayres; editing by Grant McCool)

DOE to Loan $700 Million to Develop Lithium Mine in Nevada

Rhyolite Ridge South Basin. (photo:https://www.ioneer.com)

BY DARREN THOMPSON

FEBRUARY 06, 2023

WASHINGTON— The United States Department of Energy (DOE) announced on Jan. 13, that it will finance $700 million to Ioneer Incorporated, the Australian company currently developing a lithium mine at Rhyolite Ridge in Nevada.

The financing has conditions that largely depend on whether the project gets all of its operating permits. 

If completed, the Rhyolite Ridge project could potentially support the production of lithium for roughly 370,000 electric vehicles each year and would create up to 600 construction jobs and approximately 250-300 operations jobs, according to the project’s website. It would be the first lithium-boron project in the world and the second operational lithium project in the United States.

“As one of the few places in the United States with an abundance of lithium and other critical minerals, Nevada is central to strengthening our domestic clean energy supply chain and making electric vehicles more available and accessible,” Nevada Senator Jacky Rosen said in a statement. “I applaud the Energy Department for providing this loan to help support the mining and processing of Nevada’s critical minerals, help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and contribute to the creation of jobs in our state.”

Rhyolite Ridge is between Reno (215 miles south) and Las Vegas (255 north) near the Nevada-California border. Not only will the project encroach on the habitat of an endangered wildflower, which is on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Bureau’s Endangered Species Act, but it is also on lands significant to the Western Shoshone in the region.  

“This land is very sacred to our people,” Joe Kennedy, former Timbisha Shoshone Tribal Chairman, said in an interview with Native News Online. “The mine is within Western Shoshone territories.”

Kennedy lives in the Fish Lake Valley near the proposed Rhyolite Ridge mine. Fish Lake Valley is an outdoor recreational area managed by Esmeralda County, the least populated county in Nevada. The Paiute and Shoshone tribes were the first to settle in the Fish Lake Valley and fossils found in the area validate their settlement.

In his first week in office, President Joe Biden issued Executive Order 14008—Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad—which established the Justice40 Initiative. The initiative is intended to direct 40% of the overall benefits of certain Federal investments, including investments in clean energy and energy efficiency, to disadvantaged communities.

“How does the federal government plan to ensure that justice is for ‘the 40%’ for the Rhyolite Ridge mine and local Indigenous communities,” Kennedy asked of the White House’s Justice40 Initiative. “They specify disadvantaged communities, and this is one of those situations where Indigenous communities are always left out of.”

I see the discrimination, and I think everyone else does as well. These antiquated colonial laws that are used against us need to go away.”

The endangered flower, known as Tiehm’s buckwheat, is significant to the Shoshone, says Kennedy. “The buckwheat flower is used by our people and certain places where the plants grows is very special—things like that are very sacred to our people,” he says. 

Ioneer does not dispute the need to protect Tiehm’s buckwheat. The company said in a statement that it was committed to mining in an environmentally responsible manner and included a “protection plan” for the endangered flower, which includes avoiding certain populations of the flower during the first phase of the mine’s construction. 

The financing of $700 million will be over ten years, at interest rates fixed at when funding begins and mirror U.S. Treasury rates—which are much more favorable than those obtained in private financial markets. 

The Rhyolite Ridge mining project secured partial funding from a South African mining company, Sibanye-Stillwater Limited, under a purchase agreement. Under the agreement,

Sibanye-Stillwater would contribute $490 million to secure 40% of the lithium mined, and Ioneer would retain the remaining 50% of lithium and operator status. 

U.S. Circuit Court Rules in Favor of the Seneca Nation in Case Against State of New York



The Seneca Nation of Indians maintains a portion of I-90 that goes through its reservation is being used illegally. (Photo/Facebook)

BY NATIVE NEWS ONLINE STAFF JANUARY 28, 2023

The Seneca Nation of Indians won a significant victory over the State of New York in federal Court on Thursday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of Seneca Nation when it rejected the State of New York’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Tribe in 2018.  The lawsuit alleged ongoing violations of federal law related to the continued occupation of the New York State Thruway on the Nation’s Cattaraugus Territory. 

At issue is a three-mile stretch of highway on I-90 that goes through the Seneca Reservation, which is about 30 miles south of Buffalo, New York.

The Court’s decision upholds a 2020 United States District Court decision that denied the State’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

After the Court’s ruling was announced, Seneca Nation President Rickey Armstrong Sr. issued the following statement: "After fighting New York's overreaching actions for decades, on the Thruway and other issues, this is an important victory. Our arguments on behalf of our people deserve to be heard in court. The Thruway is a 300-acre scar on our Cattaraugus Territory that New York State inflicted on our people without proper authorization from the Department of Interior or in compliance with the promises made to us by treaty. We intend to make sure that State officials finally comply with federal law for this invasion of our land."

Tribal leaders contend the basis for the case originated in 1954 when the Seneca Nation was pressured to grant an easement for a thruway to be constructed over about 300 acres of its Cattaraugus Reservation, which it has always owned and occupied as a federal Indian Reservation.

Land easements on Indian Reservations require federal approval to be deemed valid, but New York State did not take action to get approval from the U.S. Department of the Interior to construct the thruway at the time.

The current case dates back to 2018. The Tribe wants the New York Thruway Authority to seek a valid easement so that the Tribe can be compensated for motorists who drive on the portion of the freeway that goes through tribal land. 

The Thruway Authority currently operates a toll station on tribal land and the Tribe is seeking to have the station closed.

Native American ‘Deaths of Despair’ Ignored in Healthcare Data

BY NATIVE NEWS ONLINE STAFF 

 

FEBRUARY 01, 2023

National mid-life mortality data focuses disproportionately on white communities— thus furthering Indigenous data genocide— a new analysis published by UCLA last week shows.

The paper looks at the term ‘deaths of despair,’ coined in 2015 by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, who were researching what factors accounted for falling U.S. life expectancies among white people. Their findings showed that the fastest rising death rates among white Americans were from drug overdoses, suicide and alcoholic liver disease. 

However, Case and Deaton research fell short of including data on Native Americans. UCLA researchers Joseph Friedman, Helena Hansen, and Joseph Gone, argue that, “If Native American people had been included in these analyses, increases in midlife mortality would not have been determined to be uniquely high among White people.”

Between 1999 and 2013—the same years of the original study—the white midlife mortality rate increased by almost 10%, whereas midlife mortality among Native Americans rose by nearly 30%, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mortality from overdose, suicide and alcoholic liver disease have collectively been higher among Native Americans than their white counterparts in every available year of data since 1999, the paper says.

The disparity has only grown since, especially throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, American Indian and Alaska Natives had a mortality rate 1.8 times higher than that of non-Hispanic whites, according to a CDC report looking at data from 14 states. 

The paper’s authors call for visibility of Native Americans in data.

The others proposed guiding principles “to protect against exclusionary data policies” for Native populations, including: specifically enumerating Native people instead of relying on the often categorization (at the state and national level) of ‘other’; and centering tribal concerns in the collection, maintenance, and sharing of community data.

“Narratives that center poor outcomes among White communities must be assessed critically, as they have historically overlooked and ignored higher rates of economic, social, and health inequities among minoritized populations in the USA,” the authors write. “This erasure of contemporary Native American presence and visibility plays a role in allowing health inequalities to go unchecked by depriving extreme disparities among Native American communities of the intense media and public attention that they deserve.Such attention—when properly contextualized through consistent reference to circumstances of Indigenous disadvantage—could play a role in galvanizing desperately needed additional health resources.”

Day of Solidarity with Leonard Peltier Set for Monday, Feb. 6th

Leonard Peltier  was arrested in Canada on Feb. 6, 1976. 

BY NATIVE NEWS ONLINE STAFF FEBRUARY 04, 2023

On February 6, 1976, Leonard Peltier was arrested in Hinton, Alberta, Canada. Monday, February 6th will mark the 47th anniversary of his arrest.

Following a controversial trial, Peltier was convicted of aiding and abetting murder of two FBi agents and has been imprisoned ever since. Many people and human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Congress of American Indians, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others believe Peltier is a political prisoner who should be immediately released.

To mark the anniversary, people worldwide will commemorate Monday as a Day of Solidarity for Leonard Peltier, who is currently incarcerated in a federal penitentiary in Coleman, Florida.  

As he enters his 48th year of incarceration, hundreds of his supporters will host “Rise Up for Peltier” events in numerous cities around the world, including Paris, Rome, Berlin, Switzerland. 

In the United States, events will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Rapid City, South Dakota; Tampa, Florida; Santa Fe, New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Tulsa, Oklahoma; San Francisco, California; and Washington, D.C. 

Related: A Message to President Biden: No Prisoner Swap Needed to FREE Leonard Peltier

Peltier is 78 years old in deteriorating health with multiple serious ailments. Supporters have been asking President Joe Biden to grant clemency so that he can spend his final years with his loved ones and tribal community.

Those interested in sending President Biden a letter should address the letter as follows:

President Joseph Biden 

The White House 

1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW 

Washington, DC 20500 USA

Terry Felix broke barriers on the soccer pitch. Now he’s making a difference for Indigenous prisoners and elders.


Native News Online Staff
Sun, February 5, 2023 

Terry Felix (right) in action with the Whitecaps in 1983.

 (Photo Credit: Terry Felix)

Major League Soccer (MLS) returns for its 28th season later this month. Today, the league has strong connections to the Indigenous community, celebrating its history in Canada and the United States and honoring the league’s all-time goal scorer Chris Wondolowski, a member of the Kiowa Tribe.

All of these ties are due, in part, to the barriers broken down by Terry Felix (Sts’ailes First Nation).

Felix made history in 1983 as the first Indigenous professional soccer player in North America and the first to represent the Canadian national soccer team. He earned that title on July 10 of that year when his team, the Vancouver Whitecaps, faced off against the New York Cosmos in North American Soccer League (NASL). The NASL was the precursor to today’s MLS.

The day before the first game, the head coach told Felix to prepare himself because he might play the game for a few minutes.

“The next day, I went to the stadium – and it was packed,” Felix told Native News Online. “And before the game, Coach Giles came to me and said, ‘You're starting now.’ And I said, ‘Oh God, I don't want to start.’”

Vancouver’s British Columbia Place Stadium was at capacity at 50,205 to see the top two teams in the league. The second-placed New York Cosmos was a fan favorite and former club of the soccer great, Pelé.

“Then I started getting nervous and shaking,” Felix expressed. “I didn’t want to play as I was just really nervous. But I had to settle down and get ready for the game. It was pretty neat.”

Felix went on to have a superb game, assisting on the goal and nearly scoring in the second half. The Whitecaps went on to beat the Cosmos 2-0.

Felix’s rise was meteoric, but ended quickly.

He started for the MLS Whitecaps, the Canadian National Team, and the Canadian Olympic Team. After the Whitecaps season ended in 1983, he was with the Canadian National Team in Victoria, training to play Mexico in an Olympic Qualifier.

The unthinkable happened just before a routine training session, and his life’s trajectory twisted in a flash.

“I (was) running down the field and stepped into a silver dollar-sized hole,” Felix said. “And it tore a ligament in my knee. And the coach said, ‘You tore a ligament, you have to go home.’ So, I phoned my wife. And I said, ‘I got hurt. I’m coming home.’”

His wife also had news.

“She said, ‘I’m pregnant.’ I got home, and we were sitting around the apartment the next day, and Whitecaps called me,” Felix recalled. “And I thought, ‘They’re going to renew my contract.’ I went in, and they said, ‘Well, we found out you got hurt, and we’re releasing you from the contract.’”

Within close to 36 hours, Felix went from playing with three of the top teams in North America to being injured, having no club and a new baby on the way.

His daughter was due to be born during the 1984 Olympics. He had to decide whether to stay away for two months with the national team at the Olympics or stay home and help care for his daughter.

“I decided that soccer was over,” Felix said. “I stayed behind and phoned the national team and said I wouldn’t go.”

At 24, Felix was forced to make a significant commitment.

“That was a hell of a decision,” Felix said.

His judgment exemplified what was most important to him: his family and community.

Terry and his granddaughter Scarlett in Vancouver in 2016.

 (Photo Credit: Peter Mothe) (Photo: Terry Felix)

Nowadays, Felix’s bond with his family and community is stronger than ever. He lives a few hours east of Vancouver, on the Chehalis Indian Reserve where he grew up, and works at a minimum security prison in Agassiz.

Felix helps reintroduce prisoners to society again, some of whom have been incarcerated for four decades or more.

“Three days a week, I take them out of prison,” Felix explained. “These guys are ready to get back into the community, and they’re eligible for parole. You start thinking about what life was like around 1978 compared to now. I reintroduce them to the technology out there that they see.”

Beyond technological advances, Felix helps them build trust and personal connections with good people.

“When you’re in maximum security, everybody is sort of dangerous in there,” Felix said. “They’re not good to each other. When they get out here, they’re not used to people being good to them and being kind to them.”

Much of Felix’s work is to counsel the inmates who have experienced trauma from the horrific residential school era in Canada.

“Many of these guys (had) been taken away from their families and put into foster care,” Felix explained. “There’s a lot of abuse they endured. When they go to prison, they only do what they've learned as a kid. And if they grew up around violence, they become violent, which gets them in trouble. I do a lot of counseling and helping them reintegrate.”

Part of this reintegration into society is supported through a work program Felix developed in which inmates work for elders in the community.

“We get them firewood, we do all their gardening, yard work, and cleaning gutters,” Felix said. “It’s pretty neat because a lot of these guys have never known their own families.”

Working with the elders is the perfect transition to developing relationships with individuals in society, he said.

“Elders are calm and, you know, they’re not excitable … they will listen and talk to you,” Felix expressed. “It’s sort of a calming influence.”

Felix also brings in elders to teach the correctional staff. The elders teach cultural classes and workshops to develop conversation and understanding about the types of trauma they’ve gone through as a people and why there is a disproportionate number of Natives in Canada’s corrections system.

Terry Felix at the BC Hall of Fame (Photo Credit: Terry Felix)

In 2018, Felix was inducted into the British Columbia Hall of Fame Indigenous Sports Gallery, and in 2020, he was inducted into the British Columbia Soccer Hall of Fame. Last year, Felix won the Indspire Award, representing the highest honor the Indigenous community gives its people in Canada.

He remains an active role model, mentor, advisor and scout in First Nations Soccer. These are roles Felix cherishes.

“They just need someone to guide them and introduce them to the teams,” Felix said. “They’re good enough to make it on their own, but I think they need that introduction and a little bit of experience I have and talk to them and that sort of thing.”

Ben Pryor (Choctaw) is a contributing writer to Native News Online and freelance writer for several other national and regional publications. A graduate of Oklahoma State University, his writing interests include politics, the environment and sports.

About the Author: "Native News Online is one of the most-read publications covering Indian Country and the news that matters to American Indians, Alaska Natives and other Indigenous people. Reach out to us at editor@nativenewsonline.net. "

Contact: news@nativenewsonline.net

Indigenous senator quits party over Australian referendum


Senator Lidia Thorpe announces she is resigning from the Greens party and moving to the cross bench at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Monday, Feb. 6, 2023. Thorpe, an Indigenous senator, has quit the minor Greens party in an disagreement over a referendum to be held this year that would create an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. 

Mick Tsikas/AAP Image via AP

Lidia Thorpe
Adam Bandt
ROD McGUIRK
Sun, February 5, 2023 

CANBERRA, Australia: (AP) — An Indigenous senator in Australia quit the minor Greens party on Monday in a disagreement over a referendum to be held this year that would create an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Sen. Lidia Thorpe’s resignation illustrates deep divisions among Indigenous Australians on the referendum and increases the difficulty for the government in getting legislation through the Senate.

The Greens have suggested they will support a referendum likely to be held this year that would enshrine in the constitution a body representing Indigenous people to advise Parliament on policies that effect their lives. It would be known as the Indigenous Voice.

Thorpe had argued that Australia should first sign a treaty with its original inhabitants that acknowledged that they had never ceded their sovereignty to the British colonists.

She said after quitting the Greens that the party’s support for the Voice was “at odds with the community of activists who are saying treaty before Voice.”

“This country has a strong grassroots black sovereign movement full of staunch and committed warriors and I want to represent that movement fully in this Parliament,” Thorpe told reporters. “It has become clear to me that I can’t do that from within the Greens."

Another high-profile Indigenous Sen. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has also spoken out against the Voice, arguing it would divide the nation along racial lines. Her conservative party, the Nationals, took an official position in November to oppose the referendum, prompting a senior lawmaker and Voice advocate Andrew Gee to quit the party.

Bipartisan support has long been regarded as a prerequisite for a referendum’s success. But despite the divisions, an opinion poll published by The Australian newspaper on Monday found 56% of respondents in favor of the Voice. Opponents accounted from 37% and 7% were undecided.

The survey of 1,512 voters nationwide was conducted from Feb. 1 to 4. It had a 3 percentage point margin of error.

Indigenous people accounted for 3.2% of Australia’s population in the 2021 census. Indigenous Australians are the most disadvantaged ethnic group in Australia. They die younger than other Australians, are less likely to be employed, achieve lower education levels and are overrepresented in prison populations.

Greens leader Adam Bandt and his deputy Mehreen Faruqi said they were sorry Thorpe had decided to leave their progressive party.

Bandt said he had told Thorpe that the party’s constitution allowed her to take a different position on the Voice from her colleagues.

Pakistan-born Faruqi said she and Thorpe had worked together as “strong allies against white supremacy and racism in all its forms.”

“I know that we will continue to work together, this work of decolonization, as well as working for climate justice,” Faruqi said.

Thorpe said she would continue to work with the Greens on their climate policy. The Greens want Australia to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 75% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

The center-left Labor Party government enshrined in law a 43% target after it was elect in May last year.

Labor has relied on the Greens’ 12 senators to pass legislation through the upper chamber that the conservative opposition party opposes.

With the Greens’ support, Labor had only needed to enlist the vote of a single unaligned senator. With Thorpe’s departure, Labor now will need the support of two unaligned senators.

Bandt said the government would continue to rely on the Greens to get its legislative agenda through the Senate.

“The situation remains now still more or less the same in the Senate. The Greens are central in the balance of power in the Senate,” Bandt said.

Thorpe has proved a radical and divisive element in the Senate. She was criticized for referring to the then-British monarch during a Senate swearing in ceremony in August last year as “the colonizing, her majesty Queen Elizabeth II.”

She resigned as the Greens deputy leader in the Senate in October over what Bandt called a “significant lack of judgment” in failing to declare an intimate relationship she had with a former president of a biker gang.

Iran singer who faces prison wins Grammy for protest anthem

APTOPIX 65th Annual Grammy Awards

First Lady Jill Biden presents the award for song of the year at the 65th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

JON GAMBRELL
Mon, February 6, 2023

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An Iranian singer who faces possible prison time for his song that's become an anthem to the ongoing protests shaking the Islamic Republic wept early Monday after seeing he'd won a Grammy.

Shervin Hajipour appeared stunned after hearing Jill Biden, the wife of President Joe Biden, announce he'd won the Grammy's new song for social change special merit award for “Baraye.” An online video showed Hajipour in a darkened room, wiping tears away after the announcement.

Hajipour's song “Baraye,” or “For” in English, begins with: “For dancing in the streets,” “for the fear we feel when we kiss.” The lyrics list reasons young Iranians have posted on Twitter for why they had protested against Iran's ruling theocracy.

It ends with the widely chanted slogan that has become synonymous with the protests since the September death of Iranian-Kurdish woman Masha Amini: “For women, life, freedom.”

Released on his Instagram page, the song quickly went viral. Hajipour then was arrested and held for several days before being released on bail in October. The 25-year-old singer faces charges of “propaganda against the regime” and “instigating the violence,” according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that's been monitoring the monthslong protests.

The charges Hajipour faces can carry as much as six years in prison all together. The singer is also banned from leaving Iran.

Wearing a shining, off-the-shoulder Oscar de la Renta dress at the Grammy ceremony in Los Angeles, Biden said that a song “can unite, inspire and ultimately change the world.”

“This song became the anthem of the Mahsa Amini protests, a powerful and poetic call for freedom and women's rights,” Biden said. “Shervin was arrested, but this song continues to resonate around the world with its powerful theme: Women, life, freedom."

Those gathered cheered Biden's remarks. On Instagram, Hajipour simply wrote: “We won.”

There was no immediate reaction in Iranian state media or from government officials to Hajipour’s win. The singer is among over 19,600 people arrested amid the demonstrations, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran. At least 527 people have been killed amid a violent suppression of the demonstration by authorities.

On Sunday, Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday reportedly ordered an amnesty or reduction in prison sentences for “tens of thousands” of people detained amid the protests, acknowledging for the first time the scale of the crackdown.

Gen Z has anxiety about climate change and are using it to take action

Some are students, activists. Some are just worried sick. Climate crisis is all they know.

Joyce Chu and Alex Kuffner, The Providence Journal
Sun, February 5, 2023

Older generations are leaving them a planet in crisis, a place of rising seas, heat waves and extreme storms.

They grew up with no assumption that the world they were born into would be the same world when they were adults, never mind a better one. They're seeing the fields their parents used to play on flooding with polluted river water so often they can't enjoy the same games of careless youth.

In response, they're standing knee-deep in marshwater collecting scientific samples to understand how the environment's changing, pursuing new avenues of study like climate justice, getting out the vote as activists, flowing in a sea of human protesters demanding political action.

Or they're sitting in a class as their eyes glaze over, a sense of overwhelming despair making them wonder why they think a college degree will help them fit into a world of constantly diminishing promise, health and safety.

A Pew Research Center study from 2021 found that climate change is a top worry for Gen Z: 76 percent of respondents in that age group said it was one of their biggest societal concerns.

The USA TODAY Network interviewed young people as part of "Perilous Course," a collaborative examination of how people up and down the East Coast are grappling with the climate crisis.

People under 25 spoke to us with clarity, purpose and often with wisdom about the picture that science paints for our future and how they feel about it:

"The companies out there that don't care about the environment, they use money to lobby our government officials."


“It's offensive sometimes, the sheer inaction that we're looking at."


"It’s scary that we have to be the ones to do this."

The overwhelming nature of climate change

Seven-year-old Kervens Blanc was playing with friends behind a two-story concrete building when the ground started shaking. He was scared. He ran.

It was 2010. Haiti was about to become a disaster zone as the earthquake killed tens of thousands of people and destroyed vital infrastructure.

Blanc and his family came to the Boston area shortly after the catastrophe. During years of moving from place to place in and around the city, he grew up with a sense of things being temporary.

That awareness was kicked into a higher gear for the 19-year-old during his senior year at a Boston STEM academy. For his capstone project, Blanc spent hours learning about climate crisis and how natural disasters are and will continue to damage the East Coast.

"I don't like to worry or be too much in fear," he said. "I'm hopeful that something will work out, that we're not going to die because of climate change. But looking at the statistics and the direction we're going in, there's a lot of doubt."

Kervens Blanc, a freshman at Fitchburg State University, 

feels capitalism is the biggest issue when it comes to climate change.

Hyacinth Cox gets around Staunton on her 1978 Vespa Grande. 

The moped is extremely fuel efficient, averaging 120 miles to the gallon per Cox.

After learning more about the impacts of climate change in school, Blanc feels that educational institutions play a major role in informing people.

For one teen from Staunton, Virginia, her aha moment happened outside of the classroom.

Hyacinth Cox, 18, first discovered a passion for the environment when she attended Nature Camp in western Virginia as a young child. The private, nonprofit summer camp specializes in natural history and environmental science education, focusing on conservation.

Growing up in a family of environmentalists, Cox was always conscious of the world around her, but something about that two-week overnight camp at age 11 changed her.

"Go live in the woods for two weeks, learn about nature," Cox said. "I think that really sparked an interest for me in just how the world functions and grows."

Cox tries to stay as up-to-date as she can on the climate crisis and it can be depressing.

She worries about increased carbon emissions after a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision weakened the Environmental Protection Agency's regulation powers. She is concerned about how devastating heat and severe droughts will threaten the global food supply.

At her worst, she wonders if one day she'll have to move to Canada because the weather in the United States will be too extreme to survive.

"Getting those constant updates just broke me down a bit," she said.

Cox had to learn how to disengage, take time to reset her emotions and try not to stress herself. Therapy helped. When the feelings start to overwhelm her, she works to refocus on what she can change and not worry about what she can't.

"I try not to let it consume my every waking thought because, if I do, that's just not going to be great for my mental health," she said. "But it definitely does upset me a lot, that it's happening and not enough is being done."

This is your brain on climate anxiety

Sarah Jaquette Ray, author of the book, "A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety," and a professor of environmental studies at Humboldt State University, wants you to know you're not alone if you're feeling climate anxiety.

In fact, "climate denial and skepticism can be understood as a kind of climate anxiety," she said. In a culture that is "hostile to uncomfortable emotions, we need to get more comfortable around uncomfortable feelings."

Emotional distance from the impacts of the climate crisis are a normal response. When it becomes hard to shield yourself from all the facts, a sense of doom can replace that distance.

The constant exposure to news that puts a person in fear generates what neuroscientists call "amygdala hijack." The brain is in a constant state of dysregulation, which makes it hard to get from a threatening point A to some more safe point B in the future.

"It is actually very, very terrible for our mental and physical health. It has physical health consequences, which also trigger more mental health consequences," becoming a harsh feedback loop.

"It's not what the planet needs us to have to be able to engage for the long term effectively," Ray said. And this generation feels like they have to fix things themselves.

In a first-of-its-kind global survey of young people published last September, led by academics from the University of Bath in the U.K. and the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, many of the 10,000 respondents — ages 16-25 from 10 countries — said the perceived inadequate government response is associated with feelings of betrayal.

Many feel angry that they are inheriting the inaction of past generations. They blame capitalist power structures for the world's plight. They also feel a measure of hope as awareness grows about the causes of global warming.

“It’s scary that we have to be the ones to do this,” said Jack Thompson, a 17-year-old from Delaware who volunteers for Fridays For Future.

As a legislative liaison to the international climate activism group, he connects with other chapters and d with lawmakers and speaks at the state house in Dover, working on anything from raising fines on polluters to a dream proposal for carbon tax legislation in Delaware.

Thompson admitted to frustration but, like others of his age, he’s channeling his emotions into action.

“It's offensive sometimes, the sheer inaction that we're looking at. You have to figure out how to take that in stride,” said Thompson, about to start his senior year of high school. “The more people we bring out to events, bring out to committee hearings and floor speeches, the more that we can share that: ‘Hey, we're pissed off, too.’”

Matthew Kaufman, 19 of River Edge, photographed in his backyard on August 8, 2022.

Matthew Kaufman's neighborhood softball field in River Edge, New Jersey, floods all the time. The 19-year-old student at The College of New Jersey said, “Whenever it floods, they have to shut it down for a few weeks because they have to decontaminate it due to whatever is in the water could be dangerous."

Kaufman said the city council and mayor discussed it recently but had no solution. "The mayor was saying that if climate patterns continue, and it keeps flooding the way it has been, within 10 years we may just have to completely abandon that field.”

“This is the planet and the country we have to inherit," Thompson said. "We have to work to preserve both at the same time."
With awareness of climate change comes equity concern

Tyler Spangler, a 15-year-old from Red Lion, Pennsylvania, said that businesses need to be given time to adapt. He’s cautious about assigning blame. Industries grew and evolved in the 20th century before Americans were aware of the impact of fossil fuels, he said.

“I just think our technology was advancing so fast that they couldn’t keep up with certain aspects of it,” Spangler said.

Others aren’t so forgiving when it comes to industrial development. Kervens Blanc assigns the most blame for the state of the world to capitalism.

"The companies out there that don't care about the environment, they use money to lobby our government officials," he said.

“There seems to be a lot of ‘greenwashing’ going on, where they want a pat on the back for doing a feel-good thing without actually doing much,” said recent North Carolina high school grad Nicky Coursey.

New Jersey activist Pooja Rayapaneni, 17, said the Black Lives Matter protests that rocked the nation during the pandemic and understanding his privilege was what made him aware of the interconnectedness between racism and climate change.

“I was really sparked into... recognizing the privilege I hold living in Bergen County and living in the United States and not really recognizing that a lot of marginalized communities are facing many crises including climate change,” he said.

Saniyah Bolton is 16-years-old and lives in Exeter, New Hampshire. A Black Lives Matter chapter youth organizer, she's recently been learning more about environmental racism, and is especially frustrated about a perceived lack of action by government on climate change.

Tyler Spangler at his home in Windsor Township, York County, near Red Lion, Pa.

Saniyah Bolton sees minorities, particularly low-income minorities, as the most vulnerable in the face of climate change. And time is running out to help them.

Bolton, 16, is part of a local Black Lives Matter chapter that her mother co-founded in New Hampshire after George Floyd's murder. She is particularly interested in how climate change, the environment and racism are intimately connected.

"Black people are more likely to have asthma and breathing problems," said Bolton, the co-director of the chapter's youth division. "Gas emissions and air quality, that’s a huge thing.

"It’s a known thing in the U.S. that how our systems are set up, it’s going to benefit the people at the top while the lower class is just getting lower and lower."

She directs her anger towards the "billionaires and companies."

"Why don’t we take some of (your money)," she said, "and put it into community gardens, composting areas, plant-based utensils, and services in school systems to learn more about climate change?"

'The planet does not need us to burn out'

"The climate movement needs all the people in all the places," author Sarah Ray said. While she said the economy continues to shift toward green jobs, she emphasized that "every job is a climate job" for this generation. "Find your superpower and devote that to aspects of climate justice."

She said people experiencing climate anxiety can try to consciously take a pause between the stimuli of bad news and the individual response. "The planet does not need us to burn out," she said.

Like Thompson, the 17-year-old with Fridays For Future in Delaware, many young people are turning to activism.

Coursey has taken her environmental passion from the classroom to the real world, from helping plant trees in Wilmington’s urban hot spots to promoting rain barrels in her community.

Now she has her eye on earning an environmental studies degree from UNC and eventually a career with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “because education and small-town initiatives can only go so far, so policy changes are really the way to go.”

Bolton channels her activism into speaking at climate protests, a platform she uses to lift up the experiences of people of color. She hopes to attend an historically Black college or university once she graduates.

Staunton teen Cox has worked to clean up Lewis Creek and protested the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project. She insists on riding her 25-mph moped everywhere, hoping that her fuel-efficient vehicle is lessening her carbon footprint.

This fall, she will be entering Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, a small liberal arts school that follows sustainable agricultural practices, where she plans to major in conservation biology. She has dreams of becoming a science journalist.

The Haitian native Blanc plans to major in entrepreneurship at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts when he starts his first semester in the fall. But that didn't feel like enough, he said, so he wants to add a double major in marketing.

"Right now I'm going a little big," he said, smiling.

No matter the career path he takes, whether he finds himself in a position of power or not, Blanc said he will stay involved. "I definitely plan on advocating for minorities and environmental issues. This is our planet. No amount of money could be worth more."

Alex Kuffner is the veteran environment reporter for The Providence Journal, with decades of experience and a deep focus on science reporting. He can be reached at akuffner@providencejournal.com.

Joyce Chu, an award-winning investigative journalist, is the social justice watchdog reporter for The Progress Index in Petersburg, Virginia. Contact her at Jchu1@gannett.com or on Twitter @joyce_speaks.

Journalists from more than 35 newsrooms from New Hampshire to Florida spoke with regular people about real-life impacts for "Perilous Course," digging into the science and investigating government response, or lack of it.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Gen Z has anxiety about climate change and are using it to take action

Exclusive-Huge chunk of plants, animals in U.S. at risk of extinction -report






Mon, February 6, 2023 
By Brad Brooks

(Reuters) - A leading conservation research group found that 40% of animals and 34% of plants in the United States are at risk of extinction, while 41% of ecosystems are facing collapse.

Everything from crayfish and cacti to freshwater mussels and iconic American species such as the Venus flytrap are in danger of disappearing, a report released on Monday found.

NatureServe, which analyses data from its network of over 1,000 scientists across the United States and Canada, said the report was its most comprehensive yet, synthesizing five decades' worth of its own information on the health of animals, plants and ecosystems.

Importantly, the report pinpoints the areas in the United States where land is unprotected and where animals and plants are facing the most threats.

Sean O'Brien, president of NatureServe, said the conclusions of the report were "terrifying" and he hoped it would help lawmakers understand the urgency of passing protections, such as the Recovering America's Wildlife Act that stalled out in Congress last year.

"If we want to maintain the panoply of biodiversity that we currently enjoy, we need to target the places where the biodiversity is most threatened," O'Brien said. "This report allows us to do that."

U.S. Representative Don Beyer, a Democrat who has proposed legislation to create a wildlife corridor system to rebuild threatened populations of fish, wildlife and plants, said NatureServe's work would be critical to helping agencies identify what areas to prioritize and where to establish migration routes.

"The data reported by NatureServe is grim, a harrowing sign of the very real problems our wildlife and ecosystems are facing," Beyer told Reuters. "I am thankful for their efforts, which will give a boost to efforts to protect biodiversity."

HUMAN ENCROACHMENT

Among the species at risk of disappearing are icons like the carnivorous Venus flytrap, which is only found in the wild in a few counties of North and South Carolina.

Nearly half of all cacti species are at risk of extinction, while 200 species of trees, including a maple-leaf oak found in Arkansas, are also at risk of disappearing. Among ecosystems, America's expansive temperate and boreal grasslands are among the most imperiled, with over half of 78 grassland types at risk of a range-wide collapse.

The threats against plants, animals and ecosystems are varied, the report found, but include "habitat degradation and land conversion, invasive species, damming and polluting of rivers, and climate change."

California, Texas and the southeastern United States are where the highest percentages of plants, animals and ecosystems are at risk, the report found.

Those areas are both the richest in terms of biodiversity in the country, but also where population growth has boomed in recent decades, and where human encroachment on nature has been harshest, said Wesley Knapp, the chief botanist at NatureServe.

Knapp highlighted the threats facing plants, which typically get less conservation funding than animals. There are nearly 1,250 plants in NatureServe's "critically imperiled" category, the final stage before extinction, meaning that conservationists have to decide where to spend scant funds even among the most vulnerable species to prevent extinctions.

"Which means a lot of plants are not going to get conservation attention. We're almost in triage mode trying to keep our natural systems in place," Knapp said.

'NATURE SAVINGS ACCOUNT'

Vivian Negron-Ortiz, the president of the Botanical Society of America and a botanist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who was not involved in the NatureServe report, said there is still a lot scientists do not know and have not yet discovered about biodiversity in the United States, and that NatureServe's data helped illuminate that darkness.

More than anything, she sees the new data as a call to action.

"This report shows the need for the public to help prevent the disappearance of many of our plant species," she said. "The public can help by finding and engaging with local organizations that are actively working to protect wild places and conserve rare species."

John Kanter, the senior wildlife biologist with the National Wildlife Fund, said the data in the report, which he was not involved with, was essential to guiding state and regional officials in creating impactful State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs), which they must do every 10 years to receive federal funding to protect vulnerable species.

Currently $50 million in federal funding is divided up among all states to carry out their SWAPs. The Recovering America's Wildlife Act, whose congressional sponsors say will be reintroduced soon, would have increased that to $1.4 billion, which would have a huge impact on the state's abilities to protect animals and ecosystems, Kanter said, and the NatureServe report can act as roadmap for officials to best spend their money.

"Our biodiversity and its conservation is like a 'nature savings account' and if we don't have this kind of accounting of what's out there and how's it doing, and what are the threats, there's no way to prioritize action," Kanter said. "This new report is critical for that."