A BOOMER SPEAKS OUT

Rittenhouse verdict has a lot to say about condition of America's soul

Phillip H. Cherney
Sat, November 27, 2021

Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a photo of his dad, former president Donald Trump and recently acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse.

When I was Kyle Rittenhouse’s age, there were protest marches about many things: The Bomb, Vietnam War, Civil Rights. Dogs and water hoses were used against those seeking equal rights and justice in the South, but the protests I marched in were peaceful. In the 1960s, with few exceptions, only the police packed guns.

Buffalo Springfield, headlining at Hollywood’s Whisky-A-Go-Go, featured 21-year-old Steven Stills and Neil Young, who cut “For What It’s Worth,” a song many artists have recorded since 1966. Angry property owners spearheaded a curfew law on Sunset Strip to discourage young people from gathering in the neighborhood:

The song reflected signs of the times, “battle lines are being drawn, nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.” Pent-up emotion seemed to burst all at once during the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. But guns were not prevalent even during those chaotic events. On May 4, 1970, at Kent State, four unarmed students were gunned down by National Guardsmen sent to quash protests against the Vietnam War.

Except for political assassinations, guns were never the centerpiece of conversation. Unheard of in those days, Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Parkland would become memorials to the innocent children and educators slaughtered with high-powered assault rifles made easily accessible to teenagers.

Where are we 50 years later? Far from Henry David Thoreau’s vision of civil disobedience and Gandhi’s and Martin Luther King, Jr’s ahimsa (non-violent) practice. No longer is “the man” the only one who carries a gun to rallies for social justice. Ordinary citizens arm themselves to attend, shadowing a constitutional amendment never meant to shield them from violating criminal laws.

So, whatever else may be said about his motives and intentions, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse felt empowered to be on hand for protests in Kenosha two days after another police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake.

Following on the heels of George Floyd’s murder, temperatures were hot. With a vague sense of duty to protect anonymous property holders, Rittenhouse paraded the streets brandishing a human-slaughtering tool strapped to his shoulder: an AR-15 capable of firing 50 deadly rounds of full-metal-jacketed bullets in seconds. He did shoot and kill two men and maimed a third.

I do not quarrel with the right of self-defense, and I doubt there’s a jurist in the country who would advocate the abolition of the right. The right to use deadly force to defend one’s own life or come to the defense of another is well established where death or great bodily harm is imminent. Even when men carried swords and rode horses, the defense against criminal homicide charges required the defendant to “retreat to the [Castle] wall” before using deadly force.

The Retreat Rule was modified as guns replaced swords. Bullets traveled faster and at greater distances; retreat was no longer realistic. Though there is commonality, criminal laws vary from state to state, as do rules for self-defense, including for initial aggressors.

So-called “Stand Your Ground” laws, such as asserted by George Zimmerman in defense of his assault on Trevon Martin in Florida in 2012, are not new but are refashioned from the Retreat Rule.

Moreover, to address the “frailties of mankind,” an entirely new branch of homicide law evolved in the 18th Century to deal with intentional killings without malice aforethought (murder). Where passion upon adequate provocation or sudden quarrel, or an honest but unreasonable belief in the necessity to use deadly force, came into play, “manslaughter” filled a gap as a lesser-included offense to murder. The jury in Rittenhouse’s case was instructed on this law.

In several murder cases, I tried juries rejected murder charges but also rejected self-defense claims, returning manslaughter verdicts instead. The significance in California is reflected in sentencing laws — life in prison (or death) for murder downward to three, six, or eleven years for manslaughter — as a compromise to encompass those “frailties.”

Kyle Rittenhouse sobbed on the witness stand. It brought back a flood of memories for me. The credibility of the testimony is critical for the jury to understand the fear and reasonableness of the use of deadly force. I’ve called black, brown, and white teenagers and a 50-year-old man to the witness stand. In each case, the testimony has been emotional, and remorse expressed spontaneously, even if killing might have seemed the only way out at the time of the incident. Except for the truly remorseless, the trauma changes the soul whenever a man or woman takes another human life.

Americans are getting more opportunities to observe criminal trials. Far from perfect, most lawyers and judges are competent, but few are exceptional. The verdicts in Rittenhouse’s case were not the result of a quirky trial judge. As Mark Richards, lead defense counsel, noted after trial, he’s “butted heads” with Judge Bruce Schroeder for many years but gives both sides a level playing field.

Blaming District Attorneys Thomas Binger and James Kraus for failing to convince jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse did not act in self-defense is the prerogative of Monday morning quarterbacks but are not likely to provide answers for the outcome of this tough case.

The real test for me is that jurors examined evidence over 26 hours and four days of deliberations. Jurors, attorneys, defendants, and judges, are the only ones in the courtroom every minute of trial.

Jurors reexamined the videos, witness testimony, arguments, and re-read instructions. Neither media representatives nor legal scholars viewed all of the evidence and did not bear the burden of decision. Whether we agree with the verdicts, the jury accepted the responsibility of citizenship sincerely.

Guns are not going away any time soon. But until we are willing to deepen the conversation about what guns are doing to America, we are doomed to repeat the vicious cycle of violence. We will continue to have the highest rate of deaths by gun violence in any country in the world. This is no time to “congratulate” Kyle Rittenhouse, as former President Donald Trump did: “If this isn’t self-defense, I don’t know what is.” Unlike the 2020 election, this was truly a close call, evidenced by the length of jury deliberations.

Rittenhouse is not a young person who showed courage on August 25, 2020, such as coming to the aid of the defenseless, and he is no hero. Bob Dylan’s famous gospel song, Gotta Serve Somebody (1979), calls us all to a higher law, “you may even own guns ..., but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

This young man will find no salvation in a Republican representative willing to exploit him and the tragedy at Kenosha, but I hope he continues in counseling and, more importantly, finds the one who is truly worth serving.

Phillip H. Cherney is a lawyer who has represented the infamous Oakland drug czar, Felix Mitchell, Richard Allen Davis in the Polly Klaas kidnap/murder case, and Joel Radovcich, whom Dana Ewell hired to kill his sister and parents in Fresno in 1992. He is an adjunct professor at San Joaquin College of Law.

This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Rittenhouse verdict has a lot to say about condition of America's soul

Evangelical support for Israel is neither permanent nor inevitable


Walker Robins, Lecturer in History, Merrimack College
Sat, November 27, 2021, 

President Trump's evangelical supporters cheered the 2018 move of of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Ariel Schalit/AP

Israel’s former ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, made waves in May 2021 when he publicly suggested that Israel should prioritize its relationship with American evangelicals over American Jews.

Dermer described evangelicals as the “backbone of Israel’s support in the United States.” By contrast, he described American Jews as “disproportionately among [Israel’s] critics.”

Dermer’s comments seemed shocking to many because he stated them in public to a reporter. But as a historian of the evangelical-Israeli relationship, I didn’t find them surprising. The Israeli right’s preference for working with conservative American evangelicals over more politically variable American Jews has been evident for years. And this preference has in many ways paid off.

Christian Zionism in the Trump era

American Christian Zionists are evangelicals who believe that Christians have a duty to support the Jewish state because the Jews remain God’s chosen people.

During the Trump years, Christian Zionists were crucial allies for former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. They helped Netanyahu lobby Trump for the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, as well as the withdrawal of the U.S. from the “Iran Deal” – the international nuclear arms control agreement with Iran.

These evangelicals also backed Trump’s recognition of Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights, as well as cuts of more than US0 million to American funding for the Palestinian Authority in 2018.

Coming after this string of policy victories for the Israeli-evangelical alliance, Dermer’s comments made sense.

However, the alliance’s future may be in doubt. Recent polling shows dramatic declines in support for Israel among young American evangelicals. Scholars Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin found that between 2018 and 2021, rates of support fell from 69% to 33.6% among evangelicals ages 18-29.

While these polls speak most immediately to the current context, they also underline a larger historical point: Evangelical support for Israel is neither permanent nor inevitable.

Southern Baptists and Israel

The Southern Baptist Convention – long the denominational avatar of white American evangelicalism – offers an example of how these beliefs have shifted over time, which I examine in my book “Between Dixie and Zion: Southern Baptists and Palestine before Israel.”

Southern Baptists are broadly supportive of Israel, and have been for much of the past half-century. Baptist leaders like W.A. Criswell and Ed McAteer helped organize Christian Zionism in the U.S. The Southern Baptist Convention itself has passed a number of pro-Israel resolutions in recent decades.

More recently, Southern Baptist support for Israel was highlighted when the Trump administration invited Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, to lead a prayer at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in 2018.

However, Southern Baptists were not always so unified in support for Israel, or the Zionist movement that led to its creation. This was evident only days after the establishment of Israel in 1948, when messengers to the convention’s annual meeting repeatedly and overwhelmingly voted down resolutions calling for the convention to send a congratulatory telegram to U.S. President – and fellow Southern Baptist – Harry Truman for being the first foreign leader to recognize the Jewish state.

Zionism was ‘God’s plan’ – unless it wasn’t

This seems shocking today, after years of seemingly unanimous evangelical support for Israel. However, as I document in my book, Southern Baptists had diverse views on Zionism and “the Palestine question” in the decades leading up to Israel’s birth. While some did argue that support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine was a Christian duty, others defended the Arab majority’s rights in the Holy Land.

The Southern Baptist Convention refused to congratulate President Harry Truman for being the first world leader to officially recognize the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, even though he was one of their own. At right is Chaim Weizman. ASSOCIATED PRESS

During this era, the Southern Baptist Convention published books, pamphlets and other materials reflecting both sides. In 1936, its press published a work by missionary Jacob Gartenhaus, a convert from Judaism to evangelical Christianity, arguing that to be against Zionism was “to oppose God’s plan.” The following year, however, the press published a mission study manual by J. McKee Adams contending that “by every canon of justice and fair-play, the Arab is the man of first importance.”

Adams was one among a coterie of professors at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who spoke out against what they sometimes derided as “Christian Zionism” – then an unusual term.

Even evangelicals who believed the Bible anticipated the return of Jews to Palestine disagreed on whether the Zionist movement was part of God’s plan.

The influential Baptist leader J. Frank Norris of Fort Worth, Texas, who broke away from the mainstream Southern Baptist Convention in the 1920s, argued in the 1930s and 1940s that Christians had a duty to God and civilization to support the Zionists.

But there was no widespread sense that being a Baptist – or an evangelical Protestant – entailed support for Zionism. John R. Rice, a prominent disciple of Norris’, rejected his mentor’s arguments outright. “The Zionist movement is not a fulfillment of the prophecies about Israel being restored,” Rice wrote in 1945. “Preachers who think so are mistaken.”

Regarding the political question of whether Arabs or Jews should control Palestine, most evangelicals were unconcerned. The Southern Baptists focused on other priorities in the Holy Land, such as the growth of their missions in Jerusalem and Nazareth. Even those Baptists who supported the establishment of a Jewish state did not organize politically around the issue.

The future of Christian Zionism

In the decades after the establishment of Israel, however, motivated evangelical and Jewish activists – as well as the Israeli government – worked to stitch together the interfaith relationships, build the institutions and spread the ideas underpinning today’s Christian Zionist movement. These efforts have been remarkably effective in making support for Israel a defining element of many evangelicals’ religious and political identities.

However, as the latest polling of young evangelicals shows, there is no guarantee this will be permanent. This diverse and globally connected generation of evangelicals has its own ideas and priorities. It is more interested in social justice, less invested in the culture wars and increasingly weary of conservative politics.

Young evangelicals remain to be convinced of Christian Zionism. And they very well may not be.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Walker Robins, Merrimack College.

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Abdu'l Baha's message of love and unity worth remembering


John Huddleston
Sat, November 27, 2021

Many of us today are deeply dismayed at the destructive polarization of our country and yearn for the united America we happily talk about, for instance, in connection with July 4 or the Stars and Stripes.

Many are also coming to see that this national unity has to have an international dimension as we face immense global challenges such as climate change, pandemics and nuclear war. We are all Americans, but beyond that we have to think and act as world citizens.

The purpose of this column is to give hope by recalling the vision that was given about America when visited in 1912 by Abdu'l Baha (1844-1921), the eldest son of Baha'u'llah, founder of the Baha'i Faith. This new faith was based on three principles of unity: 1) all the great religions speak of the same God, the Creator; 2) they all teach love for God and the creation; and 3) humanity is one. It was fiercely persecuted in the land of its birth, Iran, and its followers were murdered, exiled and imprisoned.

Abdu'l Baha, who succeeded his father as leader of the faith in 1892, was imprisoned for many years and was only released in 1909 from his last prison which was in Acre, located today in Israel but then in the Ottoman Empire. Once free he made trips to visit Baha'is in the West, first in Europe and then in the United States.

This undated file photo shows Abdu'l Baha, who succeeded his father as leader of the Baha'i Faith in 1892.

Abdu'l Baha arrived in New York on April 11, 1912, aboard the SS Cedric, having turned down a proposal to sail on the Titanic's maiden voyage so as not set an example of an extravagant life style. The press greeted him as an "Eastern Sage" and as an "Apostle of Peace" and this positive treatment lasted for the 239 days of his visit.

He might have been greeted with scorn as a foreigner from a backward part of the world (the Ottoman Empire was then known as "the Sick Man of Europe”) and for having an "oriental name.” But his travels in the West had already shown him to be a man of extreme kindness who clearly loved and respected all those that he met, and who had a gentle wisdom and humor. Even the most hardened representatives of a skeptical profession could not resist.

During his stay, Abdu'l Baha visited some 40 cities, traveling first in the East and Midwest (including a side trip to Montreal, Canada), and then in California and the West. He gave talks mostly in private homes and hotels, but many also at universities such as Howard in the East and Stanford in the West; at religious institutions, such as churches of the Episcopalian, Catholic and Unitarian persuasion as well as Jewish synagogues and theosophical societies; at social and political organizations, such as the NAACP (he spoke at its fourth annual convention), the Socialist Party and the suffragettes; as well as at a major conference on international arbitration. Though he had originally come to visit the small American Baha'i community the vast majority of those he came in contact with, often a thousand or more at a time, were not Baha'is.

His message was always one of love and unity. He spoke strongly in support of race amity, the need to abolish extremes of wealth and poverty, and the equality of men and women. He talked with ease, publicly and privately, with people of all backgrounds ranging from clergymen, congressmen, industrialists, labor leaders, academics, inventors and explorers, to the poorest of the poor on the Bowery.

He advised the Christians to accept the Jews and the Jews to respect Jesus. But his underlying message was America's spiritual destiny, which he said is to lead the nations of the world in establishing a permanent peace.

The essence of that theme is captured by the following extract from his prayer for America: “O God! Let this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to material degrees, and render this just government victorious. Confirm this revered nation to upraise the standard of the oneness of humanity, to promulgate the Most Great Peace, to become thereby most glorious and praiseworthy among all the nations of the world."

Abdu'l Baha left America from New York aboard the SS Celtic on December 5, 1912. He lived another nine years.

This year the Baha'i world community is commemorating the 100th anniversary of his passing on November 28, 1921. The program in Gainesville includes cooperation with other organizations on climate change issues and showing of a film on the life of Abdu'l Baha.

John Huddleston lives in Gainesville.

Biden Gulf Oil Sale Means More Drilling Within Legacy Chemical Dump Site


Chris D'Angelo
Fri, November 26, 2021

The Biden administration’s oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico last week doesn’t just lock in decades of future drilling and greenhouse gas emissions, it also opens up more extraction in an area where chemical companies dumped tons of hazardous industrial waste.

Off the coast of Louisiana, in an area known as Mississippi Canyon, thousands of 55-gallon drums containing decades-old toxic waste remain scattered across a 200-square-mile stretch of ocean floor, as HuffPost revealed earlier this year. Chemical giants received federal permits to dump waste material there in the 1970s, and there has been little oversight of the area in the decades since.

The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged it is not monitoring the legacy dumping ground and has little if any understanding of the lingering environmental impacts. In light of HuffPost’s reporting, the agency said it had launched an assessment to determine whether the site qualifies for cleanup under the federal Superfund program.

But the decades-old waste hasn’t deterred fossil fuel interests in the area. Oil and gas companies are already drilling within the barrel field, with federal agencies allowing them to determine how best to avoid and reduce impacts to existing drums. In fact, it was a Shell drilling plan that shed light on the condition of remaining barrels, noting that many “still look intact” and “may or may not still contain their original content.”

During last week’s auction — the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history — Chevron Corp., Murphy Exploration & Production Co., and Houston Energy LP secured new drilling rights on offshore leasing blocks where barrels have been located.

Chevron paid $256,442.40 to lease two blocks that are part of the dumping ground. Murphy Exploration and Houston Energy paid $154,362.80 and $151,744.80, respectively, to lease one block each.

Those three companies did not respond to HuffPost requests for comment.

As with previous Gulf lease sales, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management alerted would-be bidders of the “inactive industrial waste disposal site” in its final sale notice.

“The site was established by the [Environmental Protection Agency] in 1973 under the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act to permit the seafloor deposition of approximately 205,000 steel barrels containing chemical wastes and chlorinated hydrocarbons,” reads the notice. “Bidders and lessees are advised that the blocks associated with the disposal site and adjacent blocks that are included in the sale area may exhibit hazards from barrel contents (toxic, corrosive, and/or potentially explosive materials).”

The document lists leasing blocks where barrels are known to exist, but that likely doesn’t paint a full picture. Ocean surveys have turned up barrels as far as 10 miles from the designated dump boundary, according to past notices to lessees.

This map shows the offshore leasing blocks where dumped waste barrels have been
detected along the seafloor during hazard surveys. (Photo: MAP: HUFFPOST)

At the Mississippi Canyon site, fuel additive company Ethyl Corp. got EPA approval to dump approximately 19,000 barrels of waste sludge containing liquid metal salts and calcium — drums that could still pose an explosive hazard. And DuPont jettisoned at least 1,300 barrels of waste, including “a wide variety of inorganic salts, industrial organics and chlorinated hydrocarbons” from its facility in LaPlace, Louisiana, according to a 1975 National Academy of Sciences report on ocean contaminants.

Chlorinated hydrocarbons, or CHCs, are a family of toxic chemicals that can persist in the environment and become concentrated in marine organisms.

Scientists HuffPost previously interviewed voiced concerns about the potential for these substances migrating up the food chain, where they could pose a risk to human health. They also argued oil giant Shell’s internal policy of maintaining a 33-foot standoff distance from barrels is insufficient to keep from disturbing remaining contents.

“Hazards surveys are required before bottom-disturbing activities can be approved in plans and permits,” the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management wrote in its notice for last week’s Gulf sale. “Drilling and platform/pipeline placement may require precautions, such as avoidance (recommended 30-foot minimum distance from individual barrels), decontamination of equipment, and personnel health and safety procedures.”

An EPA spokeswoman told HuffPost it is on pace to complete its initial Superfund screening by the end of the year.

It is unclear whether BOEM considered excluding portions of Mississippi Canyon from its recent lease sale pending the outcome of the EPA’s assessment. BOEM spokespersonJohn Filostrat said the bureau is not in a position to comment on the EPA’s pending report.

“For Sale 257, BOEM included lease exclusions and stipulations to protect biologically sensitive resources, mitigate potential adverse effects on protected species, and avoid potential conflicts between oil and gas development and other activities and users in the Gulf of Mexico,” he said via email. “Prior to any activity taking place on the Outer Continental Shelf, companies are required to survey the seafloor and shallow water sediments to identify potential hazards before conducting any bottom disturbing activities. This allows for any hazards to be avoided.”

Environmentalists and climate activists forcefully decried the Biden administration’s Gulf of Mexico lease sale last week, which stands at clear odds with the president’s own climate goals and comes at a time when the world can least afford wealthy nations expanding fossil fuel development.

The auction ultimately brought in more than $191 million, with oil and gas companies purchasing rights to drill across more than 1.7 million offshore acres — an area larger than the state of Delaware.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
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There Are Massive Chemical Dumps In The Gulf We Know Almost Nothing About

Green Bitcoin Beyond the Arctic Circle: Minto Invests $ 60M in Mining and Prepares for IDO


Newsfile Corp.
Fri, November 26, 2021


Dubai, United Arab Emirates--(Newsfile Corp. - November 26, 2021) - The Minto project, which raised $ 1.5 million at the presale stage, is on the way to enter IDO with BTCMT tokens. In Minto, environmentally friendly Bitcoin mining with a minimum carbon footprint is guaranteed.

In Karelia, a part of northern Russia beyond the Arctic Circle, a new data center has been built by the project team. In this place, due to the continuing installation of new mining hardware, the current bitcoin mining capacity of the data center exceeds 500 PH/s and keeps growing. According to the company, the volume of investments in the project is more than $60 million. The equipment mines bitcoins, and each BTCMT token is provided with a real bitcoin mining capacity of 0.01 TH/s.

Minto notes that the approach used to mine Bitcoin is eco-friendly, as its data-center is powered by the Karelian hydroelectric power plant, which complies with the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the field of green energy. Using the energy of water by the plant provides the mining carbon footprint minimization.

The first million tokens (out of five million) were distributed at the presale stage at a price of $1.5 per unit. Currently, at the pre-IDO stage, the BTCMT token costs just over $ 1.72 per unit.

The platform offers its own mining facilities to produce new BTCMTs. Owning BTCMT is equivalent to owning the respective mining capacity. The token holders receive a daily portion of Bitcoins from the total pool of 50 000 TH/s proportional to their share in mining power.

Moreover, Minto is ready to swiftly increase the hash rate in case of high demand for the tokens, which will keep the reward for each stacking holder at a high level. At the same time, the Minto hash rate is verified by Huobi Pool, a major mining pool.

In the nearest quarter, Minto is to conduct an IDO on the MDEX and WeStarter HECO Chain platforms, as well as to list on the DEX decentralized exchange. Listing on the Houbi Global crypto exchange is also being considered.

The project's team is a collective group of people from Europe and Russia spread across the world. Minto is founded by entrepreneurs with years of mining experience. The headquarters is in DMCC Free Zone in Dubai, the UAE. The main mining facilities with a data center are located in Karelia. Minto expects to lower the entrance threshold to the mining market for casual users and expand the area of application for the eco-friendly Bitcoin. The company noted that its eco program of planting trees in the Karelian region is being worked on.

'There is nothing alive on that tree': Inside a giant sequoia grove scorched by the KNP Complex fire


Lila Seidman
Fri, November 26, 2021

The Redwood Mountain Grove at Kings Canyon National Parks was devastated by the KNP Complex fire. (Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)

It looked like a bomb had gone off in the vast stand of giant sequoias on a mountain ridge in the southern Sierra.

Charred trees rose — some stripped of leaves and eerily skeletal — in Kings Canyon National Park’s Redwood Mountain Grove. Ash hung in the air and clawed at visitors’ throats on a chilly afternoon in November.

Roughly seven weeks earlier, intense flames from the KNP Complex fire had charged through the grove, which is home to more than 5,200 behemoth sequoias — among the world’s largest and oldest trees.

When the smoke finally cleared, the impacts were sobering.

“It does not ever get easy looking at a monarch giant sequoia that has died,” said Teresa Benson, supervisor for the Sequoia National Forest, which also was seared by recent wildfires. “That is one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to look at in my entire 30-year career with the Forest Service."

The Redwood Mountain Grove at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks was devastated by the KNP Complex and Windy fires. (Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)

As many as 2,380 giant sequoias burned to death or are expected to die within several years because of the KNP Complex fire, which is still active. Most grew in the Redwood Mountain Grove, said Christy Brigham, chief of resources management and science for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, where the fire has seared more than 88,300 acres.

And it’s only a sliver of much greater devastation.

Another 1,250 trees may have been torched by the Windy fire, which primarily burned in the Sequoia National Forest to the south. It was sparked during the same lightning storm that ignited the KNP Complex fire in early September.

The two fires claimed up to 5% of the world’s population of giant sequoias. That's in addition to the nearly 14% that were destroyed in last year’s Castle fire, which burned through the same area.

Among the trio of destructive fires, nearly 20% of all giant sequoias may have perished in a span of 14 months, according to Joanna Nelson, director of science and conservation planning at the nonprofit conservation group Save the Redwoods League.

The giant sequoia are found only in California, primarily on the western slopes of the southern Sierra. Before the three fires, there were approximately 75,000 of the massive specimens in the world; today that number may be as low as 60,000.

The Redwood Mountain Grove at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks was devastated by the KNP Complex and Windy fires. (Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)

With their towering canopies and thick bark, giant sequoias have adapted to withstand low-intensity fire, and even need it to reproduce. But ferocious fires in recent years, fueled by climate change, have proved fatal to the trees experts once thought were impervious to flames.

Since 2015, high-severity fires have killed giant sequoias “in much greater numbers than has ever been recorded,” according to a report by the National Park Service. A history of fire suppression in the region, combined with stubborn drought and other factors, has caused bone-dry vegetation to build up — a tinder box that can fuel intense blazes, officials said.

Drought also has directly contributed to the sequoias’ decline, weakening their defenses and making them susceptible to incursions from bark beetles, another scourge to which they’ve historically been immune.

Before the KNP Complex fire hit Redwood Mountain Grove, Tony Caprio, fire ecologist for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, sounded the alarm.

“Tony said early on [that] the southern end of Redwood Mountain Grove is really at risk,” said Brigham, who co-authored a recent report with Caprio and others on the 2021 fire season's impacts on giant sequoias. The report details the mortality estimates of what are considered large trees, more than 4 feet in diameter.

That part of the grove is perched on steep terrain and hadn’t been subjected to recent controlled burns to thin out fuel. Dead trees littered the area below.

Park officials knew the large grove was vulnerable, and desperately worked to prepare the area as the KNP Complex fire marched closer. Concern ran high for the grove’s thousands of sequoias.

“If fire gets established below it, there's potential for it to run up the slope, and burn with really high severity,” explained Brigham, wearing tiny gold-dipped alder cone earrings.

Andrew Cremers, fuels management specialist at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, walks through the Redwood Mountain Grove,. (Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)

Fire crews began conducting burn operations in the grove on Oct. 1, according to the recent report, and there were plans to apply a goopy, fire-retardant gel on some of the trees — an experimental method that had never been used on sequoias prior to the KNP Complex fire. Caprio created a map of where to drop the gel using aircraft.

“But it was very smoky,” Brigham said. The plan was foiled. “And the area that we wanted to put the gel is the area that is nuked.”

By the evening of Oct. 3, the fire began to take hold in the Redwood Mountain area — before backburn operations were complete. It apparently made a run up the west side of Redwood Mountain Ridge before merging with another set of flames by the following morning, according to the report. High-severity fire seared the southern end of the ridge and lower portions of the grove in Redwood Canyon, expanding east and north.

No one was there to witness the devastation but some park officials believe that, in some areas, the blaze surged as a solid wall of flames across the tree tops — a sign of ferocious fire behavior known as a running crown fire.

Down-canyon areas burned so hot that the fire created an enormous pyrocumulus cloud that soared 40,000 feet above the burn area, said Nate Stephenson, an emeritus scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The weather event generated winds so strong that they ripped bark and foliage off the sequoias, sending the debris raining down from the sky far to the north. Friends living on the eastern side of the Sierra emailed Stephenson to say they could see the gargantuan cloud over the mountains.

“It cooked down there, is my impression,” he said on Nov. 19 as he scoped out a particularly charred area of the grove higher on the mountain.

Stephenson and Brigham, who are leading experts on giant sequoias, led a media tour of a small portion of the grove that day. The grove is currently off-limits to the public. The group was joined by Caprio and Clay Jordan, superintendent of the two national parks.

Near where Stephenson stood on that recent Friday, a blackened giant loomed higher than an 18-story building. Estimated at up to 800 years old, it was alive when Genghis Khan ruled the Mongol Empire. Centuries later, it still looked sturdy as a house, its base far too broad to wrap your arms around.

But it was history now.

“There is nothing alive on that tree,” Brigham said.

Still, the tree bore cones high in its canopy. There's a chance, Stephenson said, that the cones could drop viable seeds, potentially leading to the birth of new sequoias.

Elsewhere in the grove, where it’s believed the fire burned at a lower severity, officials noticed a similarly enormous tree emitting a stream of white smoke. It was cooking from within — and would likely continue to do so for months, parks supervisor Jordan said.

“The question is, will that tree die?” Jordan asked, noting it would be exceedingly difficult, “maybe impossible,” to extinguish the fire. Not long before the KNP Complex and Windy fires broke out, Jordan said, a pair of well-known giant sequoias — King Arthur and Floyd Otter — were seen still burning from the Castle fire a year earlier.

During the tour, scorched trees appeared suddenly amid healthy-looking growth throughthe first few miles of the grove. It’s typical for fire to burn in a “mosaic” like that, Jordan said.

Just before the tour, national park and forest leaders — along with other managers of land where giant sequoias grow — gathered for a briefing in Kings Canyon Park's Grant Grove to deliver the grim news that thousands of sequoias probably perished this year.

The imposing General Grant tree stood a short walk from the podium. At 267 feet high and 29 feet around, it's considered the second largest tree on Earth. No. 1 is the General Sherman Tree in Sequoia National Park.

The people at the briefing vowed to band together to protect the remaining majestic giants for future generations. Besides waging a collective battle against climate change, the stakeholders said it was crucial to thin out dense forests with prescribed fire and other techniques.

“The main goal is to protect the redwoods,” said William Garfield, chairman of the Tule River Indian Tribal Council.

The Windy fire ignited on the Tule River Indian Reservation before expanding into the nearby Sequoia National Forest. Like the sequoias, the Indigenous people have lived on the land for thousands of years.

“They carry a lot of history … and if they're gone, that history is gone,” Garfield said.

As the light dwindled and officials and media alike cleared out, Samantha Furden, 26, and George David, 42, arrived in Grant Grove to play music and sing songs. The friends had just driven up from Los Angeles, where Furden lives.

David lives part-time in the Three Rivers area near the entrance to Sequoia National Park. He said hearing about the devastation to the trees was "actually very traumatic."

"The trees speak to the soul," David said. "This is my happy place."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Vale Indicted for Environmental Crimes in Deadly Dam Disaster


Mariana Durao
Fri, November 26, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s Federal Police indicted Vale SA and German safety auditing firm TUEV SUED AG for environmental crimes in a deadly dam collapse that buried a rural village and spread mining waste in the area.

The two companies were charged with several crimes against animal life, flora, water resources, and other counts of pollution, while 19 consultants, engineers, managers and directors were also indicted for the deaths of 270 people, the Federal Police said in a statement Friday.

The 2019 disaster in Brumadinho in southeastern Brazil caused Vale to lose its position as the world’s biggest iron-ore producer and sparked a company-wide safety and governance overhaul. In February, Vale agreed to pay $7 billion to the state of Minas Gerais, which will be used in socioeconomic and environmental programs to repair the damage caused by the dam collapse.

Vale awaits to be formally informed of the conclusion of the police investigation before making any statement, according to an emailed response to questions. The Rio de Janeiro-based company said it has continuously collaborated with the Federal Police investigations and reaffirmed that no scenario at the time indicated the dam structure was at an imminent risk of rupture.

TUEV SUED said by email it couldn’t comment because it hasn’t yet been able to assess the police report.

The report from the police inquiry will now be sent to the federal prosecutors’ office, which said it will analyze the documents, together with other evidence obtained during its own investigations.

Federal prosecutors also await a decision from a high court on whether criminal charges related to the Brumadinho case will be judged at federal or state level.

A 'LIMITED' SPILL

A long road ahead to recovery from Huntington Beach oil spill

Connor Sheets, Laura J. Nelson
Fri, November 26, 2021

Container ships and an offshore oil rig line the horizon as an oil spill cleanup crew member walks the shoreline in Huntington Beach in October. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

An oil sheen spotted off Huntington Beach this weekend served as a potent reminder of how long it will take Southern California to untangle the legal, regulatory and environmental fallout of an October pipeline spill that released an estimated 25,000 gallons of crude into the ocean.

A sheen 70 feet by 30 feet was spotted Saturday morning and gone by nightfall, authorities said. The U.S. Coast Guard said it was probably a residual leak from the ruptured 17.3-mile pipeline, which has been shut down since Oct. 2.

Divers preparing for a routine inspection of the damaged pipeline spotted the sheen about 9:30 a.m. Saturday, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said. Underwater, they saw oil droplets near the damaged section, which since the spill has been encased in a material called Syntho-Glass. Divers removed the wrap and installed a new one.

If Amplify Energy, the Texas-based company that operated the pipeline, was responsible for the weekend's release of the oil, there may be repercussions, said Ted Borrego, an oil and gas lawyer with 50 years of experience in the industry and adjunct professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

"If it is a repeat problem which is caused by a company, then fines are in order," Borrego said in an email, adding that authorities could take other steps depending on the circumstances.

Meanwhile, the wave of lawsuits sparked by the October spill is continuing to grind through the federal court system. Amplify is now facing 14 lawsuits filed by businesses, residents, property owners and others affected by the spill. The plaintiffs include Laguna Beach coastal property owners, a Huntington Beach surf school, a Seal Beach bait and tackle store, and several groups of fishing and seafood sales companies.

Several of the 22 law firms involved in the litigation have already pressed U.S. District Judge David O. Carter to consolidate their lawsuits into a class-action case. He signaled in a Nov. 9 court filing that he will eventually consolidate the cases, but is still weighing when to do so.

Carter has ordered a mid-December hearing at the Santa Ana federal courthouse, where lawyers could lobby to head up the litigation. He said he would lean toward selecting one or more firms with "long-standing" connections to Orange County and Los Angeles, experience with class-action litigation, and knowledge of bankruptcy and environmental law.

Asked for comment Monday, Amy Conway, a spokeswoman for Amplify, provided a link to a statement by the unified command that was established in response to the spill.

In court filings last month, an Amplify attorney identified a long list of insurers, including a Houston-based underwriter and 10 syndicates of Lloyd's, that could also shoulder some legal bills or eventual settlement costs.

Federal investigators believe the major October spill was triggered by a ship's anchor striking the pipeline during a storm in January, complicating the question of civil liability for the incident.

Last week, federal authorities identified and boarded a second cargo ship, the container vessel Beijing, at the port in Long Beach. The Coast Guard said in a statement that the ship was involved in the Jan. 25 anchor-dragging incident during heavy weather at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and has designated the ship’s owners, Capetanissa of Liberia and the operator V-Ships Greece Ltd., as parties of interest in the investigation.

The October spill had a significant negative impact on the natural environment, despite the fact that the estimated amount of oil released was about one-fifth of what was initially reported. The UC Davis Oiled Wildlife Care Network said earlier this month that it had recovered 82 dead birds, six dead mammals, and dozens of living mammals in the aftermath of the spill. The dead animals included a bottlenose dolphin, three California sea lions and a wide array of birds: cormorants, coots, pigeons, grebes and more.

The USC Sea Grant Program reported that 5,544 gallons of oil, 13.6 barrels of tar balls and 546,782 pounds of “oil sand and debris” had been collected from the Southern California coast as of Nov. 8. Area fisheries remain closed, but the beaches have reopened and the USC program reported that an analysis found that “San Diego and Orange County air, water, and sediment do not pose a public health concern for short-term exposures from the use of the water and beaches in the counties.”

Last week, Amplify withdrew its full-year report, citing the spill as a factor in the decision. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said that it “paid approximately $17.3 million in costs related to remediation efforts regarding the Incident,” most of which has been or is expected to be reimbursed by insurance carriers.

Stephen Schork, a longtime energy markets analyst and advisor, said he worries that rapid divestment from fossil fuel infrastructure like Southern California’s aging platforms has increased the likelihood of oil spills by smaller operators like Amplify, which don’t have the resources international energy conglomerates have to prevent such incidents and compensate affected communities once they occur.

“I’m fearful you can expect more of these instances in the years ahead with greater frequency with the way we’re going with our investments,” he said.

Eric Smith, a business professor at Tulane University in New Orleans and associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute, said he believes the government has little remaining recourse with Amplify.

“I don’t think there is much more that the authorities can do to Amplify,” he said. “Given the financial overhang, they are a zombie at this point.”

But Schork said it’s still imperative for the company to do everything it can to prevent future incidents, and for regulators to oversee those efforts.

“It’s absolutely in the best interest of every producer out there to be as meticulous as possible, and it’s incumbent on the regulators to ensure that that is happening,” he said. “They’re making sure this issue is being addressed and a remedy is being implemented."

Times staff writers Matthew Ormseth and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Krugman: Spending as if the future matters


Paul Krugman
Sat, November 27, 2021

For centuries, America has invested taxpayer money in its future. Public funds built physical infrastructure, from the Erie Canal to the interstate highway system. We invested in human capital, too: Universal education came to the United States early, and America basically invented modern public secondary education. This public spending laid the foundations for prosperity and helped make us an economic superpower.

With the rise of the modern right, however, America turned its back on that history. Tax breaks — essentially giving wealthy people money and hoping that it would trickle down — became the solution to every problem. “Infrastructure week” became a punchline under Donald Trump partly because the Trump team’s proposals were more about crony capitalism than about investment, partly because Trump never showed the will to override conservatives who opposed any significant new spending.

Now Joe Biden is trying to revive the tradition of public spending oriented toward the future.


The Build Back Better legislation that passed the House last week isn’t a pure investment plan; in particular, it includes substantial health care spending that is more about helping Americans in the near term than about the future. But about two-thirds of the proposed spending is indeed investment in the sense that it should have big payoffs in the future. And if you combine Build Back Better with the already-enacted infrastructure bill, you see an agenda that is about three-fourths investment spending.

President Joe Biden, shown here delivering remarks at the White House on Tuesday, is trying to revive the tradition of public spending oriented toward the future, Paul Krugman writes. [AP PHOTO/EVAN VUCCI]

Here’s how I read the Biden program as it now stands. Total new spending would be about $2.3 trillion over a decade. This total would include $500 billion to $600 billion of spending on each of three things: traditional infrastructure, restructuring the economy to address climate change, and children, with the last item mainly consisting of pre-K and child care but also involving tax credits that would greatly reduce child poverty.

There’s every reason to believe that all three types of spending would have a high social rate of return.

Snarled supply chains have reminded everyone that old-fashioned physical infrastructure remains hugely important; we are still living in a material world, and getting stuff where it needs to go requires public as well as private investment.

As far as climate investments are concerned, the damage from a warming planet is becoming increasingly obvious — and droughts, fires and extreme weather are only the leading edge of the disasters to come. Build Back Better’s investments wouldn’t come close to ending the danger, but they would mitigate climate change, partly protect us against some its consequences and make it easier for the United States to lead the world toward a more comprehensive solution. So the money would be well spent.

Finally, there is overwhelming evidence that helping families with children is a high-return investment in the nation’s future, because children whose families have adequate resources become healthier, more productive adults.

So what’s not to like about this agenda? No, it wouldn’t be inflationary: Don’t take it from me, listen to credit rating agencies, which are saying the same thing. The approved and proposed spending would be fairly small as a share of gross domestic product — which the Congressional Budget Office projects at $288 trillion over the next decade — and largely paid for with new taxes, so it would have very little inflationary impact.

Oh, and while some of the “pay-fors” are questionable — as it happens, mainly on the traditional infrastructure bill; Build Back Better is more or less paid for — which means that the spending would probably add somewhat to federal debt over the next few years, that debt increase would be small relative to GDP and, given low interest rates, would barely add to debt service costs. Over the longer term, the payoff to public investment might well be enough to reduce the deficit.

Still, Republicans are denouncing the Biden agenda as socialism, because, of course, they are. Hey, by their standards America has been run by socialists for most of its history — people like DeWitt Clinton, the New York governor who built the Erie Canal, and Horace Mann, who led the Common School movement for universal basic education a couple of decades later. And don’t even get me started on Dwight Eisenhower, who presided over huge government investment and a top tax rate of 91%.

Admittedly, the Biden plan would reduce economic disparities, both because expanded benefits would matter more to less-affluent families and because its tax changes would be strongly progressive. But public policy that reduces inequality, like public investment, is squarely in our national tradition. America basically invented progressive taxation, and as economist Claudia Goldin has noted, the high school movement was “rooted in egalitarianism.”

So don’t believe politicians who are trying to portray Biden’s investment agenda as somehow irresponsible and radical. It’s highly responsible, and it’s an attempt to restore the all-American idea that government should help create a better future.

Krugman writes for The New York Times.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Krugman: Spending as if the future matters

Boris Johnson’s tree planting strategy ‘in flames’, as UK spends six times more on wood burning power station

“Drax is a huge beast which requires feeding.”


Harry Cockburn
Sat, November 27, 2021

Drax power station releases over 13 million tonnes of CO2 a year from burning wood (Getty)

Ministers have been accused of lacking a “joined up strategy” on woodlands, as one government department spends six times more on a timber-burning power station than another spends on tree planting.

Annual subsidies for Drax power station in North Yorkshire, a former coal-fired power station which now runs on “biomass” made up of imported waste wood, reached £832m in 2020, while the budget for tree planting and peatland works out at just £130m a year.

Drax was recently named the UK’s biggest single source of CO2 emissions. It releases over 13 million tonnes of CO2 a year, using around 7 million tonnes of wood pellets, the equivalent of about 25 million trees, scientists have said.

Meanwhile, environment minister Zac Goldsmith admitted this week just 2,000 hectares of trees had been planted in England this year. The government has said it is aiming to plant 30,000 hectares of new woodland across the UK each year by 2024, including 7,000-10,000 hectares in England by the end of this parliamentary term.

Labour MPs claimed the “massive subsidies” for burning imported wood at Drax, combined with the low level of tree planting, meant the government’s plan to tackle the climate crisis through planting trees “is in flames”.

Lord Goldsmith has been quizzed by MPs from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) Committee over why the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) was on one hand providing such large subsidies to Drax, while the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), was given less than this one company for expanding forests and peatlands.

He told the hearing: “Drax is a huge beast which requires feeding.”

Though he said he needed to further study the environmental impact of the power station, he added that he “would question the model which requires the import of a vast amount of timber”.

Pressed on this issue, he suggested it was a matter for BEIS. But the chair of the committee, Conservative MP Neil Parish, suggested the environmental impact of the plant was something Defra could comment on.

Labour MP Geraint Davies, who sits on the committee and asked Lord Goldsmith for clarity on the logic of providing greater subsidies to Drax than for tree planting, told The Independent that as the host of the recent Cop26 climate summit, the UK “should hold its head in shame”.

He said: “It is clear that there is no joined up government strategy on climate change, with budgets to plant more sapling trees dwarfed by massive subsidies for burning imported wood leading to the UK making wood more of a problem than a solution for climate change and encouraging deforestation.

“The government’s plan to tackle climate change through planting trees is in flames as it gives over £800m a year to Drax to be the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions from burning imported wood, compared to £650m over five years on tree planting and woodlands.”

He added: “BEIS is in the hands of big business, burning imported wood as if there’s no tomorrow. Meanwhile Defra is not empowered to counteract the impact of wood burning on climate change by protecting and growing forests.”

Luke Pollard, Labour’s shadow environment secretary, told The Independent: “Lord Goldsmith’s evidence made clearer than ever how the Tories are utterly failing on tree planting. Last year, ministers managed to deliver less than half their target of 5,000 hectares of new trees in England. Now he has revealed they will do little better this year or next.

“Not only are they failing spectacularly to plant trees, their planned spending on tree planting is dwarfed by subsidies to Drax to ship and burn timber from around the world with few checks to make sure it’s not from virgin forest. How can the public expect them to deliver the promises they made at Cop26 let alone the faster action required to cut carbon?”

When asked by the Efra Committee about England’s role in reaching the 30,000 hectares of trees which will need to be planted every year by 2050 to reach the UK’s legally binding net-zero target, Lord Goldsmith said Covid had disrupted planting in England.

“Last year we planted around 2,000 hectares, which in truth is less than we’d hoped for,” he said. “Things were heavily disrupted as a consequence of Covid.”

Lord Goldsmith said that although £650m was available for tree planting, it was not the case that the money would be allocated to a tree-planting drive resulting in 7,000-10,000 hectares of trees being planted each year over the five years, but would be used more sparingly to begin with, with an ultimate goal at the end of the five-year period for tree planting to reach that level, with more spending towards the end of this timeframe.

Speaking about the low level of existing planting, Lord Goldsmith said: “The reason that I’m not concerned about the fact that we’re starting at a much lower level than the 7,000 hectares is that we’re trying new things.”

He said: “We are the second-biggest importer of timber in the world, and have been for a long time. And we are one of the most nature-denuded countries on Earth, so we are starting from a pretty low point.”

A spokesperson for BEIS told The Independent: “We are totally committed to eliminating our contribution to climate change by 2050, which is why we only support biomass which complies with strict sustainability criteria. In 2020, sustainable biomass made up around 12.6 per cent of the UK’s total electricity generation.

“Our tree planting plans complement our strictly regulated biomass commitments as part of this government’s wider strategy to slash carbon emissions, and we are proud to have pledged to treble tree planting rates by the end of this parliament, allowing us to protect our peatlands and boost biodiversity as we build back greener from the pandemic.”

Despite concerns about the disconnect between the two government departments raised by Labour, and though The Independent made several requests for comment from Lord Goldsmith and Defra officials, neither Defra, nor the environment minister offered a response, with a spokesperson saying the BEIS statement incorporated Defra input.

A Drax spokesperson told The Independent: “The world’s leading climate scientists at the UN’s IPCC and the UK’s Climate Change Committee agree that sustainable biomass has an important role to play in the decarbonisation of energy systems globally – both by displacing coal and in conjunction with carbon capture and storage to deliver negative emissions.

“Converting Drax power station to use sustainable biomass instead of coal has transformed the business. Drax is the biggest renewable power producer in the UK, generating 12 per cent of the country’s renewable electricity – enough for four million homes. Drax plays a crucial role in supporting the energy system, enabling more renewables to come online, as well as supporting thousands of jobs throughout our supply chains in the north. The conversion has also paved the way for us to deploy the vital negative emissions technology bioenergy with carbon capture and storage – by 2030 we could be permanently removing 8 million tonnes of CO2 each year.”