Sunday, December 05, 2021

Fuel smell drove health official out of Iqaluit water treatment plant 4 days before public was notified

Department of Health flagged concerns from residents 10

 days before do-not-consume order was issued

Iqaluit issued its do-not-consume order for city water on Oct. 12. Documents show a Nunavut environmental health officer flagged an 'unbearable' diesel smell at the city's water treatment plant four days earlier — and the Department of Health heard public concerns as early as Oct. 2. (Dustin Patar/The Canadian Press)

When Wilfred Ntiamoah, a Nunavut environmental health officer, assessed Iqaluit's water treatment plant on Oct. 8, the smell of diesel was so intense he had to leave the building to get some fresh air.

That was six days after the Department of Health first began investigating public concerns over a fuel smell in Iqaluit's drinking water. It would be another four days before the City of Iqaluit told its residents stop drinking the tap water due to possible fuel contamination.

Documents obtained by CBC through an access to information request show Ntiamoah flagged what smelled like diesel at the plant — an odour Ntiamoah described as "unbearable" at times.

Using an air quality monitor from Nunavut's Department of Environment, Ntiamoah recorded "significant" levels of fumes inside the plant, which he guessed were diesel fumes. The levels dropped when he went outside. He noted that they were the worst in the facility's basement.

He suggested the city bring on a consultant to find out whether the fumes inside the plant might be contributing to the smell in the water supply.

Photos Ntiamoah provided to Nunavut health officials also included a description of one water tank inside the plant as having an "oily" surface.

In another email sent to health officials that day, Ntiamoah said he wanted to explore the issue of the fumes further and questioned why the doors to the plant were opened widely.

"Was it to dissipate built-up … diesel smell/fumes," he wrote.

Health officials flagged issue on Oct. 2

Other emails obtained by CBC show the Department of Health first began investigating the issue on Oct. 2 after residents posted to social media about the smell. Health officials met with the city about it on Oct. 3.

Between Oct. 2 and 11, the city sent out initial water samples to an Ottawa lab for testing, but the samples hadn't been collected correctly — they were put in normal plastic bottles instead of specialized glass bottles. The water had to be transferred to the right containers by the lab, and ultimately those issues meant it was difficult to interpret the lab results.

Iqaluit on November 14. It's now been nearly two months since people in the city have been able to drink their tap water. (Jane George/CBC)

City officials told Iqaluit's 8,000 residents not to drink the tap water on Oct. 12, after complaints started flooding in about the fuel smell.

The city declared a state of emergency that same day.

Steven Siciliano, a microbiologist and toxicologist who has done research in the North, later told the Canadian Press that the human nose is "incredibly sensitive" to hydrocarbons, meaning people can smell it even if there's a very low amount.

He compared drinking the water every day for a week to smoking one or two cigarettes a day vs. smoking an entire pack a day. He said long-term exposure to compounds found in gasoline could be "very risky" but drinking it for a week probably wouldn't do much harm.

Dr. Michael Patterson, the territory's chief medical health officer, has said repeatedly that there don't seem to be any risks to residents who drank the fuel-contaminated tap water.

He's also said he wants to be 100 per cent certain the water is safe to drink before lifting the do-not-consume order. 

With files from Nick Murray


Iqaluit frustrated still unable to drink tap water after nearly 2 months

By Emma Tranter The Canadian Press
Posted December 3, 2021 



WATCH: Contaminated Iqaluit water tank isolated following initial inspection 
– Oct 22, 2021

In the summer, the Sylvia Grinnell River near Iqaluit is a popular spot to fish for Arctic char where ice-cold water cascades over rocky ledges.

Now, with thick layers of ice and snow covering the flowing water below, it has become one of the Nunavut capital’s main water sources for drinking and cooking.

The other comes in thousands of plastic water bottles that arrive by plane.

READ MORE: Military headed to Iqaluit to help provide safe drinking water, Blair says

It’s been almost two months since Iqaluit’s tap water was declared undrinkable. On Oct. 12, the city declared a state of emergency when fuel was found in the water supply. Residents had complained the water coming out of their taps smelled like fuel.

Since then, the city has dug up an old underground fuel tank from 1962, which was buried next to the water treatment plant and thought to be the source of the contamination.

Iqaluit Mayor Kenny Bell says he’s frustrated because the city’s testing has come back clean since Oct. 23, but the Nunavut government has the final say in lifting the do-not-consume order.

The city has installed a device to monitor for petroleum, but the territory says it wants two. It also wants the city to build a system that would bypass the water treatment plant’s underground tanks.

Members of the Iqaluit Fire Department assist with flushing the city’s water pipes in Iqaluit, Nunavut, on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. According to a City of Iqaluit news release issued earlier in the day, flushing will conclude by Thursday. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Dustin Patar

Bell says those are important steps to preventing future problems, but he doesn’t think they should be tied to lifting the order.

“It could take three weeks, could take a month, could take two months to build the bypass because of parts and labour and what not,” Bell says.

“That’s going to take time that we frankly just don’t have.”

The city has said it will cost $130 million to fix the long-term problem and has called on the federal government to pay for it.

Water quality monitoring from the city shows that between Nov. 16 and Nov. 23 all sample results came back negative for petroleum hydrocarbons.

“The water is clean. These requirements are for a future possible event,” says Bell.

Throughout the emergency, the city has continued to hand out bottled water to residents at different sites around the city.

READ MORE: Iqaluit officials recommending rebate for customers amid drinking water crisis

But staff are strained, Bell says, and the city has had to close its gym, pool and two arenas to reallocate workers.

“We’re offering $32 per hour to hand out water, but we’ve only hired a couple of people. We just need more staff,” Bell says.

“We’re all tired. We were short-handed well before this crisis. It’s crap for all of us.”

The city has asked the Nunavut government for extra hands, but Bell says that request was denied because the territory has its own staffing issues.

In a statement, Nunavut’s health department says it’s still reviewing the city’s water quality assessments.

“The (Government of Nunavut) is awaiting confirmation from the contracted engineering firm that the site assessment and required remediation have been completed to assure the risk of repeat contamination has been mitigated,” says the statement.

“The Department of Health is working closely with the third party to assess the City of Iqaluit’s field investigation report.”


2:30 Tap water contaminated in Nunavut’s capital, triggering state-of-emergency – 
Oct 13, 2021

Nunavut’s department of community and government services, which contracted the engineering firm, did not respond when asked for the name of the company.

The Canadian Armed Forces also arrived in Iqaluit on Oct. 23 to collect and purify water from the Sylvia Grinnell River using a reverse osmosis system.

But the operation ground to a halt on Nov. 22, when high winds knocked over a military tent that was protecting the water purification system.

The military has since moved its system inside a hangar at the city’s airport, and plans to truck river water there for treatment. There’s no timeline for when the operation will start again.
  
CHINA'S ALLY
Five dead after Myanmar security forces ram car into Yangon protest - media


FILE PHOTO: Police stand on a road during an anti-coup protest in Mandalay

Sat, December 4, 2021,

(Reuters) - Five people were killed and at least 15 arrested after Myanmar security forces in a car rammed into an anti-coup protest on Sunday morning in Yangon, local news portal Myanmar Now reported.

Witnesses on the scene told Reuters dozens had been injured. Photos and videos on social media show a vehicle that crashed through the protesters and bodies lying on the road.

Another protest was held in Yangon in the afternoon despite the morning violence.

Anti-military protests are continuing despite the killing of more than 1,300 people since the Feb. 1 coup. The scattered protests are often small groups voicing opposition to the overthrow of an elected government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and the return of military rule.

The opposition's shadow government said it was heartbroken to see peaceful protesters crashed and shot to death.

"We will strongly respond to the terrorist military who brutally, inhumanly killed the unarmed peaceful protesters," the National Unity Government's defence ministry said in a statement on social media after Sunday's attack.

In the incident, a "flash mob" protest in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, was rammed minutes after it started, witnesses said.

"I got hit and fell down in front of a truck. A soldier beat me with his rifle but I defended and pushed him back. Then he immediately shot at me as I ran away in a zig-zag pattern. Fortunately, I escaped," a protester who asked not to be identified for security reasons told Reuters by phone.

A car occupied by soldiers hit the crowd from the back, two witnesses said, and followed the scattered protesters arresting and beating them. Some were seriously injured with head wounds and unconscious, according to the witnesses.

A spokesman for the ruling junta did not answer calls seeking comment on Sunday.

The military has said that protesters who have been killed instigated the violence. It says it staged the coup because a November election won by Suu Kyi's party was rigged. The election commission has dismissed the assertion.

Wars with ethnic minority insurgents in remote frontier regions in the north and east have intensified significantly since the coup, displacing tens of thousands of civilians, according to United Nations estimates.

Suu Kyi, 76, faces a dozen cases against her including incitement and violations of COVID-19 protocols.

She has rejected all the charges to date.

(Reporting by Reuters Staff; Editing by Kim Coghill and William Mallard)
The NASA-China space race is about to go nuclear


THE HILL
Sun, December 5, 2021, 




Recently, NASA and the United States Department of Energy put out a call for industry to propose designs for a nuclear power plant that could be deployed on the moon within the decade, according to Science Alert. In the meantime, Interesting Engineering reports that China has completed a design for its own lunar-based nuclear reactor. The two news items suggests that both sides of the current space race are very serious about returning to the moon and developing Earth's nearest neighbor in a big way.

The Chinese lunar nuclear reactor is described as being capable of generating a full megawatt of electricity. According to Live Science, NASA requires that the lunar nuclear power plant generate just 40 kilowatts of power for 10 years, fit inside a 12-foot long by 18-foot-wide rocket, and weigh no more than 13,200 pounds. Presumably, if the moon base requires more than 40 kilowatts of power, more power plants can be launched and deployed ready for use.


By going nuclear, both NASA and the Chinese recognize that an immense amount of power is required to operate in space in a big way. The systems that keep astronauts alive and keep their experiments running require power; the more astronauts; the more power. If one adds systems that support commercial activities, such as lunar mining, then the proper conclusion is that solar alone is not the answer. Nuclear power is the key to opening space to a wide variety of human activity, for both scientific exploration and commercial development.

Nuclear power also has the advantage over solar power, whether space based, or Earth bound, in that it runs 24/7. Solar power systems need battery backups when sunlight is blocked.

NASA is also studying nuclear power for spacecraft, especially those that would voyage to Mars and points beyond. The space agency has considered nuclear rockets since the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications (NERVA) program in the 1960s. NERVA ended when it became clear that NASA would not send humans to Mars any time soon. Now that Mars is back on the agenda, nuclear rockets, which would use a nuclear reactor to superheat exhaust from the back of a spacecraft, are also back.

A nuclear thermal rocket could send humans and their supplies to Mars much more quickly than a spacecraft with conventional rocket engines. Thus, astronauts voyaging to Mars will spend less time exposed to the radiation-drenched environment of deep space.

Just as nuclear power is experiencing a renaissance for space operations, the technology is being given a second look on Earth. Nuclear power has gotten bad press after high-profile accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. More enlightened environmentalists have concluded that nuclear power should be part of a solution that transitions human civilization away from dependence on fossil fuels.

Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft, is partly financing a nuclear power plant that uses new technology to be built in Wyoming by 2028. The nuclear power plant will use liquid sodium instead of water to cool the reactor. The technology reduces the risk of an explosion or a meltdown. It also produces less nuclear waste.

Modern civilization, whether on Earth or in space, requires an immense amount of energy to operate. As technology advances, civilization will require even more power. Nuclear technology is available in the near term to provide that power, whether to run air conditioners in homes on Earth or to keep environmental systems operating on a lunar base or a spacecraft voyaging to Mars.

Will environmentalist opposition arise against nuclear systems in space as it has on Earth, inhibiting their development? Antinuclear activists have protested rocket launches that included fissile material, as they did in 1997 when the Cassini space probe launched with 72 pounds of plutonium 238 that provided power for its mission to Saturn. No doubt similar protests can be expected when a nuclear reactor and its fuel are launched to the moon.

However, as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists pointed out, once nuclear power plants are deployed in space, either at a moon base or on a spacecraft voyaging to Mars, they would present no danger to humans on Earth. The debate over nuclear power in space will occur, just as it has on Earth and will have to be engaged.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of space exploration studies "Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?" as well as "The Moon, Mars and Beyond," and "Why is America Going Back to the Moon?" He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
Diablo Canyon supporters rally in SLO to keep nuclear power plant open


Kaytlyn Leslie, Laura Dickinson
Sat, December 4, 2021, 

More than 100 people gathered in downtown San Luis Obispo on Saturday to voice their support for keeping California’s last remaining nuclear power plant open.

Supporters held a “Save Clean Energy” rally in front of the San Luis Obispo County Government Center on Monterey Street at 11 a.m., shouting their support for keeping Diablo Canyon open.

Speakers included SLO County Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg and Isabelle Boemeke, founder of the Save Clean Energy group.

At one point, participants paraded a miniature blimp down Monterey Street. It was designed to represent the one ton of carbon dioxide.

According to a flyer for the event, the Saturday rally was to express support for keeping open the state’s “largest single producer of clean energy.”


Stephen Williams of Santa Cruz sported a Diable Canyon hat. A “Save Clean Energy” rally held on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, in San Luis Obispo called for keeping Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant open.

“We cannot afford to take a step backwards in our fight to save the planet,” the flyer read. “Join us as we rally to save this essential source of zero-emissions energy.”

The nuclear power plant is set to shutter in 2025 when the final license for nuclear reactors expires.

The rally was being held in the wake of a new push to keep the plant open. A Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology report released in November claimed keeping Diablo Canyon open for 10 years beyond its expected closure would drastically help the state meet its clean energy goals.

After the report was released, government officials — both local and national — have voiced support for keeping the plant open.

PG&E however, has repeatedly said it does not plan to reverse course on decommissioning the plant.
EXPROPRIATE PG&E NATIONALIZE IT UNDER WORKERS CONTROL


Isabelle Boemeke, founder of the Save Clean Energy group, spoke at a rally to keep Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant from closing, on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, in San Luis Obispo.

SLO County Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg spoke at the “Save Clean Energy” rally held on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, in San Luis Obispo. It called for keeping Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant open.

Isabelle Boemeke is founder of the Save Clean Energy group that held a rally to keep Diablo Canyon from closing, on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, in San Luis Obispo.

A “Save Clean Energy” rally held on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, in San Luis Obispo called for keeping Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant open.
WTF
Keating: Holtec has decided to dump radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay

Doug Fraser, 
Cape Cod Times
Sat, December 4, 2021

PLYMOUTH — The company decommissioning Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station has told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it plans to start discharging radioactive water from the plant into Cape Cod Bay sometime within the first three months of 2022.

U.S. Rep. William Keating, D-Mass., shared an email with the Times that his staff received from the NRC Wednesday that confirmed Holtec International had informed the agency of its plan to release radioactive water into the bay.


Just a week earlier, Holtec spokesman Patrick O'Brien told a Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel in Plymouth there were other options, including evaporating the million gallons of water from the spent fuel pool and the reactor vessel and other plant components or trucking it to a facility in Idaho.

"We had broached that (discharging water into the bay) with the state, but we've made no decision on that," O'Brien said.

Previously: Pilgrim nuclear plant may release 1M gallons of radioactive water into bay. What we know

In an interview Tuesday, Harold Anagnostopoulos, Nuclear Regulatory Commission plant inspector and senior health physicist for Region 1 (which includes New England), said he didn't know of any planned discharge, but "we would not be involved in that decision. We would be involved in investigating or inspecting to make sure that they are meeting the requirements of their license."


Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth in 2016.

Keating said that not disclosing their plans at a public forum violated promises of transparency.

"It's troubling that within a couple of days it turned into a sure thing," Keating said Friday.

"If Holtec had true concern for public health and the environment and worked with transparency as they promised, Holtec would halt any dumping until a viable solution is found acceptable," said Diane Turco, director of Cape Downwinders, a citizen watchdog group. "(D)umping into Cape Cod Bay just highlights the fact that the NRC and Holtec don’t have a solution for what to do with nuclear waste. Contaminating our environment is part of the nuclear nightmare process and that is immoral."

Of more concern to Keating than the lack of transparency, was what he said was a decision motivated by cost and not by necessity.

Two years ago, during the negotiations for longtime plant owner Entergy Nuclear Operations to sell Pilgrim to Holtec for the purposes of decommissioning, Keating said he and others expressed concern about turning the process over — including the $1.03 billion decommissioning trust fund — to a private company that hadn't yet dismantled a nuclear plant. At the time, state Attorney General Maura Healey tried to intervene on that basis, citing concerns that the billion-dollar fund might prove insufficient and that Pilgrim would be Holtec's first shot at decommissioning.

In interviews, both the NRC and Holtec said that discharging radioactive water into the ocean is a common practice in the nuclear industry and is the least expensive method. O'Brien said Pilgrim discharged radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay as recently as 2017.

Keating said there is also a profit motive to the dumping plan.

"They are responsible to their shareholders, and that's what is going to drive them," he said.

O'Brien said in an email response Friday night that the company hadn't made any decisions yet on which disposal option to use.

"We are looking at all options allowed under the state and federal NPDES (National Pollution Discharge Elimination System) permit. We are evaluating options that include trucking for disposal, evaporation, overboarding (release) of treated water or some combination thereof. As was stated, we would be looking to come up with a final plan over the next 6-12 months, working with state and federal regulatory authorities to ensure compliance, and provide the public ample notice on the final disposition,” O'Brien wrote in the email. He said Holtec may have informed the NRC that they were ready to discharge, but hadn't finalized plans.

The email shared by Keating from NRC Congressional Affairs Officer Carolyn Wolf said that "Holtec has informed the NRC that it plans to discharge liquid effluents sometime in the first quarter of 2022."

O'Brien said cost is one consideration, but that "all levels of risk are evaluated and considered as well."

In an interview this week, Anagnostopoulos said the water from the plant cannot be discharged unless it meets standards for radioactivity materials and levels. The water is handled in batches (Holtec said the batches will be 20,000 gallons) and is cycled through filters to remove metals and other possible contaminants as well as any longer-lived high radioactive elements.

Radioactive tritium is generally what is released from nuclear power plants and the Department of Energy website put its half-life at 12.3 years.

Anagnostopoulos said the level of radiation allowed to be discharged is 100 millirems. To put that in perspective, soil contains roughly 21 millirems and a mammogram exposes the patient to 42 millirems, according to U.S. Department of Energy data. A cardiac CT Scan contains over 2,000 millirems.

Anagnostopoulos said that the 100 millirem level is right at the mouth of the outfall before dilution comes into play. He said that sensors at the mouth of the discharge pipe and at a distance measure radiation, and that plant employees do biological and water sampling and submit them to an independent lab to test for bioaccumulation. He said there are also risks in transporting radioactive water, such as the potential for a crash or spill along the route, and that it is transferring a problem elsewhere.

But Keating said that claims of low radiation levels in nuclear plant effluent were only one part of the decision-making process. He said the potential biological and economic damage caused to maritime industries such as fisheries, aquaculture and recreation, including the public perception that they may be tainted with radioactivity, should have been factored in. If it was, he said, the clear choice was to truck the water to another site, not dump it into the ocean.

"The issue is much more clear-cut. We have an alternative (trucking) and the only difference is cost," said Keating, who argued that the $1 billion in the trust fund came from ratepayers and that they deserved the best disposal solution that preserved their environment and maritime industries.

Contact Doug Fraser at dfraser@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dougfrasercct.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Holtec to dump radioactive water from nuclear plant into Cape Cod Bay
Your burger is heating Earth



Shoshana Gordon
Sat, December 4, 2021,

Data: Poore and Nemecek (2018), FDA, UN's IPCC. Note: Dairy cattle is beef from dairy cattle. Chart: Shoshana Gordon and Thomas Oide/Axios

Climate change is ratcheting up pressure to alter how we grow and consume food,

Threat level: Our food chain generates a large chunk of greenhouse gas emissions annually, mainly from animal products, climate scientists point out.

Details: The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says 21%–37% of global GHG emissions may come from food, while a study by Joseph Poore of the University of Oxford points out that food from beef cattle has the largest carbon footprint per typical serving.

America alone — with more than 330 million people — may consume over 100 kilograms of meat products per capita in 2021, the OECD estimates.

Plus, there's growing concern that emissions calculations such as these may be vastly underestimated.

Between the lines: While what we eat may affect global warming, climate change itself has an impact on food systems.

It can cause droughts or floods and alter the nutrition of particular crops, making for a more unstable food supply that's vulnerable to price spikes and shortages.

Axios
Phill Casaus: Enslavement of Natives is a sad truth of New Mexico's past


Phill Casaus, The Santa Fe New Mexican
Sat, December 4, 2021

Dec. 4—In January 1665, Alonso Garcia was arrested in Parral, Mexico, for trafficking in Apache slaves.

Garcia had a ranch in the area near Sandia Pueblo and was no rogue trader. During the mid-1600s, the enslavement of Native people, such as Apache and Diné (Navajo), was commonplace in New Mexico. In fact, human trafficking was a key element of the area's economy for some time, as primary documents of the period attest.

Alonso Garcia belonged to the Garcia de Noriega family, which originated in Zacatecas, Mexico, and is a common ancestor to most Hispano New Mexicans.


Technically, enslaving Native Americans was illegal and was outlawed by the Catholic Church and Spanish crown decades earlier, except in a "Just War" — which was how it was justified in New Mexico. These loopholes and human frailty led many to engage in the horrendous practice. Buying and selling of Apache slaves became so frequent, the government in Guadalajara, Mexico, stepped in and outlawed the trade in 1660.


Still, the practice persisted for decades in mining districts such as Parral.

New Mexicans were blatant participants in the purchasing and selling of humans. Besides Garcia, other New Mexicans appear in civil documents. Common ancestors to New Mexicans, such as Andrés Hurtado and Matias López del Castillo, can be found in documents housed at the Parral civil archives.

Portuguese merchants in Parral during this period engaged in vigorous enslavement of Blacks, with surnames such as Lima, Gonzales, Jorge and Vera jumping out of archival pages attesting to this fact. Antonio Jorge de Vera, who settled in New Mexico in the 1660s and married into the local population, belonged to some of these family groupings.


Black slavery was extremely rare in New Mexico, as the province did not have an economy that could sustain such an expense. After all, a Black slave could command five times the price of an Apache slave in the mining districts of northern colonial Mexico. Still, the practice of enslaving Native people persisted in New Mexico.

In the 1700s, during the period and decades following the reconquest of New Mexico, cautivo, or captive, culture developed and evolved — and along with it, the genízaros, non-Pueblo natives who were captured and placed in Hispano households to be Christianized and Hispanicized. This system of capturing humans went in many directions. Some Native groups would raid and take women and children from other Native groups, including the Pueblos and Hispano communities.

A casual perusal of the 1750 and 1790 padrones, or census records, of New Mexico shows a clear demarcation between Hispano towns and villages on the one hand and Pueblos on the other. A closer look at many Hispano entries show servants as members of the household. In most cases, these were non-Pueblo Native Americans who were placed in forced servitude in those households.

Sections of some communities housed genízaros separately.

Church and civil documents from the 18th and 19th century refer to Apache, Diné, Comanche and other nations as Indios Bárbaros or infieles — "Barbaric Indians" or "infidels." Those people had their own descriptive phrases to describe these conflicts. In fact, by the time of the arrival of the Americans, phrases such as "fearing time," "herded and chased" or "captured" were common to the lips of Natives of the times, and would continue under U.S. occupation.

The rescate, or ransoming, of Native captives was one of the justifications used by New Mexicans to purchase women and children from Comanche warriors. To be sure, some Plains Indians raided other Native communities to capture potential servants to sell to the Hispanos. But this was done only when it was learned there was a market for such activities in the Spanish and mestizo villages of New Mexico.

This eventually led to raids on Pueblos and Hispano-mestizo villages by Apache, Diné and Comanche. Men were killed on both sides, women and children taken captive, women raped and mixed blood children followed.

Cautivos were placed in Hispano households to be Christianized and Hispanicized. It worked, but only to a point. These marginalized slaves/servants held on to their own cultures and languages, which made their way into New Mexican Hispano culture and language through the generations, as did their bloodlines. They are still with us today.

These practices continued into New Mexico's Mexican and U.S. territorial periods. There are still whispers in some families of a Native aunt or uncle who, after being captured, became a household servant. It is a difficult history for Nuevomexicanos, for we descend from the cautivos as well as those who did the capturing.

It is a history that needs to be acknowledged and studied so as to better understand who we truly are — and why.


Rob Martínez, New Mexico's state historian, writes a column about the state's rich past every month in The New Mexican. View episodes of his YouTube series, New Mexico History in 10 Minutes, at tinyurl.com/NMHistoryin10.

Europe’s Carbon Price Has Almost Tripled in 2021


William Mathis and Rachel Morison
Fri, December 3, 2021, 



(Bloomberg) -- European carbon futures rose above 80 euros ($90.272) a ton on Friday for the first time, testing the resolve of politicians who are promising to act aggressively on climate change while grappling with inflation that’s tearing into economies across the globe.

The cost of polluting has increased more than 140% this year after a stricter environmental agenda in Europe was laid out and a sweeping rally in natural gas prices made dirtier coal more economic to use for power generation. The futures price rose as much as 0.7% Friday to 80.42 euros a metric ton on ICE Endex in Amsterdam, before turning negative.

The fast-paced increase in carbon prices has taken policy makers by surprise. Making it expensive to pollute is meant to push dirty fuels out of the power generation and industrial processes. Right now, that’s not really happening. Soaring natural gas prices mean Europe will likely see emissions increase this year as coal plants burn profitably through the winter. That’s uncomfortable for many leaders that made loud pledges at the climate talks in Glasgow last month.

In the long-term, a high carbon price could accelerate investment in methods to cut emissions or switch to cleaner fuels. Technologies like carbon capture and storage or hydrogen production from renewable energy become more economically viable if the carbon price remains at or above current levels.

While the high price could spur companies to invest in equipment to lower their emissions, the speed of the increase will likely make them pause to see whether the current prices are here to stay, according to Marcus Ferdinand, a manager focusing on power and emissions in Europe at Oslo-based Thema Consulting Group. The relative strength index, a technical indicator of a market’s momentum, showed the carbon price is the most overbought since May, just before the price dropped 12% in two days.

“It’s really crazy,” Ferdinand said. “It’s just going up too fast to be sustainable.”

With inflation already surging, rising emission costs aren’t going to help. Rapidly rising carbon prices are stoking concerns that the European Commission could step in to limit speculation in the market.

As the year comes to a close, a handful of other technical factors are also pushing permits higher. A large amount of options for carbon at 80 euros by the end of the year are set to expire on Dec. 15. That’s likely driving investors who sold the out-of-the-money options to manage their risk by buying futures. The final auction of the year is also set for Dec. 20, kicking off a period when the market will have no new supply until governments start selling permits again in January.

Carbon’s rally is likely far from over, according to Per Lekander, managing partner at Clean Energy Transition LLP. He expects the permits will surge past 100 euros in the next few weeks as utilities continue to buy allowances to account for their emissions from burning coal this year.

Record pollution costs are also likely to be raised by some heads of government at an EU summit scheduled for Dec. 16-17. Poland’s climate minister Anna Moskwa said in an interview that the carbon market needs broad reforms and that the current prices will only add costs without spurring emissions cuts.

EU leaders are likely to discuss the carbon price during their talks on rising energy costs at a summit later this month. Ministers clashed over how to reform the electricity market at a meeting Thursday, with Commissioner Kadri Simson attributing carbon’s price rise to demand for emissions allowances and policy messages coming from the recent climate summit in Glasgow.

In corporations' race to go carbon neutral, forest credits explode in popularity

Josh Lederman
Sun, December 5, 2021
This article was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.

In the forests of Guatemala, China and Scotland, oil giant Royal Dutch Shell is planting tens of thousands of trees that suck greenhouse gases out of the air, allowing customers who buy its fuel to claim that their driving is carbon-neutral — at least on paper.

In Brazil, Amazon is paying to help small-scale farmers restore degraded lands in the tropical rainforest that shares its name.

And in Asia, Delta Air Lines is spending $30 million to offset pollution from its jets by protecting half a million acres in an Indonesian peat swamp forest and a Cambodian wildlife sanctuary.


Image: Brazil Amazon forest (Evaristo Sa / AFP via Getty Images file)

With each investment, the corporations rack up “credits” for the forests they save or restore, tokens representing a set amount of carbon dioxide ostensibly kept out of the atmosphere by storing it safely in the trees.

Demand for forest credits is set to explode in the coming years as image-conscious corporations race to go “net zero.” Climate finance consultants and environmental groups are sounding the alarm about a system they say doesn’t deliver anywhere near the carbon reductions promised but offers companies a convenient way to avoid the tougher work of actually cutting emissions.

“It is the next big thing in greenwashing — and we must not be fooled,” Greenpeace recently declared on its blog.

On its face, the exchange seems like a win-win: Huge sums of money are funneled into environmental projects, mostly in poor countries with less ability to pursue large-scale forest protection on their own. Companies courting climate-minded investors can say they’re zeroing out their carbon footprints by offsetting whatever emissions they can’t eliminate from their own operations with CO₂ reductions elsewhere on the planet.

Yet the system, part of what’s known as the “voluntary carbon market,” is awash with challenges, fuzzy math and tough-to-prove claims.

Much of the time, credits are banked for existing forests that are already trapping carbon dioxide, public data from carbon registries show, on the speculative assumption that they would otherwise be cut down. In some cases, forests that generated credits bought by Microsoft and other big players have burned down in wildfires, releasing their carbon dioxide stores into the air.
Exponential growth

In recent years, a long list of Fortune 500 companies has begun purchasing credits from forest projects, according to an NBC News review of filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and corporations’ Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance disclosures.

The market for the credits is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars, a number growing year upon year as a cottage industry to sell, trade and authenticate forest credits has taken shape.

The growth may soon be exponential. Mark Carney, a former Bank of England governor and U.N. climate finance envoy, has said the carbon offset market could soon reach $100 billion a year, although some of those credits may come from carbon capture and other measures, rather than forests.

The market is also set to get a major boost from agreements reached last month at the COP26 U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, where more than 100 world leaders promised to end and reverse deforestation by the end of the decade. Leaders also reached a major agreement at the summit setting global rules for carbon markets, a move likely to bring even more major players into the game.

A key concern is that big polluters, rather than actually cut their emissions from energy and fossil fuels, will opt for the easier, often cheaper route of paying to zero them out, said Thiago Chagas, a legal consultant at Climate Focus, a nonprofit think tank that advises governments and businesses about climate policy, who has studied the quality of a U.N.-backed brand of credits known as REDD+.

“The greenwashing aspect is that companies simply offset a large majority of their emissions and then come out and say they’re carbon-neutral,” Thiago said. “That’s something that we should not be allowing at this point anymore. ... They need to do their homework. They need to reduce their own emissions internally.”

Not all forest credits are built the same.

There are multiple, competing “certification” standards and a dizzying array of organizations or companies that act as middlemen, authenticating supposed greenhouse gas reductions and connecting credit buyers and sellers. Measuring activity on the ground in far-flung rainforests can be incredibly difficult.

“There’s a whole verification process that involves a third-party auditor, but there are strange things about it,” said ecologist Dan Nepstad, the president of the Earth Innovation Institute. “It’s the carbon project developer that hires the auditors. So the auditors are working for the company that would benefit, really, from a good result.”

That means it’s up to companies to do their own due diligence to know that the credits they’re buying are legitimate, Nepstad said.

Delta’s projects in Indonesia’s Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve and Cambodia’s Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary funnel funds to local and indigenous communities to run forest conservation programs. The company says the projects yielded 13 million metric tons of CO₂ reductions last year, helping the company meet its goal to become “the first carbon-neutral airline globally.”

“All of Delta’s offset projects are independently audited against leading, third-party standards,” the airline said. Delta said it has also invested in wetland restoration as part of a $1 billion commitment to mitigate its emissions.

Still, there’s no single, universally recognized way to count how much carbon any given project keeps out of the atmosphere.

If a company, for example, pays landowners not to cut down a forest they didn’t plan to cut down anyway, there’s no real savings for the planet — a problem known as “additionality.” Projects are supposed to be measured against a “baseline” of what would most likely have occurred if the payments were never made. But the baselines are often inflated, experts said.

Britaldo Soares-Filho, a professor of cartography and geosciences at Brazil’s Federal University of Minas Gerais, said that makes forest “preservation” projects far more risky than, say, planting trees where there previously were none.

“Restoration projects are something that you really can measure. You start from zero, and then you can measure, over time, the amount of carbon fixed in the trees and the soil. It’s closer to reality,” Soares-Filho said. “The thing is, when you say, ‘I’m protecting this area that might be deforested in the future,’ now you are speculating.”

There’s also “leakage” — when a company pays landowners not to cut down Forest A and they cut down Forest B, instead. And “permanence” — when a carbon-trapping forest is kept intact one year thanks to purchased credits but is cut down the next year.

One model, a start-up credit marketplace called NCX, offers individual landowners a chance to generate and get paid for credits for postponing tree harvesting on their properties for one year at a time, rather than the traditional standard of 100 years. If the landowners cut all the trees down the next year, they’ve already gotten paid.

Zack Parisa, the company’s CEO and founder, argued that because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for a long time, trapping more and more heat, delaying release of carbon into the air for even one year has value. He said that’s especially true because scientists say this is the pivotal decade for humanity to avert the worst effects of global warming.

“When that’s the case, landowners don’t have to engage in these multigenerational contracts that are subject to natural disturbances, fires, hurricanes,” Parisa said. “You can bring a lot more participation to the table, a lot more scale immediately, right now, in this critical decade.”

In the meantime, the forest credit market is creating a pathway for a massive infusion of corporate cash into ecological projects that might otherwise go unfunded: dense forest restoration in India, agroforestry in Peru and forestland preservation in Pennsylvania’s Hawk Mountain wild bird sanctuary.

Nepstad, of the Earth Innovation Institute, said the forest credits market is at a crossroads as it moves to a larger scale in which states and provinces are taking larger roles.

“The bottom line is that these are programs that are starved of finance,” Nepstad said. “The world has been so focused on making sure that funds are not flowing if there’s not just incredibly risk-free emissions reductions behind them, instead of saying let’s just get the money flowing and make sure there’s some pretty rigorous credibility measures in place.”
Russia’s Push To Mine Arctic Metals Is Fueled By Nuclear Power


Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, December 4, 2021, 

When news first broke a few years ago that Russia's state nuclear energy company was working on a floating nuclear power plant, some took it as a joke. Others mocked it as the worst idea ever.

But it turns out it wasn't such an outlandish idea after all. The Akademik Lomonosov started operating in 2019. It looks like what it was meant to be: a source of reliable energy in a region so harsh that building any other kind of power supply system would be a challenge.

The Akademik Lomonosov sits off the town ot Pevek in Chukotka. Chukotka is an autonomous region in the northern part of Russia's Far East.

It also happens to be full of gold, copper, and lithium, among other metals.

The Financial Times wrote earlier this week how Russia was fueling its Arctic ambitions with nuclear power. And the ambitions include taking full advantage of the opening up of the Northern Sea Route thanks to the changing climate and also of its metal and mineral wealth.

Take copper, for example. Copper demand is set to soar in the coming years if the energy transition continues at the current clip. The metal is the default choice for electrical wiring thanks to its superb conductivity and is also used in significant amounts in power generation, transmission, and distribution, including from wind turbines and solar installations.

It is also used abundantly in electric vehicles—if the average internal combustion engine contains about 20 kilos of copper, the average electric car contains as much as four times that. No wonder, then, that copper demand from the EV industry alone—in EV charging alone, according to BloombergNEF—is set to grow by a whopping 1,000 percent between 2020 and 2030.

It may well be the case that while everyone is too busy watching natural gas prices in Europe and wondering what Moscow will do next, Moscow is in fact focusing on metals and minerals—some of which, incidentally, have been called the oil of tomorrow.

According to the FT article, Chukotka is rich in lithium reserves. Just how rich is hard to pinpoint, but it might be enough to be worth developing. Russia also has lithium deposits in eastern Siberia and Yakutia, also in the Far East, and has plans to become the source of 3.5 percent of the world's lithium by 2025.

The Arctic seems to be the modern version of the treasure cave in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. There is everything in the Arctic in terms of natural resources, but the harsh climate and lack of even basic infrastructure in most of it have interfered with the development of these resources. There has also not been much need for them in a fossil fuel-based economy.

Now, with the surge in demand expected for most basic metals and certain minerals considered critical for the energy transition such as cobalt, for example, or the group collectively known as rare earths, there seems to be strong motivation, at least in Russia, which has most of the Arctic, to push ahead with resource development in the inhospitable northern region.

Rosatom, the company behind the Akademik Lomonosov, plans to build five more floating nuclear power plants, all to supply mining projects. The nuclear option was preferred by the Kremlin to Novatek's idea for floating gas-fired power plants. The five floating power plants will cost $2.2 billion.

Floating power plants are the first step that needs to be made on the road to the development of Russia's metal and mineral wealth in the Arctic. Without electricity, the task of building roads and other vital infrastructure for a mining project is a lot more challenging. With electricity, the first big problem is solved.

"Russia should expand through the Arctic, as this is where it has its main mineral resources," President Vladimir Putin said back in 2017 and has made sure since then that progress is being made.

"The world economy is aimed at a gradual transition to low-carbon energy, and this is already a new reality," said Russia's Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin, earlier this year. "It is necessary to prepare for a step-by-step reduction in the use of traditional fuels: oil, gas, coal. [It is necessary] to improve energy efficiency, develop alternative energy, build appropriate infrastructure," Mishustin also said.

Russia, in other words, is beginning to prepare for a post-fossil fuel world, or at least a world that needs less of the hydrocarbons that have fuelled it for close to 200 years now. This world will replace hydrocarbons with metals and minerals. Fortunately for Russia, it has a lot of both hydrocarbons and metals and minerals. Unfortunately for those without a lot of metal and mineral resources, they might once again find themselves dependent on imports from the country that now holds their gas supply in its hands.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
Why France faces so much anger in West Africa
POST-COLONIAL ANGER OVER NEOCOLONIALISM

Paul Melly - Africa analyst
Sat, December 4, 2021,

Mali has witnessed several protests against France

It all started so positively. Where have things gone wrong? Why does France now appear so unpopular in Africa?

French President Emmanuel Macron has increased aid to the continent, begun the return of cultural artefacts stolen during the colonial wars and reached out beyond the usual inter-government ties to engage younger generations and civil society.

He has kept French troops in the Sahel to fight the jihadist militants that kill so many local civilians, police and soldiers and supported the regional bloc Ecowas as it tries to defend electoral politics against military takeovers.


This year he flew to Rwanda to publicly acknowledge French failures during the 1994 genocide.

Yet his country is now the target of embittered African complaints and criticism on a scale that is probably unprecedented.

Last month, a convoy of French troops heading north to support the fight against Islamist militants was repeatedly blockaded by protesters as it crossed Burkina Faso and Niger.

In September Mali's Prime Minister Choguel Maïga was met with a wave of sympathetic comment when he used a speech at the UN to accuse France of "abandoning his country in mid-flight", after Mr Macron began to scale back the deployment of troops in the country.

Among progressive West African commentators and urban youth, it is now commonplace to hear calls for the abolition of the CFA franc - the regional currency used by many francophone countries and which is pegged to the euro under a French government guarantee. Its critics say this enables France to control the economies of those countries which use it, while France says it guarantees economic stability.
Neo-colonial arrogance

What explains this paradox? How is it that a president more concerned for Africa than most recent predecessors, and more aware too of how the continent is changing, encounters a level of French unpopularity not felt for decades?

Certainly, Mr Macron's self-confident - critics would say arrogant - personal style is a factor.

Despite reaching out to Africa, President Macron has faced a backlash

He has made his share of diplomatic blunders.

After 13 French troops died in a helicopter crash in Mali in November 2019 he demanded that West African leaders fly to France for an emergency summit, an outburst perceived as neo-colonial arrogance, particularly as Mali and Niger had suffered far heavier recent military losses.

President Macron was forced into a rapid course-correction, flying to Niamey, Niger's capital, to pay his respects to the Nigérien military dead and postponing the summit until January 2020.

But the causes of France's current discomfort also extend back to decades before Mr Macron's election in 2017.

"You can cite historical controversies linked to colonisation. Many of us are the children of parents who knew the colonial period and its humiliations," explains Ivorian political analyst Sylvain Nguessan.

During the early post-independence decades, France maintained a dense web of personal connections with African leaders and elites - dubbed "françafrique" - which too often slid into a mutual protection of vested interests, with little regard for human rights or transparency.

Among outside powers, Paris was far from alone in colluding with dictatorial allies, but its relationships were particularly close and unquestioning.
Charisma and change

The most damning failure came in Rwanda in 1994, when France failed to act even as its ally, the regime of then-President Juvenal Habyarimana, began to prepare genocide.

The CFA is a colonial-era currency that is still used in several former French colonies in Africa

From the mid-1990s onwards several governments worked to reform France's engagement with Africa and give more priority to development and democratic governance.

But momentum later faltered.

Nicolas Sarkozy began his tenure as president in 2007 by remarking, with a spectacular lack of tact, that "the African man has not sufficiently entered into history". He favoured old allies such as the Bongo family, who have governed Gabon since 1967.

When François Hollande became president in 2012 he had no choice but to focus on security issues in the Sahel - a swathe of land south of the Sahara desert. He never really had the political strength to revive reform efforts.

But with Mr Macron's accession to office, France had a president fully aware of the need for change - and with the political clout and personal enthusiasm to attack the task.

In 2017 he told students in the Burkinabe capital, Ouagadougou, that France would back a reform of the CFA franc if African governments wanted this. He also invited civil society, youth and cultural figures to this year's France-Africa summit in Montpellier, rather than the usual flock of presidents.
Sahel - a festering wound

Yet his readiness to speak plainly, challenge old structures and question comfortable assumptions has not always played well, even among those who are clamouring for change.

Despite France's counter-terrorism operation, militants are still a major problem in the vast Sahel region of West Africa

Moreover, the situation in the Sahel has deteriorated into a festering wound.

The French military presence fuels an increasingly widespread sense of grievance across West Africa.

Despite a massive and sustained military effort - with more than 5,000 troops deployed and more than 50 killed - France has not been able to decisively overcome the threat from jihadists, whose attacks on local communities and security forces continue.

The reasons are complex, both military and social, environmental and economic.

Yet a significant proportion of local public opinion feels that France, as a high-tech Western military power, should have been able to "sort" the problem and should now get out of the way if it cannot do so.

Those feelings seem to have motivated the protesters who blockaded the French army convoy.

And this comes after earlier causes of resentments, as Mr Nguessan points out: "The speeches of Sarkozy in Dakar, Macron in Ouagadougou; the war in Ivory Coast; the discouraging results of the campaign against terrorism.

"Questions related to the currency, debt, support for local dictators and ill-chosen words."

France is still regarded as a prop for the old guard establishment - even if supporting democratic bodies

But underlying social and communal factors also shape the attitudes of some.

One senior Sahel military officer says he sees the French as allies of Tuareg former separatist rebels in northern Mali - an allegation fiercely and credibly denied in Paris.

Similar complexities surround France's support for West Africa regional body Ecowas - which is currently trying to pressure coup leaders in Mali and Guinea to rapidly return their countries to civilian constitutional rule.

A growing number of young people regard the regional bloc as an incumbent presidents' club, too slow to criticise civilian rulers who manipulate democratic rules and unwilling to acknowledge the strength of popular support for military leaders promising reform.

So in backing Ecowas as the legitimate African crisis management institution, France ends up being perceived as a prop for the old guard establishment.

Paul Melly is a consulting fellow with the Africa Programme at the think-tank Chatham House in London.