Two Palestinians Go Dogging review – devastatingly human portrait of conflict sears itself on the mind

Arifa Akbar

THE GUARDIAN

FILM

Don’t be fooled by the title. This is not – bar a few fruity scenes – a play about dogging, and there are more than two Palestinians in it. There are Israelis too, living in contested territory and enacting the fear, hostility and oppression of that conflict which has become so dreadfully familiar to us through news feeds that even the language around its reporting is inflammatory.

What this slowly rumbling earthquake of a show does so startlingly well is take the conflict and make it small, specific, multi-layered – yet as devastatingly epic as Greek tragedy. Sami Ibrahim’s script revolves around a Palestinian family living in a village east of Jerusalem and being slowly destroyed. Reem (Hala Omran, bolshy, mercurial) is its matriarch and our central narrator; alongside her is her melancholic husband, Sayeed (Miltos Yerolemou, just wonderful).

When an Israeli soldier, Sara (Mai Weisz), is murdered, there are calls for retribution; but Reem has her own scores to settle after her children are killed. Through her we get a sense of a community living under siege, seething with powerless anger, while Sayeed just emanates hopeless resignation.

This local focus on one family has echoes of Lorca, in its intractable grudge-bearing and cycles of violence. Reem tells us of the terror of the Red Zone, of Israeli troops taking sniper shots at unarmed Palestinians, of drone strikes on houses, of children being gunned down at point blank range – including her own 12-year-old girl and then a second daughter, Salwa (Sofia Danu).

Directed by Omar Elerian, the production is many things at once: playful and tragic, baggy and taut, always pulling back from whimsy at the tipping point of self-indulgence. Just as we are lulled by a moment of comedy or metafictive silliness, violence comes careering around the corner.

So many of its scenes stay seared on the mind: Reem watching a video of her son’s last moments; Sara begging for her life before it is horrifyingly stamped out. The saddest scene, for me, is a quiet one with Reem and Sayeed sitting side by side, she sifting lentils, he peeling an orange. “Can you imagine what it’d be like, not living here? Not doing all of this? … Protests and campaigns and watching people die?” he says to her, and she sounds nonplussed by such an implausible thought.

It is a play with a reach way beyond its fictive bounds, addressing everything from Palestinian martyrdom to the international community’s inaction over illegal settlements, while the recent, appalling killing of Shireen Abu Aqleh casts a long shadow. Yet there is no simple binary of Palestinian victimhood versus Israeli oppression here. Reem’s son, Jawad (Luca Kamleh Chapman), is a murderer turned mascot. Sara is given a voice beyond her death, and a searing scene brings a battle for supremacy between her and Salwa after they have died: the conflict is clearly never-ending, even reaching into the afterlife. Meanwhile, Sara’s father, Adam (Philipp Mogilnitskiy), gives us one of the play’s most furious satires on the absurdities of war.

Initially, Two Palestinians Go Dogging feels like a rambling piece of improv, beginning as a standup act and slowly turning into a family story set two decades into the future, in the midst of the “fifth intifada”. It seems deliberately scrappy, too: bare-boned in its staging with minimal props (some rocks, fake blood, microphones) and a set made of corrugated iron and draped sheets. All of which gives it a furtive sense of illicit street theatre that could be dismantled quickly if needed.

It also resembles a Complicite production in the meta-theatrical games it plays – sometimes too drawn out and distracting – and contains a boldness that is almost reckless in its dramatic risks. Every actor is in a flak jacket, and the performances are moving across the board. As a drama, it seems to call for action even as it tells us that the conflict is so unresolvable it will still be chugging on in 2046.

It ends with a letter from the playwright stating its own Truman Show artifice, but we walk out in discomfort, not able to ignore the fact that this fiction is someone’s reality. If I have a grumble it is that the show could be tighter, but it nonetheless comes with an enormous gut-punch, and is all that theatre should strive to be.

• At Royal Court theatre, London, until 1 June.

Beyond The Scream: why Edvard Munch was no one-hit wonder

Nicholas Wroe 

THE GUARDIAN 

Few artists are as strongly associated with a single painting as Edvard Munch is with The Scream. Even before its endless memeability became apparent it was as much a fixture of popular culture as of art history. But there has always been more to Munch than his most famous work, and a new show at London’s Courtauld Gallery gives a rare chance to trace his wider career.

The exhibition comes from the collection of Norwegian industrialist Rasmus Meyer, who discovered Munch’s work in the early years of the 20th century and soon became an avid supporter and collector, going on to buy paintings directly from Munch’s studio, the paint almost still wet, as the saying goes. This is the first time his collection, held in the Kode art museum in Bergen, has been shown together outside Scandinavia. It takes work from the 1880s, when Munch was the rising star of Norwegian art, through his “golden decade” of the 1890s – when he developed his characteristic style and produced what became known as his The Frieze of Life series, including various iterations of The Scream – and into the 20th century.

“Norway had only really begun to crystallise as an independent nation at the end of the 19th century,” explains Courtauld curator Barnaby Wright, “and Meyer wanted to put together a collection of Norwegian art that would say something powerful about their culture and identity.” Not that Munch’s work was universally appreciated in 19th-century Norway. While he was attaining international recognition, disputes between conservative and avant-garde opinion played out in similar ways as they had with French impressionism in the 1870s.

The layout of the Courtauld, passing through their stellar collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art on the way to the exhibition space, is fortuitously suited to this show. Munch had been fascinated by the impressionists’ exploration of the effects of light, and new techniques for capturing them, but the lessons he took were then deployed for his own purposes. Rather than following Monet in taking his canvas outdoors to nature, Munch was more interested in painting from memory and out of his imagination, using light in a far more expressive and symbolic way.

By the 1890s he had developed this style of painting, employing richer and moodier colours to conjure an atmosphere of anxiety in which figures and landscapes increasingly reflected one another. He named these explorations The Frieze of Life, and “his ambition was to cover a spectrum of the most profound human emotions and experiences”, explains Wright. “Often drawing on his own memories from childhood; the loss of loved ones; torturous relationships with women. What makes these pictures endure is the complexity and multiplicity of feelings and emotions he evokes. However great The Scream is, it is just one example of Munch’s extraordinary output. This collection shows why so many of his pictures still speak so powerfully to us.”

‘Morbidity, death and precarious anxiety’: four key works from the exhibition

Evening on Karl Johan Street (1892, main picture)Light plays a critical role in all of Munch’s work, and here he captures the creative possibilities of a strange moonlight mixed with gaslight. Evening on Karl Johan Street is a key Frieze of Life picture and the first time Munch used those skeletal faces that loom out of the canvas, which he repeated in his Scream paintings. This is the origin picture for that now famous visual device.

Self-Portrait in the Clinic (1909)When Munch had a nervous breakdown he sought treatment at a clinic in Copenhagen. His life had been lived at an intense pitch. When Munch was a child, his father was zealously religious, and an air of morbidity and death hung over the family. It clung to Munch for the rest of his life and it was this sense of precarious anxiety that fed into his art. This particular work has an interesting parallel with Van Gogh’s self-portraits after his severe mental episodes in depicting a man and an artist attempting to rebuild himself.

Children Playing in the Street in Åsgårdstrand (1901–03)Munch spent many of his summers in the small coastal fishing town of Åsgårdstrand. Here, he takes a seemingly mundane everyday activity and turns it into something more profound. Are the boys taunting the young girl, looking at her as an object of desire or just playing? Equally enigmatic, is she, on the borderline of adolescence, pleading for assistance or facing them down?

Melancholy (1894–96)The idea that emotions are at their most extreme when people are on the edge between areas, such as the shore and the water, was a fertile one for Munch. Here it reflects the state of mind of the central figure, lost in his own tragic thoughts and also isolated from the two background figures on the jetty. This was the first time Munch adopted this new deeply moody and symbolic manner.

Edvard Munch: Masterpieces from Bergen is at the Courtauld Gallery, London, from Friday to 4 September.

US woman Elizabeth Line jokingly thanks Queen for attending Crossrail ceremony in her place


A US businesswoman named Elizabeth Line has jokingly thanked the Queen for attending the unveiling of the new London transport link in her place.

© PA Crossrail

After discovering her name had been trending on Twitter, the CEO of Digital Citizen spoke of her “disappointment” at not being able to attend the opening ceremony this week.

In a tweet, she said: “Obviously disappointed I couldn’t attend in person but Her Majesty always comes through in a pinch. Thanks again TfL.”

While at Paddington station, the Queen unveiled a plaque to commemorate the day and was given a special Elizabeth line Oyster card.

In 2016, when the roundel was unveiled, she said she was delighted to share her name with the capital’s £20billion transport alink.

However, this isn’t the first time Ms Line has inadvertently been caught up in the online interest surrounding the Crossrail line.

Speaking to the Standard at the time, she said: “I’m thrilled about it. Nothing like waking up to a little insta-celebrity.

“When I found out I was trending on Twitter this morning, there were a few moments of ‘what did I do last night’ panic but now I’m just having fun with it."

When asked about the chosen colour, Ms Line said she “loved the purple”.

The service will operate for passengers on Tuesday and comes over three and a half years since it was meant to open.

The new line includes 41 stations between Reading and Heathrow in the west, through central London, to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.

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Beam me up, Priti! The sci-fi about teleporting refugees that feels very real

Alex Rayner 

Five months ago, a pretty important envelope dropped into the mailbox of Meriem Bennani’s lawyer. The Moroccan-born, New York-based artist had been granted a green card, and was now a lawful, permanent resident of the US. “It’s weird,” she says over a glass of sparkling water in a bar close to Nottingham Contemporary, the gallery where she is installing Life on the Caps, her new video exhibition. “Of course, I’m grateful. My whole life has been lived from visa to visa.” She expresses ambivalence towards her new home, before adding that she doesn’t want to focus too much on herself, “because, you know, I’m OK”.

This puts Bennani in dramatic contrast to the characters in Party on the Caps and Life on the Caps, her two half-hour videos set in a futuristic sci-fi detention camp called Caps (short for “capsule”), situated on an island in the middle of the Atlantic. In the films, teleportation has replaced air travel. Would-be illegal immigrants to the US are intercepted as they attempt to zap across the Atlantic, and interned in the camp, which has developed from an insular holding pen to a sprawling migrant settlement and Latin quarter.

The animation in Mary Poppins blew me away! I was like: How do they do that?

We’re introduced to the camp by Fiona, an animated crocodile, cereal box character and unofficial camp mascot (Bennani has a master’s degree in animation from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, as well as a bachelor’s in fine art from the Cooper Union in New York). Then we meet the human inhabitants of the Moroccan neighbourhoods, who party, protest, play music, undergo strange age-reversal procedures, create memes, flip off the American “troopers” who oversee the island, and sometimes address the camera directly, in this strange mix of pseudo-documentary and sci-fi cartoon.

Bennani loved Disney movies as a child growing up in Rabat, the Moroccan capital, and was particularly taken with the ones that mixed live action with animation, such as the 1964 musical Mary Poppins. “That blew me away!” she says. “I was like, ‘How do they do that?’”

The artist is familiar with postcolonial politics, understanding now how two staples of her childhood – Disney videos and the Cartoon Network channel – may have served veiled, neocolonial ends. She regards Fantasia, the 1940 Mickey Mouse movie, as Disney’s biggest imperialistic “flex”. She says: “It’s the pure awesomeness of animation, plus the addition of European classical music. It’s like ‘empire!’ but it’s still beautiful and magical.” A third Caps film, not showing in Nottingham, pays tribute to Fantasia, while twisting the story to address the multitudes who lie beyond America’s borders.

Moroccan rappers and social media stars perform alongside Bennani’s friends and family in her Caps films, each acting the part of an islander. This addition of north African pop, as well as computer-generated animation, means the films stay pacy, and never shade into boring polemics.

It all sounds like an odd mix for a film-maker, but for Bennani it’s a pretty well-established formula. In Fly, an animated fruit fly guides viewers around the private lives of citizens in Rabat and Fez. In Mission Teens, Bennani appeared as a CGI donkey, shooting footage of real-life, snotty teens at elite, French-speaking schools in Rabat. And in 2 Lizards, Bennani and her flatmate – fellow animator Orian Barki – cast themselves as languid talking reptiles, trying to make the best of life in lockdown Manhattan.

This work, which the animators posted on Instagram, became a pandemic hit, and led to more commercial inquiries. “We developed a TV show, but it didn’t work out,” Bennani explains. “It was too mainstream for the art world, but too weird for Hollywood.”

I’m quite bored by the art world. That’s not who I make the work for

She and Barki are working on a new script, but while that’s in development she’s happy to be opening her show at a free-to-visit gallery in the centre of a significant British city, which draws in visitors from many walks of life. “That’s really important to me,” Bennani says, adding that she’s included an indoor playground-style space for younger gallery-goers. “I’m quite bored by the art audience, the art world,” she says. “That’s not who I make the work for.”

Nottingham is, of course, the setting for one of Disney’s better-known films, Robin Hood. “It wasn’t one I watched a lot,” she says. “But ethically, it’s not bad.”). And British politics is providing Bennani’s show with a fitting backdrop, the government having recently announced its plans to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda. The artist sighs as I mention this. Science fiction, for her, isn’t about craftily predicting the future, but more about finding ways to think about our lives today. The Home Office’s overseas processing plans place her imaginary island in perspective. “It is,” she says, with a brisk, almost cartoonish sense of despair, “barely a dystopia.”

Meriem Bennani: Life on the Caps is at Nottingham Contemporary until 4 September.

Time to act is now as UN expert suggests fossil fuels are "dead end"

Neil Ever Osborne - Saturday

The Weather Network

Extreme weather has become the day-to-day “face” of the climate crisis, stated experts from the UN upon the release of their new State of the Global Climate report.

Ringing yet another alarm about global disruptions — made worse by heat trapping emissions — the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) agency highlighted the “vulnerability of populations to current weather and climate events” and reported “loss and damages of more than US$100 billion, as well as severe impacts on food security and humanitarian aspects due to high-impact weather and climate events.”

This sentiment surrounding the relevance of extreme weather is supported by many Canadians who in recent surveys shared an understanding of climate change through their direct experiences with weather events, such as when a heat dome and subsequent flood devastated parts of Western Canada in 2021.

According to WMO Secretary General Dr. Petteri Taalas, “Our climate is changing before our eyes. The heat trapped by human-induced greenhouse gases will warm the planet for many generations to come.”

The new UN report found 2015 to 2021 are the seven warmest years on record and notable key climate indicators set new records in 2021.A wind turbine farm in Ontario, Canada. (Neil Ever Osborne)

Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached a new high of 413.2 ppm — a 149 per cent increase from the pre-industrial era. As a consequence of melting ice and glaciers, along with thermal expansion, the global mean sea level reached a new high after averaging a 4.5 mm rise per year from 2013 to 2021.

Ocean heat content in 2021 was also the highest on record, and the report noted this warming trend will only continue. The report also stated ocean acidification was measured to be at its lowest in 26,000 years, a result of the ocean absorbing almost 25 per cent of human-induced emitted carbon.

Additionally in 2021, the State of the Global Climate report noted the Antarctic ozone reached a maximum area, Greenland had its first-ever rainfall at its highest point, and heatwaves shattered records across the globe, notably in Death Valley with a temperature of 54.4°C.

The WMO further concluded the “compounded effects of conflict, extreme weather events, and economic shocks, further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, undermined decades of progress towards improving food security globally.”

On the report’s findings, the UN Secretary General António Guterres stated, “The climate report is a dismal litany of humanity’s failure to tackle climate disruption.” Guterres singled out the impact of oil and gas in particular.

“Fossil fuels are a dead end — environmentally and economically,” he said.


© Provided by The Weather Network

Time to act is now as UN expert suggests fossil fuels are "dead end"An Indian firefighter cools hot coal at a stockyard at a coal-fired thermal power plant belonging to Essar Power in Salaya, some 400 km from Ahmedabad, on Oct. 4, 2016. Essar Power Ltd. is one of India's largest private sector power producers and owns power plants in India and Canada. (Sam Panthaky / AFP / Getty Images)

On the matter of the UN agency’s report, Canada’s Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault stated, “From devastating wildfires to floods, extreme weather in 2021 drove home the urgency of climate action and ambition. Not only do we need to cut the emissions that cause climate change, we need to ensure our communities and our economy are prepared for this new reality.”

Guilbeault continued, “As we address the human drivers of extreme weather,” the WMO “reminds us that it’s critical to build communities and an economy that are resilient.”

For its part in seeking a solution to the climate crisis, along with the nationwide adoption of renewable energy strategies, Canada launched the 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan this past March.

Meanwhile, in Europe this past week, the European Commission launched the RePowerEu initiative, a swift response to the invasion of Ukraine that will reduce the EU’s natural gas imports from Russia by two-thirds before the end of this year and in full by 2027. The emergency package, as it has been described, seeks to bolster the move towards sourcing clean energy.

With a similar action in mind, four European Union countries including Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and Netherlands recently signed an agreement to increase offshore wind capacity tenfold by 2050. With a 150 GW potential capacity, the offshore energy source dubbed the “Green Power Plant” of the North Sea could power as many as 230 million European households, a number well above the current number of homes that rests at 195 million.


Thumbnail Image: Two boys struggle to push up their bike loaded with coal thats been collected at the Jharia coal fields. According to the World Economic Forum, India was home to six out of 10 of the world's most polluted cities in 2020. A majority of India's energy production comes from fossil fuels.

 (Jonas Gratzer / LightRocket / Getty Images)

UK

Fossil fuel-funded climate thinktank reported to Charity Commission

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate sceptic thinktank, has been reported to the Charity Commission by the Green MP Caroline Lucas and Extinction Rebellion.

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Helena Horton

 Environment reporter 

The move comes after the Guardian revealed that the group received funding from fossil fuel interests.

The thinktank has charitable status, but climate campaigners say the questions about its funding mean it should be stripped of this.

In a letter to the Charity Commission, the signatories including the writers Irvine Welsh and Zadie Smith say the GWPF is “not a charity, but a fossil fuel lobby group”.

The GWPF, set up in 2009 by the former Tory chancellor Lord Lawson, has enjoyed a recent revival in its influence in parliament. It has MP Steve Baker as a trustee and has its research promoted by the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of Conservative MPs.

The letter also claims that the thinktank flouts the rules that charities must be run for the public good. The commission states that “a purpose must be beneficial – this must be in a way that is identifiable and capable of being proved by evidence where necessary and which is not based on personal views”.

It also says “any detriment or harm that results from the purpose (to people, property or the environment) must not outweigh the benefit – this is also based on evidence and not on personal views.”

The signatories say that the GWPF does not abide by this as it “works against the public need to prepare, mitigate and adapt to the unfolding climate emergency” and therefore does not serve or benefit society.

They argue that the group’s funding could show a conflict of interest, and that it is not working for the public good.

Through its American arm, the group received $210,525 in 2018 and 2020 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation – set up by the billionaire libertarian heir to an oil and banking dynasty. The US-based foundation has $30m of shares in 22 energy companies including $9m in Exxon and $5.7m in Chevron, according to its financial filings.

Between 2016 and 2020, the American Friends of the GWPF received $620,259 from the Donors Trust, which is funded by the Koch brothers, who inherited their father’s oil empire and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding the climate denial movement.

The letter concludes: “We look to the Charity Commission’s own guidance that a charity must make sure ‘protecting people from harm is central to its culture.’ We contend that the ongoing global harm caused by climate change is exacerbated by the vested interests that use the GWPF’s undeserved charitable status as a front for their interests.”

A spokesperson for the GWPF declined to comment on the letter to the Charity Commission. The thinktank did respond to previous revelations about its funding, saying the companies it receives money from do not count as oil and gas interests, owing to the wealth created from fossil fuels being historic.

100 scientists and academics urge UN to drop sustainable development targets after ‘failure’

Ethan Freedman 

THE INDEPENDENT UK

It’s time for the United Nations to drop their current model for tackling the world’s crises, according to a letter from 100 scientists, teachers and experts, shared exclusively with The Independent.

The experts are calling for the United Nations to abandon the “Sustainable Development Goals” — a group of 17 targets adopted in 2015 to tackle global social and environmental issues from hunger to climate change to economic growth.

The letter, released as the UN begins a summit on disaster risks in Bali, Indonesia on Monday, argues that the world’s problems cannot be solved through the same ideology that created them.

“If the way modern societies operate cause the problems that the SDGs seek to address, can we be surprised that those same systems are incapable of fixing them?” the letter reads.

The letter has been signed by researchers from 27 countries, all in a personal capacity and not as representatives of any institution.

Among the notable experts who have put their names to the letter are Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at Nasa who was arrested last month in a climate protest; Yves Cochet, France’s former Minister of Environment and Regional Planning; and Britt Wray, author of the recent climate anxiety book, Generation Dread.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are based on an ideology that values material and technological progress and prioritizes corporate interests - where “humanity will balance social, economic and environmental issues to progress materially,” Jem Bendell, a sustainability researcher at the University of Cumbria, told The Independent via email, citing a recent non-peer reviewed paper that he authored on the subject.

Dr Bendell called the SDGs a “systemic greenwash” that undermines “challenges to structural power.”

“Before now, it may have been convenient for politicians, bureaucrats and people in the organisations they fund, to maintain an upbeat message that more technology, capital and management will solve both poverty and environmental destruction,” the letter reads.

“However, the evidence from the UN’s own reports show clearly that is merely a convenient myth, and that billions of people would be better served by more sober analysis of the worsening situation,” it adds.

According to the UN, the SDGs were developed to end “poverty and other deprivations” while improving health and education, reducing inequality, spurring economic growth, tackling climate change and protecting natural habitats.

The letter calls on the UN to “drop the redundant and unhelpful ideology of Sustainable Development,” and move towards plans of local resilience and “de-growth of wealthy economies”.

© Provided by The Independent A satire of the SDG logos, created by Dr Jem Bendell (Jem Bendell)

The world can’t separate resource use and pollution from economic growth enough to stave off catastrophic environmental disaster, Dr Bendell stated. He used the example of electrifying global infrastructure, a goal of many climate activists in order to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Doing so would require a lot of natural resources — resources that we may not have, Dr Bendell stated. The implication, then, is that wealthy countries and individuals need to reduce their consumption, he added.

“Clearly that idea isn’t super appealing to the folks at Davos,” Dr Bendell added, referencing the annual meeting of high-powered business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum, which got underway on Sunday.

Other signatories to the letter shared similar sentiments.

"If governments keep heedlessly pursuing exponential economic growth at any cost - which empirically clearly requires growth in resources and pollution, including greenhouse gases - we will eventually collapse just like any other species,” said Dr Kalmus in a statement emailed to The Independent.
Lead signatories on the letter, all in a personal capacity:

Professor William Rees (University of British Columbia, Ecological Economics)

Dr Malika Virah-Sawhmy (IASS, Climate Adaptation)

Dr Peter Kalmus (NASA, Climate Science)

Dr Yves Cochet (Former Minister of the Environment, France)

Dr Stella Nyambura Mbau (LOABOWA, Climate Adaptation)

Dr Ye Tao (MEER Framework, Climate Adaptation)

Dr Sonja Kaiser (TUBAF, Earth System Modelling)

Professor Jem Bendell (University of Cumbria, climate adaptation)

Dr Clelia Sirami (INRAE, Ecology)

Dr Jeremy Jimenez (State University of New York, Education)

Dr Britt Wray (Stanford University, Psychology)

Dr Rupert Read (UEA, Philosophy)

The full list of signatories and text of the letter can be found here

California oil regulator confirms methane leak at idle oil wells in Bakersfield


Nathan Solis
Sun, May 22, 2022

The leak was discovered near a residential neighborhood in Bakersfield. 

(Lisa Mascaro / Associated Press)

State regulators have confirmed a methane gas leak at a pair of idle oil wells near a residential neighborhood in Bakersfield, raising the concerns of local environmental groups who fear the problem might be more widespread.

It's unclear how long the leaks described as "pinhole-sized" went undetected, but state regulators said they were sealed by Friday evening.

Earlier this month, researcher Clark Williams-Derry from Washington state walked onto the Kern Bluff oil field in northeast Bakersfield and discovered an audible hiss coming from two oil wells. The wells sit approximately 400 feet from a home in a suburban housing development and were previously managed by Sunray Petroleum Inc.

Williams-Derry said the oil wells look like spouts jutting from the ground and are covered by blue barrels, but are exposed to the open air. He said there are many more blue barrels in the oil field like the one he found.

"I was not out looking for things that were leaking when I walked into the oil field," said Williams-Derry, who works with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and was visiting Bakersfield last week. "I wonder what this means for people in the community, because if someone can just wander by there's no telling what this means."

Methane is a colorless, odorless, highly flammable gas. High levels of methane can reduce the amount of oxygen breathed from the air and can result in vision problems, memory loss, nausea, vomiting, facial flushing and headache.

Across much of California, fossil fuel companies are leaving thousands of oil and gas wells unplugged and idle, potentially threatening the health of people living nearby and in many cases handing taxpayers the bill for the environmental cleanup.

From Kern County to Los Angeles, companies haven’t set aside anywhere near enough money to ensure these drilling sites are cleaned up and made safe, according to a 2020 data analysis and investigation by the Los Angeles Times and the Center for Public Integrity.

Of particular concern are about 35,000 wells sitting idle, with production suspended, half of them for more than a decade. Though California recently toughened its regulations to ensure more cleanup funds are available, those measures don’t go far enough, according to a recent state report and the Times/Public Integrity analysis.

Last Tuesday, an inspector from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District confirmed the methane leak in Bakersfield and reported it to the California Geologic Energy Management Division, the state’s oil and gas regulator. CalGEM said the leaks were minor and not deemed an emergency by the air district and the Bakersfield Fire Department.

“CalGEM deployed inspectors [Thursday] to evaluate the methane emissions from two long-term idle wells operated by Sunray Petroleum,” CalGEM State Oil & Gas Supervisor Uduak-Joe Ntuk said in a statement. “We are coordinating with the operator to ensure the wells are repaired expeditiously. The pinhole-sized leaks have been determined to be minor in nature and do not pose an immediate threat to public health or safety.”

A group of environmental advocacy and social justice groups first called attention to the leaks last week. In a letter to CalGEM, the coalition said the readings recorded by the air district showed methane readings of at least 50,000 parts per million from one well and 20,000 parts per million from the second well.

“Methane leakage also indicates that the well may be emitting other harmful chemicals,” the group said. “Methane is a super-polluting greenhouse gas more than 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide. The methane spewing from these wells is contributing to the climate emergency and undercutting the state’s greenhouse gas reduction efforts.”

CalGEM spokesperson Jacob Roper said, "We have been coordinating with the operator and local first responders to determine the wells do not pose an immediate threat to public health or safety."

Democratic Assemblyman Rudy Salas Jr., who represents Bakersfield, said in a statement, "I am upset to learn that this dangerous leak is happening in our community. Let’s stop the leak and find out who is responsible to fix the problem."

The wells sit off Morningstar Street in northeast Bakersfield and according to state records were last used in the late 1980s and managed by Sunray Petroleum, Inc. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and have more idle wells throughout Kern County. There was no answer at a phone number listed for Sunray Petroleum in Las Vegas.

Earlier this month, CalGEM ordered Sunray Petroleum to plug the wells at the oil field. The court order also required the operator to decommission the production facilities and restore the well sites for 28 idle wells, including the two wells with the methane leaks.

CalGEM says the order was issued because the operator did not pay its idle well fees and have not submitted to a testing compliance plan along with numerous other oilfield-related violations. Sunray Petroleum has appealed the order.

State and local agencies' failure to declare the methane leak an emergency has frustrated local advocacy groups.

Coordinator Kobi Naseck with Voices in Solidarity Against Oil in Neighborhoods slammed the state agency’s response and the harm he feels the surrounding communities face from the methane leak.

"Any designation of this massive, toxic methane leak as minor or unthreatening to public health is a dangerous mischaracterization of what's going on, puts frontline families in Kern County at risk, and reveals that the current CalGEM administration is unable to follow its new mission” as promised by the agency in the last few years, Naseck said in a statement.

Local residents on Friday said they saw engineers and other workers arrive at the oil field and they're expected to remain at the site over the weekend.

Organizer Cesar Aguirre with Central California Environmental Justice Network has canvassed the surrounding neighborhood to inform residents about the methane leak and said several residents complained about feeling ill in the last few weeks.

“When I told them there is a gas leak in the area, their faces just went white, like they were in shock, because at one home there was four kids running around in the background playing and they had their windows open,” Aguirre told the Times.

CalGEM is currently reviewing new statewide policies that would stop new oil wells from being built within 3,500 feet of areas from schools, homes, hospitals, parks and other places where people congregate.

Naseck wants to know why CalGEM doesn't push for setbacks to apply to existing well sites, like the one in Bakersfield.

"This massive methane leak is happening in a community right next to homes in close proximity to a school and a daycare center," Naseck said.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Economists Warn Banning Abortion Would Have Big Impact on Education, Economy

Susan Tebben
Sun, May 22, 2022


Nearly two dozen Ohio economists agreed that prohibiting abortion in Ohio would negatively impact labor force participation and educational attainment, according to a new survey.

The Ohio Economic Experts Panel answered a survey conducted by Scioto Analysis. The survey asked whether the economists agreed that prohibition of abortion in Ohio would reduce “women’s educational attainment in the state,” would “reduce women’s labor force participation in the state,” and would reduce “women’s earnings in the state.”

The survey comes as Ohio awaits a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on an abortion ban case, after a draft opinion was leaked indicating the court is poised to strike down Roe v. Wade and with it, national abortion rights.

It also comes as legislation that would ban abortion if the 1973 abortion legalization court case is overturned sits in the General Assembly awaiting committee meetings and possible passage.

In the survey, 22 of 24 economists in the state agreed that abortion bans would cause decreases in education and economic abilities.

“Of the 22 who agreed abortion prohibition would decrease wages, economists commented on the tradeoff women have between working and parenting,” Scioto Analysis stated in their survey summary.

Of all the responses received, “strongly agree” overwhelmingly surpassed any other response.

Individual responses came mostly from those that agreed with the statements.

“The empirical evidence is very clear about the negative impact of unplanned pregnancies on women’s educational attainment, especially when support services are unavailable or unaffordable,” said Dr. Fadhel Kaboub, of Denison University.

Those that entered “strongly disagree” responses didn’t include elaboration through individual responses.

Dr. Jonathan Andreas, of Bluffton University, agreed that abortion prohibitions would reduce women’s earnings in the state, but he said abortion “will have a small effect on average income and education statistics” because those most affected by prohibition are “the poorest women who have the least opportunities.”

“Middle-class and wealthy women just pay more money and get out-of-state abortions or pay illegal providers in the state,” Andreas wrote.

Many of the comments focused on low-income communities and people of color as disparately impacted by an abortion ban in Ohio.

“Economic research overwhelmingly indicates that abortion rights greatly affect the educational level, career opportunities, earning and wealth enhancement potential for women,” said Dr. Diane Monaco, of Heidelberg University. “Abortion rights advantages are especially profound for historically marginalized women as well.”

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

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EMBASSY IS SOVERIGN TERRITORY
Indonesia summons Britain's envoy after furore over rainbow flag

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia summoned Britain's ambassador on Monday to explain the raising of a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) flag at its embassy, and urged foreign missions to respect local "sensitivities" following a backlash among conservatives.

A participant holds rainbow flags at the international Rainbow Memorial Run during the inauguration of the Gay Games village at the Hotel de Ville city hall in Paris

Barring the sharia-ruled province of Aceh, homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country, although it is generally considered taboo.

The rainbow LGBT flag was flown alongside the British flag at the country's embassy in Jakarta on May 17 to mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, according an Instagram by the embassy.

Alumni 212 Brotherhood, an influential conservative Islamic movement, in a statement said the flag sullied the "sacred values of Indonesia".

Teuku Faizasyah, foreign ministry spokesperson, confirmed British ambassador Owen Jenkins had been summoned.

"The foreign ministry reminds foreign representatives to be respectful of the sensitivities among Indonesians on matters relevant with their culture, religion and belief," he said.

A British embassy spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Faizasyah said that though an embassy is sovereign territory, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations stipulates only that nation's flag can be flown.

Indonesia is becoming less tolerant of its LGBT community as some politicians become more vocal about Islam playing a larger role in the state, according to activists and human rights groups.

A 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center also showed that 80% of Indonesians believe homosexuality "should not be accepted by society".

Last week, Indonesia's chief security minister said a revision of the criminal code being deliberated by parliament included some articles aimed at the LGBT community, a move backed by some conservative lawmakers.

His remarks followed a backlash over a popular podcast that was forced to scrap an episode this month in which a gay couple was interviewed.

(Reporting by Stanley Widianto; Editing by Martin Petty)