GREENWASHING

Oil Nations Are Selling Billions In Green Bonds

Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, November 27, 2021

Not too long ago, green investing was associated with a warm moral glow, but it wasn’t mainstream--not by a long shot. Increasing climate awareness, a growing shift in policy, and investors demanding socially and environmentally conscious options are transforming this, however, and while it still may not be mainstream, it’s working rather quickly toward megatrend status.

Over the past half-decade, ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing has emerged as the single biggest global megatrend. Every year, more than $3 trillion in new global funds flow into the $30 trillion ESG market.

Meanwhile, green bonds have become the latest craze in the ESG sector, with French asset management company with €1.729 trillion of assets under management, Amundi, now the world’s largest issuer of green bonds. The green bond market is truly booming; in 2020, governments and companies issued green bonds worth $297 billion, with the forecasts for this year being $500 billion and $1 trillion in 2022.

And now, the green bond sector has attracted an unlikely customer: Oil-producing countries.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar have all lined up billions of dollars worth of green bonds as they step up their game to fight climate change.

Green Bonds

Tackling the climate crisis won’t come cheap, with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimating that limiting the temperature increase to 2C will require ~$3 trillion of investment every year through 2050. To raise those vast sums, governments and corporations everywhere are increasingly turning to the green bond market.

Green bonds essentially work like regular bonds but with one key difference: the money raised is used exclusively to finance green projects such as renewable energy and green buildings.

With countries around the world stepping up their efforts to reduce carbon emissions, the market for green bonds is booming. For instance, in October, the European Union issued about $14 billion of green bonds, marking the highest amount ever. Proceeds from the bonds will be used to finance projects, including a research platform for the energy transition in Belgium and wind power plants in Lithuania. Orders exceeded the securities available by more than 11 times in the EU deal, highlighting that it can cost less to issue green bonds than the conventional variety.

Oil-producing nations are waking up to this phenomenon, with Saudi Arabia’s $430 billion sovereign wealth fund planning to announce its first green debt issuance as it looks to drum up investment for renewable energy and other sustainable projects. One such project is the green megacity of Neom located to the country’s north.

The Saudi government has announced plans to build a $5 billion green hydrogen plant that will power Neom when it opens in 2025. Dubbed Helios Green Fuels, the hydrogen plant will use solar and wind energy to generate 4GW of clean energy that will be used to produce hydrogen.

But here’s the main kicker: Helios could even produce hydrogen that’s cheaper than oil.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) estimates that Helios’ costs could reach $1.50 per kilogram by 2030, way cheaper than the average cost of green hydrogen at $5 per kilogram and even cheaper than gray hydrogen made from cracking natural gas. Saudi Arabia enjoys a serious competitive advantage in the green hydrogen business thanks to its perpetual sunshine, wind, and vast tracts of unused land.

In fact, Saudi Aramco has told investors that it has abandoned immediate plans to develop its LNG sector in favor of hydrogen. Aramco has said that the kingdom’s immediate plan is to produce enough natural gas for domestic use to stop burning oil in its power plants and convert the remainder into hydrogen. Blue hydrogen is made from natural gas either by Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) or AutoThermal Reforming (ATR) with the CO2 generated captured and then stored. As the greenhouse gasses are captured, this mitigates the environmental impacts on the planet.

Saudi Arabia clearly has its eyes on a future whereby the economy will stop relying too heavily on oil. Whether or not it will remain committed enough to achieve its long-term goal is another question.

Saudi Arabia’s regional peers are at it, too.

This year, the UAE’s biggest government-controlled bank issued at least $1.36 billion in green debt, while Reuters revealed in October that Qatar Energy, a state-owned oil company, is planning a green bond issue worth several billions of dollars.

Legit Bonds or Greenwashing?

For many years, Big Oil has been chided for its outsized role in climate change and even pilloried for trying to burnish its green credentials with half-hearted attempts at clean energy investments, aka greenwashing. The recrimination appears well deserved, considering the sector dedicates a minuscule amount of its capital spending to renewable energy despite its operations being responsible for 15% of greenhouse gas emissions.

And now, the likes of Saudi Arabia risk falling into the same trap if their oil production roadmaps are any indication.

After all, Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil producer, has announced plans to boost oil production further, from the current 12 million barrels a day to 13 million barrels a day by 2027.

The UAE has an even more aggressive growth plan, with state-controlled oil company ADNOC saying it will increase oil output by 25% to produce 5 billion barrels a day by 2030. Meanwhile, Qatar continues to invest heavily in African oilfields and is building the world’s largest liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal.

A recent study by Dutch asset manager NN Investment Partners found that the green bond market is currently fraught with various legal issues, with 15% of all green bond issues “coming from companies involved in controversial practices that contravene environmental standards.”

An oil-producing nation can easily violate the spirit of green bonds, for instance, by using fossil fuels to generate ‘green hydrogen.’ This is hardly a far-fetched idea: Amundi recently threatened to withdraw its exposure to the State Bank of India’s green bonds after it emerged that the bank was financing a coal mine in Australia.

Drawing clear lines between pools of money and their expenditure requires a high degree of transparency, something that countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are, unfortunately, not famed for. Ultimately, this points to a real and urgent need to develop clear standards and criteria with high granularity as this market escalates.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

WWII contaminants on an Aleutian island are one step closer to finally being cleaned up

© 2021 TomTom

Great Sitkin Island

Volcanic Island

Great Sitkin Island is a volcanic island in the Andreanof Islands of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. The island covers a total area of 60 square miles and lies slightly north of a group of islands which are located between Adak Island and Atka Island.

Morgan Krakow, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
Sun, November 28, 2021

Nov. 29—Richard Ragle looked at the island as the boat pulled up. He'd studied historical photographs of Great Sitkin Island for years, but it wasn't exactly what he expected — some things were bigger and others were smaller than he had imagined.

The island, nestled into the Aleutians, has grasses that grow so tall they're difficult to walk through. It's green and lush, but has a rugged coastline and a tall ridge often obscured by clouds. And there's a volcano towering above, a snowy peak mottled with ash deposits, Ragle said.

After a summer of field work, Great Sitkin Island is now closer to being cleaned up after functioning as a naval refueling station during World War II and being abandoned.

Ragle is a project manager with the Army Corps of Engineers who works for the Formerly Used Sites program — known as FUDS — in which the U.S. Defense Department hires the Corps to clean up sites where the agency no longer owns the property.

In the case of Great Sitkin Island, it's now owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.

There are more than 100 FUDS projects around Alaska and 77 have been cleaned up so far, with 60 more to go, according to Ragle.

The projects are ranked as a way to guide funding requests for cleanup, Ragle said. After an initial investigation determined the level of risk at Great Sitkin, the project was paused so the Corps could address projects with greater risk, which tended to be closer to population centers.

"Great Sitkin has finally worked its way up high enough on the list that we could request funding for it," he said.

That occurred in 2014, and from there experts analyzed old photographs of the island to try to identify where disturbances occurred, which ultimately culminated in a 2021 summer of field work on the island, Ragle said.

Workers spent 65 days over the summer investigating the extent of contamination there.

A refueling base, a tsunami and burning fuel

The island was once used as a naval refueling station during World War II. Tanks there stored more than 10 million gallons of fuel.

"Those tanks were not full when the Navy abandoned the facility, but they were not empty either," Ragle said.

Construction on what was called the Sand Bay Naval Station began in 1942. It could accommodate as many as 680 people plus had places to store fuel, but by 1949 only 10 people remained on the island. Naval ships heading west during World War II refueled at Great Sitkin on the way to Japan, Ragle said.

In 1957, a tsunami hit the island. The wave reworked a lot of the infrastructure near the coast on the island, disturbing and resituating things like the dump, buildings and utility poles, said Tim Plucinski, an environmental contaminants biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"At least the mess prior to that, I think, was all consolidated in specific areas," Plucinski said. "But after that tsunami hit, I think it kind of mixed everything back up again."

The Navy abandoned Great Sitkin in 1963, according to the Corps.

In order to clean up leaking fuel in the following decade, the Navy burned it, "in some cases by breaching the sides of the storage tanks with explosives and lighting the pool of liquid with incendiary grenades," the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said.

Ragle said that appeared to be a common practice at the time — there are photos of the Navy taking similar measures on Attu Island as well.

"We don't have lots of records for what actually occurred," Ragle said. "But the plan was to release fuel out of the tanks and burn it."

There are some notes that the efforts were successful with some tanks and less so with others, he said.

In the 1980s, the Fish and Wildlife Service found several petroleum spills and seeps as well as lead, chromium and other contaminants in the soil, according to information from the Corps. By the 1990s, the site was listed as a FUDS property, and for several years afterward, different steps were taken toward cleanup through analysis and a few site visits.

Finally, in 2019 a contract was awarded to investigate several features at the site. During the summer of 2021, a contractor worked to figure out how much contamination was left on Great Sitkin.

Investigators sampled soil at the surface of the island, where it's available to wildlife, to figure out the risk to different animals, Ragle said. They also used different techniques to find petroleum underground.

Cleanup completion timeline uncertain

The current project is the first significant effort of its kind at Great Sitkin since the inception of the FUDS program, Plucinski said. It's one of 29 FUDS sites within the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, he said.

"The fact is, prior to the Department of Defense's occupation of these sites, they were much more in their native state and with human occupation and then in a lot of cases the military just walking away, I just see that they're taking on the responsibility of cleaning these places up," Plucinski said.

Thick, viscous bunker fuel and fluid heating fuel were found on the island as well as aviation fuel, diesel and gasoline, he said. And while petroleum is the "most prevalent concern on Great Sitkin," there's also concern surrounding lead batteries, metals and solvents as well as questions about whether certain contaminants made it into groundwater and creeks.

There are major seabird populations on and near Great Sitkin, but no major nesting areas, he said. However, the contaminants might impact the habitats of terrestrial birds like lapland longspurs, rosy finches and ptarmigan.

Plus, there are rats on the island. Rats have often been brought to islands by the military, Plucinski said. In the treeless Aleutians, rats can devastate birds that nest on the ground.

"We talk about a rat spill — we call them spills — being more ecologically damaging than actually the contaminants themselves," Plucinski said.

[From the archives: Birds are returning to a now rodent-free island in the Aleutians formerly known as Rat Island]

A final report about the investigation is still multiple months away, Ragle said, since contractors collected massive amounts of data during the summer.

"But on a grander scale, the site was not as dirty as I personally expected," Ragle said.

Most of the contamination wasn't as deep as he'd initially anticipated, which should make cleanup efforts easier. Once they figure out the extent and nature of the leftover fuel, Ragle said, they can come up with ways to clean it.

But in terms of when the island will be cleaned up, it's not clear just yet. FUDS projects can take a lot of time.

"It's really important that we clean up the environment," Plucinski said. "And turn it to as close to a natural state as we possibly can."

Barren forests, dirty rivers, unbreathable air: Inside an Arctic city's vast pollution problem

LONG READ

Marianne Lavelle, Inside Climate News
Sun, November 28, 2021, 6:40 AM·17 min read

This article is part of “The Fifth Crime,” a series on ecocide published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news outlet that covers climate, energy and the environment, and Undark Magazine, a nonprofit, editorially independent digital magazine exploring the intersection of science and society.

It was 2 a.m. and the sun was shining, as it does day and night in mid-July in Norilsk, a Siberian city 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Igor Klyushin went to the bank of the river where he used to fish with his father for grayling, a dorsal-finned beauty known for its graceful leaps above the surface. “A very merry fish,” Klyushin recalled. “It enjoys cold and clean, clean water.”

He doubted grayling would be there that night. In any event, authorities had long warned that it was unsafe to fish for them in the Daldykan River.

And besides, he wasn’t there to fish. He began to record images of the clay-colored muck flowing downriver from one of the largest metal mining and smelting complexes in the world. The discolored water represented “the latest environmental crime of Norilsk Nickel,” Klyushin said in the video he posted on “Norilchane” — or “Citizens of Norilsk” — the YouTube channel he helps moderate.The channel and its Facebook group, with about 8,300 members, have become gathering places for distressed residents of Norilsk, the northernmost city in the world. The city of 176,000 has long been recognized by environmentalists — and even by the Russian government — as one of the most polluted places on Earth, because of one business: Norilsk Nickel, the world’s biggest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel and a top producer of platinum, cobalt and copper.

Built as a resource colony by prisoners in the Soviet Gulag, Norilsk outlasted communism, embraced capitalism, and it now aims to ramp up production to sell the metals needed for electric vehicle batteries and the clean energy economy. Norilsk Nickel is the world’s leading producer of the high-purity Class 1 nickel that electric vehicle industry leaders like Tesla CEO Elon Musk are seeking. The company’s ambitions coincide with those of Russian President Vladimir Putin for greater development in the Far North, which he maintains can be accomplished sustainably.

Image: Norilsk, Russia. (Getty Images)

But Norilsk Nickel has undermined its own vision for the future by spoiling a priceless environment, with implications for the entire planet. The company’s pollution has carved a barren landscape of dead and dying trees out of the taiga, or boreal forest, one of the world’s largest carbon sinks. Its wastewater has turned glacial rivers red. Its smokestacks belch out the worst sulfur dioxide pollution in the world. And last year, a corroded tank burst and released 6.5 million gallons of diesel fuel into waters that flow to the Kara Sea. It was the largest oil spill in Arctic history. Although Norilsk Nickel maintains that no diesel fuel made it to the Arctic Ocean, the Russian government’s fisheries science agency told Inside Climate News that its testing showed that the contamination had reached that far.

In September, Norilsk Nickel agreed to negotiate the settlement of an $800 million lawsuit that the federal fisheries agency, known as Rosrybolovstvo, filed against the company this summer over the damage to the region’s aquatic resources.

Norilsk is an example of the kind of systematic and long-term devastation that has animated a global movement to make destruction of nature an international crime. The campaign aims to treat “ecocide” in the same way as genocide or crimes against humanity, offenses prosecutable by the Hague-based International Criminal Court. The ecocide campaign has drawn attention to the failure of national laws to halt severe and widespread or long-term damage that has international consequences.

Norilsk is grappling with such damage, both as part of a region that is especially vulnerable to climate change and as a city reliant on an industry that has poisoned its land and water.

Norilsk Nickel maintains that it can rehabilitate its environment. It paid a $2 billion fine for last year’s diesel spill, the largest environmental penalty in the country’s history, and it has pledged to spend more than $5 billion on both pollution control and economic and social revitalization throughout its territory of Krasnoyarsk Krai.

“We do acknowledge that there are legacy issues relating to our business,” a company spokesman said in written responses to questions from Inside Climate News, referring to the problems left over from the Soviet era. “We are implementing far-reaching measures to address them.”

Local government officials are enthusiastic about Norilsk Nickel’s program. The city and the territory plan to build a hospital, renovate housing and even create an Arctic Museum of Modern Art. Krasnoyarsk Krai Gov. Alexander Uss has proposed making Norilsk the official capital of the Russian Arctic.

But residents like Klyushin are skeptical, given the pollution they’ve seen even after the company paid its fine.

“When I came that night to see the Daldykan, my heart really sank, and it was broken,” Klyushin said, speaking by phone through an interpreter two weeks after he took video of the discolored water in July. “The river was red with pulp, and the chemical smell is still in my lungs.”

Image: A dead fish on the shore of the Ambarnaya River outside Norilsk on June 10, 2020. (Irina Yarinskaya / AFP via Getty Images)

Dying forests and pollution visible from space

The story of Norilsk’s pollution is written in the trees: 5.9 million acres of dead and dying boreal forest downwind from the Norilsk Nickel compound — a scar larger than New Jersey, slashed into the largest forested region on Earth.

In tree ring samples, scientists have pinpointed the great rush of sulfur dioxide pollution that began in 1942, when the first nickel smelter geared up to meet the Soviet Union’s need for stainless steel during World War II. And the tree rings have shown how the rate of forest deaths here jumped in the 1960s, from 5 percent annually to 30 percent annually at one research site, said a study that researchers from Siberian Federal University and the University of Cambridge published last year. The discovery at that time of huge new ore reserves gave Norilsk Nickel “a new lease on life,” the company noted in its official history.

Image: Smoke stacks for a nickel-refinery spew sulfur dioxide into the environment July 21, 2002 in Norilsk, Russia. (Oleg Nikishin / Getty Images file)

By the early 1980s, all larch trees within 40 miles east of Norilsk were dead.

Satellite readings show that no other human enterprise — no power plant, no oil field, no other smelter complex — generates as much sulfur dioxide pollution as Norilsk Nickel. In fact, the only entities on Earth that rival its sulfur emissions are erupting volcanoes, according to a monitoring project led by scientists at NASA and Environment Canada. At 1.9 million tons of sulfur dioxide emissions annually, Norilsk produces as much sulfur pollution as the entire U.S. — all concentrated in a city the size of Eugene, Oregon.

“You cannot breathe there,” Valeriya “Lera” Bolgova, a leader of the Nganasan people, one of five Indigenous tribes of the Taimyr peninsula, said in an interview. The region’s first people have been unique witnesses to Norilsk Nickel’s indelible imprint on the environment, because fish and reindeer meat are still central to their diets.

“When the pollution proceeds, and proceeds as intensively as it is nowadays, both the fish and the animals start looking for a cleaner environment,” Bolgova said.

Valeriya

Researchers from Siberian Federal University affirmed that the reindeer patterns have dramatically changed on Taimyr. They found the average stay of the reindeer at their traditional summer calving and feeding place to be just 63 days, a third of what it was in the 1960s.

As for human health, lung cancer mortality is 1.2 to 2.5 times higher in Norilsk than in other Russian cities, and deaths from cardiovascular disease and infectious diseases also are elevated, according to the latest research. Such elevated rates are difficult to tie to a single source, and their cause hasn’t yet been established.

It is difficult to study life expectancy in Norilsk because so many people retire early and move to warmer climates, where their health outcomes aren’t captured in the city’s statistics.

“They hope to start getting this higher pension and then go to the mainland and live this beautiful life,” said Klyushin, whose father and uncle were among those who left. His father died a few years ago at age 61, and his uncle died before he was 60.
A ‘mountain river’ of diesel fuel

Klyushin and other local environmental activists agitated for years for Rosprirodnadzor, the Russian environmental protection agency, to establish an office in Norilsk.

They succeeded early last year, and the job of chief deputy went to Vasily Ryabinin, then 39, a chemist, who had previously worked at Norilsk Nickel but left after his beloved mentor at the company died of cancer, he said in an interview with Inside Climate News.

Yet the warm, spring day when 6.5 million gallons of diesel fuel spilled from the Norilsk Nickel complex into the Daldykan River marked both the beginning and the end of Ryabinin’s career as an environmental enforcer for the Russian government.

In the days leading up to May 29, 2020, the temperature in the region had risen 18 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, according to one scientific study. Permafrost had begun to give way under a corroded fuel tank at Norilsk Nickel’s power plant that Russian government safety inspectors had deemed unstable two years earlier and that the company had never fixed.

Ryabinin received a phone call from his boss, who had been denied entry to investigate at the nickel plant, saying red pollution had been spotted in the river. Ryabinin joined him outside the plant, but they were turned away by security, backed up by police.

Ryabinin, who is both a mountaineer and a photographer, took his hiking boots and a camera and walked 2 kilometers with his boss to a nearby bridge, where they could see “an absolute mountain river” of diesel fuel spilling into the waterways, Ryabinin said. “My boss was even afraid to actually smoke, because the smell was so strong it was possible these vapors could ignite some kind of explosion,” he added.

Ryabinin told his story in a 45-minute video posted later on the Norilchane YouTube channel. His broadcast and photographs were the first account that reached the outside world about the largest known oil spill in the Arctic. If it had occurred in the U.S., it would have ranked among the country’s top 10 spills, more than half the size of the Exxon Valdez spill and six times larger than the 2010 pipeline spill of tar sands oil in the Kalamazoo River.

An aerial view shows the pollution in a river outside Norilsk on June 6, 2020, after a subsidiary of metals giant Norilsk Nickel's massive diesel spill on May 29. 

(Irina Yarinskava / AFP via Getty Images)

Top Rosprirodnadzor officials flew in from Moscow. The company deployed containment booms and hundreds of workers to clean up. But Ryabinin felt it was an unwinnable race with the river current. He pressed to sample the water downstream in Lake Pyasino for contamination, but his superiors told him no transportation was available. Six days later the head of Rosprirodnadzor declared that no oil had reached the lake, which connects to the Arctic Ocean. Norilsk Nickel said the same.

Ryabinin, feeling he was being prevented from determining the true extent of damage to the environment, turned in his resignation.

One of Russia’s most prominent ecologists, Evgeny Shvarts of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for Geography in Moscow, told Inside Climate News he is convinced from long experience as an environmental advocate in Russia that people can’t rely on the government for environmental protection.

Shvarts has been a member of Norilsk Nickel’s board of directors since 2019, one of the independent directors the company is required to have because it is traded on the London Stock Exchange. Shvarts holds no stock in Norilsk Nickel and isn’t in the corporate chain of command under the majority shareholder, the oligarch Vladimir Potanin.

Shvarts believes independent directors and other requirements of the public markets are especially important in Russia, where, he said, the government doesn’t have the tools necessary to implement environmental laws. “It is a very naive approach to think that the state always represents the public interest,” he said.

After Klyushin saw pollution in the Daldykan River again in July, he notified the regulatory agencies. The Ministry of Natural Resources responded with a letter that Klyushin shared with Inside Climate News. In it, the ministry detailed Norilsk Nickel’s reported discharges into waterways for the first quarter of 2021: cobalt, 32,318 tons, or four times the legal limit; iron, 3,998 tons, or 45 times the legal limit; and nickel, 989 tons, or 100 times the legal limit. The discharges exceeded the “normative permissible standards,” the ministry said, but they were allowed under Norilsk Nickel’s permit, signed by Rosprirodnadzor, the environmental agency. The agency declined repeated requests to respond to questions for this article.

Image: The Norilsk power plant No 1 supplies electricity to industrial enterprises of the Norilsk Nickel company, the world's largest producer of palladium and one of the largest producers Nickel, platinum and copper. (Kirill Kukhmar / TASS via Getty Images)More

“Nornickel’s factories operate under strict environmental restrictions and a set of established permits, which are prescribed in accordance with project documentation with an assessment of permissible impact standards,” Norilsk Nickel’s spokesman said about the discharges.

Ryabinin said he wasn’t surprised about the permits or the ministry’s response.

“In Russian, we have a saying: ‘It’s like throwing dried peas against the wall,’” he said. “The peas will just come right back to you. They won’t get to somebody else, to someone who is guilty of building this wall.”
Putin plays ‘the good czar’

Putin reacted sharply to news of the diesel spill last year, which came only weeks after he unveiled a new strategic plan for the Arctic, a vision of resource development and environmental protection going hand in hand.

“Why did the authorities find out about this only two days later?” Putin asked in a video conference call with regional and company officials. “Are we going to learn about emergencies from social networks?”

President Putin holds meeting on diesel fuel spill clean-up in Krasnoyarsk Territory (Alexei Nikolsky / TASS via Getty Images)

Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of books about Putin and about the long-lasting costs of the Soviet Union’s intensive development of Siberia, said about Putin, “This is him playing the role of the good czar, who has a direct connection with the people.”

But, she said, Putin doubtless is also aware of how environmental disaster can breed activism and awaken dissatisfaction with the government. After the deadly 1986 Chernobyl disaster, protests in Ukraine, Belarus and Estonia morphed into a full-fledged independence movement that helped bring about the Soviet Union’s collapse.

In the weeks after the Norilsk Nickel spill, five people were arrested or charged with criminal negligence, including the power plant’s director and chief engineer and Norilsk’s mayor at the time.

The London-based consulting firm Environmental Resources Management, which the Norilsk Nickel board hired to investigate the accident, found that it was caused by a confluence of a changing environment, carelessness and neglect. In February, a Russian court ruled that the company should pay a fine of 146 billion rubles, or $2 billion.

“We learned this lesson well,” Potanin said in a statement after the verdict. “We are carrying out the instructions of the President to eliminate the consequences of the accident and to restore the ecosystem.”

Norilsk Nickel has maintained that the cleanup effort collected more than 90 percent of the leaked fuel — if true, an extraordinary recovery rate. For oil spills in marine environments, the average recovery rate is 8 percent to 10 percent, and on rivers, 50 percent would be considered high, according to experts at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Oil Spill Recovery Institute at Cordova, Alaska.

Fuel spill cleanup in Norilsk, Russia (Kirill Kukhmar / TASS via Getty Image)

Image: Employees of Russia's state-owned oil pipeline monopoly Transneft during a clean-up operation following a massive fuel spill in the Ambarnaya River outside Norilsk on June 10, 2020. (Irina Yarinskaya / AFP via Getty Images)

Russian scientists determined that diesel fuel from the spill did reach Pyasino Lake and beyond. Contamination was found in bottom sediment in the lake and the entire 900-kilometer length of the adjoining Pyasino River, including at its mouth in the Arctic Ocean’s Kara Sea, said Vyacheslav Bizikov, the deputy director of the Russian government’s All-Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography in Moscow, in an interview with Inside Climate News.

Bizikov led the expedition of scientists, who lived on boats for 17 days sampling water, sediment and fish. The researchers found both diesel fuel and heavy metal contamination in the liver and muscles of fish they tested, and they warned local authorities and Indigenous communities that the fish weren’t safe to eat, he said.

The findings became the basis of the lawsuit the Russian fisheries agency filed against Norilsk Nickel in July. The company and the agency are working out an agreement on how to further study the damage, restore the environment and replenish the fish, Bizikov said.

“We can restore and recover the ecosystems and water ecosystems if we do it right,” Bizikov said. “As I see it, it’s not a matter of one day or one year. If there will be no more accidents, we will manage to fix it. It’s difficult to say when, but in 10 years, maybe we will see the definite results.”

New pressures for change are building on Norilsk Nickel from the outside.

Electric vehicle batteries, which rely on nickel for energy density and storage, are a major growth opportunity for the company. Russia is one of the few places that have the sulfur-rich ore that readily yields the very pure-grade Class 1 nickel needed, a resource base that has made Norilsk Nickel the world’s leading producer.

Musk of Tesla has said that he has plenty of business to offer but that he wants to partner with companies that engage in sustainable practices. “Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way,” he said on a company earnings call last year.

Potanin has made clear his ambition to compete in this market, having announced that Norilsk Nickel will increase production of “green economy” metals by 30 percent to 40 percent by 2030.

Construction is now underway on a $4.1 billion project at Norilsk Nickel that the company has said will reduce sulfur dioxide air pollution 90 percent by 2025. The company has pledged to cut air pollution before, but has said the task was complicated by the remote environment. The new project began in earnest following the scrutiny the company received after its 2020 diesel fuel spill. (Norilsk Nickel)

‘We kill our children and leave them a trash heap’

Norilsk Nickel, pledging to cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 90 percent by 2025, has said it will spend at least $4.1 billion on a project called Sulphur Programme 2.0.

“In my opinion, the implementation of the project will fundamentally change the ecological situation in our city,” Norilsk’s current mayor, Dmitry Kasarev, who previously worked for Norilsk Nickel, said in written responses to questions from Inside Climate News. “Our city ​​should breathe a new breath in terms of ecology.”

Shvarts, who helped Norilsk Nickel develop its new environmental and climate strategy, said he supports the company’s striving to be part of the green economy. “We need to make every week, every month, a few new steps ahead to be a more transparent, more open, more environmentally responsible company,” he said.

Klyushin, however, won’t wait for that day to come. He has vowed to leave Norilsk soon and not return.

Igor Klyushin has watched pollution grow in Norilsk since moving here with his family as a 7-year-old in 1977. (Courtesy Igor Klyushin)

He worries about his friend Ryabinin, who has four children and hasn’t had a full-time job since he quit Rosprirodnadzor.

“If it were not for Vasily who started this, who discovered this, they would have avoided responsibility. This is clear,” Klyushin said.

Ryabinin said that since he quit the Russian environmental protection agency, he has been working as a freelance photographer and focusing on his children. He would like to take them to a place with more opportunity — and, of course, less pollution. But for now the family has no plans to move. His wife still works for Norilsk Nickel.

The experience of fighting the company changed him, Ryabinin said. The problem, he said, isn’t one company but consumption without any thought of where the raw material comes from or the need to use less.

“Until the bulk of the population of our planet comes to understand the reasonable consumption of any resources,” he said, “we will not achieve either economic growth or an environmentally friendly planet. We just simply kill our children and leave them a trash heap.”

Ludmila Mekertycheva in Moscow contributed to this report.

Motorcycle Monday: Cancel Culture Comes For Indian Motorcycle

Steven Symes
Mon, November 29, 2021, 

Should they bow to the pressure?

Whether you love or hate Indian Motorcycle, it’s likely you have an opinion about the brand’s name and logo. Actually, a lot of people who’ve never ridden a motorcycle in their life have hot takes on what should be done with Indian Motorcycle. It’s a topic which was dealt with back in the 90s before anyone had even heard of cancel culture, but that’s how long these types of sentiments have existed in society.

For now this issue has sat on the backburner, relegated to smaller media outlets and not the big corporate broadcasters and newspapers. That could change in a flash as we’ve seen a thing not previously in the spotlight suddenly become public enemy number one. Some argue Indian Motorcycle is profiting off the name and imagery of indigenous people, which they say is exactly like when different tribes were forcibly kicked off their land by white settlers. That’s a huge logical leap, but it’s the argument being levied with a lot of emotion mixed in so you don’t pay too much attention to the lack of logic or the fact some Native Americans don’t agree with the sentiment.

As mentioned before, there’s some turbulent history with the Indian Motorcycle brand, most notably a lawsuit in the 1990s after a deal to have a Native American tribe make the bikes fell apart. It’s a complicated legal case, but there was understandably a lot of bad blood from that deal gone sour.

More recently, a few voices in the motorcycle world have decided the time is now for Indian to change its name and logo. I’ll let them explain in their own words.

Canada MotoGuide ran an op-ed in March of this year where the author states, “As the world becomes more PC-friendly, I do think that the name and branding will do more harm than good, ultimately having a negative impact on sales in the future. I certainly don’t want to see the company fail, nor do I wish anything but the best for those who make their living and support their families working for the company. I merely think that supporting and perpetuating a certain pattern of cultural appropriation is best left in the past.”

New Zealand motorcycle publication On Throttle ran a similar piece about this topic also in March, the author stating he didn’t want to attack the oldest motorcycle brand in America. However, he argued “while the company is not outwardly racist, there are problems with the brand that have not been addressed in regards to the cultural appropriation”

More thoughtful dialog can be found on a 4-year-old Reddit post where the author asks if the name and logo for Indian Motorcycle is offensive. The top answer was succinct: “I have never owned one but do not feel anything negative about it. I used to run Native Net, 67 reservations, where we discussed problem areas and this was never brought up by any of the Native nations.” Another user pointed out that sometimes perceptions are off due to a lack of understanding, like how people think the gunmaker Savage Arms is racist because of the name combined with an Indian’s head in the logo. In that case, the founder’s last name was Savage and he traded with a chief who gave his permission to use his likeness, likely because he found it to be an honor and not mockery.

Nothing from the history of Indian Motorcycle suggests a connection between the founders of the company and any Native American group. However, it seems they used names like Chief, Scout, and Chieftain to convey strength, not as mockery. Some take the usages as just the opposite.

I grew up in a state where there were a lot of Native Americans. I had friends who were from different tribes or pueblos and others who were part Native American. I also attended college with many Native Americans and discussed cultural topics with some. I live right next to two reservations and have lived around Native Americans my entire life. From my own life experience, the one thing I can say with 100 percent certainty is that if anyone is trying to tell you all Native Americans feel or think a certain thing, they’re not being honest. Some hate things like Indian Motorcycles. Others think they’re cool and are proud owners of an Indian, others that they’re silly, and some have no opinion on the topic. In other words, trying to argue that the brand name and logo offends all Native Americans is simply untrue.

For Polaris’ and Indian Motorcycle's part, they seem to be sensitive to the potential controversy. While they continue to use legacy names, no new model names have even a hint of indigenous roots. They haven’t added any extra Indian-themed imagery to the motorcycles and you won’t find anything like that in dealerships, or at least that’s the direction the dealers have been given by Indian Motorcycles.

There are plenty of reasons to not like Indian Motorcycle. Some have an issue with the parent company, Polaris. Others aren’t a fan of the bike designs or they don’t like how they ride. I know people who really hate the quality or reliability of Indians. But for now it seems like the effort to build pressure to cancel the brand name and logo isn’t exactly catching on in the motorcycle world and it may never.

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I HAD THE PLEASURE OF SEEING A POST WWII INDIAN RECONSTRUCTED AND THE GREATER PLEASURE OF RIDING IT.

Protecting South Carolina marshes means protecting Native American way of life



Sandy Edge
Mon, November 29, 2021

We have always harvested the marsh.

The Chicora of the Catawba once traversed the coast from Cape Fear, North Carolina to Savannah, Georgia, but, as the land became colonized we slowly retreated into the sacred heart of our territory, what is now Little River Neck, South Carolina.

With our people condensed to one small spot, we needed a system for survival.

So we kept the marsh like we would a garden. The marsh was divided into plots and we became the gardeners – harvesting and reseeding the saltmarsh.

This maintenance both kept the marsh healthy and provided us with food.

Until the mid-1980s, our tribe maintained these plots.

Each day we’d shuck oysters into five-quart jars and leave their shells in the marsh for new oysters to grow on. We didn’t eat the oysters ourselves, but people were crazy for them and we’d sell the oysters to them.

Us?

We were after the fish.

Mullet, spot, flounder - those were our delicacies. We’d plant fish traps near our oyster gardens or spearfish in the crystal clear water the oysters produced.

Our target size was the size of our hand, never too big, never too small.

Then, after a long day, we would split our catch among our community and sell the excess at the fish market. Those days would end around the stew pot with the smell of mullet in the air.

The next day we would wake up and work those plots again, every day, until we were too old. Then, we’d pass it to the next member of our tribe. The responsibility of stewardship and the bounty it produced was now theirs.

But we’ve been cut off from our marshes.

As people decided they wanted our land, we found we didn’t have the proof of ownership they wanted.

First were told our land was already owned under King’s Grant.

Then that land was sold and developed and we lost access. The plots that were handed down and cared for over generations were taken from us. Now they’re bisected by lawns, golf courses, and roads.

Not only has the marsh lost our stewardship, but the weather is changing. I’ve watched the rains grow heavier and more frequent in my lifetime. The water floods the manicured lawns that were once marsh and maritime forest. The rain falls onto roads and concrete and rushes into the marsh. All of this run-off, laden with fertilizer and pollution, chokes the once clear waters of our home.

The fish that were once plentiful and fed our families are scarce. Today, people catch them too small or too big, and they catch too many. Our way maintained those fish. Now those resources are depleted.

The Chicora way of life has disappeared with these resources.

If we want to eat fish, a staple of our diet, we must now buy fish from the market. The same market we used to sell fish to. I’d love to pass our traditions to my children, but the opportunity is slipping away.

We have to protect our marshes and the resources they provide.

We need to protect access to these resources as well. It’s more than a question of protecting the natural systems that protect our communities.

For me and my tribe, it’s a question of survival.

These marshes fed us and sustained our culture.

To be cut off from these marshes means to be cut off from the soul of the Chicora people.

Sandy Edge lives in Little River Neck and is a member of the Chicora family of the Catawba People

Lummi Nation declares disaster as tens of thousands of invasive European green crab found


Natasha Brennan
Mon, November 29, 2021, 6:00 AM·3 min read

The Lummi Indian Business Council has passed a resolution declaring a disaster after more than 70,000 European green crab — an invasive species — were captured and removed from the Lummi Sea Pond in recent months.

The Tribe cultivates shellfish and juvenile salmon in the 750-acre sea pond surrounded by the most productive natural shellfish beds on the reservation. The crabs threatens hatchery operations, Tribal shellfish harvests and may have larger impacts if the infestation spreads.

“The appearance of the European green crab is a serious threat to our treaty fishing rights,” Lummi Nation Chairman William Jones Jr. said in a press release.

The council passed the resolution Tuesday, Nov. 23, following a multi-agency effort led by the Lummi Natural Resources Department to remove the aggressive predator that consumes shellfish, destroys salmon habitat and is credited with the rapid decline of Maine’s soft-shell clam industry within the past decade.

The resolution establishes a task force that will confront the crisis with a comprehensive response strategy.

“Warming water temperatures due to climate change have only made things worse,” Jones said. “Unless action is taken to contain and reduce the problem, we will see this invasive species spread further into Lummi Bay and neighboring areas of the Salish Sea.”

The crab — native to Europe and northern Africa — is a highly adaptable shore crab that preys on juvenile clams before they reach harvestable age, out-competes native crab species, such as Dungeness crab, and wreaks havoc on nearshore marine and estuary ecosystems.

It is also known to burrow into marsh banks and uproot eelgrass beds, an important nursery habitat for juvenile salmon.

Given the devastating ecological impacts of the crab, the Washington Sea Grant’s Crab Team coordinated a region-wide early detection effort in partnership with the state, Tribes and volunteers in 2015.

Despite its name, the European green crabs distinguishing feature is not its color, but the five spines to the outside of the eye on the shell. Lummi Indian Business Council passed a resolution Tuesday, Nov. 23, declaring a disaster after more than 70,000 invasive European green crab were removed from Lummi Sea Pond.

Remains of one crab were found in Squalicum Harbor in May 2019 — the first confirmation of the “global invader” in Whatcom County. Later that year, the crabs were found on Lummi Nation beaches and in the Tribe’s aquaculture pond near the fish and shellfish hatchery.

In September 2020, traps caught nearly 1,000 crabs in the Lummi Sea Pond alone.

Before then, the largest numbers of the crab were found near the Makah Reservation located on the tip of the Olympic Peninsula in Clallam County.

This past June, four were found in Squalicum Harbor, marking the first time that live crabs had been discovered in the harbor in Bellingham.

Now, tens of thousands have invaded the Lummi Sea Pond — a “perfect breeding ground” with ample food, safety from predators and a stable growing environment.

The staggering, unprecedented population explosion led Lummi Nation, the Crab Team, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the University of Washington to collaborate on the largest European green crab trapping effort since it was detected in the Western U.S.

At an October meeting with the state’s 29 federally recognized Tribes, Gov. Inslee heard from some Tribal leaders on how the crab infestation is hurting their Tribes and economies.

The crab’s impact on salmon is especially concerning, after more than 2,500 adult Chinook have died in the South Fork since September and recent flooding further disrupted their habitat.

Fanning Springs offers swimming, snorkeling and scuba diving, but tainted by nitrates

Cindy Swirko, The Gainesville Sun
Sun, November 28, 2021

Kayakers gather around to witness as scientists with the US Geological Survey net and tag sturgeon in the Suwannee River near Fanning Springs in 2015.

To look at Fanning Spring, it is difficult to reconcile the beauty of its blue water to an ugly truth — it is one of the most nutrient-rich springs in the region, with a concentration of nitrates approaching unsafe levels.

The first-magnitude spring and its state park along the Suwannee River in Levy County draws thousands of visitors a year. They must pass informational kiosks along the walkways and boardwalks down to the spring that explain how actions on land — particularly the use of fertilizers — pollute the water.

Like many other springs in the region, people have been living along Fanning for eons. Information from the Florida Park Service states that Paleo-Indian people first began drinking its water and eating its fish and animals 14,000 years ago. Several aboriginal sites have been found in the park.

Fragile Springs revisited: Salt Springs offers recreation variety in Ocala National Forest

White settlers eventually began moving to the region. A fort was built there in 1838 during the Second Seminole War. Later, a ferry across the Suwannee moved people and horses for years.

While the town of Fanning Springs did not grow much, the spring was a favorite spot to cool off for people from across the region.

Location: Fanning Springs State Park is at 18020 U.S. 19 in the town of Fanning Springs.

About: Fanning is considered a first-magnitude spring, meaning water flowed at a rate of at least 100 cubic feet per second, though that rate slowed in the 1990s. The Suwannee River Water Management District still names it as a first-magnitude.

The state bought about 200 acres surrounding the spring and its run to the Suwannee River in 1993 and it became part of the park system in 1997.

Visitors: Swimming, snorkeling and open-water scuba diving are allowed in the spring. Divers must have proper certification and are required to register with park staff before entering the water. There must be a minimum of two divers.

A 200-yard boardwalk meanders along the spring run through cypress trees to the Suwannee River. The spring at a point on the river where sturgeon often jump in the spring and summer months, a neat sight but dangerous to boaters and paddlers.

Manatees sometimes winter in the spring, where the constant 72-degree water is warmer than the Suwannee River or Gulf of Mexico.

Problems: Fanning for decades has been one of the state’s most polluted springs with nitrates as the culprit. The spring is open to swimming, but it is not the most inviting swimming hole because of the excess algae.

Current nitrate data is not available from the Suwannee River Water Management District or the U.S. The Geological Survey but it has been considerably higher than the 0.35 milligrams per liter set by the state to try to stem the pollution.

Fanning is also prone to flooding when the Suwannee River is high, which could also impact the growth of algae by altering water chemistry in the spring.

An assessment by the federal Environmental Protection Agency lists Fanning Springs as impaired for fish and wildlife propagation, fish consumption and recreation. The impairments for recreation and propagation are caused by nitrates and low oxygen. The impairment for consumption is mercury in the fish.

Future: Fanning, its downstream neighbor Manatee Springs and others are included in a Suwannee River basin management action plan triggered by the high level of nitrate.

The plans require farmers in the basin to use practices to reduce nitrates, such as cutting fertilizer use. Septic tanks on new homes can also be restricted and wastewater treatment systems can have to meet tougher standards. Incentives can be given to sports facilities such as golf courses to cut fertilizer use.

Spring advocates, including the Florida Springs Institute and the Florida Springs Council, contend the basin plans are not strong enough to reduce nitrates.

The Florida Springs Council in a legal challenge to the Suwannee basin plan gave multiple examples of shortcomings including the lack of specific requirements for reducing fertilizer use and no restrictions on new septic systems on lots of more than an acre.

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Fanning Springs offers visitors variety of fun, lessons on pollution

Ritual cups, cemetery shed light on ancient Jewish retreat at Yavne


An excavation site believed to be from the time of the Sanhedrin in Yavne

Mon, November 29, 2021, 

YAVNE, Israel (Reuters) - Archaeological finds in Israel have shed light on Yavne, an ancient town that served as the retreat for Jewish authorities after the fall of Jerusalem during a rebellion against Roman rule.

The excavation unearthed ruins of a building with cups made of chalkstone, a material deemed appropriate for Jewish religious rites, pointing to the presence of the exiled Sanhedrin legislative assembly, the Israel Antiquities Authority said.

Cited by the Roman historian Josephus, Yavne served as focal point of Jewish activity. According to Jewish scripture, the Sanhedrin was reconstituted there with Roman consent during a rebellion that led to the second century fighting in Jerusalem.

"This is a direct voice from the past, from the period when the Jewish leadership salvaged the remaining fragments from the fall of the (Jerusalem) Temple," the Authority said in a statement.

Also discovered near the site was a cemetery with dozens of graves, including sarcophagi, and more than 150 glass phials placed on top of the tombs, which the Authority said were probably used to store fragrant oils.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Alex Richardson)

HP Joins Lifelong Wildlife Advocate Jane Goodall on Her New Mission: Planting Trees

Trees for Jane is a grassroots effort to plant and protect one of the Earth’s most precious resources.

Northampton, MA --News Direct-- HP Inc.

Mon, November 29, 2021


By Sarah Murry


Forest protection, replanting, and restoration of the world’s trees are among the most valuable actions we can take today to bring down carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and protect the habitats of the most vulnerable species on our planet (including our own). Environmentalist icon and researcher Dr. Jane Goodall is issuing a call for everyone to participate in whatever way we can with her Trees for Jane grassroots campaign and accompanying short film, A Trillion Trees, which launched this week during the United Nations yearly Climate Week event in New York City.

The campaign aims to stop deforestation while helping to replenish the world’s dwindling stock of trees and forests through community-based protection and reforestation programs. It also empowers individuals to plant and care for their own tree or trees in their backyards, rooftops, or with local community groups.

“Trees are the foundation of our ecosystem, our planet,” Goodall says. “Protecting, restoring, and planting trees is a very tangible way to save our climate while creating a better world for all living creatures.”

There’s no time to waste. Every six seconds, our planet loses a football pitch worth of tropical rainforest to deforestation through human-driven deforestation for economic development, cattle ranching, mining, and climate-worsened droughts and wildfires. Three hundred million people worldwide live in forests and 1.6 billion depend directly on them for their livelihoods, according to WWF. One mature tree can capture an average of 0.62 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) over its lifetime. Forests and forest products currently capture and store 15% of US carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion each year, equivalent to the annual emissions from 163 million cars.

HP is a founding partner of Trees for Jane and is supporting Goodall as part of its ongoing Sustainable Impact efforts, which include its forest-positive vision for printing, a pledge to plant trees as part of the 1t.org initiative, and a partnership with WWF to restore and protect the world’s forests through the HP Sustainable Forests Collaborative.

“Climate change is a defining challenge of our time that demands immediate action and investment — NGOs, governments and the private sector must partner to drive solutions,” says Karen Kahn, chief communications officer at HP and Trees for Jane advisor. Bold steps are needed now and by many to create a lasting future.”

Goodall, whose trailblazing work 60 years ago in Tanzania changed the public’s relationship with chimpanzees, our closest primate cousins, today speaks all over the world about the threat of habitat loss, environmental degradation, and climate change. Her eponymous Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), last year committed to contributing five million trees (via replanting or restoration) through her organization and partnerships to the 1 Trillion Trees campaign. Though her message is global, she continues to urge local action, starting with encouraging everyone to plant a tree for Jane.

“There’s a very simple and practical solution that everyone can take part in. A solution that is as old as time,” she says. “We can all do our part by planting a tree or two, or supporting people who do.”

To take action, go to www.treesforjane.org, follow on Instagram @TreesforJane, and support on social with the hashtag #TreesforJane.

RELATED: When forests thrive, people and business prosper, too.

View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from HP Inc. on 3blmedia.com

View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/hp-joins-lifelong-wildlife-advocate-jane-goodall-on-her-new-mission-planting-trees-640637586