I applied for LA’s basic income program – and the process was startling



Ruth Fowler
Mon, November 29, 2021,

Sitting in a Ralphs parking lot overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway at 8am on a Friday, hot and sticky in an ageing wetsuit, I clicked on the link for Big:Leap, Los Angeles’ guaranteed income pilot and the largest program of its kind in the US.

Applications for the program had opened that morning. Participants would be chosen by lottery and the criteria for eligibility were simple: applicants had to be over the age of 18, live in the city of Los Angeles, have one or more dependents, and be living in poverty according to the federal poverty guidelines – a somewhat outdated and controversial method of measuring poverty, but one which, in the absence of anything else, is still used widely. The project’s aim was straightforward, too: to study the effects of giving approximately 3,000 families $1,000 a month in cash with no strings attached.

Related: Californians on universal basic income paid off debt and got full-time jobs

To a single parent who had lost two jobs in 2021, the opportunity to receive an additional thousand dollars a month tax-free in a city where the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,195 seemed like a lifeline. I thought I knew what to expect from the process. I had applied for several aid programs before – CalWorks, CalFresh, MediCal, onerous and detailed applications that delved into my bank accounts, utility bills, rental agreement, child support, income and assets (or lack of them), and they often involved numerous trips to offices to clear up glitches that had tied my hypothetical aid up in a bureaucratic system. During the pandemic, I applied for – and received – $17,500 of SBA money. That application took just minutes to complete.

The approximately 80 questions that the Big:Leap application posed started predictably enough: What is your gender? How many children under the age of 18 do you have?

They soon delved into the personal: How much bodily pain have you had during the past 4 weeks?

Then the application took a nosedive into the deeply intimate:

Have you experienced any of the actions listed below from any current or former partner or partners?


Blame me for causing their violent behavior.


Shook, pushed, grabbed or threw me.


Tried to convince my family, children or friends that I am crazy or tried to turn them against me.


Used or threatened to use a knife or gun or other weapon to harm me.


Made me perform sex acts that I did not want to perform.Screen shots from the application

The application took me 45 minutes, several F-bombs and one packet of Kleenex to complete.

It’s the paradox of Big:Leap. The program aims to stop “controlling” people in poverty through policy by no longer dictating what recipients spend government assistance on. But to prove the project’s worth, researchers have developed a control program that felt frustrating and arduous – hurtful, even, at times. “That is proof that we have to get policy to stop forcing people in poverty to prove their need,” said Michael Tubbs, the former mayor of Stockton, California.

Stockton in recent years ran a wildly successful two-year guaranteed income pilot, the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (Seed). The program achieved the results many politicians and researchers aiming to combat wealth inequality had hoped for: critics of the scheme had argued that untaxed, additional, no-strings income – in Stockton’s case, $500 a month for two years – would quash people’s work ethic and that the money would be spent irresponsibly. Extensive surveys ultimately revealed that the money improved the 200 participants’ job prospects, financial stability, mental and physical health, and overall wellbeing. Only 1% of the money went towards alcohol and tobacco, researchers found.

Since then, other major California cities have launched their own pilots. San Francisco announced its program in September 2020. Oakland followed suit in March. Chicago, Illinois, passed its guaranteed income program in October.

The setup of each of these pilots has varied. The Stockton program had a similar structure to Big:Leap, using a control group and a trial group to draw its conclusions. But it had no criteria for entry other than a Stockton zip code, and potential applicants entered a simple lottery without any initial questionnaire.

Curious about the reactions of other LA residents to the application questions, I went along to one of the walk-in centers across the city, most of which were in the district of Curren D Price, the city councilmember who had initiated the LA scheme. It’s a predominantly working class, Spanish-speaking neighborhood with one of the highest poverty rates in the city. At Price’s office, 16 computer terminals were set up in a room with three bilingual volunteers ready to assist walk-in applicants who might not have the literacy or technology to complete the application at home. A reporter for KCRW, Aaron Schrank, sat outside the room, holding a voice recorder. On Friday, when applications opened, there had been lines around the block. When I visited three days later, 13 of the terminals were occupied, and bored children clutching crayons wandered around while their parents patiently typed away. One woman completed the application in three hours. Another took two.

Schrank told me that two people he’d interviewed early that morning had, like me, been confused and offended by the questions. Luis Riva, a former upholsterer, had told him: “They’re asking too many questions about my health. They’re asking questions that aren’t related to helping people with money. They’re asking other things like how is my health, how do I think, psychological stuff.” Bonnie Morales, who lost her father and then her job during the pandemic, complained: “They asked me about my partner, like if it was a girl or a boy. Like, what does that matter?… Why does it matter if I’m gay, a lesbian, bisexual, or trans? I just find those questions very fucking weird to me, you know … Ask me if I’m starving. Ask me if I can afford a bag of beans. Ask me that.”

A volunteer, Porsha Anderson, acknowledged that many of the applicants had struggled with the questions. “They want to know, ‘Why are they asking me about domestic issues? What am I meant to say? What’s the answer I need to give to get the money?’”

Dr Bo-Kyung Elizabeth Kim, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California Center on Education Policy, Equity and Governance who heads the local research overseers for Big:Leap, explained that the questionnaire includes core questions composed by researchers and questions added by the study sites.

“Both researchers and their political partners are hoping to understand how and why money provided through the program may or may not improve the specific experience of families in poverty,” she said, as well as the challenges that poverty can bring about.

The questions about intimate partner violence in the questionnaire were included by the city of Los Angeles, she said: “We suspect intimate partner violence is a widespread community issue based on police calls for domestic disturbances, but we actually do not have strong data on its prevalence as typically only physical violence is reported,” she noted. “Inclusion of those questions does help LA understand the prevalence of intimate partner violence among applicants, and helps the city determine if guaranteed income can actually help people move away from dangerous relationships.”

The questions on the application were not compulsory, she added. (The disclaimer at the start of the application did state that the questions weren’t obligatory, but there was no way for an applicant to avoid them. Everyone had to click through the entire application before they could be submitted for entry into the lottery.)

The Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, said that he, as a social scientist, wanted the LA program to have the biggest possible sample size and ask the deepest questions of that sample, to provide solid data for potential government policy aimed at combating poverty. The goal, he said, was to find solutions that allow people to exit poverty, not to simply survive it through cash, food, medical or tuition assistance.

Garcetti said what had convinced him to commit to the pilot were “Angeleno cards” – basic debit cards containing a cash amount handed out to LA residents in need during the pandemic. The cards had the added benefit of allowing the city to track where that money was spent, Garcetti said. After he saw that most of the money was spent on basic necessities such as food, rent and utilities, he became committed to the idea of a guaranteed income scheme that could act as a bellwether of sorts for programs at a federal and state level, he said. The city has since set up a new department to handle Big:Leap and other “community wealth initiatives” aimed at combating poverty.

The difference between traditional social services and the notion of a guaranteed income, Garcetti said, was “the trust that [the program] places in everyday people to make decisions for themselves”.

“Our addiction to poverty costs us trillions of dollars. I believe that we can save money spent on criminal justice, on lost economic opportunity, through this scheme and offer that up as a value proposition to federal government,” he added. “We treat the poor like children who can’t do anything for themselves. We treat the rich like spoilt teenagers and let them get away with anything.”

Poverty is disabling, and poverty is undignified. Seeking aid in the United States often still involves a double loss of privacy – first by divulging swathes of information that must be disclosed as proof of need: bank accounts, spending habits, rent, income, utilities etc, then by accepting aid that comes with strict caveats, an individual is forced to submit to the intrusive control of a government that does not trust poor people to make the right decisions for their own survival and wellbeing. Individual freedom comes with wealth. Wealth that is often accumulated generationally. Wealth that is often untaxed. Wealth that has bought a trust that the poor cannot afford.

Guaranteed income programs are bravely attempting to find a solution to seemingly unresolvable problems. But the process to get there, at least in LA, is arduous.

Perhaps one of the most telling questions on the Big:Leap application was “What does trust mean to you?” For Councilmember Price, trust means relying on the community for support. For Dr Kim, trust is something that should be given to those in poverty.

“We’ve been so controlling of people in poverty,” she said. “They’re not in control of their own money. People know how to use their money – they just don’t have any. The idea of this project is just to give them some room.”

When applications for the Big:Leap closed, more than 59,000 out of nearly 500,000 eligible Angelenos had applied. The pilot’s website had over 350,000 visits, and the city information line had taken 1,469 calls about the program.

After arriving home from the Price’s offices, I pulled on what’s known in the catering world as “black bistro” and went to serve cocktails at a private party in a $32m home in Beverly Hills for $25 an hour. It struck me that the entire budget for the Big:Leap was $40 million. The yawning gap between the insanely wealthy and the horrifically poor had never felt so acute.

Leading climate change activist looks to mobilize older Americans

Ben Adler

·Senior Climate Editor

Mon, November 29, 2021,

With a younger generation increasingly focused on the problem of rising global temperatures, prominent environmental activist and author Bill McKibben is launching a new grassroots movement to mobilize older Americans to combat climate change and to work on related social justice issues.

McKibben, 60, has partnered with co-founders Akaya Windwood, a 65-year-old nonprofit consultant, and Vanessa Arcara, a millennial who worked at 350.org, to mobilize older Americans. Their new group, known as Third Act, is having a soft launch this week and a full-fledged rollout early next year.

“Third Act is for people like me — that is to say over the age of 60 — the baby boomers and the Silent Generation above them,” McKibben told Yahoo News. “It’s very clear now that young people are — not just on climate, but on other important issues like civil rights — doing what needs to be done. Older people need to not just assign the hardest problems on the planet to 17-year-olds as their homework.”

McKibben has spent the majority of his life defending the environment. He began his career as a writer for the New Yorker magazine and as an author of books such as “The End of Nature,” one of the first popular books about climate change. In 2008, McKibben and a group of students from Middlebury College, where he teaches as a distinguished scholar, founded 350.org, a group that would go on to play a prominent role in efforts to stop climate change, including organizing the massive 2014 “People’s Climate March” in New York City.

But McKibben is relatively atypical for a climate change activist in at least one way: He’s a baby boomer. And while boomers are stereotyped as ex-hippies who fetishize organic produce, they are on average more politically conservative than younger Americans and they are less likely to rate climate change as a top concern or engage in activism to address it.

Urging governments, universities, corporations and other powerful institutions to change their ways in the face of climate change has become an increasingly common focus of activism in recent years, but as anyone at the recent large protests surrounding the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland can tell you, they tend to share a common trait — the crowds skew young, often very young.

That’s a problem for the climate movement, since older Americans have the most money, free time and political influence to contribute.

350.org's co-founder Bill McKibben at an event at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. (Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns via Getty Images)

McKibben and his partners hope to get people who may have marched for civil rights or against the Vietnam War to reengage in the activism of their youth and to join the millennial generation and Gen Z in their effort to prevent catastrophic climate change. The other main initial area of focus will be defending voting rights, from Republican-led efforts to make voting more difficult such as rollbacks of mail-in voting.

Windwood told Yahoo News that they chose those two seemingly disparate causes because both are key civil rights issues, because both the negative effects of climate change and voter disenfranchisement fall very disproportionately on people of color. “What weaves these two together… is racial equity and justice,” she said. “We will always be asking that question: how does race, nationality, play out here?”

Polls show that millennials and members of Gen Z — roughly speaking, that would be Americans born since 1980 — are the most likely to say that climate change should be a top concern for the government. But voter turnout goes up with age. In last year’s presidential election, the U.S. Census Bureau reported, “Voter turnout was highest among those ages 65 to 74 at 76.0%, while the percentage was lowest among those ages 18 to 24, at 51.4%.”

Wealth is even more skewed by age. In December 2020, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reported, the year before that households headed by 25- to 35-year-olds had $24,000 in median wealth, compared to $269,000 among families ages 65 to 75.

So, McKibben reasons, to really move powerful institutions to confront climate change, older people must get involved. “[Older people] need to start taking real responsibility, in part because we caused the problems and in part because they can’t be solved without us,” he said. “They vote in such large numbers and they control such an absurd percentage of the nation’s financial assets.”

Activists lead with a float while taking part in the People's Climate March through Midtown, New York City. Sept. 21, 2014. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)

“I didn’t know that our generation — and I’m a boomer — is really longing for a way to contribute, and there’s a lot of excitement out there,” Windwood said.

“I figured we might be a little sleepy, or tired, or ready to get our golf shoes on for those that could afford that,” she said. “But, within days of Bill just casually mentioning it in one of his articles, there were like 300-400 people [who] just signed up within hours. And I think it took us all by surprise.”

The name “Third Act” is drawn from the idea that people who came of age in the 1960s and ’70s had a revolutionary first act in their youth, and that after a more materialistic and inward-looking second act, a return to pressing for social change will be their next one.

“This is potentially a very interesting generation, and its first act was witness to or participated in, profound cultural, social, political transformations: the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the first Earth Day,” McKibben said. “Second act relies perhaps somewhat more committed to consumerism than citizenship.”

“So we emerge into our third act with plenty of resources, about 70 percent of the financial assets in the country belong to baby boomers or the Silent Generation,” he continued. “We emerge with lots of skills and we emerge with grandkids, and ready to try and change that legacy, so that we’re not the first generations that leave the world in a much worse place than we found it.”

McKibben, center right, marches with thousands to the White House urging then-President Barack Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. Feb. 17, 2013. (Ken Cedeno/Corbis via Getty Images)

To reach those “experienced Americans,” as McKibben calls them in the group’s promotional video, they have enlisted the support of well-known figures such as actress Jane Fonda and TV producer Norman Lear. Of course, Fonda and Lear have always been engaged in progressive activism, and it remains to be seen whether Third Act will actually inspire previously disengaged seniors, or just provide another outlet for those already inclined to get involved.

But even just deploying those more activist seniors could have a significant effect. Watching the still incomplete struggle in Congress to pass President Biden’s Build Back Better proposal that would invest in clean energy, and the unsatisfying outcome at the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference, McKibben is convinced that climate activism needs to move from the political system to choking off the money supply to the fossil fuel industry.

“The youth at Fridays for the Future coalition were calling on the banks to stop lending to the fossil fuel industry and doing demonstrations outside a bunch of branches, and they say they’re gonna be ramping this up in the year ahead,” McKibben said, referring to the youth climate movement co-founded by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg. “Well, we were very eager to get out there in the street and support them, because if you’re a banker and you look out and you see a crowd of 19-year-olds, that’s a threat in one way. You want these kids taking out your credit card … you want them coming to work at your bank. You don’t want a bad name among 19-year-olds. But if they look out and see a bunch of 69-year-olds, that’s a different kind of threat. They know whose money is in their vault.”

Interfaith love a risk amid India's Hindu nationalist surge















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India Interfaith LoveNazima Shaikh, mother of Arbaz Mullah weeps as she speaks to the Associated Press at her home in Belagavi, India, Oct. 6, 2021. Arbaz Mullah was a Muslim man in love with a Hindu woman. But the romance so angered the woman’s family that — according to police — they hired members of a hard-line Hindu group to murder him. It's a grim illustration of the risks facing interfaith couples as Hindu nationalism surges in India. 

AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi

SHEIKH SAALIQ
Sun, November 28, 2021, 

BELAGAVI, India (AP) — Arbaz Mullah’s love story began, as romances often do, when he first laid eyes on the woman of his dreams, Shweta Kumbhar.

Over nearly three years, their courtship in many ways resembled that of any other couple: They went on dates and to movies, snapped selfies, frequented public parks, made each other promises to get married. But those secret vows would never be fulfilled.

The romance so angered relatives of Kumbhar, a Hindu, that they allegedly hired members of a hard-line Hindu nationalist group to kill 24-year-old Mullah, who was Muslim.

They did exactly that, according to police. On Sept. 28, his bloodied and dismembered body was found on a stretch of railroad tracks.

While interfaith unions between Hindus and Muslims are rare in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, and other Hindu nationalists have forcefully decried what they call “love jihad.” The discredited conspiracy theory holds that supposedly predatory Muslim men deceive women to coerce them into changing their religion, with the ultimate aim of establishing domination in the majority-Hindu nation.

The “love jihad” issue has pitted the BJP against secular activists who warn it undermines constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and puts Muslims in the crosshairs of hard-line Hindu nationalists, emboldened by a prime minister who has mostly stayed mum about rising attacks on Muslims since he was first elected in 2014.

“This conspiracy theory demonizes the Muslim as the other and creates victimhood and fears in the Hindus that India is going to be converted into a Muslim country,” said Mohan Rao, a retired professor of social sciences at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University who has researched interfaith marriages. “It’s absurd.”

Gopal Krishna Agarwal, a BJP spokesman, said the party has no objection in principle to interfaith marriages, which are legal, but suggested that concerns about “love jihad” are valid.

“BJP is not completely against interfaith marriages. Basically, it is an individual choice,” Agarwal said. “But to lure somebody through financial means, or some coercion, or some sort of motive to convert, that is not acceptable.”

India’s National Investigation Agency and some court rulings have rejected the “love jihad” theory as baseless. Census data show the country’s religious mix has been stable since 1951, and India remains predominantly Hindu with Muslims making up about 14% of its nearly 1.4 billion people.

Nonetheless, rights groups say violence against interfaith couples has increased in recent years, perpetrated by hard-line Hindu nationalists out to stop such relationships. Hundreds of Muslim men have been assaulted, and many couples have been forced to go into hiding. Some have been killed.

It was against that backdrop of fear that Mullah and Kumbhar began dating in 2018 in the city of Belagavi, in the southern state of Karnataka.

They hit it off instantly. But soon their conservative neighborhood was abuzz with gossip about a romance between a Hindu woman and Muslim man.

Mullah’s mother, Nazima Shaikh, was worried. She was all too familiar with the frequent news stories about interfaith couples being targeted in Karnataka, which is governed by Modi’s party.

“I was unsettled because I knew how it could end,” Shaikh said.

She tried to persuade Mullah to end the relationship, but he refused. Their love was too great, and he was determined.

Meanwhile Kumbhar’s family was aghast. Shaikh said she appealed to them to give the relationship their blessing but was told that “they will kill or get killed but won’t let their daughter marry my son.”

Soon, Mullah began receiving threatening calls. First they came from Kumbhar’s family, then from members of the hard-line Hindu nationalist group Sri Ram Sena Hindustan, or Lord Ram’s Army in India. They demanded money and for Mullah to break up with Kumbhar.

Kumbhar’s parents also sought to stop her from seeing him, so the couple began meeting clandestinely in faraway towns and in fields in the countryside, according to friends.

When the threats grew, Mullah reluctantly agreed to end the relationship after being told it would mean he would no longer be bothered. But the couple continued to correspond in secret — and her family was incensed when they found out. It wasn’t long before he was summoned to meet again with the members of Sri Ram Sena Hindustan.

Late that night the phone rang at Shaikh’s home.

“Life would never be the same,” she said.

Investigators say that at the meeting, Sri Ram Sena Hindustan members bludgeoned Mullah with clubs and decapitated him using a knife. They then allegedly placed his body on the railroad tracks to try to make it look like he died when a train ran over him.

Ten people were soon arrested, though formal charges have yet to be brought. They include Kumbhar’s parents, who according to senior investigator Laxman Nimbargi have confessed to paying the killers.

The Associated Press was unable to speak with Kumbhar. After a brief time in police custody, she is now staying with relatives who declined to make her available or even say where she is.

Sri Ram Sena Hindustan denied that its members killed Mullah and said the group is being targeted for “working for the benefit of Hindus.”

Its leader, Ramakant Konduskar, who calls himself a foot soldier in the battle to save Hinduism, said he is not against any religion but people should marry within their own. He considers “love jihad” a threat to society.

“Our Hindu culture is thousands of years old,” he said, “and we should preserve it and value it.”

A 2020 Pew Research Center study found that roughly two-thirds of Hindus in India want to prevent their own from marrying outside the faith. An even larger share of Muslims, nearly 80%, said they favored preventing interreligious marriages.

Some jurisdictions governed by Modi’s party have begun trying to codify that sentiment into law.

Last year lawmakers in Uttar Pradesh, a state headed by Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath, passed India’s first “love jihad” bill, requiring couples from different religions to provide two months’ notice to an official before getting married. The legislation applies to all interfaith marriages but primarily affects Muslims as Islam requires a non-Muslim to convert in order to sanctify the union.

Under the law it’s up to the official to determine whether a conversion came about through compulsion, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Because authorities can make couples’ names public during the process, hard-liners have sometimes intervened to pressure women’s families to bring charges of forced conversion.

Experts say proving the conversion is forced is not easy unless the woman acknowledges it because she invariably signs a statement before marriage saying she is willing.

So far nearly 100 people have been arrested under the law, though only a few have been convicted. Three other states governed by the BJP have introduced similar measures.

Critics say the bills violate the constitutional right to privacy. They also view the laws as deeply patriarchal in that they target Hindu women, portrayed as hapless victims of Muslim men.

“Women are not assets,” said Renu Mishra, a lawyer and women’s rights activist in Uttar Pradesh. “They can make their own decisions, and no one has the right to tell them whom to love and whom not to love.”

Others worry the laws could further widen religious fault lines and accuse the BJP of stoking imaginary fears.

“What the love jihad theory does quite successfully is to introduce demographic anxieties, which is a politically potent weapon,” said Rao, the retired professor.

Couples in major cities such as New Delhi and Mumbai are increasingly likely to eschew traditional norms such as arranged marriages and choose life partners irrespective of religion. Some liberal activists, most of them Hindus, have formed social and legal aid groups for interfaith couples and celebrate their stories on social media.

But in Belagavi, a relatively small city, such resources and support are lacking. Karnataka state has recently seen a rise in anti-Muslim attacks, exacerbating fears among the community.

In that environment, Mullah felt he had nowhere to turn, according to those close to him.

“Loving somebody is not a crime. It just happens. Nobody can plan it,” said Hyder Khan, one of his friends. “But it is very difficult in these times to be a Muslim and to fall in love with someone from another religion.”

Another friend, Muzaffar Tinwal, recalled speeding to the scene on his motorcycle after learning of the killing. Taking it in, he said, his “mind stopped working.”

Mullah’s decapitated body lay on the ground, hands lashed together tightly behind the back, his head was at the edge of the railroad tracks and his severed legs were scattered about.

It was Tinwal who phoned Shaikh with the news that night. The next morning, police called her to identify the body.

“My son made a terrible mistake of loving a Hindu woman,” Shaikh said on a recent afternoon at her modest home in a congested neighborhood where webs of electrical wires crisscross the streets. She paused, searching for the right words, before continuing, “Is this what you get for loving someone?”

___

Associated Press journalists Shonal Ganguly, Aijaz Rahi and Chonchui Ngashangva contributed to this report.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/10/hinduism-is-fascism.html?spref=bl

America is not the leader of the free world if it cannot help Europe's refugees| Opinion

Siddique Malik
Mon, November 29, 2021

It’s America’s duty to spearhead a solution to an acute humanitarian crisis that has struck Europe, not just because America’s inaction over an earlier related event is a reason for the problem’s emergence, but also because America owes it to its moral leadership. America’s failure to act would be tantamount to relinquishing that leadership.

The crisis I am talking about is the refugee crisis at the Belarusian-Polish border. Gut-wrenching pictures of helpless refugees, including small children, gathered against barbed wires are painful reminders of little children being snatched from the arms of their parents and then locked up in cages and horse-mounted American border guards whipping fellow human beings at the US-Mexico border. Humanity must end its callousness towards the Almighty’s helpless creations whose only crime is to run from tyranny and misery. And America must provide political and moral leadership on that much-needed change of heart.

November 23, 2021: A migrant holds his child as he waits to get meal during a snowfall outside a logistics center at the checkpoint "Kuznitsa" at the Belarus-Poland border near Grodno, Belarus. Belarusian authorities say they have helped more than 100 migrants leave the country on Monday and more are prepared to leave Tuesday, a statement that comes after almost two weeks tensions at on the Belarus' border with Poland, where hundreds of migrants remain stuck.

Positioned behind the refugees are Belarusian border guards who let the incoming refugees join the stranded group. But until recently, Belarus was not letting anyone from the group retreat back into Belarus. On the other side of the barbed wires, Polish border guards are enforcing a heartless policy of their government to deny refugees entry into Poland and hearings of their asylum applications that, under the international law, constitute Poland’s and the European Union’s duty.

The result is a terrible humanitarian crisis. People are stranded in the open air in bitter European winter. They have no access to food, water, medicines and other basic necessities of life. The other day, the refugees noticed a young man among them was motionless. When they checked him, they realized he had frozen to death overnight.

Poland is a member of the European Union, but it, along with another member, Hungary, has been locked in an ongoing battle with the E.U. over those two countries’ lackadaisical attitude towards judicial independence and freedom of speech. The E.U. wants all its members to follow its basic standards on those subjects. But that’s hypocritical. When it comes to human rights of the above-mentioned refugees, E.U’s silence over Polish policy of denying them due process is nothing but criminal. That heightens the urgency for the United States to fill the leadership vacuum on the matter.

The crisis was created by Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator. It was his attempt to get back at the E.U. that imposed sanctions on his thuggish regime for rigging the 2020 elections that his opponent, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, won. But Lukashenko reacted to the election results the way dictators generally do. He changed the election results, refused to relinquish power, and threatened Tikhanovskaya and her children. She, along with her children, fled to neighboring Lithuania.

A movement by the Belarusian people to force Lukashenko to accept the genuine election results ensued. Last May, Lukashenko committed an act of air piracy by forcing a Ryanair jet overflying Belarus – Ryanair is based in Ireland, another EU member – to land in Belarus and then arresting an opposition activist who was on board that jet.

Now, Lukashenko’s embassies in and around various strife-ridden countries – Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. – in cahoots with human smugglers, are enticing people to attempt to enter the E.U. Once those misguided and exploited people arrive in Belarus, buses transport them to the Polish border. That is Lukashenko’s way of getting even with the E.U.

America can take a two-pronged approach to the situation, and it must.

America has always taken acts of air piracy very seriously. In 1992, after then-Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, was caught red-handed for his role in attacking international airliners, America moved the United Nations Security Council to impose an air embargo on Libya that brought Gaddafi to his knees. I am surprised, neither E.U. nor America made a similar move against Belarus after Lukashenko’s act of air piracy.

In earnest, the Russia of 1992 was very different than today’s Russia. It had just inherited veto power from the Soviet Union that collapsed in December 1991. At the time of the Security Council vote over Gaddafi’s criminal behavior, Russia was led by its first post-Soviet president, Boris Yelstin, who was pro-West.

Vladimir Putin is not only not pro-West, he will do anything in his power to stymie the West. And that explains Lukashenko’s behavior. He has Putin’s support. Putin generally does not act positively until and unless encouraged by America.

Considering the vastness of the areas in which Russia needs America, I am sure, America can find a morsel to throw at Putin as a quid pro quo. I would suggest finding a morsel juicy enough for Putin to look the other way as America and E.U. seek a comprehensive solution to Lukashenko’s thuggery and force him to transfer power to Tikhanovskaya. That would be a win-win-win situation. It would resolve the refugee issue, restore democracy in Belarus and send a shiver down the spine of dictators everywhere.

More: The US should welcome Haitian refugees, their hardships go back centuries

If America does not have even that much leeway over Russia, that means America’s foreign policy options are very limited and basically subject to Putin’s whims. In that situation, the talk of being the leader of the free world is just nonsense. If America cannot even help sustain democracy and support human rights in the heart of Europe, how is it going to deal with Russia’s and China’s incursions into the far corners of the world?

The above action will take time that the stranded refugees don’t have. Whether or not America has the ability and the will to take that concrete action, it must initiate the second prong of my two-pronged suggestion: President Joe Biden must immediately call the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and ask her to make Poland allow the refugees into Poland, house them in temporary shelters and start processing their asylum applications.

On November 15, the E.U. stiffened the sanctions on Belarus. Two days later, to deflect attention from its nefarious role in the crisis, Lukashenko started to allow stranded refugees to retreat back into Belarus and provide them shelter. That was in contrast to Poland firing tear gas shells and water cannons on them. Shame on E.U. for lecturing Poland and Hungary on freedom and due process! It needs a lecture itself.

Tragically, conspicuous by its absence is American action without which the situation won’t improve. A dictator is winning the war of optics while America is too busy being the leader of the free world to help those seeking freedom.

Siddique Malik is an observer of sociopolitical affairs. Find him @The SummerOf1787.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: America must help refugees or it's not the leader of the free world | Opinion

Amazon and Target play an 'outsized role' in California port congestion compared to competitors Ikea and Walmart, new study says


Hannah Towey
Mon, November 29, 2021

Walmart's primary ocean carrier, CMA CGM, pictured here, was the biggest polluter among all container ships in the report.Thomas Pallini/Insider


Amazon and Target play an 'outsized role' in California port congestion and pollution, a new study says.


95% of Target's US imports come into West Coast ports, the Ship It Zero coalition found.


The container ship backlog has contributed to high levels of pollutants, research shows.

Amazon and Target have played an "outsized role" in the congestion at California's Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, according to research released by the Ship It Zero coalition on Monday.

The report breaks down the shipping routes and carriers used by Amazon, Target, Ikea, and Walmart in order to estimate the greenhouse gas emissions released by cargo ships. Ship It Zero is a coalition of environmental and public health advocates, scientists, and shipping experts campaigning companies to "achieve zero-emissions shipping by 2030."

Compared to Ikea and Walmart, Amazon and Target favor West Coast ports over East Coast ports, with 95% of Target's US imports coming into Seattle, Long Beach, and Los Angeles, according to the study. Amazon's top shipping route goes from Shenzhen, China to Los Angeles, per the report.


Ikea has increasingly favored rail transport within its shipping routes while Walmart imports mainly flow through East Coast and Gulf ports, according to Ship It Zero.

Target and Walmart did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Target is the biggest contributor to West Coast port pollution of all the companies studied.

Ship It Zero Coalition

US imports from the four companies accounted for an estimated 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, the study found, a number that equates to the annual emissions from five coal-fired power plants. The study listed Walmart, which is the top importer of goods in the US, as the number one overseas polluter.

Walmart's primary ocean carrier, CMA CGM, was the biggest polluter among all carriers in the report.

In 2019, Ikea announced an ambitious plan for the company to become "climate positive" — meaning it would reduce more pollution than it creates — by 2030.

"Emissions from ocean shipping is an important topic for us at Ikea and we agree that it needs more focus," an Ikea spokesperson told Insider via email. "We are a big transport buyer, and we have a big responsibility to influence the ocean transport industry in a positive way."

Last year, Walmart said it will eliminate its carbon footprint by 2040. This goal does not encompass Walmart's entire supply chain, and therefore does not calculate emissions released by overseas shipping. Target's sustainability goals do take its entire supply chain into account — the company also aims to be net-zero by 2040.

Amazon has pledged to be net-zero carbon across its business by 2040, including shipping emissions, a company spokesperson told Insider. The tech giant also helped launch the First Movers Coalition to scale-up emerging technologies that are essential to transitioning the world's economy to net-zero carbon.

MORE THAN NIMBY

Green ... but maybe not clean: Nevada desert town fights to keep solar company out


Alicia Victoria Lozano
Mon, November 29, 2021, 

PAHRUMP, Nev. — Just minutes from the California border sits a sun-drenched town in Nevada that wants nothing to do with its neighbor to the west.

Located about 60 miles from Las Vegas, Pahrump was once home to the Southern Paiute Indians and didn’t install telephone service until the 1960s. Many current residents moved to the unincorporated town to get away from the traffic and pollution that plague much of California.

Residents now find themselves at odds with Candela Renewables, a San Francisco-based renewable energy company that hopes to build a large-scale solar field across some 2,300 acres.

“It seems illogical to me to destroy the environment to protect the environment,” said Pahrump resident Jeannie Cox-King, who helped organize a protest Saturday against the Rough Hat Nye County solar field. “We should keep our public lands public.”

Attendees hold signs at a rally to protest solar development in Pahrump, Nev., on Nov. 27, 2021. (Bridget Bennett for NBC News)

As climate change ravages the country with droughts, wildfires and heat waves, Nevada is making a push to become a leader in renewable energy. About 80 percent of the state is public land, much of it maintained by the Bureau of Land Management. The nearly year-round sunshine and abundance of space make it an attractive option for solar companies.

But community members and conservationists worry that green energy projects are not entirely clean and could destroy thousands of miles of untouched land. They are part of a growing chorus of people who say they support clean energy, including solar, but not at the expense of local ecosystems.

Large-scale solar fields run the risk of displacing native plant and animal life, contributing to ferocious dust storms, and disturbing fragile desert soil capable of capturing much-needed moisture from the air.

“We need to recognize that any form of energy is going to have some impacts,” said Nels Johnson, North American director for renewable energy at The Nature Conservancy. “The question is how do we try to avoid and minimize those impacts?”

Candela Renewables, a San Francisco-based renewable energy company, is hoping to build a large-scale solar field in Pahrump, Nev., which has what's known as cryptobiotic soil. Disturbing the delicate desert crust, a thin layer of bacteria-rich soil that retains water and nutrients and slows erosion, can contribute to powerful dust storms that release particles into the air. (Bridget Bennett for NBC News)More

Among those impacts is damage to the desert’s crust, a thin layer of soil on the surface that acts like a seal, trapping both carbon and nutrients underneath. Removing the crust can contribute to powerful dust storms that release particles and carbon into the air, Johnson said. Those particles can be unhealthy, especially for people with existing respiratory conditions.

Last week, a solar company was fined almost $220,000 for failing to control dust during construction and blowing some 70 tons of excess dust into the air, The Associated Press reported.

Native animal species are also at risk. Last year, a team of biologists moved 139 Mojave desert tortoises, a threatened species, off the site of the 3,000-acre Yellow Pine Solar Project 10 miles south of Pahrump. Thirty of the tortoises were killed, possibly by badgers, conservationists said. And across the border in California’s Mojave Desert, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System killed some 6,000 birds annually in 2016.

Attendees hold signs at a rally to protest solar development in Pahrump, Nev., on Nov. 27, 2021. (Bridget Bennett for NBC News)

Johnson and other conservationists say installing solar panels on pre-existing buildings or land previously developed for other uses, including abandoned mines, could mitigate some of the ecological concerns surrounding large-scale solar farms. But experts say that approach is expensive and ultimately insufficient compared to the rapidly increasing threat of climate change.

“The idea that these projects are saving us from climate change is, at the very least, questionable,” said Kevin Emmerich from the Nevada conservation group Basin and Range Watch. “We’re not really thinking about true conservation.”

A spokesperson for Candela Renewables said that although the company is in very early planning stages for the Rough Hat Nye County project, environmental and ecological concerns remain a high priority.

“We hear the Pahrump community’s concerns loud and clear. We, too, see the area we’re considering as more than a site for a clean-power facility. We appreciate that this land already supports an ecosystem, schools, trails and homes," the spokesperson said in a statement. "Candela believes that over time we can show that balance is possible."

The company estimates Rough Hat Nye County would create roughly 400 local jobs and help support the Biden administration’s goals of permitting 25 gigawatts of new solar, wind and geothermal power projects by 2025.

Dust settles after an off-road vehicle travels across federal land where the proposed Rough Hat solar project could be constructed in Pahrump, Nev., on Nov. 27, 2021. (Bridget Bennett for NBC News)

The Rough Hat Nye County solar farm project would produce 500 megawatts of electricity and a neighboring project in Clark County would produce 400 megawatts. Combined, the two projects would power more than half a million homes.

This is part of a national push away from fossil fuels amid a deepening climate emergency, caused in part by the burning of energy sources such as coal, oil and gas.

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, has set the goal of requiring 50 percent of the state’s power to come from renewable energy by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050. The state is on track to meet those goals, according to the Nevada Governor’s Office of Energy.

There are currently nine solar projects operating in the state and another five approved and pending construction, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

“Nevada has long been known for its renewable energy potential,” David Bobzien, director of the Nevada Governor's Office of Energy, said in a statement. “Any energy produced in the state is going to be renewable energy, and with abundant solar and geothermal resources and 80 percent federally-owned public lands, there is enormous potential for leveraging those resources to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector.”

Jeanne Wright looks off her property in Pahrump, Nev., on Nov. 27, 2021. Surrounding her and her neighbors is federal land where the proposed Rough Hat solar project could be constructed. (Bridget Bennett for NBC News)

Solar power could provide nearly half of America’s electricity by the middle of this century, the Biden administration said in a study released earlier this year. The study, by the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, found that meeting the administration’s climate change goals would require increasing the solar share of energy production to at least 37 percent by 2035 and then to 44 percent or more by 2050.

As of now, just 3 percent of the current national electricity supply comes from solar power.

“We are just in the early stages of a huge transformation in the way energy is produced and used. It is going to generate the biggest infrastructure development era, maybe in the history of the United States,” Johnson said.

Scale is what concerns Pahrump resident Dee Mounts, who described her community as an “old Wild West town” where deals are still made with handshakes.

At least six solar projects have been proposed in Nye County and neighboring Clark County, including two by Candela Renewables. The Yellow Pine solar farm in Pahrump Valley, developed by NextEra Energy Resources LLC, has been targeted by activists for some time, but construction is expected to start in the coming months.

A residence displays a sign opposing solar projects in Pahrump, Nev., on Nov. 27, 2021. Candela Renewables, a San Francisco-based renewable energy company, hopes to build a large-scale solar field across some 2,300 acres bordering Pahrump. (Bridget Bennett for NBC News)More

“That’s what really makes people upset,” Mounts said. “It’s going to be a town of solar instead of what we’re known for — the land and the trails.”

Barbara Callihan uses many of those trails for her Happy Hoof Beats equestrian business. A 22-year resident of Pahrump, she survived lung cancer and getting one lung removed. She spent most of the pandemic practicing social distancing and spending time outside, but now fears that if the Rough Hat solar project is approved, construction could mean blinding dust storms and valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis, an infection caused by fungus found in soil in the southwestern United States and parts of Mexico.

“I am absolutely on board for green energy, but not at the expense of the community this is being put on top of,” she said. “I don’t know if I can be happy if I’m going to be enduring a fungal infection that could kill me.”

At a recent meeting of the Pahrump Public Lands Advisory Committee, Dewey Klurfield, Candela Renewables manager of development, shared plans for the Rough Hat Nye County solar project with community members. Dozens of residents lambasted the company for encroaching on their land.

During one especially tense exchange, Nye County Commissioner Debra Strickland warned: “This is not going over well with my community.”

“We need to come to some understanding that we can’t see this in our backyard,” she added.

“I’m not a fool,” Klurfield responded. “I can read a room.”

Ancient advanced Chinese civilisation ‘was wiped out by climate change’


Rob Waugh
·Contributor
Mon, November 29, 2021

Liangzhu City in Hangzhou in China's eastern Zhejiang province

 (Photo by - / AFP) / China OUT (AFP via Getty Images)

A highly advanced Chinese civilisation referred to as "China's Venice of the Stone Age" was wiped out in a sudden collapse triggered by climate change, new research has shown.

A highly advanced culture blossomed about 5300 years ago in China’s Yangtze delta, which is considered to be one of the earliest proofs of monumental water culture.

The walled city had a complex system of navigable canals, dams and water reservoirs. This system made it possible to cultivate very large agricultural areas throughout the year.

But it collapsed abruptly, and scientists now believe it was caused by a rapid change in climate.

Christoph Spötl, head of the Quaternary Research Group at the Department of Geology at the University of Innsbruck says, "A thin layer of clay was found on the preserved ruins, which points to a possible connection between the demise of the advanced civilisation and floods of the Yangtze River or floods from the East China Sea.

“No evidence could be found for human causes such as warlike conflicts. However, no clear conclusions on the cause were possible from the mud layer itself."

Read more: Melting snow in Himalayas drives growth of green sea slime visible from space

Geologist Haiwei Zhang from Xi'an Jiaotong University in Xi'an, took samples of stalagmites from the two caves Shennong and Jiulong, which are located southwest of the excavation site.

 

Liangzhu City in Hangzhou in China's eastern Zhejiang province (AFP via Getty Images)

Christoph Spötl of Innsbruck University says, "These caves have been well explored for years. They are located in the same area affected by the Southeast Asian monsoon as the Yangtze delta and their stalagmites provide a precise insight into the time of the collapse of the Liangzhu culture, which, according to archaeological findings, happened about 4300 years ago.”

Data from the stalagmites show that between 4345 and 4324 years ago there was a period of extremely high precipitation.

Evidence for this was provided by the isotope records of carbon, which were measured at the University of Innsbruck.

The precise dating was done by uranium-thorium analyses at Xi'an Jiaotong University, whose measurement accuracy is plus or minus 30 years.

"This is amazingly precise," says the geologist. "The massive monsoon rains probably led to such severe flooding of the Yangtze and its branches that even the sophisticated dams and canals could no longer withstand these masses of water, destroying Liangzhu City and forcing people to flee."

The very humid climatic conditions continued intermittently for another 300 years, as the geologists show from the cave data.

In the history of human civilisation, this is one of the first examples of highly developed communities based on a water infrastructure. Metals, however, were still unknown in this culture.

Thousands of elaborately crafted jade burial objects were found during excavations.

Liangzhu was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019. However, the advanced civilisation of this city, which was inhabited for almost 1000 years, came to an abrupt end. Until today, it remains controversial what caused it.

First image of omicron coronavirus variant shows many more mutations in area that interacts with human cells

Vishwam Sankaran

Mon., November 29, 2021

First image of omicron coronavirus variant shows many more mutations in area that interacts with human cells


Researchers have revealed the first image of omicron, the new coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa and Botswana, which shows that it has more mutations than the currently predominant Delta variant.

The 3D image of omicron, produced and published by the Bambino Gesu hospital in Rome, reveals that the variant has many mutations concentrated in the spike (S) protein — the part of the novel coronavirus that enables it to enter human cells.

“We can clearly see that the omicron variant presents many more mutations than the delta variant, concentrated above all in one area of the protein that interacts with human cells,” the researchers said in a statement on Sunday. “This does not automatically mean that these variations are more dangerous, simply that the virus has further adapted to the human species by generating another variant.”

The scientists called for further studies to unravel if the adaptation seen in the variant is “neutral, less dangerous, or more dangerous”.

First photo of the omicron variant (B.1.1.529), SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern (Bambin Gesù)

Scientists have found about 50 mutations in omicron, 30 of which are on the S protein, and half of those in the receptor-binding domain – the part that binds to the ACE2 receptor on human cells through which the virus enters tissues.

The red dots in the image, researchers said, indicate areas with “very high variability,” while the orange ones are those with “high variability”, and the yellow ones with “medium variability.” Green dots are parts of the S protein showing low difference between the two variants, while the gray area shows portions that do not vary.

“Case numbers tripled in 3 days in South Africa to 2,828, but this is perhaps partly because of intensive monitoring, although it is possible that the transmission rate is double that of delta (R=2) and the doubling time is about 4.8 days,” Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine, Imperial College London, said in a statement on Saturday.

“South Africa is going into summer and rates of delta are very low, so hard to say if omicron competes over delta,” Dr Openshaw added.

On Friday, the World Health Organisation noted that there could be an increased risk of reinfection with the new B.1.1529 coronavirus variant, named omicron, compared to other variants of concern.

“The number of cases of this variant appears to be increasing in almost all provinces in South Africa,” the WHO noted in a statement on Friday. “In recent weeks, infections have increased steeply, coinciding with the detection of B.1.1.529 variant.”

While the number of people testing positive has risen in areas of South Africa affected by this variant, the WHO says further studies are underway to understand if the surge in cases is because of omicron or other factors.

The WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution also highlighted that it is still unclear whether infection with omicron causes more severe disease compared to infections with other variants.

“While preliminary data suggests that there are increasing rates of hospitalisation in South Africa, this may be due to increasing overall numbers of people becoming infected, rather than a result of a specific infection with omicron,” the experts noted in a statement on Sunday.

They urged all countries to enhance surveillance and sequencing efforts to better understand circulating variants of the novel coronavirus, and submit complete genome sequences and associated metadata to a publicly available database, such as GISAID.

The WHO and several health experts across the world have called for increasing global vaccine equity to ensure that new variants of concern do not emerge.

“It is very likely that current vaccines will protect against severe disease with omicron as they do for all the previously identified virus variants. But this does highlight the need to remain vigilant – the pandemic is not over,” Lawrence Young, virologist and professor of molecular oncology at Warwick Medical School, said.

THIRD WORLD USA

Millions of Americans struggle to pay their water bills – here's how a national water aid program could work


Joseph Cook, Associate Professor of Economic Sciences, Washington State University
Mon, November 29, 2021

Water: an increasingly expensive necessity. iStock via Getty Images

Running water and indoor plumbing are so central to modern life that most Americans take them from granted. But these services aren’t free, and millions struggle to afford them. A 2019 survey found that U.S. households in the bottom fifth of the economy spent 12.4% of their disposable income on water and sewer services. News reports suggest that for low-income households, this burden has increased during the pandemic.

Since 1981, the federal government has helped low-income households with their energy costs through the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. But there had not been a national water aid program until Congress created a temporary Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program as part of the COVID-19 response. Now the House-passed Build Back Better Act includes US$225 million for grants to states and tribes to help reduce the cost of water services for low-income households.

As an economist specializing in environmental and natural resource issues, I’m encouraged to see this idea gaining support. But I also know from analyzing efforts at the local level that these programs may be ineffective if they aren’t well designed. I believe the U.S. can learn lessons from Chile, which has run an effective national water assistance program for 30 years.

Flaws in US local aid programs

I have studied water and sewer customer assistance programs around the world and developed a database of examples run by U.S. utilities in cities including Seattle, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Although there are hundreds of these programs, three major problems undercut their effectiveness.

First, because utilities have to fund their assistance programs from their own budgets, they typically charge “non-poor” customers higher rates and use those payments to subsidize low-income customers. State regulations often forbid this, forcing utilities in those states to rely on voluntary donation programs to fund assistance.

Second, in areas with high poverty, too many customers need help and there are not enough non-poor customers to foot the bill.

Third, smaller and less well-funded utilities often do not have administrative capacity or expertise to design and implement their own customer assistance programs.
These challenges have spurred politicians and policy experts to call for a federal program – a step that the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Drinking Water Advisory Council recommended back in 2003.

Learning from Chile’s experience

Agencies such as the World Bank often cite Chile’s water aid program as a model. Here’s how it works:

The program aims to ensure that households don’t pay more than 3% of their income for receiving a quantity of water to meet their essential needs. There is no consensus among experts on what this “lifeline” quantity of water should be, but Chile sets it at 15 cubic meters per month – about 4,000 gallons.

Eligible customers apply to their city government every three years. Once enrolled, they immediately see reductions in their bills, based on their poverty levels, for that first 15 cubic meters of water use. Each month, the water utility bills the city for subsidies it has provided to poor customers.

If households use more than 15 cubic meters of water per month, they pay unsubsidized prices for whatever they use above that level. This gives everyone an incentive to fix leaky pipes and appliances and conserve water. Regulators who set water prices are not involved in running the subsidy system or determining subsidy levels.

In the late 1990s, Chile launched a major expansion of its sewage treatment plants. Water utilities raised their rates by 34% to 142% between 1998 and 2015 to pay for this initiative. Because these rate increases outpaced growth in income, subsidies grew by 54% over the same time period. The takeaway: Chile found a way to pay for water and sewer investment while still protecting the poor.

How a US water aid program might work

If the U.S. creates a national water aid program, key questions will include who is eligible and how much water is an “essential” quantity for households. The EPA estimates that an average U.S. household uses approximately 9,000 gallons per month, but one-third of this is for gardens and lawns. Reliable national data on U.S. household water usage is nearly nonexistent, and there is no estimate of how much water low-income households use.

Program managers would need to collect information on utility water and sewer pricing structures, put it in a database and couple it with census data to estimate the number of eligible households in each state.

To estimate what a program like Chile’s might cost here, my team at Washington State University compiled a database of water and sewer rates as of December 2019. We included all U.S. cities with populations over 100,000, at least two cities per state, and made assumptions about rates for smaller cities and towns.

We estimate that a program covering the full cost of 4,500 gallons of water per month for households at or below the poverty line would cost approximately $11.2 billion annually if 70% of eligible households participate. In total, we estimate that 11.8 million households would receive an average subsidy of $67 per month.

Our project website includes a calculator tool to estimate the annual federal cost based on different assumptions about eligibility, participation, the “essential” water quantity and the percentage discount on water bills.

Another approach: Add money to SNAP payments

Public policy scholar Manny Teodoro has suggested another way to deliver water aid: topping up support that people receive to buy healthy food through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Louisiana Purchase card, issued by the state the SNAP recipients.

This idea builds on a well-known program with a long track record. Low-income households would not have to file new paperwork to receive benefits. Delivering water aid this way could help renters, whose water costs often are rolled into their rent, and rural residents who use well water and have to pay for water treatment and maintenance costs out of pocket.

It would place less of an administrative burden on the large number of small U.S. water systems serving fewer than 500 people. And it could be quickly implemented by adding water providers as approved vendors for electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card payments.

Eligibility for SNAP is set at 138% of the poverty line, and an estimated 84% of eligible households participate. With these parameters, we estimate that a program covering 100% of the cost of 4,500 gallons of water per month would cost $17 billion annually. The main weakness of this approach is that water and sewer rates vary across the country, so it risks providing too much or too little assistance to low-income households depending on where they live.

Getting water prices right for everyone

Access to a safe and affordable water supply and sewer services is codified in the U.N.‘s Human Right to Water and Sanitation. The U.S. is a wealthy country, and my research group’s estimates show that the cost of a targeted program to help the poor pay their bills is reasonable.

Without federal funding, poor and marginalized households will continue to fall behind on their bills and experience the indignity and health risks of having their water turned off.

At the same time, the U.S. needs to make major investments in its water and sewer infrastructure and manage the effects of drought and climate change. Economists broadly agree that water should be more expensive in many places to give local governments and ratepayers incentive to conserve and plan for a water-scarce future. I believe Chile’s experience shows how a national program can preserve this signal while directing most of its water sector subsidies toward protecting the poor.

Research Assistant Nick Kraabel assisted in estimating the nationwide costs discussed in this article.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Joseph Cook, Washington State University.