Boom time for marijuana sales in Illinois, as industry expands with new products — but minority businesses get left behind

Robert McCoppin, Chicago Tribune
Sat, January 1, 2022,

While 2021 was a boom time for legal marijuana sales in Illinois, it was another wasted year for minority entrepreneurs trying to break into the business, and a mixed experience for customers.

Recreational cannabis retail sales continued to climb steadily this year, to more than $1.2 billion, roughly an 85% increase from 2020 through November of this year alone. The medical cannabis program reached 136,000 active patients, who spent another $362 million. The sales generated more than $300 million in tax revenue in fiscal year 2021 — more than from alcohol.

But after new applicants waited through more than a year of delays for business licenses, judges prevented them from opening dispensaries while litigation dragged on, with no solution in sight.

The year saw many new twists in the cannabis field. Sales took off for hemp-derived Delta-8 THC, called “weed light,” despite existing in a legal gray area. Huge multistate companies gobbled up independent dispensaries and expanded dramatically. In one constant, prices of marijuana in Illinois remained among the highest in the nation.

While cannabis remains illegal under federal law, proposals to decriminalize it or let banks finance it have been slowly gaining some support among lawmakers. The year also ushered in a vast array of new products and consumer trends. Here are a few reasons why 2021 was a great year for big cannabis operators in Illinois, but frustrating for newcomers.

Consolidation

Several cannabis companies founded and headquartered in Chicago have become among the largest operators in the nation, while out-of-state operators have come into Illinois, by opening new facilities or buying up competitors. Cresco Labs and Curaleaf each have grown to the maximum 10 retail sites in Illinois; PharmaCann has eight; Ascend Wellness, seven; Green Thumb Industries lists nine stores on its website; nuEra has six, and Zen Leaf operates 10.

Together, that means seven companies control 60 of the 110 weed stores in the state.

The number of growers is even more limited. A mere 18 companies are allowed to grow cannabis — compared with hundreds of companies that do so in Western states like Oregon or California, where they have the opposite problem of oversupply to the illegal market.

Licensed growers in Illinois say they support new entrants to the market by helping with the complicated application process, by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars each in state fees to help fund startups and for seed projects to help them get started. PharmaCann promised $600,000 to help fund scholarships and build Oakton Community College’s new cannabis cultivation laboratory. Cresco Labs created its new Illinois Cannabis Education Center in Chicago, which offers a mock dispensary and training facility for aspiring workers and owners.

By state law, there was supposed to be a slew of new businesses licensed last year, with favoritism toward poor, largely minority areas with high rates of cannabis arrests. But after a series of delays, applicants complained that consultant KPMG had scored applications unfairly, resulting in wealthy, white, politically connected winners.

To address the complaints and associated lawsuits, state lawmakers authorized 185 new dispensary licenses. But Cook County Judge Moshe Jacobius ordered that those licenses not be awarded while he wades through lawsuits challenging the process.

The state did award 40 new craft grower licenses plus infuser and transporter licenses, but Cook County Judge Neil Cohen forbade the issuance of up to 60 new craft grower licenses due this year, while the courts try to resolve litigation from applicants who were disqualified.

None of this slowed down the existing market. Companies that had been granted licenses to open medical marijuana dispensaries since 2015 were allowed to also sell recreational weed, and to expand to second locations. Because of its artificially constrained market, Illinois still has among the highest-priced weed in the country.

Wholesale flower prices reached nearly $4,000 per pound, analyst Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. estimated — three times the U.S. average pegged by price tracking company Cannabis Benchmarks. With customers paying $19 per gram for retail flower, Cantor Fitzgerald estimated average annual sales per store at nearly $17 million.
Moldy weed worries

A big part of the demand — $1 out of every $3 spent — is from out of state, since Illinois is surrounded by states that don’t allow recreational sales. Michigan does have adult use sales, but was hit by a large public recall of cannabis that had high levels of mold or other contaminants, with stores required to post notices alerting customers for a month after sales.

Illinois, in contrast, issued a recall and quarantine this year, but kept it quiet. In May, the state Department of Financial and Professional Regulation sent dispensaries notice of a voluntary recall of Verano’s Mag Landrace flower due to possible mold contamination. The department investigated the issue, but said it is prohibited by the state cannabis law from disclosing the results.

In addition, a former production supervisor for PharmaCann, William Sanford, filed suit claiming that he was fired for repeatedly reporting moldy cannabis for removal after it had passed lab tests. The tests only sample a small part of each crop, so mold may grow undetected and may sicken those who eat it or inhale its spores. Sanford said he was told to stop reporting mold, but continued to do so, and was terminated in July.

PharmaCann acknowledged that mold is a factor with any agricultural product, but is tightly controlled. By state law, all legal cannabis products must undergo lab tests to pass strict state limits on mold, pesticides, metals and other contaminants. If they fail, they may be treated with solvents for use in edibles, vapes and other products, but must be tested again to meet safety requirements. Options for sterilizing cannabis include irradiation or ozone gas, as used in the food industry.

Microdosing

Customers may have noticed a dizzying variety of new products this year. One growing trend was in the area of low-dose edibles, for consumers to better control their experience. Rather than the 10 milligrams of THC, the main component that gets users high, which was previously suggested as a serving size, mints and gummies now often contain 5 or 3 mg, often with matching cannabidiol, or CBD, for users who want to relax without getting too high or paranoid.

One study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Chicago found that low levels of THC reduced stress, while slightly higher doses that produced a mild high actually increased anxiety.

And a survey by BDS Analytics Report found that 43% of edibles customers prefer low-dose products, and half of customers chose products based on the amount of CBD, which is thought to have a moderating effect on THC.

Beverages are also growing in popularity, offering moderate doses of THC and the quick onset of effects without the smoke. For hardcore users, there are still plenty of high-powered flower, vapes and concentrates approaching 90% THC.

For those who don’t like the high prices and taxes of licensed weed, this year saw the rise of Delta-8 THC. It’s typically said to be derived from hemp, and provides similar, if milder, effects as the traditional Delta-9 THC found in pot. It’s often sold in gas stations or vape shops. A proposal to outlaw such knockoff cannabinoids did not pass in Springfield this year, but may be reconsidered in the spring session.

Cannabis suppliers continue to compete for customers through word-of-mouth and the occasional competition. Most recently, the High Times Cannabis Cup named its winners for 2021, as judged by public participants.

Wait till next year

Looking ahead to 2022, state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Chicago Democrat, has proposed legislation to expand the new craft growers licenses from 5,000 square feet to 14,000 square feet or more. That would still be a far cry from the 210,000 square feet of canopy that existing growers are allowed, but would help business owners get more financing based on their ability to produce more revenue.

Also, in light of the courts’ de facto lockout of new minority owners, a group called Ex-Cons for Community & Social Change held protests this year, calling for consumers to support their “local weed man,” or illegal dealers.

Found Tyrone Muhammad of Englewood, who served 21 years in prison for murder and now says he’s trying to rebuild his community, called for creation of a peddler’s license, so people without the money to open a bricks-and-mortar facility can take part in the cannabis industry. He believes licensing would reduce the violence that accompanies illegal drug dealing.

Muhammad is also pushing to change state law to drop the ban on former felons working in the field. As it stands, only those with low-level convictions can get expungements and get licensed.

“It’s still a farce,” he said. “In any other industry, as an ex-con, I can work. But I can’t work in the cannabis space.”

rmccoppin@chicagotribune.com

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
Half a Dozen of India’s Crypto Exchanges Searched After Alleged Rupee 700M Tax Evasion Detected: Sources



Amitoj Singh
Sat, January 1, 2022

India’s tax authorities have conducted searches at some of India’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges including CoinSwitch Kuber, CoinDCX, BuyUCoin and Unocoin after what they deemed tax evasion of Rs 40.5 crore (400 million INR or approximately $6 million) was detected at cryptocurrency exchange WazirX, according to sources with direct knowledge of the searches.

On Dec. 30, a team of officers from CGST (Goods & Services Tax and Central Excise) Mumbai East Zone, tax authorities in India’s financial capital, tweeted this:

On Dec. 31, the tax authority revealed details in a statement saying “the case is a part of the special anti-tax evasion drive, which relies on intensive data mining and data analytics, initiated by the CGST Mumbai Zone.”

The agency also warned that it “will cover all the cryptocurrency exchanges falling in Mumbai zone and will also intensify this drive in the coming days.”

The Binance-owned WazirX blamed a lack of clarity in regulation for the matter, saying it’s “been diligently paying tens of crores worth of GST every month.”

The exchange added: “There was an ambiguity in the interpretation of one of the components which led to a different calculation of GST paid. However, we voluntarily paid additional GST in order to be cooperative and compliant. There was and is no intention to evade tax. That being said, we strongly believe that regulatory clarity is the need of the hour for the Indian crypto industry.”

Following the WazirX search, Mumbai’s Tax authority, along with DGGI, the national law enforcement agency under the Ministry of Finance responsible for fighting tax evasion in India, searched the offices of about six cryptocurrency service providers on Saturday.

The DGGI recovered Rs 30 crore (approximately $4 million) worth of funds that resulted from alleged tax evasion during the crackdown on the cryptocurrency exchanges.

More than 50 officers conducted the searches and the exchanges cooperated, the sources told CoinDesk.

K-State studies use of equipment to crush seeds of herbicide-resistant weeds


Tim Carpenter
Sat, January 1, 2022

Researchers at Kansas State University are participating in a study to determine whether technology developed in Australia could be an effective deterrent in Midwest crop fields to growth of pigweeds, feral ryegrass and other unwanted plants resistant to herbicides.

Vipan Kumar, a Kansas State weed scientist at the agricultural research center in Hays, said collaboration with Iowa State University and University of Arkansas would shed light on potential of deploying rolling cage mills on the back of combines during harvest. The mills pulverize invasive weed seeds in the field so they won’t be viable the next year.

“We conducted a preliminary test this fall in a grower’s field, and the seed crusher did a decent job of crushing Palmer amaranth seeds in a milo field,” he said. “I’m hoping that this will be a good fit for wheat and soybean folks, as well, and that they can make good use of it in terms of integrated weed management.”

Farmers in Kansas and other Midwest states routinely battle Palmer amaranth and other pigweeds, feral ryegrass and kochia, which have developed resistance to herbicides. The rising cost of farm chemicals to prevent growth of yield-damaging weeds has researchers and producers searching for alternatives.

Harvest Weed Seed Control, or HWSC, was initially advanced in Australia, where a grower built a rolling cage mill out of frustration with other weed control methods. The roller cages are manufactured in Canada and Australia. The units cost about $75,000 and require a minimum of 80 horsepower machinery to operate.

Kumar anticipates the price of the systems would decline as the technology evolved and use increased among farmers. The research at Kansas State will take into consideration cost of equipment, potential yield increases and reduction in reliance on herbicides.

“Over the next couple of years, we will create data from Kansas fields,” Kumar said. “We already have data from Iowa, where we found that this system destroys more than 90% of water hemp seed.”

He said there would be no silver bullet to the problem of chemical-resistant weeds in fields of soybeans, milo or wheat.

“You won’t resolve all your problems with this method, but it can play a critical role in integrated weed management if you combine it with other methods of weed control,” he said.

This story was produced by the Kansas Reflector, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization covering state government, politics and policy.

Here's why the McAuliffe Center says we should all watch the Webb telescope closely


Lillian Eden, MetroWest Daily News
Sun, January 2, 2022, 

Aiming to look to galaxies far, far away, the James Webb Space Telescope has left Earth from Kourou, French Guiana, on a journey of nearly a million miles.

Its mission is simple: science in space that’s never been done before. The telescope will be able to look at the first galaxies of the universe during their infancies and see if planets orbiting other stars have indications of life, including oxygen, water and atmospheres.

That’s according to Irene Porro, director of the Christa Corrigan McAuliffe Center for Integrated Science Learning in Framingham.


Although the launch has been frequently delayed, the Christmas morning launch went off without a hitch and can be streamed on NASA’s website.

Irene Porro

“This is the mission of the century,” Porro said ahead of the launch. “I truly believe that what we will learn with Webb will affect the life of almost everyone on planet Earth. Not because we all of a sudden become astronomers, no, it’s a kind of insight, perspective, a new view on the universe — literally — and it’s accessible to everyone.”
What makes the Webb Telescope unique?

“Often, James Webb is being referred to as a followup to Hubble, but in a way, I would prefer to think about it as a compliment,” Porro said. “It’s not going to do the same kind of science, it’s going to do science that the Hubble couldn’t do.”

The main differences between the two telescopes are size, the type of light they will detect and where the JWST will be — namely, 930,000 miles away at a Lagrange Point, where the pull from both the Earth and the sun will help keep the telescope in orbit.

The JWST is quite a bit larger than the Hubble Space Telescope, which went in to low orbit around Earth in 1990. The Hubble is about as long as one of the letters of the Hollywood sign in California, and it’s only 14 feet wide. Fully deployed, the JWST will have a sun shield about the size of a tennis court attached to a collection of hexagonal mirrors more than 20 feet wide.

The JWST will spend some of its time looking at the same objects the Hubble Space Telescope, viewing them in infrared as opposed to visible light. When you look at someone, you are able to do that by seeing visible light — what the Hubble telescope can observe. But if you look at someone through an infrared camera, you can still see the person, but their shape is defined by temperature — which parts are warmer or cooler.

“If I were eating some ice cream, you literally would see ice cream going down my esophagus,” Porro explained. “Using different parts of the spectrum of light, we’ll see different characteristics of an object. Webb will be able to look at the same objects Hubble looked at and see different phenomena that Hubble couldn’t see.”

It will take about a month for the JWST to reach its destination and, if all goes well, six months will be spent calibrating and fine tuning the telescope. Then it will finally begin making observations.
How can the JWST look back in time?

If the light on the moon were to suddenly be turned off, it would take more than a second for people on Earth to notice — the amount of time it takes for light from the moon to reach the planet.

That same principle, on a much larger scale, is why the JWST is being touted as a way to see through time. Light first created billions of years ago is still traveling across the galaxy.

For example, if a planet 65 million light years away were to train a telescope on Earth right now, it wouldn’t see the planet in its present form; instead, it would observe what was happening on Earth 65 million years ago. In that case, the dinosaurs.

Challenger: Remembering Christa McAuliffe on the 35th anniversary of the Challenger explosion

Over such an expanse of time and distance, that light may be very weak. That's why the new telescope has a sun shield, Porro said, for the same reason that lights are dimmed in movie theaters and fireworks are best enjoyed in the dark.

“We are looking for this very faint infrared light from out there, and we are flooded in infrared light coming from the sun, the Earth and our own instruments,” Porro said. “The shield has really that main role of blocking all the infrared light.”
A wider perspective

Porro stressed that while this project is a complex and technical mission, it's also an opportunity for more perspective.

“It shows that humans are so creative and capable," she said. "We don’t have to go out there ourselves, but we can create beautiful machines that can go there and learn things that are so important to us."

The telescope is the culmination of decades of work from about 10,000 people helping the effort, and helping young people understand the scope of this work is part of what the McAuliffe Center offers through offering programs that simulate space missions and expanding access to STEM education.

“Sometimes our goal is to get people to be both inspired and interested in STEM careers,” Porro said. “But even if they’re not interested in this kind of career, to appreciate what kinds of intense collaborative work goes into this. This is not science fiction, this is reality — and it’s better than science fiction.”


This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Webb telescope launch: What it means to the Christa McAuliffe Center

More wonders of the ancient world were revealed in 2021, including the mummies of Egypt's pharaohs, sunken Crusader treasure, and a Roman crucifixion



Bethany Dawson
Sun, January 2, 2022

Egypt Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, Insider

Archaeologists revealed more wonders of the ancient world in 2021.

They ranged from a lost city, a mummy with a golden tongue, and 2,400-year-old baskets of fruit.

We document some of the best archaeological finds of the last 12 months.

In 2021 archaeologists discovered an array of lost treasures of the ancient world.

Insider's coverage of the archaeological breakthroughs included Egyptian mummies with tongues of gold, sunken Crusader trove, and 2000-year-old Roman slave quarters perfectly preserved by a volcanic eruption.

2,400-year-old baskets of fruit discovered in ancient Egyptian city under the sea

Head of Diorite found in Abu Qir Bay, where ancient cities of Canopus and Thonis-Herakleion are.Egypt Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

In August 2021, Insider's Alia Shoaib reported that 2,400-year-old baskets of fruit were discovered in an ancient Egyptian under-sea city Thonis-Heracleion.

Archaeologists found a trove of ancient artifacts from the fourth century BCE, including wicker baskets filled with doum, fruit from an African palm tree, grape seeds, and Greek ceramics.

The fascinating discovery was made by a team of researchers from the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology, led by the French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio, who discovered the ruin of Thonis-Heracleion twenty years ago.

Goddio told the Guardian that the fruit had been untouched for over 2000 years, calling the find "incredible."

Archaeologists discovered 2 ancient graves of a mother and baby near Stonehenge in England

Inside the sarsen circle at Stonehenge.James Davies/English Heritage

In February, Archaeologists in England found two ancient graves near the prehistoric Stonehenge in Salisbury.

The find was made during excavations necessary before the creation of a new highway tunnel.

The two graves were declared to be roughly 4,500 years old — as old as the stones in the central circle of the henge — and belonging to a mother and baby.

The pair were thought to be related to those who built the circle, with Matt Leivers, an archaeologist with Wessex Archaeology who helped survey the area having told Insider: "The later arrangements of bluestones would have been built around the time these people lived and died — if they weren't the builders then they might have been their relatives, or perhaps their children or grandchildren."

Stonehenge has been a mystery for centuries — until February 2021, when researchers discovered the stones had been transported from Wales to Salisbury, suggesting the henge is a type of burial ground.

'Lost golden city' found in Egypt

The city was found after seven months of excavating.

STR/picture alliance via Getty Images

In April 2021, Jacob Sarkisian reported that a "lost golden city" was found in Egypt, 300 miles south of Cairo.

It was one of the largest ancient cities ever discovered in the country and one of the most significant finds since the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb a century ago.

The team said in a statement: "The Egyptian mission under Dr. Zahi Hawass found the city that was lost under the sands. The city is 3,000 years old, dates to the reign of Amenhotep III, and continued to be used by Tutankhamun and Ay."

The city features several neighborhoods, intact 10-feet-high walls, and even a bakery.

The earliest evidence of tobacco used by hunter-gatherers in the US West 12,000 years ago

Archaeologists unearth an ancient hearth, containing four charred tobacco seeds, in northern Utah on October 11, 2021.Sarah K. Rice/Handout via REUTERS

At the beginning of October 2021, Joshua Zitser reported that the earliest evidence of tobacco use was found in Utah.

The find dates back over 12,000 years, with the leaf believed to be used by hunter-gatherers for food preparation.

This uncovered the fact that humans may have been using tobacco some 9,000 years earlier than previously thought.

You can read Insider's senior news reporter Joshua Zitser's full report here.

An amateur diver found a 3-foot sword off the Israeli coast dating back to the Crusades

Jacob Sharvit, director of the Marine Archaeology Unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority, holds a meter-long (yard-long) sword, that experts say dates back to the Crusaders, in the Mediterranean seaport of Cesarea, Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021.(AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In October 2021, an amateur diver in Israel made an incredible find: a three-foot crusade-era sword.

Shlomi Katzin came across a giant sword, covered in shells and marine life, 13 feet under the Mediterranean waves as he was exploring the waters of the Carmel coast.

Katzin also found giant metal and stone anchors and bits of pottery nestled in a 1,000 square-foot patch of the sandy seabed during his exploration.

Katzin reported his find to the Israel Antiquities Authority, and they declared the sword to be from between the 11th and 13th centuries.

"It is exciting to encounter such a personal object, taking you 900 years back in time to a different era, with knights, armor, and swords." Nir Distelfeld, an inspector for the IAA's Robbery Prevention Unit, said in a press release.

You can read Aylin Woodward's full report here.

Archaeologists discovered an Egyptian mummy buried with a golden tongue

Archaeologists found an Ancient Egyptian mummy with a golden tongue covering still in its mouth in El Bahnasa, Egypt.Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

In February 2021, archaeologists in Egypt uncovered a mummy buried with a golden tongue in its mouth.

Egyptian and Dominican archaeologists found 16 burial shafts at the Taposiris Magna Temple near Alexandria. When searching the places of rest, they found one mummy who was given a golden amulet in the shape of a tongue placed in its mouth.

The amulet is a great honor, thought to give the dead the ability to speak to gods.

Rare evidence of Roman crucifixion found in England

Nail found in the heel bone of the ancient skeleton.Albion Archaeology

In December 2021, Insider's Rebecca Cohen and Erin Schumaker reported that a skeleton in England was found with a nail through its foot — rare evidence of Roman crucifixion.

Researchers in Cambridgeshire were analyzing findings from a dig of an ancient Roman settlement, and when they researched the bones found, they discovered this evidence of crucifixion.

While crucifixion was thought to be relatively common for the Roman era, few pieces of evidence for it exist.

The find is just the fourth known crucifixion in the world, with it ranking as the best-preserved one.

Astonishing images of Roman slave quarters in Pompeii frozen in time for almost 2,000 years by a volcanic eruption

A "slaves' room" at a Roman villa, containing beds, amphorae, ceramic pitchers, and a chamber pot discovered in a dig near the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, destroyed in 79 AD by a massive volcanic eruption, Italy, 2021Pompeii Archeological Park/Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism/Handout via REUTERS

In November 2021, archaeologists in Pompeii, Italy, found incredibly well-preserved 2000-year old slave quarters.

The room, frozen in time due to the Mount Vesuvius eruption of 79 AD, featured beds, a chest, and a chamber pot.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director-general of Pompeii's archaeological park, hailed the findings on the Pompeii website as a "window into the precarious reality of people who seldom appear in historical sources."

High-tech scanners 'unwrapped' a mummified Egyptian pharaoh, revealing a seemingly healthy 35-year-old with no clues for how he died

Facemask of the unwrapped mummy of Pharaoh Amenhotep I.S. Saleem and Z. Hawass

Just as 2021 closed, Insider's science reporter Dr. Marianne Guenot reported how 3D CT scanners had been used to 'unwrap' a mummified Egyptian pharaoh.

The images showed "unprecedented detail" of the body of Amenhotep I, said Sahar Saleem, a professor of radiology and lead author of a study on the mummy.

Amenhotep was the second Pharaoh of Egypt's 18th dynasty, ruling for over two decades in 1525 BC.

The scans were able to age the Pharaoh and tell that he was 5 feet, 6 inches, tall, circumcised, had a narrow chin, a small narrow nose, curly hair, mildly protruding upper teeth, and a pierced left ear.

The discovery of a 2000-year-old dagger was a vital clue to revealing a forgotten battle between the Roman Empire's legions and tribal warriors

A soldier's dagger from 15 BC was found in Oberhalbstein (Graubünden, Switzerland) before and after restorations.Archäologischen Dienst Graubünden

In Switzerland, a volunteer archaeologist uncovered a Roman-era dagger that has revealed intricate details of an ancient battle.

Schmid unearthed the dagger in the mountainous Graubünden region of Switzerland, an area believed to be the site of a lost battlefield where Imperial Roman soldiers fought Rhaetian warriors in approximately 15 BC.

This discovery then sparked further explorations, revealing a battlefield.

The dagger, dated to around 15 BC, is a rare find. The team behind the discovery explained that only four of its kind had ever been found in former Roman territories.

You can read the full report from myself and my colleague Joshua Zitser.

The Taliban ordered shop mannequin beheadings, saying the dummies are 'idols' and are forbidden by Islam, reports say

Female mannequins are seen in a shop window in Kabul, Afghanistan. One is headless, while the other two have their faces covered.

Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images

Joshua Zitser
Sun, January 2, 2022

Mannequins in Herat, Afghanistan, must have their heads removed, the Taliban has ruled.

The mannequins were being worshipped as idols, claimed the Taliban.

Those who ignore the beheading order face severe punishments, according to The Times.

The Taliban ordered a series of mannequin beheadings, describing the heads of dummies as "idols" that are forbidden by Islam, according to reports.

Shopkeepers in the western Afghan province of Herat were told to remove the heads of female mannequins by The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice this week, The Times reported.

Those who ignore the order face severe punishments, warned the local department of the ministry, per the media outlet.

Ministers believed that people were worshipping the mannequins as idols, according to MailOnline, and the Quran considers idolatry to be an unforgivable sin.

According to the Aghan media outlet Raha Press, the director of the local ministry said that even looking at the face of a female mannequin is against Sharia law.

An initial order called for the removal of mannequins completely, but a compromise on just removing the heads was agreed, MailOnline said.

Raha Press reported that shopkeepers in Herat are dismayed by the beheading order, citing how expensive the mannequins are. One shopkeeper said mannequins cost up to $200 each, per the news outlet, and added that cutting their heads off is a "great loss" for him.

The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Afghanistan was reinstated in September, after the fall of Kabul. The all-male ministry replaced the former Ministry of Women Affairs, stoking fears that the Taliban's moral police would decimate women's rights in the country.

This week, Sky News reported that the ministry told taxi drivers they should not take women on long journeys if they do not have a male chaperone.

NEW BUNSWICK

Whistleblower warns baffling illness affects growing number of young adults in Canadian province

Leyland Cecco
Sun, January 2, 2022, 

Photograph: Zoonar GmbH/Alamy

A whistleblower in the Canadian province of New Brunswick has warned that a progressive neurological illness that has baffled experts for more than two years appears to be affecting a growing number of young people and causing swift cognitive decline among some of the afflicted.

Speaking to the Guardian, an employee with Vitalité Health Network, one of the province’s two health authorities, said that suspected cases are growing in number and that young adults with no prior health triggers are developing a catalog of troubling symptoms, including rapid weight loss, insomnia, hallucinations, difficulty thinking and limited mobility.

The official number of cases under investigation, 48, remains unchanged since it was first announced in early spring 2021. But multiple sources say the cluster could now be as many as 150 people, with a backlog of cases involving young people still requiring further assessment.

“I’m truly concerned about these cases because they seem to evolve so fast,” said the source. “I’m worried for them and we owe them some kind of explanation.”

At the same time, at least nine cases have been recorded in which two people in close contact – but without genetic links – have developed symptoms, suggesting that environmental factors may be involved.

One suspected case involved a man who was developing symptoms of dementia and ataxia. His wife, who was his caregiver, suddenly began losing sleep and experiencing muscle wasting, dementia and hallucinations. Now her condition is worse than his.

A woman in her 30s was described as non-verbal, is feeding with a tube and drools excessively. Her caregiver, a nursing student in her 20s, also recently started showing symptoms of neurological decline.

In another case, a young mother quickly lost nearly 60 pounds, developed insomnia and began hallucinating. Brain imaging showed advanced signs of atrophy.

The Vitalité employee, who asked not to be named because they were unauthorized to speak publicly and feared repercussions for speaking out, said they decided to come forward because of growing concerns over the speed with which young people have deteriorated.

“This is not a New Brunswick disease,” said the employee. “We’re probably the area that is raising the flag because we’re mostly rural and in an area where people might have more exposure to environmental factors.”

Related: Mystery brain disorder baffles Canadian doctors

But in January, the province of New Brunswick is widely expected to announce that the cluster of cases, first made public last year after a memo was leaked to the media, is the result of misdiagnoses, which have mistakenly grouped unrelated illnesses together.

The Special Neurodegenerative Disorder Clinic, also called the Mind Clinic, in the city of Moncton is the clearing house for cases referred from within the region as well as neighbouring provinces. Prospective cases have typically stumped doctors and resisted a battery of standardized neurological tests used to rule out certain conditions.

Using a case description guideline developed by a team of neurologists and epidemiologists, the clinic decides if the patients warrant further investigation or if they may have a known illness or disease. Determining who becomes part of the cluster is subjective, largely because the brain is notoriously difficult to study. Certainty is often only obtained after the patient dies and the cerebral tissue can be fully tested.

Despite the striking details surrounding the newer cases, the province has worked to tamp down fears. In October, officials suggested that the eight fatal cases were the result of misdiagnosis, arguing that instead of suffering from a shared neurological illness, the victims had died of known and unrelated pathologies.

But experts familiar with the cluster are alarmed, largely because of the age of the patients. Neurological illnesses are rare in young people.

“The fact that we have a younger spectrum of patients here argues very strongly against what appears to be the preferred position of the government of New Brunswick – that the cases in this cluster are being mistakenly lumped together,” said a scientist at the Canada’s public health agency, who specializes in neurodegenerative illnesses but was unauthorized to speak.

In October the province also said an epidemiological report suggested there was no significant evidence of any known food, behaviour or environmental exposure that could explain the illness.

Tim Beatty’s father Laurie, a retired hardware employee, died in 2019 after the onset of mental confusion around Christmas marked the beginning of his rapid deterioration.

Beatty says the family was “gobsmacked” when he learned his father was one of eight people a pathologist controversially declared was improperly diagnosed and had instead died of Alzheimer’s.

Beatty and his sister have pleaded to have their father’s remains tested for neurotoxins, including β-Methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA), which some have suggested could be the culprit behind the illness.

In one study, high concentrations of BMAA were found in lobster, an industry that drives the economies of many of New Brunswick’s coastal communities. The province’s apparent resistance to testing for suspected environmental factors has led to speculation among families that the efforts to rule out the existence of a cluster could be motivated by political decision making.

“If a group of people wanted to breed conspiracy theorists, then our government has done a wonderful job at promoting it,” said Beatty. “Are they just trying to create a narrative for the public that they hope we’ll absorb and walk away from? I just don’t understand it.”

Documents obtained through freedom of information requests and seen by the Guardian showed scientists at the country’s public health agency were considering BMAA as a possible cause, but needed the province to order the testing.

“I don’t know why the province wouldn’t just simply do the science and look. They have my dad’s remains. We’ve given them full permission to do toxicology and do what needs to be done,” said Beatty. “Yet, nothing has been looked at.”

But experts nonetheless warn that testing itself is also more difficult than the public realizes.

While some medical tests can provide quick and definite results other types of investigation require far more work.

“What people are talking about really amounts to a full research investigation, because then we know what we’re looking for precisely,” said the federal scientist who was familiar with both the cluster and the testing process. “Right now we don’t have a way to interpret simple data that you might get when testing a person’s brain tissue for a particular toxin. For example, how much are ‘elevated’ levels of a neurotoxin compared to the rest of the public? And when does that become a cause for concern?”

The scientist said teams are ready to begin the research, but “New Brunswick has specifically told us not to go forward with that work”.

Those familiar with the cluster are bracing for a January report, written by the province’s oversight committee, which will determine if the 48 cases are genuinely suffering from a neurological illness or the result of misdiagnosis by neurologists.

Amid mounting tension between specialists and the provincial government, a source familiar with the Mind Clinic say the postings for several jobs at the clinic – a social worker, an administrator and a neuropsychologist – were recently made temporary, the budget would no longer be recurrent and the clinic would be converted into a Alzheimer’s and geriatric clinic. Health minister Dorothy Shephard told reporters on 1 December that speculation the clinic would be shut down was untrue.

“We keep telling the patients that the country is behind them, and that the tests will be done so that we can figure this out. We tell them we will get to the bottom of this so that we can help them,” said the Vitalité employee. “And so far, that hasn’t happened. But they need us.”

A massive oil spill helped one Louisiana billionaire avoid paying income tax for 14 years


Jesse Eisinger, Paul Kiel and Jeff Ernsthausen

The Courier
Sun, January 2, 2022

After the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded in 2010, environmentalists surveying the damage in the Gulf of Mexico came upon a mystery. The water had oil slicks that, because of the currents, couldn’t have originated from the site of the notorious accident.

With the help of satellite imagery, they figured out that oil was leaking from a different spill, a six-year-old disaster the public knew almost nothing about. In September 2004, Hurricane Ivan had swept the legs out from under a 40-story oil-drilling platform operated by a company called Taylor Energy, causing a leak that continues to this day. It is the longest-running — and by one estimate, the largest — U.S. oil spill ever recorded, a contentious saga that prompted a recent “60 Minutes” segment.

It’s been an environmental nightmare for the region — but a massive tax bonanza for Phyllis Taylor, the owner of Taylor Energy and the fallen rig.

According to ProPublica’s analysis of a secret trove of tax data, from 2005 to 2018, Taylor took in some $444 million in income, most of it from wages, interest, dividends and capital gains, and didn’t pay a cent in federal income tax.

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That’s in significant measure because she was able to transform money her company was compelled to spend cleaning up the oil spill into a perfectly legal nine-figure tax write-off for herself.

Representatives for Taylor, now 80, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Taylor is part of a set of ultrawealthy Americans who manage to avoid federal income taxes for years on end by using their businesses or leisure interests to throw off enough deductions to offset the millions or even billions of dollars they make. We’ve nicknamed the group the biggest losers. Taylor’s story shows just how lucrative it can be to be a member of that particular club.

Patrick Taylor, Phyllis Taylor’s husband, founded Taylor Energy in 1979. He would eventually become the richest man in Louisiana and enjoyed the sort of lifestyle that went with the title. He raced speedboats on the Mississippi, rode bulls in rodeos and skydived more than 500 times. But he often said he preferred to be known for his role in advocating for the creation of a beloved state program that provided scholarships to Louisiana colleges and universities.

Taylor Energy operated out of an ornate four-story mansion in New Orleans, off Lee Circle, where a statue of Robert E. Lee stood until 2017. Female employees were not allowed to wear pants, and employees addressed their superiors as “sir” or “ma’am.” Patrick’s office had hand-painted blue-and-white silk wallpaper from a Russian palace, while a nearby dining room featured marble fountains from an 18th-century French chateau. Rooms were named after Ronald Reagan and the British naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson

The 'gentle dove'

Phyllis cut an unusual figure in the world of brash wildcatters. She started out in the business working for another Louisiana oilman, sometimes being mistaken for his coffee-bearing assistant before he surprised the men in the room by announcing she was his attorney. She married Patrick Taylor in 1964 and served on the board of directors of Taylor Energy while he ran the company.

Deemed the “gentle dove” of Louisiana for her philanthropy, Phyllis Taylor supported local education and art institutions, as well as housing for the homeless. She loved to travel, and in an interview with Condé Nast Traveler, extolled the joys of circumnavigating the world: “The difference between a short cruise and a world cruise is night and day, storm and calm, fleeting thought and thoughtfulness. With an extended cruise you absorb the lifestyle of life at sea; with the great advantage of having a crew and staff that treats you like royalty.” A frequent hunter, Taylor proudly displayed the skin and head of a leopard she shot in Zambia.

The year Ivan hit changed Phyllis Taylor’s life. A couple of months after the hurricane, her husband died at age 67. At 63, she took over the company.

More: US says oil, gas sales damage climate — but won't stop them

Deaths create a spectacular tax boon for the wealthy, what some experts consider one of the largest loopholes in the code.

Taylor Energy had ballooned in value in the 25 years since its founding. If Patrick Taylor, who controlled the vast majority of the company, had sold it while he was alive, the Taylors would have owed a huge sum in capital gains tax. But all of that value disappeared at death for the purposes of taxes thanks to a widely decried provision of the code that will cost the U.S. Treasury more than $500 billion in lost taxes over the next decade. Phyllis inherited the company and became the wealthiest woman in Louisiana, worth an estimated $1.6 billion. There’s no estate tax for property transferred to a spouse.

'A tax incentive'

In 2008, four years after Taylor Energy became aware of the spill, the company had yet to clean it up. Taylor decided she wanted out of the business. She sold all of the company’s oil rigs and other assets, except for the damaged rig, to two South Korean entities. Taylor, who owned about 95% of the company, according to her former CEO, received close to $1.2 billion of the roughly $1.25 billion price tag.

Yet Taylor was legally allowed to portray the sale to the IRS in a very different light — and that in turn depended on the fact that the law allows owners of private companies a lot of leeway in determining the value of their assets. Since Taylor was inheriting the company tax-free, she and her advisors had every reason to assign it a high initial value, because that would mean that when she later sold the assets, the high value would minimize or eliminate the gain on paper.

“When property is transferred between spouses at death, there’s a tax incentive to aggressively value it on the high end,” said Gregg Polsky, a tax law professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, who has been retained as a consultant to ProPublica.

Taylor’s tax records suggest that’s what happened. Taylor did not record a gain on the sale of her company. In fact, she was able to report a loss of $211 million.

It’s difficult for outsiders to value a private company. But a former company insider said Taylor Energy was sold at a premium. “I did the valuation. I know what the assets were worth and know what we sold them for. We did not take a loss. Period,” John Pope, Taylor Energy’s former CEO, told ProPublica.

The upshot of the claimed loss was that Taylor paid no federal income tax in a year when she realized an enormous gain from the sale. She even got a remarkable extra goodie: refunds on $30 million in taxes she’d paid in previous years.

Cleaning up the spill

A March 31, 2015, photo shows an oil sheen drifting from the site of the former Taylor Energy oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Louisiana.

After the 2008 sale, what was left of Taylor Energy was devoted to one thing only, cleaning up the spill. The company had professed to be trying to plug the leaking oil well but seemed to make no progress.

A few months after the sale, the federal agency that oversees drilling in the Gulf negotiated an agreement that required the company to create a $666 million trust to cover the cost of the cleanup.

That was a lot of money — more than half of the proceeds from the company’s sale — but it came with a silver lining. Because Taylor Energy was set up as a sole proprietorship, its income and losses flowed through to Phyllis’ personal taxes. She could write off the costs of the cleanup against her own income.

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It may be surprising that the costs of cleaning up an environmental disaster are tax-deductible. But such write-offs are legal, qualifying as “ordinary and necessary” business expenses. By contrast, fines and penalties are not deductible. Oil giant BP was able to deduct most of the settlement it reached with the government over the Deepwater Horizon spill because much of it went to address the environmental calamity, rather than to penalties for wrongdoing.

Such deductions are unobtainable for executives or shareholders at publicly traded corporations, where only the company gets to deduct the expenses.

It took years for the extent of the spill to become known. Taylor disclosed almost nothing about the accident and fought public records requests. The reality unspooled thanks to the persistence of environmental groups, investigative reporting and revelations from a dizzying array of suits and countersuits.

In the years after it established the cleanup trust, Taylor Energy claimed that it could not have foreseen such an accident and that stopping the leak was technologically impossible.

'Stall tactics over cooperation'

In 2012, the Coast Guard finally ordered Taylor to install a dome to contain the leak, but three years later, when Taylor Energy settled a lawsuit that forced it to start publicly disclosing more about its efforts, the company had not even finished the design.

According to a later review by the Coast Guard, Taylor Energy was “obstinate, difficult to deal with and verbally combative,” and preferred “to employ stall tactics over cooperation with an intention to confuse, delay or misdirect” the government.

In 2015, The Associated Press revealed that both Taylor and the government had dramatically underestimated the volume of the leak. The Coast Guard released a new estimate, much higher than its previous ones and 20 times the roughly 4 gallons a day Taylor was claiming.

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In a lawsuit, a federal expert put it higher still, estimating the spill to be up to 29,400 gallons a day. That would mean that starting in 2004, more oil spilled into the Gulf from Taylor Energy’s rig than the estimated 130 million gallons that gushed into it as a result of BP’s Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

For more than a decade, Taylor Energy has launched a series of legal actions against the government to try to recoup at least a portion of the money in the trust or to end its cleanup obligations, saying it has done all that it could. The company has come up empty every time. Rather than put resources into fixing the problem, Taylor has been “putting all of its money and efforts into fighting the cleanup,” said Brettny Hardy, a senior attorney for Earthjustice, an environmental group.

Today the oil is still flowing at a rate of about 1,000 gallons a day. A protective dome, finally installed by a contractor the Coast Guard hired after losing faith in Taylor, contains the leak.

Taylor has weathered all of this remarkably well. She remains known as a great benefactor to her city and state. Praising her philanthropy, the U.S. Marine Corps gave her honorary marine status in 2013, and The Times-Picayune granted her its “Loving Cup” award in 2016.

The combination of the loss on the sale of the company and the expenses from the cleanup meant Taylor did not pay any income taxes from 2005 through 2018. At the end of 2018, her reserve pool of losses exceeded $330 million, making it a distinct possibility that she would never have to pay income taxes again.

— ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. The Secret IRS Files is an ongoing reporting project. Sign up to be notified when the next story publishes.

This article originally appeared on The Courier: Oil spill helped billionaire Phyllis Taylor avoid paying income tax

Coming Soon to This Coal County: Solar, in a Big Way


Cara Buckley
Sun, January 2, 2022

A billboard advertising coal mining jobs in Inez, Ky., Oct. 15, 2021. (Maddie McGarvey/The New York Times)

MARTIN COUNTY, Ky. — For a mountain that has had its top blown off, the old Martiki coal mine is looking especially winsome these days. With its vast stretches of emerald grass dotted with hay bales and ringed with blue-tinged peaks, and the wild horses and cattle that roam there, it looks less like a shuttered strip mine and more like an ad for organic milk.

The mountain is poised for another transformation. Hundreds of acres are set to be blanketed with solar panels in the coming year, installed by locals, many of them former miners. The $231 million project, which recently cleared its last regulatory hurdle, may well be the biggest utility-scale coal to solar project in the country.

It would be a desperately needed economic boost drenched in symbolism: Renewable energy generated from a shuttered mine in the heart of Appalachia, where poverty grinds on in the aftermath of the coal industry’s demise.

In many ways, the project is a test case for whether a region once completely dependent on digging fossil fuels from the ground can be revived by creating clean energy from the sun. As coal continues to decline — the number of jobs nationwide fell to about 40,000 last year from 175,000 in the mid-1980s — supporting former coal communities is seen as vital for what has been termed a “just transition,” in part to ward off backlash against attempts to decarbonize.

Yet, even as coal miners elsewhere resist the prospect of work in solar and wind production, Martin County’s bleak economic picture — its unemployment rate is nearly twice the national average — has opened many residents to investment of pretty much any sort. Coal mining has already flatlined here; by last count, the county had just 26 miners left, down from a peak of thousands.

“The global warming thing, I think a lot of that is overplayed,” said James Mollette, a 65-year-old former miner, as he whiled away part of a recent afternoon inside Miss Ida’s Tea Room in downtown Inez, the county seat. But Mollette said he was all for a new solar farm, even if it offered largely temporary work. “Anything we can get will be a plus to the economy,” he said.

Martin County is in the eastern part of the state sandwiched between West Virginia and Johnson County, Kentucky, home to the world famous coal miner’s daughters, singers Loretta Lynn and her sister, Crystal Gayle. (A $5 ticket buys entry into the ramshackle cabin in Butcher Holler where they and their six siblings grew up.) In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson flew to Martin County to tout his war on poverty, posing before cameras on the porch of an unemployed saw mill operator and father of eight.

Nearly six decades later, suffering continues. About one-third of the dwindling population lives in poverty, battered by the sharp drop in coal production as well as the environmental damage left in mining’s wake.

Over the past decade, the coal severance tax revenue collected by Martin County based on how much coal is pulled out of the ground has fallen more than 90% to $80,000 in the last fiscal year, according to Colby Kirk, the county’s deputy executive judge. As mining work plummeted, people moved elsewhere. Those who stayed face hourslong commutes to manufacturing, retail and service jobs in other counties and states. The region is so job-starved that when a massive indoor tomato farm opened up last year three counties away, about 7,000 applications flooded in for 350 spots.

The area also withstood an enormous coal-slurry spill in 2000 when a containment lagoon burst into an abandoned mine below it, sending more than 250 million gallons of toxic coal waste laced with arsenic and mercury into local waterways. The spill, more than 20 times bigger than the Exxon Valdez oil disaster, oozed into yards and streams for miles, suffocating every frog, fish and snapping turtle in its path and contaminating the county’s drinking water.

Part of the legacy of the Martiki mine — flat sprawling spaces, proximity to power transmission lines, not to mention a population hungry for work — may have paved the way for a more auspicious future.

“Our bet is we can help make this community, and others like it in coal country, relevant to the opportunities in the green energy economy that everyone agrees is coming,” said Adam Edelen, a Kentucky native and former Democratic state auditor who is the local developer for the project. Edelen said the fact that a promised return of coal had failed to materialize helped his cause. “I would’ve been run out of the coalfields had I tried to do this six to 10 years ago,” he said.

For more than a decade, the Environmental Protection Agency has been recommending that renewable-energy projects be built on Superfund sites, former landfills and abandoned mines — property less desirable for housing or other uses. Of the roughly 130,000 potential sites it has identified, fewer than 500 have been developed for renewable-energy projects, the EPA said. Still, there is growing interest among green-energy developers. Of the 18 other solar projects planned by Edelen’s company, Edelen Renewables, one-third would be built on former mines.

“It’s a great opportunity to address climate needs in ways that reduce environmental and social impacts, and that’s why we’re looking at this hard,” said Nels Johnson, North America director of renewable energy for the nonprofit the Nature Conservancy, which itself is in the early stages of helping to develop solar farms atop former mines in eight states, including on its own land in West Virginia. “Renewable energy in those settings can bring new life to these lands.”

Getting to the old Martiki site requires winding through valleys and hollers, past bungalows, shacks, kudzu-choked ditches, rusted-out cars, tiny Baptist churches, roadside burial plots and a community called Pigeon Roost.

Up at the now-flattened summit, the sky yawns big and wide. After shutting down most operations in the 1990s, the mine’s owners oversaw what Edelen said was an admirable job restoring the land. People have been racing all-terrain vehicles on the grounds, and it has become home to a band of horses, many set free by residents who could no longer afford to tend to them. Until recently, a farmer grazed some cattle there, too. Once the solar project gets underway, the animals are expected to move to adjacent land.

As many as 300 workers will be needed to install the panels, which will stretch over about 1,200 acres of fenced land. Edelen, whose company has trademarked the phrase “social impact solar,” said the jobs will pay an average of $25 to $30 an hour; according to the United Mine Workers of America, union miners in the region average $31.40 an hour.

All but about a dozen of the solar jobs will be temporary, lasting from 12 to 18 months. Edelen and developers at Savion, the company that owns the Martin County solar project, have worked with administrators at nearby Big Sandy Community College to create a certificate program so their workers might be hired elsewhere.

“Selfishly, we have other projects in the region, other developers do, too, and these skills are going to be transferable,” said Erich Miarka, a director of development of Savion. “There’s going to be a lot of work over the next several years.”

With solar now the fastest-growing source of new electricity in the United States, developers have been looking to central Appalachia, drawn by its energy infrastructure and position within the country’s biggest electricity marketplace, which makes it easier for developers to sell their energy to the grid.

A crucial lure for the Martin County project is a sizable regional power substation up on the mountain. The solar farm would generate up to 200 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 33,000 homes, which can be fed to a substation to be carried via still-robust transmission lines, avoiding what could have amounted to multimillion dollars in upgrades.

Around Martin County, eagerness for new investment is tempered by some trepidation. Nina McCoy, a local activist and retired biology teacher, said she felt the public had been shut out of much of the planning process, and she lamented that the energy generated wouldn’t directly help the county, where residents face skyrocketing utility bills. “I worry that it’s going to be another extractive industry,” she said.

There are also competing opinions about how much the community will benefit. Savion has committed to pay Martin County up to $300,000 each year for 30 years in lieu of taxes. (According to Edelen, the project received federal tax credits but hasn’t gotten state or federal investment.) Victor Slone, county judge-executive, said the amount was “significant,” but Lisa Stayton, publisher of the local paper, The Mountain Citizen, said that considering inflation, it wasn’t that much.

“​​People here, for the most part, are glad to see any kind of business come,” Stayton wrote in a text message. “That says we are still as desperate as we ever were.”

Down the mountain, in the village of Lovely, interviews with former coal miners on a recent day also yielded differing views.

Two ex-miners who were working at a small liquidation shop said they were anti-solar and wanted the coal industry to come back. Asked what they’d have liked to see go atop the old Martiki mine, one suggested a track for drag racing.

But at a dusty intersection a few hundred feet away, another former miner, Gary Webb, 66, said he was “all for that solar farm.”

Webb was spending the day tearing a wood porch off a decrepit mobile home, along with his cousins, Ernie Dials, 74, also a retired miner, and Darrell Davis, who is in his 60s. They said they bought the home for $1,500 and planned to rebuild the porch at Davis’ house.

Webb said that he welcomed almost any sort of development up on the mountain and that all the coal had been mined out of it anyway.

“Coal mining’s not coming back," he said, as roosters crowed nearby, "and if it’s just 15 to 20 full-time jobs, it’s better than nothing, and better than the land sitting there and doing nothing.”

And, Webb added, he was thinking about his children. Cleaner energy was a benefit for them, he said.

“It’s good for climate change,” Webb said. “Anything that helps is good.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Climate change, new construction mean more ruinous fires

By MARTHA BELLISLE

Homes burn as wildfires rip through a development Thursday, Dec. 30, 2021, in Superior, Colo. 

(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)


The winter grassland fire that blew up along Colorado’s Front Range was rare, experts say, but similar events will be more common in the coming years as climate change warms the planet — sucking the moisture out of plants — suburbs grow in fire-prone areas and people continue to spark destructive blazes.

“These fires are different from most of the fires we’ve been seeing across the West, in the sense that they’re grass fires and they’re occurring in the winter,” said Jonathan Overpeck, a professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. “Ultimately, things are going to continue to get worse unless we stop climate change.”

Flames swept over drought-stricken grassy fields and neighborhoods northwest of Denver on Thursday with alarming speed, propelled by guests up to 105 mph (169 kph). Tens of thousands were ordered to flee with little notice.

“I came out of Whole Foods, which is about a half mile from ground zero, and felt like I had to jump in my car and make a dash for my life as the smoke and wind and nearby flames were engulfing the area,” Susie Pringle of Lafayette said in an email. “It was scary!”


Two people were missing as of Sunday and at least seven were injured.

Officials estimated nearly 1,000 homes and other buildings were destroyed.

The blaze burned at least 9.4 square miles (24 square kilometers). The cause is still under investigation, but experts say its clear what allowed it to spread so fast.

“With any snow on the ground, this absolutely would not have happened in the way that it did,” said Keith Musselman, a snow hydrologist in Boulder. “It was really the grass and the dry landscape that allowed this fire to jump long distances in a short period of time.”

Three ingredients were needed to start this fire — fuels, a warm climate and an ignition source, said Jennifer Balch, a fire scientist with the University of Colorado, Boulder. “And then you add a fourth ingredient, wind, and that’s when it became a disaster.”

Temperatures in Colorado between June and December were the warmest on record, Balch said. The grasses grew thick because they had a wet spring, but saw no moisture until snow flurries arrived Friday night.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Sunday called the blaze a “a horrific convergence” of destructive wind gusts that hit the area following the unseasonably dry and warm winter.

“We know that with the climate we face higher risks,” Polis said. “Right here in city and suburbs.”

Balch said Colorado is a dry landscape filled with flammable material for much of the year - “and those chunks of time are getting longer with climate change.”

The lesson learned throughout this event is that the “wildland-urban interface is way bigger than we thought it was,” Balch said. That means a wider area is under threat of wildfire.

That border area — where structures built by people meet undeveloped wildland prone to fire — has always been the foothills, she said. Fire-fighters in Boulder consider the interface west of Broadway — a busy road that passes through the center of town. But Thursday’s fire sparked east of that line, next to thousands of houses that have sprouted up on the east side of the Rockies since the 1990s, Balch said.

The remains of the Element by Westin hotel is seen, Friday, Dec. 31, 2021 in Superior, Colo. Hundreds of homes, a hotel and a shopping center have burned and tens of thousands of people have been evacuated in wildfires outside Denver. (AP Photo/Eugene Garcia)

“There were stretches between Denver and Fort Collins that had no development, but now it’s just like one long continuous development track,” Balch said. “And those homes are built with materials that are very flammable — wood siding, asphalt roofing.

“We need to completely rethink how we’re building homes.”

The other important change is understanding how these fires start in the first place, she said.

“There’s no natural source of ignition at this time of year. There’s no lightning,” she said. “It’s either going to be infrastructure-related or it’s going to be human caused.”

“The way we live in the landscape and our daily activities make us vulnerable,” she said.

Over the last two decades, 97% of wildfires were started by people, according to a recent study by the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Causes have ranged from accidents at construction sites, to a car with a hot tailpipe, to tossed cigarettes.

“I like to say, we need Smokey Bear in the suburbs,” she said. “We need to be thinking about how our daily activities can contribute ignitions or sparks that start wildfires.”

Unless people stop climate change by cutting back on fossil fuels, wildfires will threaten communities, Overpeck said.

“There’s little doubt in my mind that the conditions conducive to really bad wildfire, whether it’s grass or forest, are only going to get worse,” he said.

As more people move to areas where wildfires occur, the threat goes up.

“We’re building towns and cities and infrastructure and so it’s just a matter of time before we have whole towns burning down like we had in California and events like this in Colorado.”

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Associated Press reporter Brittany Peterson contributed to this report.

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Follow Martha Bellisle on Twitter @marthabellisle