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PFAS are important because they can kill you and the ones you love. Only one party gives a damn
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Have you ever heard of “Forever Chemicals”? These chemicals—their technical name is per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS—have earned that name because, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explained, they “do not break down in the environment.” In other words, they last forever.
PFAS have been in the news quite a bit recently as more and more people—like the residents of Campbell, Wisconsin, and communities all over that state, for example—learn how badly these chemicals have damaged their environment. People in Campbell have to use bottled water for everything from cooking to brushing their teeth because the water in their area has been contaminated by PFAS used in materials that fight fires in a nearby airport. Campbell Town Supervisor Lee Donahue lamented to The Guardian: “It’s emotionally draining. People are angry that it happened, they’re angry that they had no control over it, and they’re angry that their well is contaminated for no fault of their own.”
In “Let’s Go Crazy,” the late, great Prince sang: “Forever, and that’s a mighty long time.” I think we’d all be happier if he’d have been around forever instead of these awful forever chemicals.
Why PFAS should scare the bejeezus out of you
PFAS have been used since the WWII era, and are dead useful because they repel both oil and water. You’ll find them in all kinds of household products, from nonstick pans to numerous different cleaning products, to food packaging—such as pizza boxes—to storage containers, clothing, furniture, carpets, and far more. So PFAS are everywhere, they last forever, and, unfortunately, multiple studies show they cause:
- Testicular, kidney, liver, and pancreatic cancer
- Reproductive problems
- Weakened childhood immunity
- Low birth weight
- Endocrine disruption
- Increased cholesterol
- Weight gain in children and dieting adults
Even worse, corporations had evidence that PFAS were harmful as early as 1950. As the Environmental Working Group noted: “For decades, chemical companies covered up evidence of PFAS’ health hazards. Today nearly all Americans, including newborn babies, have PFAS in their blood, and up to 110 million people may be drinking PFAS-tainted water. What began as a ‘miracle of modern chemistry’ is now a national crisis.” PFAS contamination has occurred in every part of the country, as the map below indicates. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael S. Regan stated: “PFAS contamination has been devastating communities for decades. I saw this first hand in North Carolina.”
In terms of equity, PFAS disproportionately affect some of the most vulnerable communities in America, who all too often live near manufacturing plants that produce these substances. In late 2019, the Union of Concerned Scientists produced a report, Abandoned Science, Broken Promises, that examined the damage inflicted by The Man Who Lost An Election And Tried To Steal It on this issue. The report concluded that “communities of color and low-income communities are more likely to bear the economic and biological burden of the federal government’s lack of responsiveness to community concerns on this toxic class of chemicals.”
What’s Biden doing about it?
While running for president, Joe Biden promised to “tackle PFAS pollution.” Since taking office, he’s taken a number of steps to do just that. In the first 100 days of the Biden-Harris administration, we saw, among other actions, the EPA create a council specifically devoted to PFAS, develop new standards on drinking water, and initiate research on PFAS levels in wastewater. It’s important to note that while John Oliver brought much-needed additional attention to the matter in early October, Biden had been doing good work long before that point.
Regarding legislation, Biden has pushed for approximately $10 billion in the Build Back Better plan and the hard infrastructure bill to deal with contamination caused by PFAS. Additionally, the White House backed the PFAS Action Act of 2021, which passed the House on July 21 and is currently under consideration in the Senate. This bill, which impressively garnered 23 Republican votes in the House, would take the following measures:
- Requiring the EPA to set drinking water standards for two PFAS compounds—PFOA and PFOS—within two years;
- Designate PFOA as a “hazardous substance” under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) within one year;
- Require the EPA to determine if all PFAS should be classified as “hazardous substances” under CERCLA within five years;
- Require testing of all PFAS for toxicity to human health under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA);
- Require the EPA to issue drinking water standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) for at least PFOA and PFOS [Note: these two are most hazardous] (although the bill calls for standards for all PFAS) within two years;
- Require the EPA to designate PFOA and PFOS as “hazardous air pollutants” pursuant to the Clean Air Act within six months;
- Create labelling requirements for products to signify that they are or are not PFAS-free; and
- Create effluent regulations under the Water Pollution Control Act.
Getting that legislation through the Senate is a dicey proposition at best, however. Nevertheless, recent weeks have seen more major action from the executive branch, culminating in the issuance on Oct. 18 of a detailed plan to “research, restrict, and remediate harmful PFAS.” A White House fact sheet explained that these forever chemicals pose “a serious threat across rural, suburban, and urban areas. To safeguard public health and protect the environment, the efforts being announced will help prevent PFAS from being released into the air, drinking systems, and food supply, and the actions will expand cleanup efforts to remediate the impacts of these harmful pollutants.”
The White House roadmap will set limits on the amount of PFAS allowed in drinking water, require corporations that use PFAS to provide the public with in-depth information about the amount that appears in their products, and, perhaps most importantly, use the Superfund law to name as hazardous substances the two most dangerous PFAS: Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctane Sulfonate (PFOS).
These two have been studied more extensively than any other PFAS chemical. We know that they are especially resistant to being worn down to any degree. Thus, they are even more widespread and prevalent in every part of the country and type of environment—they are found in the air, soil, and groundwater. As the EPA noted, the “toxicity, mobility and bioaccumulation potential of PFOS and PFOA result in potential adverse effects on the environment and human health.”
Will these actions to rein in the harm caused by PFAS cost companies some money? Yes, but as Mr. Regan put it, “It could be expensive, but it’s necessary. It’s time for manufacturers to be transparent and provide the American people with this level of detail.”
Environmental activists offered praise for the new roadmap on PFAS. Earthjustice called it a “good first step” while also stating that the EPA “must move faster to set deadlines and expand regulations to stop the approval of new PFAS. It must also address incineration and stop industrial discharges.” Some activists were less pleased than others, to be sure.
These companies have been getting away with polluting, lying about it to regulators as well as the public, and avoiding the costs for far too long. If you weren’t already angry, you will be after reading this New York Times article detailing how the people who lived near the Fayetteville Works chemical plant in North Carolina are suffering from all kinds of PFAS-related pollution that has taken a toll on their health. The authors also explain how the companies responsible managed to skirt any kind of real accountability.
They have used public charm offensives to persuade regulators and lawmakers to back off. They have engineered complex corporate transactions to shield themselves from legal liability. And they have rolled out a conveyor belt of scantly tested substitute chemicals that sometimes turn out to be just as dangerous as their predecessors.
One woman, Beth Markesino of Wilmington, had to give birth at 24 weeks due to issues with her placenta. Her baby boy was born lacking a kidney and a bladder—we know this kind of birth defect results from PFAS contamination. He lived only a short time. Markesino drank water laden with PFAS throughout her pregnancy. At a public meeting with a corporate executive held after the truth had started to come out, she told him through tears: “I buried my son.”
Republicans don’t like what Biden’s doing about it
As for Republicans, it goes way beyond Trump. His actions merely reflect decades of Republican ideology where the first rule of regulations remains what it has been since Reagan: “Whatever corporations want, corporations get.” The corollary to that rule is, “Oh, and if it hurts regular people, we don’t give a rat’s ass.”
For Republicans, and the corporations whom they serve, regulations are just plain wrong. They see them as illegitimate roadblocks to be navigated around, which is why Republican presidents love to put corporate executives who got rich doing exactly that in charge of regulatory bodies. Fox, henhouse, you know the drill.
And here’s the real kicker: Not only are you and I directly harmed when corporations pollute our air, water, and soil, so are the competitors of those who pollute. How in the world are honest businesses—ones that play by the rules, don’t cut corners, and refuse to save money by dumping the foulest kinds of waste into the environment—able to stay in business when some other guy can undercut them on price exactly because they save money by polluting? The incentive to do the wrong thing is so strong that it requires even stronger disincentives in the form of harsh penalties and, if we’re talking about pollution, an EPA with the resources and ideological commitment to be a truly vigilant monitor of industry behavior. Without it, our health and safety don’t stand a chance.
There’s no need to take my word on what Republicans think about the regulations that aim to keep us safe. On the very same day that the Biden White House issued its plan to combat the devastation caused by PFAS, the face of the next generation of Trumpists put forth this bit of wisdom.
I offered my own bit in response: “Simplistic generalizations harm America.”
As for Cawthorn, he offered just those three words, with which he presented his party’s absolutist position. Putting Cawthorn’s words and Biden’s actions side by side illustrates the difference between the simplistic, politicized, rigid ideology of Republicans and the problem-solving, fact-based, scientific, actually giving a shit about the health of all Americans approach Democrats take. You might also recognize that contrast from a little thing called COVID-19.
On PFAS specifically, the Trump White House tried to prevent the release of a CDC study that documented the reality that PFAS do real damage to the human body even when they appear in the environment at much lower levels than we previously thought were problematic. Remember Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA? His hands were all over this hatchet job. Why suppress the study? Because the Trumpers thought it would be a “public relations nightmare” for polluters—one of whom is our very own Department of Defense.
The policy contrast between the Biden and Trump administration approaches to the environment extends far beyond just PFAS (or the pandemic, for that matter). On air pollution, the twice-impeached Florida resident issued a rule that hamstrung the ability of the EPA to act to protect the air we breathe. The EPA under Biden stated that the Trump rule would have prevented it from being able to “use the best available science in developing Clean Air Act regulations.” Biden got rid of it, and his administration’s rationale appears to go beyond any of his predecessors in terms of the level of support it provides for the EPA to act aggressively to protect our health.
Likewise, after Fuck a l’Orange gutted the Endangered Species Act, his Democratic successor made a number of moves to restore its ability to do what the law’s authors intended it to do. Those are just some areas—broad ones, no doubt—of environmental policy. Here’s a full list of the over 100 environmental regulations Trump did away with, each time putting the interests of his fat cat corporate buddies ahead of your health (and he’s far from the first Republican president to do so).
PFAS pose an immediate and long-lasting threat to our health. And Republicans are actively preventing us from doing something about it, and not only at the federal level. I mentioned Wisconsin at the outset, and I encourage you to read the whole piece in The Guardian to get a sense of how areas in every part of that state are suffering, and who’s to blame.
As municipalities and residents wrestle with the water crisis, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature has killed legislation and blocked funding meant to address the problem, which is likely much larger than currently known: Only about 2% of the state’s utilities have tested for the chemicals, and those that have tested were checking for no more than 30 of the approximately 9,000 PFAS compounds that exist.
Additionally, the Republican-dominated legislature rejected the Clear Act that would have helped address the problems caused by PFAS by creating standards to assess whether water in a given location is safe to use. Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, also included $22 million targeted at testing PFAS levels and cleaning up damage. If you guessed that Republicans ripped that line out of the budget, you’d be on the mark.
Scott Laesar, water program director for the advocacy group Clean Wisconsin, explained: “We’ve had difficulty just testing water to get a handle on the scale and scope of PFAS contamination. We are asking for some really basic information about what’s in people’s water, and if we can’t even get that, then we’re in a difficult spot.” He added: “We have an industry that would rather not know what’s out there and is engaged in a pretty cynical effort to maintain the status quo. This legislature has had numerous opportunities to invest in addressing PFAS and they have elected not to do so.”
The Biden-Harris administration, on the other hand, has already made major progress across the board in undoing the damage on environmental policies, and PFAS specifically, that Trump did over four years, although they need to do a lot more to solve these problems in a comprehensive way. We can take heart from the early November announcement of new regulations on methane that will “push oil and gas companies to more accurately detect, monitor and repair methane leaks from new and existing wells, pipelines and other equipment.”
If the White House adds to what they’ve already done in the regulatory arena, and Democrats take significant action on climate in the final versions of the spending bills currently being considered in Congress, this Democratic team will have not only reversed Donald Dickweed’s harmful actions, they will have begun to create a new legacy of their own—one that voters will remember. If they don’t, voters will remember that too.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh’s Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)
This Week in Statehouse Action: Whiplash edition
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Hey, how are you?
I know Tuesday night might have been kinda rough.
To say that Election Day 2021 didn’t turn out the way Democrats and progressives hoped is … a bit of an understatement.
Are you confused? Bummed? Scared? Ambivalent? Numb? Apathetic? In a glass case of emotion?
Well, no matter where you are right now, I’ve got something for you.
Read on!
As an erudite consumer of this missive, you’re likely already aware that Republicans won all three of Virginia’s statewide constitutional offices on Tuesday, and Democrats lost their majority in the House of Delegates.
A 50-50 tie in the House is unlikely, but still not totally out of reach for Democrats.
Provisional ballots and ballots postmarked by/on E-day delivered before noon on Friday start getting counted tomorrow afternoon.
In 2020, this resulted in about 120,000 additional votes counted statewide.
Obviously this isn’t how it works, but if that number were to hold this year and were divided among all 100 House seats, that would be 1,200 more votes in each district.
And with control of the House dependent on the final outcome in a handful of races with a margin of just a couple hundred votes, these as-yet-uncounted-but-properly-cast-and-extremely-legal ballots will determine whether Republicans take an outright majority (the chamber makeup as of this writing is 48 D/52 R) or whether we end up with a 50-50 tie.
Cutting a seven-seat loss to a five-seat loss is no mean feat, and while I’ll certainly be following closely, I’m not getting my hopes up. (In fact, my money at this point is on a 49-51 chamber, which is exactly where Democrats were just two years ago.)
But what if Democrats do end up holding two seats and the House convenes in January as a tied chamber?
So glad you asked!
If Democrats and Republicans are at parity in the 100-seat House, Virginia’s code and constitution provide no guidance or mechanism for breaking ties.
… unlike the state Senate, where a 20-20 tie (on everything outside of budget legislation) is broken by the lieutenant governor, who also presides over the chamber. (More on Virginia’s incoming LG in a bit.)
This scenario would be not entirely without precedent (and you can read more about the weedy history of it here, if you’re so inclined), so while there are few hard and fast rules governing the situation, we have a pretty good idea of how it might be resolved.
History suggests that one of the following scenarios will come to pass:
- Democrats try every tactic and trick in the book to delay seating one of the new Republican members until they can elect a Dem as speaker. Republicans will howl in righteous outrage, and both parties will enter a power-sharing agreement similar to a template from … 1998.
- Democrats and Republicans somehow agree to elect a compromise House speaker, whose power will likely be constrained by specific rules, and they’ll then enter into a power-sharing agreement.
- ANARCHY
Okay, scenario 3 isn’t really in the cards, but the point remains that there’s no way to know with any certainty how this situation is going to shake out.
Anyway, you’re probably not here for election results, but it’s worth noting that Democrats failed to flip a single GOP-held seat (though Biden won a handful held by Republicans just a year ago).
Meanwhile, Republicans flipped at least five Dem-held seats, possibly as many as seven.
The past couple of days have seen a lot of teeth-gnashing and garment-rending (… figuratively, I think), which is understandable—losing the power conferred by holding a legislative chamber majority sucks, and doubly so when you know you’ve also lost a check on the agenda of the incoming Republican governor.
I think folks expected it from me, too—after all, I’m a native Virginian, and I got my start in state politics in the Virginia Democratic Caucus.
Nah.
Politics is increasingly a business of short memories and shorter attention spans, but honestly, one doesn’t have to cast back especially far to recall a time when Democrats were exponentially worse off in Virginia.
I mean, it was a mere four years ago that Dems in the commonwealth entered Election Day with just 34 House members out of 100.
But, okay, Virginia also had a Democratic governor back then.
So let’s cast back just a bit further.
It’s November 2009. Virginia House Democrats just lost five seats in a landslide election that also elected Republican Bob McDonnell governor, and they roll into the next legislative session with just 39 members.
Now that was an awful feeling.
And that wasn’t even Virginia House Dems’ nadir! That was back in 2001, when they won just 31 seats out of 100. (But at least Virginia had also just elected Mark Warner as its first Democratic governor in eight years.)
Anyway, my point is, I’m actually way more used to disappointing Virginia legislative election results than positive ones.
But the takeaway here is this: Perspective.
Yes, it sucks. Yes, it’s scary.
And I’m definitely already fretting about which rights and protections Democrats spent the past two years expanding and strengthening will get gutted by GOP executive orders.
But we’ve been here before.
We’ll be here again.
Because at least this election hopefully finally put to bed the garbage Beltway trope that “Virginia is a blue state now” that emerged after Barack Obama won the commonwealth a second time in his 2012 reelection.
Anyone who’s paid attention to Virginia state politics for more than a couple of years and/or has actually spent time outside of Northern Virginia knows that, while the commonwealth may have become reliably blue in statewide federal elections, it merely purpled in down-ballot races.
Now hopefully everyone else will catch on.
Maybe you’re wondering how this happened. How did Democrats lose five or six or seven seats in a single night?
That’s still shaking out. Everyone who’s claiming they know what happened at this point is full of crap.
But a keen observer can already point to a few things that definitely factored in:
Early, aggressive spending. The Republican State Leadership Committee started running TV ads in some of the seats the GOP flipped way back in August.
National committee investment: According to the RSLC, the RNC made a “historic investment” into digital ads, texting, and direct mail in “key districts.”
If the DNC invested in Virginia legislative races this year, I would love for someone to respond and correct the record. But I know of no such investment, and the current occupant of the White House and the standard bearer for the Democratic Party didn’t even bother to make endorsements until just two weeks prior to the election.
(The DLCC, ever doing yeoman’s work, pumped over $2.3 million into these races, plus staff time and resources, training, and more.)
And, of course, the national political climate—though I’ll die on the hill of it not being dispositive in state legislative races—definitely created a headwind for Democratic candidates.
But that’s quite enough history. Time to look forward.
While the House of Delegates was the only Virginia chamber on the ballot this year, it’s definitely time to worry about the state Senate.
Yes, Democrats still have majority control (21 D/19 R).
But that’s a very slim majority.
And three wrinkles are coming into play in the Senate.
Their names are Winsome Sears, Chap Petersen, and Joe Morrissey.
Winsome Sears made history this week by becoming Virginia’s first woman (and first Black woman and woman of color) lieutenant governor.
Overdue and cool by any measure.
But Sears is … not cool.
See, I’m so old that I remember her brief stint in the House of Delegates in the early aughts.
And back then, she was already a right-wing extremist who supported … some unfortunate legislation.
She tried to make protecting children from abuse more difficult.
She supported a “stand your ground” measure before it was cool.
And she signed on to myriad bills designed to block women from obtaining abortions.
More recently, Sears revealed herself to be a Trump acolyte (she served as national chair of Black Americans to Re-elect the President just last year).
She’s stridently against reproductive rights (still), opposes gun safety laws, and supports anti-public school policies like vouchers and so-called “school choice.”
She’s on record as wanting to roll back the voting rights expansions implemented by Democrats—the ones that she didn’t seem to mind as she won her election on Tuesday.
Anyway, Sears will now be leading the Senate and breaking ties.
And why are we worried about ties in a 21 D/19 R Senate?
Sens. Chap Petersen and Joe Morrissey.
First, Chap.
Annoying, but generally speaking, merely an occasional thorn in the side of his fellow Democrats.
He’s certainly not the only Dem in the Senate with a contrarian streak, but he definitely stands out for the frequency with which he breaks with the party—and how loudly he tends to do it (grandstanding speeches, op-eds in major state newspapers nowhere near his actual district, that kind of thing). Chap has also demonstrated a willingness to trade his votes for key Democratic priorities for concessions in other areas, and just this year, he broke with the party more than any other member.
But Joe Morrissey.
Ugh.
Depending on how long you’ve been reading this missive, you may or may not have encountered a previous rant against this extremely not good human who somehow keeps making his way back to the legislature.
Maybe you’re unfamiliar with “Fightin’ Joe” (his nickname, not mine), and you’re wondering why this is bad.
Well, a close vote contingent on support from Joe Morrissey should absolutely stress you out.
He’s a chaos Muppet who seems to delight in wreaking havoc.
He’s loyal only to himself, and he regularly demonstrates that loyalty—his own party be damned.
It gives someone who clearly believes the rules don’t apply to him the chance to destabilize state government if the mood strikes him.
And if you think this a harsh characterization of Joe Morrissey, then … well, you don’t know Joe.
I’ve described his litany misdeeds in this space before, and if you really want to read it all, welp, it’s all right here.
With receipts.
Also, he’s definitely not a pro-choice lawmaker, which will absolutely be an issue he votes on in the next couple of years.
Sigh
Right-wing media outlets wrote false reports on this Muslim prosecutor, conservatives threatened her
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One of the first Muslims to be elected to public office in Virginia has come under attack after right-wing media outlets chose to target her and create false narratives around her work. Elected in 2019, Buta Biberaj unseated a Republican incumbent for Loudoun County’s commonwealth attorney position. As gubernatorial elections neared in Virginia, conservative media outlets used a former sexual assault case involving a Loudoun County school to spread disinformation about Biberaj and others.
According to the American Independent Foundation, the false accusations boosted by Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin accused Biberaj of attempting to cover up the sexual assault by silencing the father of the victim by having him arrested and pocketing money from investor George Soros. As a result of these conservative lies, Biberaj has received death threats on her personal cell, home, and office numbers.
Callers have left threatening messages like: “We’re coming for you, bitch,” “You don’t have to watch your back, we’re going to come at you from the front,” and, “You deserve everything you’re going to get.”
“Those individuals are highlighting the fact that I’m a woman, I’m of the Muslim faith, I’m … an immigrant,” Biberaj told the American Independent Foundation. “We’ve had threats and comments and harsh communication from white supremacist groups. So you see that and know that this is intentionally done to rile people up in that realm.”
But individual people are not the only ones threatening Biberaj; hate groups like VDARE are campaigning against her as well. VDARE published an article under the headline “White Father Arrested In Loudoun Protesting Daughter’s Rape In School Bathroom By ‘Teen’ In Skirt. Muslim Immigrant Prosecutor Buta Biberaj Wants To Jail FATHER,” on Oct. 11. According to the American Independent Foundation, the following day the organization shared the article in a tweet that called Biberaj a “Soros-backed immigrant Muslim prosecutor who is trying to jail a white father.” Six days later, the VDARE account replied to a tweet from the Youngkin campaign about ties between Biberaj and Soros and said that she was “an Albanian Muslim immigrant from Montenegro.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center references VDARE as “anti-immigration hate website” that “regularly publishes articles by prominent white nationalists, race scientists and anti-Semites.”
Right-wing media outlets including Fox News and the Daily Wire used the Loudoun County sexual assault case as justification of why trans people should not use bathrooms that match their gender identity. They claimed that cisgender males would masquerade as trans females to assault girls in bathrooms and locker rooms and used this case to argue for “bathroom predator” myths.
While the boy charged in the case was reportedly wearing a skirt at the time of the assault, Biberaj said, he did not identify as transgender during the trial, and the assault took place after the girl had invited him to meet her in the bathroom. He then ”exceeded the permission and consent of the girl, which is what made it sexual assault,” she said.
A judge ruled against the boy on Oct. 26 in his first of two cases of sexual assault in the county.
Right-wing media outlets then claimed that the victim’s father was also arrested because Biberaj wanted to silence him even though reports found the father was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after a fight broke out at a school board meeting in June.
In an alleged “fact check,” the Republican Standard wrote on Oct. 27 that Biberaj “must have understood why Smith, who attended a Loudoun County School Board meeting on June 22 looking for answers, would’ve gotten upset after the district superintendent said the student suspected in his daughter’s assault didn’t exist. And yet, she appeared in court personally to push for jail time, a fine and anger management classes.”
Conservative outlets have continued to highlight her immigrant background, referring to her as not American as they make statements saying an immigrant prosecutor arrested an “American who complained about daughter’s rape.”
As the right-wing media lies spread, threats against Biberaj increased. When she brought them to the Virginia attorney general’s office, the Virginia State Police, and the FBI, she was advised to reevaluate the way she lives her life in order to protect her safety.
“The narrative just keeps changing to fit what the goal is … If you look at everything that’s out there, we knew nothing about the May 28 incident until July 9,” Biberaj said. “So all those narratives are intentional disinformation.”
She added the fact that Republican gubernatorial candidate Youngkin is spreading these lies is even more disheartening. Youngkin has not only called for Biberaj’s resignation but demanded a state and federal investigation into the Loudoun County School Board.
“The most frustrating thing is, we look to our leaders to create healthy communities. When individuals take incidents like this which are harmful, hurtful, as well as traumatic to families, and you’re going to take that and let that be your rally cry, just to promote something, then that means your political interests are greater than your people interests,” Biberaj said. “And, that to me, is not a sign of good leader[ship], because once this election is done, I don’t think Mr. Youngkin or any of the candidates may be in our day-to-day lives here in Loudoun County. But these families are still living here. The hurt that they’re causing will still reside here.”
“That’s not leadership,” she added.
According to Loudoun Now, investigations are being conducted in regards to the threats.
“The Virginia State Police is in receipt of the threats and has forwarded them to our Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management Team, as is done with any email of an alarming/threatening nature that is received by an elected/public official. No arrest or charges have been placed at this time,” a statement from the State Police said.
Caribbean Matters: Barbados' Mia Mottley stuns the world again, this time at COP26
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After her forceful presentation at the United Nations on Sept. 24, previously covered in Caribbean Matters, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has made global and social media headlines again. This time, it’s for the fiery speech she delivered at the opening session of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, in Glasgow on Nov. 1.
Mottley represents a small Caribbean island country with a population of approximately 288,300. One of the oldest Caribbean colonies of Great Britain, Barbados will soon be a nation without Queen Elizabeth as head of state, effective Nov. 30.
Given the global crisis of climate change and the particular perils facing citizens of island nations, as well as other smaller countries with limited resources that are populated by mostly people of color, it seems fitting that a Black woman is well on her way to becoming an international face and voice for those people who have been exploited for centuries by colonial powers.
Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.
While many of us have been pushing back against the negatives of social media giants, it’s undeniable that only a few short years ago, the general public would never have been exposed to the voice of someone like PM Mottley. Most Americans’ knowledge of Barbados is limited to its existence as a Caribbean vacation location. Additionally, few international speeches—unless given by leaders of European nations or Russia—make U.S. headlines; one Caribbean nation that is the exception to this rule is Cuba.
Yet thanks to Twitter and Facebook, Mottley has captured the attention of people beyond those individuals who are immersed in global politics or Caribbean studies.
In case you missed it, here is her speech in full, with a transcript posted below.
The full transcript is worth a read.
Your Royal Highness, Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
The pandemic has taught us that national solutions to global problems do not work.
We come to Glasgow with global ambition to save our people and to save our planet. But we now find three gaps. On mitigation, climate pledges or NDCs – without more, we will leave the world on a pathway to 2.7 degrees, and with more, we are still likely to get to 2 degrees.
These commitments made by some are based on technologies yet to be developed, and this is at best reckless and at worst dangerous.
On finance, we are $20 billion short of the $100 billion. And this commitment even then, might only be met in 2023.
On adaptation, adaptation finance remains only at 25%; not the 50-50 split that was promised, nor needed, given the warming that is already taking place on this Earth. Climate finance to frontline small island developing states, declined by 25% in 2019.
Failure to provide the critical finance and that of loss and damage is measured in my friends, in lives and livelihoods in our communities. This is immoral and it is unjust.
If Glasgow is to deliver on the promises of Paris, it must close these three gaps.
So, I ask to you, what must we say to our people living on the frontline in the Caribbean, in Africa, Latin America, in the Pacific, when both ambition and regrettably some of the needed faces at Glasgow are not present?
What excuse should we give for the failure in the words of that Caribbean icon Eddy Grant, “will they mourn us on the frontline?”.
When will we, as world leaders across the world, address the pressing issues that are truly causing our people angst and worry, whether it is climate or whether it is vaccines?
Simply put, when will leaders lead?
Our people are watching and our people are taking note. And are we really going to leave Scotland without the resolve and the ambition that is sorely needed to save lives and to save our planet?
How many more voices and how many more pictures of people must we see on these screens without being able to move? Or are we so blinded and hardened that we can no longer appreciate the cries of humanity?
I have been saying to Barbadians for many years that many hands make light work. Today we need the correct mix of voices, ambition and action.
Do some leaders in this world believe that they can survive and thrive on their own? Have they not learned from the pandemic? Can there be peace and prosperity if one third of the world literally prospers and the other two thirds of the world live under siege and face calamitous threats to our wellbeing?
What the world needs now, my friends, is that which is within the ambit of less than 200 persons who are willing and prepared to lead. Leaders must not fail those who elected them to lead.
And I say to you, there is a sword that can cut down this Gordian knot, and it has been wielded before. The central banks of the wealthiest countries engaged in $25 trillion of quantitative easing in the last 13 years. $25 trillion! Of that, $9 trillion was in the last 18 months to fight the pandemic.
Had we used that $25 trillion to purchase bonds to finance the energy transition or the transition of how we eat or how we move ourselves in transport, we would now today be reaching that 1.5 degrees limit that is so vital to us.
I say to you today in Glasgow that an annual increase in the SDRs of $500 billion a year for 20 years, put in a trust to finance the transition, is the real gap Secretary-General that we need to close, not the $50 billion being proposed for adaptation. And if $500 billion sounds big to you, guess what? It is just 2% of the $25 trillion. This is the sort we need to wield.
Our excitement one hour into this event is far less than it was six months ago leading up to this event.
Can we with those voices and these speeches from Sir David and others, find it within ourselves to get the resolve to bring Glasgow back on track? Or do we leave today believing that it was a failure before it starts?
Our world, my friends, stands at a fork in the road; one no less significant than when the United Nations was formed in 1945. But then, the majority of our countries here did not exist. We exist now. The difference is we want to exist 100 years from now. And if our existence is to mean anything, then we must act in the interests of all of our people who are depending on us.
And if we don’t, we will allow the path of greed and selfishness to sow the seeds of our common destruction.
The leaders of today, not 2030, not 2050, must make this choice.
It is in our hands and our people and our planet need it more than ever.
We can work with who is ready to go, because the train is ready to leave and those who are not yet ready, we need to continue to ring-circle and to remind them that their people, not our people, but their citizens need them to get on board as soon as possible.
Code Red. Code Red to the G7 countries, code red, code red to the G20.
Earth the COP. That’s what it said. Earth to COP. For those who have eyes to see, for those who have ears to listen and for those who have a heart to feel, 1.5 is what we need to survive. 2 degrees, yes S-G, is a death sentence for the people of Antigua and Barbuda, for the people of the Maldives, for the people of Dominica and Fiji, for the people of Kenya and Mozambique, and yes, for the people of Samoa and Barbados.
We do not want that dreaded death sentence and we have come here today to say, “try harder, try harder,” because our people, the climate army, the world, the planet needs our actions now, not next year, not in the next decade.
Thank you.
In Mottley’s speech to the United Nations in September, many headlines zoomed in on the fact that she quoted reggae icon Bob Marley. In her COP26 speech, Mottley referenced “Living on the Frontline,” a 1979 reggae hit by Eddy Grant, a Guyanese–British singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who is currently suing Donald Trump for a copyright violation.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Mottley may have referenced Grant’s music in her speech to throw some shade on this peculiar situation, which has been covered in both Caribbean and U.S. media.
Climate change is clearly at the top of Mottley’s agenda, both globally and back home. The Jamaica Observer reported on her remarks at a handover ceremony of the RSS Maritime Security Strategy Project on Oct. 25; the paper noted that she warned Caribbean nations that they must “prepare for the possibility of a climate change event that could cause mass migration and displacement in the region.”
“2017 was that year that showed us the possibility of what could happen with the impact on Dominica, and Antigua and Barbuda in particular with those successive hurricanes that hit us,” Mottley said adding that, “the coastal and inland flooding due to intensified storm surges have also continued to be a problem for too many of our other countries. Trinidad, Guyana and Suriname may not be hit by hurricanes but they are hit by floods.”
Mottley told the hybrid ceremony that the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre CCCCC) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reports that a one-metre rise in sea level can displace approximately 110,000 people in Caricom member states.
Mottley is also known for her cool and competence in interviews with the media, most recently in this interaction with a BBC interviewer about civil rights and members of the LGBTQ community.
Join me in the comment section below for more Mottley, and for a round-up of other Caribbean news and events
Read the first installment of Caribbean Matters here, and last week’s entry on the Garifuna/Garinagu people here.
Newsmax reporter reassigned after saying COVID vaccines track you with ‘bioluminescent marker’
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Emerald Robinson is to ultra-conservative propaganda machine Newsmax what Steve Doocy is to ultra-conservative propaganda machine Fox News. She is one of two (occasionally three) people in the White House press briefings who ask truly oblique questions and then are served with reality papers by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. In recent months, Robinson has made headlines by acting like a gossipy high school teen from a badly written after-school special, openly creating “facts” on the fly in the hopes of making conservative fanboys squeal.
On Thursday, multiple outlets reported that Robinson has been pulled off the air after making a bizarre enough claim about COVID-19 vaccines that even Newsmax had to do some damage control. According to the Daily News, Robinson went to her already over-the-line-bizarre Twitter account and posted: “Dear Christians: the vaccines contain a bioluminescent marker called LUCIFERASE so that you can be tracked.” Robinson’s brand includes being conservative Christian, so making connections between the devil and Luciferase (Lucifer anyone?) was a short walk through her tiny mind, I guess.
However, just because words sound similar to other words does not make you right. Then again, Ronald Wilson Reagan has six letters in each one of his full names. 666! Just sayin’!
The Daily Beast reports that an employee at Newsmax told them their newsroom (which I imagine just consists of people doing shots of Jagermeister and watching old clips of Donald Trump firing people on The Apprentice) said that people were very happy that Robinson had been put on the sidelines. “It’s really buzzing the newsroom. I think it’s a good idea. If we are going to be viewed as a news organization, we have to act like one.” I hate to be the one to tell this staffer that ship sailed long ago.
This news comes just one day after it was reported that Smartmatic, a voting technology company, was suing both Newsmax and One America News for defamation in their inaccurate reporting on claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. That was a few months of time when Newsmax could have made the argument that they were a “news organization,” but instead decided to repeatedly and willfully lie about the nature of the elections.
Newsmax released a statement about Robinson’s trip to quiet town in order to stay under the radar long enough for things to pass. “Newsmax strongly believes and has reported that the Covid 19 vaccines are safe and effective. We do not believe the vaccines contain any toxic materials or tracking markers, and such false claims have never been reported on Newsmax. The many medical experts appearing on Newsmax have supported the use of the vaccine.” Sounds like someone just got word that people dying of COVID-19 and their families might consider class action cases against outlets that misinform them about important public health information.
But before we all pretend that Newsmax is doing the right thing here for any other reason than someone in their legal department pressed a red button, let’s just remember that Robinson was given a short break starting Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021.
That’s from a little over two weeks ago. This is the tweet pinned to Robinson’s account as of the writing of this story.
And this is her on Halloween.
Robinson worked at OAN before she brought her brand of conservative Christian misinformation to Newsmax.
Police reform measure fell short in Minneapolis, but this is why we still won
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On Nov. 2, Minneapolis residents voted on an innovative proposal to reshape community safety: de-center police in public safety, employ more capable first responders, and only deploy police when absolutely necessary. Nearly 45% of voters supported this bold change, but it sadly was not enough… for now. But there is so much to celebrate.
It’s been 17 months since George Floyd was brutally murdered in broad daylight, during a call that in no way warranted police restraining Floyd. For too long, police have shrugged off these needlessly deadly encounters as collateral damage of a tough job. Getting Question 2 on the ballot was already victorious in putting police on the defensive, forcing them to justify their role.
Even in the face of a well-oiled, fear-mongering disinformation machine, funded largely by wealthy interests outside the city, people power prevailed and inspired nearly half of Minneapolis voters to dream bigger than a notoriously violent police force. And many people who rejected the measure were not endorsing police; they simply wanted to know more about how a Department of Public Safety would protect them.
More clearly articulating a new public safety vision is a critical next step, and there are already successes to point to. Minneapolis residents now have more options for non-police interventions because of groups like Relationships Evolving Possibilities mounting a community emergency hotline, training dozens of people as street medics, and creating non-police emergency response guides. This bump in the road will not stop progress.
Backlash and fear-mongering are classic reactions to people-centered radical organizing. Integration, voting rights for Black Americans, food benefits for families in poverty, and the basic right of LGBTQ people to public life were all met with violent pushback. The backlash didn’t stop us then, and it won’t stop us now. Despite failing to pass Question 2, Minneapolis and the entire nation is one step closer to a broad reimagining of public safety.
We CAN shift the responsibility of emergency response away from police, and we CAN keep each safe. This fight is not over, and we need you to keep it going. One way you can do that is to chip in to support these organizations mounting resistance to police abuse and advancing community alternatives.
In Maryland community 'made for Black people,' homeowners report appraisal discrimination
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A Maryland realtors’ association is investigating after homeowners in a majority Black community reported multiple cases of alleged appraisal discrimination, leaving home values in the area thousands of dollars lower than what similar properties in nearby communities are worth. The Prince George’s County Association of Realtors sent surveys to more than 3,000 realtors in the county to assess their experiences with appraisal bias. Although fewer than 500 of those surveys have been turned in, Black homeowners in the community shared their individual experiences with alleged appraisal discrimination with local news station WUSA9.
Homeowner Jacqulyn Priestly told the news station her almost 9,000 square-foot home in Bowie, Maryland, that her family built from the ground up ended up appraising for lower than the cost to build it. “In neighboring counties, we’re seeing the exact same builder with the same style home, and [their] homes are worth twice as much,” Priestly said.
She told the news station that her family decided to build to get “more space, multi-generational living with mom and my stepdad living with us too.”
“We looked in other counties in Maryland and then decided to stay in Prince George’s County because we recognize the fact you can’t put a price tag on community,” Priestly told WUSA9.
Appraisers, however, tried. After one appraisal report came back with errors, a second came in at $1.3 million, almost $500,000 lower than construction costs, Priestly told WUSA9. “How is it that the wood and the walls and the nails that were used … how are they worth less than what they cost us?”
Homeowners Derrick and Roshaunda Ingram-Harvey reported a similar experience to WUSA9. They said they were preparing to sell their five-bedroom home for $1.275 million and move to Texas, but their home appraised some $60,000 lower than expected at $1.19 million. “We lost about $60,000,” Roshaunda said. “I think it’s biased because of the stature. How often do African American people buy million-dollar homes … they look at Prince George’s County as an area that’s made for Black people.”
“Every realtor said, we don’t know that your house will sell for that price, because it’s not going to appraise for that in Prince George’s County,” Roshaunda said. “Houses in Prince George’s County don’t appraise for over a million dollars, and they definitely don’t sell.”
Appraisers involved in the sale of the Ingram-Harvey and Priestly homes didn’t return WUSA9’s requests for comment.
What they reported, however, aligns with reports in Black communities throughout the nation. Erica and Aaron Parker, a Cincinnati family, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) when their four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom home complete with a finished walkout basement appraised more than $40,000 less than a buyer was willing to pay, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
In their situation, an appraiser acknowledged errors in the report but refused to adjust the home’s appraised value. “We saw homes sell for much more than the asking price. It didn’t make sense. What was so different about our house? Why were we being told we had to sell for so much less?” Aaron asked the Cincinnati Enquirer. When the family borrowed a white neighbor’s photos to display in their home and had it appraised again, the value came in almost $100,000 higher, the Parkers told the Enquirer.
HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge assembled a task force, the Interagency Task Force for Property Appraisal Valuation Equity, to address appraisal discrimination earlier this year. “PAVE will join forces with businesses and local leaders to forge a more equitable America; where every person gets a fair chance at building their wealth,” Fudge tweeted in July when she announced the task force.
Andre Perry, a Brookings fellow working on a study about the effects of racial bias in housing on Black communities, told the Cincinnati Enquirer homes in Black areas are undervalued by an average of $48,000, totaling $156 billion in losses. “If we can detect how much racism depletes wealth from Black homeowners, we can begin to address bigotry principally by giving Black homeowners and policymakers a target price for redress,” Perry and other researchers said in the study. “Laws have changed, but the value of assets—buildings, schools, leadership, and land itself—are inextricably linked to the perceptions of black people. And those negative perceptions persist.”
RELATED: Black family hangs photos of white neighbors and appraisal comes back nearly $100,000 higher
RELATED: A tale of two appraisals: White man gets $100K higher value than Black woman
RELATED: Black family hides photos, Toni Morrison books in order to get fair real estate appraisals
This 27-year-old ran on a campaign to defund the police—and defeated longtime incumbent
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As we process results from the elections on Tuesday, Nov. 2, it’s all too easy to fall into despair and frustration about the races that didn’t go our way. While work absolutely remains to be done, it’s also important to acknowledge victories where we had them, including in some surprising instances. One example? 27-year-old Indira Sheumaker, a Black Lives Matter activist who campaigned on defunding the police, beat out an incumbent for a seat on the Des Moines City Council, representing Ward 1.
According to the Des Moines Register, Sheumaker will be the first Black city council member in Des Moines since 1985. As of the Jan. 10 swearing-in, she will also be the youngest person to serve on the council (coming in as the only person under 30) and the only person of color. Sheumaker, a first-time candidate, defeated 69-year-old longtime incumbent Bill Gray, who had served in the office since 2014 with 542 votes.
“We just won our campaign on a platform centered on Defunding the Police for Safety and Justice. It can be done,” Sheumaker said in a campaign statement. “My goal for this city has always been to work from the bottom up. Not the top down.” In her campaign, Sheumaker also stressed the importance of making food and housing accessible, flood preparedness, rent control, decriminalizing cannabis, tenant rights, and combating corporate greed.
“I want to be the kind of leader who is part of the community, the kind of leader people can talk to you,” Sheumaker told the crowd at a cafe in downtown Des Moines the night election results rolled in, according to Iowa Public Radio. She said given that she’s a protester and activist herself, she can’t tell people not to “show up” on her lawn.
Sheumaker became involved in politics after the police killing of George Floyd when she organized marches for racial justice in Des Moines. Since then, she’s worked steadily with the Black Liberation Movement (which supported her campaign) and advocated for defunding the police.
“I already told all these people: if you don’t like what I do, you better be banging on my door with 500 people on my lawn,” she told the group as music played and people celebrated her big win.
Sheumaker really credits local, individual support for her win, and wants to stay true to herself and her community. “I didn’t look for big donors, didn’t look for donations from developers, landlords — and I didn’t get any,” Sheumaker told the Register. “It was very much a campaign for the people.” She has received more than $30,000 in campaign donations since February. According to Iowa Public Radio, Sheumaker said most of her contributions came from individual donors, and her grandparents were her biggest donors. They were in the crowd the night she won, too.
You can check out an interview with Sheumaker here. And if you want to read up on some other exciting victories from Tuesday that haven’t gotten nearly enough national media attention, check out our coverage of State Rep. Ed Gainey and Aftab Pureval, too.
Anti-vaxx Chronicles: This guy REALLY thought Ivermectin was the answer
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Facebook is a menace. COVID-19 is a menace. Conservatism is a cesspool. Together, those three ingredients have created a toxic stew of malevolent death and devastation. We can talk about all those things in the abstract, look at the numbers and statistics, and catch the occasional whiff of seditionist right-wing rhetoric. But I hadn’t really fully understood just how horrifying that combination of right-wing extremism, Facebook, and a killer virus was until I became a regular at the Herman Cain Awards subreddit. This series will document some of those stories, so we are aware of what the other side is doing to our country.
Today’s cautionary tale thinks Ivermectin is the solution, but it’s all China’s fault anyway.
Literally no media reported on a poll that claimed that 9% of respondents had died of COVID, because no such poll exists. Sheesh, doesn’t even pass the smell test. (And of course, there’s no sourcing on that meme.)
“If you don’t believe that one thing I believe, then ALL SCIENCE is suspect” — conservatives.
These kinds of memes are extra stupid, because we can just as easily say: “if you believe that COVID is a hoax and that Ivermectin is a cure and that masks don’t work, then. you do not believe in science. You believe in a political ideology.” And this formulation would be far more valid.
If you really believe China infected the world … why would you be opposed to countermeasures to protect us from that supposed attack?
Their logic is literally 1) China attacked us, so 2) we won’t wear masks or get vaccinated to protect ourselves, so 3) … profit!
Dr. Anthony Fauci and President Joe Biden are saying “NOPE” to the virus by wearing a mask. Ben Shapiro is like “please infect me.”
“China attacked us with COVID, and Biden is letting in millions of more people with COVID, so let’s not protect ourselves with masks and vaccinations!”
COVID is either scary and we need to deploy countermeasures, or it’s not. YOU CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS.
Given Tuesday’s results, it’s clear it’s in Republicans’ interest to keep this pandemic going as long as possible, frustrating people who want a return to normalcy and creating supply chain issues that have led to higher inflation and a shortage of some goods.
The vaccinated aren’t falling into any abyss, but the unvaccinated are dying and prolonging the national and global COVID misery. It’s working out great for the Republican Party, and they’ll sacrifice tens of thousands more of their supporters to keep the misery going.
It’s just like that one time when Germany was trying to save their people with free vaccines against a global pandemic. Exactly like it.
Imagine crying about “censoring speech” and “silencing opposition” when your entire political apparatus is hysterically trying to silence Toni Morrison and the critical race theory boogeyman?
Dear god, do they want people with ebola and other diseases hanging around them out in the world? No, you shouldn’t be traveling with most of this stuff!
Thank science that many of those diseases have become so rare because, you know, vaccines.
“Hey you, this medicine won the Nobel PEACE price, you stupid person!”
Oh my.
Meanwhile, Ivermectin did win a Nobel in medicine for, you guessed it, deworming and killing other parasites.
Half of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Campbell and Ōmura for discovering avermectin, “the derivatives of which have radically lowered the incidence of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, as well as showing efficacy against an expanding number of other parasitic diseases”.
It’s a dewormer. It won a Nobel for deworming. Nobel in medicine. Not peace. Ivermectin didn’t bring peace anywhere. And certainly didn’t bring peace to parasites.
Parasites are bad. Killing them is good.
COVID isn’t a parasite. Buying the horse dewormer version at your local feed shop is, indeed, so dumb, that you should sit the next few rounds out.
Incidentally, “The Nobel Peace Prize 2015 was awarded to National Dialogue Quartet “for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011.”
Could you imagine if they were this excited about something that actually worked, like the vaccines?
Everything would be different.
Literally no government says that. None.
Meanwhile, there are governments that have controlled this virus from spreading. Looking at Australia, New Zealand, and Portugal to name a few. But their people aren’t as insufferably stupid as red America.
Why is the right okay with unfettered gun access, but requires a voter ID to exercise an even more fundamental right?
We can play this stupid game all day.
People have to register to vote. There are requirements to exercise that right.
So yeah, to function in society in the presence of a deadly pathogen that has killed millions worldwide, a COVID card should be required.
OH OH … why don’t we require a COVID Card for voting? Would that work for them?
If the argument is that everyone should require vaccination to receive government benefits, then sure! Sign me up.
Will that also include driving on government-funded roads, attending government-funded schools, and partaking in every other facet of life which is funded or subsidized with government dollars? Because that’s an even better idea!
October 9, talks shit about welfare recipients not “contributing to society” in an anti-vaccination meme.
October 20-ish, his dad dies of COVID
October 27-ish, his mom dies of COVID.
Doesn’t mention their illnesses on Facebook. That would step on his narrative.
November 3, he dies of COVID.
Turns out horse dewormer might not have been the cure after all.
Still, I don’t understand what the praying is for. Aren’t Christians about loving thy neighbor and helping those in need? This guy literally posted a meme mocking the idea of “the common good.” Then took up a hospital bed with a ventilator, which we will pay for out of our own taxed pockets, and stressed our overburdened medical system. Let’s just hope no one else worthy died because of that lack of a bed.
His ignorance killed him and his family. I just hope he doesn’t have any kids or anyone else who financially depended on him. That would be the silver lining to yet another unnecessary tragedy.
Earth Matters: Unmet emissions pledges imperil planet; many local eco-advocates elected on Tuesday
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Back in 1972, the Club of Rome-commissioned “The Limits of Growth,” a report that argued the world’s economic system could not continue its current rate of growth because of resource constraints and environmental matters. The report presented various outcomes for what could happen when the growth of industrial civilization collided with finite resources. Without big changes of direction, the authors argued, civilization might collapse. The report caught immediate, blistering criticism—some of which was accurate and some decidedly myopic.
While the club’s analysis wasn’t focused on climate change, one buried chart showed that an astonishingly steep and rapid rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was already underway and would continue soaring even more steeply in coming years. When the report was published, atmospheric CO2 was running at 328 parts per million and the prediction was that it would hit 380 ppm by the year 2000. It actually took until 2005. The chart made no mention of rising temperatures as a consequence. (You can see a more readable copy of the chart at this link—scroll to page 72).
Not all climate activists are completely in tune with every note of teenaged eco-warrior Greta Thunberg’s “blah, blah, blah” assessment of climate summits in general and specifically the COP26 get-together happening this week and next in Glasgow. Nonetheless, among activists, the overall sentiment is one of low expectations for what will come out of this latest summit. Not when it comes to words—as Thunberg laments. Plenty of those, plenty describing our climate predicament, plenty about the failure so far to turn those words into serious, immediate action to cut off the accumulated spew of human-generated greenhouse gases that are heating the planet toward average temperatures not seen since Homo sapiens emerged 300 millennia ago.
In a report released in September, the United Nations warned that the world is on a trajectory to reach an increase of 2.7 degrees Celsius—or 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit—in warming above the pre-industrial average over the course of the 21st century. Well past the two-degree increase that scientists say would be disastrous, much less holding the increase to the so-called “aspirational” 1.5 degrees above which the most vulnerable nations will suffer profound, even apocalyptic impacts.
As Harry Stevens and Brady Dennis report, nations collectively aren’t living up to the non-binding pledges they made under the Paris agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Rich countries also aren’t providing the $100 billion they pledged to help developing nations cope with climate change. Even if all the pledges were being met, they wouldn’t be adequate to the task, according to the report.
There’s some good news on this front from Glasgow: 100 nations signed the Global Methane Pledge to cut emissions of this potent greenhouse gas by 30% over the next eight years. But pledges are words, and there’s no guarantee that this one will fare any better than those that aren’t already being fulfilled. For one thing, some of the worst offenders—Russia, for instance—aren’t on board. And in the United States, the attempt to impose a new methane emissions rule may collide with a Supreme Court majority far more likely to stomp on it than the majority that ruled 5-4 in 2007 that the Environmental Protection Agency can regulate greenhouse gases—and is required to do so.
The world has had many summits to discuss what should be done to prevent, mitigate, and adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis and initiate programs to accomplish those goals. However, we have collectively ignored what scientists as early as 1988 warned us we must do. Their message then and subsequently was that delaying immediate action on climate would require that any future actions with the potential to be effective would have to be ever more draconian. As Adam Levy points out so well below, we have missed so many opportunities and now we’re on that predicted precipice where only draconian action can succeed, but that feckless politicians call outrageous and unacceptable. Republicans, for instance, have just issued their own climate plan, which calls for—you guessed it—more burning of fossil fuels.
Although it’s true that some predicted impacts of the climate crisis are already “baked into” our future for centuries no matter what we do, there is still time to make moves that will avoid some of the worst impacts of the changes that our behavior has wrought. Not much time, however. And whatever the outcome of COP26, those moves will only be launched if the grassroots activism on climate becomes even more intense, persuasive, and forceful.
SHORT TAKES
Voters elected environmental champions up and down the ballot
The League of Conservation Voters’ analysis of the Nov. 2 elections found significant good news to trumpet:
On Tuesday, while the losses in Virginia were disappointing, we saw environmental champions win in key races across the country. While LCV affiliate endorsed candidates did not win every race, young, Black, Brown, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, and Arab American candidates put climate action and environmental justice front and center in their elections and won up and down the ticket.
Much of our progress on climate and clean energy has come from state and local leaders who have tackled the climate crisis head-on. As a result of their leadership, 1 in 3 people in this country now live in a place committed to 100% clean energy. These races are also vital to meet our national climate goals and will be important to implement federal climate action through the Build Back Better Act.
RAMPANT Disinformation about the climate on Facebook MOSTLY GENERATED BY 10 outlets
Just as 71% of greenhouse gas pollution since 1988 has come from only 100 companies, just 10 publishers are responsible for 69% of the digital pollution of climate science denial on Facebook, according to a study conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The outlets—the report calls them the “Toxic Ten”—include several conservative U.S. websites, as well as Russian state media. The list:
Breitbart, a far-right news site once run by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon • Western Journal, a Conservative news site • Newsmax, which has previously been sued for promoting election fraud conspiracies • Townhall Media, founded by the Exxon-funded Heritage Foundation • Media Research Center, a “think tank” that received funding from Exxon • Washington Times, founded by self-proclaimed messiah Sun Myung Moon • The Federalist Papers, a site that has promoted COVID-19 misinformation • Daily Wire, a conservative news site that is of the most engaged-with publishers on Facebook, and Russian state media, pushing disinformation via • RT.com and • Sputnik News Patriot Post
YOungest Chief in his tribe’s history leads its fight against climate change
At just 34 years old, writes Tik Root, Dana Tizya-Tramm has become the youngest leader of the Vuntut Gwitchin, a First Nation of the Yukon that mostly lives above the Arctic Circle. Tizya-Tramm has aggressively taken on what he views as his people’s most important challenge: the climate crisis.
The shifting Arctic is squeezing the Vuntut Gwitchin on multiple fronts. Tizya-Tramm says less predictable caribou migration patterns have meant some villages can go years without a successful hunt, and the spawn of certain salmon species has dropped so low that fishing has been severely restricted in recent years.
“Nature speaks to us,” he said. “Just not in English.” With Tizya-Tramm at the helm, the community is listening. In 2019, the Vuntut Gwitchin became among the first Indigenous peoples in Canada to declare a climate emergency — a move that catapulted them into the international limelight. That same year they set a target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and as they strive toward the goal, the First Nation has been working to build among the largest solar projects in the Arctic.
Tizya-Tramm hopes the Vuntut Gwitchin model will be followed by others. “We’re dropping a stone in the water and it’s creating a ripple effect,” he said.
Delays bug White House environmental justice advisers
In an executive order earlier this year, President Biden mandated the creation of a climate and economic justice screening tool to identify communities in need as part of the Justice40 initiative, a plan to ensure 40% of climate-related investments benefit historically neglected communities. July was the missed deadline for finalizing the tool. Consequently, several of the White House’s environmental justice advisers are expressing frustration because this delay could mean federal money from the bipartisan infrastructure and Build Back Better bills—if they pass—won’t go to the communities that need it most. Aides in the Office of Management and Budget’s U.S. Digital Service, charged with developing the software, have not reported on their progress.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy have already funded a few pilot programs to show how Justice40 could work but without the new mapping tool. Several of the 26 members on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council indicated concerns to GreenWire over the delay and what they call a lack of transparency that they believe could lead to misuse of government dollars. “For those of us on the [council], we don’t know if there was a process that determined which pilots would get rolled out and what input was made available,” said Robert Bullard, a member of the council who is widely known as the “father of environmental justice.” He added, “It’s hard for us to understand the criteria used by these agencies in how they selected pilots. And our question is how are the pilots selected and what kind of external input [did the agencies get].”
EPA investigating KOCH-OWNED chemical plant accused of environmental racism
Port Arthur sits on the Lone Star State side of the Texas-Louisiana border, a processing center and overseas shipping point for energy and mining firms that includes numerous terminals for several of the nation’s major oil and gas pipelines. Since 1936, Oxbow Calcining, a plant owned by the notorious billionaire climate disinformation funder William Koch, has processed oil and gas into petroleum coke, a product used in manufacturing steel and aluminum. From 2016 to 2019, Sharon Kelly writes, Oxbow pumped into the air 22 million pounds of sulfur dioxide, a cause of lung disease. People of color make up most of the population of 2,600 who live within three miles of the plant.
Sulfur dioxide is produced when you burn hydrogen sulfide. Colin Cox, an attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project, said the smell of hydrogen sulfide is often compared to rotten eggs, but sulfur dioxide is “a little different. Most people describe it to me as burning garbage.” He added, “[T]he people in that community have been surrounded by refineries and industry for their entire lives, breathing that stuff and smelling that stuff.”
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A HALF DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ
Are “net-zero” climate targets just hot air? Corporations and countries around the world are promising to eliminate their contributions to climate change. However, “On the road to COP26, corporations are using ‘net-zero’ to block effective climate policy and greenwash their image while maintaining business-as-usual,” according to a report from the nonprofit group Corporate Accountability. […] The core of a net-zero emissions plan that isn’t just greenwashing should therefore have large and immediate reductions in absolute emissions. By Umair Irfan
“Four Important Points About EPA’s Proposed Methane Emissions Controls for Oil and Natural
Gas Facilities.” EPA no longer believes other federal and state regulations sufficiently control methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industry. By Romany M. Webb
Is the Global Methane Pledge Just “Words on Paper”? More than 70 countries, including the United States, have promised to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030. Is it enough? By Amy Westervelt
A California law gave the people power to cut pollution. Why isn’t it working? AB 617, which was touted as a corrective to environmental injustice, has created a long-winded, bureaucratic process but resulted in little regulation — a design flaw that may be intentional. By Naveena Sadasivam
Unlocking the Transition: As Tesla, Ford and others invest billions in EVs, will the power system be ready? The White House zero emission vehicle target of 50% of new car sales by 2030 has a long way to go, a short time to get there, and big challenges along the way. By Amy Westervelt
More oil vs. climate: Can Biden have it both ways? “As we see current volatility in energy prices, rather than cast it as a reason to back off our clean energy goals, we must view it as a call to action,” said President Biden Tuesday at the global COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. But, said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, “All the negotiation in the world is ultimately hollow unless Biden acts boldly to end the fossil fuel era at home.” She said Biden could stop oil and gas leasing on public lands and end fossil fuel exports through executive action, “but he refuses to do it. Biden contradicts his own moral imperative by leaving on the shelf his own tools to literally save lives and our planet from climate catastrophe.” By Lesley Clark, Mike Lee, Ester Wells