10 April 20
Just want to take a moment to give a special shout out to the people who are responding to the donation appeals for this drive.
When it’s tough sledding the people who step up are the backbone of the organization.
This is one tough fundraising drive, make no mistake about it. But 70 people so far have said Reader Supported News is worth my time and my contribution.
That is inspiring.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
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09 April 20
Bill McKibben | Will the Coronavirus Kill the Oil Industry?
Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes: "It's hard to get mad at a virus, but it's easy to be enraged by people and institutions that are disregarding the threat it poses in order to further their own profits."
Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes: "It's hard to get mad at a virus, but it's easy to be enraged by people and institutions that are disregarding the threat it poses in order to further their own profits."
Last week, I wrote about how construction is set to resume on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and how it will, in the process, risk the health of indigenous Americans, by bringing in workers from around the country to remote rural areas. (I didn’t know at the time that JPMorgan Chase, the world’s biggest fossil-fuel lender, had helped issue a billion-dollar bond to assist.) The same thing is happening in Canada, where tribal chiefs are trying to shut down gas-pipeline construction in British Columbia. Since the coronavirus took over our global conversation, the Trump Administration has also granted the oil industry the favor of dramatically reducing the mileage standards that the Obama Administration had imposed during the 2009 financial bailout. As public-health researchers pointed out, besides amping up climate change, this will cost at least ten thousand lives through lung damage from increased pollution. In the same vein, the E.P.A. announced that oil companies can keep selling dirtier “winter gas” well into the spring, even though it will create more smog as the temperature rises and, hence, damage people’s lungs. The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has suspended enforcement of its regulations because somehow, in a nation with rapidly rising unemployment, there’s not enough personnel to get the job done. The team at Drilled News has put together the most comprehensive list I’ve seen of all these rollbacks.
To understand the recklessness of the oil industry’s actions, it helps to appreciate its dilemma: on one hand, its product is responsible for climate change, which is the greatest crisis in the history of our species. On the other, its competitors in fields such as wind and solar power can now produce a better product more cheaply. Think about transportation, the main use of oil in the United States. Even without tax incentives, you can buy a new electric vehicle for the average price of a new American car. They cost far less to operate, they have very few moving parts to break, and, according to surveys, drivers like them better than other cars. Or think about home heating: air-source heat pumps can save you thirty per cent compared with filling an oil or propane tank. Meanwhile, chefs are increasingly turning off the gas and converting to induction cooktops—and you can do likewise, at a starting cost of about fifty dollars.
This transformation isn’t going to happen overnight—there’s a lot of inertia in any system, and especially so in energy systems. The transition from wood to coal, and from coal to oil, took many decades, and the oil industry has been counting on a slow passage this time, too. But the pandemic may actually be upending many of those assumptions. It has cratered demand for oil, obviously, and that has helped drive the price down to almost nothing—less than nothing, in some cases. In an effort to maintain market share, the Saudis and the Russians decided to engage in a ruinous price war; when Donald Trump announced that he was going to solve it, he forgot to ask American producers, who don’t seem to want to join a regime of production cuts. Basic bottom line: as a result of the coronavirus, we may well have seen the peak demand for petroleum on planet Earth.
But the key question for the climate crisis is, in fact, how fast the transition will take place. And the bad news, as we’ve seen, is that the oil industry still has huge amounts of political juice. So activism will remain crucial.
Passing the Mic
Ellen Dorsey is the executive director of the Wallace Global Fund, which supports a wide variety of climate-change efforts. She’s been a leader in convincing philanthropic organizations to sell their holdings in fossil fuels; her most recent article on the subject appeared last month in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
You’ve worked for years to get foundations to divest from fossil fuels, and sometimes it’s been a tough slog. Why do you think that is, and is it changing?
Honestly, it is incomprehensible that any foundation is still invested in fossil fuels, let alone some of the leading foundations with missions promoting environmental justice and social change. Foundations receive charitable tax status to serve the public good. It is a clear violation of your mission if you continue to invest in an industry that is arguably a threat to our survival by refusing to tender business plans consistent with what is required to protect civilization. No matter your mission, you should divest, as climate change impacts everything from protecting the most marginalized, preserving biodiversity, and creating educational institutions that prepare our children for the future.
Also, investing in such fuels and those who finance them ultimately undercuts the grantee work that we fund. How can you invest your endowed assets in fossil fuels, or bank with those investing in new fossil fuels, while you deploy a tiny fraction in grants to organizations that you expect to solve the problem? It is inconsistent, at best.
And, in addition to divesting from fossil fuels, we must also invest in solutions. Getting the world to a hundred per cent renewable energy in time will require every institutional investor to put at least five per cent of our assets into renewables, efficiency, clean tech, and energy access. Funders should specifically focus on investing in what mainstream investors won’t prioritize.
Responding to this economic crash, investors must rebalance portfolios. Don’t wait for fossil fuels to come back—they won’t—get out now for financial and ethical reasons. Foundations that began divesting more than five years ago have seen consistently better returns than those that did not. An invest-divest commitment will bolster returns, meet fiduciary duty, align programs and investments, and make a foundation’s portfolio consistent with the demands of a climate emergency.
What do philanthropists have to offer that’s specially useful as we approach this climate crisis? What can they do that governments can’t?
Philanthropy as a sector must declare a climate emergency. We need to respond at the scale of the problem and fundamentally resource the global mobilization required. In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic will demonstrate precisely why a managed and aggressive approach to climate needs to happen now, before the impacts are impossible to stop. What would it look like if philanthropy as a sector and individual donors alike declared a climate emergency? We would put climate at the center of our missions, as a cross-cutting priority informing all of our work. We would fund front-line movements and scale their capacity to advocate for change in time. Our strategies would be guided by the goal of fundamental system change, where our economy is restructured and governments lead in building programs that transform our infrastructure and create millions of new jobs. We would dip deeply into our endowments or spend out entirely to meet the needs of this crucial decade. Lastly, for God’s sake, we would manage those remaining assets we hold consistent with the science and divest from fossil fuels and invest in the solutions.
Climate School
Jeff Goodell has written an excellent piece on climate change and the oceans, reminding us that salt water covers seventy per cent of the planet, and that, if the oceans are heating fast, the effects on terra firma will be enormous. Rolling Stone in general is doing fine environmental reporting—the Earth Day issue, with Greta Thunberg as reimagined by Shepard Fairey on the cover, is worth owning. (Full disclosure: I have an article on JPMorgan Chase in the issue.)
Justin Guay is another longtime observer of energy trends, and, in a Medium post, he argues that the bailout offers a “once in a generation punctuated equilibrium event that will forever alter the energy landscape.” Obama-era stimulus programs helped “birth the modern solar industry,” and we could get even more done this time, he contends.
You can now stream a twenty-minute documentary from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about the life of the indigenous climate activist Clayton Thomas-Müller. I’ve worked with him for many years, but, until I read a draft of the memoir on which this film is based, I never understood the backstory of his life, which runs from helping sell drugs to helping stop pipelines.
Scoreboard
Boulder County, Colorado, became the first county in the nation to tell its insurance carriers that it will take its business elsewhere if those companies keep investing in and underwriting fossil-fuel projects. “We can’t be investing in things that are detrimental to our constituents, our community, our planet,” Elise Jones, the Boulder County commissioner, said.
There are days this spring when the obituary sections feel overwhelming, but a death that should be noted is that of Martin Khor, the former director of the Third World Network. Born in Malaysia, he was at the center of efforts to insure that environmentalism understood and paid attention to the Global South.
After a seven-year battle against frackers, a small Pennsylvania town won big when a state agency upheld its invocation of a novel legal strategy that granted legal rights to nature. “For me, it has always been about the right to protect our water, our hellbender salamander and our home,” a local retired elementary-school teacher said, referring to an ancient species that lives under stream boulders in the area.
Money continues to flow into “E.S.G.” stock funds, which try to invest on the basis of good “environmental, social, and governance” practices—and one reason may be that these funds are outperforming stock indexes even as markets tank. “It’s investors thinking, we need to do things that are better for everybody, for the whole world, so I’m going to support the companies that are going to help us do that,” a strategist said. “People come together in a crisis.”
Warming Up
Check out “Heal!,” described as a “battle poem for the climate and its defenders.” It comes from M.I.T., where the Festival Jazz Ensemble recently premièred it. The piece is composed by the pianist (and Ph.D. candidate) Peter Godart, with a fierce spoken-word section from Tiandra Ray, a 2015 M.I.T. grad. “Our relentless stampede toward wealth and comfort has cracked open our Earth,” she says. “We must reroute. We must heal the damage.”
A New York Fire Department EMT wheels a patient into an emergency arrival area at Elmhurst Hospital during the coronavirus outbreak in Queens, N.Y., on Monday, April 6, 2020. (photo: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
Summer Heat May Not Diminish Coronavirus Strength
James Gorman, The New York Times
Gorman writes: "The homebound and virus-wary across the Northern Hemisphere, from President Trump to cooped-up schoolchildren, have clung to the possibility that the coronavirus pandemic will fade in hot weather, as some viral diseases do."
James Gorman, The New York Times
Gorman writes: "The homebound and virus-wary across the Northern Hemisphere, from President Trump to cooped-up schoolchildren, have clung to the possibility that the coronavirus pandemic will fade in hot weather, as some viral diseases do."
But the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, in a public report sent to the White House, has said, in effect: Don’t get your hopes up. After reviewing a variety of research reports, a panel concluded that the studies, of varying quality of evidence, do not offer a basis to believe that summer weather will interfere with the spread of the coronavirus. The pandemic may lessen because of social distancing and other measures, but the evidence so far does not inspire confidence in the benefits of sun and humidity.
The report, sent to Kelvin Droegemeier, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House and acting director of the National Science Foundation, was a brief nine-page communication known as a rapid expert consultation.
Rent came due on April 1st - but for people across America, paying just wasn't possible. (photo: Eugene Garcia/Shutterstock)
Any Rent Is Too Damn High: A Proposal for the Coronavirus Economy
Alexis Sottile, Rolling Stone
Sottile writes: "Michael Gianaris has a plan to address New York's coronavirus-induced rent crisis, and he wants it implemented two weeks ago - not tomorrow."
READ MORE
Alexis Sottile, Rolling Stone
Sottile writes: "Michael Gianaris has a plan to address New York's coronavirus-induced rent crisis, and he wants it implemented two weeks ago - not tomorrow."
READ MORE
Liberty University president Jerry Falwell, Jr. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
Jerry Falwell Jr. Says Warrants Are Out for 2 Journalists After Critical Stories on Coronavirus Decision
Caitlin Oprysko, POLITICO
Oprysko writes: "Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, said on Wednesday that arrest warrants had been issued for journalists from The New York Times and ProPublica after both outlets published articles critical of his decision to partially reopen Liberty's campus amid the coronavirus pandemic."
Caitlin Oprysko, POLITICO
Oprysko writes: "Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, said on Wednesday that arrest warrants had been issued for journalists from The New York Times and ProPublica after both outlets published articles critical of his decision to partially reopen Liberty's campus amid the coronavirus pandemic."
Photocopies of the two warrants published on the website of Todd Starnes, a conservative radio host, charge that Julia Rendleman, a freelance photographer for the Times, and Alec MacGillis, a ProPublica reporter, committed misdemeanor trespassing on the Lynchburg, Va., campus of the college while working on their articles.
Falwell and Liberty, one of the most high-profile evangelical schools in the country, have come under fire for welcoming students back to campus after the school’s spring break despite the pandemic, while nearly every other college in the country has ordered students off campus.
In an interview on Starnes’ show, Falwell ripped a New York Times report that nearly a dozen students were experiencing symptoms of Covid-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. The Times cited “the physician who runs Liberty’s student health service,” who said three students so far had been tested for coronavirus, with at least one student, who lives off campus, testing positive.
More students were self-quarantining, the Times reported, a move caused, Falwell said, by where they had spent spring break. Falwell said the physician, who he says has “no official role at Liberty,” had “immediately issued a correction” to his statements to the Times.
A statement on the school’s website says the physician denies “he ever told the reporter that Liberty had about a dozen students were sick with symptoms that suggest COVID-19” and that he “gave figures for testing and self-isolation that are consistent with Liberty’s numbers but the New York Times preferred to go forward with sensational click-bait that increases traffic.”
Falwell defended his decision to allow students back to campus, saying there was “maybe” less than 10 percent occupancy on campus and that some who remained on campus were international students or were afraid to go home and live with high-risk family members.
Falwell, a fierce supporter of President Donald Trump, was among those who were portraying reaction to the virus as overblown as recently as a month ago, accusing opponents of the president of weaponizing the outbreak to hurt him politically and suggesting the virus might be the work of North Korea and China.
When Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia commanded higher-education institutions in the state to stop in-person teaching last week, it was viewed by some as a swipe at Liberty, which said it had canceled its remaining in-person offerings.
Both articles by the Times and ProPublica quoted students or professors who suggested that social-distancing guidelines, designed to prevent the spread of the highly transmissible virus, were not being adequately practiced on campus.
Falwell cast his decision to seek a case against the journalists as a move to protect his students, asserting that the journalists had probably come from coronavirus hot spots such as Washington, D.C., or New York, and that by being on campus they had put remaining Liberty students at risk. He also complained that Liberty was being singled out because of its status as a religious school.
He contended that there were witnesses for both cases of alleged trespassing, telling Starnes that there were no-trespassing signs posted at “every entrance” barring everyone from the campus except students, faculty and staff, or those with official university business.
Richard Tofel, president of ProPublica, said he’d not seen or heard anything of the warrant aside from having been pointed to it on Starnes’ website.
David McCraw, in-house counsel for the Times, said in a statement, “Julia was engaged in the most routine form of news gathering: taking an outdoors picture of a person who was interviewed for a news story.” McCraw said Rendleman had been invited to campus by one of the students interviewed for the article.
“We are disappointed that Liberty University would decide to make that into a criminal case and go after a freelance journalist because its officials were unhappy with press coverage of the university’s decision to convene classes in the midst of the pandemic,” he added.
There is no warrant for the author of the Times article, Elizabeth Williamson, because the magistrate judge did not find enough physical evidence to charge her, Falwell said. But he threatened civil defamation lawsuits against Williamson and another unidentified media outlet if the Times didn’t make a “clear apologetic correction” to its report.
The coronavirus shows tying health insurance to jobs is a disaster. (photo: iStock)
Ezra Klein, Vox
Klein writes: "According to a new analysis by the consulting firm Health Management Associates (HMA), the Covid-19 crisis could lead to between 12 million and 35 million people losing employer-sponsored health coverage due to job losses."
READ MORE
Klein writes: "According to a new analysis by the consulting firm Health Management Associates (HMA), the Covid-19 crisis could lead to between 12 million and 35 million people losing employer-sponsored health coverage due to job losses."
READ MORE
Margaret Gordon, co-founder of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, holds one of her many portable air monitors which can be inserted in fanny packs and can gather data on the go. Ms. Margaret started her own air monitoring in 2008. (photo: Nina Riggio/NBC)
Low-Income California Communities Enact Plan to Fight Disproportionate Air Pollution
Joe Purtell, NBC News
Purtell writes: "Like many of California's cities, air pollution is not evenly distributed in Oakland. The unhealthy air is concentrated - usually in low-income neighborhoods of black and brown people."
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Joe Purtell, NBC News
Purtell writes: "Like many of California's cities, air pollution is not evenly distributed in Oakland. The unhealthy air is concentrated - usually in low-income neighborhoods of black and brown people."
READ MORE
The company behind the breakthrough, Carbios, has partnered with major companies including Pepsi and L'Oréal. (photo: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)
Scientists Create Mutant Enzyme That Recycles Plastic Bottles in Hours
Damian Carrington, Guardian UK
Carrington writes: "The enzyme, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, reduced the bottles to chemical building blocks that were then used to make high-quality new bottles."
READ MORE
Damian Carrington, Guardian UK
Carrington writes: "The enzyme, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, reduced the bottles to chemical building blocks that were then used to make high-quality new bottles."
READ MORE
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