11 May 20
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Juan Cole | Top 5 Reasons Trump's West Wing May Be Emerging as a Coronavirus Epicenter
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "Some observers are afraid that the virus is circulating in the West Wing itself."
ana Winter and Hunter Walker at Yahoo News broke the story that 11 Secret Service agents have tested positive for the coronavirus. Likely some of them served in the West Wing. This week it was revealed at that a US military valet who brought Trump food came down with the virus, sending Trump into a “lava level” rage. Two aides to Vice President Mike Pence have tested positive. Some observers are afraid that the virus is circulating in the West Wing itself.
If so, it would come as no surprise, since the Trump White House has been thumbing its all along nose at best practice mitigating measures.
1. Denialism. Trump spent two months doing absolutely nothing to prepare for fighting the coronavirus, repeatedly denying it would be a problem in the United States, saying there were only 15 cases, that it would fall to zero, that it would magically go away in April. When a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control in late February warned on television of what was coming, the stock market took a dive. Trump had been in India and he fumed all the way home about that public admission. That is, one of Trump’s motives in coronavirus denialism was to protect the value of securities so as to keep his wealthy base happy going into his bid for reelection.
This stance of denialism required that Trump and his circle not be seen to take the coronavirus seriously. But that means that the administration did little to stop the spread of the disease in the White House itself.
2. Shaking hands. Back in the first half of March, Pence defended his and Trump’s insistence on shaking hands. Pence opined, ”As the president has said, in our line of work, you shake hands when someone wants to shake your hand. The president will continue to do it, I’ll continue to do it.”
In contrast, infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci strongly urged that the whole custom of shaking hands be abolished forever. In fact, along with wearing masks, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, all of whom have unexpectedly low numbers of cases and fatalities, share in common a culture where you greet people in some other way than transferring someone’s microbes from their hand to yours.
Trump wouldn’t even wear a mask when he toured an Arizona Honeywell factory that makes masks, and where all the employees were wearing them. They were playing Paul McCartney and the Wings’ 1973 James Bond theme song, “Live and Let Die” in the background during his visit. I kid you not.
Will Weissert and Jonathan Lemire at AP reported that Trump fears he would look ridiculous in a mask and that the Biden campaign would use footage of him thus attired in attack ads, hurting his reelection chances.
In Hong Kong universal public voluntary adoption of face masks appears to have been one of their secrets of success in containing the coronavirus. Some Americans, in contrast, are so ignorant that they have actually brandished guns rather than wear a mask. (Since they want to be gunmen, why are the so against wearing a mask? Billy the Kid did).
4. Big Meetings. The intrepid Hunter Walker at Yahoo News also reported that big meetings have been held regularly in the White House, including in the relatively cramped Oval Office. Staff routinely meets in large gatherings with no masks and no social distancing.
5. It is almost as though this Republican administration is full of arrogant people who dismiss science. Oh wait.
There was that op-ed Mike Pence wrote denying that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer, and then there was his refusal to provide clean needles during the HIV crisis, harming Indiana public health. Then there is Trump’s own claim that climate change is a Chinese hoax. Gee, there are a lot of Chinese hoaxes around that all seem actually to come true.
Trump’s chief advisor on making America Minderheitenrein (purified of minorities), Stephen Miller, came up through the far right wing Breitbart propaganda mill that denies the science of climate change. Miller’s wife was one of the Pence aides who contracted the coronavirus this week. I wish Ms. Miller a speedy recovery. It is a nasty disease that can leave even young people with serious health conditions, including decreased lung function and damage to the heart, kidneys and other organs.
People who dismiss the prescriptions of science are prospective Darwin Award winners. The danger is that when they own the White House, they may force the rest of us to join them at the podium for the award ceremony.
The Arbery Family. (photo: CNN)
Georgia AG Asks Feds to Probe Handling of Ahmaud Arbery Case
Emma Tucker, The Daily Beast
Tucker writes: "Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr announced on Sunday that he has asked the Department of Justice to investigate the handling of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man who was fatally shot by two white men while jogging."
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Darlene Krawetz before contracting Covid-10. (photo: WP)
On What Life Becomes When Covid-19 Won't Go Away
Darlene Krawetz and Eli Saslow, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "This virus is unpredictable and so, so violent."
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Cars wait in a queue to receive food assistance provided by the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida in Orlando on May 7. (photo: Paul Hennessy/Echoes Wire/Barcroft Media/Getty Images)
Coronavirus Is Exacerbating America's Hunger Crisis
Li Zhou, Vox
Zhou writes: "Food banks and SNAP are completely overwhelmed right now."
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Karen Ruark, a 3rd grade teacher in Maryland, drives to the South Dorchester School four days a week to access the WiFi there. She often works in her car while her two teenage daughters do schoolwork. (photo: Jaclyn Borowski/Education Week)
Belle Chesler | The Empire Has No Clothes: In the Classroom That Zoom Built
Belle Chesler, TomDispatch
Chesler writes: "Do you hear that silence? That's the absence of footsteps echoing through our nation's public school hallways. It's the silence of teaching in a virtual space populated with students on mute who lack a physical presence."
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Two girls play in front of the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona. (photo: Alejandro GarcÃa/EPA)
Barcelona Without the Tourists: 'We've Reclaimed Our City but Inherited a Ghost Town'
Stephen Burgen, Guardian UK
Burgen writes: "For six weeks, the streets of Barcelona were deserted. Not a soul except the Deliveroo and Glovo riders and the occasional shopper, masked and gloved, making a foray to the nearest supermarket before scurrying back home."
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Pollution. (photo: David McNew/Getty Images)
The Oil Crash Could Be Geothermal's Big Break
Kate Aronoff, The New Republic
Aronoff writes: "Geothermal power requires similar infrastructure and skills as fossil fuel extraction, which means laid-off oil workers could switch to greener work pretty easily."
s oil and gas companies falter under the weight of Covid-19 shutdowns, price wars, and their own massive debt burden, an unlikely beneficiary seems to be emerging: geothermal power. Ordinarily, geothermal is the runt of the renewable power litter. But because it uses much of the same infrastructure as is used in fossil fuel extraction, geothermal might offer an appealing off-ramp for some of the tens of thousands laid off in the oil and gas industry, while helping build a low-carbon future.
That said, there’s a long way to go. Geothermal currently provides less than 1 percent of the country’s power, with half of its infrastructure built in the 1980s. Even so, the United States leads the world in installed geothermal capacity. Worldwide resources are distributed widely, from Italy to Mongolia, Turkey to Indonesia; Iceland and Kenya each derive huge percentages of their power from geothermal sources. In the U.S., geothermal extraction points are currently spread across eight Western states.
Geothermal potential here, though, is enormous. The U.S. Geological Survey, in 2008, estimated that geothermal in California could provide up to 15,000 megawatts of power—about a fifth of the current capacity of the state’s existing power plants. That capacity grows in tandem with technological breakthroughs. A 2019 study from the Department of Energy found that geothermal power has the potential to provide between 16 and 20 percent of the country’s electricity.
Tim Latimer helped found Fervo Energy in 2017 after starting his career as an engineer in the oil industry in Texas. “The skill I had developed to that point was poking deep holes in the ground,” he told me. “What I learned in researching geothermal was that I could do that for no-carbon energy.” Fervo specializes in applying technologies used in natural gas extraction—like hydraulic fracturing and distributed fiber-optic sensing—to geothermal power. “We use all the same equipment” as in natural gas fracking, he says, “but the systems we design with them are quite different.”
The collapse of oil prices in the last several weeks has been a boon to his business. Oilfield service companies, wracked by sweeping layoffs around the country, have been keen to offer Fervo equipment at lower rates than usual, now that there’s less competition from fossil fuel drillers. “As equipment is going into storage, people are really interested in putting that equipment to work,” Latimer said. “We’re getting more interest from service companies and better prices.”
Every member of Fervo’s team got their start in the oil and gas business. “It’s a seamless transition,” Latimer says. “If you’re somebody who knows how to operate that drilling rig and have spent your career learning how to make decisions on the drill site, it’s very easy. We’ll use drilling rigs that may have just come off an oil and gas well. Technically, there are things that have to be different. Our engineers have to learn different things about how the wells work, but from a workforce standpoint, it’s highly similar.”
While still tiny in terms of deployment, and facing geographic limitations, geothermal could be a major complement to renewables, since it’s available around the clock, rain or shine, wind or no wind. Some firms have also explored the possibility of recovering lithium from the superheated brine unearthed in geothermal power production before it’s reinjected underground, potentially producing a critical ingredient in the batteries that store solar power and increase reliability. That’s a serious side benefit, given the great need for lithium going forward, if society is to transition off fossil fuels.
The problems facing geothermal have as much to do with economics as geography. Like fracking, geothermal requires massive upfront capital costs to initiate production. But it’s also more like traditional oil drilling, in that there’s a high risk of drilling up “dry” wells that can’t produce any power. Even amid low interest rates, these factors have made it a hard sell to investors eager for quick returns. And its high production costs translate to higher prices that can make it a less competitive option for power providers compared with wind, solar, or gas.
Policy can make a big difference. California—where about 8 percent of power is produced from geothermal—is set to build the state’s first new geothermal plants in nearly a decade, part of a more general spike of interest in geothermal over the last year. In the Golden State, that growth is being spurred by the state’s climate goals, which aim for carbon neutrality by 2045. The policy signals to investors that natural gas won’t be around forever and makes no-carbon power sources like geothermal more attractive, even if they’re more expensive in the short term. So far, Community Choice Agencies—locally controlled electricity providers in California—have been the most active in procuring power from geothermal.
Like any energy source, geothermal is no panacea. As with wind or large-scale solar installations, geothermal drilling is still drilling, and getting buy-in from surrounding communities will mean undergoing a proper environmental impact review and public comment period, avoiding protected areas, and following careful safety precautions. And since geothermal drilling, like all other activity in our society, exists within an energy system still run predominately on fossil fuels, the transportation of necessary drilling equipment still runs largely on carbon-based fuels.
The similarities between traditional and geothermal drilling have created an odd coalition in Canada between renewables and oil sands companies. The ultimate goal for fossil fuel companies in Canada isn’t exactly in line with strong environmental goals, of the sort championed here by Green New Deal advocates. The Canadian oil sands companies hope to power their oil sands extraction with geothermal power, a source they view as firmly in line with an “all of the above” approach to energy.
Interest from U.S.-based fossil fuel companies has been comparatively muted, waxing when prospects for incumbent fuels look bleak and waning when they improve again. Despite having been around in some capacity for decades, geothermal in the U.S. remains a relatively small and somewhat undefined industry player. The shape of federal support for domestic geothermal—or the lack thereof—could play a big role in determining whether the industry develops for the benefit of the public or for existing polluters to use as political cover for the continued extraction of dirtier fuels.
If the U.S. were to make decarbonization a national priority, it could shoulder the risk for early-stage geothermal development as it did for upstart technologies during World War II, stimulating private investment. Such a backing could provide not just tax credits and ramped-up research and development, through programs like ARPA-E (the government agency dedicated to promoting advanced energy technologies) but also next-level support like pledging to procure geothermal power for government use. In doing so, the government could also make sure the public benefits from this technology are shared broadly. Federal backing, for example, can ensure that laid-off oilfield workers are hired on geothermal rigs at wages and benefits comparable to those they made digging up fossil fuels. It can also enforce standards on companies receiving federal support for siting, environmental impact assessments, and community input.
All this might sound a little far-fetched at the moment, but given the rapid, in some cases existential, changes underway for fossil fuels, there may now be a bigger opening than ever for newcomers—particularly those that can almost literally pick up where bankrupted oil drillers left off. When they include it at all, green groups tend to treat geothermal as one of several items on a wishlist for the kind of new energy sources that emissions-conscious governments should be investing in; most people simply don’t know much about it. There remain a lot of unknowns about what a massive, thriving U.S. geothermal sector could look like. The Covid-19 crisis could be an opportunity to map one out that’s built firmly in the public interest and align the needs of thousands of laid-off workers with those of the planet.
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