31 August 20
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Bill McKibben | On Climate Change, We've Run Out of Presidential Terms to Waste
Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes: "This is one of those terrifying moments in the early history of the global-warming era."
he working definition of the ongoing brain seizure that is 2020 is either that Coloradans are being told by state authorities to install smoke-resistant “safe rooms” in their houses, or that Californians now must weigh what kind of mask to wear. An N95 mask helps to filter out harmful particulates from the wildfire smoke that is overwhelming the Golden State, but many come with an exhalation valve to keep the wearer from overheating—and that valve can spread the coronavirus. Luckily, according to the ABC affiliate in San Francisco, “There’s a pretty simple fix: you can wear a cloth or surgical mask over the N95.”
This is one of those terrifying moments in the early history of the global-warming era. As of this writing, Hurricane Laura is headed for the coasts of Texas and Louisiana as a monster storm; meanwhile, the West has been erupting in flames. In California, a heat wave that had produced record-high temperatures ran into a dry storm that, within a couple of days, produced a tenth of the state’s average annual lightning discharges. (Increase the planet’s temperature just a degree Celsius, by the way, and you increase lightning activity by about twelve per cent.) Authorities told all forty million people in California to be prepared to evacuate—indeed, they told them to park their cars facing out of the driveway, in case they had to leave in seconds. But the pandemic has made evacuation more complicated, because heading to a shelter might carry its own dangers, and it has left California’s firefighting force depleted, because the state relies on prison inmates, a group that has been hit especially hard by COVID-19, to fill out its ranks. And that’s just California. The flooding crisis in China intensified again last week, as record amounts of water poured into the reservoir behind Three Gorges Dam.
Here’s what this means: if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take over the White House, in January, they’re going to be dealing with an immediate and overwhelming climate crisis, not just the prospective dilemma that other Administrations have faced. It’s not coming; it’s here. The luxury of moving slowly, the margin for zigging and zagging to accommodate various interests, has disappeared. So, if the Democrats win, they will have to address the pandemic and the resulting economic dislocation, and tackle the climate mess all at the same time. Any climate plan must be, in some way or another, the solution to the current widespread loss of jobs.
That will not be easy, because, although the interests that keep us locked into the use of fossil-fuels are weakening, they remain strong. A remarkable new investigation by the Guardian documented how the gas industry—utilities, drillers, and unions—is spending huge sums to insure that cities don’t start encouraging homeowners to use electricity. (Part of the story documents the industry’s successful campaign to overwhelm efforts by activists in Seattle who are affiliated with 350.org, which I helped found.) But the effort to keep fossil-fuel executives out of the White House is growing: last week, even the veteran centrist John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign, was joining hands with the Sunrise Movement to demand a public pledge from the Biden team to shun oil-industry lobbyists and executives. In a Democratic Administration, however, the role of unions would be as important as the power of companies—and, so far, the building trades have done what they can to block efforts to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
As Kate Aronoff wrote in The New Republic, last week, “establishment Democrats, but also relative progressives championing a so-called just transition, continue to treat the fossil fuel industry as a reliable source of well-paid union work instead of a rapidly sinking ship. As a result, they’re mostly unprepared to rescue its passengers.” This means, she points out, that Biden (and climate policy) likely would be blamed for the loss of jobs, even if it is the cratering economics of fossil fuel that is actually driving the shift. (On Monday night, ExxonMobil was dropped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average after ninety-two years, overtaken by tech companies; as recently as 2011 it was the biggest company on earth.) “Democrats have to be willing to build a generous safety net instead of catering to deficit hawks,” Aronoff added. “And they have to start a frank conversation within the Democratic coalition about the fact that fossil fuel jobs are already disappearing.”
This isn’t impossible. In fact, Amanda Little suggests, at Bloomberg Opinion, that it’s a conversation that needs to be had across many industries: her example is beef, where new plant-based meat substitutes “can buoy American farmers who have been struggling for years by helping them diversify their crops. The key ingredients in plant-based meats are soy, dry peas, legumes and pulses. As demand grows for alternative meats, so will demand for these crops.” As Little notes, we’re growing thirty per cent more dry peas than in 2018. “Instead of declaring a war on the meat industry, Biden and Harris should celebrate its evolution. They could emphasize that meat giants like Tyson Foods Inc., JBS and Smithfield . . . are themselves investing in a plant-based future.”
The point is clear: as Biden and Harris campaign for the future of our democracy this fall, they also have to lay the groundwork to fight for the future of our planet. That message can be communicated to voters: Biden showed how to do it with a commercial that linked his love of his vintage Corvette to the future of electric vehicles. No, electric sports cars and industrial pea cutlets will not save the climate; but it’s crucial, right now, on the campaign trail, for politicians to help Americans understand the rapid and unsettling transition that physics implacably demands. We’re out of Presidential terms to waste. If there’s going to be effective American action on climate, it’s going to have to come from Joe Biden.
Passing the Mic
Antonia Juhasz is a freelance journalist who has covered the oil industry for years—she wrote the cover story for the current issue of Sierra Magazine, titled “The End of Oil is Near,” with a powerful sidebar on the Trump Administration’s efforts to bail out the industry. She’s a 2020-2021 Bertha investigative-journalism fellow, working with an international cohort of journalists on fossil fuels, the climate crisis, and corporate power, and is the author of three books, most recently, “Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.”
BP announced that it’s going to cut oil and natural-gas production by forty per cent in a decade. Is this a capitulation to reality that will spread or an outlier that has them scoffing at ExxonMobil H.Q.? Are we really at an inflection point?
We are, and BP’s announcement is significant. It reflects reality: a public and its policymakers fed up with fossil fuels, making a whole lot of it simply unprofitable to produce—same for the companies that produce it. This was true before COVID-19, which has accelerated a process well underway. It could be the beginning of the end of the oil industry, but that’s largely up to us. BP’s announcement reveals important regulatory weaknesses. European oil companies are forced to report and reconcile these losses in ways that Exxon and Chevron are not. So as BP reported this month a whopping $16.8 billion losses, it also unveiled a new business model, [more focussed on low-carbon technology] that’s supposed to turn a profit. That’s good. But BP isn’t keeping its fossil fuels in the ground. Rather, it’s selling off oil and gas assets to other companies that continue to produce the fuels. That’s bad. If we want fossil fuels to remain undeveloped, we can’t rely on fossil-fuel companies. Left to its own devices, in 2030, BP still plans to devote two-thirds of its business to oil and gas.
BP also announced that it plans to transition from an “international oil company” to an “integrated energy company,” significantly increasing its renewable-energy business. Is that good news, and should it be followed by other companies?
BP, like every major oil company, has a long track record that must be taken into account as we build the new green economy. We’re subsidizing these companies to the tune of nearly five trillion dollars a year globally, so we’ve earned the right to evaluate their work. Fossil fuels are not renewable, but they are natural resources with which humans have cohabited for millennia. The devastation wrought by BP, Exxon, Chevron, Shell and others in just the last hundred and fifty years, through their control of oil, natural gas, and coal, profoundly undermines the notion that the answer to our problems is to entrust these same companies today with the sun, wind, and waves. The problem is not just the fossil fuels, but behavior and a business model that runs contrary to just about every basic tenant of equitable and just transition policy. Perhaps most importantly, theirs is a model built on ever-expanding demand. Yet if we’re going to survive the wealthiest among us—including the largest corporations—must embrace far healthier and sustainable consumption patterns that reduce our over-all usage of both energy and transportation systems.
You’ve been enthusiastic online about Kamala Harris as a climate champion. Do you know her from California? What gives you the most faith in her?
As attorney general, Kamala Harris was the rare California state official to stand not only with Richmond, a hard-hit low-income community of color, but against Chevron—the most dominant oil company in the state [which has a big refinery in Richmond]. And in the wake of the devastating Santa Barbara oil spill she took aggressive action against Plains All American Pipeline. As you’ve noted, California is an oil state, yet throughout her political career, Harris has taken just $170,865 from the “Energy & Natural Resources” industry. She’s not beholden to the oil industry, and both her policies and platform reflect that independence. As a Presidential candidate, she went further than most to embrace keep-it-in-the-ground policy, stating her unequivocal support for a full fracking ban and, most profoundly, pledging to initiate a first-of-its-kind international coalition to implement the managed decline in fossil-fuel production and the phaseout of industry subsidies worldwide. I cannot emphasize enough what a game-changer this is. She’ll push Biden to be more aggressive on environmental, climate and fossil-fuel justice, especially if the public pushes her, as well.
Climate School
The damage from rapidly rising temperatures comes in many forms. The California fires are a dramatic example, but a new study from researchers at the University of Arkansas details a more insidious threat: rising oceans push water tables higher, flooding inland areas.
Guido Girgenti and Varshini Prakash, of the Sunrise Movement, have edited a new collection of essays called “Winning the Green New Deal” that reads, in part, like a playbook for what needs to happen post-election, should Biden win. The Reverend William Barber, Naomi Klein, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Julian Brave NoiseCat, the union leader Mary Kay Henry, and others volunteered to write pieces. (I did, too.)
Those California fires, according to a magisterial piece of reporting from Inside Climate News, remind us that a fundamental shift in fire behavior is underway. Droughts—the precursor to big blazes—used to be caused by a lack of rainfall. But, as temperatures climb, wildfires are increasingly caused by rapid evaporation during extreme heat waves. Such “heat-driven aridity” has helped create a “year-round wildfire season” in parts of the West, and in places like Australia.
On Tuesday, a committee of Democratic senators released an omnibus report on the climate crisis. In many ways, the most interesting reading begins on Page 199, where Sheldon Whitehouse, of Rhode Island, and others collate all the known data about the political-influence-buying of the fossil-fuel industry. Should the Democrats regain control of the upper chamber in November, this will likely be a blueprint for action.
They’re cutting hundreds of trees to widen the road to Gandhi’s old ashram, in India. This seems like too much irony even for 2020; hence, a petition.
Scoreboard
At Harvard, where students and faculty have been waging a fight for fossil-fuel divestment for most of the past decade, alumni weighed in decisively: an insurgent slate of candidates for the university’s Board of Overseers claimed three of five open seats in the most recent election, despite a last-ditch effort by a group of alumni who accused divestment activists of effectively “buying” the seats on behalf of “special interests.”
The Australian insurance giant Suncorp, which has been the target of an aggressive campaign by the activist group Market Forces, declared that it would no longer invest in fossil-fuel companies or underwrite their projects. That’s a big deal, especially because the country’s conservative government has made new gas development a cornerstone of its COVID-19-recovery policy.
A new study shows that Greenland lost record amounts of ice in 2019—and by record amounts, the researchers mean a million tons of ice per minute. Every second, enough water melted to fill seven Olympic-sized pools. A separate study indicated that Greenland may have passed a point of no return: even a retreat to the temperature levels of the past few decades would not be enough, at this point, to prevent the country’s eventual melt. “The ice sheet is now in a new dynamic state,” a researcher explained.
Warming Up
The mediocre nineties act Smash Mouth played the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, last month, and took the opportunity to explain to the largely unmasked crowd its theory on the pandemic: “Fuck that coronavirus shit.” So it’s either a good thing or a bad thing that, as the Times noted last spring, in a round-up of climate-related songs, the band’s hit “All Star” is actually kind of about global warming. I’m not saying you should listen to it; I’m saying that it’s interesting.
Michael Flynn. (photo: VICE)
Appeals Court Denies Michael Flynn and Justice Department's Effort to End His Case
Ann E. Marimow and Spencer S. Hsu, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "A federal judge can scrutinize the Justice Department's decision to drop the criminal case against President Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled Monday, allowing the legal saga to continue."
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Donald Trump supporters. (photo: Damon Winter/NYT)
Trump to Followers: Bring the Violence
Heather Digby Parton, Salon
Excerpt: "Armed men in pickup trucks are 'Great Patriots!' according to our president. He's drooling for mob violence."
resident Trump was having a normal one on Sunday morning, tweeting and retweeting 89 times over the course of three and a half hours. Many of them were tweets of polling numbers from obscure firms showing him in the lead after the Republican convention. But most of the tweets and retweets were incitement to violence among his true believers and complaints about "Democrat cities," an ongoing mantra which he seems to think is a slam dunk to get him re-elected.
He repeatedly insulted and mocked Joe Biden, of course, and Portland, Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler will undoubtedly have to change his phone number after the president of the United States posted it on Twitter so his followers could call and demand his resignation.
He also showed support for one of his fans in Wisconsin:
It was a manic tweet spree and one that couldn't have show the president's state of mind any more clearly. Biden has said Trump is "rooting for violence," and I don't think anyone can reasonably argue with that.
In fact, Trump's surrogates are saying it right out loud. Fox News' Chris Wallace asked Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump whether she agreed with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway's assertion that "the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety and law and order." Lara answered, "Well, I think it paints a very clear picture." She might as well have said, "You go, boys!"
On CNN on Sunday, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., agreed with Trump that the shootings by a 17-year-old Trump fan last Tuesday night in Kenosha were understandable:
What the president did was he offered to surge manpower and resources so the violence could end. The governor did not accept that that day, that night tragically two people lost their lives because citizens took matters into their own hands. I'm not for vigilantism. I'm not sure that's what was happening. People felt, because the governor — local officials were looking for help. The governor did not accept the help, and so there was not the resolve to end the rioting, and so people took matters into their own hands, and that's what ended up happening. People die.
Johnson is confused about everything, as usual. Trump publicly berated Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers for failing to call in the National Guard hours after Evers had already done so, telling his followers that Evers wasn't protecting the city. Johnson basically said that people felt they needed to take matters into their own hands because the president had lied to them and told them the governor wasn't protecting them. Yet somehow he's against vigilantism. Everything about that is a grotesque inversion of anything one could call "law and order."
Trump was at it again later on Sunday, tweeting in response to a press conference by Wheeler, the Portland mayor. Trump called him a "dummy" and ranted on, saying, "He would like to blame me and the federal government for going in, but he hasn't seen anything yet. We have only been there with a small group to defend our U.S. courthouse, because he couldn't do it."
Conway's little gaffe in which she admitted that the White House and the Trump campaign believe street violence is good for them illuminates the president's fanning of the flames. He has finally grasped that he cannot unilaterally sending in a bunch of federal cops, as he did in Washington to stage his photo-op last June. Instead, he's not-very-subtly signaling to his gun-toting fans that they are going to have to take action on their own if they hope to scare people into voting for him. Leave the propaganda to him, just ramp up the chaos.
He tweeted that MAGA "protesters" who came to Portland in a caravan on Saturday night were "Great Patriots!" and later explained why their behavior was understandable:
The Atlantic's Ron Brownstein wondered on Twitter whether "suburban voters look at these pictures and say, 'yes, where I belong is in the same political coalition as men who crowd into pickup trucks w/guns, as in Bosnia 1998 or a Third World dictatorship?'" (Those huge flags flying behind them reminded me of men crowded "into pickup trucks w/guns," as in news photographs of ISIS fighters.)
It's a jarringly familiar sight, but it doesn't look like anything we've seen in America before.
There was an actual shooting that night and someone died. It's unclear what exactly happened. But it is very clear that this kind of confrontation is something that Trump and his henchmen are actively stoking for political gain..
As I wrote on Friday, this is hardly the first time Trump has deployed crude, racist fear-mongering. He's been doing it for years, going all the way back to the full-page Central Park Five ad. If it isn't marauding gangs of Black teenagers, it's Muslim terrorists or Mexican rapists or left-wing anarchists. There's always some bogeyman coming to get you.
The only thing he knows how to do is point a finger at "the other" and then promise people that he's the only one who can save them. He feels confident that he's got the troops to back him up, one way or the other. He gave an interview with Breitbart back in 2019 in which he made this explicit:
You know, the left plays a tougher game, it's very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don't play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people, but they don't play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.
Yes, it would be very bad. The question is whether or not anyone will believe that Donald Trump is the man who can save America from all this mayhem he is creating. After all, he's been promising to do that ever since he came down that elevator. Here he is at the 2016 Republican convention:
I guess that's yet another promise he'll fulfill after he makes America Great Again — Again.
A woman ironing. (photo: Shutterstock)
A Direct Legacy of Slavery, Domestic Worker Exploitation Is on the Rise in the US
Maurizio Guerrero, In These Times
Excerpt: "The pandemic has left already vulnerable workers even more exposed to abuses on the job."
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A cardiac patient. (photo: Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images)
COVID-19 Can Wreck Your Heart, Even if You Haven't Had Any Symptoms
Carolyn Barber, Scientific American
Excerpt: "A growing body of research is raising concerns about the cardiac consequences of the coronavirus."
eyond its scientific backing, the notion that a COVID-19 patient might wind up with long-term lung scarring or breathing issues has the ring of truth. After all, we hear the stories, right? The virus can leave survivors explaining how they struggled to breathe, or how it can feel, in the words of actress Alyssa Milano, “like an elephant is sitting on my chest.”
We’ve also known for a while that some COVID-19 patients’ hearts are taking a beating, too—but over the past few weeks, the evidence has strengthened that cardiac damage can happen even among people who have never displayed symptoms of coronavirus infection. And these frightening findings help explain why college and professional sports leagues are proceeding with special caution as they make decisions about whether or not to play.
From an offensive lineman at Indiana University dealing with possible heart issues to a University of Houston player opting out of the season because of “complications with my heart,” the news has been coming fast and furiously. More than a dozen athletes at Power Five conference schools have been identified as having myocardial injury following coronavirus infection, according to ESPN; two of the conferences—the Big Ten and the Pac-12—already have announced they are postponing all competitive sports until 2021. And in Major League Baseball, Boston Red Sox ace pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez told reporters that he felt “100 years old” as a result of his bout with COVID, and of MLB’s shortened season because of myocarditis—an inflammation of the heart muscle, often triggered by a virus. Said Rodriguez: “That’s [the heart is] the most important part of your body, so when you hear that … I was kind of scared a little. Now that I know what it is, it’s still scary.”
Why are these athletes (and their leagues and conferences) taking such extreme precautions? It’s because of the stakes. Though it often resolves without incident, myocarditis can lead to severe complications such as abnormal heart rhythms, chronic heart failure and even sudden death. Just a few weeks ago, a former Florida State basketball player, Michael Ojo, died of suspected heart complications just after recovering from a bout of COVID-19 in Serbia, where he was playing pro ball.
Here’s the background: Myocarditis appears to result from the direct infection of the virus attacking the heart, or possibly as a consequence of the inflammation triggered by the body’s overly aggressive immune response. And it is not age-specific: In The Lancet, doctors recently reported on an 11-year-old child with multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C)—a rare illness—who died of myocarditis and heart failure. At autopsy, pathologists were able to identify coronavirus particles present in the child’s cardiac tissue, helping to explain the virus’ direct involvement in her death. In fact, researchers ((HAS NO LINK)) are reporting the presence of viral protein in the actual heart muscle, of six deceased patients. Of note is the fact that these patients were documented to have died of lung failure, having had neither clinical signs of heart involvement, nor a prior history of cardiac disease.
Ossama Samuel, associate chief of cardiology at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York, told me about a cluster of younger adults developing myocarditis, some of them a month or so after they had recovered from COVID-19. One patient, who developed myocarditis four weeks after believing he had recovered from the virus, responded to a course of steroid treatment only to develop a recurrence in the form of pericarditis (an inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart). A second patient, in her 40s, now has reduced heart function from myocarditis, and a third—an athletic man in his 40s—is experiencing recurring and dangerous ventricular heart rhythms, necessitating that he wear a LifeVest defibrillator for protection. His MRI also demonstrates fibrosis and scarring of his heart muscle, which may be permanent, and he may ultimately require placement of a permanent defibrillator.
This is an incredibly tricky diagnosis. Patients with myocarditis often experience symptoms like shortness of breath, chest pain, fever and fatigue—while some have no symptoms at all. J.N., a health care provider who asked that his full name not be used, told me that COVID-19 symptoms first appeared in his case in late March. He ultimately was hospitalized at Mount Sinai Medical Center after developing unrelenting fevers spiking to 104 degrees, chest tightness, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
“Even the Advil and acetaminophen wouldn’t help my fevers,” said J.N. Just 34 years old, he was diagnosed with COVID-induced myocarditis and severe heart failure. Doctors admitted him to the intensive care unit and placed him on a lifesaving intra-aortic balloon pump due to the very poor function of his heart. He spent two weeks in the hospital, has suffered recurrences since his discharge, and now says, “I’m very careful. I’m very concerned about the length of time I’ve been feeling sick, and if these symptoms are lifelong or will go away anytime soon.” J.N. said that everyday activities, like carrying his one-year-old daughter up a flight of stairs, leave him feeling winded and fatigued. He has been unable to work since March.
According to some reports, as many as 7 percent of deaths from COVID-19 may result from myocarditis. (Others feel that estimate is too high.) The arrhythmia that sometimes accompanies it is also worrisome, and researchers have found that to be fairly common among COVID-19 patients. In J.N.’s case, he noticed his heart racing on several occasions into the 130 beats per minute range. And while the prevalence of this in virus patients is not known exactly, a study found that ventricular arrhythmias occurred in 78 percent of patients without COVID-19, with up to 30 percent of them experiencing serious arrhythmias 27 months later.
Experts estimate that half of myocarditis cases resolve without a chronic complication, but several studies suggest that COVID-19 patients show signs of the condition months after contracting the virus. One non–peer reviewed study, involving 139 health care workers who developed coronavirus infection and recovered, found that about 10 weeks after their initial symptoms, 37 percent of them were diagnosed with myocarditis or myopericarditis—and fewer than half of those had showed symptoms at the time of their scans.
Any such cardiac sequelae lingering weeks to months after the fact is clearly concerning, and we’re seeing more evidence of it. A German study found that 78 percent of recovered COVID-19 patients, the majority of whom had only mild to moderate symptoms, demonstrated cardiac involvement more than two months after their initial diagnoses. Six in 10 were found to have persistent myocardial inflammation. While emphasizing that individual patients need not be nervous, lead investigator Elike Nagel added in an e-mail, “My personal take is that COVID will increase the incidence of heart failure over the next decades.”
Taking on myocarditis is a chore. Thankfully, some acute cases resolve on their own, requiring only hospital monitoring and possibly some heart medications. We’ve learned that steroids and immunoglobulins—useful elsewhere—aren’t effective in acute viral myocarditis, although Samuel said there may be a role for steroids in younger COVID-19 patients who seem to present with more of an autoimmune type of the condition. And, of course, an effective vaccine could help prevent cases in the first place.
Samuel called it “extremely dangerous” for athletes diagnosed with myocarditis to play competitive sports for at least three to six months, because of the risk of serious arrhythmia or sudden death, and several athletes already have made the decision to heed those dire warnings. We’ll likely see more such decisions in the very near future, as each sport enters its peak season.
And for the rest of us? Wear a mask, social distance, avoid large gatherings, and spend more time in the great outdoors. I would echo the advice of J.N.: “Be careful. Just don’t get the virus in the beginning.” As of today, it’s still the best defense we’ve got.
A Rohingya child stands in front of a shanty in Chakmarkul refugee camp in Teknaf, Bangladesh, on Wednesday. (photo: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images)
Three Years Since Their Genocide Began, the Rohingya Remain Desperate for Help
Editorial Board, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Using the word 'genocide' won't bring the Rohingya home. But it will serve as a reminder to Aung San Suu Kyi - and to the world - of what happened."
HE STRUGGLE of man against power,” wrote Czech novelist Milan Kundera, “is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” This is precisely where the Rohingya Muslims find themselves today, three years after 750,000 people were terrorized and torched out of their homes by Myanmar’s security forces and forced into miserable camps in Bangladesh. The crimes against the Rohingya — and their ongoing misery — must not be forgotten.
In August 2017, Rohingya militants attacked police posts in northern Rakhine state, killing 12 members of the security forces. Myanmar’s security forces responded starting Aug. 25 with a scorched-earth campaign against the Rohingya population of Rakhine state, in the western part of the country. Thousands of civilians were killed, their villages burned to the ground, and some 750,000 people fled for their lives to Bangladesh. The violence included massacres. On Sept. 2, 10 Rohingya men from the village of Inn Din were roped together and killed. At least two had been hacked to death by Buddhist villagers, and the rest were shot by Myanmar’s security forces, according to Reuters, which interviewed witnesses to the massacre and exposed it. Later, the Myanmar authorities cleared away the Rohingya homes and paved over the Rohingya villages to create new government barracks.
Today, the Rohingya plight remains desperate. There are now about 1 million people living in five refugee camps of bamboo and plastic shelters over an area equivalent to about a third of Manhattan. Children make up about half of them. The refugees fear resettlement in Myanmar would subject them to more deprivation and violence, and efforts to negotiate a return to Rakhine state have failed twice, in 2018 and 2019. The refugees have followed closely as their case was taken up by the International Court of Justice, which ruled in January that Myanmar must implement emergency measures to protect them against violence and preserve evidence of possible genocide. The ruling came after Myanmar’s leader, Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, personally argued before the court in The Hague that the Rohingya exodus had not been mass murder. The Myanmar government has rejected the court’s ruling, which is only the first step in a process that will probably take years.
It is time to call the Rohingya destruction what it is: a crime against humanity, and genocide. The definition of “genocide” in international law is: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Using the word “genocide” won’t bring the Rohingya home. But it will serve as a reminder to Aung San Suu Kyi — and to the world — of what happened. It will help the struggle of memory not to forget — neither the crime nor the urgent need for redress.
The Arctic is burning. (photo: Daryl Pederson/Getty Images)
Arctic Wildfires Emit 35% More CO2 So Far in 2020 Than for Whole of 2019
Tobi Thomas, Guardian UK
Thomas writes: "The amount of carbon dioxide emitted by Arctic wildfires this year is already 35% higher than the figure for the whole of 2019."
About 205 megatonnes emitted in June and July alone as Siberia hit by heatwave
The latest data, provided by the EU’s Copernicus atmosphere monitoring service, shows that up to 24 August 245 megatonnes of CO2 had been released from wildfires this year. The figure for the whole of last year was 181 megatonnes.
The peak number of active fire observations was about 600 in late July, compared with 400 in 2019. The average equivalent number between 2003 and 2018 was about 100. Copernicus estimated that 205 megatonnes of CO2 was emitted between 1 June and 31 July alone. The wildfires coincided with a heatwave in Siberia, where temperatures soared to more than 30C (86F) in some areas.
Dr Mark Parrington, senior scientist at Copernicus, said the Arctic wildfires this summer may be setting a new precedent. Emissions increased significantly in July and early August compared with 2019. “In some respects [the data] has been similar to 2019 in terms of the dry and warm conditions in the Siberian Arctic. This year, the difference was a large cluster of fires that burned through July for many days leading to higher estimated emissions.”
Dr Thomas Smith, assistant professor in environmental geography at the London School of Economics, said 2019 had already been an anomalous year in the Arctic circle. “We have seen two years of anomalously high activity, according to the satellite record that goes back to 2003,” he said.
Smith also warned that some fires were destroying ancient peat bogs containing carbon that has accumulated over thousands of years, a process similar to fossil fuel burning.
Analysis performed by Smith, covering May and June of this year, suggested that about 50% of the fires in the Arctic Circle were burning on peat soils, with the vast majority of the fire activity occurring in eastern Siberia.
Arctic wildfires have become a cause for concern in recent years, with fires becoming more widespread and persistent in 2019 and 2020.
In June, Russia’s aerial forest protection service reported that 3.4m acres of Siberian forest were burning in areas unreachable to firefighters. Last summer, the Arctic fires were so intense that they created a cloud of smoke and soot bigger than the EU landmass.
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