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06 March 21
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Bill McKibben | The Shift to Renewable Energy Can Give More Power to the People
Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes:
he pandemic has driven a lot of people outdoors: reports show that park visits are up around the world and parking lots at hiking trails are packed. That’s understandable—by now you’d need to chop down a sizable forest to print out the studies showing that time in nature reduces stress, cuts healing times, and enhances the functioning of the immune system. As Sadie Dingfelder wrote in the Washington Post in December, “I’ve always found it relaxing and rejuvenating to be outdoors, but the anxiety and isolation of the pandemic, the uncertainty of civil unrest and, oh, I don’t know, the potential crumbling of American democracy have made me crave nature like a drug.”
That’s good news for the planet and for people. Studies have demonstrated, for example, that kids who spend more time outdoors grow up to become more environmentally inclined. If you love something, you’ll protect it: from the day that the Sierra Club was founded, that’s been the mantra of the conservation movement. But there’s one trapdoor here: if we’re going to build out renewable energy in the ways that the climate crisis requires, it’s going to require intruding on some of that landscape. A new report from Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law finds that state and local governments across the country have been passing laws designed to restrict the expansion of solar and wind projects. Sometimes, they’ve acted at the behest of the fossil-fuel industry—as Molly Taft reported in Gizmodo last week, the Koch front group Americans for Prosperity played a part in blocking a major Texas wind farm.
But some of the push came from local people who just didn’t want to look at wind turbines. As the Sabin study concluded, “ ‘not in my backyard’ and other objections to renewable energy occur throughout the country, and can delay or impede project development.” I’ve definitely seen that phenomenon at play in Vermont, where I live. Plenty of people with no apparent allegiance to oil or gas have managed to impose a de-facto moratorium on new windmills on ridgetops, and challenged construction of solar farms for being eyesores. Their arguments are often absurd—the idea, for instance, that windmills cause cancer was adopted by Donald Trump from NIMBY opponents of turbines, even though the medical evidence is clear that windmills don’t cause harm. (Just as it is clear that particulate pollution from fossil fuels now accounts for nearly one in five deaths worldwide, ahead of H.I.V./AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.) Yes, wind turbines kill birds—perhaps a quarter of a million every year in the United States, compared with the 6.8 million that die after colliding with cell-phone and radio towers and the billions that succumb to domestic cats. (And, if we keep raising the temperature on the current trajectory, two-thirds of American bird species will be threatened with extinction by 2100.)
There’s a bad reason that some of this resistance will eventually dissipate: bigger players are coming into the renewable-energy industry, and eventually their clout is going to match the Kochs’—NextEra Energy, a Florida-based renewables provider, briefly passed ExxonMobil in market capitalization last autumn, and one assumes that it is hiring lobbyists. But a better method for converting—in the words of a Clean Energy Wire analysis—NIMBYs into P(lease)IMBYs would be to give locals a stake in the economic success of the enterprise. The simplest way is through ownership—early German solar and wind expansion, beginning in the nineteen-nineties, was eased by the fact that much of the equipment was owned by local coöperatives and even by churches, which made money off it. But, as the scale of Europe’s renewables industry expands—wind power may need to grow by a factor of twenty-five this decade to meet the Continent’s targets—it’s becoming increasingly difficult for small players to buy into projects. As Paul Hockenos reports at Yale Environment 360, the European Union is trying to spur more community ownership of renewables, but, as huge offshore wind farms begin to sprout, only large corporations have access to the billions of dollars required for construction.
There are probably other ways to turn renewable energy into something that economically benefits the people who live with it—watching New Mexico face the potential loss of oil and gas revenues, as Joe Biden calls for a temporary ban on new drilling on public lands, is a reminder that we should think of sunlight and wind power as community assets, and make sure that those who exploit them are, at the least, paying a hefty price to communities for the right. But we shouldn’t give up on the idea of democratizing energy ownership as much as possible: the sun and the wind are omnipresent, giving us a remarkable chance of reducing the influence wielded by those who control the energy supplies. As the invaluable Institute for Local Self-Reliance pointed out a full decade ago, “With new rules, we can unlock the potential of distributed generation and the potential of people to power the clean energy future.”
This is not the only NIMBY battle that needs fighting. In California, the reluctance of too many otherwise committed environmentalists to allow denser cities, which would decrease the use of cars, is a hypocrisy of the highest order. And, in both cases, part of the answer is a new aesthetic that reflects the reality of the world we inhabit. We need to see dense, vibrant cities as more attractive than scattered suburbs, and we need to look at wind turbines and see the breeze made visible. Much depends on it.
Passing the Mic
Having watched a winter storm bring Texas to its knees (or to Cancún), it seems the right moment to talk with Saket Soni, the executive director of Resilience Force, which has been described as “a national initiative to transform America’s response to disasters by strengthening and securing America’s Resilience Workforce” and one that is “the national voice of the millions of people whose work, heart, and expertise make sustainable recovery from disasters possible.” He’s currently at work on the idea with Craig Fugate, who was the administrator of FEMA during the Obama Administration. (Our conversation has been edited for length.)
Obviously, even if we do everything right from here on, we’re going to be dealing with climate-related disasters for the foreseeable future. How should we prepare?
Even if we slashed emissions to zero tomorrow, a certain amount of harm is locked in, particularly for front-line communities. We see that in the record hurricane seasons, the wildfires in forested states, the crisis in Texas. So climate resilience has to be an organizing principle of the federal government. Our future depends on rebuilding our homes, cities, communities, and social infrastructure not just back to the way they were but stronger, better able to withstand the next storm, fire, quake, or drought. And none of that happens without a skilled, secure resilience workforce. The federal government can—and must—unlock billions in adaptation and resilience.
But here’s the thing: that money will compound inequality if we don’t intervene. The current rules of federal-recovery investment disproportionately channel money into wealthier communities. As a result, white homeowners’ wealth tends to increase after disaster recovery, while low-income Black and brown communities fall further behind. I call this the resilience divide. Building true resilience has to mean bridging that gap.
Did we learn anything about this from the COVID year?
COVID was a dress rehearsal for our climate future. The questions we faced in responding to a global health disaster are the ones we face in preparing for the even greater threat of climate change. That includes how to repair historical inequalities through disaster response.
I learned a lot in New Orleans, an epicenter of both the climate crisis and COVID. We partnered with the city to build a New Orleans Resilience Corps. We took Black and brown workers who had lost their jobs during the economic shutdown, retrained them for COVID- and climate-related work, and put them on new career paths.
It’s a glimpse of what’s possible if we invest in the resilience workforce at scale. A national resilience corps could work on climate adaptation and mitigation year-round and provide a path to the middle class for workers, the way manufacturing once did. Lawmakers looking for answers should take note.
It seems as if immigrants often play a big role in this hard work. Why, and what should it teach us about a new ethic of solidarity?
Every time America is rebuilt for a new generation, immigrants play a big role in that rebuilding. This time is no different. I saw it myself after Katrina, and after dozens of climate disasters since. After fires and floods, through hell and high water, immigrants drive the rebuilding that lets others come home. “We are America’s white blood cells,” one of them told me.
What’s new is the outpouring of solidarity during the COVID crisis. Suddenly, workers at the bottom of America’s labor caste system—grocery-store clerks, care workers, delivery drivers—were being applauded. The workers dismissed as unskilled had a new name: essential. The climate crisis, too, has its essential workers. A vast portion of them are immigrants.
The question is how to turn the applause that the workers are getting into the protections that they need: P.P.E., health care, high wages, benefits, unions. And immigrant resilience workers need one more thing, which is just as essential: citizenship. The new federal playbook for climate resilience has to include it.
Climate School
A team at Duke Law School has issued a report urging the Securities and Exchange Commision to increase the rigor of reporting on socially responsible investing. “The SEC’s failure to mandate consistent and decision-useful disclosure” of relevant information on how companies address environmental, social, and governance factors, the researchers write, “has made it impossible to efficiently allocate capital towards a sustainable future.”
GreenFaith is organizing a worldwide day of climate action for people of faith on March 11th—in the United States, it’s concentrating on fighting the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota, and backing the call for green-infrastructure spending in Congress.
Climate change has been an issue long enough that historians are giving it an increasingly serious look. The National Security Archive recently released a cache of declassified documents from the Clinton era that outline how the U.S. prepared for the Kyoto Climate Change Conference, in 1997. In a summary accompanying the released documents, the archive’s senior analyst, Robert Wampler, notes, “As a January 1998 memorandum to Vice President Gore stresses, the administration’s domestic campaign must prevent a ‘fatal PR blitz’ from undermining public and Senate support, which could kill the treaty ‘in the cradle’ ”—which, indeed, is what happened.
Reflecting on the Texas energy debacle, Ezra Klein points out, in the Times, that, even as we need to build large-scale networks to cope with crises, defenders of the status quo may try to hunker down in place: “a global crisis that demands cooperation and even sacrifice will be fertile soil for nationalists and demagogues.” But a poll by Morning Consult offers some good news: fifty-six per cent of U.S. voters say that Texas should connect its electric grid with those of other regions, compared to only twenty-four per cent who say that the state should preserve its independence.
Scientists working at the CERN particle-physics laboratory, in Switzerland, have found a new feedback loop, in which warming may produce more clouds that could, in turn, intensify the warming. Iodine is the key, and its concentration in the atmosphere is increasing as the Arctic thaws. “The more the ice melts, the more sea surface is exposed, the more iodine is emitted, the more particles are made, the more clouds form, the faster it all goes,” Jasper Kirkby, a spokesperson, said.
Writing in Daily Kos, Dan Bacher notes that California’s ongoing permitting of new oil and gas wells is threatening protected marine areas—and agrees with Kyle Ferrar, of the Fracktracker Alliance, that, if Governor Gavin Newsom would finally stop issuing O.K.s for new wells, it might make it easier for the Biden Administration to do the same on public lands across the country.
A big new study indicates that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)—a set of ocean conveyor belts that includes the Gulf Stream—is slowing down, and dramatically. The paper, published in Nature GeoScience, reports that the warming climate—and hence the melt of Arctic ice—has left the current in its weakest state in at least the past millennium. The Times provided a true service this morning by taking the report and other recent ocean science and turning it into a spectacular multimedia presentation.
Scoreboard
There is guarded good news from Indonesia, where deforestation for palm-oil plantations has fallen fairly sharply in the past couple of years. But the same companies continue to dominate the industry, and there is reason to worry that palm-oil prices have begun to rise again, as economies around the world come out of the COVID funk.
Local groups in Novato, California, are pushing back against a plan for a fourteen-pump Costco gas station, on the ground that we shouldn’t actually be pumping more gas. Since California is planning to end the sale of internal-combustion engines in the years ahead, it makes little sense to keep building new fossil-fuel infrastructure. The Novato Planning Commission recommended approval of the plan last week, but opponents say that they’ll keep up the fight as it goes to the full city council. The battle is far from hopeless—the neighboring city of Petaluma just banned new gas stations.
Montgomery County, in Maryland, is leading the nation in deploying electric school buses; it has leased several hundred of them from a Boston-based firm. As Steven Mufson and Sarah Kaplan note, in the Washington Post, “a sweeping study published in 2001 found children riding in diesel school buses are exposed to four times the levels of toxic exhaust as people sitting in a passenger car on the same road.”
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that “two pipeline workers were among those arrested in a human trafficking sting in Itasca County” between February 17th and 19th, “stoking activists’ fears the Enbridge Line 3 project could increase such crimes in Minnesota.”
A judge in New Delhi ordered bail for the young Indian climate activist Disha Ravi, but, as Naomi Klein writes in an important piece for The Intercept, her case is depressingly emblematic of the growing bond between authoritarian governments and Big Tech.
The early returns aren’t promising: nations were supposed to submit new climate pledges under the Paris accords by the end of 2020. The U.S. and China didn’t do so; the countries that did submitted plans which would reduce the carbon problem by only about one per cent. One country, Mexico, actually lowered its previous target.
Warming Up
The Weather Station is a Toronto band led by the singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman. Its new album, “Ignorance,” focusses on climate change. Here’s a review by the venerable podcast “Sound Opinions,” and here’s the first track, “Robber,” inspired by ExxonMobil. Key lyrics:
He had permission
Permission by words
Permission of thanks
Permission by laws
Permission of banks
A previous version of this post misidentified the respondents to the Morning Consult poll.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., speaks during a news conference after the Senate passed a COVID-19 relief bill in Washington, Saturday, March 6, 2021. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Senate Passes $1.9 Trillion Coronavirus Relief Package
Chloee Weiner, NPR
Weiner writes:
he Senate approved President Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan Saturday, securing additional aid for American families, workers and businesses — and a legislative victory for the Biden administration.
After more than 24 hours of debate, the evenly divided Senate voted 50-49 to approve the measure. Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaksa was absent because he was in Alaska for a family funeral.
The package delivers a new round of financial assistance to Americans grappling with the impact of the pandemic, including $1,400 direct payments, an extension of supplemental unemployment benefits and an increase to the child tax credit.
Individuals earning up to $75,000 and couples earning up to $150,000 would receive the full direct payments of $1,400 per person. But those payments would phase out for individuals and couples who make more than $80,000 and $160,000, respectively.
The income cutoff was lowered after moderate Democrats demanded that the latest round of checks target lower-income families.
Federal unemployment benefits would be extended through Sept. 6 at the current rate of $300 per week and the first $10,200 of those benefits would be tax-free for households that earn $150,000 or less.
Democrats were under pressure to get the bill to Biden's desk before current federal unemployment benefits expire on March 14. The budget reconciliation process allowed them to act without Republican backing, requiring only a simple majority to pass the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., signaled Tuesday that Democrats had the support they needed to move forward with the vote. But debate on the Senate floor was delayed when Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., indicated Wednesday that he'd require Senate clerks to read the more than 600 page bill on the floor, pushing the vote by several hours.
"We need to highlight the abuse," Johnson said in a Tweet. "This is not a COVID relief bill. It's a boondoggle for Democrats."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Tuesday accused the Biden administration of trying to "jam" Republicans on the legislation.
"It is my hope that in the end Senate Republicans will unanimously oppose it, just like House Republicans did," McConnell said to reporters.
House Democrats' version of the bill originally included a provision to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2025, but the Senate parliamentarian decided the provision did not fit the rules that govern budget bills in the Senate.
The House will need to revote on the final version of the bill before it can be signed into law. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said in a statement Saturday that the House will vote on an identical measure on Tuesday.
A mother holds her child as they surrender to U.S. Border Patrol agents. (photo: David J. Phillip/AP)
Migrant Children Are Still Being Temporarily Separated From Relatives Under Biden Administration
Rick Jervis, USA TODAY
Jervis writes:
he Biden administration is still sheltering children separated from close family members in federal facilities for weeks on end -- something immigrant advocates and attorneys had hoped the new administration would resolve by now.
Biden administration officials have signaled they are pivoting away from Trump administration policies they felt were inhumane toward migrants, especially children. But as federal agents grapple with a rising influx of unaccompanied immigrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border, what to do with the children who come with an adult that is not their parent is becoming a rising concern.
The migrant children often arrive with a grandparent, older sibling or other relative but are separated until federal officials can confirm the accompanying adult is their relative, as mandated under U.S. law. The procedure, which is different from the highly controversial Trump administration policy of separating immigrant moms and dads from their children, is designed to protect minors from human traffickers and grant them legal protections.
But it also classifies the youngsters as "unaccompanied minors" and places them in federal shelters until a sponsor or adult is vetted, a process that can take several weeks or even months.
Though not as dramatic as Trump administration-era family separations, which unleashed a furious backlash, separating children from close relatives could be equally detrimental, said Lisa Koop, associate director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center, a legal advocacy group that represents immigrant youth.
"It really does look and feel in many ways like a parent-child separation," Koop said. "The trauma of the separation is very similar."
A growing wave of unaccompanied children at the border is fast becoming President Joe Biden's first major immigration challenge. More than 4,000 migrant children were transferred in January to the custody of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency tasked with caring for them once they cross the border -- up from 3,330 in December and nearly four times the number that arrived in October, according to agency statistics.
At a press briefing Friday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki re-emphasized that the Biden administration intends to take a different approach to processing the children than former President Donald Trump did, even as the number of minors at the border continues to climb.
"We’re going to chart our own path forward," she said. "And that includes treating children with humanity and respect and ensuring they're safe when they cross our borders."
But where to house all the children as they await immigration proceedings remains a daunting question. The resettlement agency oversees about 7,000 beds for the minors due to reduced capacity because of COVID-19 restrictions and this week it had about 7,700 migrant children in its custody, according to the statistics. Some of the excess number of children were being housed in at least one "Influx Care Facility," or temporary shelter, with no state oversight.
Federal officials were housing 224 of the children at a temporary shelter in Carrizo Springs, Texas, which has drawn criticism from advocates due to the facility's remote location and lack of regular inspections. The 700-bed facility was shuttered in July 2019 after the Trump administration faced blowback for poor conditions at a number of temporary shelters housing unaccompanied children. Biden reopened the facility last week.
Among the thousands of children appearing at the border are those who show up with an adult other than their parent. The exact number of those minors is unknown. The resettlement agency referred questions about that group of children to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman on Friday said the agency doesn't keep those stats.
Leah Chavla, a senior policy advisor at the Women's Refugee Commission, a non-profit that helps migrant children, said she's noticed a steady rise in the number of children arriving at the border with an adult other than their guardian and placed into federal custody, though exact numbers are hard to come by.
"We don’t have good numbers because CBP doesn’t collect data on that," she said. "But there is a lot. We've observed it, we've heard it from service providers. It's happening more so than in the past."
Under the Trafficking Victims Protection and Reauthorization Act of 2008, children who show up with an adult who are not their parent are classified as unaccompanied minors to make sure they're placed in less restrictive facilities, avoid expedited deportation status and their immigration case is presented as an interview in front of an asylum officer rather than a more former court setting.
Advocates have said they want the children who show up with relatives to retain those protections but hoped the Biden administration could reduce the amount of time they spend in federal shelters. For months, advocates have lobbied Biden officials to implement changes to reduce the time those children spend in federal custody.
"It is a very complex situation," said Wendy Young, president of Kids In Need of Defense, an advocacy group for refugee and immigrant children, "and one that we are hoping the new administration will address aggressively."
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a White House press briefing this week that his agency is considering locating officials with the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services at Border Patrol stations to more quickly verify if migrant children have sponsors in the United States and reunite them with relatives.
"We are taking a look at where efficiencies can be achieved in the best interest of the child," he said.
Often, parents who have been living in the United States will send for their young children with an older sibling, said Koop, the legal advocate. Other times, a grandparent who has raised the child since birth will take the arduous journey with them and arrive at the U.S. border -- only to be separated from the child for weeks or maybe months, she said.
"There should be a way legally for the children to be essentially reunified in place with the adult caregiver without having to go through the entire system," she said.
Linda Brandmiller, a San Antonio immigration attorney who represents unaccompanied minors, said children arriving at the border with relatives and shuttled through federal shelters has been a challenge for years.
Two years ago, she represented a 10-year-old boy from Mexico who arrived at the border seeking asylum with his 18-year-old sister. Since the sister was old enough, she was placed in an adult facility, while the boy shuttled between federal shelters, she said. Even though he had an uncle living in San Antonio who was a U.S. citizen and willing to sponsor him, it took Brandmiller two months to have the boy released.
Those types of cases are only going to increase as more immigrant families and children arrive at the border, she said. Brandmiller said she understands children need to be protected against possible human traffickers, but verifying next of kin shouldn't take as long as it does.
So far, the process hasn't noticeably improved under the Biden administration, she said.
"The frustration is almost worse," Brandmiller said. "We had expected so much better."
A woman wearing a mask walks past a wall bearing a graffiti asking for rent forgiveness amid the COVID-19 pandemic. (photo: Valeria Macon/AFP/Getty Images)
Why the Government's Plan to Help Out Renters Is Falling Flat
Aida Chavez, The Intercept
Chavez writes:
The program to assist with rent has run into numerous barriers in distributing aid — including landlords.
ewel Burgess, 40, first applied for emergency rental assistance in Washington, D.C., last year, after being furloughed from her job delivering meals for the city’s Office on Aging. She never heard back about whether she was approved or denied for the rent help, like a few of her friends have, she said, and hasn’t been able to afford her $1,002 rent, utility bills, and other basic needs on the few hundred dollars she receives in unemployment benefits.
“At this point, I’m at a standstill; I feel like I’m between a rock and a hard place,” Burgess said. “I don’t know how, going forward, what they’re going to do about helping me, if they helped me already, or received money on my behalf — I don’t know nothing. I’m just sitting here hoping and praying to God that I don’t get an eviction notice on my door or somebody comes knocking on my door telling me I have to leave my apartment because I’m being evicted.”
As the coronavirus pandemic drags on into its second year, millions of people like Burgess are struggling to pay their rent and bills, with many placing hope in the federal relief money being sent to state and local governments for short-term rental assistance payments. These emergency rental assistance programs, which were created and expanded with funding from the CARES Act back in March, were meant to provide desperately needed financial support to households and tenants who abruptly lost income.
The first round of rental assistance used money from a $150 billion Treasury Department stream known as the Coronavirus Relief Fund, which gave local and state governments money that could be spent on a wide range of emergency programs. An extra $25 billion was approved in December, though the Treasury included guidelines that made it more difficult for renters to access the money. Some of those guidelines have now been revised, and President Joe Biden has also called on lawmakers to pass an additional $30 billion in rental and utility assistance as part of the broader $1.9 trillion stimulus package currently being negotiated.
But many rental assistance programs have been woefully underused, in part because of bureaucratic hurdles and the realities of administering funds. Implementation of the assistance programs is up to individual states and cities, and many local governments have had trouble reaching those in need. Some jurisdictions have even had to reallocate millions intended to go toward paying people’s rent. In Arizona, rental assistance has expanded, but the state has only received about 330 applications, Fox 10 Phoenix reported.
Burgess said she’s disappointed with the government’s failure to distribute aid to many of the people who lost jobs during the pandemic. “They come on the news and say, ‘We have programs that are available, we have money and funding that’s available,’ and then you try to go out and reach out to these people to get the funding and help, and then you have to qualify, you have to meet requirements, you have to have documentation,” she said. “All types of stuff they ask you before you can even get the assistance. It’s all a process, and in the process, what do I do to make sure I have the necessities I need?”
Some rental assistance programs, in cities like Chicago, paid the grants directly to tenants who could prove they had lost their job or hours at work and found themselves unable to pay rent as a result — and were effective at doing so. But many other jurisdictions struggled to spend the millions set aside for rental assistance ahead of the initial December 30 deadline and were forced to forfeit it to other programs.
As the deadline approached in Atlanta, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms proposed cutting the $22 million allocated to the city’s pandemic rental assistance program in half. In Pennsylvania, roughly $108 million of the $175 million meant for rent and mortgage relief never made it to the people pleading for it and was redistributed to the state’s Department of Corrections for coronavirus-related payroll expenses instead.
As of December 2020, nearly one in every five renters nationwide were behind on rent, according to recent Census Bureau figures. The Biden administration announced in February that it would extend the foreclosure moratorium and mortgage forbearance. The federal eviction moratorium, which was extended through the end of March, and a tangle of state and local protections have been protecting tens of millions from losing their homes.
But housing advocates are worried about those falling through the cracks, saying the current moratorium and scattered relief programs aren’t strong enough to protect tenants from displacement.
“There’s never been a comprehensive set of solutions put in place to protect tenants and keep them stably housed during the pandemic,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “There’s been a patchwork of resources and protections at the federal, state, and local level that has kept most renters stably housed but there’s been an alarming number of evictions that have proceeded despite the protections.”
Though the federal eviction ban has helped keep many tenants in their homes over the past year, Yentel noted that eviction moratoriums on their own have “never been the end solution.” These orders only postpone evictions, as the amount of unpaid rent accrues. A January report from Moody’s Analytics estimated that Americans owe about $57 billion in back rent.
Some of the emergency rental assistance programs that struggled to distribute aid didn’t have the staff or capacity to be able to review all the applications that were coming in, while some programs were slowed down by additional layers of bureaucracy. Burdensome documentation requirements and complicated application processes — which vary place to place — are also barriers to assistance, excluding some of the households that were most in need.
But one of the biggest hurdles in distributing the money so far has been landlords’ refusal to participate. To receive the money, landlords had to agree to certain conditions and tenant protections to participate in the program, including the promise to not raise rent for a certain amount of time and to not to evict them. Some property owners outright declined, turning down payments to pay for their tenants’ rent, while others failed to respond at all.
Property owners and landlords, Burgess added, say they need to collect rent so they can continue to keep a roof over their head, but “what makes it any different from the people that live in the properties they’re renting out?”
Paul Williams, a former policy administrator with the Chicago Department of Housing, said that Chicago policymakers had already set up an emergency rental assistance program that paid out about $2 million directly into tenants’ bank accounts. When federal funds arrived, it was easy to just pump more money into their existing program.
“I think a lot of these other cities and states that were doing this, they just have inertia within their program and policy design where every time that they’ve done rental assistance, they’ve done it this way,” Williams said. “And giving money directly to tenants, people are afraid to do that for all of the reasons people are afraid of giving poor people money.”
“We heard those arguments in Chicago too. There were a couple of aldermen who were skeptical of the program because they were like, ‘What if a tenant doesn’t need 100 percent of the money for their rent and they buy a flat-screen?’” he continued. “Well, what if we give the money directly to the landlord, and they don’t use all the money on maintenance and mortgage, and they buy themselves a flat-screen?”
The latest pot of money, a $25 billion rental assistance fund Congress approved in December, came with new guidelines that effectively banned the direct-to-tenant approach of distributing aid.
A tenant could still apply for rental assistance and get the money, but only after their landlord had been contacted by the city and the city confirmed that the landlord has either declined or not responded. Many of these agencies have complicated application processes and therefore have to field questions from landlords on the phone. “Cities don’t have the staff to do this properly,” Williams said. “A lot of cities are just hiring contracting firms of like 10 staff people to do all the application process.”
The Treasury Department in late February revised the guidance that Steven Mnuchin’s Treasury Department put in place on the last day of the Trump administration. The revised rules allow tenants to self-certify on most eligibility requirements and give the landlord 14 days to respond before the money is sent to the tenant. Williams said the updated rules are an improvement, but it remains to be seen whether programs in different states will be able to do direct-to-tenant well.
“Congress has already provided $25 billion, which is a really substantial, historic amount of rental assistance that will go a long way,” Yentel said. “But it’s not enough, and we need more.”
Lakers star LeBron James. (photo: Erik S. Lesser/EPA)
LeBron James's More Than a Vote Ad Campaign Focuses on Defending Voting Rights
Cameron Jenkins, The Hill
Jenkins writes: "LeBron James's voting rights group More Than a Vote is out with a new ad seeking to defend voting rights."
In the ad, released Friday as part of the group's Protect Our Power campaign, James narrates as various scenes of protests, insurrection, demonstrations and historical events flash on the screen.
"Look what we did. Look what we made happen. What our voices made possible," the basketball star says as photos of former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, presidential inauguration poet Amanda Gorman and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) are displayed.
"And now look what they're trying to do to silence us. Using every trick in the book and attacking democracy itself. 'Cause they saw what we're capable of, and they fear it," James adds as images of mailboxes and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot are shown.
More Than a Vote also partnered with Black Voters Matter Fund, Fair Fight Action, the Georgia NAACP and the New Georgia Project to combat voter suppression across the nation and focus on Georgia legislation that would serve to restrict voting access. According to CBS News, the ad is set to air this Sunday during the NBA's All-Star Game, which also coincides with the anniversary of "Bloody Sunday."
James issues a call to action in the ad, requesting that Americans do more than advocate on social media to create a change.
"This isn't the time to put your feet up," James says. "Or to think posting hashtags and black squares is enough. Because for us, this was never about one election.
"It's always been more than a vote. It's a fight and it's just getting started."
James created More than a Vote last summer on the heels of nationwide protests over racial inequality and police brutality sparked by the death of George Floyd. The organization has partnered with voting rights organizations, including When We All Vote and Abrams’s Fair Fight.
'Survivors and relatives of victims of El Salvador's December 1981 El Mozote massacre are fighting for a trial in one of the most heinous crimes of the U.S. government in Latin America.' (photo: Edgard Garrido/Reuters)
Salvadorans Protest Against El Mozote Massacre Impunity
teleSUR
In December 1981, the Salvadorean Army killed nearly 1,000 people in the largest massacre in recent Latin American history.
l Salvador's human rights defenders, survivors, and relatives of victims of the El Mozote massacre on Thursday protested in front of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (ICHR) headquarters to demand justice for the crime.
"Thirty-nine years have passed and there is still no justice for the victims. The government continues to hinder the investigation," said Oscar Claros, whose sister was one of the 1,000 people killed by the Army in the El Mozote in 1981.
The protest coincided with a virtual hearing convened by the ICHR to analyze the judicial process failure and the systematic blocking of military archives that would shed light on the events.
In this hearing, the victim's relative lawyer Camila Ormar denounced that the Armed Forces and President Nayib Bukele's administration continue to prevent the judge in charge of the case, Jorge Guzman, to investigate those files.
"Bukele and the officials are committing crimes of breach of duty, disobedience, and cover-ups of crimes," Guzman said and added that he will keep moving forward with the investigation despite the obstacles.
From December 10 to 13, 1981, the Salvadorean Army executed thousands of civilians in El Mozote and nearby communities in the Morazan Department, believing that guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) were hiding there. Over 500 victims were children and babies.
In 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights held the Salvadorean State responsible for the massacre and called for investigations into this crime, the largest massacre in recent Latin American history.
A tree in a city. (photo: Peter Stubbs/EdinPhoto)
US Cities Are Losing 36 Million Trees a Year. Here's Why It Matters and How You Can Stop It
Amy Chillag, CNN
Chillag writes:
f you’re looking for a reason to care about tree loss, this summer’s record-breaking heat waves might be it. Trees can lower summer daytime temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a recent study.
But tree cover in US cities is shrinking. A study published last year by the US Forest Service found that we lost 36 million trees annually from urban and rural communities over a five-year period. That’s a 1% drop from 2009 to 2014.
If we continue on this path, “cities will become warmer, more polluted and generally more unhealthy for inhabitants,” said David Nowak, a senior US Forest Service scientist and co-author of the study.
Nowak says there are many reasons our tree canopy is declining, including hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, insects and disease. But the one reason for tree loss that humans can control is sensible development.
“We see the tree cover being swapped out for impervious cover, which means when we look at the photographs, what was there is now replaced with a parking lot or a building,” Nowak said.
More than 80% of the US population lives in urban areas, and most Americans live in forested regions along the East and West coasts, Nowak says.
“Every time we put a road down, we put a building and we cut a tree or add a tree, it not only affects that site, it affects the region.”
The study placed a value on tree loss based on trees’ role in air pollution removal and energy conservation.
The lost value amounted to $96 million a year.
Nowak lists 10 benefits trees provide to society:
Heat reduction: Trees provide shade for homes, office buildings, parks and roadways, cooling surface temperatures. They also take in and evaporate water, cooling the air around them. “Just walk in the shade of a tree on a hot day. You can’t get that from grass,” Nowak said. To get the full temperature benefit, tree canopy cover should exceed 40% of the area to be cooled, according to a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “A single city block would need to be nearly half-covered by a leafy green network of branches and leaves,” the authors wrote.
Air pollution reduction: Trees absorb carbon and remove pollutants from the atmosphere.
Energy emissions reduction: Trees reduce energy costs by $4 billion a year, according to Nowak’s study. “The shading of those trees on buildings reduce your air conditioning costs. Take those trees away; now your buildings are heating up, you’re running your air conditioning more, and you’re burning more fuel from the power plants, so the pollution and emissions go up.”
Water quality improvement: Trees act as water filters, taking in dirty surface water and absorbing nitrogen and phosphorus into the soil.
Flooding reduction: Trees reduce flooding by absorbing water and reducing runoff into streams.
Noise reduction: Trees can deflect sound, one reason you’ll see them lining highways, along fences and between roads and neighborhoods. They can also add sound through birds chirping and wind blowing through leaves, noises that have shown psychological benefits.
Protection from UV radiation: Trees absorb 96% of ultraviolet radiation, Nowak says.
Improved aesthetics: Ask any real estate agent, architect or city planner: Trees and leaf cover improve the looks and value of any property.
Improved human health: Many studies have found connections between exposure to nature and better mental and physical health. Some hospitals have added tree views and plantings for patients as a result of these studies. Doctors are even prescribing walks in nature for children and families due to evidence that nature exposure lowers blood pressure and stress hormones. And studies have associated living near green areas with lower death rates.
Wildlife habitat: Birds rely on trees for shelter, food and nesting. Worldwide, forests provide for a huge diversity of animal life.
Planning for trees
Nowak says there’s a downside to trees too, such as pollen allergies or large falling branches in storms, “and people don’t like raking leaves.” But, he says, there are ways cities and counties can manage trees to help communities thrive. “You can’t just say ‘we’re not going to have forests.’ We might as well manage and work with the trees.”
“You don’t want a tree in the middle of a baseball field. It’s very difficult to play sports if you have trees in the way. Or trees in the middle of freeways.”
Nowak says we can design and manage tree canopies in our cities to help “affect the air, to affect the water, to affect our well-being.”
Urban forests especially need our help to replace fallen trees. Unlike rural areas, it is very difficult for trees to repopulate themselves in a city environment with so much pavement and asphalt.
“A lot of our native trees can’t actually find a place to drop an acorn so they can regenerate,” explains Greg Levine, co-executive director for Trees Atlanta.
“That’s why the community has to go in and actually plant a tree because the areas just aren’t natural anymore.”
The job is not complete when the saplings take root. Organizations like Trees Atlanta and their volunteers plan most of their year to care for these young trees until they’re mature enough to thrive on their own.
“We try to prune trees for 10 years to make sure they get a good healthy structure.” Levine adds. “We also add mulch around trees to help keep the moisture in the ground so the tree doesn’t dry up. We have to have a lot of patience with planting trees around pavement, making sure that they can rise to the challenge. “
How you can help stop tree loss
Protect what you have: Nowak says the first step is caring for the trees on your own property. “We think we pay for our house, and so we must maintain it. But because we don’t pay for nature, we don’t need to. And that’s not necessarily true.”
Prune the dead limbs out of your trees: If they’re small enough, do it yourself or hire a company. The risk of limbs damaging your house is significantly lowered when there’s tree upkeep, Nowak said.
Notice where your trees may be in trouble: Often, you can observe when something’s wrong, such as when branches are losing leaves and breaking or when mushrooms are growing at the base or on the trees. You can also hire an arborist or tree canopy expert to assess the health of your trees on an annual basis. Or you can contact your local agricultural extension office for advice.
Don’t remove old trees if it’s not necessary: Instead, try taking smaller actions like removing branches. “It takes a long time for these big trees to get big: 50 to 100 years. And once they’re established, they can live a long time. But taking a big tree out and saying ‘we’ll replant,’ there’s no guarantee small trees will make it, and it will take a very long time to grow.”
Allow trees to grow on your property: Although everyone’s aesthetic is different, it’s the cheap way to get cooler yards and lower energy bills. It’s also an inexpensive approach to flood and noise control.
Nowak says he laughs when his neighbors wonder why their property doesn’t have more trees, because “I hear people running their lawn mowers.” Fallen seeds need a chance to implant, and constant mowing prevents that. If you don’t like where a seedling is growing, you can dig it up and plant it or a new tree where you like.
Educate yourself about trees and get involved: Many cities have tree ordinances that seek to protect very old, significant trees. You can get involved by attending city council meetings. You can also help your city plant trees by joining local nonprofit groups.
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