27 April 21
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RSN: Harvey Wasserman | 80 Ways Nuke Power Is a Catastrophic Failure
Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
Wasserman writes: "This year's Earth Day summit (April 22) and Joe Biden's pledge to halve American carbon emissions by 2030 come with the 35th commemoration (April 26) of the Chernobyl catastrophe."
Together they evoke atomic power’s epic failure in at least 80 different ways:
- Atomic reactors are radioactive fires directly heating the Earth at 571 degrees Fahrenheit.
- So far they’ve delivered five super-hot apocalyptic explosions (one at Chernobyl, four at Fukushima) with innumerable other close calls … past, present & future ...
- At Chalk River, SR-1, Three Mile Island, Church Rock, Davis-Besse, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and all other nuke “incidents,” the only absolute certainty is that government and industry officials are lying.
- According to Mikhail Gorbachev, such lies about Chernobyl – and its devastating impacts – were the primary cause of the demise of the Soviet Union. (To get a sense of the accident, watch the devastating 5-part HBO series at https://www.hbo.com/chernobyl.)
- It is impossible to meaningfully calculate the human, climate, political, or financial costs of the next major reactor disaster in the US or anywhere else on this planet.
- As they badly age, more atomic reactors will explode.
- In 1952, Harry Truman’s Blue Ribbon Paley Commission Report on the future of energy predicted that the US would be powered by renewables, and that there would be 15,000,000 solar-heated homes in the US by 1975.
- But in December, 1953, Dwight Eisenhower announced a “Peaceful Atom” program that would come through the bomb-producing Atomic Energy Commission, which proceeded to squander the hundreds of billions of dollars that might otherwise have given us a green-powered economy, avoiding much of the climate crisis.
- The 1957 promise of the Price-Anderson Act that commercial reactors would get private disaster insurance remains unfulfilled.
- No nuclear proponent (including Bill Gates) has volunteered to personally insure the reactors they advocate.
- You are personally liable for the loss of your family, health, and home (check your homeowner’s policy) should they be destroyed by reactor fallout.
- In a true free-market energy economy with zero subsidies to fossil, nuclear, or renewable energy, renewables would quickly prevail.
- The most meaningful nuke power debate now centers not on future construction, but on the deteriorating safety of each individual aging reactor, any one of which could be melting as you read this.
- The gargantuan radioactive, heat, and toxic chemical emissions at (with the April 30th shutdown of Indian Point) 93 US reactors and some 440 reactors worldwide directly devastate our oceans, lakes, rivers, and air whenever they operate.
- The billions of gallons of radioactive liquids accumulated and still being leaked at Fukushima directly threaten the Pacific Ocean.
- Fukushima emitted more than 100 times more radioactive cesium than did the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- The nuclear industry cannot account for the climate impacts of the heat generated by the explosions at Chernobyl and Fukushima.
- All atomic reactors directly emit radioactive carbon 14, a devastating global warmer.
- All atomic reactors cause massive carbon emissions in fuel production.
- Reactor wastes stay hot and deadly for a quarter-billion years.
- Since nobody knows how to deal with reactor wastes, nobody can firmly estimate their future climate impacts.
- The ultimate financial costs of managing those reactor wastes cannot be meaningfully calculated.
- Decommissioning funds, allegedly set aside to dismantle shutting reactors, have been looted throughout the world, leaving reactor corpses to smolder for centuries to come. The certain climate impacts of operating reactors far exceed those of wind, solar, batteries, and increased efficiency.
- The combined deployment of wind, solar, batteries, and efficiency can provide all of humankind’s electricity long before any new reactor buildup.
- Renewables and efficiency are far cheaper, cleaner, safer, more reliable, quicker to deploy, and create more jobs per dollar than atomic power.
- There are no proven prototypes of fusion, thorium, or small modular reactors indicating any chance they could solve the climate emergency as quickly, cheaply, or reliably as renewables.
- The accident at Three Mile Island turned a $900 million asset into a $2 billion liability within minutes.
- The cost of the Chernobyl catastrophe exceeded $1 trillion.
- The disaster at Fukushima immediately destroyed some $60 billion in net present value (6 reactors x $10 billion each).
- The disaster at Fukushima represents the biggest single immediate destruction of tangible invested capital in human history.
- Heightened energy costs due to post-Fukushima nuke shutdowns and Japan’s failure to convert to renewables are in the trillions and rising.
- After years of construction, having generated not a single electron of electricity, South Carolina’s two V.C. Summer reactors have been abandoned at a cost of more than $10 billion.
- At least one top South Carolina utility executive involved with the V.C. Summer fiasco will go to prison for misleading the public on construction progress.
- After years of construction, Georgia’s two new Vogtle reactors are still not operating, despite more than $28 billion in sunk capital, more than double the original cost estimate.
- There are no other new large atomic reactors credibly proposed or under construction in the US.
- No new reactor built in the US could compete with renewables and efficiency.
- Despite full amortization, all the 93 US reactors currently licensed to operate produce power that costs more than wind and solar when decommissioning, waste storage, and likely future accidents are factored in.
- Building enough large new reactors in the US to theoretically combat global warming would take decades and cost trillions.
- But trying to do so would come with no guarantee that those reactors would actually reduce global warming, because of the heat, carbon, toxic wastes, radiation, and periodic explosions they would create.
- No effective mass evacuation is possible from an explosion at any American reactor.
- New York governor Andrew Cuomo shut two Indian Point reactors near New York City by characterizing their evacuation plan as “swim to New Jersey.”
- New York governor Andrew Cuomo has kept four ancient, dangerous, money-losing reactors operating with a $7 billion bailout.
- One of the bailed-out NY reactors, Nine Mile Point, opened in 1969, and, like many other old US reactors, was designed pre-digitally.
- The average age of a licensed US reactor is now over forty.
- A $1 billion bailout for two ancient, deteriorated reactors in Ohio was bought with a $61 million bribe to the speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, who then spread around much of the cash to buy the votes he needed for the bailout.
- Nuclear industry thugs physically assaulted signature gatherers circulating a petition to repeal Ohio’s nuke bailout with a public referendum, which polls showed Ohio voters would have overwhelmingly approved.
- Money-losing, climate-killing reactors are being kept open throughout the US with similar bribes to corrupt state legislatures.
- Reactors throughout the US are dangerously embrittled, meaning key internal components will shatter when a melt-down requires pouring in cooling water, leading (at least!) to massive hydrogen explosions, as at Fukushima.
- The exploding reactors at Fukushima were designed by General Electric, with many duplicate models now operating in the US.
- Among the most embrittled US reactors is California’s Diablo Canyon Unit One, which is surrounded by a dozen earthquake faults, including the San Andreas, just 45 miles away.
- Diablo Canyon is half the distance from the San Andreas fault Fukushima was from the epicenter of the earthquake that destroyed it.
- The concrete is crumbling at New Hampshire’s Seabrook reactor, among others.
- The shield wall at Ohio’s Davis-Besse is crumbling and could collapse onto critical safety components, leading to a catastrophic disaster.
- Boric acid ate almost entirely through a critical safety component of the Davis-Besse reactor before workers discovered the problem by accident.
- When atomic reactors open, nearby infant death rates rise.
- When atomic reactors shut, nearby infant death rates drop.
- The 1979 meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island Unit Two killed downwind humans, animals, and plants.
- The nuke industry compares TMI’s emissions to a single x-ray imposed on all area residents, thus admitting that pregnant women were exposed to doses definitively linked to childhood cancers as early as the 1950s.
- Epidemiological studies conducted by central Pennsylvania residents involving more than 500 households showed definitive human health impacts from the accident.
- A three-person Baltimore News-American team reported mass deaths and malformations among farm and wild animals downwind from TMI.
- Central Pennsylvania farmers reported crop and tree die-offs after the TMI accident.
- Chernobyl killed more than a million humans.
- Chernobyl’s fallout caused an apocalyptic wave of aborted pregnancies, infant still-births, childhood cancers, birth defects, malformations, and mutations.
- Fukushima’s emissions are harming humans throughout Japan, as shown in particular by studies of widespread thyroid problems.
- Radioactive hot spots caused by Fukushima’s fallout are being confirmed throughout Japan, making it criminally irresponsible to proceed with the summer Olympics there.
- All atomic reactors kill billions of fish and other marine creatures with heat, radiation, and toxic chemical emissions.
- Construction at Diablo Canyon destroyed the abalone population at Avila Beach before the reactors ever operated.
- No wind turbine or solar panel ever killed a fish (not even the ones that fly).
- Fossil/nuclear cooling towers, automobiles, and high-rise buildings kill millions of birds; feral cats have killed billions.
- The global average for bird kills at wind farms dropped radically when old-style turbines at Altamont Pass, California, were replaced with bigger, monopole designs.
- Bird kills at modern wind farms plummet when one of two or three blades is painted black, making them more visible.
- Solar panels installed atop reservoirs and aqueducts, such as the water supply network in California, can radically curtail evaporation, saving billions of critical gallons over time (solar panels also operate more efficiently when they are cooled).
- Cooling water shortages threaten reactor operations all over the world.
- Reactors in France and elsewhere have been forced shut due to riverine water becoming too hot to cool them.
- Feedwater pumps at the South Texas Nuclear Plant recently froze, threatening a major disaster.
- The wind turbines that recently froze in Texas were not up to the specifications of other wind turbines worldwide (as in Wisconsin and Colorado) that could easily have withstood that cold wave.
- Energy losses in Texas from frozen nuke and fossil fuel facilities far exceeded those from the frozen wind turbines.
- Solar panels installed on rooftops avoid transmission losses suffered by all central generating stations, making them far more efficient than those installed in deserts and other remote locations.
- The National Renewable Energy Lab estimates there are more than 4.9 million square meters of rooftop space suitable for photovoltaic panels in the US.
- Constant breakthroughs in solar, wind, battery, and efficiency technologies continue to steadily drive down their costs.
- Inherent technological problems and continuing fuel supply challenges constantly escalate the costs for fossil/nuclear generators.
- Atomic reactors were originally meant to put a happy face on the nuke weapons industry and to expand the domain of the Atomic Energy Commission, which both promoted and regulated them.
- Despite treaties and denials, nations around the world now buying new reactors will use them to generate fissionable material for nuke weapons, as have India, Pakistan, etc.
- Nuke reactors are de facto pre-deployed nuke weapons of mass destruction for rogue nations and terrorists.
- No terrorist ever threatened to blow up a city by bombing a windmill or solar panel.
- The Green New Deal and Solartopian Revolution will ultimately put the fossil/nuclear industry out of business, avoiding incalculable costs in climate-killing heat, radiation, toxic pollution, and more.
- Retraining the fossil/nuke workforce will provide millions of safe, secure jobs for decades to come.
The Solartopian workforce needs to be unionized!
… and that’s just for starters!!
No Nukes!!! … and we’ll see you in Solartopia.
Harvey Wasserman’s Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.solartopia.org, along with his new People’s Spiral of US History: From Jigonsaseh to Solartopia. In 1974 he helped coin the phrase “No Nukes!” With Joel Segal, he co-convenes the weekly Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Zooms, Mondays, at 5 p.m. Eastern Time (www.electionprotection2024.org).
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Protesters in Elizabeth City on Saturday calling for the release of body camera footage of the police killing of Andrew Brown Jr. (photo: CNN)
Bodycam Video Appears to Show "Execution-Style" Killing of Andrew Brown Jr. by NC Deputies
David K. Li, NBC News
Li writes: "The family of a North Carolina man shot and killed by sheriff's deputies said Monday that they were shown just 20 seconds of body-camera video that appeared to show the man with his hands on the steering wheel of his car before he was killed."
Brown's family and attorneys said they were allowed to see just 20 seconds of video of the deadly encounter.
he family of a North Carolina man shot and killed by sheriff's deputies said Monday that they were shown just 20 seconds of body-camera video that appeared to show the man with his hands on the steering wheel of his car before he was killed.
Loved ones of Andrew Brown Jr., 42, expected to be shown the bodycam video just before noon Monday, but the viewing was pushed back several hours because of redactions sought by the county attorney, family attorneys said.
But even in 20 seconds of video, Brown's loved ones said, it was clear that he wasn't a threat to law enforcement and shouldn't have been gunned down.
"My dad got executed just trying to save his own life," son Khalil Ferebee told reporters outside the Pasquotank County Sheriff's Office. "It ain't right. It ain't right at all."
Family attorney Chantel Cherry-Lassiter said the video showed Brown in his vehicle as it was blocked in the driveway in Elizabeth City by law enforcement, making an escape impossible. NBC News hasn't seen the video.
"Andrew had his hands on his steering wheel. He was not reaching for anything. He wasn't touching anything," she said.
"He had his hands firmly on the steering wheel. They run up to his vehicle shooting. He still stood there, sat there in his vehicle, with his hands on the steering wheel while being shot at."
When asked whether Brown was shot in the back, attorney Harry Daniels told The Associated Press, “Yes, back of the head.”
The family conceded that Brown did try to drive away — but said he was fired upon before he tried to escape. Shell casings were flying in the video before his vehicle moved, Cherry-Lassiter said.
"His car was riddled with bullets, shooting him when he was not threatening them in any form or fashion," she said. "There were shell casing before he even backed out. So they were shooting at him when he was sitting there with his hands on the steering wheel in the driveway."
Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy S. Wooten in a video statement later Monday characterized the incident as quick and said that outside investigators are interviewing witnesses and gathering more information.
"This tragic incident was quick and over in less than 30 seconds, and body cameras are shaky and sometimes hard to decipher," Wooten said. "They only tell part of the story."
The redactions and the delay angered Brown's family, especially in light of a search warrant affidavit detailing allegations against him and justifying why deputies sought to arrest him.
"They released a warrant saying all kinds of things about Andrew Brown, but they want to redact the face of police officers that killed Andrew Brown?" said Benjamin Crump, another attorney representing the family.
"Now, Andrew Brown didn't kill nobody. The police killed Andrew Brown. But we're going to protect them and not show their face and not say their names so we can see what their rap sheet is," he said.
Pasquotank County Attorney R. Michael Cox said in a statement earlier in the day that state law "allows us to blur some faces on the video and that process takes time."
The family complained that they were shown 20 seconds of bodycam video from just one of at least eight responding deputies. No dash-cam video was shown, they said.
Cox couldn't be immediately reached for comment late Monday afternoon.
Brown was killed Wednesday as deputies sought to serve a warrant for his arrest on felony drug charges, authorities said. A search warrant affidavit made public Monday accused Brown of selling cocaine, crack, meth and heroin.
The circumstances of his death remain unclear. Seven deputies have been put on administrative leave. Three have resigned; a spokesperson for the sheriff's office said their resignations were unrelated to the shooting.
The shooting occurred in a residential neighborhood in Elizabeth City, which is about 35 miles south of Norfolk, Virginia.
Earlier Monday, Elizabeth City Mayor Bettie Parker declared a state of emergency ahead of the release of the video and a potential "period of civil unrest." The video can be publicly released only by a judge.
The declaration clears a way for the city to receive state and federal assistance "to protect our citizens," Parker said.
Monday protesters took to the streets in Elizabeth City, a community of around 17,600, with some saying the redacted video showed a cover-up, NBC affiliate WAVY reported.
Brown was shot when a SWAT-style team tried to serve the warrants last week, sheriff's officials have said. Brown was a convicted felon with a history of resisting arrest, which meant the procedure was considered to have a higher risk than others, authorities said.
Gov. Roy Cooper has said Brown's death was "tragic and extremely concerning," and he has called for a state investigation "to ensure accountability."
Merrick Garland. (photo: Demetrius Freeman/Getty Images)
Attorney General Merrick Garland Announces a Civil Investigation Into the Louisville Police Department
Yahoo! News
Excerpt: "The Justice Department is opening a civil investigation into the Louisville Jefferson County Metro Government and the Louisville Metro Police Department to determine whether LMPD engages in a pattern or practice of violations of the constitution or federal law."
n Monday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed that the Justice Department is opening a civil investigation into the Louisville (Ky.) Police Department and the Louisville-Jefferson County metro government to determine if they violated the Constitution and federal law.
Video Transcript
MERRICK GARLAND: Today, the Justice Department is opening a civil investigation into the Louisville Jefferson County Metro Government and the Louisville Metro Police Department to determine whether LMPD engages in a pattern or practice of violations of the constitution or federal law. Today's announcement is based on an extensive review of publicly available information about LMPD conducted by the Justice Department's civil rights division. The investigation will assess whether LMPD engages in a pattern or practice of using unreasonable force, including with respect to people involved in peaceful expressive activities.
It will determine whether LMPD engages in unconstitutional stops, searches, and seizures, as well as whether the department unlawfully executes search warrants on private homes. It will also assess whether LMPD engages in discriminatory conduct on the basis of race, or fails to provide public services that comply with the Americans with Disability Act. The investigation will include a comprehensive review of the Louisville Police Department's policies and training. It will also assess the effectiveness of LMPD's supervision of officers and systems of accountability.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. (photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/AP/Shutterstock)
US Supreme Court Leans Toward Conservative Groups on Concealing Donors
Lawrence Hurley, Reuters
Hurley writes: "Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared sympathetic to a challenge by two conservative groups to a California requirement that tax-exempt charities disclose to the state the identity of their top financial donors."
The nonprofit groups - the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and the Thomas More Law Center - argued that California's policy, in place for the past decade, violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and association. They have said that if the information becomes public, which it has in the past, it could lead to harassment or threats to donors.
Democratic-governed California, the most populous U.S. state, has said the donor information is required as part of the state attorney general's duty to prevent charitable fraud.
Conservative justices, who make up a 6-3 majority, signaled support during Monday's arguments in the case for the challengers' view that the measure should be struck down in full.
There appeared little appetite for a middle ground proposal backed by President Joe Biden's administration to uphold the state policy but send the case back to lower courts to explore whether the groups could pursue a challenge based on how the state applied the rules to them.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas voiced concern that donor identities becoming publicly known could deter people from giving money to groups with contentious views. His wife, Virginia Thomas, is a conservative activist.
"In this era there seems to be quite a bit of loose accusations about organizations. For example, an organization that has certain views might be accused of being a white supremacist organization or racist or homophobic, something like that, and as a result become quite controversial," Thomas said.
The Thomas More Law Center is a conservative Catholic legal group. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which funds education and training on conservative issues, is the sister organization of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group - both founded by conservative billionaire businessman Charles Koch and his late brother David.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts appeared skeptical that California could assuage the concerns of someone who wants to donate to a controversial group but is worried about their donation being made public.
"If that person came to you and says, 'I want to give a donation but I want to be sure that California will not disclose this, that it will not get out. Can you give me 100 percent assurance that would not happen?' What would you tell that person?" Roberts asked California's lawyer, Aimee Feinberg.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that 250 nonprofit groups from across the ideological spectrum had backed the challenge, suggesting that showed broad opposition that would justify a wide ruling striking down the policy.
California requires that charities provide a copy of the tax form they file with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service that lists donors who contribute large amounts. Larger groups have to disclose donors who contribute $200,000 or more in any year. That information is not posted online and is kept confidential but some has been disclosed in the past.
The case could have broad ramifications if the justices set a new standard make it easier for groups to withhold the identity of donors. The court in the past has been hostile to political campaign finance restrictions - it ruled in 2010 that corporations and other outside groups could spend unlimited funds in elections - but has upheld disclosure requirements.
Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer expressed concern that the case could be a "stalking horse" that would set up future challenges to campaign finance restrictions, noting that in the political context "the interest is even stronger in people being able to give anonymously."
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018 reversed a federal judge's ruling in favor of the groups.
A ruling is expected by the end of June.
A U.S. census taker. (photo: Census.gov)
Which States Won - and Lost - Seats in the 2020 Census?
Geoffrey Skelley and Nathaniel Rakich, FiveThirtyEight
Excerpt: "The political balance of the 50 states was just reweighted."
On Monday afternoon, the U.S. Census Bureau announced how many seats each state will have in the U.S. House for the next 10 years — a once-in-a-decade process called reapportionment. In total, five states will gain one House seat each starting with the 2022 elections — and Texas even added two. But for every seat these states gained, another state had to lose one — and indeed, seven states lost one congressional district each.
Overall, the gains and losses following the 2020 census largely continue a pattern in recent decades whereby states in the Midwest and Northeast have lost seats because their population growth has stagnated, while states in the South and West have mostly gained seats because their populations have boomed. (There is one exception to this overarching trend: California actually lost ground for the first time in its history.)
This southward and westward migration of congressional seats will, of course, affect the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans. With legislatures and commissions all over the country about to draw new congressional maps, states where Republicans have full control of the redistricting process added two seats on net (four seats gained, two lost). Meanwhile, the few states where Democrats wield the redistricting pen subtracted one seat on net (one gained, two lost). States with independent redistricting commissions or where the two parties share redistricting power also lost a net of one seat (two gained, three lost).
As a result, we can now say with finality that Republicans will control the redrawing of 187 congressional districts (43 percent) — or 2.5 times as many as Democrats (who will redraw 75 districts, or 17 percent). There are also 167 districts (38 percent) where neither party will enjoy exclusive control over redistricting (either because of independent commissions or split partisan control). And, of course, there are six districts (1 percent) that won’t need to be drawn at all (because they are at-large districts that cover their entire state).
But just because most of the states that are gaining seats are red and most of the states that are losing them are blue does not necessarily mean that reapportionment will help Republicans — in the House, at least.1 That’s because many of the fastest-growing areas of red states are increasingly Democratic, so it matters a lot how the new districts will be drawn.
To be sure, in states where one party enjoys full control of redistricting, they will probably attempt to draw the new district — or adjust for the loss of an old one — in ways that benefit themselves. But that may not always be possible, or they may actually prefer not to do so for other, more idiosyncratic reasons (such as drawing other districts to suit a particular incumbent). So based on population patterns and local political considerations, here’s our best judgment about which party will benefit from reapportionment in each state.
States that gained seats
The three most populous states to gain seats are Texas, Florida and North Carolina, and in each, Republicans will control the redistricting process. For the first time in decades, they won’t have to seek preclearance from the Justice Department either before implementing their maps thanks to the 2013 Supreme Court decision that struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. That, in turn, could open the door for more extreme gerrymandering in these states, which historically disenfranchised voters of color.
For instance, Republicans will at least try to draw Texas’s two new districts to be as safe as possible for Republicans. But they also face the challenge that Texas’s suburbs — its fastest-growing areas — are rapidly becoming more Democratic, which threatened to blow up their 2011 gerrymander. According to Daily Kos Elections, Biden came within 3 percentage points of carrying 22 out of Texas’s current 36 districts in the 2020 election. So in an effort to shore up Republican incumbents in some areas, the Texas legislature may be forced to create safe new districts for Democrats in places like Austin, Dallas or Houston. But even if one or both of the new seats are blue, Texas’s map will still likely benefit Republicans overall (perhaps more so than their current 23-13 advantage), muddying the question of which party truly benefits from reapportionment here.
Meanwhile, in Florida, Republicans could expand the GOP’s present 16-11 seat advantage by drawing a new Republican seat, but in doing so they may also cut into Democratic-controlled seats that aren’t overwhelmingly blue, such as Rep. Stephanie Murphy’s Orlando-based seat and/or Rep. Charlie Crist’s Tampa Bay-area seat. It’s plausible that the state’s new district could be drawn in one of those regions, too, as both have grown more than most other parts of the state in the past decade. As for North Carolina, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has no say in redistricting, so the GOP-led legislature could try to draw an aggressive gerrymander to improve the party’s 8-5 edge. However, the three most over-populated districts are all urban-suburban seats Biden won by at least 30 percentage points. That means Republican line-drawers will have to balance trying to add GOP-leaning seats while also not accidentally drawing too many potential Democratic voters into Republican-held districts, which could eventually cause them to flip if more densely populated areas trend further to the left. Notably, the state supreme courts in Florida and North Carolina both ordered at least partial redistricting that weakened Republican-drawn maps in the last decade; however, GOP judicial election wins and appointments since then may reduce the likelihood that those state courts will interfere with any future Republican gerrymandering attempts.
Out west, Colorado and Montana will use commissions to draw their new congressional maps, which should limit partisan gerrymandering, but also makes it harder to say which party will benefit from new lines. Colorado is using a redistricting commission for the first time, but it’s had a dramatic start with its members voting unanimously to remove the commission chair after he made comments questioning the validity of the 2020 election outcome. As for the state’s new district, it will likely be drawn somewhere in the Denver region, where much of Colorado’s growth has occurred. Meanwhile, Montana must decide how to draw its new lines, having gained a second congressional seat for the first time in 30 years. The most logical arrangement is to split the state into eastern and western halves — an outcome that has upside for both political parties. Both seats would probably still favor Republicans given the red hue of the state, meaning that in most cases, the GOP would gain a seat in Big Sky Country. But the western seat might actually be somewhat competitive thanks to liberal cities like Missoula and Bozeman — so in some scenarios, Democrats could actually add to their ranks.
Finally, unusual circumstances make it hard to predict the partisanship of Oregon’s sixth seat. Although it wouldn’t be hard to draw a 5-1 gerrymander of the state, Democrats recently agreed to give Republicans an equal say on the legislature’s redistricting committees. (However, Democrats still have control over the institutions that must approve the maps — the full state Senate, full state House and governorship — and can theoretically rescind their olive branch.) That, plus the preferences of Oregon’s congressional Democrats to hold onto their existing bases of support, may encourage a compromise 4-2 map, in which the new seat would, in effect, add a member to the Republican caucus. If a court has to get involved, a 3-3 map is even possible.
States that lost seats
California continues to be the most populous state in the country, but its pace of growth has slowed enough that it will lose a seat in the next Congress. That means the state’s independent redistricting commission will have to decide what part of the state loses representation, which could hurt one party. Based on population growth, the endangered seat could very well be a district located completely or partly in Los Angeles County. And because Democrats control almost all of those seats, that could mean they will suffer a net loss from California’s redistricting. However, the removal of a district could make Republican Rep. Mike Garcia’s seat in northern Los Angeles County even more Democratic-leaning than it already is — Biden carried it by 10 points — if the district’s new lines stretch further southward, which would give Democrats a better chance of capturing that seat.
New York and Illinois are two other blue states that lost one district each, but the Democrats who control redistricting in those states should be able to ensure that a Republican-held seat is the one that gets axed. Both states are losing residents in their redder, rural areas — upstate for New York and downstate for Illinois. So in Illinois, expect one of the state’s five Republican representatives to draw the short straw — perhaps Rep. Adam Kinzinger or Rep. Rodney Davis. In New York, meanwhile, several Republican-held districts, such as the 21st, 22nd, 23rd and 24th, are shrinking and could be combined in such a way that not only reduces their number by one, but also makes at least one of them more Democratic. Indeed, these two states are probably Democrats’ two biggest weapons in redistricting this year, so expect their final maps to be even friendlier to Democrats than their current 13-5 (Illinois) and 19-8 (New York) splits.
Unlike in the previous two states, Republicans will control the redistricting process in Ohio, which also lost one seat. The GOP already has a sizable 12-4 edge on the current map,2 and they could try to make sure their loss of a seat is felt by Democrats. The leading contenders for removal are probably the districts held by Democratic Reps. Marcy Kaptur (9th District) and Tim Ryan (13th District), the latter of whom is running for Senate anyway. However, Republicans will be at least a little constrained by redistricting amendments voters passed in 2015 and 2018. To pass a map that will last the entire decade, the GOP-controlled state legislature will need at least a little buy-in from Democrats there; otherwise, it will only stay in effect for two terms and will need to be redrawn. Additionally, there are new limits on how cities and counties can be split. Nevertheless, Ohio is so red outside of the big cities of Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati that Ohio Republicans can draw a highly favorable map without breaking the rules governing the splitting of localities.
Two other states in the Frost Belt will also lose a seat, but their new maps will be drawn by either a divided government or a commission. In Pennsylvania, the Republican-controlled legislature could butt heads with Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, which could bring the Democratic-controlled state supreme court into the line-drawing process. However, it’s unclear exactly which party is most likely to lose a seat, as broad swaths of the state outside of its southeast region have seen stagnant growth — or even population loss. Meanwhile, Michigan is another state utilizing a redistricting commission for the first time, which should minimize partisan gerrymandering. Still, Michigan will lose a seat, and because Wayne County has shrunk over the past decade, there’s a good chance a seat in the Detroit area will be on the chopping block. That likely means Democrats will lose a seat they currently control, but because the new map will replace the current Republican gerrymander, Democrats could end up with more favorable turf in other parts of the state.
Lastly, we know for sure that Republicans will be the ones to lose a seat in West Virginia. All three current members of Congress from the Mountain State belong to the GOP, so at least one out of Reps. David McKinley, Alex Mooney or Carol Miller will not be in the next Congress. Expect a lot of intrigue surrounding how, exactly, the seat is redrawn — and perhaps a rare incumbent-vs.-incumbent primary election.
Of course, we’re a long way from knowing the full political ramifications of redistricting, as the 31 other states that didn’t lose or gain a seat and will have more than one representative will also have to redraw their congressional lines. We also don’t know how the 13 states we’ve examined here will draw their maps. But today’s announcement of the reapportionment numbers marks the first step toward knowing what the lay of the land will be ahead of the 2022 election.
Colville Confederated Tribe members. (photo: Tyler Tjomsland/The Spokesman-Review)
In Momentous Decision, Court Rules Indigenous Nation in US Has Right to Lands in Canada
Orion Donovan-Smith, The Spokesman-Review
Donovan-Smith writes: "Chairman of the Colville Tribal Council, said the ruling is important not only for the Sinixt, but for numerous other Indigenous peoples separated from their ancestral lands since the U.S.-Canada boundary was drawn."
n a long-awaited decision, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Sinixt people, part of the twelve Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, have constitutionally protected hunting rights on their ancestral land in current-day British Columbia.
The case began in 2010 when Rick Desautel, a Sinixt descendant and member of what is now known as the Lakes Tribe, killed an elk in a ceremonial hunt on traditional Sinixt land near Vallican, B.C. While the Canadian government had recognized the Sinixt in the early 1900s, calling them the Arrow Lakes Band, the government declared them extinct when the last known member of that band died in 1956.
Desautel and his lawyer argued the Sinixt people are very much alive, though European colonization pushed some of them south of their homeland to the Colville Reservation in Washington.
The court’s decision brought “jubilation” and “a gigantic sigh of relief,” Desautel told The Spokesman-Review.
“Through all the different appeals we’ve been through, and then getting to the Supreme Court,” he said, “the anticipation on my part has been very great.”
The Canadian Constitution protects the rights of Indigenous people to hunt for ceremonial purposes on their traditional land, and on Friday the court upheld lower court decisions acquitting Desautel of violating B.C. law by killing the elk. The 7-2 decision also means other Indigenous peoples in the United States can claim the same rights across the border if they can prove their ancestors lived in what is now Canada.
Rodney Cawston, chairman of the Colville Tribal Council, said the ruling is important not only for the Sinixt, but for numerous other Indigenous peoples separated from their ancestral lands since the U.S.-Canada boundary was drawn.
“My heart was just soaring,” Cawston said. “This is a huge decision for the Colville Tribes as well as many other trans-boundary tribes. … It’s huge for all our future generations, who will be able to go back and forth across the border and enjoy the homelands of our people.”
Writing for the majority, Justice Malcolm Rowe said Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution should be interpreted such that “the expression ‘aboriginal peoples of Canada’ means the modern‑day successors of Aboriginal societies that occupied Canadian territory at the time of European contact, and this may include Aboriginal groups that are now outside Canada.”
The two dissenting justices, Suzanne Côté and Michael Moldaver, argued Desautel had not clearly established continuity with the pre-contact group’s practices. Côté also said Indigenous groups outside Canada’s borders should not be considered “aboriginal peoples of Canada,” while Moldaver agreed with the majority on that point.
Desautel’s lawyer Mark Underhill said the judgment has major implications for Indigenous people throughout Canada, not just along the border.
“The most important part of the decision, beyond the impact on the Sinixt,” Underhill said, “is the court’s very strong statements that rights in Canada flow from the prior occupation of aboriginal peoples for thousands of years in Canada, and that forced displacement — which is not just the story of the Sinixt, but is the story of many aboriginal groups throughout North America — is not going to displace those rights.”
In its judgment, the court also urged negotiations to determine the status of Indigenous groups, rather than relying on the courts.
“These things are not ideally done through test cases,” Underhill said. “They once again, as they’ve been doing for over 20 years, encouraged the parties and particularly the government to sit down and negotiate. … The hope is a lot of these issues can be resolved through good-faith discussions, as opposed to court cases.”
The hunt that led to Friday’s ruling was no accident, Desautel said, and was decades in the making.
It began at least as early as 1989, when Desautel was among a group of Colville tribal members who crossed the border to protest a plan to build a highway through land near Vallican where Sinixt people are buried. While their blockade ultimately failed to stop the road project, it helped organize an effort to be recognized by the Canadian government.
The tribal council came up with a plan: Desautel, who worked at the time for the Colville Tribes’ Fish and Wildlife Department, would cross the border and hunt game, knowingly violating B.C. law.
Joe Peone, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Department, researched Canadian law and presented the council with a step-by-step approach to prompt a court case to challenge the 1956 declaration that the Sinixt were extinct. It took several citations, Desautel said, before the government took him to court for the 2010 hunt.
Cawston said Friday’s decision was neither the beginning nor the end of the Sinixt people’s fight for recognition. Testimony from as far back as the 1920s, he said, shows Sinixt leaders never relinquished their rights.
“With the background of our ancestors encouraging us and fighting for those rights even as far back as when they were dispossessed,” Cawston said, “it really set us on a path. Going forward, we want to really begin working with the ministries in British Columbia on being recognized as a First Nation in Canada.”
Establishing relations with the Canadian government, Cawston said, would help Sinixt people protect their original homelands and natural resources. He also hopes to bring together Sinixt descendants who are enrolled in other First Nations in Canada.
“It gives us much better footing in Canada to protect our cultural resources, our archeological resources, our grave sites,” he said. “So there’s going to be a lot of work ahead of us.”
Joe Biden. (photo: Frank Franklin II/AP)
Joe Biden's New Climate Pledge Isn't Fair or Ambitious
Rishika Pardikar, Jacobin
Pardikar writes: "Biden's emissions pledge will not do enough to reach [the Paris Agreement's] goal, according to an analysis by Climate Action Tracker, a scientific organization that measures governmental climate action."
President Joe Biden has announced a new emissions reduction plan. It doesn’t do nearly enough to address the US’s climate impacts on the rest of the world.
n Thursday, President Joe Biden announced that the United States will cut emissions by 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 as part of its commitment to the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change.
Biden’s announcement came during the administration’s virtual Leaders Summit on Climate, which aimed to push climate action around the world.
A key goal of the summit was “to keep a limit to warming of 1.5 degree Celsius within reach.” A 2018 special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that global greenhouse gas emissions need to drop by 50 percent by 2030 to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
But Biden’s emissions pledge will not do enough to reach this goal, according to an analysis by Climate Action Tracker, a scientific organization that measures governmental climate action.
The group found that Biden’s new target is “considerably stronger” than the United States’ previous Paris Agreement goal under President Barack Obama, which entailed cutting emissions to 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. However, the analysis concluded that Biden’s plan still falls 5 to 10 percent short of what’s needed to keep warming within 1.5 degrees by 2030.
But even if the United States reduced its emissions target by that additional amount, experts say the country still wouldn’t be contributing its fair share to the global effort to combat the climate crisis. Considering the country’s past impacts on the planet, and the resources it has available to help developing nations address climate change in other parts of the world, critics say the United States is duty bound to adopt a far more ambitious and far-reaching climate action plan.
Biden’s pledge “doesn’t go far enough, and we expect much more, especially because the Biden administration is viewed as being sympathetic to environmental and climate justice,” said Meena Raman, a Malaysia-based legal adviser and senior researcher at the Third World Network (TWN), a nonprofit international research and advocacy organization involved in development issues and North-South affairs.
“The U.S. has been a laggard in so far as climate action is concerned,” Raman added, pointing to the country’s failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and its history of opposition to climate action during UN climate change negotiations.
The Biggest Polluter in History
The idea that global emissions need to fall by 50 percent by 2030 “is a global average target,” said Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist from Eswatini, the Southern African country formerly known as Swaziland. Hickel serves on the Statistical Advisory Panel for the UN Human Development Report 2020, the advisory board of the Green New Deal for Europe, and on Harvard’s Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice.
To meet that target, Hickel told the Daily Poster that the United States and other high-income nations “have a responsibility under the terms of the Paris Agreement to cut emissions much faster than [Biden’s pledge], given their overwhelming contributions to historical emissions.”
The United States is the biggest carbon dioxide emitter in history. More specifically, the United States has emitted 25 percent of the world’s emissions since 1751. And even though US emissions have fallen in recent years, fossil fuels still account for 80 percent of energy production in the United States.
The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the first major international climate change treaty, acknowledged that countries should address the crisis “in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions.” The Paris Agreement is a treaty within UNFCCC.
This meant developed countries should bear more responsibility in global sustainability efforts, based on the outsized impact their societies have on the environment and the technologies and financial resources they command.
Therefore, said Hickel, Biden’s announcement “might sound ambitious,” but it is “totally inadequate and flies in the face of climate justice.”
A 2020 paper by Hickel explored the concept of “carbon budget,” the idea that the atmosphere is part of the global commons and all countries should only emit their fair share of carbon dioxide. According to the paper, the United States has already overshot its share of the carbon budget by 40 percent. Overall, the Global North has overshot its carbon budget by 92 percent, with the European Union being responsible for 29 percent of that total.
Biden’s new emissions pledge means that “the U.S. will continue to colonize the atmospheric commons, gobbling up the fair shares of poorer nations, causing enormous destruction in the process,” said Hickel. “Why should anyone in the Global South accept this? It is morally and politically untenable.”
Hickel noted that the United States should instead “commit to reach zero emissions by 2030, and to pay reparations for climate damage to countries in the Global South.” Such effort would include helping to facilitate emission reduction efforts in poorer nations that have yet to consume their fair share of the global carbon budget.
The US Climate Fair Share Project, an effort backed by over a hundred seventy-five climate organizations, also believes the United States should do more to combat climate breakdown in developing countries. The project has concluded that in order to cover its fair share of climate impacts, the United States would have to cut its emissions by 195 percent — meaning the country would have to be responsible for negative emissions.
To achieve this goal, the US Climate Fair Share project says the United States would need to cut emissions by 70 percent, then meet the remaining 125 percent reduction by financing international climate efforts and providing technological support to developing countries.
“The U.S., like wealthy countries in general, has a fair share [of emissions reductions] that is too large to be achieved domestically,” noted the project. ”Wealthy countries can do their fair shares by supporting developing countries as they seek levels of ambition greater than they could achieve on their own, levels that are actually commensurate with the 1.5°C temperature goal.”
The 2018 IPCC Special Report elaborated on how temperature rise has already caused “profound alterations” to human and natural systems, leading to extreme weather, droughts, floods, sea level rise, and biodiversity loss, causing unprecedented risks to vulnerable populations. Referring to developing countries, the report noted “the most affected people live in low and middle income countries, some of which have already experienced a decline in food security, linked in turn to rising migration and poverty.”
As of now, the planet is headed toward a 3 degree Celsius increase by the end of the century. About one-fifth of the world’s population already live in regions that have warmed beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“A Worrying Focus on the Private Sector”
References in Biden’s emissions reduction plan to relying on net-zero emissions and private sector involvement are also raising concerns.
A White House press release on the plan said “America’s 2030 target picks up the pace of emissions reductions in the United States, compared to historical levels, while supporting President Biden’s existing goals to create a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net-zero emissions economy by no later than 2050. There are multiple paths to reach these goals, and the U.S. federal, state, local, and tribal governments have many tools available to work with civil society and the private sector to mobilize investment to meet these goals while supporting a strong economy.”
Net-zero goals have been heavily criticized for distracting from an urgent need to drastically cut down emissions on the assumption that future technologies can sequester the carbon that is emitted today.
As for private sector participation, Harjeet Singh, global climate lead at the international nongovernmental organization ActionAid, pointed out that there is “a worrying focus on the private sector to deliver.”
“How can we have confidence in companies driven by profit margins when we’re not seeing real zero targets from businesses, especially from the polluting industries most responsible for the climate crisis?” Singh asked.
For example, many private US fossil fuel companies have announced dubious net-zero targets while failing to commit to reducing oil and gas output and opposing policies that would help reduce emissions. Between 2000 and 2016, the fossil fuel industry spent over $2 billion in lobbying efforts to kill climate action.
“Fossil fuel groups like the American Petroleum Institute have lobbied U.S. governments under presidents from both parties,” said Raman at the Third World Network. “So Biden has inherited a huge problem, but his [emissions cut] announcement doesn’t do enough.”
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