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23 May 21
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Bill McKibben | The Particular Psychology of Destroying the Planet
Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes: "How is it that some people, or corporations, can knowingly perpetuate the damage? Or, as people routinely ask me, 'Don't they have grandchildren?'"
What kind of thinking goes into engaging in planetary sabotage?
wo weeks ago, I looked at the question of the anxiety that the climate crisis is causing our psyches. But, if you think about it, there’s an equally interesting question regarding the human mind: How is it that some people, or corporations, can knowingly perpetuate the damage? Or, as people routinely ask me, “Don’t they have grandchildren?”
A reminder that plenty of people have been engaged in this kind of planetary sabotage came last week in a remarkable paper by Harvard’s Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes. After analyzing nearly two hundred sources, including some internal company documents and “advertorials,” they concluded that Exxon officials had embraced a strategy “that downplays the reality and seriousness of climate change, normalizes fossil fuel lock-in, and individualizes responsibility.” And the authors found a model: “These patterns mimic the tobacco industry’s documented strategy of shifting responsibility away from corporations—which knowingly sold a deadly product while denying its harms—and onto consumers. This historical parallel foreshadows the fossil fuel industry’s use of demand-as-blame arguments to oppose litigation, regulation, and activism.” As Supran explains in a long Twitter thread about the research, “ExxonMobil tapped into America’s uniquely individualist culture and brought it to bear on climate change.”
What kind of thinking goes into adopting a tobacco-industry strategy to protect a business model as you wreck the climate system? (And it’s not just Exxon—here’s an analysis of how Big Meat is playing the same climate tricks.) No one, of course, can peer inside the heads of oil-company executives or those of their enablers in the legal, financial, and political worlds. But there’s an interesting explanation in a new book from the British psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe. “Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis” states its argument in its subtitle: “Neoliberal Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare.” Weintrobe writes that people’s psyches are divided into caring and uncaring parts, and the conflict between them “is at the heart of great literature down the ages, and all major religions.” The uncaring part wants to put ourselves first; it’s the narcissistic corners of the brain that persuade each of us that we are uniquely important and deserving, and make us want to except ourselves from the rules that society or morality set so that we can have what we want. “Most people’s caring self is strong enough to hold their inner exception in check,” she notes, but, troublingly, “ours is the Golden Age of Exceptionalism.” Neoliberalism—especially the ideas of people such as Ayn Rand, enshrined in public policy by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher—“crossed a Rubicon in the 1980s” and neoliberals “have been steadily consolidating their power ever since.” Weintrobe calls leaders who exempt themselves in these ways “exceptions” and says that, as they “drove globalization forwards in the 1980s,” they were captivated by an ideology that whispered, “Cut regulation, cut ties to reality and cut concern.” Donald Trump was the logical end of this way of thinking, a man so self-centered that he interpreted all problems, even a global pandemic, as attempts to undo him. “The self-assured neoliberal imagination has increasingly revealed itself to be not equipped to deal with problems it causes,” she writes.
In her conclusion, Weintrobe contrasts this narcissistic entitlement with the “lively” (and psychologically appropriate) entitlement of young people who are now demanding climate action so that they will have a planet on which to live full lives. “They, who will have to live in a damaged world, need our support to stop further damage,” she writes. “The danger is that unless we break with Exceptionalism and mourn our exaggerated sense of narcissistic entitlement, we may pay them lip service with kind words but throw them overboard . . . while we carry on with carbon-intensive life as usual.”
Passing the Mic
The film “The Ants and the Grasshopper” has been a long time in the making. In 2012, Raj Patel, a research professor at the University of Texas, went to Malawi with a film crew to follow the farmer and activist Anita Chitaya and document her work in ending hunger and gender inequality. “We wanted to show that the biggest innovations in the food system were being driven by frontline communities and people of color in the global South,” Patel said. But, “when Anita learned about climate change, and the role of the United States in furthering it, she was shocked. She asked whether she should come over to America, to school us on what climate change was doing to her community. We fund-raised, travelled in 2017, and documented the impact she had on communities from Iowa to Detroit to Oakland to Washington, D.C.”
The film about that trip—charming, infuriating, big-hearted—will début later this month at the Mountainfilm documentary festival, in Telluride, Colorado. You can watch the trailer here, and it’s worth doing to get a sense of Chitaya’s voice so that you can imagine her answering these questions, which Patel and his team forwarded to her in Africa. (They translated the answers from her native Tumbuka, and the interview has been edited.)
What message were you most trying to get across to Americans when you travelled here?
The atmosphere has been damaged because of gas and smoke coming from America. We came to spread the news about how climate change affects us in Malawi, and what we are doing to change how we live to address the problems. We needed to tell them about the struggles that we were facing because it seems they did not know and, if they did not know about us, how could they care about us? I also want to say that it was an honor for us to meet them.
What do you think they heard, and what do you think they didn’t hear?
A lot of people listened and nodded when we talked about climate change in Malawi, but many also didn’t understand. They agreed that the weather was different, but disagreed that it was something that was the result of humans. They said it was impossible for humans to do this to the weather, or said that it was God’s will. This means that, even if their hearts were touched when we told them of our suffering, they did not understand that the way they live is causing that suffering.
If those Midwest farmers came to your community and your farm, what would you like them to learn from the experience?
I would be very happy if they came to my farm. I would teach them how we return the stalks and residue to the soils, how we plant soybeans and add manure from animals to heal the soil. If we take care of the soil, it will yield, and our lives can be healthy, without malnutrition.
But I would also show them how far we have to walk for water. In America, you have so much water. Here, our boreholes are drying up for longer each year. For us, it can be that it takes an hour to walk for water, and then you have to wait in a queue. I would show them how climate change makes life harder for women. If men don’t understand gender equality here, it makes life harder for their wives and daughters, who have to walk farther to find water.
And I would show them how men and women share work here. We have Recipe Days, when men and boys learn to cook, and everyone learns to experiment with new kinds of food. It helps us to bring about gender equality. We did not see as much of that in America as we do in our villages. Some people in America have a very traditional view of what men and women should do. If we are to work together, America needs to let go of its backward thinking.
Climate School
The biggest news of the week was Tuesday’s report from the International Energy Administration (I.E.A.) explaining that, to have any chance of meeting the temperature target set in the Paris accord, new development of coal, gas, and oil has to cease now. This epochal statement will be reverberating for weeks. (I wrote about it here.) For now, this interview with the I.E.A. executive director, Fatih Birol, gets the message across concisely. Putting new money into fossil fuel, Birol said, would be “junk investments.”
The fight over the Line 3 pipeline—which activists conducted as best they could during a long pandemic winter in Minnesota—is slowly nationalizing. The Seattle City Council voted to oppose the pipeline plan, becoming the first non-tribal government to do so. Meanwhile, activists announced plans for what looks to be a large gathering bent on nonviolent direct action along the pipeline route in June. Success would probably require making Line 3 enough of a national issue that the Biden Administration feels the need to intervene. Meanwhile, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, of Michigan, offers an impassioned defense of her efforts to shut down the Line 5 oil pipeline through the Great Lakes.
Department of I Didn’t See That Coming: A new report shows that rising carbon-dioxide emissions are lowering the density of the upper atmosphere and, in the process, could reduce the amount of space junk normally incinerated as it begins to return toward Earth. In a worst-case scenario, the amount of satellite-killing debris in orbit could increase fifty times by 2100—a “more probable outcome” is a tenfold or twentyfold increase.
The Guardian’s environment editor Damian Carrington offers a handy taxonomy for figuring out what’s greenwashing and what’s real progress.
In Sunset Park, Brooklyn, community leaders, including Elizabeth Yeampierre, of UPROSE, were part of a push toward a new clean-energy model for the waterfront, through the development of an offshore wind project. Now, such a project will be built by the Norwegian oil company Equinor. As Inside Climate News reports, the waterfront’s “73 acres of cracked concrete and rusting fences will be cleared away and replaced with the modern port that will anchor the burgeoning offshore wind industry. Crumbling bulkheads will be shored up to support 200-foot cranes. The decrepit piers, which look out over Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, will be reinforced to hold turbine blades as long as football fields.”
Tasmania was one of the birthplaces of green politics, and Christine Milne, a former senator from the Australian Greens party, is hard at work restoring Lake Pedder, which was vastly expanded in the nineteen-seventies by flooding from a huge hydroelectricity project. As she makes clear in this video, the ancient glacial lake is a prime candidate for restoration to its original state, as the United Nations’ Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which will run through 2030, commences.
Together with the activist pranksters the Yes Men and the Fixers Fix, the young climate campaigners of Fridays for Future pulled a prank on the U.K.’s Standard Chartered Bank, though it’s sad that a declaration from a bank that it will stop funding fossil fuels is more likely to be a spoof than reality.
Brentwood, California—which is about fifty miles east of Berkeley—decided not to renew a franchise for a pipeline that runs through a corner of the city. Council members and residents, the Mercury News reported, “had many questions concerning safety of the pipeline that flows 1.8 million cubic feet of natural gas daily through the city, including near several subdivisions, which were not built at the time the pipeline was constructed. ‘I’ll be honest, I have concerns,’ Councilwoman Jovita Mendoza said. ‘It’s right by school, and that makes me super uncomfortable.’ ”
Scoreboard
A new study finds that a third of global food production may be at risk by century’s end if greenhouse-gas emissions keep rising at a rapid rate. But, if we meet the targets set in the Paris accord, only five to eight per cent of our harvests may be in danger.
Pressure is building on the investment giant T.I.A.A. to divest from fossil fuels. The asset manager, which handles the pensions of many teachers and university professors, has more clients in the State University of New York system than any other university—and last week members of the University at Albany’s faculty senate followed the lead of their colleagues on other campuses and voted to ask T.I.A.A. to get out of fossil fuels.
A new paper from the Carbon Tracker initiative in London shows that, contrary to a downbeat assessment from the International Energy Agency, there’s enough easily available lithium and other minerals to keep the renewables boom going—and that the switch from fossil fuels should dramatically decrease the total amount of mining activity on the planet. It appears to answer many of the concerns raised in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on the same topic.
Amid the tragic fighting in the Middle East, the outgoing (Jewish) and incoming (Muslim) executive directors of the Arava Institute, perhaps the region’s leading environmental-studies center, issued a plea for peace and for joint work on larger issues. “Instead of turning our attention to the common threats we face from a pandemic still out of control in Gaza and the West Bank, the economic fallout from the pandemic, and the looming impact of climate change, we find ourselves embroiled once again in violence and the historic political conflict. We call on the government of Israel to prevent further violent escalation and implore leaders in the region to reject a return to tribalism and find a path towards peace, reconciliation, security, justice and self-determination for all.”
Warming Up
Bettye LaVette’s version of “Blackbird” is killer anytime, but, just to remind ourselves that people aren’t the only ones with a stake in the climate outcome, here’s an old video of the ecologist Curt Stager playing the same song—for a black bird. It will make you grin.
Friday afternoon in Jerusalem. (photo: Arab 48)
Juan Cole | Israeli Invasion of Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound Shows Conflict Remains Hot Despite Ceasefire, Angers Muslims Worldwide
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Juan Cole writes: "Only half a day after a ceasefire went into effect between the Palestinians in Gaza and the government of Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel, the peace was disturbed in Jerusalem at the flashpoint al-Aqsa Mosque compound."
Rabi’ Sawaid reports for Arab 48 that confrontations broke out Friday afternoon between worshipers at the al-Aqsa Mosque and Israeli security forces when the latter invaded the environs of the mosque complex after communal Friday prayers. At the same time, confrontations broke out between Palestinian youth and the Israeli Occupation army in numerous sites in the Palestinian West Bank.
Sawaid says that since 13 April there have been regular attacks by Israeli security forces and militant squatter-settler gangs, especially at the al-Aqsa Mosque and the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, in order to quash protests about the ethnic cleansing of 12 Palestinian homes and their surrender to Israeli squatter-settlers.
Al Jazeera says that first, an unusually large crowd of 20,000 worshipers came for dawn prayers. Then thousands of Palestinians gathered at the al-Aqsa compound to pray Friday prayers, and many stayed to celebrate what they viewed as a victory when Israel accepted a ceasefire with Hamas after only 11 days of heavy bombardment. They also conducted mourning prayers for the some 270 Palestinians who were killed by Israeli bombing raids or by live fire.
Wire services say some were waving Palestinian flags, which is strictly prohibited by the Israeli authorities in Jerusalem. Israel has illegally annexed Palestinian East Jerusalem, in contravention of the UN Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Israeli security forces moved in to break up the celebrations.
Al Jazeera reports, “For his part, the director of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Omar Al-Kiswani, said that the occupation forces detained 20 young men at the Lions Gate and 20 others at the Council Gate. He added that the occupation soldiers stormed the Al-Aqsa compound and their arrival at the Dome of the Rock Mosque terrified the worshipers and violated the sanctity of the place.”
Reuters reports that Israeli police say that demonstrators threw stones and some molotov cocktails at Israeli security forces, provoking the invasion of the mosque compound. Arabic language reports say that it was the celebratory rallies that provoked Israeli ire.
The confrontation lasted about an hour. Despite its brief duration, it demonstrates that the underlying causes of the recent Israeli bombardment of Gaza and crack down on Jerusalem and West Bank Palestinians have not changed in the least, and the situation remains volatile.
Muslims around the world have been deeply angered by Israeli incursions into the al-Aqsa compound, the third holiest site in Islam. Rallies were held all over Pakistan (pop. 216 mn.) on Friday, as well as in other Muslim countries.
Israeli actions in Jerusalem were among the reasons given by Usama Bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
Israeli security forces tightened their grip on the nearby Sheikh al-Jarrah neighborhood after Palestinian activists talked of coming into it and holding Friday prayers in the buildings from which several Palestinian families are being expelled in favor of Israeli squatters (the latter were allowed to come and go freely in the neighborhood on Friday). A group of protesters, both Palestinians and leftist Israelis, gathered at the entrance to the quarter to protest the ethnic cleansing move.
The Red Crescent Society said that 82 Palestinians were injured in these confrontations. Their communique said that 4 were wounded by Israeli soldiers’ live fire, 30 by rubber-coated metal bullets, 45 suffered difficulty in breathing from inhaling military-grade tear gas, and 3 were injured by stun grenades or physical beatings.
Twenty-three were injured in the Israeli security forces’ incursion into the compound of the al-Aqsa Mosque after Friday prayers, most by rubber-coated metal bullets, and 2 by stun grenades.
At the entrance to Bethlehem, the Israeli army dispersed a march in support of Gaza with live fire and tear gas. The crowd replied by setting some cars afire in the city. Similar events unfolded in Kafr Qaddum, Nabi Saleh, western Ramallah, and two small towns in Nablus district.
In al-Bireh, a large march began in front of the Abdel Nasser Mosque in the center of the city and set out for Ramallah.
On Thursday and Friday Israeli security forces made a sweep of West Bank towns and arrested some 60 known Hamas activists. Most of the Palestinian West Bank supports the secular nationalist Palestine Liberation Organization, but there are pro-Islam Hamas supporters as well.
An RWDSU representative holds a sign outside the Amazon fulfillment warehouse that was at the center of a unionization drive in Bessemer, Alabama. (photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
How a Mailbox Could Get the Amazon Union Vote Overturned
Sara Morrison, Vox
Morrison writes: "The future of what could be one of the most consequential union organizing efforts in recent memory may rest on a mailbox."
A failed union drive may get new life because of the company’s insistence on installing a mailbox.
Specifically, this gray multi-compartmented mailbox that was recently installed in the parking lot of an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama.
If you’ve been following the Amazon unionization story, you know that workers in its Bessemer facility have been organizing to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) since last summer, just a few months after the facility opened its doors in March 2020. And you know that the notoriously anti-union company has fought tooth and nail against this effort. While Amazon employees in some other countries belong to unions, an Amazon unionization attempt in the United States has never succeeded.
This one hasn’t, either ... yet. The majority of voting employees ended up choosing not to unionize. But in an ongoing hearing before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the RWDSU is trying to overturn those results by arguing that Amazon interfered with the election.
The union vote was held over several weeks in February and March, with nearly 6,000 workers eligible to vote by mail. About 2,500 workers actually voted, with 1,798 of them voting against unionizing and 738 voting for it. Another 505 ballots were challenged — mostly by Amazon — and never opened because they wouldn’t determine the outcome of the election given the non-union side’s lead.
The RWDSU has asked the NLRB to throw out the election results. Among the union’s many objections — and what seems to be one of its strongest arguments — is that mailbox.
And it may have a real case here, according to former NLRB chair Wilma Liebman. “The mailbox issue, in large, creates strong grounds for overturning the election,” Liebman, who chaired the NLRB from 2009 to 2011, told Recode.
The mailbox has been an issue since it appeared in February. Amazon sent workers texts encouraging them to use the “secure mailbox,” which it said would be “easy, safe, and convenient.” The mailbox is located on Amazon grounds, where workers are notoriously under constant surveillance — that surveillance was actually one of the reasons workers cited for forming a union in the first place.
The mailbox was Amazon’s second choice. The company had first pushed to have ballot drop boxes placed on site, but the NLRB rejected that plan because it would give the appearance that Amazon was in charge of the vote and intimidate workers into voting Amazon’s way.
But after the United States Postal Service (USPS) approved of and installed the mailbox, Amazon erected a large tent around it and added signage encouraging employees to use it to mail in their ballots — despite the USPS denying Amazon’s request to place a “vote here” sticker on the mailbox itself. Amazon claimed that the tent was meant for the voters’ privacy. The RWDSU saw it differently, saying in its objection to the NLRB that it “created the impression that the collection box was a polling location and that the employer had control over the conduct of the mail ballot election.”
Despite RWDSU’s issues with the mailbox — union president Stuart Appelbaum told AL.com in February that it was unprecedented employer behavior and “pretty disgusting” — the union decided to go forward with the vote anyway.
But now it’s a key part of its case for why the results should be overturned — and new details revealed during the hearing seem to bolster that point.
An Amazon employee testified last week that he saw Amazon’s security guards opening the mailbox. Amazon has maintained that it didn’t have access to the outgoing mail compartment.
“Similar to any other mailbox that serves businesses, we had access only to the incoming mailbox where we received mail addressed to the building,” Kelly Nantel told Recode.
This might not even matter. Just the presence of the mailbox and how it came to be installed on the property could be a bigger factor.
For instance, also revealed during the hearing were emails to the USPS from Amazon regarding the company’s request for a mailbox that stated it was a “highly visible Dave Clark initiative.” Clark is Amazon’s head of worldwide consumer, and his apparent involvement indicates that Amazon was aggressively pushing for this mailbox at even its highest levels.
The emails also suggest that the highest levels of the USPS were involved, too, with one saying that the mailbox request had been “escalated” to the USPS’s commerce and business solutions chief, Jacqueline Krage Strako.
Simply put, Amazon really wanted this mailbox, and it really wanted its employees to use it when they cast their ballots. The union is arguing that it dressed it up to look a lot like the official polling station the NLRB said it couldn’t have. And Amazon isn’t just any private customer for the USPS — it was the agency’s biggest customer in fiscal year 2019, generating billions in revenue for the beleaguered agency.
“I would say it verges on brazen,” Liebman said of Amazon’s aggressive push for a mailbox and the tent and signage around it. “I have never heard of something like this. And you have to question, what’s the legitimate reason they did it?”
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on the union’s allegations that the mailbox created a confusing and intimidating atmosphere for employees casting their votes. Amazon will have a chance to present its side next week; a decision isn’t expected for several weeks or months. Then we’ll find out just how important this mailbox is.
Sen. Cory Booker has worked closely on the effort with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) (photo: Al Drago/AP)
Booker: Police Reform Talks See 'Meaningful Progress'
Brianna Crummy, Politico
Crummy writes: "Sen. Cory Booker said on Sunday that 'meaningful progress' has been made in the negotiations on police reform that have taken place in the House and the Senate."
The New Jersey Democrat sees the negotiations as a bipartisan effort to effect change.
Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," the New Jersey Democrat said he's “committed” to seeing the issue through.
“This is not about going after good officers. This is about when officers have breached the civil rights of another American citizen,” Booker said. “To me, we need this to create real accountability. So, I’m at the negotiating table fighting for that.”
Booker sees the negotiations as a bipartisan effort to effect change. He has worked closely with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.).
“I wouldn't have a negotiating partner in Tim Scott if [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell didn't believe that this is something that we should be at the table trying to work through," Booker said. "We are, on the Senate side, working in good faith to bring this to a conclusion.”
Booker and his allies also have the backing of President Joe Biden as they advance police reform proposals.
“We're going to give 200 percent to try to make it happen,” White House senior adviser Cedric Richmond said earlier on CNN.
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) has said he wouldn’t “sacrifice good at the altar of perfect” if they couldn’t get support to deal with police immunity in the first go.
Booker, however, made clear negotiations were continuing.
“We need to at some point get qualified immunity. It’s what I’m determined at this negotiating table to get,” Booker said, adding: “I'm not negotiating this in public. I have said where my line is.”
Police reform is an issue Booker looks at personally.
“I don't know a Black male in my circle that doesn't have stories of unfortunate encounters with police or, frankly, painful or humiliating ones,” he said.
General view of the Jackson Women's Health Organization in Jackson, Mississippi, U.S., May 21, 2021. Picture taken May 21, 2021. (photo: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
Mississippi's 'Pink House' Becomes Ground Zero in US Abortion Battle
Gabriella Borter, Reuters
Borter writes: "For eight years, Derenda Hancock has ushered women from their cars to the doors of Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, donning a rainbow vest as she shields them from protesters waving religious pamphlets and shouting 'turn back!' through bullhorns."
Hancock, a 62-year-old part-time waitress, grew accustomed to repeated attempts by lawmakers and anti-abortion activists to block access to abortions at the Jackson Women's Health Organization where she leads the clinic's volunteer escorts.
But the future of that access feels threatened like never before after the U.S. Supreme Court thrust the clinic's noisy city block into the center of the country's contentious debate over abortion rights.
The court on Monday agreed to review Mississippi’s bid to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a Republican-backed measure enacted in direct challenge to the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.
The court's new 6-3 conservative majority, which is not expected to rule on the case until next year, could decide to weaken or overturn that ruling, which established a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy before the fetus is viable, usually between 24 and 28 weeks.
The Jackson Women's Health Organization, known locally as the "Pink House" because of its bubble gum-colored paint, is named in the case.
"Our little case here, everything hangs on it,” said Hancock, tears forming under her lavender eye shadow as she talked about patients, some who drive hundreds of miles and scrape together the $150 needed for an initial appointment.
"If they do overturn Roe, we’re done," she said. "I know in my heart this is the big enchilada."
Mississippi is one of six states with a single abortion clinic. It is also one of about 10 states with “trigger laws” that would effectively ban abortion outright without Roe v. Wade, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights.
Three others border Mississippi - Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee - meaning an overturn of Roe could eliminate legal abortion access for millions of women in the U.S. South.
Mississippi has enacted other laws that impede the ability to get abortions. Women must wait at least 24 hours between their first consultation and the procedure, there are mandatory sonograms, minors need parental consent, and public funding through Medicaid does not cover most cases.
The Jackson clinic has been on the brink of a shutdown before as a result of various restrictive laws. After the Supreme Court news broke last week, the clinic received a flurry of calls from panicked patients asking if it would stay open, said its director, Shannon Brewer.
Sitting at her office desk a few days later, Brewer’s eyes darted constantly to a television showing feeds from the clinic’s security cameras. She said she could not break the nervous habit: People have vandalized the property in the past, and Brewer fears for the safety of the staff and doctors.
"The impact it would have affects so many clinics, so many women," Brewer said. "This one has a huge impact across the country."
CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM FOR ABORTION OPPONENTS
The Supreme Court’s review is a victory for anti-abortion lawmakers who have pushed hundreds of abortion restrictions through Republican-led state legislatures in recent years.
Outside the Pink House, most of the anti-abortion protesters said a favorable decision would not be enough.
“Ideally I’d like a constitutional amendment that recognizes the humanity of the unborn,” said Dr. Beverly McMillan, a former Mississippi abortion provider who now opposes the procedure.
She paced along the clinic sidewalk praying her rosary beads, part of a group of protesters that included street preachers blasting gospel music and soft-spoken elderly women handing out prayer cards.
Allan Klein, an engineer also praying rosary beads, said he felt removing the constitutional right to abortion was just an initial step and that religious reasoning was needed to prevent women from ending pregnancies.
"I’m more interested in getting people to change their minds," he said. "Ultimately, law enforcement isn’t going to completely keep people from doing what they want to do."
For L.W., a 33-year-old mother of two who asked to go by her initials for privacy, difficult circumstances led her to shift her stance on abortion.
A Jehovah’s Witness, she previously leaned against abortion. But financial hardship and her struggle with alcoholism played a role in her decision to get a medication abortion at eight weeks pregnant, she said.
"I struggled between ‘I don’t want to do it’ and ‘I have to do it,’" L.W. said, sitting in the clinic's gated courtyard last week after a check-up.
In Mississippi, where some 20% of residents live in poverty, the majority of abortion patients get financial assistance through national abortion funds to cover the procedure, which can exceed $600. The women often still have to save up for the cost of at least two trips - one for state-mandated counseling and another for the procedure.
About half of women who get abortions in the United States are in poverty, according to Guttmacher’s most recent data from 2014.
L.W. said her experience made her more passionate about protecting abortion rights.
“No one here knows what I’m going through,” she said, her hands folded in her lap as shouting and music echoed from the street.
Belarusian police detain Roman Protasevich in 2017. (photo: Sergei Grits/AP)
Belarus Accused of 'Abhorrent Action' After Ryanair Flight Diverted to Arrest Journalist
Andrew Roth, Guardian UK
Roth writes: "Belarus has been accused of hijacking a European jetliner and engaging in an act of state terrorism when it forced a Ryanair flight to perform an emergency landing in Minsk after a bomb threat and arrested an opposition blogger critical of authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko."
Roman Protasevich wanted for organising last year’s protests against Alexander Lukashenko
elarus has been accused of hijacking a European jetliner and engaging in an act of state terrorism when it forced a Ryanair flight to perform an emergency landing in Minsk after a bomb threat and arrested an opposition blogger critical of authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko.
Roman Protasevich, a former editor of the influential Telegram channels Nexta and Nexta Live, was detained by police after his flight was diverted to Minsk national airport. Minsk confirmed that Lukashenko ordered his military to scramble a Mig-29 fighter to escort the plane.
The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said the plane had been “hijacked” and accused Lukashenko of a “reprehensible act of state terrorism”. He said he would demand new sanctions against Belarus at a European Council meeting scheduled for Monday.
Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the UK foreign affairs select committee, said: “If aircraft can be forced to the ground … in order to punish the political opponents of tyrants, then journalists here in the UK, politicians anywhere in Europe will find it harder to speak out.”
“We are coordinating with our allies,” said Dominic Raab, the UK foreign secretary. “This outlandish action by Lukashenko will have serious implications.”
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, said EU leaders would decide on the repercussions for Belarus at Monday’s meeting.
He said: “I call on Belarus authorities to immediately release the detained passenger and to fully guarantee his rights. EU leaders will discuss this unprecedented incident tomorrow during the European Council. The incident will not remain without consequences.”
Forcing the emergency landing of a European jetliner would be an extraordinary act even for Lukashenko’s government, which has launched a broad crackdown on opposition leaders and independent media. Opponents of the regime have been arrested, including some who have fled abroad to avoid reprisals, including a former spokesman for Lukashenko who vanished last month during a trip to Moscow and then reappeared in custody in Minsk.
Protasevich has been accused by Belarus of terrorism and provoking riots after the Nexta channels became one of the main conduits for organising last year’s anti-Lukashenko protests over elections fraud. Protasevich had been living in exile and Poland had previously rejected an extradition request sent by Minsk.
Protasevich was flying on an intra-EU flight from Athens to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, when the plane was diverted to Minsk. According to online flight data, the plane was over Belarusian airspace when it diverted course but was closer to Vilnius than Minsk.
“I’m facing the death penalty here,” a trembling Protasevich reportedly told a fellow passenger from the plane before he was led away by Belarusian police. The mass unrest charges against him carry a sentence of up to 15 years. His current whereabouts are unknown.
The grounding of a plane flying from Greece to Lithuania on an Ireland-based carrier with a Poland-based political exile on board provoked broad from across the EU bloc and the threat to European transportation routes also triggered a strong reaction from EU officials.
“Unprecedented event!” wrote Gitanas Nausėda, the president of Lithuania. “The regime is behind the abhorrent action. I demand to free Roman Protasevich urgently!”
The German foreign ministry state secretary, Miguel Berger, demanded “an immediate explanation by the government of Belarus on the diversion of a Ryanair flight within the EU to Minsk and the alleged detention of a journalist” and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said “any violation of international air transport rules must bear consequences”.
The EU has already sanctioned nearly 60 Belarusian officials, including Lukashenko and his son Victor, over accusations of elections fraud and then a heavy-handed crackdown on protesters that included widespread reports of brutal torture in Belarusian jails. Minsk has increasingly turned to Moscow for support, isolating it from the west but also limiting the effect of possible sanctions from Brussels or Washington.
Protasevich had been covering a visit to Athens by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a former presidential candidate who has declared herself the country’s leader-in-exile due to widespread fraud during last year’s elections. She called on the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to investigate Belarus.
“The regime forced the landing @Ryanair plane in Minsk to arrest journalist and activist Raman Pratasevich. He faces the death penalty in Belarus. We demand immediate release of Raman, @ICAO investigation, and sanctions against Belarus,” she wrote. “Lukashenko’s regime endangered the lives of passengers onboard the plane. From now – no one flying over Belarus – can be secure. International reaction needed!”
In a statement sent to the Guardian, Ryanair said it had been ordered to divert the flight to Minsk by Belarusian air-traffic controllers.
“The crew on a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius today (23 May) were notified by Belarus ATC of a potential security threat on board and were instructed to divert to the nearest airport, Minsk,” a spokesperson for the low-cost airline, which is headquartered in Ireland, wrote in an e-mail. “Ryanair has notified the relevant national and European safety and security agencies and we apologise sincerely to all affected passengers for this regrettable delay which was outside Ryanair’s control.”
The statement did not mention reports that a military jet had been scrambled to escort the jetliner or that a passenger from the flight had been detained during the stop in Minsk.
Protasevich told colleagues earlier on Sunday he had been followed while travelling to the airport in Athens. A Russian speaker had followed him into a line at the airport and attempted to photograph his documents, he wrote to colleagues. They said they had not heard from him since.
Editors at Nexta who mostly live in exile have said they have been threatened with extraordinary rendition in the past. “We get [threats] all the time,” Stepan Svetlov, its founder, told the Guardian last year. “They say they’re going to blow the office up, they say they’re going to kidnap us and drive us back to Belarus.”
Environmental activist Greta Thunberg. (photo: Getty)
Greta Thunberg Talks Science, Self-Care, and What's Next for Her
Marianne Dhenin, Teen Vogue
Dhenin writes: "We always say that we don’t have the money, we can’t act so quickly, we can’t do these kinds of things. But then, when the pandemic came, we saw a completely different crisis response, and that puts [the climate crisis] in a different perspective. It really shows that we can treat an emergency like an emergency."
n an overcast August morning, the world watched as Greta Thunberg set sail from a quaint port city in southwest England aboard a racing yacht en route to the 2019 U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York City. The voyage marked a year since the start of Greta’s weekly school strikes. She had come a long way from sitting alone in her father’s yellow rain jacket outside the Swedish Parliament to being invited to speak in front of the United Nations and galvanizing a global youth movement for climate action, now millions strong.
The trans-Atlantic trip also marked the beginning of a gap year for Greta. Off from school, she planned to take her protest around the world (via a carbon-neutral racing yacht, electric cars, and Europe’s vast rail network) and meet with leading climate scientists to learn more about the effects of global warming and the science that could save our planet. But the trip, which is the basis of a new, three-part documentary series that premiered on PBS on Earth Day, April 22, was disrupted in a way no one could have imagined when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020.
“We decided very early on to cancel or postpone all of the planned strikes and protests because it was the right thing to do,” Greta tells Teen Vogue, “so we’ve had to move online.” She had planned to march with thousands of like-minded activists in cities around the world, but instead Greta found herself tweeting selfies from her couch in Stockholm with her now instantly recognizable black-and-white “SKOLSTREJK FÖR KLIMATET” sign.
At first, COVID-19 knocked the climate emergency out of international headlines. But it wasn’t long before connections between the two crises began to crystallize. As life around the world slowed at the beginning of the pandemic, climate scientists reported a steep drop in planet-warming fossil fuel emissions. Viral photos showed wildlife exploring emptied cities, where urbanization had destroyed the animals’ natural habitats. Experts began to warn that ongoing habitat destruction has created ideal environments for the emergence of zoonotic diseases, like the novel coronavirus, which could lead to more pandemics in the future. And suddenly, governments were mobilizing to find solutions—uniting behind the science, as Greta would say—to develop treatments and vaccines.
Amid the chaos, Greta turned 18. Now, on the brink of adulthood, she speaks to Teen Vogue via Zoom, reflecting on her gap year and what it will take to protect our uncertain future.
Editor’s note: These responses have been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Teen Vogue: You took a year off from school and traveled around the world to meet leading climate experts and witness the impact of global warming firsthand. What were some of the most striking moments you experienced on that journey?
Greta Thunberg: I don’t think there were any specific striking moments, or interviews, or meetings. It’s just the accumulated amount: When you take all of them together and read between the lines, connecting the dots between them, you realize that [the climate crisis] is something much bigger. There were still very powerful and very striking moments, but it’s when you add it all together that you start to see the full picture, and that’s the most powerful thing.
TV: Your trip was interrupted after you spoke at the European Parliament’s Environment Council in Brussels in March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic brought life around the world to a relative standstill. Do you think the pandemic has helped reveal anything about the climate crisis?
GT: It has maybe put the climate crisis in a different perspective. We always say that we don’t have the money, we can’t act so quickly, we can’t do these kinds of things. But then, when the pandemic came, we saw a completely different crisis response, and that puts [the climate crisis] in a different perspective. It really shows that we can treat an emergency like an emergency.
TV: What do you think we have learned during the pandemic that we can take into the fight against climate change?
GT: That it is not until we really start treating a crisis like a crisis that we can get real change and start addressing that crisis. It has shown us that without science, we wouldn’t have made it very far. We are depending on science, both in the role of the solution and as an alarm—like a fire alarm or a warning. For example, we have shown how quickly we can develop a vaccine once we really put our resources into it. Of course, the climate crisis doesn’t have a vaccine. But it really shows that once we put support and resources, whether it is financial or something else, into science, then we can start seeing some results.
TV: President Trump was a disaster for the climate. His rollbacks of Obama-era climate policy have the potential to increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 1.8 gigatons by 2035. His successor, Joe Biden, has promised to make climate action a priority of his administration. Many members of Congress were also elected on climate action platforms. What do you think young people in the U.S. can do to hold our elected officials accountable and help recover from Trump-era setbacks in climate policy?
GT: The first thing that we need to keep in mind is that Trump may be gone, and that may be a positive thing for the climate, but we cannot relax just because of that. People seem to think of Joe Biden as a savior and now everything will be all right just because Trump is gone, but that’s a very dangerous thing to do. We must not allow ourselves to relax. We must continue to push even harder and still call out Joe Biden because, of course, he’s not good for the climate either. Just because he’s a bit less bad doesn’t mean that he’s good for the climate.
We need to see through the speeches [politicians] make. Just because they say they care about the climate doesn’t mean that they’re actually going to do anything big.
TV: And how do you think, practically speaking, young people can do that?
GT: For example, school strikes or protests. I know that it’s hard during pandemic times, but there are still ways that you can become an activist. Because we cannot vote as young people, among the most powerful things that we can do is raise our voices. We always have a voice, no matter how old we are. Another powerful thing that we can do is influence the adults around us—for example, our parents. That’s the way I got started. Nothing is too small to begin with.
TV: You’ve been in international headlines for more than two years now, led dozens of marches in countries around the world, and spoken at some remarkably high-profile events—that’s a lot of pressure. You also talk in the PBS documentary series about having Asperger’s and how difficult it is to cope with overstimulation at crowded events. How do you manage all of that stress? Do you have a routine for self-care?
GT: I guess I just try to distance myself from it as much as I can; that way it becomes much easier. When I’m on a march, I try to shut off all the inputs and just make my own little bubble in a way, which makes it easy to handle.
I do lots of things [at home]: being with my dogs, lots of jigsaw puzzles, and crafting, like embroidery and knitting. That’s very relaxing.
TV: Now that you’ve turned 18 and taken this trip around the world, what are you going to do next?
GT: Well, I’ve just started high school. This is my first year, and then, when this term ends, I have two more years. So I’m doing that first, while at the same time doing activism. But after that, I have no idea what I want to do or what I’m up to. I guess I will have to see where I end up. But probably I will be where I can be the most useful—advocating for change in one way or another and being an activist in whatever shape that may take.
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