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Gretchen Whitmer | Why I'm Trying to Shut Down an Underwater Oil Pipeline That Threatens the Great Lakes
Gretchen Whitmer, The Washington Post
Whitmer writes: "Oil and water don't mix - especially when the latter involves the Great Lakes, the repository of more than 20 percent of the world's fresh water."
il and water don’t mix — especially when the latter involves the Great Lakes, the repository of more than 20 percent of the world’s fresh water. And yet for nearly 70 years, an oil company has pumped crude oil through the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron connect and where Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas come closest.
The two aging, 4.5-mile sections of underwater pipeline are a ticking time bomb. I’m taking every action I can to shut them down, to protect two Great Lakes and the jobs that depend on them.
Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. owns the pipeline, known as Line 5, which is part of a network that transports crude oil and other petroleum products from Western Canada. In 1953, a forerunner Enbridge company secured an easement from the state of Michigan for $2,450 to run the pipeline through the Straits. It now moves about 540,000 barrels of crude and natural gas liquids through the Great Lakes daily.
For decades, few people even realized that the dual pipelines passed through the Straits. But catastrophic oil spills have since alerted millions of Americans to the enormous potential dangers. In Michigan, the turning point might have been in 2010. In April of that year, the deadly disaster of the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig poured millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico; three months later, an Enbridge pipeline in Michigan, Line 6B, ruptured, sending hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil gushing into a creek feeding the Kalamazoo River, near Marshall, Mich. It was one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history.
After those twin catastrophes, eyes turned to the aging oil pipelines running through the Great Lakes.
While Enbridge says its pipelines pose no threat, the record from just the past few years says otherwise. The Straits of Mackinac is a busy shipping channel, with the dual pipelines lying perpendicular to passing ships. In April 2018, a commercial vessel inadvertently dropped and dragged a massive anchor across the pipelines while passing through the Straits. An “underwater pipeline inspection video shows deep scoring along the lake bottom, then up and over the twin pipelines,” the Detroit Free Press later reported. “Deep marks are etched in both pipelines, and there is evidence of outer protective coating loss.”
It was just a matter of luck that the pipelines did not rupture. Then, in 2020, Enbridge disclosed another strike on Line 5, one that caused significant damage to a pipeline support, likely by either an anchor or cables from a passing ship. Another catastrophe dodged.
The potential costs of a major oil spill are too great to ignore. The Great Lakes support more than 1.3 million jobs that generate $82 billion in wages annually across the United States. We cannot continue to run the risk of the devastating economic, environmental and public health impacts that would follow a disaster involving Line 5.
That’s why I took action. Last November, I filed a lawsuit and notified Enbridge that the state of Michigan was revoking and terminating the 1953 easement for Enbridge’s dual pipelines in the Straits. The notice gave Enbridge 180 days — until this past Wednesday — to cease pumping oil through the Great Lakes. This week, I notified Enbridge that if it continues to operate past the deadline — which it has done — the state would make every effort to disgorge the company of all profits unjustly earned from Line 5 while trespassing on state land.
Enbridge says it will continue pumping until a court orders it to stop. I’m confident the state will prevail. Even under federal law, states retained the right to prescribe the location of pipelines. The company may end up running a new pipeline elsewhere: Although it would be years away at best, Enbridge is exploring the possibility of digging a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac. The authority is 49 U.S.C. 60104(e).
But at this moment, the company must stop pumping oil across the bottomlands of the Great Lakes. Enbridge is flat wrong in its absurd argument that Michigan, having said yes in the 1950s, cannot say no today. That’s why 16 other states and D.C. have filed an amicus brief supporting my position: to preserve their sovereign rights over where pipelines are laid.
Shutting down Line 5 will require adjustments, which are already underway. For example, Michigan draws propane from the pipeline. Anticipating the coming changes, the market for Michigan’s wholesale propane supply is diversifying and propane retailers are developing alternative sourcing arrangements. The state is also taking steps to prevent price gouging and exploring opportunities to invest in renewable energy, energy efficiency and electrification to bring down long-term costs.
Running pipelines through the water of the Great Lakes is, and always has been, a dangerous threat. I will not sit idle as this time bomb keeps ticking.
Demonstrators gathered in front of the Governor's Mansion in Austin to protest against Senate Bill 8, an anti-abortion bill that Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law this morning. Credit: (photo: Evan L'Roy/The Texas Tribune)
Texas Governor Signs Extreme Six-Week Abortion Ban Into Law
Mary Tuma, Guardian UK
Tuma writes: "The Texas Republican governor Greg Abbott has signed into law one of the most extreme six-week abortion bans in the US, despite strong opposition from the medical and legal communities, who warn the legislation could topple the state's court system and already fragile reproductive healthcare network."
Senate Bill 8 bars abortion at six weeks with no exception for rape or incest, amounting to a near-total ban
he Texas Republican governor Greg Abbott has signed into law one of the most extreme six-week abortion bans in the US, despite strong opposition from the medical and legal communities, who warn the legislation could topple the state’s court system and already fragile reproductive healthcare network.
“This bill ensures that every unborn child who has a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion,” said Abbott, flanked by several members of the Texas legislature this morning.
Senate Bill 8 (SB 8), passed by both chambers of the Republican-dominated Texas legislature, bars abortion at six weeks of pregnancy with no exception for rape or incest, amounting to a near-total ban as most women are not aware they are pregnant at this stage. While a dozen states have passed similar so-called “heartbeat” bills – bans on abortion once embryonic cardiac activity is detected – none have yet been enforced due to court challenges.
Unlike those measures, the Texas version absolves the state from enforcing the law. Instead it allows any private citizen the extraordinary authority to sue an abortion provider – they do not need to be connected to the patient or even reside in the same state, opening up the floodgates to harassing and frivolous civil lawsuits that could shut down clinics statewide.
In fact, any individual can sue anyone who “aids or abets” abortion care or someone who “intends” to help an abortion patient, a breathtakingly wide range of possible people and groups. While those who sue can collect a minimum of $10,000 if they are successful, those unjustly sued cannot recover legal fees. The anti-abortion law’s private enforcement provision is the first of its kind in the country.
“This law is so broadly written it could target not just abortion clinics and staff but anyone that volunteers or donates to an abortion fund or activist organization like ours,” says Aimee Arrambide, executive director of reproductive rights advocacy group, Avow Texas. “Domestic violence and rape crisis counselors who offer guidance, family members who lend money to abortion patients, a friend who gives a ride to an appointment, or even someone that provides an address to a clinic could also face lawsuits.”
Texas abortion laws, which include a 24-hour pre-abortion sonogram rule, limits on judicial bypass, a 20-week ban and private insurance ban, are some of the most restrictive in the country, making the procedure already difficult to access in many parts of Texas. The new bill makes abortion care near impossible, advocates say.
“The six-week ban is egregious enough,” continued Arrambide. “But the civil cause of action component is legally irresponsible on its own and could set an example for what other legislatures might introduce across the states.”
In response to concerns over the potential for a rapist to sue his victim’s abortion provider under the draconian law, the legislature passed an amendment that exempts rapists and those who commit incest from taking legal action. However, as Democratic lawmakers on the House floor pointed out, it only applies to those convicted of rape. Since 91% of women in Texas do not report rape to the police and the small number of those who do rarely see their abuser convicted, the amendment largely failed to allay fears.
Furthermore, the law does nothing to prevent someone associated with a rapist, like a friend or family member, from suing his victim.
“This bill empowers rapists and abusers, and lawyers and trolls who want to abuse and clog up our courts,” said Representative Donna Howard, a Democrat from Austin, in an impassioned speech on the house floor before the bill’s final passage. “And this forced pregnancy act will drive women back into the [pre-Roe] shadows out of fear of harassment through lawsuits that anyone in this country can file.”
More than 370 licensed attorneys, including local leaders in major Texas cities, have condemned the unprecedented legislation. In an open letter to state lawmakers, they write that the law would undermine the Texas constitution and the “rules and tenets of our civil legal system”. Granting legal standing to those who have not personally suffered an injury could have a “destabilizing” impact on the state’s entire legal infrastructure, they warn.
“SB 8 is a blatantly unconstitutional attempt by Texas Republican leadership to misuse civil courts to restrict women’s access to healthcare, and to allow anti-choice activists to target and penalize healthcare providers,” said Christian Menefee, Harris county attorney. “This bill is morally reprehensible and legally nonsense.”
Additionally, more than 200 physicians across Texas expressed deep concern over their ability to administer healthcare, cautioning the bill would create a “chilling effect” that would prevent physicians in over 30 specialties, including primary care, emergency medicine, OB/GYN and internal medicine, from providing information on all pregnancy options to patients due to frivolous lawsuits.
“SB 8 would be catastrophic for both the patients I care for across Texas and for the dedicated physicians across our state,” said Dr Ghazaleh Moayedi, a Dallas-based OB/GYN. “No matter your personal opinions on abortion, we can all agree that Texas physicians should be able to provide accurate, non-biased medical information without threats or harassment from out-of-state extremists.”
Meanwhile, the state’s major anti-abortion lobby organization, Texas Right to Life, celebrated the bill’s passage as the most “historic” anti-choice measure in recent memory. The novel approach to enforcement should help “incentivize” abortion clinics to comply, said the group’s legislative director, John Seago.
“We will be closely watching whether the abortion industry follows this law, if not they should be prepared for civil liability,” said Seago.
Elisabeth Smith, chief counsel for state policy and advocacy for the Center for Reproductive Rights, says reproductive health advocates are crafting a legal strategy against the extreme measure, scheduled to be enacted on 1 September. The dangerous legal tactics in SB 8 “make a mockery” of the legal system and are meant to drain abortion providers of their time, energy and financial resources in trial court, she stresses.
“The bottom line is that abortion providers in Texas are not going to let this bill impede their ability to provide care to patients,” says Smith. “The law will be challenged with the goal of stopping it from ever taking effect.”
President Biden. (photo: Getty)
Andrew Bacevich | Is There a Doctor in the House: Biden the Bold vs. Joe the Timid
Andrew Bacevich, TomDispatch
Bacevich writes: "Is President Biden afflicted with the political equivalent of a split personality?"
Andrew Bacevich’s latest book, After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed — a must-read, says his editor (me) — will officially be published on June 8th. Of it, Adam Hochschild writes, “In a sane country, the estimable Andrew Bacevich would be secretary of a much-shrunken Defense Department. Deepened by his sense of history, this up-to-the-minute book is his answer to the big question: why is the most powerful nation on earth so ill-prepared to deal with the world it faces?” Make sure to order it ahead of time, but for Bacevich fans, I have a special, limited offer as well. Go to the TomDispatch donation page and give a minimum of $100 ($125 if you live outside the USA) and you’ll get a signed, personalized copy of the book from him as soon as it’s available. It’s a deal of deals: you receive a genuine must-read book with the author’s signature and TomDispatch is assured of the sort of money we eternally need simply to chug on in this strange, disturbing world of ours. Tom]
“A United States Coast Guard cutter fired 30 warning shots after 13 Iranian fast patrol boats menaced a group of American Navy ships sailing in the Strait of Hormuz, the Pentagon said on Monday…” — so began a minor piece in the New York Times last week. Hmmm… Did you even know that the U.S. Coast Guard was patrolling in the Persian Gulf? Does that seem even faintly strange to you? And this isn’t the first such encounter, nor is the Persian Gulf the only place on this planet of ours where Washington all too often edges close to some kind of conflict that would hold dangers for the future of any administration, no less Joe Biden’s with its ambitious domestic plans.
Thought of another way, what a curiously stacked world the political inhabitants of Washington live in. Consider a recent report by Joe Cirincione at the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft website on a congressional hearing in which every witness seems to have urged the further funding of the endless “modernization” of the American nuclear arsenal (just to ensure that, at any moment, in any administration, we could blow this planet sky-high). As he put it, “A panel of old white men spent 90 minutes hectoring Congress to replace every weapon in the U.S. arsenal and to maintain the Cold War policies that repeatedly brought us to the brink of nuclear war.”
Sadly, we’ve been living in such a world for decades now. In fact, today, TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich, author of the soon-to-be-published After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed, reminds us of just how war, or the threat of war, has regularly challenged presidential domestic policy goals and what it might do to Joe Biden’s fondest dreams. Though it’s never thought of that way, you might even argue that Barack Obama’s domestic hopes went down in his Afghan surge (that Biden opposed), which left 100,000 U.S. troops (not to speak of scads of contractors, CIA operatives, and the like) in a country already known as the graveyard of empires.
And we’re in a world where, from the waters off Iran to those off China, cold wars could turn hot all too quickly. If only retired colonel and historian Bacevich were being called to Congress to testify on such subjects — or those who mattered in Washington were to read his new book! And yes, hope does spring eternal, doesn’t it? Tom
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
Is There a Doctor in the House?
Biden the Bold vs. Joe the Timid
s President Biden afflicted with the political equivalent of a split personality? His first several months in office suggest just that possibility. On the home front, the president’s inclination is clearly to Go Big. When it comes to America’s role in the world, however, Biden largely hews to pre-Trumpian precedent. So far at least, the administration’s overarching foreign-policy theme is Take It Slow.
“Joe Biden Is Electrifying America Like F.D.R.” So proclaimed the headline of a recent Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times. Even allowing for a smidgen of hyperbole, the comparison is not without merit. Much like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during his famous First Hundred Days in office in the midst of the Great Depression, Biden has launched a flurry of impressively ambitious domestic initiatives in the midst of the Great Pandemic — an American Rescue Plan, an American Jobs Plan, an American Families Plan, and most recently an environmental restoration program marketed as America the Beautiful.
Biden’s Build Back Better domestic campaign qualifies as a first cousin once removed of Roosevelt’s famed New Deal. To fix an ailing nation, FDR promoted unprecedented federal intervention in the economy combined with a willingness to spend lots of money. As then, so today, details and specifics took a back seat to action, vigorous and sustained, not sooner or later but right now.
Of course, FDR’s Hundred Days did not actually end the Great Depression, which lingered on for the remainder of the 1930s. From the outset, however, the New Deal captured imaginations, especially among progressives. It invested national politics with a sense of hope and excitement. As historians subsequently came to appreciate, the New Deal was also rife with internal contradictions. Nevertheless, in terms of both style and substance, Roosevelt became and remains the beau ideal of the activist president. As press depictions of Joe Biden as our latest FDR proliferate, one can easily imagine the president happily filling his scrapbook with newspaper clippings.
That said, any political leader who embarks on an aggressive domestic reform program has to prevent the outside world from getting in the way. Roosevelt largely succeeded in doing so through his first two terms. Activism at home did not translate into activism abroad. Eventually, however, the outbreak of war in Europe and in the Far East famously prompted FDR to retire “Dr. New Deal” and don the mantle of “Dr. Win-the-War.” In doing so, he was bowing to the inevitable. The New Deal was already running out of gas when the danger posed by a global struggle against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan brought it to a screeching halt. FDR wisely chose to accommodate himself to that reality.
In the ultimate irony, defeating those enemies made good on various unfulfilled New Deal aspirations, restoring both American prosperity and self-confidence. Yet war inevitably imposes its own priorities and creates its own legacies. World War II did so in spades. If postwar America bore the imprint of the New Deal, it also differed substantially from what New Dealers back in the 1930s had envisioned as the purpose of their enterprise.
Not least of all, during the ensuing Cold War, standing in immediate over-armed, over-funded readiness for the next war became a permanent priority. As a consequence, domestic matters took a backseat to a fundamentally militarized conception of what keeping Americans safe and guaranteeing their freedoms required. As the self-designated guardian of the “Free World,” the United States became a garrison state.
“That Bitch of a War”
A generation later, a reform-minded president fancying himself FDR’s rightful heir faced a variant of Roosevelt’s dilemma, but demonstrated far less skill in adapting to it.
In the mid-1960s, Lyndon Baines Johnson conceived of a domestic reform plan that would, he believed, out-do the New Deal. His vision of a Great Society would guarantee “abundance and liberty for all,” while ensuring “an end to poverty and racial injustice.” And that, Johnson insisted, would be “just the beginning”:
“The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.”
Here was a promise of nothing less than a federally designed and federally funded utopia. And for a brief moment, it even seemed plausible.
Winning the presidency in his own right in 1964 — he had first gained it as vice-president when John F. Kennedy was assassinated — elevated LBJ to a position in American politics not unlike FDR’s 30 years earlier. Senator Barry Goldwater’s abysmal showing as the Republican presidential candidate that year left his party in disarray. Democrats enjoyed clear majorities in both houses of Congress. Assuming he could steer clear of complications related to the ongoing Cold War, the way seemed clear for LBJ to Go Big as a domestic reformer.
As it turned out, this was not to be. Within a year of unveiling his Great Society, Johnson made a fateful decision to escalate U.S. military involvement in an ongoing war in Vietnam. In effect, LBJ laid down a huge bet, calculating that Going Big on the home front would prove compatible with fighting a major war in Southeast Asia. He wagered that “Dr. Great Society” could simultaneously serve as “Dr. Win-the-War,” so long as that war remained manageable.
Over the course of several agonizing years, Johnson discovered that the two roles were incompatible. The conflict he came to call “that bitch of a war” doomed his Great Society, destroyed his presidency, and left a legacy of bitterness and division from which the nation has yet to fully recover. Rather than ranking alongside his hero FDR, Johnson ended up being roundly despised by conservatives and liberals alike, by those who had served in Vietnam and those who had opposed the war. In the estimation of many, “Dr. Great Society” ended up as “Dr. Callous and Cruel.”
Recall, however, that Johnson chose to go to war in Vietnam, even while persuading himself that politically he had little choice but to do so. The trivial Tonkin Gulf Incident of August 1964 did not even faintly replay Pearl Harbor, yet LBJ pretended otherwise. His misguided decision to use that pseudo-event as a pretext for armed intervention stemmed from a wildly ill-advised reading of contemporary politics. An ostensibly savvy pol, Johnson backed himself into a corner from which he could find no escape.
The imperatives of the Cold War seemingly dictated that, if the United States allowed Vietnam to “go Communist,” the sitting commander-in-chief and his party would incur unacceptable political damage. In Washington and across much of the country, the prevailing mood demanded toughness in confronting the Red Threat. Better to fight them in the jungles of Indochina than in the suburbs of San Francisco — so went the thinking at the time.
That a conflict between two recently minted Southeast Asian nations, neither of them democratic but each claiming to represent the Vietnamese people, could determine the fate of the entire Free World will strike most readers today (schooled by more recent debacles like the invasion and occupation of Iraq) as preposterous. In the mid-1960s, however, Lyndon Johnson judged the risks of saying so out loud too great for him to chance. So he sent hundreds of thousands of G.I.s off to fight an unwinnable war and put the torch to his own presidency.
Will Joe Biden Be Dr. Build Back Better?
To most Americans today the Vietnam War has become a distant memory. Let me suggest that its lessons remain notably relevant to our reform-minded administration of the present moment.
Johnson’s mistake was to defer to an entrenched but deeply defective national security paradigm when the success of his domestic reforms demanded that he reject it. President Biden should take heed. To preserve his status as the latest reincarnation of FDR, Biden will have to avoid the errors in judgment that consigned LBJ’s Great Society to history’s junkheap.
On the foreign-policy front, the Biden team can already claim some modest, if tentative achievements. President Biden has indeed preserved the New Start nuclear agreement with Russia. Unlike his predecessor, he acknowledges that climate change is an urgent threat requiring concerted action. He has signaled his interest in salvaging the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, more commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal. Perhaps most notably, he has ordered the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, ending the longest war in American history. Implicit in that decision is the possibility of further reductions in the U.S. military footprint across the Greater Middle East and much of Africa, all undertaken pursuant to a misguided post-9/11 Global War on Terror.
That said, so far President Biden has left essentially untouched the core assumptions that justify the vast (and vastly well funded) national security apparatus created in the wake of World War II. Central to those assumptions is the conviction that global power projection, rather than national defense per se, defines the U.S. military establishment’s core mission. Washington’s insistence on asserting global primacy (typically expressed using euphemisms like “global leadership”) finds concrete expression in a determination to remain militarily dominant everywhere.
So far at least, Biden shows no inclination to renounce, or even reassess, the practices that have evolved to pursue such global military dominion. These include Pentagon expenditures easily exceeding those of any adversary or even plausible combination of adversaries; an arms industry that corrupts American politics and openly subverts democracy; a massive, essentially unusable nuclear strike force presently undergoing a comprehensive $1.7 trillion “modernization”; a network of hundreds of bases hosting U.S. troop contingents in dozens of countries around the world; and, of course, an inclination to use force unmatched by any nation with the possible exception of Israel.
Military leaders like to say that the armed services exist to “fight and win the nation’s wars,” a misleading claim on two counts. First, based on the results achieved since 9/11, they rarely win. Second, their actual purpose is to satisfy various bureaucratic and corporate interests, not to mention ideological fantasies, all captured in the awkward but substantively accurate phrase military-industrial-congressional-think-tank complex.
Put simply, ours is a nation in which various powerful and influential institutions are deeply invested in war. If President Biden genuinely aspires to be “Dr. Build Back Better,” he would do well to contemplate the implications of that fact, lest he willy-nilly find himself sharing LBJ’s sad fate.
In Washington and various quarters of the commentariat, an eagerness to get tough with China and/or Russia and/or Iran — a veritable Axis of Evil! — is palpable. Biden ignores these tendencies at his peril. Indeed, if genuinely committed to prioritizing domestic reforms, he should actively resist those intent on diverting him onto a path pointing to military confrontation.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, says that his boss has “tasked us with reimagining our national security.” Of course, reimagining presumes a high level of creativity along with an ability to cast aside obsolete habits of mind. Whether Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Pentagon chief General Lloyd Austin, or Biden himself possesses the requisite level of imagination remains, at best, an open question. Little in their collective backgrounds suggests that they do. In the meantime, somewhere out there in the South China Sea, the Donbas region of Ukraine, or the Persian Gulf, some variant of a Tonkin Gulf event lurks, ready to sink the administration’s domestic agenda.
If Biden wants to be “Dr. Build Back Better,” he should assume the additional role of “Dr. Curb the War Habit.” That means rejecting once and for all the illusions of military dominion to which too many in Washington still pay tribute, whether cynically or out of misguided conviction. Doing so will require not only imagination but gumption. Still, if President Biden intends to Go Big at home, he will need to Go Big in changing U.S. policies abroad as well.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel Frostlands (the second in the Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
District Attorney Larry Krasner talks to volunteers before they canvas around Philadelphia's Fairmount neighborhood on May 16, 2021. (photo: David Maialetti/AP)
Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner Defeats Police-Backed Primary Challenger
Akela Lacy and Alice Speri, The Intercept
Excerpt: "Krasner's victory gives momentum to the movement to elect reformist prosecutors, which has faced fierce backlash from law enforcement groups."
our years into his experiment with reforming Philadelphia’s criminal justice system, Larry Krasner overwhelmingly won his primary race for reelection to the office of district attorney on Tuesday.
With 74 percent of votes counted, Krasner led his Democratic primary challenger Carlos Vega 65 percent to 35 percent, according to the Associated Press. Vega conceded the race shortly before midnight on Tuesday, and Krasner is all but assured victory in the November general election.
“We in this movement for criminal justice reform just won a big one,” Krasner said in a victory speech. “Four years ago, we promised reform, and a focus on serious crime. People believed what were, at that point, ideas. Promises. And they voted us into office with a mandate. We kept those promises. They saw what we did. And they put us back in office because of what we’ve done.”
Vega, a former homicide prosecutor who was one of 31 staffers Krasner fired during his first week as district attorney, had run a campaign attacking Krasner’s policies as soft on crime and was boosted by one of the largest expenditures from the city’s police union in more than a decade.
Though he said his campaign was not pro-police, Vega campaigned with Philadelphia’s FOP Lodge 5, a local chapter of the Fraternal Order of the Police, the largest police union in the country. The police union gave more than $100,000 to Protect Our Police PAC, a political action committee that launched last year to push Krasner out of office. Vega and POP PAC tried to distance themselves from each other throughout the race: POP PAC claimed it wasn’t supporting Vega but ran a video encouraging Republican voters to switch their registration to vote in the Democratic primary against Krasner. Vega renounced POP PAC after the group sent a fundraising email blaming George Floyd for his own death. The group spent $45,000 on TV ads attacking Krasner in the final month of the race.
Since his election in 2017, Krasner has become a symbol of the burgeoning movement to elect reform-minded prosecutors. “Krasner has been kind of a model,” said Scott Roberts, senior director of criminal justice campaigns at Color of Change, a racial justice group that supported several such prosecutors’ bids and endorsed Krasner. “I can’t tell you how many potential DA candidates I have talked to who lead with, ‘I’m going to be the Larry Krasner of fill-in-the-blank city.’”
But Krasner’s election and the reforms he enacted as soon as he took office also sparked a fierce backlash — making him a national target for law enforcement groups and prominent Republicans. Former President Donald Trump, for example, claimed in 2019 that prosecutors in Philadelphia and Chicago “have decided not prosecute many criminals” who pose a threat to public safety.
Krasner’s reelection bid came as an increase in gun violence in many U.S. cities — including Philadelphia — and calls to reduce the scope of policing prompted a return to tough-on-crime rhetoric and rebuke of reformist efforts. But other reform-oriented DAs in cities with considerable gun violence — like Chicago’s Kim Foxx and St. Louis’s Kim Gardner — recently won reelection bids despite sometimes vicious attacks on them.
According to a recent poll by Data for Progress, many of the reforms Krasner enacted remain popular with voters in Pennsylvania. Sixty-four percent of people surveyed expressed support for limitations to the use of cash bail, 60 percent were in favor of the decriminalization of drug possession, 75 percent favored sentence reductions for good behavior, and 68 percent supported terminating probation when supervision is no longer needed. Just this week, a Philadelphia City Council committee advanced a measure outlining procedures for a new police oversight board that will go to a full council vote later this week — the result of years of organizing by local activists who have pushed to create a body with power and funding to hold police accountable for misconduct, with renewed energy after police met protests last summer with brute force.
“With all the noise that goes on, the attacks, what have you, we know that the agenda is still very popular,” said Roberts. “People want to see these prosecutors’ offices being focused on bringing down incarceration rates, and holding police accountable. And they’re actually looking for other solutions for violence, they’re not willing to buy into the narrative that they hear from police unions and conservative politicians.”
Krasner was elected in 2017 on a promise to end mass incarceration in the city and transform the way prosecutors approach crime. At the time, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch described Krasner’s win as “a revolution.” The win by a former criminal defense and civil rights attorney who had never worked as a prosecutor until his election ushered a new era into an office that had been run for two decades by one of the “deadliest prosecutors” in the country, Lynne Abraham, whose office sent 108 people to death row.
Krasner’s office pledged never to seek the death penalty, stopped requesting cash bail for low-level offenses, expanded diversion programs for some gun offenses, and stopped prosecuting marijuana use and sex work. He also took a hard line on police accountability, brought charges against more than 50 officers accused of misconduct, and instituted a “do not call” list of officers with a history of misconduct and dishonesty that his office deemed unreliable witnesses and would not call to testify in court. The district attorney revamped a conviction integrity unit that has helped to exonerate 20 people since he took office in 2018.
The DA’s decarceral approach drew criticism from city residents and police forces who claimed that Krasner’s policies drove a spike in gun violence in the city last year. Krasner has also faced pushback from the left, including some of his supporters and groups like the Philadelphia Bail Fund, which said he hasn’t lived up to his campaign promises to end cash bail. Krasner’s office has continued to request high-dollar figures for cash bail in certain cases, and it’s an issue the DA acknowledges he hasn’t solved.
“I think he’s tried to figure out how to split the difference between addressing a bail system that has people incarcerated, pre-trial, who really shouldn’t be, and the responsibility he has around addressing gun violence in the city,” said Roberts, of Color of Change, adding that overall, Krasner earned a “passing grade as a reform prosecutor.”
The fight over Krasner’s handling of cash bail is just one that highlights the limitations facing prosecutors running on promises of reform, said Chenjerai Kumanyika, a scholar and journalist in Philadelphia, and assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. Even some of Krasner’s allies are clear-eyed about the impracticality of investing in progressive prosecutors as a long-term solution to the problem of mass incarceration, Kumanyika explained.
“The insight I’ve seen from some movement actors and organizers is that the progressive prosecutor still relies a little bit on the idea that transformative change relies on electing the right person,” he said. “Krasner seemed like that person,” he added, but “the limitation of that is that, one: it still has that kind of, we’re still just trying to get the right person in, the sort of illusion that we indulge in that a DA can be the advocate for the movement.”
The other limitation, as Kumayika described it, is that the model of a “progressive prosecutor” doesn’t work everywhere. “It leaves us sort of without a real plan in places where you’re not going to be able to elect a progressive prosecutor,” he said, proposing a shift toward a vision of electing “an accountable prosecutor” instead. “What that does, is it forces us to turn our attention to building our movement.”
Even as people who hoped the so-called progressive prosecutor movement would fundamentally overhaul the U.S. criminal justice system, including the lack of police accountability, were sometimes left disappointed, there is no question that Krasner’s 2017 election helped build momentum around district attorney races across the country. Until then, incumbent prosecutors were rarely challenged and even more rarely defeated. But Krasner’s win in Philadelphia, as well as Kim Foxx’s in Chicago a year earlier, contributed to fueling nationwide awareness and enthusiasm around previously low-turnout elections. Their elections also shaped public understanding that DA races could be competitive and a space for substantial policy debate — drawing even more candidates to enter such races.
While at the time of his first campaign Krasner was perhaps the most reform-oriented prosecutor to be elected, his win has also inspired many would-be prosecutors pushing for even greater change, said Roberts, citing San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin as an example. “Showing that someone with Krasner’s agenda can get elected I think encouraged tons more people, some with even more transformational politics than him, to get into these races.” After Krasner, reform-minded prosecutors were elected in other large cities, including Los Angeles, Dallas, Boston, and Atlanta.
As “progressive prosecutor” became a catchphrase and the movement gained steam and racked up wins, candidates with little genuine commitment to decarceration sometimes co-opted the language of true reformers. Still, the successes of the movement have transformed the way voters think of prosecutors and the unique power they yield within the justice system.
Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor and executive director of the justice nonprofit Fair and Just Prosecution, credited early challengers to the system, including Krasner, with “forcing a dialogue,” in an interview with The Intercept. “The starting point has dramatically shifted over the last few years,” she said. “And I think it’s by virtue of the fact that communities want something different. They’re no longer embracing the failed tough-on-crime paradigms of the past.”
Krinsky noted that her group currently works with around 70 new DAs from across the political spectrum who have made a commitment to shrinking the carceral system and increasing transparency, accountability, and fairness. While that is a fraction of the roughly 2,000 elected prosecutors across the country, they represent more than 20 percent of the country’s population because many of them are from large urban areas — an indication of the broad impact of the movement around DA elections.
In Manhattan, which will hold a primary election for district attorney next month, several candidates are taking a reformist approach. “The conversation is a very different one than we might have expected in a large urban area three or four years ago,” said Krinsky. “It really is a sign of times that have changed.”
The effort to build widespread awareness and engagement around local elections was also replicated beyond DA races, with similar organizing taking aim at sheriff and comptroller races, for instance. “We definitely see people replicating the model,” said Roberts.
But as prosecutors seeking to transform the ways of their offices racked up wins across the country, they faced backlash and obstructionism, particularly from police and their unions, though sometimes from within their offices as well. In some states, politically appointed federal prosecutors stepped in to take over cases, including protest-related ones, that local DAs had declined to prosecute. “Change is never easy and certainly there are many interests that have a vested stake in preserving the status quo, whether that’s bail bond companies or correctional leaders or police unions,” said Krinsky. “They don’t want to necessarily shrink the size of the system, and they don’t necessarily embrace increased accountability.”
In Philadelphia, the strongest and earliest backlash to Krasner’s election came from the police union. The president of Philadelphia’s police union, John McNesby, made numerous appearances on Fox News and other outlets attacking Krasner’s policies, claiming that the DA disliked law enforcement and calling on voters to support Vega.
Philadelphia’s FOP Lodge 5, a chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, spent $140,000 to oust Krasner, more than it had in any of the city’s last seven electoral cycles, including $25,200 from the union PAC directly to Vega’s campaign (the maximum contribution over two years) as well as $113,000 to the Protect Our Police PAC. Throughout the campaign, POP PAC spent more than $130,000 on TV ads attacking Krasner. The Pennsylvania chapter of the FOP also gave $12,500 to Vega’s campaign.
Last month, the police union stationed a Mister Softee ice cream truck in front of the DA’s office giving out free ice cream, a gesture to highlight how, they claimed, Krasner was “soft on crime,” bringing the truck back in the weeks leading up to the race.
Police efforts to fight Krasner were no match for his campaign, which raised $1.35 million, compared to Vega’s $600,000. Krasner’s campaign was backed by outside groups including Shaun King’s Real Justice PAC. He was also backed by the political action committee for the Guardian Civic League of Philadelphia — a chapter of the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers, which represents Black cops in the city — and by Club Valiants, a fraternal group representing Black and Latino firefighters in Philadelphia.
The animosity between Krasner and Vega was palpable throughout the race, and not just because Vega was in the process of suing the DA for age discrimination related to his firing. Vega launched his campaign by attacking Krasner, saying his office didn’t care about victims and that it has made Philadelphia a more dangerous place.
The former homicide prosecutor also accused Krasner of “spreading lies” about his record in relation to a wrongful conviction case that Vega had helped to retry. The back and forth prompted the Innocence Project, which represented Anthony Wright during his retrial, to issue a statement denouncing Vega’s portrayal of his role in the case in comments to The Intercept and to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Vega accused the Innocence Project of bringing up the case to boost Krasner’s campaign. After a heated debate on May 5, Vega was recorded on a hot mic asking Krasner if the DA had security downstairs and if he wanted to give Vega a ride home.
Attempts by Vega and his backers in law enforcement to pin gun violence in the city on Krasner didn’t resonate with Philadelphians who have interacted with the criminal legal system, said City Council Member Kendra Brooks. “We’re talking about the same system that has disinvested into all the things that they needed to be successful, right?” she said. “And it’s also the system that perpetuates this cycle of violence, and crime and trauma that also puts them in the ground. And in communities, you can’t separate any of that.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks during a TV interview on Capitol Hill. (photo: Jose Luis
AOC Leads 11th-Hour Push to Stop Israel Arms Sale
Lara Seligman, Andrew Desiderio and Nahal Toosi, Politico
Excerpt: "A group of lawmakers is cobbling together an effort to block a controversial sale of precision-guided weapons to Israel as President Joe Biden ratchets up the pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring to a halt the increasingly deadly conflict in Gaza."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leading the effort, along with Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Mark Pocan, Ilhan Omar and others, according to a draft resolution obtained by POLITICO.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is leading the effort, along with Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and others, according to a draft resolution obtained by POLITICO. An Ocasio-Cortez spokesperson confirmed she is releasing the resolution Wednesday.
The resolution of disapproval, as drafted, aims to prohibit the proposed $735 million sale of a Boeing-built arms guidance kit to Israel. The Joint Direct Attack Munitions kit, as it's known, converts unguided or “dumb” bombs into precision-guided munitions.
The eleventh-hour Democratic effort comes one day after a group of senior House Democrats on Tuesday backed off an emerging push to delay the sale amid intensifying violence in the region. Lawmakers wanted to use the impending arms transfer as leverage to push the Israelis to drop their resistance to a ceasefire.
Earlier Wednesday, Biden told Netanyahu that he “expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire,” according to a White House readout of their phone conversation. Last week, the U.S. blocked efforts by the United Nations Security Council to call for a ceasefire, effectively backing Israel’s bombing campaign against Hamas, the Palestinian militant group.
As of Wednesday, Israel’s military operations in Gaza have killed 217 Palestinians, including 63 children, while 12 Israelis have died in the conflict, which escalated after Hamas launched thousands of rockets into Israel.
The resolution of disapproval isn’t likely to advance through the House or even the Foreign Affairs Committee; the period given to Congress for review of the Israel arms sale in question expires at the end of the week. Although symbolic, the Ocasio-Cortez-led push reflects progressive Democrats' increasing uneasiness over the lack of conditions on U.S. support for Israel, skepticism that's only deepened as Israel continues to bombard Gaza with air strikes.
Most Democrats, though, have defended the arms sale even as they have pushed Israel to agree to a ceasefire. Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.) noted earlier this week that the Boeing kit is precision-guided and thus intended to reduce civilian casualties as well as collateral damage. Israel is facing international criticism for its strikes against Hamas that have resulted in civilian deaths and injuries.
Republicans, meanwhile, have remained staunchly behind Israel and Netanyahu. At a press conference on Wednesday, GOP senators hammered Biden for not being more outspoken in favor of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza — even suggesting that the administration was tacitly supporting Hamas.
“Joe Biden needs to stand up and reject this radical anti-Israel proposal,” Sen. Tom Cotton (D-Ark.) said, referring to Ocasio-Cortez’s effort. “But Joe Biden has been rapidly caving to the left this week.”
Lawmakers said Tuesday that the weapons, bought directly from Boeing in a deal that had been in the works for years, would not arrive in Israel for months. Unlike foreign military sales, direct commercial sales do not get posted online, and lawmakers only get a 15-day window for objections. Congress was first notified on May 5.
A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the sale, citing federal laws restricting public comments on licensing activity related to direct commercial sales.
“We remain deeply concerned about the current violence and are working towards achieving a sustainable calm,” the spokesperson said.
The U.S. has long provided lethal arms, including precision-guided bombs, tanks and sophisticated fighter jets, to Israel. Since 1985, the U.S. government has provided nearly $3 billion in foreign military aid annually for Israel to preserve its military edge over its Arab neighbors.
Washington has also built war reserve stock facilities in Israel to stockpile military equipment, including ammunition, “smart” bombs, missiles and military vehicles. Although intended for use by U.S. forces in the Middle East, the equipment has on rare occasions been transferred to Israel for use during conflicts, including during the 2014 Gaza war.
In recent years, however, the political dynamic surrounding U.S. support for Israel has shifted significantly. While both parties broadly continue to express strong support for Israel's sovereignty, some progressive Democrats have become more vocal about potentially cutting U.S. military aid to Netanyahu's conservative government, particularly after he considered annexing part of the West Bank in 2020.
And pro-Palestinian activists were thrilled to see progressives take a more vocal stance against the Democratic establishment's previously unquestioning support for the Israeli government.
"The traditional red lines that Congress previously never crossed are falling apart," said Raed Jarrar, advocacy director with Democracy for the Arab World Now.
A Salvadoran woman seeking asylum in the United States poses for a portrait in a relative's home behind a page from her court documents in Tijuana, Mexico, on Nov. 5, 2019. (photo: Gregory Bull/AP)
They Missed Their US Asylum Hearings Fearing the Cartel Would Kill Them. Now They're Stuck in Mexico.
Hamed Aleaziz and Adolfo Flores, BuzzFeed
Excerpt: "On the day of her first immigration court hearing, Veronica had two choices: miss her family's chance at getting asylum in the US, or return to the border city where the cartel had threatened to kill them."
"It's like seeking refuge in Canada and being sent to wait in Afghanistan where you might be killed."
Veronica, an asylum-seeker from El Salvador who asked to be identified only by her first name out of fear for her safety, chose to miss her court hearing and stay put in Mexico City. The 24-year-old said she tried calling the court to explain why she and her family couldn't make it, but no one ever picked up. In February 2020, a judge ordered them deported for not showing up.
"It was a horrifying feeling," Veronica told BuzzFeed News. "I cried a lot because we came here with such high hopes that someone would help us."
Nearly 28,000 immigrants like Veronica and her family were ordered deported without them being present at their last hearing. In addition to conditions being too dangerous to travel to the border, some immigrants missed their hearings because they were kidnapped by cartels, some were denied entry because they were pregnant, and others were too sick. Whatever the reason, it didn't matter and the judges overseeing their cases ordered them deported in absentia.
The Biden administration has started to undo the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) policy that sent more than 71,000 immigrants and asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while a US judge ruled in their case. So far, the administration has mostly only allowed those with open cases to enter the US, leaving those with removal orders like Veronica waiting in Mexico with the hopes that one day it will be her turn.
In recent weeks, Homeland Security officials have agreed that those ordered deported in absentia should have their cases reopened, according to government documents obtained by BuzzFeed News. The move would clear the way for them to be allowed back into the US and pursue their asylum cases, but it’s unclear when this next phase of the rollback would be implemented.
"It's like seeking refuge in Canada and being sent to wait in Afghanistan where you might be killed," Dante, a 26-year-old asylum-seeker from Cuba, told BuzzFeed News. "But if you don't show up to your hearing, you get ordered deported. One way or another, you get screwed."
Dante, who asked to be identified only by his first name fearing retaliation in Mexico and Cuba, and his girlfriend missed their asylum hearing in October 2019, a month after nearly being kidnapped in a Mexican border town. A judge also ordered them deported in absentia.
The process to reopen the cases can be particularly time intensive, and DHS officials have been concerned that forcing government attorneys to file thousands of reopening motions could overwhelm staff.
A DHS spokesperson said the system to process people with active cases is the “first phase” of a program to “restore safe and orderly processing at the Southwest border.”
“The US is currently prioritizing individuals with active MPP cases, generally based on their MPP enrollment date, while also considering prioritized access for certain highly vulnerable individuals,” the spokesperson said, adding that, at this time, “we do not have any new announcements regarding populations who do not have active MPP cases.”
“The Biden administration has made it clear that our borders are not open, people should not make the dangerous journey, and individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion,” the spokesperson said.
So far, nearly 8,400 immigrants who had been forced to remain in Mexico under MPP have been able to enter the US under a process started by the Biden administration, according to an analysis from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. For the most part, only those with active cases have been able to apply to be allowed into the US, and according to the analysis, as of the end of April, 18,087 people still remained in Mexico with open cases who in theory could register to be allowed into the United States.
Attorneys and advocates who worked with immigrants in MPP said the Trump administration's policy effectively weaponized geography to make it nearly impossible for people to win their asylum cases. In addition to having little access to attorneys or legal guidance, asylum-seekers were expected to wait months, if not years, in Mexican cities known for the kidnapping, rape, and killing of immigrants.
On Monday night, an asylum-seeker who was forced to wait in Mexico under MPP was fatally shot in Ciudad Juárez just a few days before he was to be allowed into the US by the Biden administration.
Human Rights First has counted at least 1,544 public reports of murder, rape, and other attacks committed against people in MPP. But in only about 2% of cases decided by a judge were immigrants able to get some type of relief like asylum.
The uncertainty of if or when Veronica and her family will be able to pursue their asylum case within the US weighs on her, particularly because of the dangers immigrants face in Mexico. She didn't want to miss her court hearing, Veronica said, but the family also didn't want to risk their lives. Moments after Veronica, her husband, and her then–2-year-old daughter were sent back to the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo in November 2019, they were kidnapped by the local cartel. After days of threats and abuse, they were released, but warned that if they ever returned to any part of the border, they would be killed. Their kidnappers had taken photos of them and their personal information.
Veronica and her family eventually moved from Mexico City to Mexicali, another border city, with the hopes of getting help from a legal advocacy organization, but their case is still closed. Now, they’re waiting to see if the Biden administration will reopen cases and allow them into the US.
"It's very difficult to live with the fear that the cartel, which has our information, will grab us again," Veronica said. "My hope is the US will give us a chance, just like they did with the people who had open cases, because we are not safe here in Mexico."
Ekom Waterfall in a rainforest in Cameroon, Africa. (photo: Getty)
African Rainforests Are Surprisingly Resistant to Small Changes in Climate, Study Finds
Kaitlin Sullivan, EcoWatch
Sullivan writes: "Aptly called, 'Earth's lungs,' the planet's two largest swaths of rainforest, in Amazonia and Africa, suck up 15 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions produced by humans."
ptly called, "Earth's lungs," the planet's two largest swaths of rainforest, in Amazonia and Africa, suck up 15 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions produced by humans. These ecosystems are essential for carbon sequestration and therefore curbing climate change, and while the Amazon rainforest has been the subject of mountains of research, scientists are just now beginning to understand how rainforests in Central and Western Africa respond to small changes in climate — and it's good news.African rainforests naturally thrive in drier conditions than rainforests in Amazonia and Southeast Asia. According to new research, these conditions appear to have made African rainforests more resistant to drought and warmer-than-normal temperatures compared to rainforests in Amazonia, the world's largest rainforest, and Borneo.
"This is the first on-the-ground evidence of what happens when you heat and drought an intact African rainforest," Leeds' School of Geography professor and senior author of the new research, Simon Lewis, said in a press release. "What we found surprised me."
Despite more severe droughts and hotter weather, 100 plots of intact tropical rainforests spread across the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia and the Republic of the Congo still absorbed a significant amount of Earth-warming CO2 compared to non-drought years.
To test this, the team used the 2015-2016 El Niño climate pattern as a model for what conditions may look like consistently in the near future. Exasperated by climate change, the temporary cycle brought a temperature increase of nearly 1 degree Celsius above the 1980-2010 average and the most severe drought on record.
According to lead author Amy Bennett, a professor at the Leeds' School of Geography, the extreme weather conditions brought by El Niño in 2015 and 2016 reduced the amount of carbon dioxide the forest pulled from the atmosphere by about 36 percent. However, the ecosystems continued to function as a huge carbon sink. Despite the crippling conditions, the plots indicated that rainforests in Central and Western Africa still absorbed 1.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year — three times the amount emitted by the United Kingdom in 2019.
"African tropical forests play an important role in the global carbon cycle, absorbing 1.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year since the turn of the last century. To discover that they will be able to tolerate the predicted conditions of the near future is an unusual source of optimism in climate change science," Bennett said in a press release.
In particular, larger trees were mostly unaffected, which the researchers speculated was due to the fact that larger root systems have more stable access to water. Smaller tree species, however, had less growth and higher death rates during drought years.
In contrast, research published in Nature in 2018 found that the Amazon rainforest's canopy shrunk during spells of El Niño drought. The Amazon rainforest, the largest of its kind in the world, is expected to collapse by 2046 and scientists believe it's already on the brink of emitting more carbon dioxide than it absorbs.
Taken together, research on Earth's lungs emphasizes the importance of keeping rainforests intact while drastically reducing carbon emissions. Central Africa houses the world's second-largest tropical rainforest. Like all rainforests, the 240 million hectares of forest are threatened by logging, mining, expanding agriculture and wildfires.
"The resistance of intact African tropical forests to a bit more heat and drought than they have experienced in the past is welcome news, but we still need to cut carbon dioxide emissions fast, as our forests will probably only resist limited further rises in air temperature," said Bonaventure Sonké, a professor at University of Yaoundé in Cameroon, who co-authored the new study.
Gabon recently received $150 million in international funds from the United Nations Central African Forest Initiative to preserve its rainforests, 10 percent of which are already protected. Cameroon, its neighbor to the north, committed in 2017 to restoring more than 12 million hectares of degraded land by 2030, the International Union for Conservation of Nature reported. But on its own, preserving rainforests will not be enough to prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change. The authors stress that humans also need to commit to emitting fewer greenhouse gases.
"Our results provide a further incentive to keep global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as outlined in the Paris Agreement, as these forests look to be able to withstand limited increases in temperature and drought," Sonké said in a press release.
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