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25 February 22
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And because a simpleton megalomaniac in Washington spent four years fixated on Monopoly, playing checkers in what Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin know is an elaborate chess game, the United States faces existential danger beyond description.
I call this Mort Report non-prophet; correspondents can only speculate on the future based on the present in light of the past. I am scared witless about far more than Ukraine — less because of Russia or China than of treacherous politicians, greedheads and useful idiots at home.
Ukraine’s history is long and complex. Just start with the Orange Revolution that began in November 2004 while George W. Bush was wading deeper into needless quagmire in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack that triggered his all-out war on terror.
Ukrainians, who had fought hard for freedom and democracy, spent two months and a day in freezing weather until they overturned what so many saw as a rigged election. Police held back, fearful of violent response. Casualties amounted to one man who suffered a heart attack.
Contrast that to America in 2016. A plainly evident narcissist demagogue won because so many Democrats sulked when their candidate lost the primaries, and so many others did not bother to vote. He would still be president, I am convinced, had it not been for the Covid-19 pandemic.
We all watched Donald Trump toady up to Putin, taking his side against America’s own intelligence services’ assessments. Congress approved urgent aid to Ukraine, but he held it up in an attempt to extort dirt on Joe Biden. High crimes don’t get higher than such blatant treasonous treachery.
Trump weakened NATO, insulting allies and threatening to bring home troops from Europe if partners did not pay more money in spite of their effective forward defense. And on Wednesday, he heaped praise on Putin. “This is genius,” he said. “How smart is that?…We could use that on our southern border.”
Trump’s humiliating capitulation to the Taliban was not on Moscow and Beijing. Nor was public response in America. Joe Biden managed an inevitably chaotic yet successful evacuation in the impossible circumstances Trump left behind.
As conflict looms with potentially unimaginable consequences, Republicans play politics. Mitch McConnell blames Biden for the Afghanistan response, which, he says, emboldened Putin to react. And Democrats, along with much of the Washington press corps, continue taking pot shots at the president.
Step back and consider the broader backdrop.
Republicans, along with Democratic factions squabbling among themselves over domestic policy, have brought about the nightmare that haunted Richard Nixon: China and Russia have joined together in pursuit of old dreams to dominate the world.
Xi has grander plans to create vassal states all over the map to supply strategic materials, with beholden leaders who stamp out human rights and free expression, starting with genocidal ethnic cleansing at home. He is colonizing from the sea floor to the dark side of the moon, with space stations to render traditional armies and navies obsolete.
Meantime, he is building submarines and warships at an astonishing pace, along with cyber weapons to paralyze economies and confound adversaries’ command and control.
Putin is no longer focused only on the traditional aim of defending Mother Russia from neighboring threats. He is reviving Soviet-era efforts to dominate the Middle East, with ventures into Africa and Latin America.
This is no armchair thumb-sucking. I have watched this take shape in fits and starts since covering the United States and the Soviet Union square off in Africa and Asia during the 1960s. It is no time for a clown-car Congress. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose grasp of history extends to recalling Hitler’s “Gazpacho,” is comic relief. Others are hardly funny.
With all of its nuclear superpower, the United States is like a muscular weightlifter made impotent by steroids. It cannot intervene without provoking a world war that everyone would lose. Sanctions achieve nothing in the short-term. Leaders at the top are the last to suffer. Both Putin and Xi are playing for the history books, not simple tactical gains.
As it happens, Biden is perfectly suited to the job. So what if he is no spelling-binding speaker or inept at blowing his own horn? This is not “Dancing With the Stars.”
If all sectors of America cannot rally around the president they’ve got, not the central-casting character so many would prefer, elements of Armageddon are no longer beyond the realm of possibility.
Watch Biden’s clear address to the nation, explaining preparedness to aggression Putin has been planning for months. The ruble has plummeted along with Russia’s stock market, he said, as bank interest rates soar. The Russian propaganda outlets churn out lies (he didn’t mention Fox News, which also qualifies), but prospects are hopeful if Americans hold firm.
A president might be able to forgive student loans by fiat, but he, or she, has little to say about abortion or social and cultural inequality or other issues that America obsesses on even in the face of a threat the country hasn’t faced since World War II.
Biden’s main role, like all presidents’, is to confront foreign threats. He has spent a lifetime gaining experience and earning respect among world leaders. Politicians and ill-informed citizens who hamstring him now do it at unthinkably extreme peril.
Police officers detain a protester in Moscow's Pushkin Square on Thursday night. (photo: Kommersant Photo Agency)
The OVD-Info rights group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that as of Thursday evening, more than 235 people had been detained in 29 cities.
Rallies took place across many time zones, and those detained hailed from cities ranging from from the enclave of Kaliningrad on the edge of Europe to the far eastern city of Vladivostok.
There were also protests in cities including Yekaterinburg, the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and the capital Moscow.
Footage of the protests, which were of varying sizes, were shared on social media and showed people holding signs and chanting "No to war!"
Thomas van Linge, who has been reporting on incidents surrounding the invasion of Ukraine, tweeted footage of what he said was a rally in the city of Tyumen in which he said that "police are busy arresting everyone before it takes off."
One-person picketers are the only form of protest that does not require the prior approval of the authorities. Citing coronavirus restrictions, including on public events, Russia's interior ministry said on television for people to refrain from unsanctioned protests or face arrest.
Independent news outlet Meduza reported that anti-war solo picketers were also popping up in cities across Russia.
Activist and opposition politician Ilya Yashin tweeted footage of a protester holding an anti-war sign being arrested.
The journalist Anton Barbashin tweeted that some people were being detained even before they reached protests and that "in Moscow known protest figures are arrested leaving their apartments."
Moscow correspondent for The Guardian Andrew Roth tweeted footage of one person being detained within seconds of holding up a sign. "Arrests are getting a lot rougher," he wrote.
Meanwhile, rallies took place across the world to protest President Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
A rally organized by the London Euromaidan group was held in the British capital where demonstrators called for tougher sanctions against Putin and his regime. Protesters held banners which said: "When the last Ukrainian soldier falls, Putin will come for you" the Evening Standard reported.
Protests were also held in cities including Berlin, Barcelona, The Hague and Warsaw.
Ten rallies were held in cities across the U.S. on Thursday including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and New York City.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation to the seat currently held by Justice Stephen Breyer would not flip the court's ideological balance. (photo: Erin Schaff/The New York Times)
Jackson would be the first Black woman on the high court, and the first justice since Thurgood Marshall with significant experience as a criminal defense attorney
Jackson, 51, would also be just the third African American in the high court’s 233-year history. A former public defender, she served as a trial court judge in Washington for eight years before Biden elevated her last year to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She was confirmed to that court after a relatively uncontentious Senate hearing and with the backing of three Republican lawmakers.
Russia was able to take the Chernobyl power plant after fighting with Ukrainian troops. (photo: Facebook)
If fighting breaches the facility’s massive sarcophagus, it could mean trouble for Europe.
“It is impossible to say the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is safe after a totally pointless attack by the Russians,” a representative of the Ukrainian government told Reuters, calling it one of the “most serious threats in Europe today.”
Chernobyl was the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident. Less than 100 people died in the accident, but it caused widespread distribution of radioactive fallout across Ukraine, Russia, Western Europe, and Scandinavia. As a result, the Ukrainian government sealed the radioactive debris in concrete containers, and put the damaged No. 4 reactor itself in a 40,000-ton, $2.5 billion reinforced steel shelter. There is also a 30-kilometer Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, spanning both Belarus and Ukraine, where people are banned from entering due to lingering radiation concerns.
Russia’s 35th Combined Arms Army, which includes three battalion tactical groups, was poised before the war to advance on the capital of Kyiv. Unlike other forces, however, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone stood in its way. Russian army units may not have set out to actually capture the site, but simply wanted to pass through it, seeking to seal off the capital city from behind.
A short video on Twitter appears to show a Russian T-80U main battle tank, a BTR-80 wheeled armored personnel carrier, and a BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle parked on the grounds of the site. Popular Mechanics has reviewed the video and confirmed the video was in fact taken at the exact point where the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is pinned on Google Maps. The large structure in the background of the video lines up with Chernobyl Reactor No. Five, which was never completed.
An unnamed military source quoted by the Associated Press has a different explanation, stating that Russia “wants to control the Chernobyl nuclear reactor to signal NATO not to interfere militarily.” That explanation does not make a lot of sense, however, as any release of radioactivity as a weapon against NATO would first go through occupied Ukraine and then Russia itself.
There are some reports of damage at the Chernobyl facility as a result of shelling, though it’s not clear if the damage is to any of the hundreds of structures there or the most important one—the giant steel sarcophagus that entombs Reactor No. Four. It seems likely that Russian forces are under orders to prevent damage to the site, given the danger escaping radioactivity poses to Russia.
There are four fully operational nuclear power plants, with a total of 15 nuclear reactors, spread across Ukraine. According to World Nuclear News, the CEO Of Energoatom, the state nuclear power company, recently reassured the public that nuclear plants will be shut down in the event of emergencies, and that they are structurally strong enough to survive aircraft crashes.
Protesters outside federal court in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Monday before opening arguments in the civil trial of three former Minneapolis police officers, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane. (photo: Eric Miller/Reuters)
The three officers were found guilty on all counts.
J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao were accused of failing to intervene on Floyd's behalf as he pleaded for his life and repeatedly said he couldn't breathe while pinned under the knee of former Officer Derek Chauvin's knee for more than nine minutes.
Along with Thomas Lane, Kueng and Thao were also charged with a second count of violating Floyd's rights by failing to render aid during the restraint captured on a bystander video that fueled global unrest and a racial reckoning.
Having found the officers guilty, the jury was asked whether Floyd's restraint led to his death. The jury answered yes, allowing the judge to give the former cops longer sentences if he chooses.
The three former officers now face a second trial in Floyd's death on June 13 in Hennepin County District Court where they are accused of aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter.
Chauvin has already been convicted in both state and federal court. He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in December to violating Floyd's constititional rights, but has yet to be sentenced on that crime. He was convicted of Floyd's murder last April and sentenced to more than 22 years in prison. Chauvin is being held in the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Oak Park Heights.
Jury selection in the trial of Kueng, Lane and Thao began in late January. Lawyers made their opening statements Jan. 24 and closing arguments Tuesday. The prosecution put 21 witnesses on the stand. The defense attorneys called 11 witnesses, including all three defendants.
Jurors began deliberations in the case just before 10 a.m. Wednesday and worked about 13 hours before reaching their verdict just before 4 p.m. Thursday.
Floyd died on Memorial Day in the custody of the officers. The following day, police Chief Medaria Arradondo fired all four officers as the video shot by teenage bystander Darnella Frazier ricocheted around the world on social media.
Kueng and Lane were first on the scene at the convenience store on a report from a clerk that Floyd has used a counterfeit $20 to buy a pack of cigarettes. They first approached him in his Mercedes SUV on the street and cuffed his hands behind his back before walking him across the street and trying to get him into the back of a squad vehicle.
As Kueng and Lane struggled to get an upset Floyd into the backseat, Chauvin and Thao arrived to help. With Thao standing watch, the other three officers placed a handcuffed Floyd prone on the street.
Floyd repeatedly said he couldn't breathe while Chauvin put his knee on the back of Floyd's neck, pressing the side of his face into the street. Kueng held down Floyd's lower back area while Lane controlled his legs. Thao remained standing, holding back an increasingly angry group of bystanders on the curb who pleaded for them to relent or check Floyd's pulse.
In his instructions to the jury before deliberations, Magnuson told jurors they must view the evidence in light of what a "reasonable officer at the scene" would have done "without the benefit of 20-20 hindsight."
He told them they must consider whether the decision to use force on Floyd was reasonable under circumstances that were tense and rapidly evolving.
It violates the Constitution for a police officer to fail to intervene if he had knowledge the force was unreasonable and ability to help, Magnuson said.
The jurors, all 12 of whom are white, come from all over the state. Eight are women and four are men. Two each are from Hennepin, Ramsey and Olmsted counties. One juror each is from the following counties: Anoka, Blue Earth, Washington, Jackson, Nicollet and Scott.
Yurok Tribal Police Chief Greg O'Rourke visits the last confirmed location on Jan. 19, 2022, where Emmilee Risling was seen before going missing in October 2021, in Klamath, California. (photo: Nathan Howard/AP)
But things escalated when Emmilee Risling was charged with arson for igniting a fire in a cemetery. Her family hoped the case would force her into mental health and addiction services. Instead, she was released over the pleas of loved ones and a tribal police chief.
The 33-year-old college graduate — an accomplished traditional dancer with ancestry from three area tribes — was last seen soon after, walking across a bridge near a place marked End of Road, a far corner of the Yurok Reservation where the rutted pavement dissolves into thick woods.
Her disappearance is one of five instances in the past 18 months where Indigenous women have gone missing or been killed in this isolated expanse of Pacific coastline between San Francisco and Oregon, a region where the Yurok, Hupa, Karuk, Tolowa and Wiyot people have coexisted for millennia. Two other women died from what authorities say were overdoses despite relatives’ questions about severe bruises.
The crisis has spurred the Yurok Tribe to issue an emergency declaration and brought increased urgency to efforts to build California’s first database of such cases and regain sovereignty over key services.
“I came to this issue as both a researcher and a learner, but just in this last year, I knew three of the women who have gone missing or were murdered — and we shared so much in common,” said Blythe George, a Yurok tribal member who consults on a project documenting the problem. “You can’t help but see yourself in those people.”
The recent cases spotlight an epidemic that is difficult to quantify but has long disproportionately plagued Native Americans.
A 2021 report by a government watchdog found the true number of missing and murdered Indigenous women is unknown due to reporting problems, distrust of law enforcement and jurisdictional conflicts. But Native women face murder rates almost three times those of white women overall — and up to 10 times the national average in certain locations, according to a 2021 summary of the existing research by the National Congress of American Indians. More than 80% have experienced violence.
In this area peppered with illegal marijuana farms and defined by wilderness, almost everyone knows someone who has vanished.
Missing person posters flutter from gas station doors and road signs. Even the tribal police chief isn’t untouched: He took in the daughter of one missing woman, and Emmilee — an enrolled Hoopa Valley tribal member with Yurok and Karuk blood — babysat his children.
In California alone, the Yurok Tribe and the Sovereign Bodies Institute, an Indigenous-run research and advocacy group, uncovered 18 cases of missing or slain Native American women in roughly the past year — a number they consider a vast undercount. An estimated 62% of those cases are not listed in state or federal databases for missing persons.
Hupa citizen Brandice Davis attended school with the daughters of a woman who disappeared in 1991 and now has daughters of her own, ages 9 and 13.
“Here, we’re all related, in a sense,” she said of the place where many families are connected by marriage or community ties.
She cautions her daughters about what it means to be female, Native American and growing up on a reservation: “You’re a statistic. But we have to keep going. We have to show people we’re still here.”
Like countless cases involving Indigenous women, Emmilee’s disappearance has gotten no attention from the outside world.
But many here see in her story the ugly intersection of generations of trauma inflicted on Native Americans by their white colonizers, the marginalization of Native peoples and tribal law enforcement’s lack of authority over many crimes committed on their land.
Virtually all of the area’s Indigenous residents, including Emmilee, have ancestors who were shipped to boarding schools as children and forced to give up their language and culture as part of a federal assimilation campaign. Further back, Yurok people spent years away from home as indentured servants for colonizers, said Judge Abby Abinanti, the tribe’s chief judge.
The trauma caused by those removals echoes among the Yurok in the form of drug abuse and domestic violence, which trickles down to the youth, she said. About 110 Yurok children are in foster care.
“You say, ‘OK, how did we get to this situation where we’re losing our children?’” said Abinanti. “There were big gaps in knowledge, including parenting, and generationally those play out.”
An analysis of cases by the Yurok and Sovereign Bodies found most of the region’s missing women had either been in foster care themselves or had children taken from them by the state. An analysis of jail bookings also showed Yurok citizens in the two-county region are 11 times more likely to go to jail in a given year — and half those arrested are female, usually for low-level crimes. That’s an arrest rate for Yurok women roughly five times the rate of female incarcerations nationwide, said George, the University of California, Merced sociologist consulting with the tribe.
The Yurok run a tribal wellness court for addiction and operate one of the country’s only state-certified tribal domestic violence perpetrator programs. They also recently hired a tribal prosecutor, another step toward building an Indigenous justice system that would ultimately handle all but the most serious felonies.
The Yurok also are working to reclaim supervision over foster care and hope to transfer their first foster family from state court within months, said Jessica Carter, the Yurok Tribal Court director. A tribal-run guardianship court follows another 50 children who live with relatives.
The long-term plan — mostly funded by grants — is a massive undertaking that will take years to accomplish, but the Yurok see regaining sovereignty over these systems as the only way to end the cycle of loss that’s taken the greatest toll on their women.
“If we are successful, we can use that as a gift to other tribes to say, ‘Here’s the steps we took,’” said Rosemary Deck, the newly hired tribal prosecutor. “‘You can take this as a blueprint and assert your own sovereignty.’”
Emmilee was born into a prominent Native family, and a bright future beckoned.
Starting at a young age, she was groomed to one day lead the intricate dances that knit the modern-day people to generations of tradition nearly broken by colonization. Her family, a “dance family,” has the rare distinction of owning enough regalia that it can outfit the brush, jump and flower dances without borrowing a single piece.
At 15, Emmilee paraded down the National Mall with other tribal members at the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. The Washington Post published a front-page photo of her in a Karuk dress of dried bear grass, a woven basket cap and a white leather sash adorned with Pileated woodpecker scalps.
The straight-A student earned a scholarship to the University of Oregon, where she helped lead a prominent Native students’ group. Her success, however, was darkened by the first sign of trouble: an abusive relationship with a Native man whom, her mother believes, she felt she could save through her positive influence.
Later, Emmilee dated another man, became pregnant and returned home to have the baby before finishing her degree.
She then worked with disadvantaged Native families and eventually got accepted into a master’s program. She helped coach her son’s T-ball team and signed him up for swim lessons.
But over time, her family says, they noticed changes.
Emmilee was uncharacteristically tardy for work and grew more combative. She often dropped off her son with family, and she fell in with another abusive boyfriend. Her son was removed from her care when he was 5; a girl born in 2020 was taken away as a newborn as Emmilee’s behavior deteriorated.
Her parents remain bewildered by her rapid decline and think she developed a mental illness — possibly postpartum psychosis — compounded by drugs and the trauma of domestic abuse. At first, she would see a doctor or therapist at her family’s insistence but eventually rebuffed all help.
After her daughter’s birth, Emmilee spiraled rapidly, “like a light switched,” and she began to let go of the Native identity that had been her defining force, said her sister, Mary.
“That was her life, and when you let that go, when you don’t have your kids ... what are you?” she said.
In the months before she vanished, Emmilee was frequently seen walking naked in public, talking to herself. She was picked up many times by sheriff’s deputies and tribal police but never charged.
The only in-patient psychiatric facility within 300 miles (480 kilometers) was always too full to admit her. Once, she was taken to the emergency room and fled barefoot in her hospital gown.
“People tended to look the other way. They didn’t really help her. In less than 24 hours, she was just back on the street, literally on the street,” said Judy Risling, her mother. “There were just no services for her.”
In September, Emmilee was arrested after she was found dancing around a small fire in the Hoopa Valley Reservation cemetery.
Then-Hoopa Valley Tribal Police Chief Bob Kane appeared in a Humboldt County court by video and explained her repeated police contacts and mental health problems. Emmilee mumbled during the hearing then shouted out that she didn’t set the fire.
She was released with an order to appear again in 12 days after her public defender argued she had no criminal convictions and the court couldn’t hold her on the basis of her mental health.
Then, Emmilee disappeared.
“We had predicted that something like this may ... happen in the future,” said Kane. “And you know, now we’re here.”
If Emmilee fell through the cracks before she went missing, she has become even more invisible in her absence.
One of the biggest hurdles in Indian Country once a woman is reported missing is unraveling a confusing jumble of federal, state, local and tribal agencies that must coordinate. Poor communication and oversights can result in overlooked evidence or delayed investigations.
The problem is more acute in rural regions like the one where Emmilee disappeared, said Abigail Echo-Hawk, citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and director of the Urban Indian Health Institute in Seattle.
“Particularly in reservations and in village areas, there is a maze of jurisdictions, of policies, of procedures of who investigates what,” she said.
Moreover, many cases aren’t logged in federal missing persons databases, and medical examiners sometimes misclassify Native women as white or Asian, said Gretta Goodwin, of the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s homeland security and justice team.
Recent efforts at the state and federal level seek to address what advocates say have been decades of neglect regarding missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Former President Donald Trump signed a bill that required federal, state, tribal and local law enforcement agencies to create or update their protocols for handling such cases. And in November, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to set up guidelines between the federal government and tribal police that would help track, solve and prevent crimes against all Native Americans.
A number of states, including California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona, are also taking on the crisis with greater funding to tribes, studies of the problem or proposals to create Amber Alert-style notifications.
Emmilee’s case illustrates some of the challenges. She was a citizen of the Hoopa Valley Tribe and was arrested on its reservation, but she is presumed missing on the neighboring Yurok Tribe’s reservation.
The Yurok police are in charge of the missing persons probe, but the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office will decide when to declare the case cold, which could trigger federal help.
The remote terrain where Emmilee was last seen — two hours from the nearest town — created hurdles common on reservations.
Law enforcement determined there wasn’t enough information to launch a formal search and rescue operation in such a vast, mountainous area. The Yurok police opted to forgo their own search because of liability concerns and a lack of training, said Yurok Tribal Police Chief Greg O’Rourke.
Instead, Yurok and Hoopa Valley police and sheriff’s deputies plied the rain-swollen Klamath River by boat and drove back roads.
Emmilee’s father, Gary Risling, says the sheriff’s office failed to act on anonymous tips, was slow to follow up on possible sightings and focused more resources on other missing person’s cases, including a wayward hunter and a kayaker lost at sea.
“I don’t want to seem like I’m picking on them, but that effort is sure not put forward when it becomes a missing Indian woman,” he said.
Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal declined interview requests, saying the Yurok are in charge and there are no signs of foul play. O’Rourke said the tips aren’t enough for a search warrant and there’s nothing further the tribal police can do.
The police chief, who knew Emmilee well, says his work is frequently stymied by a broader system that discounts tribal sovereignty.
“The role of police is protect the vulnerable. As tribal police, we’re doing that in a system that’s broken,” he said. “I think that is the reason that Native women get all but dismissed.”
Emmilee’s family, meanwhile, is struggling to shield her children, now 10 and almost 2, from the trauma of their mother’s disappearance — trauma they worry could trigger another generational cycle of loss.
The boy has been having nightmares and recently spoke everyone’s worst fear.
“It’s real difficult when you deal with the grandkids, and the grandkid says, ‘Grandpa, can you take me down the river and can we look for my mama?’ What do you tell him? ‘We’re looking, we’re looking every day,’” said Gary Risling, choking back tears.
“And then he says, ‘What happens if we can’t find her?’”
A flare burns near Cotulla, Texas, on Oct. 26, 2021. The South Texas town is located within the Eagle Ford Shale, one of the country's top oil and gas-producing regions (photo: Aydali Campa/Howard Center for Investigative Journalism)
The greenhouse gas emissions from “venting” and “flaring” excess natural gas over a decade is equal to those of nearly 42 million cars annually.
The self-congratulatory pause came during an October meeting of the agency that oversees a more than $400 billion oil and gas industry in the top-producing state of the top-producing country on a rapidly warming planet.
Christian, a former Grammy-nominated gospel singer, complained that negative media reports had obscured “the good job our staff and this industry has done for a cleaner environment, the cleanest industrialized nation on the planet.”
Then the chairman and his two fellow elected commissioners returned to their agenda and, without debate, approved 39 more requests from oil and gas companies seeking permission to burn off or vent natural gas that’s rich in methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
Over much of the last decade, oil and gas operators in Texas and a dozen other U.S. states have flared, or burned off, at least 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to an analysis of satellite data by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. That’s the greenhouse gas emissions equivalent of nearly 42 million cars driving for a year. The industry has also directly released unknown amounts of gas into the atmosphere through a process called venting. Between them, flaring and venting release a noxious cocktail of carbon dioxide, methane and other pollutants.
Climate scientists have warned that without steep, immediate reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, the world will miss its chance to avert the deadliest and most destructive effects of climate change, which is already contributing to unprecedented wildfires, floods and other natural disasters across the planet. Epidemiologists have also linked flaring emissions to preterm births.
Flaring has surged alongside the fracking boom that’s helped producers unlock previously unreachable fossil fuels and boosted local, state and national economies over the last decade and a half. The United States now produces enough oil and natural gas to be energy independent, its volumes surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia.
While companies sometimes flare and vent to relieve dangerous pressure buildups or perform equipment maintenance, cost is another motivator. Natural gas is far less profitable than oil, and it’s often cheaper for companies to get rid of the gas associated with operations than to transport and process it for sale.
Regardless of the reasons, every act of flaring and venting releases methane, which traps heat 80 times more effectively than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, making methane reduction one of the fastest routes to reducing global warming, experts say.
During the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November, the Biden administration unveiled its proposal to slash methane emissions by the U.S. oil and gas industry, the country’s largest industrial source of methane. The rule would eliminate venting at both new and existing oil wells, and require companies to capture and sell gas whenever possible.
But regulators are largely unaware of the amount of gas being flared and vented, the Howard Center found. It’s a blind spot that’s developed under limited federal oversight and a patchwork of state regulations, lax enforcement and inconsistent data collection.
For at least 17 years, government auditors have warned that bad data was blinding regulators to the amount of greenhouse gases being pushed into the atmosphere by the oil and gas industry’s flaring and venting. In 2004, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommended improved data collection and oversight. Specifically, the GAO suggested standardized reporting for flaring and venting data across all states, and the use of satellite data to improve the accuracy of flaring information. As recently as 2016, the same office warned that natural gas emissions from oil and gas production on federal land weren’t being tracked consistently.
“You can’t regulate what you don’t measure,” said Gunnar Schade, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A…M University who has used satellite data to study flaring in Texas. “We actually don’t have a good handle on what goes in the atmosphere for various reasons—some of them by design, some of them by negligence.”
The satellite flaring volumes calculated by the Howard Center, with the guidance of scientists who pioneered and used the methodology, far exceed the total reported to regulatory agencies in the 13 states designated by the U.S. Energy Department as having the most active flaring. They also far surpassed the total published by the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. Energy Department analytics agency that says it gets its data from the states.
Laws in those top-flaring states vary widely on when companies can flare or vent, whether they need a permit, how much they can emit and if or how they’ll be penalized if they’re caught breaking the rules, the Howard Center found. All of the regulations—even the strictest—have myriad exceptions. The federal government doesn’t regulate flaring and venting except on federal and tribal lands and in federal waters.
Four of the states maintain little or no information on flaring and venting volumes, the Howard Center’s investigation found. In those that do keep volume data, it’s based on self-reported information from oil and gas operators, some using estimations rather than metered measurements. There are few regular audits for accuracy or completeness.
“You’re totally at the whim of what the self-reporting is,” said Tim Doty, a former senior technical adviser at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which is charged with maintaining air quality in what satellite data shows is the nation’s top-flaring state. “Some of the companies are trying to do the right thing, but not all the companies are trying to do the right thing.”
Satellite technology offers a way to gauge the accuracy of self-reported flaring volumes. While it comes with limitations, the technology is generally regarded as the best available, independent tool for measuring flaring volumes, though not one that state and federal regulators have adopted.
The methodology was pioneered in 2012 by Christopher Elvidge, a scientist then working at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It uses satellites equipped with Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite instruments to detect flares from oil and gas operations and estimate the volumes of gas they burn, based on the infrared light they give off. When Elvidge later moved to the Colorado School of Mines’ Earth Observation Group, the program went with him.
Reporters at the Howard Center gathered and analyzed the satellite data for the top-flaring states from 2012 through 2020. They then compared those totals to company-reported flaring volumes collected by regulators in the same states.
There were vast discrepancies across the board.
Some states allow companies to report combined totals for their flaring and venting volumes, making it impossible to draw a meaningful comparison with the flaring-only volumes picked up by satellites. But in Texas, for example, satellite data indicated the volume of flared gas alone was almost double the amount reported for both flared and vented gas—raising questions about underreporting. And in Montana, the companies’ combined flaring and venting volume reports were nearly 150 percent higher than the flaring-only volumes detected by satellites—highlighting the unknowns surrounding venting.
The disparities persisted even in states that require oil and gas operators to separately report flaring and venting volumes, which should allow for a fair comparison against the satellite data. In North Dakota, for instance, satellites detected 25 percent more flaring than was reported by companies. In Wyoming, the discrepancy was roughly the same—but in the opposite direction.
Some of the discrepancies, scientists say, may result from the fact that some states don’t require companies to report every instance of flaring, and that the roving satellites don’t catch every flare, especially small or intermittent ones.
But the fact that company-reported volumes differed dramatically from those of an empirical check indicates that government data is inaccurate or incomplete and that policymakers don’t know the extent of the greenhouse gases resulting from flaring and venting, even as they attempt to craft climate change legislation.
“There’s almost been a kind of tacit agreement that we’ll accept the estimates,” said Barry Rabe, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies public and environmental policy. “Until such time that there’s political or public pressure to make those numbers more accurate, it’s easier just to look the other way.”
The Birthplace of Fracking
Texas has been vital to the United States’ emergence as the top producer of oil and gas. The fracking boom that began in the mid-2000s started in north Texas’ Barnett Shale, following advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling methods. Production has since been driven by development in the southern Eagle Ford Shale and the Permian Basin, which stretches across west Texas into southeastern New Mexico and is the most prolific oil and gas region in the nation.
In 2020, Texas accounted for 43 percent of all oil produced in the U.S. and about a quarter of all natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
But not all of the gas pulled out of the ground is used as fuel. By their tally, companies operating in Texas flared and vented more than 980 billion cubic feet of gas between 2012 and 2020, though satellite estimates indicate the volume of flared gas alone could be almost twice as high.
Texas Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright said he trusts Texas’ oil and gas operators to correctly self-report and dismissed the validity of the satellite data, suggesting it includes heat sources other than flares.
“I am a rancher, and the law still allows me to push my brush, pile it and burn it,” he said in an October interview. “If you go down to where I’m from, every weekend there’s smoke everywhere because we burn brush.”
However, Elvidge and his team of scientists who developed the satellite data methodology say their algorithms filter out heat signatures from sources other than oil and gas flares, including wildfires and flares at coal mines.
Wright is one of the three elected commissioners of Texas’ oil and gas regulatory agency, established 130 years ago when it still oversaw the railroad industry, and one of two who have publicly questioned the reality of climate change.
While campaigning in 2020, Wright questioned whether flaring really harms the planet. “Nobody’s proven to me exactly in pinpoint what is really hurting our atmosphere,” he said during a podcast called “Oil and Gas Startups,” before calling himself an environmentalist.
Christian, the commission chairman, authored a 2018 opinion piece claiming that “the science of climate change is far from settled.”
The Railroad Commission has been criticized for being too close to the industry it regulates. Its three commissioners have accepted donations from members of the oil and gas industry over the course of their political careers totaling from about a half-million dollars to $3 million, according to OpenSecrets, a national campaign finance watchdog.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also received more than $34 million in contributions from members of the oil and gas industry over the span of his political career—far more than any other governor of a top-flaring state. Asked about campaign contributions tied to oil and gas, Greg Abbott’s staff has previously said he represents “all Texans.”
While Texas law does not allow political candidates to accept donations from corporations, it does allow individuals and political action committees to contribute unlimited amounts. Wright, in an email, said he based his decisions “on what I believe is best for the state and our citizens. Period.”
“Upholding the public’s trust, not to mention my own personal integrity, is important to me,” said Wright. “I am committed to following all rules and regulations set forth under state law and administered by the Texas Ethics Commission.”
Fellow commissioner Christi Craddick said she, too, followed Texas Ethics Commission rules. Christian did not respond to a request for comment.
The Railroad Commission has said it supports reducing flaring and that flared and vented volumes are just a fraction of all natural gas produced in the state. In 2020, the commission began requiring companies seeking permits to flare or vent to provide more information justifying that need. In September 2021, it began requiring that flaring volumes be reported separately from venting volumes. Environmental advocates considered that a small sign of progress given the state’s industry-friendly regulations.
Under Texas law, operators can’t flare or vent without a permit unless they’re exempt or authorized under Statewide Rule 32. But that list of allowances is long, including provisions letting operators flare and vent while setting up wells, during repairs and maintenance and for safety reasons.
“If you read Rule 32, it’s just a list of loopholes,” said Cyrus Reed, conservation director for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, a national environmental nonprofit.
For companies that don’t qualify under those exemptions, the Railroad Commission has handed out at least 36,700 permits between 2012 and 2021.
“The Railroad Commission has decided to basically offer anyone who wants a flaring permit, a flaring permit,” said Colin Leyden, Texas political director at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy and scientific research nonprofit. “At the end of the day, if you don’t outlaw routine flaring like other states—Colorado, New Mexico—if you don’t outlaw it as an operational procedure, it will continue.”
Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, said the oil and natural gas industry “is and will continue to be the cornerstone of a cleaner, stronger, better future with lower emissions and less carbon intensity.”
Nearly a dozen Democrat-sponsored bills aimed at reducing flaring or venting—or increasing oversight of the practices—died in committee in the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature during the session that ended in May 2021.
“I’d like to be naive and say if we just lobby harder and if we just educate public officials more, that there would be action here or at the Railroad Commission,” said Reed. “I think that’s naive, given our politics. I think it’s probably going to take federal action.”
A Gray Zone of Flaring
Virginia Palacios, a ranch owner in south Texas, was driving down a bumpy road one blisteringly hot fall afternoon in Encinal, population 601, when she spotted a small, intermittent flare behind a chain-link fence.
The flickering was a sign the flare might not be combusting efficiently, releasing even more methane into the air.
She pulled over and reached for her phone. “I could call the TCEQ about it right now,” she said, referring to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, “and see if they do anything.”
As a founder of Commission Shift, a nonprofit working to hold Texas oil and gas regulators accountable, Palacios had reported suspected malfunctioning flares to the state agency before. While the Texas Railroad Commission has primary jurisdiction over the industry, including prevention of the waste of natural resources, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality regulates air emissions, including those from flaring and venting.
“There’s a flare that’s going—it’s on, but it’s kind of flickering out,” Palacios, who has a master’s degree in environmental management, told the agency operator. “I’m just concerned that it’s not burning all the gas that’s going through.”
In calculating emissions from flare stacks, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assumes a flare’s combustion efficiency is 98 percent unless otherwise determined by its manufacturer.
But as Doty, the former Texas Commission on Environmental Quality technical adviser, noted, unless an agency inspector checks a flare on-site, it’s impossible to know if it’s combusting efficiently. And with “hundreds of thousands of sites” in Texas, Doty said, there were too few inspectors to do that.
“It would take literally an army of people to go do that, even if the state regulatory agencies had the best intentions in mind and … that’s all they focused on,” said Doty, who left the Texas environmental commission after nearly 30 years, claiming the agency wasn’t interested in keeping experienced employees who were vocal about their concerns.
Without more monitoring and enforcement, experts say that flares can exist in a gray area between flaring and venting—with some gas being flared, some being vented and no easy way to tell how much of either.
In a 2020 survey of the Permian Basin, the Environmental Defense Fund found that more than one in 10 flares were only partially combusting or entirely unlit, pushing methane into the atmosphere.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, as well as environmentalists, have used infrared, or optical gas imaging, cameras to detect leaks as well as venting and inefficient flaring, but it’s not easy to deploy them on a large scale. According to Doty, who served as the agency’s optical gas imaging program director, the cameras cost around $100,000 each.
The commission, which would only answer submitted questions, said it had 159 full-time employees who conduct air-quality investigations and are available to respond to air quality complaints. The agency said it had “enough” inspectors to conduct required state and federal air investigations. The commission also said it had 20 infrared cameras for use around the state “to address environmental issues that could affect air quality including those around oil and natural gas related sites.”
While the cameras can detect venting and inefficient flaring, Doty said there are no regulations requiring the state agency to use them that way.
Palacios said she got a call back from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality a day after she filed the complaint from Encinal. The agency told her its infrared cameras were under maintenance, she said, and that an inspector couldn’t investigate the flare for a couple of weeks.
“The system is not designed to detect rule violations or protect public health and the environment,” Palacios said in a follow-up email. “It’s designed to document that the companies are in compliance.”
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has made a public effort to address an increase in emissions from oil and gas facilities in the Permian Basin. In January 2021, it launched the “Find it and Fix it” program to allow oil and gas companies in violation of commission regulations to submit compliance plans. In return, the companies could receive “enforcement discretion” that would consider a company’s efforts in determining any punishment or penalties.
But the program is voluntary and, in a statement to the Howard Center, the agency said just 21 companies had enrolled in the initiative and only 16 had submitted compliance plans. According to an oil and gas directory maintained by the Texas Railroad Commission, there were more than 1,100 companies registered in Midland and Odessa, two of the Permian Basin’s biggest cities, as of October 2021.
Critics say such programs limit accountability while allowing large, unknown volumes of toxic gases into the atmosphere.
“We’re absolutely underestimating,” said Doty. “I can’t even fathom how much we’re underestimating emissions.”
Demographics of Flaring
Sandra Barrera remembers noticing the skunky smell of Odessa, a fracking epicenter in west Texas, when she first drove into town in 2014. The black smoke and emissions from nearby flares concern her.
“Even though oil and gas is great for the economy, it’s also affecting the health of people,” said Barrera, who grew up in Houston. “We’re drinking the water, we’re breathing in the air.”
A February 2021 study of the three major flaring sites in the United States—the Permian, Eagle Ford and Bakken basins in Texas, New Mexico, Montana and North Dakota—sought to understand how many Americans might be exposed to toxic air pollutants, light pollution and noise.
Researchers, led by environmental epidemiologist Lara Cushing, estimated that over a half-million people were living within about three miles of flares, the highest concentration of those in Odessa and nearby Midland, towns in Texas’ Permian Basin.
“We also found that Black, Indigenous and people of color were disproportionately exposed to flaring relative to the white population,” Cushing, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the Howard Center.
In 2020, Cushing and four other researchers published a study on the impact of nightly flaring events on pregnant women living nearby, analyzing 23,487 birth records from 2012 to 2015 in South Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale.
They found that the odds of a preterm birth—a baby being born too early, prior to 37 completed weeks—was higher, Cushing said. “About 50 percent higher among pregnant individuals that lived, had a high—what we considered a high amount—of flaring close to their home,” she added.
This trend was most prevalent among Latino populations, which were exposed to more flares on average than the white population, according to Cushing.
An analysis of U.S. Census and satellite data by the Howard Center revealed similar demographics. In 12 of the 15 Texas counties with the highest satellite-recorded flaring volumes, more than 50 percent of people identified as Latino, nonwhite or multiracial.
Like many environmentalists, public health researchers have also turned to satellite data after finding state-level information on flaring to be inadequate.
“We relied on secondary data source satellite observations, which are great because they’re objective,” said Cushing. “They don’t rely on self-reported information from the industry, but they also have their limitations.”
For example, satellite data can’t explain why women living near flares are experiencing more preterm births, Cushing said. “Is it because of air pollutants that are being released or stress associated with seeing this type of activity in your community, or something else?”
Medical studies specific to flaring are limited because of the lack of state-level data, the limitations of satellite data and the rural nature of areas most often affected. However, the possible health risks of living near oil and natural gas development sites has been clearly established in more than a dozen peer-reviewed studies published between 2012 and 2021, according to a Howard Center review. Those include asthma, heart failure, high blood pressure and cancer.
“How much evidence do you need to take action?” asked Jill Johnston, a research colleague of Cushing’s and an assistant professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “There seems to be this pattern that we’ve seen across multiple states, multiple study designs.”
Cushing said conducting more air monitoring near flares would aid researchers’ understanding of the types of pollutants being released and their impact on rural communities that typically face higher poverty rates and health burdens.
‘The Clock’s Ticking’
Jose Gonzalez knows when the oil and gas industry is booming because the seats in his restaurant in rural La Salle County are full.
“The truth is that I am very happy, because if they do well, we do well too,” said Gonzalez, co-owner of the Country Store restaurant in Cotulla, in Spanish.
Like many local businesses in this small town of about 4,000 in south Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale, Gonzalez said most of his customers work in the oil and gas industry. His restaurant, just off Interstate 35, attracts truck drivers hauling petroleum and natural gas.
La Salle County was transformed after horizontal drilling began in the Eagle Ford Shale in 2008. New homes, hotels and industry-adjacent businesses sprouted up against the backdrop of pump jacks and flare stacks.
The Eagle Ford’s oil production peaked in 2015, when it pushed out nearly 432 million barrels. It also flared more than 92 million cubic feet of natural gas that year, according to a Texas A…M analysis of satellite data.
During this boom, Gonzalez, an immigrant from the northeast Mexican state of Tamaulipas, saw doors open for him and his family. His father started a trucking company to transport sand used for fracking.
Even Palacios concedes how a thriving oil and gas industry can bring life to rural economies. With the construction of new buildings, including a public library and city hall, the boom has improved life in Encinal, her small community south of Cotulla.
But in 2011, Palacios’ family had to sell the livestock on their fourth-generation cattle ranch amid a major drought.
“Oil and gas has kind of taken over as the major industry compared to cattle,” said Palacios. “But in doing that, the emissions from oil and gas development have really affected our ability to earn a sustainable living.”
Scientists say it’s hard to quantify just how much flaring and venting are contributing to global warming, largely because the volume of gas that companies are venting remains a big unknown.
“Right now, there’s a lot of opinions, but not a lot of good measurements,” said Schade, the Texas A…M scientist. He noted that new satellites set to launch in 2022 and 2023 will help scientists quantify how much methane is being released by oil and gas operators, including through venting.
In the meantime, scientists and environmental advocates agree that eliminating routine flaring is among the easiest ways to help combat climate change.
“If we’re looking at the very big and difficult problem of climate emissions,” said Leyden, the Environmental Defense Fund’s Texas political director, “methane from the oil and gas industry as a whole is really a low-hanging fruit. Flaring even more so, because it’s really, simply being driven by profit.”
New Mexico and Colorado have banned routine flaring, and more than a dozen oil and gas companies have pledged to stop through their own initiatives by 2025 or 2030.
But with the lack of good data, scientists and environmental advocates say federal intervention is the only way to comprehensively address flaring, venting and the problems they present. Many want the Biden administration to develop and enforce robust rules that are uniform across states.
“It’s been at least 10 years that we’ve been dealing with this venting and flaring issue in Texas, and Texas regulators have not responded,” Palacios said. “Now, it is time for federal regulators to step in and do something.”
Meanwhile, said Doty, “the clock’s ticking.”
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