01 March 22
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War is reshaping our world. Will we harness that urgency for climate action or succumb to a final, deadly oil and gas boom?
This is not the warm and cozy nostalgia of fuzzily remembered childhood pleasures; it’s an enraged and annihilating nostalgia that clings to false memories of past glories against all mitigating evidence.
All these nostalgia-based movements and figures share a longing for something else, something which may seem unrelated but is not. A nostalgia for a time when fossil fuels could be extracted from the earth without uneasy thoughts of mass extinction, or children demanding their right to a future, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, like the one just released yesterday, that reads, in the words of United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, like an “atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” Putin, of course, leads a petrostate, one that has defiantly refused to diversify its economic dependence on oil and gas, despite the devastating effect of the commodity roller coaster on its people and despite the reality of climate change. Trump is obsessed with the easy money that fossil fuels offer and as president made climate denial a signature policy.
The Canadian truckers, for their part, not only chose idling 18-wheelers and smuggled jerry cans as their protest symbols, but the leadership of the movement is also deeply rooted in the extra-dirty oil of the Alberta tar sands. Before it was the “freedom convoy,” many of these same players staged the dress rehearsal known as United We Roll, a 2019 convoy that combined a zealous defense of oil pipelines, opposition to carbon pricing, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and explicit nostalgia for a white, Christian Canada.
Though petrodollars underwrite these players and forces, it’s critical to understand that oil is a stand-in for a broader worldview, a cosmology deeply entwined with Manifest Destiny and the Doctrine of Discovery, which ranked human as well as nonhuman life inside a rigid hierarchy, with white Christian men at the top. Oil, in this context, is the symbol of the extractivist mindset: not only a perceived God-given right to keep extracting fossil fuels, but also the right to keep taking whatever they want, leave poison behind, and never look back.
This is why the fast-moving climate crisis represents not just an economic threat to people invested in the extractive sectors but also a cosmological threat to the people invested in this worldview. Because climate change is the Earth telling us that nothing is free; that the age of (white, male) human “dominion” has ended; that there is no such thing as a one-way relationship comprised only of taking; that all actions have reactions. These centuries of digging and spewing are now unleashing forces that make even the sturdiest structures created by industrial societies — coastal cities, highways, oil rigs — look vulnerable and frail. And within the extractivist mindset, that is impossible to accept.
Given their common cosmologies, it should come as no surprise that Putin, Trump, and the “freedom convoys” are reaching toward one another across disparate geographies and wildly different circumstances. So Trump praises Canada’s “peaceful movement of patriotic truckers, workers, and families protesting for their most basic rights and liberties”; Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon cheer on Putin while the truckers sport their MAGA hats; Randy Hillier, a member of the Ontario Legislature who is one of the convoy’s loudest supporters, declares on Twitter that “Far more people have … will die from this shot [the Covid vaccines], than in the Russia/Ukraine war.” And how about the Ontario restaurant that last week put on its daily specials board the announcement that Putin “is not occupying Ukraine” but standing up to the Great Reset, the Satanists, and “fighting against the enslavement of humanity.”
These alliances seem deeply weird and unlikely at first. But look a little closer, and it’s clear that they are bound together by an attitude toward time, one that clings to an idealized version of the past and steadfastly refuses to face difficult truths about the future. They also share a delight in the exercise of raw power: the 18-wheeler vs. the pedestrian, the shouted manufactured reality vs. the cautious scientific report, the nuclear arsenal vs. the machine gun. This is the energy currently surging in many different spheres, starting wars, attacking seats of government, and defiantly destabilizing our planet’s life support systems. This is the ethos at the root of so many democratic crises, geopolitical crises, and the climate crisis: a violent clinging to a toxic past and a refusal to face a more entangled and interrelational future, one bounded by the limits of what people and planet can take. It is a pure expression of what the late bell hooks often described, with a playful wink, as “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” — because sometimes all the big guns are needed to describe our world accurately.
The most urgent political task at hand is to put enough pressure on Putin that he sees his criminal invasion of Ukraine as too great a risk to sustain. But that is only the barest of beginnings. “There is a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future on the planet,” said Hans-Otto Portner, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group that organized the landmark report released this week. If there is a uniting political task of our time, it is to provide a comprehensive response to this conflagration of toxic nostalgia. And within a modern world birthed in genocide and dispossession, that requires laying out a vision for a future where we have never been before.
The leadership of our various countries, with very few exceptions, are nowhere near meeting this challenge. Putin and Trump are backward-facing, nostalgic figures, and they have plenty of company on the hard right. Jair Bolsonaro was elected by playing on nostalgia for Brazil’s era of military rule, and the Philippines, alarmingly, is poised to elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as its next president, son of the late dictator who pillaged and terrorized his nation through much of the ’70s and ’80s. But this is not only a right-wing crisis. Many liberal standard bearers are deeply nostalgic figures too, offering as antidotes to surging fascism nothing but warmed-over neoliberalism, openly aligned with the predatory corporate interests — from Big Pharma to big banks — that have shredded living standards. Joe Biden was elected on the comforting promise of a return to pre-Trump normal, never mind that this was the same soil in which Trumpism grew. Justin Trudeau is the younger version of the same impulse: a shallow, attention-economy echo of his father, the late Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. In 2015, Trudeau Jr.’s first statement on the world stage was “Canada is back”; Biden’s, five years later, was “America is back, ready to lead the world.”
We will not defeat the forces of toxic nostalgia with these weak doses of marginally less toxic nostalgia. It’s not enough to be “back”; we are in desperate need of new. The good news is that we know what it looks like to fight the forces enabling imperial aggression, right-wing pseudo-populism, and climate breakdown at the same time. It looks very much like a Green New Deal, a framework to get off fossil fuels by investing in family-supporting unionized jobs doing meaningful work, like building green affordable homes and good schools, starting with the most systematically abandoned and polluted communities first. And that requires moving away from the fantasy of limitless growth and investing in the labor of care and repair.
The Green New Deal — or the Red, Black, and Green New Deal — is our best hope for building a sturdy multiracial working-class coalition, based on finding common ground across divides. It also happens to be the best way to cut off the petrodollars flowing to people like Putin, since green economies that have beat the addiction to endless growth don’t need imported oil and gas. And it’s also how we cut off the oxygen to the pseudo-populism of Trump/Carlson/Bannon, whose bases are expanding because they are far better at harnessing the rage directed at Davos elites than the Democrats, whose leaders, for the most part, are those elites.
Russia’s invasion underlines the urgency of this kind of green transformation, but it also throws up new challenges. Before Russia’s tanks started rolling, we were already hearing that the best way to stop Putin’s aggression is to ramp up fossil fuel production in North America. Within hours of the invasion, every planet-torching project that the climate justice movement had managed to block over the past decade was being frantically rushed back onto the table by right-wing politicians and industry-friendly pundits: every canceled oil pipeline, every nixed gas export terminal, every protected fracking field, every Arctic drilling dream. Since Putin’s war machine is funded with petrodollars, the solution we are told, is to drill, frack, and ship more of our own.
This is all a disaster capitalist charade of the kind of I have written about too many times before. First, China will keep buying Russian oil regardless of what happens in the Marcellus Shale or the Alberta tar sands. Second, the timelines are fantastical. There is no such thing as a short-term fossil fuel play. Every one of the projects being flogged as a solution to dependence on Russian fossil fuels would take years to have an impact and, in order for their sunk costs to make financial sense, the projects would need to stay in operation for decades, in defiance of the increasingly desperate warnings we are receiving from the scientific community.
But of course the push for new fossil projects in North America is not about helping Ukrainians or weakening Putin. The real reason all the old pipe dreams are being dusted off is far more crass: This war has made them vastly more profitable overnight. In the week that Russia invaded Ukraine, the European oil benchmark, Brent crude, reached $105 a barrel, a price not seen since 2014, and it is still hovering above $100 (that’s twice what it was at the end of 2020).
Banks and energy companies are desperate to make the most of this price rally, in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Alberta.
As surely as Putin is determined to reshape Eastern Europe’s post-Cold War map, this power play by the fossil fuel sector stands to reshape the energy map. The climate justice movement has won some very important battles over the last decade. It has succeeded in banning fracking in entire countries, states, and provinces; huge pipelines like Keystone XL have been blocked; so have many export terminals and various Arctic drilling forays. Indigenous leadership has played a central role in nearly every fight. And remarkably, as of this week, $40 trillion worth of endowment and pension funds at over 1,500 institutions have committed to some form of fossil fuel divestment, thanks to a decade of dogged divestment organizing.
But here is a secret our movements often keep even from themselves: Since the price of oil plummeted in 2015, we have been fighting an industry with one hand tied behind its back. That’s because the cheaper, easier-to-access oil and gas is mostly depleted in North America, so the pitched battles over new projects have primarily been over unconventional, costlier to extract sources: fossil fuels trapped in shale rock, or under the seabed in the deep ocean, or under Arctic ice, or the semi-solid sludge of the Alberta tar sands. Many of these new fossil fuel frontiers only became profitable after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, which sent oil prices soaring. Suddenly, it made economic sense to make those multibillion-dollar investments to extract oil from the deep ocean or to turn Alberta’s muddy bitumen into refined oil. The boom years were upon us, with the Financial Times describing the frenzy in tar sands as “north America’s biggest resources boom since the Klondike gold rush.”
However, when the price of oil collapsed in 2015, industry’s determination to keep growing at such a frenetic pace wavered. In some cases, investors weren’t sure they would earn their money back, which led some majors to pull back from the Arctic and the tar sands. And with profits and stock prices down, divestment organizers were suddenly able to make the case that fossil fuel stocks weren’t just immoral, they were a lousy investment, even on capitalism’s own terms.
Well, Putin’s actions have untied the hand behind Big Oil’s back and turned it into a fist.
This explains the recent wave of attacks on the climate movement and on the handful of Democratic politicians who have advanced science-based climate action. Rep. Tom Reed, a Republican from New York, claimed last week, “The United States has the energy resources to knock Russia out of the oil and gas market entirely, but we don’t use those resources because of President Biden’s partisan pandering to the environmental extremists of the Democratic party.”
The precise opposite is true. If governments, many of whom ran promising Green New Deal-like policies over the past decade and half, had actually implemented them, Putin would not be able to flout international law and opinion as he has been doing so flagrantly, secure in the belief that he will still have customers for his increasingly profitable hydrocarbons. The underlying crisis we face is not that North American and Western European countries have failed to build out the fossil fuel infrastructure that would allow it to displace Russian oil and gas; it is that all of us — the U.S., Canada, Germany, Japan — are still consuming obscene and untenable amounts of oil and gas, and indeed of energy, period.
We know the way out of this crisis: Ramp up the infrastructure for renewables, power homes with wind and solar, electrify our transportation systems. And because all energy sources carry ecological costs, we must also reduce demand for energy overall, through greater efficiency, more mass transit, and less wasteful overconsumption. The climate justice movement has been saying this for decades now. The problem is not that political elites have spent too much time listening to so-called environmental extremists, it’s that they have hardly listened to us at all.
Now we find ourselves at a strange moment, when a great deal feels up for grabs. BP announced on Sunday that it will sell off its 20 percent stake in Russian oil giant Rosneft, and others are following its lead. That’s potentially good news for Ukraine, since pressure on this most critical sector will certainly get Putin’s attention. However, we should also be clear that it is likely only happening because BP is planning to take full advantage of the oil and gas frenzy, unleashed by higher prices, in North America and elsewhere. “BP remains confident in the flexibility and resilience of its financial frame,” it reassured market watchers in its press release announcing the Rosneft move.
It’s significant too that BP’s news came within hours of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announcing that his country will build two new import terminals to receive shipments of natural gas, further locking in dependence on fossil fuels in the middle of a climate emergency. The terminals had long been opposed by German environmentalists, yet now they are being pushed through under cover of war, presented as the only way of making up for the gas that Scholz had recently announced would not flow through Nord Stream 2, the newly built pipeline running under the Baltic Sea. That move turned a state-of-the-art piece of fossil fuel infrastructure into an “$11-billion hole in the ground,” in the words of The Globe and Mail’s European bureau chief, Eric Reguly.
Yet it’s not only fossil fuel projects that are being killed and revived. “We are doubling down on renewables,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, announced ahead of Russia’s invasion. “This will increase Europe’s strategic independence on energy.”
Watching these geopolitical chess pieces fly across the board in a matter of days, along with the latest wave of dramatic sanctions against Russian banks and air travel, there are plenty of reasons for dread, including a repeat of measures that punish the poor for the crimes of the rich. But there are flashes of optimism too. What is heartening is less the substance of any individual move than their sheer speed and decisiveness. As in the early months of the pandemic, the response to Russia’s invasion should remind us that despite the complexity of our financial and energy systems, it turns out that they can still be transformed by the decisions of mere mortals.
It’s worth pausing over some of the implications. If Germany can abandon an $11 billion pipeline because it’s suddenly seen as immoral (it always was), then all fossil fuel infrastructure that violates our right to a stable climate should also be up for debate. If BP can walk away from a 20 percent stake in a Russian oil major, what investment cannot be abandoned if it is premised on the destruction of a habitable planet? And if public money can be announced to build gas terminals in the blink of an eye, then it’s not too late to fight for far more solar and wind.
As Bill McKibben wrote in his excellent newsletter last week, Biden could help in this transformation, using powers only available during times of emergency, by invoking the Defense Production Act to build large numbers of electric heat pumps and shipping them to Europe to mitigate the pain of losing Russian gas. That is the creative spirit we need in this moment. Because if we are building new energy infrastructure — and we must — surely it should be the infrastructure of the future, not more toxic nostalgia.
There are many lessons we must take from the trembling moment we are living through. About the dangers of allowing nuclear weapons to proliferate unchecked. About the short-sightedness of shaming once great powers. About the grotesque double standards in Western media about which lands, and which lives, are treated as invadable and disposable. About which forced migrations are treated as crises for the people moving, and which are treated as crises for the countries they are moving to. About the willingness of everyday people to fight for lands — and about whose fights for self-determination and territorial integrity are celebrated as heroic, and whose are cast as terrorist. All of these are lessons we must learn from living through this moment of naked history.
And we must learn this one as well: It is still possible for humans to change the world we have built when life is on the line, and to do it quickly and dramatically. As we were two years ago when the pandemic was first declared, we are in yet another terrifying but highly malleable moment.
War is reshaping our world, but so too is the climate emergency. The question is: Will we harness wartime levels of urgency and action to catalyze climate action, making us all safer for decades to come, or will we allow war to add more fuel to a planet already on fire? That challenge was put most sharply recently by Svitlana Krakovska, a Ukrainian scientist who is part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group that produced this week’s report. Even as her country was under the Kremlin’s attack, she reportedly told her scientific colleagues in a virtual meeting that “Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots, fossil fuels, and our dependence on them.”
Russia’s outrages in Ukraine should remind us that the corrupting influence of oil and gas lies at the root of virtually every force that is destabilizing our planet. Putin’s smug swagger? Brought to you by oil, gas, and nukes. The trucks that occupied Ottawa for a month, harassing residents and filling the air with fumes and inspiring copycat convoys around the word? One of the occupation’s leaders showed up in court a few days ago wearing an “I ♥ Oil and Gas” sweatshirt. She knows who her sponsors are. Covid-denialism and surging conspiracy culture? Hey, once you have denied climate breakdown, denying pandemics, elections, or pretty much any form of objective reality is a light lift.
At this late stage in the debate, much of this is well understood. The climate justice movement has won all the arguments for transformational action. What we risk losing, in the fog of war, is our nerve. Because nothing changes the subject like extreme violence, even violence that is being actively subsidized by the soaring price of oil. To prevent that from happening, we could do far worse than to take inspiration from Krakovska, who apparently told her colleagues at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in that closed-door meeting, “We will not surrender in Ukraine. And we hope the world will not surrender in building a climate-resilient future.” Her words so moved her Russian counterpart, eye witnesses reported, that he broke ranks and apologized for the actions of his government — a brief glimpse of a world looking forward, not back.
The Jan. 6 House select committee is seeking an interview with former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, seen here. (photo: Jabin Botsford/WP)
Deputy White House counsel Jonathan Su wrote letters to Navarro, who served as former President Trump’s trade adviser, and an attorney representing Michael Flynn, Trump’s onetime national security adviser, notifying them of Biden’s decision on Monday.
Biden’s decision was first reported by Axios.
In the letter to Navarro, Su reiterated that Biden believes an assertion of executive privilege is “not in the national interest” given the “unique and extraordinary nature of the matters under investigation.”
In the letter to Flynn’s attorney, David Warrington, Su noted that Flynn, who resigned in 2017 under pressure after less than a month on the job, left the White House long before the Capitol riot.
“To the extent any privileges could apply to General Flynn’s conversations with the former President or White House staff after the conclusion of his tenure, President Biden has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the national interest, and therefore is not justified, with respect to particular subjects within the purview of the Select Committee,” Su wrote.
However, Warrington wrote in a response to Su that Flynn has not made an assertion of executive privilege related to the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena and has not refused to appear for a deposition.
“I do not know whether your letter was prompted by some event, information received, a request by a third-party, or if it is simply the type of letter the White House Counsel’s Office is sending to all former Executive Branch employees who have received such a subpoena,” Flynn’s attorney wrote, according to a letter obtained by The Hill. “We certainly did not ask for such a letter.”
The panel subpoenaed Navarro, who served in the White House until the end of the Trump administration, last month. Navarro has pledged to fight the subpoena in court.
On Tuesday, Navarro provided The Hill with the email response he sent to Su. In it, Navarro asserted that it was “fanciful and dangerous to assert that a sitting president can revoke the Executive Privilege of his predecessor.”
“You and the Biden regime along with partisan judges and the witch hunt otherwise known as the Jan 6 committee are doing great violence to the Constitution and the country,” Navarro wrote in the message. “See you at the Supreme Court.”
The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed Flynn along with a handful of other Trump associates in November.
Flynn was subpoenaed about a December meeting at the White House where they discussed using national emergency power to seize voting equipment.
Biden has previously rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege over White House documents the committee has requested from the former president’s tenure, most recently ordering the National Archives to turn over visitor logs to the Jan. 6 panel.
Trump pursued legal action to block the committee’s access to the documents, but the Supreme Court declined his request to block the documents and turned away his appeal last month.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). (photo: AP)
Reps. Andrew Clyde, Thomas Massie, and Chip Roy were the only House members who opposed The Emmett Till Antilynching Act
In explaining his “no” vote, Massie wrote in a Twitter thread that designating enhanced penalties “for ‘hate’ tends to endanger other liberties such as freedom of speech.” He also argued that lynching is illegal in all states already.
Roy issued a statement Tuesday explaining his decision. “Lynching is an unspeakably heinous crime,” he said. “But this bill doesn’t have anything to do with lynching, other than its name.” He called the bill “an effort to advance a woke agenda under the guise of correcting racial injustice” and said it is a “matter for the states.”
A representative for Clyde did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone.
In a statement following the bill’s passage, Rep. Bobby L. Rush, who introduced the bill, recalled the killing of Emmett Till. Till, a 14 year-old child, was killed in 1955 by a group that accused him of flirting with a white woman. “I was eight years old when my mother put the photograph of Emmett Till’s brutalized body that ran in Jet magazine on our living room coffee table, pointed to it, and said, ‘This is why I brought my boys out of Albany, Georgia,’” Rush said. “That photograph shaped my consciousness as a black man in America, changed the course of my life, and changed our nation.”
Rush on Twitter called out the three Republicans who voted against the legislation, noting that Roy once described lynching as “an example of justice.”
Roy’s remarks came last year during a hearing about Asian-American hate crimes. “We believe in justice. There’s old sayings in Texas about ‘find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree,’” he said. “You know, we take justice very seriously, and we ought to do that. Round up the bad guys. That’s what we believe.”
Many Democrats condemned his comments, with Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa calling his words “a white supremacist dog whistle you can spot from a mile away.”
Asked to clarify his statement, Roy doubled down. “Apparently some folks are freaking out that I used an old expression about finding all the rope in Texas and a tall oak tree about carrying out justice against bad guys. I meant it. We need more justice and less thought policing,” he said, adding, “No apologies.”
The House voted to pass a version of Till Antilynching Act in 2020 (with four House Republicans, including Massie, voting against it). It then went to the Senate where it was held up by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Paul argued that making lynching a hate crime might lead to people being sentenced too harshly. “This bill would cheapen the meaning of lynching by defining it so broadly as to include a minor bruise or abrasion,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor. “Our national history of racial terrorism demands more seriousness of us than that.”
Lynching was used in the 19th and 20th centuries as a “popular way of resolving some of the anger that whites had in relation to free blacks,” according to the NAACP. Records kept by the organization counted 4,743 lynchings in the U.S. between 1882 and 1968, although historians believe the actual number of lynchings has been underreported. Most victims, approximately 72 percent, were black, but immigrants and other people of color were also victims of lynching.
Numerous anti-lynching bills have been introduced to Congress since a 1918 anti-lynching bill, the Dyer Bill, was introduced to Congress but blocked by a Senate filibuster.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov attends a news conference following talks with his Italian counterpart Luigi Di Maio in Moscow, Russia, February 17, 2022. (photo: Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)
The boycott by envoys from the European Union, the United States, Britain and others left only a few diplomats in the room including Russia's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov, who is a former deputy to Lavrov. Envoys from Syria, China and Venezuela were among delegations that stayed.
Lavrov was addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council remotely, after cancelling his visit due to what the Russian mission said on Monday were EU states blocking his flight path.
Neutral Switzerland also imposed financial sanctions on Lavrov on Monday, a measure of the international revulsion over an invasion Russia describes as a "special military operation" aimed at dislodging "neo-Nazis" ruling Ukraine. read more
In his speech, Lavrov accused the EU of engaging in a "Russophobic frenzy" by supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine during Moscow's military campaign that began last Thursday.
A Russian armoured column bore down on Ukraine's capital Kyiv on Tuesday and invasion forces fired rocket barrages into the centre of Kharkiv, the country's second largest city, on the sixth day of Russia's assault on its neighbour.
'SHOW OF SUPPORT'
Among the diplomats who walked out, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly and Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod joined Ukraine's ambassador Yevheniia Filipenko behind a large Ukrainian blue and yellow flag.
"It is a remarkable show of support for Ukrainians who are fighting for their independence," Filipenko told reporters.
Filipenko said there had been "massive destruction to civilian infrastructure" in Kharkiv, adding: "The maternity wards are being attacked, civilian residential buildings are being bombed."
Russia denies targeting any civilian sites.
Canada's Joly said: "Minister Lavrov was giving his version, which is false, about what is happening in Ukraine and so that's why we wanted to show a very strong stance together."
Later on Tuesday Canada will petition the International Criminal Court over what Joly said were Russia's "crimes against humanity and war crimes".
She was referring to the Hague-based court where the office of the ICC prosecutor on Monday said it would seek court approval to open an investigation into alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
The U.S. envoy to the Human Rights Council, Michele Taylor, said in a statement: "This Russian war of aggression will have profound implications for human rights in Ukraine and Russia, and the leaders of Russia will be held accountable."
Abortion rights advocates demonstrating in front of the Supreme Court in November. (photo: Tom Brenner/NYT)
"I just remember laughing to myself because I was like, wow, for as responsible as I think I am all the time, I had no idea that I was pregnant — and that late," says Anna. NPR is only using her first name because of the sensitivity of her story.
Doctors in Texas have been warning that S.B. 8 would make it harder for them to treat medical crises and would endanger their patients. Six months in, many say those predictions are coming true.
"I don't want to be talking about this at all," says Anna, who lives in central Texas. "But it's important to share this story. Because somebody is going to die eventually."
The law bans most abortions as soon as any cardiac activity can be detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy, or about two weeks after a missed period. Most women don't know they're pregnant at that point.
For Anna, there would have been little to no time to get an abortion in Texas by the time she discovered her pregnancy. She and Scott were open to having a baby, even if a bit sooner than they might have planned, so they moved up their wedding plans to December.
When their wedding day arrived, Anna was 19 weeks pregnant. And she was in her wedding dress, getting makeup done with her bridesmaids, when she noticed something was wrong.
"It felt like something was coming out of me. So I freaked out. I literally wet my dress in the seat that I was in," she says.
Anna had to race against time
Anna's water had broken too early for the baby to survive. She and Scott spent the night of their wedding in the ER, trying to take in the heartbreaking news.
"Basically the doctor looked at me and was like, well, the baby's underdeveloped," says Anna. "Even with the best NICU care in the world, they're not going to survive."
And as painful as it was to hear that, the doctors told Anna there was another urgent concern.
"'You're at a high chance of going septic or bleeding out,'" she says the doctors told her — a risk of infection or hemorrhage, which could become deadly. "'And unfortunately we recommend termination, but we cannot provide you one here in Texas because of this law.'"
In Anna's situation, a patient would normally be offered two options: wait and watch for signs of danger; or terminate the pregnancy, which is usually the safest option and most guaranteed to preserve future fertility.
But under Texas law, abortions are only allowed at that stage for severe medical emergencies, defined as when a patient is "in danger of death or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function."
And because fetal heart tones were detectable, doctors told Anna they couldn't offer her that option.
Patients face a heartbreaking choice
It's impossible to know how many patients and doctors are having similar conversations in Texas. Many are feeling frustration and disbelief as they navigate in the new legal environment.
Also creating complications is that the law contains no exception for pregnancies conceived through rape or incest, creating wrenching situations for patients whose lives have already been rattled by trauma.
Dr. Andrea Palmer, an OB-GYN in Fort Worth, recently took care of a woman who discovered she was pregnant after being drugged and raped at a party. Before the assault, she and her husband had been trying for a baby.
"She found out she was pregnant and was not able to discern whether the baby was the product of consensual sex with her husband or the product of her sexual assault," says Palmer.
Genetic testing could have answered that question, but not in time to legally get an abortion close to home. Palmer says her patient couldn't afford to travel out of state and didn't want to risk waiting and finding out the worst. So she got an early abortion in Texas while it was still legal.
"The thought of carrying something in your body and raising a baby that could have been by a man who was sadistic and sick and awful enough to drug and rape a complete stranger? I just cannot imagine that somebody who claims to have love in their heart would ever wish that particular bit of hell on another human being," says Palmer.
Her patient gave permission to share her story anonymously, so people could hear how complicated and difficult these decisions can be.
Anti-abortion-rights advocates say it's mainly a problem of understanding the law
"Yeah, I mean it's, it's absolutely horrific," says John Seago. He's the legislative director with Texas Right to Life, which helped push S.B. 8 through the state legislature last year. He says even though he feels for Anna and for Palmer's patient, the law's supporters believe that abortion is an "act of injustice," no matter what.
"Even in the worst circumstances, another act of violence on an innocent victim is not the best solution that we have," he says.
Seago says when it comes to medical emergencies, medical associations should do more to help doctors understand what's allowed under the law.
"It seems politically advantageous for some of these groups that oppose the bill, and oppose all pro-life legislation, to just say this is unreasonable," he says.
Groups including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have opposed S.B. 8. They say the law is vaguely worded, leaves providers vulnerable to being sued and puts patients at risk.
Dr. John Thoppil, president of the Texas Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, says medical groups have provided as much guidance as they can.
"I think the interpretation of the bill, through multiple layers, has been fantastically communicated, but that doesn't make the bill any better," he says. "This might help you say, 'I might win the lawsuit,' but it doesn't prevent the lawsuit."
Doctors are operating in a climate of fear
Molly Duane, an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is challenging the law, says providers also are "extremely and understandably fearful" of providing abortions even in medical emergencies because of the law's design, which allows individuals to enforce it through civil suits.
"A physician who made that determination in the moment would be doing so knowing that if someone second-guessed their judgment, [anyone] could file a lawsuit saying that you violated S.B. 8.," she says.
In the emergency room on their wedding night, Anna and Scott say the doctors appeared nervous and concerned, but could do little to help them.
"I remember being like, what, why can't you just do this?" says Anna. "They couldn't even say the word 'abortion.' I could see the fear in these doctors' eyes that they were just so scared to even talk about it."
"They were typing stuff out on their phones and showing it to us," adds Scott, saying that the doctors were afraid to even be overheard helping them plan an abortion.
The next day, Anna's OB-GYN needed a plan to get Anna to a place where she could get the procedure as quickly as possible. They ruled out some nearby states, including Oklahoma and Arkansas, with mandatory waiting periods as long as three days.
"So there's two options," says Scott. "There's New Mexico and there's Colorado. Would we rather have her go into labor on a plane or like, out by Midland in a car?"
"And I said absolutely not," says Anna's doctor, who spoke with NPR on the condition of anonymity over fears of facing lawsuits. "Because west Texas is at least 8 or 9 hours of desert. Sometimes you have hours with no cell phone reception, no gas station ... in the middle of a medical crisis. So I requested she at least take a flight. And make it a direct flight if possible."
But Anna says that plan came with its own set of risks. There's a lump in her throat as she talks about what could have happened on the plane.
"I had to come up with a game plan with my OB in case I went into labor on the flight. And I made sure that I bought us front row seats so I could be close to the bathroom in case it happened. And I'm like, no one should ever have to do that."
But even through tears, Anna says she knows she was lucky to have several thousand dollars in savings to cover the cost — and to get an appointment in Colorado at all.
Clinics in nearby states are stretched thin
Clinics across the region say they're struggling to accommodate the surge in demand from patients from Texas, the nation's second most populous state. And they're fearful that many more states could implement similar laws if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns decades of precedent guaranteeing abortion rights.
"Texas is a very large state. So you have numerous people trying to get care elsewhere," says Kari White, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin. She's been researching patients who've left Texas for abortions since S.B. 8 took effect.
"There are not very many clinics in the states that surround Texas," she says. "And they're already serving the patients that live in that state, as well as sometimes in neighboring states."
White says the supply and demand problem is only likely to get worse. A major abortion case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in 1973, opening the door to many more restrictions around the country. The Mississippi law at the center of the current case would ban most abortions after 15 weeks — four weeks earlier than when Anna was searching for an appointment in a neighboring state.
"People may not be able to go to Oklahoma or Louisiana four months from now, because care may not be available in those states either," White says.
Lawmakers in states such as Oklahoma, Florida and Ohio are sponsoring bills modeled after the one in Texas. Meanwhile, states including California and Vermont are taking steps to expand abortion access, hoping to increase their ability to take in patients like Anna from around the country.
Since her ordeal, Anna says she fears for the lives of other women.
"I've never in my life felt like I didn't matter, that my life was expendable," she says, but "I did in that moment."
She's especially worried about families without the resources to travel long distances for potentially life-saving treatment.
"I have a savings account and a job that I could have made this happen for myself," she says. "There's plenty of other people on this planet with uteruses who could not have done that. And what would they have done? Would they have just died? I think about that all the time."
'It is painfully clear to us that this war is absolutely pointless.' Russians protest in Moscow against the war in Ukraine. (photo: Kommersant Photo Agency/REX/Shutterstock)
When sanctions bite and hard times hit the country, people will lose their fear. Then Putin will be finished
People are saying they feel guilty about being Russian. People are burning their passports on camera. Hell, I posted: “I am Russian but Putin is not my president.”
But there are far fewer people actually out protesting. You have to understand that ordinary people in Russia are scared out of their minds. On the first day of the conflict, almost 1,000 protesters were jailed across Russia for walking outside with as little as a piece of paper that said: “I don’t want war.” According to the independent media source OVD-info, in the first four days of the war more than 5,200 people were arrested.
My friend spent time in jail for walking down the same street as the protesters. A professor of sociology, Grigory Yudin, was arrested in the centre of Moscow and reportedly beaten up in the back of an autozak (police bus).
There are now more police teams than I can count – with new names such as Rosgvardiya (Russia’s internal military force) – and they are ruthless. These forces were created several years ago specifically to wander the streets of Moscow (and other cities) and prevent anything “suspicious” from happening.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re an 18-year-old kid or a pregnant middle-aged woman, they’ll beat you up, put you in a wagon and take you in for questioning. When you have a former KGB agent in charge, you have a country that functions as an enormous jail.
It is painfully clear to us that this war is absolutely pointless. Putin is using false history lessons, lamenting the fall of the Soviet Union, and making claims about Nato advancing its forces simply to justify his own madness. I believe that the true answer to the question people ask on social media – “how did we get to this?” – is that Putin is insane.
I don’t know when or why this happened. Maybe it’s his age. Maybe his isolation during the pandemic caused him to question his legacy. I could believe anything now.
When my wife, who is Ukrainian, and I woke up last Thursday in our Dubai hotel room, our whole world had turned upside down. We turned on Putin’s televised address about the military operation. Twenty minutes later, we turned it off. We were scared by the vagueness of his report. What was a “special military operation”? Was this really a declaration of the third world war? We were disgusted by the theatrical performance of a president we had never chosen. We were even more disgusted by the thought that most people in Russia would believe him.
There’s a huge divide of opinions between the “New Russians” – my generation, people born in the 1990s, who never lived in Soviet times – and the older generation. Not one of my friends back home believes that Putin wasn’t planning this war for some time. The older Russians are fed lies by TV and other media to convince them that what Putin is doing is justifiable.
The big problem is that there is no coherent ideology in Russia. There is no shared way of interpreting the world. Instead, the simplistic idea that has become prevalent is a story of “us v them”. It’s extremely easy to sell and it gets votes. That’s the agenda that Putin has been pushing for the past decade or so.
He says that Ukraine is an enemy that is historically part of Russia but sold itself to Nato, or that everyone in the world is the US’s puppet.
These ideas are so contagious. When you try to reason with an average person in Russia, they might say something like: “The TV is right and you’re wrong. Also – you’re probably an agent of the CIA.” Many people live in ever-present fear and it’s easier for them to believe what they’re told. Standing outside the crowd can cost you your freedom.
None of my younger Russian friends around the globe are surprised. We’re so used to feeling disappointed and embarrassed by our government that we barely feel shame any more. Like children of abusive parents, after so many years we forget what’s normal and what’s not. We simply sigh, shake our heads, and say: “Well, what did you expect?” The “global Russians”, as we call ourselves, long ago gave up on the prospect of having a country and government we’d be proud of.
I can’t help but be reminded of the Soviet war with Afghanistan: 15,000 Russian deaths. Nine years of combat. My mother told me stories of her former classmates, people she actually knew, arriving back in coffins. It was a totally pointless endeavour that cost Leonid Brezhnev the entire economy and helped contribute to the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Putin, who is so keen on history, is unknowingly digging his own grave. With Russia cut off from Swift and facing sanctions from the EU, the US, and the UK, it’ll take only a few years before it runs into extremely hard times. And when it does, people will not be afraid any more. If history teaches us anything, it’s that people – even ones as stubborn and patient as the Russians – will not tolerate a lack of food. When the money runs out, so will Putin’s clock.
And we – the new generation of Russians – will be waiting.
'The case, which relies on a concept known as Rights of Nature, is an important test of what Indigenous law experts say could become a powerful tool for tribes to defend their sovereignty and the non-human relatives.' (photo: Getty Images/Grist)
A legal battle between Seattle and the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe could test the Rights of Nature movement.
For over a century, salmon populations have been declining in the Skagit River in Northwest Washington State and the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe say three hydroelectric dams are responsible. Last year the tribe sued the City twice over the dams, first claiming Seattle is engaged in “greenwashing” by calling the project the “Nation’s greenest utility,” despite strong contradictory evidence. Then again claiming the city violated Federal and state law by refusing to install fish passages. Neither has led to any increased protections for salmon.
But with the dams in question in the midst of a relicensing process that could extend their life by another fifty years, Fiander realized he had a fresh opportunity to fight back, and in January, he filed a third lawsuit, this time with a new strategy. In Sauk-Suiattle Tribal Court, he sued Seattle on behalf of salmon, Tsuladxw in the Sauk-Suiattle language, alleging that the city’s hydroelectric dams violate the salmon’s rights.
“Tsuladxw, our relatives under on water, are the most important cultural and sacred food of the Sahkuméhu [Sauk-Suiattle people] and have been a part of our traditional stories, teachings, lifeways and spirituality since the earliest times to the present day,” the complaint reads. “For the Sahkuméhu, Tsuladxw is sentient like all living creatures and they are our relations.”
The lawsuit seeks declaratory relief that salmon have the inherent right to “flourish”, that the Tribe has a right and responsibility to protect salmon, and that the city is engaged in intentional violation of these rights.
“Tsuladxw depends on clean, abundant fresh flowing waters and the nutrients they carry and which important and essential natural ecosystem resources have been under constant threat from defendant’s activities,” the complaint continues.
The case, which relies on a concept known as Rights of Nature, is an important test of what Indigenous law experts say could become a powerful tool for tribes to defend their sovereignty and the non-human relatives. Rights of Nature laws acknowledge that animals, water, and their ecosystems have inherent rights that must be protected and are equivalent to fundamental human rights like the right to exist freely and safely. They also acknowledge that ecosystems and animals with Rights of Nature are entitled to legal representation by groups with knowledge and investment in their protection.
The Sauk-Suiattle believe it is their responsibility to protect salmon. In response, Seattle has sued the Tribe back, arguing that the Sauk-Suiattle Tribal court has no jurisdiction over the city.
The growing rights of nature movement codifies beliefs that many Indigenous communities have held for thousands of years. But in the United States, they’re raising bigger questions: Can Indigenous worldviews help protect the environment? And will the American legal system let them?
For hundreds of years, treaty law – legally binding agreements negotiated between Indigenous nations and the United States – has been the primary law governing relationships between tribal, state and federal governments. In many cases, treaties created property rights, service obligations, and retained crucial rights to land, hunting and fishing. Most treaties were signed under duress, meaning tribes had to accept less than ideal terms, but the Constitution holds that treaties are the “the supreme law of the land”, and for generations, have been one of the only legal options tribes have been able to employ. Experts say Rights of Nature may offer a new legal avenue to Indigenous nations.
In 2006, Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania, became the first known community to pass a rights of nature law after giving legal rights to the local ecosystem in order to ban hazardous waste dumping. Thomas Linzey, senior legal counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, helped craft the law, and since then, countries and communities around the world have adopted similar Rights of Nature laws to protect the environment.
In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to recognize the rights of Pachamama, or Mother Nature, in its constitution. And three years later, the law became the basis of a lawsuit against a company dumping construction waste in a river. Largely led by Indigenous communities, other countries like Colombia and New Zealand have also adopted Rights of Nature laws.
In 2018, the White Earth Band of Ojibwa recognized the rights of Manoomin, or wild rice, to “exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve, as well as inherent rights to restoration, recovery, and preservation.” Rights of Manoomin, which means “good berry,” was the first Tribal law to grant legal rights to a plant or animal.
“In our culture, wild rice is the most significant, central part of our culture. It’s the most central part of our spirituality,” said Frank Bibeau, attorney for the White Earth Ojibwe.
In 2021, White Earth sued the State of Minnesota on behalf of Manoomin to stop Enbridge, a Canadian energy company, from using billions of gallons of water in its construction of an oil pipeline. Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline expansion has met fierce resistance from the Ojibwe and other Indigenous and non-Indigenous land and water protectors. Over its fifty-four year history, the pipeline has suffered from a series of oil spills, including a 1991 incident that was the worst inland oil spill in US history. The lawsuit was the first attempt by a Tribe to enforce a rights of nature law and is currently awaiting a decision from a Federal Appeals court that will decide if it will be heard in Tribal court. The decision could impact the Sauk-Suiattle case and other tribal Rights of Nature cases, but differences in treaties and state laws mean that each case faces its own unique circumstances and challenges.
Bibeau believes that Rights of Nature lawsuits have the potential to shift the balance of power between tribes and state governments when it comes to environmental protection and create a situation where states like Washington and Minnesota opt to negotiate with tribes out of a desire to avoid litigation. “If you want our consent then you’re going to have to start making things better and cleaner and show us that,” he said. “We just can’t let it happen.”
In the Sauk-Suiattle case, Bibeau sees a potential turning point for the Rights of Nature movement in the United States. People have a visceral reaction to dying salmon, Bibeau says, that can help them understand a concept like Rights of Nature in a way that something more obscure like wild rice cannot. Because of this, he says the case has the potential to bring even more attention to the legal concept of Rights of Nature. “I suspect that the model that Sauk-Suiattle is using will become the real template for most of the Indian tribes because everybody knows that a fish needs clean water,” he explained. “Everybody knows what a thousand dead fish look like and they immediately jump to the conclusion that there’s something wrong with that water.”
Matthew Fletcher is Director of the Indigenous Law … Policy Center at Michigan State University and member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. “Treaty law is the law of the colonizer. It’s American law. This is what the United States is willing to accept and acknowledge. And on a fundamental level, it’s not enough. So the tribes are adopting a theory that’s rooted in their cultures,” Fletcher said.
The litigation between the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe and the city comes as Seattle City Light navigates a years-long relicensing process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The current 30-year license expires in April 2025. The new application, if granted, could extend the license as long as 50 years. At a minimum, the Sauk-Suiattle hope that a new license will provide better fish protections, but without a license, the dams could be removed.
The Sauk-Suiattle lawsuit claims that three dams – The Diablo, Gorge, and Ross Dams – are harming salmon populations. The dams make up the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project in Northwest Washington State, about 100 miles from Seattle, which provides roughly 20% of the city’s total electricity. Unlike many other hydroelectric dams, these three do not include pathways for fish to move around the massive structures.
The dams limit the flow of water, which reduces the flow of nutrients and other vital aspects of the river’s ecosystem, says Fiander, and is especially catastrophic for species like salmon, which rely on those areas to spawn. Tribes and other environmental groups also allege that the dams prevent salmon from reaching upstream parts of the river that they could before the dams were built. However, Seattle City Light claims that those parts of the river were already difficult for salmon to access due to natural impediments.
Since the dams’ last relicense in 1995, three fish that call the area home — chinook salmon, steelhead, and bull trout — have been listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. Orcas, which rely on salmon as a food source, are also endangered. Jack Fiander, the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe’s legal counsel, says that these ripple effects are a perfect illustration of why Rights of Nature laws are important. Rights of Nature, he says, are an acknowledgement that everything is connected. Protecting salmon helps protect the river, the orcas, and the people living near them. “It’s not meant to be mystical,” he said.
Fiander says that relicensing is an existential crisis for both salmon and the Tribe. “If these three dams get licensed for another 50 years without some consideration or requirement of getting fish past those dams to access habitats, the salmon in that river are probably going to be extinct in ten years,” he said.
But Chris Townsend, Director of Natural Resources and Hydro Licensing for Seattle City Light, disputes claims that City Light is not doing enough to protect salmon. “The Skagit River is one of the healthiest runs of Chinook left in Puget Sound. Particularly the area just below our dam. So we’ve been doing something right with the flows,” he said.
Fiander maintains that the salmon are clearly suffering from the dams. “The dams provide electricity, but they are blocking all kinds of nutrients and sediments behind them that the river needs for its life,” he said, adding that just one fish passage could make a huge difference for salmon.
Townsend, however, said that it is too early in the process to say what measures are required to protect the river and its wildlife. “Those decisions have to be based on science,” he said.
Debra Smith, the general manager of City Light, has said that the utility is committed to building fish passage if the regulatory agencies indicate that it is necessary while Townsend says that City Light is open to a conversation about Rights of Nature. “We look forward to the point when we can talk and coordinate with the Tribes more directly when the lawsuits have been resolved and we hope that that will be soon,” he said.
Fiander says that despite City Light’s public statements, they are not negotiating in good faith and are trying to overwhelm him with corporate legal tactics.
After criticism of its initial study plan, City Light’s revised study plan was approved, with some modifications, by FERC in July 2021. The new plan proposed 33 studies related to flood risk, fish population, water quality, and more. City Light will release its initial report findings at the beginning of March. The final application is due April 2023.
Other Tribes and environmental groups have also pushed back on City Light’s environmental claims. The Upper Skagit, who share treaty rights to Skagit River with the Sauk-Suiattle and the Swinomish Tribe, have also resisted City Light’s plans, asking for a study to consider removing Gorge Dam.
Tribal advocates see the city’s efforts to fight the Tribe as evidence that they are not prioritizing the project’s environmental impact. “If Seattle was behaving in an environmentally ethical manner, they would address the Tribe’s claims in a serious manner,” Matthew Fletcher said.
The Tribe is currently awaiting Federal court ruling on their litigation, like the White Earth Ojibwe. Win or lose, Frank Bibeau believes the cases are an important step toward getting the U.S. legal system to embrace Rights of Nature. “It’s probably the most powerful tool we’ll ever have. And that may be all the power we need if we can just get it harnessed and use it as a shield and a sword to make the state operate in a better way for everybody,” he said.
For Jack Fiander, the case rests on the simple concept that salmon deserve the right to live and be defended. As long as that right is at risk, the Sauk-Suiattle will continue doing everything they can to protect salmon and the river. “Certain animals in nature are connected to us and are sentient beings,” he said. “It’s something I was taught since childhood.”
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