Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price

Via an unprecedented wave of lawsuits, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for the devastation caused by fossil fuels

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Chris McGreal

Wed 30 Jun 2021 03.00 EDT

After a century of wielding extraordinary economic and political power, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for driving the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes.

An unprecedented wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US, aim to hold the oil and gas industry to account for the environmental devastation caused by fossil fuels – and covering up what they knew along the way.

Coastal cities struggling to keep rising sea levels at bay, midwestern states watching “mega-rains” destroy crops and homes, and fishing communities losing catches to warming waters, are now demanding the oil conglomerates pay damages and take urgent action to reduce further harm from burning fossil fuels.

But, even more strikingly, the nearly two dozen lawsuits are underpinned by accusations that the industry severely aggravated the environmental crisis with a decades-long campaign of lies and deceit to suppress warnings from their own scientists about the impact of fossil fuels on the climate and dupe the American public.

The environmentalist Bill McKibben once characterized the fossil fuel industry’s behavior as “the most consequential cover-up in US history”. And now for the first time in decades, the lawsuits chart a path toward public accountability that climate activists say has the potential to rival big tobacco’s downfall after it concealed the real dangers of smoking.

“We are at an inflection point,” said Daniel Farber, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment.

“Things have to get worse for the oil companies,” he added. “Even if they’ve got a pretty good chance of winning the litigation in places, the discovery of pretty clear-cut wrong doing – that they knew their product was bad and they were lying to the public – really weakens the industry’s ability to resist legislation and settlements.”

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For decades, the country’s leading oil and gas companies have understood the science of climate change and the dangers posed by fossil fuels. Year after year, top executives heard it from their own scientists whose warnings were explicit and often dire.

In 1979, an Exxon study said that burning fossil fuels “will cause dramatic environmental effects” in the coming decades.

“The potential problem is great and urgent,” it concluded.

But instead of heeding the evidence of the research they were funding, major oil firms worked together to bury the findings and manufacture a counter narrative to undermine the growing scientific consensus around climate science. The fossil fuel industry’s campaign to create uncertainty paid off for decades by muddying public understanding of the growing dangers from global heating and stalling political action.

The urgency of the crisis is not in doubt. A draft United Nations report, leaked last week, warns that the consequences of the climate crisis, including rising seas, intense heat and ecosystem collapse, will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades even if fossil fuel emissions are curbed.

To investigate the lengths of the oil and gas industry’s deceptions – and the disastrous consequences for communities across the country – the Guardian is launching a year-long series tracking the unprecedented efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry to account.

The legal process is expected to take years. Cities in California filed the first lawsuits back in 2017, and they have been tied down by disputes over jurisdiction, with the oil companies fighting with limited success to get them moved from state to federal courts where they think the law is more favorable.

But climate activists see opportunities long before verdicts are rendered in the US. The legal process is expected to add to already damning revelations of the energy giants’ closely-held secrets. If history is a guide, those developments could in turn alter public opinion in favor of regulations that the oil and gas companies spent years fighting off.

A string of other recent victories for climate activists already points to a shift in the industry’s power.

Last month, a Dutch court ordered Shell to cut its global carbon emissions by 45% by the end of the decade. The same day, in Houston, an activist hedge fund forced three new directors onto the board of the US’s largest oil firm, ExxonMobil, to address climate issues. Investors at Chevron also voted to cut emissions from the petroleum products it sells.

Earlier this month, developers of the Keystone XL pipeline cancelled the project after more than a decade of unrelenting opposition over environmental concerns. And although a federal court last year threw out a lawsuit brought by 21 young Americans who say the US government violated their constitutional rights by exacerbating climate change, the Biden administration recently agreed to settlement talks in a symbolic gesture aimed to appease younger voters.

For all that, American lawyers say the legal reasoning behind foreign court judgements are unlikely to carry much sway in the US and domestic law is largely untested. In 2018, a federal court knocked back New York City’s initial attempt to force Big Oil to cover the costs of the climate crisis by saying that its global nature requires a political, not legal, remedy.

Other regional lawsuits are inching their way through the courts. From Charleston, South Carolina, to Boulder, Colorado, and Maui, Hawaii, communities are seeking to force the industry to use its huge profits to pay for the damage and to oblige energy companies to treat the climate crisis for what it is – a global emergency.

Municipalities such as Imperial Beach, California – the poorest city in San Diego county with a budget less than Exxon chief executive’s annual pay – faces rising waters on three sides without the necessary funding to build protective barriers. They claim oil companies created a “public nuisance” by fuelling the climate crisis. They seek to recover the cost of repairing the damage and constructing defences.

The public nuisance claim, also pursued by Honolulu, San Francisco, and Rhode Island, follows a legal strategy with a record of success in other types of litigation. In 2019, Oklahoma’s attorney general won compensation of nearly half a billion dollars against the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson over its false marketing of powerful prescription painkillers on the grounds it created a public nuisance by contributing to the opioid epidemic in the state.

Other climate lawsuits, including one filed in Minnesota, allege the oil firms’ campaigns of deception and denial about the climate crisis amount to fraud. Minnesota is suing Exxon, Koch Industries, and an industry trade group for breaches of state law for deceptive trade practices, false advertising, and consumer fraud over what the lawsuit characterizes as distortions and lies about climate science.

The midwestern state, which has seen temperatures rise faster than the US and global averages, said scorching temperatures and “mega-rains” have devastated farming and flooded people out of their homes, with low income and minority families most at risk.

Minnesota’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, claims in his lawsuit that for years Exxon orchestrated a campaign to bury the evidence of environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels “with disturbing success”.

“Defendants spent millions on advertising and public relations because they understood that an accurate understanding of climate change would affect their ability to continue to earn profits by conducting business as usual,” Ellison said in his lawsuit.

Farber said cases rooted in claims that the petroleum industry lied have the most promising chance of success.

“To the extent the plaintiffs can point to misconduct, like telling everybody there’s no such thing as climate change when your scientists have told you the opposite, that might give the courts a greater feeling of comfort that they’re not trying to take over the US energy system,” he said.

Fighting the facts

Almost all the lawsuits draw on the oil industry’s own records as the foundation for claims that it covered up the growing threat to life caused by its products.

Shell, like other oil companies, had decades to prepare for those consequences after it was forewarned by its own research. In 1958, one of its executives, Charles Jones, presented a paper to the industry’s trade group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), warning about increased carbon emissions from car exhaust. Other research followed through the 1960s, leading a White House advisory committee to express concern at “measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate” by the year 2000.

API’s own reports flagged up “significant temperature changes” by the end of the twentieth century.

The largest oil company in the US, Exxon, was hearing the same from its researchers.

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Year after year, Exxon scientists recorded the evidence about the dangers of burning fossil fuels. In 1978, its science advisor, James Black, warned that there was a “window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategy might become critical”.

Exxon set up equipment on a supertanker, the Esso Atlantic, to monitor carbon dioxide in seawater and the air. In 1982, the company’s scientists drew up a graph accurately plotting an increase in the globe’s temperature to date.

“The 1980s revealed an established consensus among scientists,” the Minnesota lawsuit against Exxon says. “A 1982 internal Exxon document … explicitly declares that the science was ‘unanimous’ and that climate change would ‘bring about significant changes in the earth’s climate’.”

Then the monitoring on the Esso Atlantic was suddenly called off and other research downgraded.

What followed was what Naomi Oreskes, co-author of the report America Misled, called a “systematic, organised campaign by Exxon and other oil companies to sow doubt about the science and prevent meaningful action”.

The report accused the energy companies of not only polluting the air but also “the information landscape” by replicating the cigarette makers’ playbook of cherry picking data, using fake experts, and promoting conspiracy theories to attack a growing scientific consensus.

Many of the lawsuits draw on a raft of Exxon documents held at the University of Texas, and uncovered by the Columbia Journalism School and the Los Angeles Times in 2015.

Among them is a 1988 Exxon memo laying out a strategy to push for a “balanced scientific approach,” which meant giving equal weight to hard evidence and climate change denialism. That move bore fruit in parts of the media into the 2000s as the oil industry repositioned global heating as theory, not fact, contributing to the most deep-rooted climate denialism in any developed country.

The company placed advertisements in major American newspapers to sow doubt. One in the New York Times in 2000, under the headline “Unsettled Science”, compared climate data to changing weather forecasts. It claimed scientists were divided, when an overwhelming consensus already backed the evidence of a growing climate crisis, and said that the supposed doubts meant it was too soon to act.

Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, Lee Raymond, told industry executives in 1996 that “scientific evidence remains inconclusive as to whether human activities affect global climate”.

“It’s a long and dangerous leap to conclude that we should, therefore, cut fossil fuel use,” he said.

Documents show that his company’s scientists were telling Exxon’s management that the real danger lay in the failure to do exactly that.

In 2019, Martin Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University, told a congressional hearing that as a consultant to Exxon on climate modelling in the 1980s, he worked on eight scientific papers for the company that showed fossil fuel burning was “increasingly having a perceptible influence on Earth’s climate”.

Hoffert said he “hoped that the work would help to persuade Exxon to invest in developing energy solutions the world needed”. That was not the result.

“Exxon was publicly promoting views that its own scientists knew were wrong, and we knew that because we were the major group working on this. This was immoral and has greatly set back efforts to address climate change,” said Hoffert.

“They deliberately created doubt when internal research confirmed how serious a threat it was. As a result, in my opinion, homes and livelihoods will likely be destroyed and lives lost.”

Exxon worked alongside Chevron, Shell, BP, and smaller oil firms to shift attention away from the growing climate crisis. They funded the industry’s trade body, API, as it drew up a multimillion dollar plan to ensure that “climate change becomes a non- issue” through disinformation. The plan said “victory will be achieved” when “recognition of uncertainties become part of the ‘conventional wisdom’.”

The fossil fuel industry also used its considerable resources to pour billions of dollars into political lobbying to block unfavourable laws and to fund front organisations with neutral and scientific sounding names, such as the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). In 2001, the US state department told the GCC that President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “in part, based on input from you”.

Exxon alone has funded more than 40 groups to deny climate science, including the George C. Marshall Institute, which one lawsuit claims orchestrated a “sham petition” denying man-made global climate change. It was later denounced by the National Academy of Science as “a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists”.

To Sharon Eubanks the conspiracy to deny science sounded very familiar. From 2000, she led the US justice department’s legal team against nine tobacco firms in one of the largest civil cases filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) act, which was designed to combat organised crime.

In 2006, a federal judge found that the industry had spent decades committing a huge fraud on the American public by lying about the dangers of smoking and pushing cigarettes to young people.

Eubanks said that when she looked at the fossil fuel industry’s strategy, she immediately recognised big tobacco’s playbook.

“Big Oil was engaged in exactly the same type of behaviour that the tobacco companies engaged in and were found liable for fraud on a massive scale,” said Eubanks. “The cover up, the denial of the problem, the funding of scientists to question the science. The same pattern. And some of the same lawyers represent both tobacco and big oil.”

The danger for the fossil fuel industry is that the parallels do not end there.

The legal process is likely to oblige the oil conglomerates to turn over years of internal communications revealing what they knew about climate change, when and how they responded. Given what has already come out from Exxon, they are unlikely to help the industry’s case.

Eubanks, who is now advising attorneys general and others suing the oil industry, said a turning point in her action against big tobacco came with the discovery of internal company memos in a state case in Minnesota. They included language that talked about recruiting young people as “replacement smokers” for those who died from cigarettes.

“I think the public was particularly stunned by some of the content of the documents and the talk about the need for bigger bags to take home all the money they were going to make from getting people to smoke,” said Eubanks.

The exposure of the tobacco companies internal communications shifted the public mood and the politics, helping to open the door to legislation to curb smoking that the industry had been successfully resisting for decades.

Farber, the Berkeley law professor, said the discovery process carries a similar danger for the oil companies because it is likely to expose yet more evidence that they set out to deceive. He said that will undercut any attempt by the energy giants to claim in court that they were ignorant of the damage they were causing.

Farber said it will also be difficult for the oil industry to resist the weight of US lawsuits, shareholder activism, and shifting public and political opinion. “It might push them towards settlement or supporting legislation that releases some from liability in return for some major concessions such as a large tax to finance responses to climate change.”

The alternative, said Farber, is to take their chance on judges and juries who may be increasingly inclined to take the climate crisis seriously.

“They may think this is an emergency that requires a response. That the oil companies should be held responsible for the harm they’ve caused and that could be very expensive,” he said. “If they lose, it’s catastrophic ultimately.”

The Guardian is sharing stories in its Climate crimes series with Covering Climate Now, a global news collaboration of more than 400 news outlets

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RSN: Robert Reich | Trump Left Behind a Monstrous Predicament. Here's How to Tackle It

 

 

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Robert Reich | Trump Left Behind a Monstrous Predicament. Here's How to Tackle It

Robert Reich, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "One of the nation's two major political parties has abandoned democracy and reality. We must now move a vast swath of America back into a fact-based pro-democracy society." 

ext week’s Senate trial is unlikely to convict Donald Trump of inciting sedition against the United States. At least 17 Republican senators are needed for conviction, but only five have signaled they’ll go along.

Why won’t Republican senators convict him? After all, it’s an open and shut case. As summarized in the brief submitted by House impeachment managers, Trump spent months before the election telling his followers that the only way he could lose was through “a dangerous, wide-ranging conspiracy against them that threatened America itself”.

Immediately after the election, he lied that he had won by a “landslide”, and later urged his followers to stop the counting of electoral ballots by making plans to “fight like hell” and “fight to the death” against this “act of war” perpetrated by “Radical Left Democrats” and the “weak and ineffective RINO section of the Republican Party”.

If this isn’t an impeachable offense, it’s hard to imagine what is. But Republican senators won’t convict him because they’re answerable to Republican voters, and Republican voters continue to believe Trump’s big lie.

A shocking three out of four Republican voters don’t think Joe Biden won legitimately. About 45% even support the storming of the Capitol.

The crux of the problem is Americans now occupy two separate worlds – a fact-based pro-democracy world and a Trump-based authoritarian one.

Trump spent the last four years seducing voters into his world, turning the GOP from a political party into a grotesque projection of his pathological narcissism.

Regardless of whether he is convicted, America must now deal with the monstrous predicament he left behind: one of the nation’s two major political parties has abandoned reality and democracy.

What to do? Four things.

First, prevent Trump from running for president in 2024. The mere possibility energizes his followers.

An impeachment conviction is not the only way to prevent him. Under section three of the 14th amendment to the constitution, anyone who has taken an oath to protect the constitution is barred from holding public office if they “have engaged in insurrection” against the United States. As constitutional expert and former Yale Law professor Bruce Ackerman has noted, a majority vote that Trump engaged in insurrection against the United States is sufficient to trigger this clause.

Second, give Republicans and independents every incentive to abandon the Trump cult.

White working-class voters without college degrees who now comprise a large portion of its base need good jobs and better futures. Many are understandably angry after being left behind in vast enclaves of unemployment and despair. They should not have to depend on Trump’s fact-free fanaticism in order to feel visible and respected.

A jobs program on the scale necessary to bring many of them around will be expensive but worth the cost, especially when democracy hangs in the balance.

Big business, which used to have a home in the GOP, will need a third party. Democrats should not try to court them; the Democratic party should aim to represent the interests of the bottom 90%.

Third, disempower the giant media empires that amplified Trump’s lies for four years – Facebook, Twitter and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and its imitators. The goal is not to “cancel” the political right but to refocus public deliberation on facts, truth and logic. Democracy cannot thrive where big lies are systematically and repeatedly exploited for commercial gain.

The solution is antitrust enforcement and stricter regulation of social media, accompanied by countervailing financial pressure. Consumers should boycott products advertised on these lie factories and advertisers should shun them. Large tech platforms should lose legal immunity for violence-inciting content. Broadcasters such as Fox News and Newsmax should be liable for knowingly spreading lies (they are now being sued by producers of voting machinery and software which they accused of having been rigged for Biden).

Fourth, safeguard the democratic form of government. This requires barring corporations and the very wealthy from buying off politicians, ending so-called “dark money” political groups that don’t disclose their donors, defending the right to vote and ensuring more citizens are heard, not fewer.

Let’s be clear about the challenge ahead. The major goal is not to convict Trump for inciting insurrection. It is to move a vast swath of America back into a fact-based pro-democracy society and away from the Trump-based authoritarian one.

Regardless of whether he is convicted, the end of his presidency has given the nation a reprieve. But unless America uses it to end Trumpism’s hold over tens of millions of Americans, that reprieve may be temporary.

Thankfully, Joe Biden appears to understand this.

READ MORE

On Monday, ICE conducted flights to Port-au-Prince with children and infants on board. (photo: GlobalGiving)

Outcry as More Than 20 Babies and Children Deported by US to Haiti
Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK
Pilkington writes: "US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) deported at least 72 people to Haiti on Monday, including a two-month-old baby and 21 other children, in an apparent flagrant breach of the Biden administration's orders only to remove suspected terrorists and potentially dangerous convicted felons."

Ice accused of sending ‘defenseless babies into the burning house’ as deportations of 72 carried out in apparent breach of Biden order

The children were deported to Haiti on Monday on two flights chartered by Ice from Laredo, Texas to the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. The removals sent vulnerable infants back to Haiti as it is being roiled by major political unrest.

Ice is facing a rising chorus of denunciation as a “rogue agency” for its apparent refusal to abide by the new guidelines laid down by Biden and his homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. The incoming administration ordered a 100-day moratorium on all deportations, which was temporarily blocked by a judge in Texas.

However, the judge’s restraining order left in place the new guidelines stipulating that only the most serious immigration cases should be subject to deportation.

Last Friday, the administration appeared to gain the upper hand in its attempt to rein in Ice when deportation flights to Haiti were suspended. But on Monday the immigration agency reasserted itself again with the renewed flights to Port-au-Prince, children and infants on board.

Human rights activists are dismayed by the deportations, which bear a close resemblance to the hardline course set by Donald Trump. “It is unconscionable for us as a country to continue with the same draconian, cruel policies that were pursued by the Trump administration,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the immigration support group the Haitian Bridge Alliance.

She added: “I don’t know what’s going on between Ice and the Biden administration, but we know what needs to be done: the deportations must stop.”

Immigration advisers are especially concerned about the safety of the Haitian children deported on Monday, given that they are being returned to a country that is embroiled in rapidly mounting political turmoil. The Haitian president, Jovenel Moïse, is refusing to heed opposition calls for him to step down in a dispute over the end of his term – his detractors say he should have left office on 7 February.

Moïse has been ruling by decree for more than a year and has recently cracked down on public protests. On Sunday, the day that opponents urged him to stand down, he announced the arrests of 23 people including a supreme court justice and a senior police inspector whom he claimed were plotting a coup against him.

Two Haitian journalists were reportedly shot with live ammunition fired by the armed forces on Monday in volatile scenes in the Champ de Mars in downtown Port-au-Prince.

The Biden administration has stoked further controversy by backing Moïse in the dispute. The US government has announced it takes the view that the Haitian president has another year to run before he must leave office.

Jozef said it was not safe to return children to this environment. “I fear for the kids being sent into the middle of this uprising. It’s as if there is a house burning, and instead of taking people out for their own safety the United States is sending defenseless babies into the burning house.”

Ice is continuing the deportations under the controversial use of Title 42, a health statute introduced in 1944 that was rarely used until recently. The Trump administration supercharged its application under the guise that it was necessary as a health protection against the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump continued to follow an aggressive approach to Haitian deportations right up to the final hours of his presidency. The day before he left the White House, a final deportation flight was sent to Haiti carrying a man who was not a Haitian citizen and had never been to that country.

Biden came into office the following day pledging to steer a more humane path. So far, though, Ice appears to be frustrating that intention.

READ MORE

Sens. Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Schumer, McConnell Reach Deal on Trump Impeachment Trial
Jordain Carney, The Hill
Carney writes: "Senate leadership announced on Monday that they have reached a deal on the framework for former President Trump's impeachment trial, which will start on Tuesday."

“For the information of the Senate, the Republican leader and I, in consultation with both the House managers and Former President Trump's lawyers, have agreed to a bipartisan resolution to govern the structure and timing of the impending trial,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said from the Senate floor.

“All parties have agreed to a structure that will ensure a fair and honest Senate impeachment trial of the former president,” Schumer said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) confirmed on the Senate floor that they have reached a deal, noting that it “preserves due process and the rights of both sides.”

“I’m pleased that Leader Schumer and I were able to reach an agreement on a fair process and estimated timeline for the upcoming Senate trial,” McConnell said. “It will give senators as jurors ample time to receive the case and the arguments.”

Schumer's announcement comes after he disclosed during a press conference in New York earlier that they were finalizing an agreement.

The timeline would allow the trial to wrap up as early as next week, if both sides agree not to call witnesses.

Under the deal, the Senate will debate and vote on Tuesday on whether the trial is constitutional. The effort to declare the trial unconstitutional will fall short after Rand Paul (R-Ky.) forced a vote on the issue late last month. Forty-four GOP senators supported his effort.

Opening arguments will start on Wednesday. Under the deal, the House impeachment managers and Trump’s team will have 16 hours over two days each to present their case to the Senate.

That’s a faster pace than both the Clinton trial and the first Trump trial where both sides got 24 hours.

The deal also leaves the door open to calling witnesses. The House impeachment managers previously invited Trump to testify under oath, an offer his attorneys rejected. They haven't yet said if they will try to get the Senate to call other witnesses.

The trial will also be paused on Saturday to accommodate a request from one of Trump's attorneys to observe the Jewish Sabbath.

If both sides use all of their time, that would set up opening arguments to wrap on Sunday.

After that the Senate is expected to have time to ask questions of both sides, as well as potential deliberations. In previous trials, senators have had two days for the question-and-answer session. According to the resolution of the trial’s rules, senators will get four hours to ask questions.

Both sides will get two hours for closing arguments.

“As in previous trials, there will be equal time for senator questions and for closing arguments and an opportunity for the Senate to hold deliberations if it so chooses and then we will vote on the article of impeachment,” Schumer said.

The trial comes nearly five weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Though Republicans fumed after Trump urged his supporters to march to the Capitol as lawmakers were counting the Electoral College result, Democrats are not expected to be able to get the 17 Republican votes needed to convict Trump.

READ MORE

Members of KC Tenants, an anti-eviction group, maintain a blockade at the Eastern Jackson County Courthouse in Independence, Missouri, U.S., January 5, 2021. (photo: Carly Rosin/Reuters)

'This Is Not Justice.' Tenant Activists Upend US Eviction Courts
Michelle Conlin, Reuters
Conlin writes: "As freezing temperatures settled over Kansas City, Missouri, on Jan. 28, Judge Jack Grate opened his online courtroom. The first of 100 cases on his docket was that of Tonya Raynor, a 64-year-old who owed $2,790 in back rent.....

....and fees on an apartment on the city’s east side, a swath of vacant storefronts and boarded-up properties.

“Miss Raynor, are you there?” asked Grate, a burly 71-year-old sporting a beard, a buzz cut and a rumpled, orange short-sleeve shirt.

A booming voice responded: “This is not justice. This is violence.” Soon a chorus joined in: “Judge Grate, you are making people homeless! You are killing people!”

The voices in the virtual courtroom of the Jackson County Circuit Court belonged to members of KC Tenants, a group that brought Kansas City’s eviction operation to its knees last month. The group is one of scores of tenants’ unions and anti-eviction activist groups in cities nationwide whose memberships have exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Housing experts liken their combative tactics to the rent strikes that swept the United States during the Great Depression.

Some of these activists operate loosely under the umbrella of the Autonomous Tenants Union, which works to end evictions nationally. Others, like KC tenants, are independent. Their anthems are “Cancel Rent,” “No Debt,” and “No Evictions.”

They are calling for more federal relief to help tenants pay back rent. Landlords, some of whom haven’t been paid in nearly a year, say they are hurting financially too, and are being unfairly villainized for a housing crisis created by a once-in-a-century pandemic.

In Kansas City, Judge Grate ignored the protestors and tried to talk over them at the Jan. 28 hearing, seemingly unaware of the mute button. Ultimately, he shut down the proceedings.

Judge Grate declined to comment.

It was yet another showdown in a months-long campaign by KC Tenants that culminated in the delay of 854 evictions in Jackson County in January, according to Jordan Ayala, an eviction researcher and Ph.D candidate at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, who analyzed the court filings. That number matches estimates from KC Tenants’ leadership.

Valerie Hartman, the court’s public information officer, disputes that figure but said the court does not track the number of hearings or their outcomes.

In September, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control banned evictions nationally amid concerns about the public health risks of putting people out of their homes during a pandemic. President Joe Biden has extended that moratorium to March 31.

Still, exceptions in the measure have allowed some evictions to proceed. No comprehensive database exists to track those figures. But since the spring, nearly 250,000 tenants have been evicted in 27 U.S. cities tracked by Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. When the federal ban lifts, up to 40 million people - owing more than $57 billion in back rent - could be evicted, according to Moody’s Analytics, an economic research firm, and the Aspen Institute, a global think tank.

‘SLUMLORD SATURDAYS’ AND ‘STOOP COURTS’

In Kansas City, KC Tenants members chained themselves to courthouse doors and staged sit-ins to prevent in-person hearings. They also protested at judges’ homes and waged a social media campaign called “Slumlord Saturdays,” targeting owners who allegedly kept their properties in poor repair while pursuing evictions.

“We take direct action to intervene in a violent system that exists to protect private profits at the expense of human lives,” said KC Tenants director Tara Raghuveer, 28.

Similar scenes have played out nationally. In Brooklyn, New York, protesters have blockaded apartment entrances to prevent evictions, and demonstrated in the offices of lawyers representing landlords. They have also held “stoop courts” – appearing on screen with tenants outside their homes during online eviction hearings.

In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Autonomous Tenants Union has been robocalling landlords to pester them for tenant relief. It has also staged marches to landlords’ offices, city hall and local officials’ homes.

Over the summer, the group targeted Youssef “Joe” Berrada, who owns more than 8,000 housing units, many in low-income neighborhoods.

After Berrada filed eviction notices on 330 tenants, the protest group waged a social media campaign against him, as well as phone blasts and pickets at his corporate office. In August, when Berrada announced he would pause evictions during the COVID-19 crisis, the group took credit.

Joe Goldberger, a lawyer representing Berrada, denied the tenants’ union influenced that decision. He urged lawmakers to step up with compensation for landlords.

“Without governmental assistance, tenants will owe back rent in amounts that can’t be repaid,” said Goldberger in a statement. That leaves landlords facing foreclosures, overdue tax bills and deferred maintenance on their properties, he said.

It’s a rare point of agreement between anti-eviction groups and landlords. Both groups say the $25 billion in rental relief passed by Congress in September is not enough.

A White House spokeswoman said Biden has called on Congress to approve another $30 billion in renter assistance, and to extend the eviction moratorium through September.

‘END EVICTION VIOLENCE’

Just after 9 a.m. on the morning of Jan. 8, two Kansas City civil process deputies showed up on the doorstep of 38-year-old Donald Smith to evict him. The unemployed former railroad conductor owed more than $6,000 in back rent and fees.

Smith unexpectedly grabbed a weapon after allowing the deputies into his home, and they shot him three times in the abdomen, said court spokeswoman Hartman. Smith remains hospitalized, and the incident is under investigation.

Smith could not be reached for comment. A family member who asked not to be identified told Reuters that the weapon was a BB gun, and that Smith had suffered a mental breakdown after losing his job, compounded by the isolation of pandemic lockdown.

The night of the shooting, KC Tenants marched to the quaint, two-story home of Judge J. Dale Youngs, who presides over the circuit court that approved Smith’s eviction. Puzzled neighbors watched from their lawns as the group chanted “end eviction violence” and brandished signs reading “Judge Youngs, You Have Blood on Your Hands,” according to interviews with group members and videos of the protest.

KC Tenants followed up with a rally. Two days after the shooting, Youngs ordered a two-week pause on eviction hearings, citing concerns about employee safety and “social and political unrest.”

Youngs declined to comment.

When the halt lifted two weeks later, KC Tenants began interrupting hearings online, over the phone and in court, ultimately disrupting 90% of the evictions scheduled in January, according to researcher Ayala.

Hartman, the court spokeswoman, said those claims are “false,” adding that many hearings and trials took place as scheduled.

The reprieves won by KC Tenants are only temporary. Most of the delayed eviction hearings were re-scheduled for February and March, according to researcher Ayala and court docket data.

But there was no postponement for tenant Raynor, the first tenant called in the chaotic Jan. 28 hearing in Judge Grate’s online courtroom. Raynor did not attend the proceedings, as most tenants don’t, housing experts say. That led to an automatic win for the landlord.

Before Grate shut down the day’s online session, he ordered Raynor’s eviction and a $2,790 default judgment against her. Raynor, who could not be reached for comment, had ten days to vacate the apartment.

That eviction will remain on her record for at least seven years, a stigma that makes it difficult for most renters to obtain new housing.

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Women in Los Angeles wait in line at a food bank. (photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

The Shecession: Women Face Staggering Job and Income Losses Amid the Pandemic's Economic Crisis
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "The 'shecession' is about making sure that we understand that women have been disproportionately impacted by job and income losses during the pandemic and during this economic downturn."

s Democrats in Congress push forward on passing President Joe Biden’s sweeping $1.9 trillion stimulus package, many experts say measures to combat the economic fallout from COVID-19 must address the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on women — especially women of color. Women in the U.S. lost 5.5 million jobs in the first 10 months of the pandemic, nearly 1 million more job losses than men, and, combined with increased responsibilities for caregiving at home, are experiencing a “shecession,” according to researcher C. Nicole Mason. “Women have been disproportionately impacted by job and income losses during the pandemic and during this economic downturn,” says Mason, who is president and CEO of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a leading voice on pay equity, economic policies and research impacting women. “The reason for this is because women are overrepresented in the hardest-hit sectors: service, leisure/hospitality, education and healthcare services.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Democrats are moving forward on President Biden’s $1.9 trillion proposed stimulus package as the United States faces a staggering economic crisis. They plan to use the budget reconciliation process to pass the bill despite Republican opposition, allowing the legislation to take effect before March 14th, when key unemployment programs expire.

There are still some hurdles to be worked out. Biden has said he’s open to negotiating eligibility for receiving $1,400 direct payments included in the bill. But on Saturday, Senator Bernie Sanders, the new chair of the Senate Budget Committee, tweeted his opposition to cutting the income threshold, writing, quote, “Unbelievable. There are some Dems who want to lower the income eligibility for direct payments from $75,000 to $50,000 for individuals, and $150,000 to $100,000 for couples. In other words, working class people who got checks from Trump would not get them from Biden. Brilliant!” unquote. Senator Sanders elaborated Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: What we have done in the past and what we have promised the American people, we’ve said two things in the last month. We said we were going to get you $2,000, and that’s $600 plus $1,400, and what we’re going to do is say that everybody, a single person, individual, $75,000 or lower, and a couple, of $150,000 or lower, will be eligible for that full $2,000, $600 plus $1,400. Now, when people said, “We don’t want rich people to get that benefit,” I understand that. I agree. And what we need to do is have a strong cliff so it doesn’t kind of spill over to people making $300,000.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as billionaires’ wealth in the United States grew by almost 40% during the pandemic, increasing by more than $1.1 trillion. Biden’s stimulus bill is also set to include a $400-per-week jobless benefit through September and $30 billion for rent and utility assistance.

This comes as data shows women lost about five-and-a-half million jobs over the course of the first 10 months of the pandemic — nearly 1 million more jobs lost than men. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spoke about the staggering number of women who have left the workforce since the pandemic began, when she appeared Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.

TREASURY SECRETARY JANET YELLEN: The American rescue package that President Biden has proposed really addresses the problems that women face. It places huge emphasis on getting our schools open safely, getting children back into school, providing paid family and medical leave during this crisis so that women don’t have to leave their jobs when they’re faced with health issues or family issues that they have to address. There’s emphasis on providing more child care and payments, tax credits expanded for children to help families address these needs. And I think this is really necessary to get women back to work. They have faced a disproportionate burden because of this crisis, especially low-wage women and women of color.

AMY GOODMAN: Women of color are especially hard hit by job losses during the pandemic, with Black, Latinx and Asian women accounting for all of women’s job losses in December. Combined with women’s increased responsibility for caregiving at home, it’s a trend that could set women back decades and prompted our next guest to call this the first-ever “shecession.”

C. Nicole Mason is the president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a leading voice on pay equity, economic policies and research impacting women. She’s quoted in a section of The New York Times that came out on Sunday, the whole section, “America’s Mothers Are in Crisis. Is Anyone Listening to Them?”

C. Nicole Mason, thanks so much for being with us. Can you talk about what this economic crisis means for women, what a “shecession,” your term, is?

C. NICOLE MASON: So, this is a historic moment. We have not witnessed a moment like this ever in U.S. history. So, the “shecession” is about making sure that we understand that women have been disproportionately impacted by job and income losses during the pandemic and during this economic downturn. And the reason for this is because women are overrepresented in the hardest-hit sectors. Service, leisure/hospitality, education and healthcare services have been hit hardest during this downturn, disproportionately impacting, again, low-wage workers and women of color.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about why women are so hard hit right now and how in this country this is really being overlooked — certainly not by the women themselves, who are being crushed, losing their jobs, having to care for parents, having to care for children — what this means, setting women back decades.

C. NICOLE MASON: So, what this means is, so, the reason why women, like I said, are disproportionately impacted is because they’re overrepresented in the hardest-hit sectors. And when stay-at-home orders were implemented, businesses closed down, and that disproportionately impacted women, and then also schools and daycares closed down. So women had this dual burden of providing for their families and earning a living, but also caretaking responsibilities.

So, in the beginning, I don’t really believe that we really took it seriously in terms of the impact of school closures on working women. But we saw, for example, in August, 865,000 women fell out of the workforce. And people asked me, they said, “Well, you know, why do you think that is?” I said, “It’s a no-brainer.” Schools were supposed open in August and September, and they didn’t. And women had to make some tough choices.

AMY GOODMAN: You wrote in a recent piece, “At the first of the year, we celebrated women’s economic gains, when they made up a little more than 50% of the workforce. The pandemic has all but wiped out those gains and made it more difficult for women to reenter the workforce and sustain employment.” Explain.

C. NICOLE MASON: So, again, at the beginning of the year in 2020, in January, we were celebrating this milestone. And then the pandemic hit, and more than 2 million women fell out of the workforce, at four times the rate than men.

In 2008, when the economic recession hit, it mainly impacted manufacture and production and construction, again, disproportionately impacting men.

So, but this time around, not only were women losing jobs at a clip, they were also managing virtual learning with their children. And women were told, during this time, you know, like, “Oh, you’ll figure it out. Oh, it’s not that big a deal.” And in terms of reopening and stay-at-home orders, we put a lot of focus on small businesses, which I think is right, but there was very little attention paid to getting schools open. And so, that has had a disproportionate impact on women, because without schools and daycares and the pandemic under control, they will continue and have continued to fall out of the workforce.

AMY GOODMAN: So, as this debate on the $1.9 trillion COVID crisis, economic crisis package takes place, what is missing? What do you think needs to happen particularly to protect women?

C. NICOLE MASON: So, there are a lot of good things in that package. So, you heard Janet Yellen talking about all the good things in there or smart things in there for women — you know, the expanded unemployment insurance, the housing and food assistance moneys in there, paid family and sick leave. All these things will go a long way towards ensuring women who cannot reenter the workforce because of caretaking responsibilities or simply can’t find a job, because many women have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more, that they have a lifeline. So that’s really important.

And I think the second part of the stimulus package, which we’ll see, I think, in the coming weeks and months, is job creation. So, there will be a concerted effort on job creation. And oftentimes, like in 2008, there was a concerted effort around infrastructure, production, manufacturing, getting people back to work. This time around, we’re going to need to focus on those hardest-hit sectors, where women have been most affected and impacted, and then also dedicate some funds to education and training, because, you know, to be honest, Amy, some of those jobs that we lost are not going to be able to come back until women will have to enter new sectors altogether.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the $15 minimum wage increase that was included in Biden’s stimulus bill proposal? Some say it cannot be included if Democrats want to use the reconciliation process to pass it, because that rule can only be used for bills concerning spending, taxes and debt. But Senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the Budget Committee, argued that it does comply with the budget reconciliation process. Can you comment?

C. NICOLE MASON: So, the $15 minimum wage is long overdue. Raising the minimum wage is long overdue. And right now I don’t want to choose political expediency over what — you know, the right thing to do.

But I will say, Amy, that raising the minimum wage to $15 is only a small part of this deal here. We also need to make sure that these jobs are quality jobs, because the most devastating thing during the pandemic is that when women lost their jobs, they also didn’t have paid sick leave. They didn’t have other benefits that we know make the difference for working families. And so, in addition to the $15 an hour, we also need to make sure that they have paid and family sick leave and also have better job security and flexibility. All these things are critical issues during the pandemic for working women.

AMY GOODMAN: C. Nicole Mason, I want to thank you so much for being with us, president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. She coined the term “shecession.” And by the way, give your dog a kibble from me.

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Myanmar's military. (photo: Bangkok Post)

ALSO SEE: Myanmar Military Ruler Addresses Nation as Protests Intensify

Myanmar Military Abolishes NLD's Peace and Reconciliation Mechanism, Arrests Civilian Leaders
Sai Wanna, Myanmar Times
Wanna writes: "The Tatmadaw [military] has informed the ethnic armed groups that future peace talks will be continued only with the Tatmadaw-formed peace committee."

he Tatmadaw (military) government has disbanded the National Reconciliation and Peace Centre (NRPC), the leading internal peace process mechanism of the previous government, arresting some of its civilian leaders.

The NRPC was led by State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Tatmadaw has only been under the leadership of the organisation in conducting political talks with the armed ethnic groups.

On February 1, the military declared the state of emergency by arresting and detaining several civilian leaders including President U Win Myint, State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Union Ministers, and chief ministers of the states and regions.

"We have been informed that the NRPC has been abolished,” said Lamai Gum Ja, a member of the Peace-Talk Creation Group (PCG). PCG has been helping in peace talks between the four-member Northern Alliance ethnic armed groups and the Tatmadaw.

“If there is any need for talks, we should only discuss with the group formed by the military. The members of the Northern Alliance have yet to show any clear stance on the situation," he added.

Prior to the military takeover, an agreement had been reached to hold talks in February between the Tatmadaw and Northern Alliance members comprised of the Kachin Independence Army, the second largest armed group in the country, the Rakhine-based Arakan Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army. The four armed groups have yet to signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA).

"The planned talks was automatically cancelled after the military coup," said U Lamai Gum Ja, adding he is not sure if there possibility of peace talks to happen between the Tatmadaw-formed peace committee led by Lieutenant-General Yar Pyae.

A phone call to Major General Zaw Min Tun, spokesperson of the military's True News Agency, went unanswered.

Colonel Khun Okkar, chairman of Pa-O National Liberation Organisation, issued a cautious warning that any political agreement with new government formed by the Tatmadaw after its power seizure could mean that the armed ethnic groups recognize it. - Translated

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Saltwater wetlands face functional extinction without a coordinated effort to save them. (photo: TahirAbbas/Getty Images)

How to Save Saltwater Wetlands From Rising Seas
Jeff Peterson, The Revelator
Peterson writes: "As wetlands disappear, they will take with them habitat, storm buffering and carbon sequestration benefits of tremendous value."

merica's coastal saltwater wetlands are on a course toward functional extinction in the coming decades. Their demise will come at the hands of steadily accelerating sea-level rise and relentless coastal development. As these wetlands disappear, they will take with them habitat, storm buffering and carbon sequestration benefits of tremendous value.

Fortunately, there is still time to change course. A determined and coordinated effort by local, state and federal governments — led by the Biden administration — could dramatically increase the number of saltwater wetlands that survive and go a long way to maintaining their ecological and societal benefits into the future.

Saltwater Wetlands: To Know Them Is to Love Them

The most recent estimate of the extent of saltwater wetlands along the American coast, published in 2009, found some 6.4 million acres with about half occurring along the Gulf of Mexico. This is a mere remnant of their historic extent and a decline of some 95,000 acres from the previous assessment in 2004, largely in the Gulf of Mexico. Ominously, the rate of loss increased by 35% from the prior five-year reporting period.

The remaining saltwater wetlands still provide an impressive array of ecological services and benefits to society. Often termed "the most productive ecosystems on Earth" they are nursery grounds for fisheries and provide habitat for birds, mammals and other wildlife.

Wetlands also protect communities from storm surges and flooding. Along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts the protective value of wetlands is estimated to be about $1.8 million per square kilometer annually. On top of all that, saltwater wetlands help fight global warming by storing carbon at a rate that is about two to four times greater than that observed in mature tropical forests.

The Saltwater Wetland Extinction Scenario

Rising sea level and steady coastal urbanization pose an existential threat to saltwater wetlands.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts that sea level along much of the American coast is likely to rise by 2 to 4 feet, and may rise by as much as 8 feet, by 2100. And seas will continue to rise in the centuries to come, with an "intermediate" estimate of more than 9 feet by 2200.

The rising seas will eventually drown all the saltwater wetlands that now exist, converting them to open water. Some wetlands will survive in place for a time if seas rise slowly enough. But the rate of sea-level rise is accelerating rapidly and other factors, such as land subsidence, will shift the balance in favor of rising seas in the years ahead.

For most saltwater wetlands, survival will require landward migration. This is possible where geography does not present obstacles, such as steep slopes, and where human development has not already staked a claim. There is no national assessment of the feasibility of saltwater wetland migration, but several studies of smaller geographic areas present a bleak picture.

On the Pacific coast, some 83% of wetlands are projected to become open water by 2110 and "migration of most wetlands was constrained by coastal development or steep topography," according to a 2018 study in Science Advances. Along the Gulf of Mexico, estimated conversion of wetlands to open water varies for each state, with rates from 24 to 37% by 2060.

The outlook for saltwater wetland survival darkens further when one considers new coastal development occupying dry land that might otherwise become a new wetland. Population in the 100-year coastal floodplain is expected to almost double by 2060, significantly expanding the coastal development footprint.

And the rising sea levels that drive wetlands inland will also prompt people to defend the land they are on, often with seawalls, bulkheads or levees. Some 14% of the coast is already armored by this infrastructure and, if the current rate of armoring continues, that percentage is expected to double by 2100.

Finally, wetlands that are able to migrate will need years to provide the same degree of ecosystem services they did originally. A study of over 600 restored wetlands worldwide found that biological structure and biogeochemical functioning "remained on average 26% and 23% lower, respectively, than in reference sites" even a century after restoration, which means that even the wetlands to do survive won't provide the same benefits.

Envisioning a Strategy for Saving Saltwater Wetlands

What can be done to help saltwater wetlands survive the one-two punch of a changing climate and coastal development?

A critical step is to admit we have a problem and agree that we need a national response strategy. A national strategy should define a goal for saltwater wetlands protection (e.g., a net increase in acreage nationally and by state) and charge a federal agency (e.g., NOAA) with leading the effort.

The heart of a new strategy needs to be carefully planned for landward migration of saltwater wetlands and deployment of new authority and resources toward that end. This key objective is widely supported in the academic literature and the work to address it must engage local, state and federal agencies.

Since it's been more than a decade since the last published assessment of the United States' coastal wetlands, existing saltwater wetlands need to be mapped anew. Then their varying rates of natural change should be assessed and the feasibility of landward migration evaluated. Evaluation of migration should include obstacles, such as natural features, and both existing and likely future development. Coastal places that are not wetlands today but are well suited to become wetlands as sea level rises, should be identified. All this information should be used to develop place-specific plans to protect and preserve the land that wetlands will need to migrate inland on a priority basis.

While that work is going on, we'll also need to focus on dampening the rate of population growth right along the coast. This will be essential to leave space for successful landward migration of saltwater wetlands. State and local government have diverse tools, including land-use plans and regulations, to apply to this challenge, but the federal government needs to help. For example, FEMA should stop issuing federal flood insurance for new development in coastal floodplains.

Another critical tool is expanded authority to restrict new coastal armoring projects that would prevent landward migration of saltwater wetlands. Eight states have implemented total or partial bans on coastal armoring, but efficacy and enforcement vary. All states should adopt and enforce such bans. These projects also require permits from the Army Corps of Engineers and existing requirements should be revised to give stronger preference for "living shorelines" that replace traditional structures with designs using biological and natural materials.

In some places, regulation will not be enough and acquisition of real estate will be necessary. Some states have land-acquisition programs that consider sea-level rise. For example, Maryland identifies "coastal lands with the highest potential to aid in adaptation if sea level rises a meter per century" and uses the assessment in making conservation investments. People in the San Francisco Bay area voted for Measure AA to provide local funds for wetlands protection in the face of sea-level rise. These programs and some others are a foothold but more states need to follow this example.

Federal agencies need to support these state initiatives by expanding modest existing federal programs that protect coastal wetlands to include purchasing land for prospective wetlands and removing buildings and other structures where needed.

Saving saltwater wetlands will require that Congress, federal agencies, states and local governments collaborate to agree on the strategy and then approve the new tools and funding needed to carry it forward. This will require years of effort, but the start of a new Congress and a new administration is an auspicious time to begin this important work.

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