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For billions of years, the oceans have been absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere. Now, to boost that drawdown, startup companies and researchers are experimenting with ‘marine carbon dioxide removal’ by altering the chemistry of the ocean and sinking biomass to the seafloor.

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This story is being co-published with Public Health Watch.

West of the Rockies, just one lead battery recycler remains in the United States. If your car battery conks out in downtown Seattle or the Sonoran desert, it will probably be hauled to Ecobat, a lead smelter half an hour east of downtown Los Angeles.

Ecobat’s facility in City of Industry melts down 600 tons of batteries and scrap every day.  A conveyor belt takes the batteries to a hammer mill where they’re cracked open and slammed into pieces. Then a furnace blasts them with 1,000 degrees of heat. The resulting ingots or “pigs” of lead then ride on, to become batteries once again.  

Nationally, about 130 million car batteries meet this fate each year. Fewer than a dozen smelters do this work in the U.S. No other consumer product in the country closes its recycling loop so completely. 

But the crucial business of smelting lead is also a very dirty one.

Lead is a neurotoxin; no known levels of it are safe. People who breathe airborne particles of lead or accidentally put it in their mouths — especially children — can suffer nerve disorders and developmental problems. The smelting process itself can create a cancer risk. In addition to lead, it can send arsenic, hexavalent chromium, formaldehyde and other chemicals into the air. 

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California has some of the tightest toxic regulations and strictest air pollution rules for smelters in the country. But some residents of the suburban neighborhoods around Ecobat don’t trust the system to protect them. 

Tens of thousands of people live in the bedroom communities of Hacienda Heights, La Puente, and Avocado Heights, including some just hundreds of feet from the edge of the company’s property. Uncertainty, both about the safety of Ecobat’s operation going forward and the legacy of lead it has left behind, weighs heavily on them.

For decades, thousands of pounds of lead poured out of the smelter’s stacks. Soil testing has revealed high levels of lead on some properties over the years, but hasn’t led to a full investigation. Although pollution controls have squashed airborne lead to a fraction of its historical highs, Ecobat — known until recently as Quemetco — has amassed nearly $3 million in regulatory penalties since 2020. 

The facility is operating under a permit that expired almost nine years ago. The Department of Toxic Substances Control, or DTSC, which oversees California’s hazardous waste laws, has sent back the company’s application for renewal three times. Once the filing is complete, DTSC will release a draft permit to the public for comment. 

But the release date listed on the department’s website keeps shifting — from February, to March, to April, and as of this week, May. 

In the meantime, long-brewing disputes among residents, the company, and regulators are again erupting into public view.

Laws don’t mean much, say neighborhood advocates, if nobody enforces them. 

“The regulators, they back down,” said Rebecca Overmyer-Velázquez, a coordinator with the Clean Air Coalition of North Whittier & Avocado Heights. “That’s really our biggest problem.” 

Rebecca Overmeyer Vasquez, facilitator for the Clean Air Coalition of North Whittier and Avocado Heights, photographed at Whittier College. Chava Sanchez

In recent months, the dispute has taken on more of an edge. Younger activists impatient with the lack of progress are leading their own inquiry into soil contamination. Ecobat is suing the state over decisions related to the facility. Court filings and lawyers’ threats showcase a bitter and growing divide on questions of public health, responsible product management, and environmental safety. 

“What they’ve really been denying the community is the ability to really call the question, should this facility, based on its past operation, receive a renewal of its hazardous waste permit?” said Angela Johnson Meszaros, an attorney at Earthjustice, which represents the Clean Air Coalition. “The community’s position is no. And I think that they have the receipts for why the answer is no.”

Ecobat did not make anyone available for an interview. In a written response to questions, Dan Kramer, a spokesman, said the company is “continuously committed” to protecting public health. “Ecobat’s number one priority is safety — for our employees, their families, and the people living and working in the communities surrounding our facility.”

At issue are not only how California protects public health going forward but also what regulators are willing to do about the past. 

The Clean Air Coalition’s Overmyer-Velázquez wants her neighborhood to avoid what happened when another lead smelter closed south of downtown Los Angeles. Exide Technologies may have contaminated as many as 10,000 homes in predominantly Latino, working-class neighborhoods. When it abruptly shut down after 90 years, lawmakers and regulators vowed that Exide would pay to clean up neighborhood-level soil contamination. But in 2020 a bankruptcy court allowed the company to abandon the property, and the cleanup remains incomplete. The cost is ballooning, and so far Californians are paying for it. 

Overmyer-Velázquez wants the Ecobat facility shut down, or moved away from densely populated Los Angeles County.  

“This place has clearly demonstrated it cannot be a good neighbor,” she said. 

DTSC did not make anyone available for an interview. In a written statement, a spokesman for the department said that it has made significant improvement to the permitting process, and that a decision on the facility’s permit “will be grounded in the latest scientific evidence regarding the potential impact of Ecobat’s operations on public health and the environment.” DTSC denied that the process has been delayed.

Half a century ago, after the Cuyahoga River burned in Ohio and as New York’s Love Canal raised national alarms about toxic waste, the Golden State was ahead of the game. California was vocal about the need to limit hazardous waste, to handle it safely, and to keep it local, rather than shipping it somewhere else, where laws are weaker. The state set stringent controls on storage and processing and began requiring permits for facilities. The company then called Quemetco filed for its first operating permit — a temporary one — in 1980. 

But some of California’s management plans never materialized; some oversight, starved for staffing and funding, fell to shreds. It took 25 years for regulators to grant Quemetco a full hazardous waste permit. 

Early on, environmental officials flagged reasons for concern about the lead smelter. State and federal regulators issued an order and a consent decree in 1987 because of the facility’s releases of hazardous waste into soil and water. An assessment from that time found “high potential for air releases of particulates concerning lead.” 

Just a few blocks away from the Facility lies the resedential community of Hacienda Heights. Chava Sanchez

It wasn’t illegal back then for Quemetco to send pollution straight into nearby San Jose Creek, or to dump battery waste into the dirt on a corner of the property without any formal containment. In 1987 alone, according to the federal Toxics Release Inventory, Quemetco reported that it had released nearly 4 tons of airborne lead from its stacks. That was okay, too. 

By the 1990s, however, the science about lead was piling up, finding that the health hazards of even low levels of exposure were problematic, especially for children. 

In the bedroom communities around Quemetco, neighbors took notice. At a public meeting in 1996, they asked why the permitting process was taking so long.  

DTSC’s Phil Chandler, a soil geologist who was working on the facility’s permit at the time, answered the crowd. He explained that the delay was understandable. 

“There was an awful lot of firms, like Quemetco, they came in the door, and said, ‘We want a permit.’ And they came all at once,” Chandler told residents back then. “So that’s been a problem.”

More people began raising questions about lead-related health impacts. 

Jeanie Thiessen, a special education teacher at a public school in the area, wanted her students to be tested for lead exposure. “Many exhibit signs of neuropsychological problems, cognitive impairments, become easily agitated, and have generally arrested development,” she wrote in a DTSC questionnaire. “Surely it is not normal to have so many children with learning disabilities come from so small an area.” 

“I grew up with a lot of those kids,” said Duncan McKee, a longtime critic of the facility who lives in Avocado Heights. He says those worries were common. Looking back, he added, “I think at that point [regulators] started taking it a bit more seriously. Maybe.”

When DTSC finally granted Quemetco a permit in 2005, it didn’t end the communities’ concerns about health and safety. 

In Los Angeles, lead smelters are overseen by the South Coast Air Quality Management District. It requires large polluters to submit health hazard assessments that calculate potential cancer risks stemming from their emissions. Quemetco’s assessment in 2000 revealed that it had the highest calculated cancer burden in Los Angeles County, not only because of lead, but also because of other carcinogens involved in the process: arsenic, benzene and 1, 3 butadiene.

That health hazard assessment led to tighter pollution controls at the smelter. In 2008, Quemetco installed an advanced air system called a wet electrostatic precipitator, or WESP. Before the scrubber was installed, the additional cancer risk from the facility for people in the surrounding area was 33 in 1 million, well above the threshold at which polluters are required to cut emissions and notify the public. In the company’s next assessment, that risk had dropped to 4 in 1 million. 

A Green Steam billows out of the Ecobat Facility. Chava Sanchez

Today, emissions from the company, now known as Ecobat, are well within South Coast’s smelter-specific lead limit. But regulatory problems at the facility remain stubbornly frequent. 

South Coast has written Ecobat up for violations 20 times since 2005. Just four years ago, the agency issued a relatively rare $600,000 fine for failing to meet federal and state-level standards. In a press release, South Coast noted that because of lead exceedances, the facility had to temporarily reduce operations. 

During DTSC’s most recent 10-year compliance period for the smelter, 2012-2022, Ecobat accrued 19 violations of the most serious type. On one visit, for example, regulators found cracks in the floor of a battery storage area, where acid, lead, and arsenic could leak. In some cases, according to the state’s online records repository, the facility was out of compliance or violations had been in dispute for years. The state’s lawyers filed a civil complaint based on some of these violations and later settled it for $2.3 million. Ecobat paid half the money to the state and half to nonprofits that promote school health and knowledge of local environmental issues. 

In its written response to Public Health Watch, the company characterized “nearly all” of the violations as “technical disagreements between Ecobat and DTSC over environmental monitoring systems in place at the facility.” 

“None of the alleged violations involved allegations that Ecobat had improperly handled or released hazardous waste or caused any environmental impacts to the community,” said Kramer. 

On its website, Ecobat emphasizes that it “has invested close to $50 million installing and maintaining new pollution control equipment and monitoring devices.” That includes the WESP, which Kramer said “was not necessary to meet Ecobat’s risk reduction obligations or any other regulatory mandates.” Instead, Kramer said, the installation of that scrubber was voluntary, and at significant expense to the company. 

Questions remain about where and whether the soil may be contaminated in neighborhoods around Ecobat; how much of the pollution in the soil can be attributed to the smelter; and what, if anything, the company can be forced to clean up. 

The facility itself reported to the federal government that its stacks ejected thousands of pounds of lead particulate into air each year through most of the eighties, and hundreds of pounds of airborne lead annually for another couple of decades after that. 

Roger Miksad, president and executive director of the Battery Council International, a trade association, argues that it’s often hard to identify the source of lead in an urban environment. The 60 freeway is nearby, for example: gasoline once was leaded, and some brake pads for cars are made with lead. Older paints also contain the toxin. 

“The number of other sites, be it from lead paint or anything else, I’m sure are innumerable,” Miksad said. “It’s not [Ecobat’s] responsibility to clean up someone’s underlying mess just because they happen to use the same chemical.”  

Angela Johnson Meszaros a lawyer from Earth Justice sits for a portrait in Pasadena’s Central Park. Chava Sanchez

But to the community and its advocates, tracing the lead is a matter of common sense.

“If you have a range of metals coming out of your stack, and if you have them going into the air, it just falls to the ground,” says Earthjustice’s Johnson Meszaros. “It has to; it’s just basic physics.” 

Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that in areas where there are multiple potential sources of lead, screening for further action would begin where the toxin was found at 100 parts per million in soil. California’s screening level is more aggressive: 80 parts per million.  

When DTSC sampled more than 50 sites within a mile of Ecobat in the 1990s, it found lead well above both those levels. At one house, lead was measured at 660 parts per million; at another property, sampling found 1,100 parts per million. But nothing more happened until 2016, when DTSC ordered Quemetco to test soils beyond its fenceline for the first time.

The company’s sampling revealed lead exceeding 80 parts per million in soil at most, if not all, of the residential properties visited. The state ordered the company to do more follow-up work, this time testing along lines radiating outward from the facility. Sampling found lead in some areas, but DTSC said the existing sampling plan is “not comprehensive and thereby the findings are not conclusive. Additional sampling is necessary to confirm the extent of facility related impacts in the community.” 

At Los Angeles County’s other lead smelter, the now-shuttered Exide plant in Vernon, soil sampling found high levels of contamination in residential areas as far as 1.7 miles away. But in 2022 a federal district judge determined that DTSC had failed to prove Exide’s pollution could have caused that contamination. 

A DTSC Work Notice of an Annual Sampling posted on the outside fence of the Ecobat Facility next to cautionary signage. Chava Sanchez

That outcome may embolden Ecobat to push back against potential legal and financial responsibility beyond the fenceline. 

Air dispersion studies conducted by state scientists have indicated that historical emissions may have extended as far as 1.6 miles from the smelter. But the company maintains that “the evidence collected to date does not indicate that Ecobat’s facility has had an adverse effect on its neighbors.” 

The lack of conclusive evidence about neighborhood level-contamination has motivated younger residents to start their own investigation. 

Avocado Heights is a tight-knit community almost surrounded by City of Industry. But this unincorporated piece of the San Gabriel Valley is kind of an emotional opposite to Quemetco’s industrial-zoned hometown. 

A grid along and across three blocks each way lines up neatly with ranch-style homes. Behind one peachy-pink house, Elena Brown-Vazquez and her brother Sam keep horses, goats, chickens and other animals.

Benjamin and Damian Herrera residents of Avocado Heights ride their horses through the neighborhood, just a few blocks from Ecobats Lead Smelter. Chava Sanchez

With dusty equestrian trails, Avocado Heights is a working-class neighborhood whose rhythm is informed by charrería culture: most people here have ties to Mexico, to places like Zacatecas or Jalisco, horse-loving country. 

That was the draw for the Brown-Vasquez siblings, who moved here in 2020 to deepen their connection with their Mexican culture. Informal food vendors like mariscos carts came by during the pandemic. The open space allowed people to play music and grill and be near each other outside, safely. They found a sense of community. 

But not long after arriving, the siblings received notice of a public meeting about the lead smelter. Elena saw kids running around yards, riding horses, and playing in the dirt, and she worried for herself and her neighbors. 

Ecobat and DTSC “talk about doing due diligence and doing your job, but they’re not really even doing a good job of engaging the community,” she said. 

Nayellie Diaz, a longtime La Puente resident and Sam Brown-Vasquez’s partner, nodded. She, Elena and Sam are among those who call themselves Avocado Heights Vaquer@s, who act “in defense of land, air, & water.” One of the group’s goals is to raise awareness about the pollution coming from the smelter in order to stop it. 

“The problem for us on some level is, there’s uncertainty,” Sam said. He’s concerned about how much lead remains in soil, and where it came from. “The reality is right now, we could tell definitively if the lead that’s in the community is coming from [Ecobat],” he added. “But they won’t do that.” 

Samuel Brown-Vazquez advocates for his neighborhood and the ranching lifestyle as a founder of Avocado Heights Vaquer@s. Molly Peterson

Last year, DTSC held a public workshop to explain its recent multimillion-dollar order against Ecobat, which included no funding to investigate soil contamination. 

“We want more data,” Elena said. 

At that meeting, Sam and Elena met Karen Valladares, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in environmental and occupational health at the University of California, Irvine, and Daniel Talamontes, a doctoral student in environmental studies at Claremont Graduate University. 

Elena, a teacher, is working with the young researchers to gather soil samples from homes close to Ecobat. Talamontes describes the grant-funded work as “guerilla science.” A lab at the University of Southern California is testing the samples and the team members will interpret them.    

“We are skilled enough, and knowledgeable, and we don’t trust [DTSC’s and Ecobat’s] methodology,” Talamontes said.

So far, Valladares and Talamontes said the overwhelming majority of soil samples have shown levels of lead above 80 parts per million, which echoes the earlier company-funded testing. She said a sizable chunk of the new samples are between 200 and 400 parts per million. The presence of arsenic in the soil, along with lead, suggests a source other than motor vehicles or paint, she said. It points to the smelter.

“There are natural levels of arsenic in the soil, but they’re very low,” Valladares said. “To have anything higher than that, it’s not the leaded gasoline. It’s coming from somewhere.”

DTSC said it is “working on a sampling strategy to determine the nature of the elevated (greater than 80 mg/kg) lead contamination observed in the community, as there are multiple potential sources of anthropogenic lead.”

At a meeting last fall, DTSC’s then-deputy director Todd Sax acknowledged that state regulators have “independent authority” to order Ecobat to do additional work right now — but he emphasized that they needed “sufficient evidence” to do so. 

“Because that’s potentially a legal situation…we have to make absolutely certain that the data that we have would stand up in court because it may come to that,” Sax said, responding to a question about why soil testing takes so long. 

“So we are being extra careful and thorough with our analyses and with the development of plans to make sure that whatever we do, it’s going to be scientifically defensible, it’s going to be right and it’s going to stick.”

Sax no longer works at DTSC and has taken a job at the California Air Resources Board. 

As the permit process for Ecobat’s smelter drags on, the company’s lawyers have been busy. 

Ecobat has filed two lawsuits involving California’s newly constituted Board of Environmental Safety, conceived by the state legislature to improve accountability at the DTSC. The board can hear public appeals to permits, as it did last year when the Clean Air Coalition challenged a limited permit the DTSC gave Ecobat for equipment the company installed without prior approval. The board sided with the neighborhood group. Ecobat has filed a civil complaint in Los Angeles County Superior Court against the board and the DTSC to appeal that decision. It’s also suing for public records related to that case in Sacramento County Superior Court. 

A more aggressive tone — and strategy — is evident in these recent filings. In one, Ecobat’s lawyers called the neighborhood activists’ conduct at the appeal meeting in November “extreme by any measure,” saying the Clean Air Coalition, or CAC, “made a circus of the meeting.” Ecobat spokesman Kramer pointed to one moment, more than five hours into the six-hour meeting, where board members admonished someone for making obscene gestures not visible on a YouTube recording of the event. “It led the board into error,” the lawyers wrote.  

The coalition, Ecobat’s lawyer wrote, “has blindly opposed Ecobat’s efforts to obtain regulatory approvals as part of a broader ‘delay strategy.’” Neighbors of the facility counter that the delay is the company’s fault. Since the company first submitted its permit renewal application in 2015, regulators have sent it back for corrections three times. Only recently did the DTSC deem the application complete. 

Ecobat also has sent a letter to Earthjustice’s Johnson Meszaros, to “notify” her that it considered the coalition’s public testimony and Instagram comments about the company to be false and potentially defamatory. 

“Ecobat has been exceptionally patient but CAC’s conduct is extreme by any measure,” the letter said. In Ecobat’s written response to Public Health Watch, Kramer said unfounded statements “can generate unfounded alarm in communities.”

Johnson Meszaros considers the letter a kind of harassment, meant to limit public participation in decisions about the smelter.

“This is something you see — oil companies have been using defamation against folks for a while now,” she said. “I think what they are telling us is they are prepared to sue community volunteers to break their will.”

DTSC and the Board of Environmental Safety did not comment on the litigation. 

“Permit renewals are not a right,” Johnson Meszaros said. “They’re earned from your past behavior choices.” 

Only China has more cars on the road than the U.S. As long as Americans drive gas-fueled cars, lead acid batteries aren’t going anywhere, according to environmental historian Jay Turner. 

“We’ve created a world that we co-inhabit with this lead and we can’t walk away from that,” said Turner, whose book “Charged” explores the value of batteries in a clean energy transition. Now that we’ve brought lead into the manmade environment, Turner said, there’s an obligation to handle it safely. 

Used car batteries at a local shop, ready to be recycled. Chava Sanchez

Doing that is more expensive in the U.S., where pollution controls are relatively tight, according to Perry Gottesfeld, an expert at the nonprofit OK International. 

Just over a decade ago, a multinational conglomerate, Johnson Controls, built a new battery smelter in Florence, South Carolina. The $150 million facility was open for just under a decade and in that time it was fined by state regulators nine times. Johnson Controls spun off its battery division, which became a new company called Clarios. When the plant was shuttered in 2021, Clarios said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it was 25% cheaper to recycle batteries at its plants in Mexico.

Gottesfeld said the U.S. doesn’t do enough to stop such offshoring. “You’re supposed to handle your own hazardous waste unless you have the inability to do so,”  he said. 

All of that puts more pressure on California, which has acknowledged its own outsourcing of hazardous waste — and which has 35 million registered vehicles on its roads. 

It also presses down on the communities around the Ecobat facility. Avocado Heights resident Elena Brown-Vasquez has heard the argument before: California needs to clean up after itself. Battery recycling plants just south of the border are known to make workers sick. “We all get that a lot, we do,” she said. 

But residents say they’re pushing back because their own health is in jeopardy, too. 

They worry that if DTSC renews Ecobat’s permit, the South Coast Air Quality Management District could allow the company to boost daily production by 25%. Ecobat has been seeking to expand for years, but local advocates have been pushing back longer. 

An early skeptic was Lilian Avery, who moved to Hedgepath Avenue in Hacienda Heights in 1956. Back then, she said during a 1996 DTSC public meeting, her neighbor was “an Armstrong rose garden; acres and acres of roses.” And then the smelter came in. 

“I have had concern about Quemetco all these years,” Avery is quoted as saying in a transcript of the meeting. “They are trying hard to be good neighbors, but they have chosen the wrong plot.”

Public Health Watch is a nonprofit investigative news organization that covers weaknesses and injustices in the nation’s health systems and policies, exposes inequities and highlights solutions.

This story has been updated to reflect a late response from California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline California communities are fighting the last battery recycling plant in the West — and its toxic legacy on Apr 22, 2024.

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Lead poisoning is often treated as if it’s a problem of the past. But its harmful legacy lingers today, particularly in the soil of urban centers across the United States. 

One in every two American children under the age of 6 tested between late 2018 and early 2020 had detectable levels of lead in their blood. Studies show soil exposure is a major reason. 

The lead pumped out of exhaust pipes and industrial smokestacks decades ago can still be found in soil. Lead paint used extensively throughout the first half of the 20th century remains on the interior and exterior walls of many homes, degrading to chips and dust that also end up in soil. And although the U.S. began phasing out lead in automobile gasoline and consumer paint in the 1970s, new lead pollution continues to be dumped on communities every year from industrial sites and the aviation gas used by small aircraft. 

Yet while the threat of lead exposure via paint and water is well documented, soils aren’t systematically tested and mapped to prevent exposure to this invisible neurotoxin.

The Center for Public Integrity and Grist have created a toolkit to help fill these information gaps and arm journalists and community members with the skills needed to do their own testing and analysis. The detailed guide walks readers through how to test the soil, map their results and investigate potential sources, both present and past. 

Center for Public Integrity / Grist

As part of this effort, Public Integrity and Grist will host several training workshops on the major tools and takeaways from the new guide. For journalists interested in coverage ideas and information about testing, join us either April 23 or April 25, both at 1 p.m. Eastern (10 a.m. Pacific).

For those interested in learning more about how to tackle soil lead contamination in their communities, join us April 30 at 1 p.m. Eastern (10 a.m. Pacific). Register here. You’ll also get an invitation to an additional brainstorming session to further tailor these approaches to your area.

Experts say that identifying the environmental sources of contamination is key to preventing lead poisoning in children. Once a child has been exposed, the damage cannot be reversed, which makes environmental testing and mapping imperative. 

Decades of research have shown the lasting harm for children exposed to lead, from brain development impacts — the capacity to learn, focus, and control impulses — to later health risks like coronary heart disease. No amount, scientists say, is safe. 

Our toolkit offers suggestions no matter what stage you’re at in your journey to learn about soil lead contamination. If you’d like to know what existing data indicates, for example, this map referenced in the toolkit shows how common elevated lead levels are in children by census tract or ZIP code in 34 states. Public health agencies fail to adequately test children’s blood for lead exposure, research shows, but existing data can point to potential trouble areas for soil, paint, or water exposure.    

If you’d like to know whether the soil in your city might be contaminated but don’t have the resources to conduct widespread testing, you can start small by testing in your backyard or a handful of properties in your neighborhood. The toolkit includes information about the online portal Map My Environment, an initiative that allows you to send in test samples to be analyzed for free. You’ll also see recommendations on lead interventions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to investigate toxic lead lurking in your community’s soil on Apr 22, 2024.

This story was originally published by Capital B.

After a year-long legal battle with a railroad company over their land, landowners in a rural, majority-Black town in Georgia may be forced to sell their homes. 

In an initial decision on April 1, a Georgia Public Service Commission officer approved a proposed rail spur in Sparta. Several property owners had refused to sell the land to Sandersville Railroad Co. In March, the centuries-old, white-owned private railroad company sought to acquire the property through eminent domain — a process that allows the government to take private land for public use. However, property owners must receive fair compensation. 

The company petitioned the state’s public service commission to condemn the land parcels from 18 property owners along Shoals Road. The railroad company planned to construct a 4.5-mile rail spur that would connect the Hanson Quarry, a rock mine owned by Heidelberg Materials, to a main train line along a nearby highway. The proposed project would create 20 temporary construction jobs, a dozen permanent jobs averaging $90,000 a year in salary and benefits, and bring in over $1.5 million annually to Hancock County.

However, residents in the town of 2,000 told Capital B in September that they didn’t want to sell their land, or that they fear the potential damage to their homes from the train. Many others say they never received a notice from the railroad company and only found out about the project at a local community meeting last year.  

The Georgia Public Service Commission held a three-day hearing in late November. The Institute for Justice, a nonprofit, public interest law firm, and residents argued the railroad project is an abuse of eminent domain that doesn’t serve the public or benefit the community. 

Benjamin Tarbutton III, Sandersville Railroad’s president, testified that economic development is important to him and “the American dream starts with a job.” He believes his railroad project will provide jobs, which is why he deems the project public use. 

Bill Maurer, an attorney with Institute for Justice who represents Sparta property owners, later asked Tarbutton: “Do you think part of the American dream is having property without it being taken for others’ use?”

“I’m going to stick with my first comment,” Tarbutton said.

During Sparta native Marvin Smith’s testimony, he also mentioned the American dream. Smith, a military veteran, owns property that was passed down to him from his father. His grandfather, James Blaine Smith, acquired 600 acres in 1926.

“The American dream says if you play by the rules and work hard, justice will prevail, and you will be rewarded,” he said. “It never occurred to me … over 43 years of playing by the rules … I would end up in a position where my land could be taken through eminent domain.”

Despite the residents’ plea, Thomas K. Bond, hearing officer for the public service commission, ruled in favor of the railroad company.

“I therefore find and conclude that the proposed condemnation by the Sandersville Railroad serves a legitimate public purpose and is necessary for proper accommodation of the business of the company,” Bond wrote. “The petition of Sandersville Railroad, as amended, is granted.”

The fight isn’t over, and the initial decision isn’t the final say in the case. Property owners, who are represented by the Institute for Justice, will challenge the ruling. They have 30 days to appeal.

There have been efforts to make it harder for companies to use eminent domain after the widely cited Kelo v. City of New London case. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government taking private property to facilitate a private development for economic benefits is considered to be a public use. Since then, at least 44 states have passed laws to alleviate the abuse.

“When the U.S. Supreme Court issued the unpopular and widely condemned Kelo decision, the Georgia General Assembly passed strict reforms to ensure that nothing like that would happen in this state. Today’s initial decision essentially undoes that work,” Maurer said in a statement. “We will fight to ensure that the people of the state of Georgia are protected from this kind of abuse at every stage we can.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Rural Georgia community battles railroad trying to take their land on Apr 21, 2024.

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On April 12, the Department of Interior released a new rule that will impose stricter financial requirements for oil and gas companies that operate on federal public land — the first such change since 1960.

The reform includes a jump in the amount of money that drilling companies must put forward to ensure cleanup of their wells. It also raises the royalty tax rate that operators pay on the minerals they extract on public land, which had not changed in more than a century.

In a statement, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said that the changes will “cut wasteful speculation, increase returns for the public, and protect taxpayers from being saddled with the costs of environmental cleanups.”

The final version of the rule, which was released in draft form last summer, joins a flurry of climate and conservation moves by the Biden administration in recent weeks, including a strengthened methane emissions standards for oil wells on federal land and a renewable energy policy meant to promote wind and solar development. Environmental groups praised the rule as long overdue.

“These new regulations are the kind of common-sense reforms the federal oil and gas leasing program has needed for decades,” said Athan Manuel, Sierra Club Lands Protection Program director, in a statement.

The increase to bonding requirements means that the government will have substantially more money set aside to pay for cleaning up abandoned oil and gas wells. In order to drill, energy companies put forward funds, most often in the form of bonds purchased with a third-party surety company, to ensure that cleanup takes place.

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These bonds are held until the company plugs its wells. If the company performs the reclamation work itself, it gets its bonds back. If a company goes bankrupt or abandons its wells some other way, the government can use the money in the bonds to pay for plugging and environmental cleanup.

Bonding levels need to be high enough to incentivize cleanup over abandonment, and Interior Department’s bonds hadn’t changed in more than six decades. A 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office found that between 84 percent and 99 percent of bonds for public land wells do not cover the full cost of cleanup. The new rule raises the minimum bond for a single public land oil and gas lease — which often contains multiple wells — from $10,000 to $150,000. For companies that operate multiple leases in the same state, the bond increases from $25,000 to $500,000.

Despite these increases, the new bonding levels are unlikely to cover the complete cost of cleaning up the more than 90,000 unplugged wells overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. The same 2019 GAO report found a wide range of plugging costs for orphaned wells on public land, ranging from $20,000 to as much as $145,000 per well, with a median cost of $71,000 to plug the well and clean up the drilling site.

Insufficient bonding often leads to wells being left idled — not producing, but also unplugged. Studies show that idled wells are more likely to become orphaned, with the financial burden for cleanup falling on public regulators — and ultimately on taxpayers. The Interior Department estimates that there are 3.5 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the U.S., which are substantial sources of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The new rule mandates that active operators on public land come into compliance with the new financial standards over the next three years and requires an update every 10 years to keep up with inflation.

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The new rule also increases the royalty tax rate that companies pay on profits from minerals extracted on public land, which will mean a windfall for Western states like Alaska, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. The previous royalty rate of 12.5 percent was set in 1920. The new rate of 16.67 percent was mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which also raised the minimum bid for an oil and gas lease to $10/acre, up from $2/acre.

About half of this new revenue will go to the states where the drilling takes place, to fund public services. In oil and gas-producing states, it’s already a major source of income. In some years, New Mexico has taken in more than a billion dollars annually from BLM oil and gas operations, thanks to leasing sales in the Permian Basin. Still, Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-partisan fiscal think tank, estimates that the government lost more than $12 billion in revenue between 2010-2019 because royalty rates were too low.

The oil and gas industry was not pleased with the final version of the rule. In a statement, Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas trade group, said the changes will drive small operators off public land and suggested that the group may sue.

“This is another rule by the Biden administration meant to deliver on the president’s promise of no federal oil and natural gas,” she said in a statement, referencing a pledge by President Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign to ban drilling on public land. “Western Energy Alliance has no other choice but to litigate this rule.”

While most environmental advocates praised the rule, some criticized the administration for failing to live up to this same campaign promise – arguing that better financial return from oil and gas drilling is not the same as banning the practice.

“Reading this rule is like finding an old floppy disk,” said Gladys Delgadillo, a climate campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. “It doesn’t belong in 2024. Updating oil and gas rules for federal lands without setting a timeline for phaseout is climate denial, pure and simple.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips3',' A powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for about 16% of global emissions, methane is the primary component of natural gas and is emitted into the atmosphere by landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, and wastewater treatment, among other pathways. Over short periods, it is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Drilling for oil on public land in the US is about to get more expensive on Apr 20, 2024.

On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency designated two types of “forever chemicals” as hazardous substances under the federal Superfund law. The move will make it easier for the government to force the manufacturers of these chemicals, called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or pfas, to shoulder the costs of cleaning them out of the environment. 

The EPA “will focus enforcement on parties who significantly contributed to the release of PFAS chemicals into the environment, including parties that have manufactured PFAS or used PFAS in the manufacturing process, federal facilities, and other industrial parties,” the agency explained in a press release. The designation, which will take effect in 60 days, comes on the heels of an EPA rule limiting the acceptable amount of the two main types of PFAS found in the United States, PFOS and PFOA, to just 4 parts per trillion.

Although the EPA’s new restrictions are groundbreaking, they only apply to a portion of the nation’s extensive PFAS contamination problem. That’s because drinking water isn’t the only way Americans are exposed to PFAS, and not all companies spreading PFAS into the environment deliberately added the chemicals to the products. In Texas, a group of farmers whose properties were contaminated with PFAS from fertilizer are claiming the manufacturer should have done more to warn buyers about the dangers of its products. The first-of-its-kind lawsuit illustrates how much more regulation will be needed to rid the environment — and Americans’ bodies — of forever chemicals.

PFAS have been around since the middle of the 20th century, when chemical giants DuPont and 3M started putting them in products such as nonstick cookware, firefighting foam, and tape. The chemicals, ultra-effective at repelling water, quickly became ubiquitous in products used by Americans every day: pizza boxes, takeout containers, popcorn bags, waterproof mascara, rain jackets.

But the stable molecular bonds that make the chemicals so effective in these applications also make them dangerous and long-lasting. The chemicals bind to blood and tissue, where they can build up over time and contribute to a range of health issues. The chemicals have been linked to testicular, kidney, and thyroid cancers; cardiovascular disease; and immune deficiencies. Over decades, as chemical companies led by 3M obscured the dangers of PFAS from federal regulators and the public, the chemicals leached into the environment and migrated into soil and drinking water supplies. They seeped into us, too; 97 percent of Americans have PFAS in their blood. 

PFAS are also in our excrement — which is a problem because of where that waste ends up. Biosolids, the concentrated byproducts of waste treatment plants, are commonly spread on farms as a fertilizer. The products are incredibly cheap — a selling point for farmers who are often working with razor-thin profit margins. Some 19 billion pounds of wastewater sludge was spread on farmland in 41 states between 2016 and 2022. The EPA estimates that 60 percent of biosolids in the U.S. are applied to agricultural lands. 

Material is loaded into a mixing truck where biosolids and amendments are combined then stored in climate controlled piles to cure at the Tulare Lake Compost plant. Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times / Getty Images

There’s growing evidence that biosolids are rife with forever chemicals that have traveled through people’s bodies. The EPA’s new PFAS rules don’t apply to biosolids, which means this contamination is largely still flying under the radar. The EPA said it aims to conduct a first-ever assessment of PFAS in biosolids later this year, which may result in new restrictions. Preliminary research has shown that the PFAS in waste sludge is absorbed by crops and, in turn, consumed by livestock; it’s even been found in chicken eggs. Some farmers aren’t waiting for the federal government to take action. 

In February, five farmers in Johnson County, Texas, sued Synagro, a biosolids management company based in Maryland, and its subsidiary in Texas. Synagro has contracts with more than 1,000 municipal wastewater plants in North America and handles millions of tons of waste every year. The company separates liquids and solids, and then treats the solids to remove some toxins and pathogens. But PFAS, thanks to their strong molecular bonds, can withstand conventional wastewater treatment. Synagro repurposes 80 percent of the waste it treats, some of which is marketed as Synagro Granulite Fertilizer. 

The lawsuit claims Synagro “falsely markets” its fertilizers as “safe and organic.” The plaintiffs accuse the company of selling fertilizer with high levels of PFAS and failing to warn farmers about the dangers of PFAS exposure. They say an individual on a neighboring property used Synagro Granulite, and the product then made its way onto their farms. 

Dana Ames, Johnson County’s environmental crimes investigator, opened an investigation after the plaintiffs made a complaint to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Johnson County constable’s office. Ames tested soil, surface water, and well water samples from the affected farms for PFAS. She found contamination ranging from 91 to 6,290 parts per trillion in soil and water samples from the plaintiffs’ properties. The county also tested tissue from two fish and two calves on those farms. The fish tested as high as 75,000 parts per trillion. The liver of one of the calves came back with an astounding 610,000 parts per trillion of PFOS — about 152,000 times higher than the EPA’s new PFAS drinking water limits.

The plaintiffs voluntarily stopped selling meat, fish, and other agricultural products after discovering the contamination. They’re suing Synagro to recoup their losses and more damages they say are sure to come. Synagro, the complaint reads, failed to conduct adequate environmental studies and the company “knew, or reasonably should have known, of the foreseeable risks and defects of its biosolids fertilizer.”

A spokesperson for Synagro told Grist the company denies the “unproven and novel” allegations. “EPA continues to support land application of biosolids as a valuable practice that recycles nutrients to farmland and has not suggested that any changes in biosolids management is required,” the spokesperson said, highlighting the lack of federal regulations. 

Workers move materials at Nursery Products, an 80-acre biosolids composting facility in California owned by Synagro. Paul Bersebach / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register / Getty Images

Ames, the investigator, said that federal and state inaction is the real root of the problem. “EPA has failed the American people and our regulatory agency here in the state of Texas has failed Texans by knowingly allowing this to continue and knowingly allowing farms to be contaminated and people, too,” Ames told Grist. 

In response to Grist’s request for comment, the EPA confirmed that recent federal PFAS restrictions do not affect the application of biosolids on farmland. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality declined to comment on the ongoing litigation in Texas.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an environmental nonprofit that helped organize the PFAS testing on the plaintiffs’ properties in Texas, is considering filing its own lawsuit against the EPA for not implementing restrictions on PFAS in biosolids. “They have a mandatory duty to look at what pollutants are in these biosolids and set standards for them,” said the group’s science policy director, Kyla Bennett, who is a former EPA employee. “They have not followed through.”

The Texas plaintiffs aren’t the only farmers struggling with a PFAS contamination problem due to the use of biosolids. Maine already banned the use of biosolids as fertilizer in 2022 after dozens of farms tested positive for forever chemicals. A farmer in Michigan who used biosolids fertilizer was forced to shut down his 300-acre farm after state officials found PFAS on his property. It’s likely that any farmland in the U.S. that has seen the use of biosolids products has a PFAS problem. “No one is immune to this,” Bennett said. “If people don’t know that their farms are contaminated it’s because they haven’t looked.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips4','An acronym for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS are a class of chemicals used in everyday items like nonstick cookware, cosmetics, and food packaging that have proven to be dangerous to human health. Also called “forever chemicals” for their inability to break down over time, PFAS can be found lingering nearly everywhere — in water, soil, air, and the blood of people and animals.
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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The EPA is cracking down on PFAS — but not in fertilizer on Apr 19, 2024.

A few months ago, I decided to take a break from reading environmental books.

I didn’t make the decision lightly — I’m an environmental journalist, after all. But I’ve spent the past seven years reading and reviewing hundreds of weighty tomes on climate change, endangered species and environmental justice. With a rare (and now-completed) sabbatical on the horizon, I felt the need to recharge and immerse myself in different forms of writing.

So I chose to put the eco-books aside for a while and devote my free time to history, poetry, philosophy, literature and pure entertainment.

Oh, what a fool I was.

Because you can’t escape tough topics like global warming, extinction and injustice — even in the pages of political analysis, science fiction, Buddhist teachings, poetry and comic books.

The natural world is all around us, and the best writers bring it to life in their work, no matter the broader topic. Science history? That’s an environmental subject. Religion? That’s an environmental issue. Batman? He’s named after an animal, naturally. They’re all reflections of the cultures we live in, the pain we feel, our relationships and our transitions.

I found myself reflecting on the environmental messages contained in these diverse volumes. In my first book-review column of 2024, below, I dig into some of them, mostly published in the past couple of years. Few were marketed as “environmental” books, but they contain wisdom environmentalists may enjoy.

1919 by Eve L. Ewing — This poetry collection is easily one of the most powerful and vital books I’ve read in the past year. It’s based on a painfully real series of events that took place in Chicago more than a century ago, when a deadly heat wave and a history of inequality combined to create an even deadlier racial conflict. This all happened long before the era of runaway climate change, but Ewing’s poetic accounts — drawn from little-seen documents contemporary to what became known as the Chicago Race Riot — feel painfully relevant. Could raging heat and injustice cause a violent crisis like this in the future? You’d better believe it.

How to Walk by Thich Nhat Hanh — Parallax Press has condensed the late Buddhist teacher’s writings and speeches into 11 pocket-sized books called the “Mindfulness Essentials” series. I read them the entire series during my sabbatical, and each volume has at least something to do with the environment — this one more than most. It touches on the importance of placing our feet on the ground and — as we take each step — recognizing where we are in the greater scheme of our neighborhoods, our communities, the planet and the universe. These are lessons I’ve already come back to it a few times. (Also relevant and recommended: How to Fight, How to Connect, and How to Relax.)

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski & Amelia Nagoski — A book every environmentalist should read — or at least keep on the shelf for when they need it. And trust me, you’re probably going to need it. This doesn’t specifically cover environmental topics, and it’s written chiefly for women and the pressures they face, but it contains tips and tools for recovering from burnout that can help us rebuild for the long fight ahead. (Side note: My local library had a 17-week reservation backlog when I first tried to read this, so maybe put in your request early?)

The Einstein Effect: How the World’s Favorite Genius Got into Our Cars, Our Bathrooms, and Our Minds by Benyamin Cohen — A planet-hopping travelog through the late scientist’s achievements and impact on the world, including several surprising environmental tie-ins. You’ll gain a new appreciation for the white-haired icon and a better understanding of how one person can have a powerful ripple effect that lasts for decades. Plus, you get to find out what happened to Einstein’s brain after he died. (Spoiler alert: It ain’t pretty).

Late in the Day: Poems 2010–2014 by Ursula K. Le Guin — Only one poem in this book by the late science-fiction author contains any real environmental themes, but coincidentally, it may also be the best poem I’ve ever read. And no, I’m not going to tell you which one. Go find out for yourself.

Poison Ivy Vol. 1: The Virtuous Cycle and Poison Ivy Vol. 2: Unethical Consumption by G. Willow Wilson, Marcio Takara & Atagun Ilhan — Stories featuring this green-clad Batman villain, who controls plants and seeks to wipe humans off the face of the planet, usually leave me cold. In the wrong creative hands, Poison Ivy makes for boring, didactic storytelling. But in this new iteration, Ivy’s in the right hands. This is a marvelously illustrated series, written by the creator of Muslim superhero Ms. Marvel, that deftly tackles all manner of environmental issues in ways that entertain, educate and challenge the reader. Along the way Wilson shows us how a character considered by some as an “ecoterrorist” may have the best intentions in the world (even if she is, in this case, an occasional murderer).

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems by Joy Harjo — Pure beauty (with more than a little emotion thrown in for good measure). This collection by the former U.S. poet laureate touches many themes, including environmental ones, although I found the poems about music and loss to be the most resonant.

Kepler by David Duchovny & Phillip Sevy — This graphic novel flips the script from Duchovny’s X-Files days: What if humans landed on a less advanced alien planet and promptly taught the residents to make the same mistakes we’ve made here? The result: political divides, corruption, injustice, climate change, violence and all the other things that make humanity not so great. The resulting book has flaws, but it wears its satire proudly on its sleeve — and at least it has something to say.

Earthdivers Vol. 1: Kill Columbus by Stephen Graham Jones & Davide Gianfelice — A graphic novel that packs a punch. In a future ruined by climate change, a lone Native American man travels back in time to rewrite history by… well, you can probably guess from the title. (Spoiler: It doesn’t go well.) Like all time-travel stories, the twists and turns and paradoxes get a little confusing if you’re not paying close attention, but it pays off (at least for now; the story is far from concluded in this first book). I came to this expecting some strong Indigenous storytelling about racial and cultural justice, but found the environmental themes provided extra relevance and raised the stakes even higher. It left me wondering: How long do we have to right our wrongs?

Porcelain by Moby — A memoir by the electronic music star, who touches upon veganism and animal rights throughout the book. But it’s also about finding beauty, purpose and community in a harsh, harsh world. It’s told through the lens of New York City in decades past, and that had me wondering about our collective future.

Strongmen by Ruth Ben-Ghiat; Sedition Hunters by Ryan J. Reilly; and Doppelganger by Naomi Klein — These books help clarify the threats people and the planet face from authoritarianism, disinformation and conspiracies — and the followers complicit in those crimes.

Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis by Michael E. Mann — OK, I had to squeeze one explicitly environmental book into this column, and it’s a good one. Mann, the climate scientist who originated the famed “hockey stick” graph, has a right to be completely pessimistic about the future, but the fact that he leans into optimism gives me strength. I’ve come back to this one a few times as I look for inspiration to reach people with powerful messages about the struggles we’ll face over the coming years.

We’ll be back next month with several brand-new environmental books — and this time they’ll fully embrace the subject matter.

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Previously in The Revelator:

The Perils of Capitalism and Disinformation: 4 Critical New Books

The post Revelator Reads: 15 Random Books That Every Environmentalist Should Read appeared first on The Revelator.

A new report alleges the U.N. has been complicit in the violent eviction of Indigenous people from six World Heritage Sites in Africa and Asia.

Read more on E360 →

A new legal theory suggests that oil companies could be taken to court for every kind of homicide in the United States, short of first-degree murder.

The idea of “climate homicide” is getting attention in law schools and district attorney’s offices around the country. A paper published in Harvard Environmental Law Review last week argues that fossil fuel companies have been “killing members of the public at an accelerating rate.” It says that oil giants’ awareness that their pollution could have lethal consequences solidly fits within the definition of homicide, which, in its basic form, is causing death with a “culpable mental state.” In other words, the case can be made that oil companies knew what they were doing.

“It’s sparking a lot of conversation,” said Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel at the advocacy group Public Citizen. After discussing the idea with elected officials and prosecutors, Regunberg said, many of them have moved from “‘Oh, that’s crazy’ to ‘Oh, that makes sense.’”

Starting around the 1970s, oil companies like Exxon understood the dangers that burning fossil fuels would unleash — unprecedented warming that would render parts of the globe “less habitable,” submerge coastal cities, and lead to extensive drought and mass famine. Yet instead of switching away from coal and oil, they doubled down, working to block legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and spreading doubt about the science of climate change. Today, with atmospheric CO2 climbing to levels last seen 14 million years ago, the predicted consequences have begun to arrive. Since the start of the 21st century, climate change has killed roughly 4 million people, according to one conservative estimate.

By 2100, that same number of people could be killed by the effects of climate change every single year, according to the new paper by David Arkush, the director of Public Citizen’s climate program, and Donald Braman, a law professor at George Washington University. “[T]he scope of the lethality is so vast that, in the annals of crime, it may eventually dwarf all other homicide cases in the United States, combined,” they write.

Criminal law cases are normally brought against individuals, but Regunberg says there’s a strong case for applying it more broadly. “It’s supposed to be about protecting us from dangerous actors that would harm our communities. What if we actually use this system to protect us from dangerous corporate actors that are doing incomprehensible harm?”

Homicide opens up a new flank in the strategy to bring climate change into the courts. Climate litigation is now in its “third wave,” according to Anthony Moffa, a professor at the University of Maine School of Law. The first lawsuits sought to force power companies to limit their emissions by way of federal public nuisance claims, a strategy the Supreme Court shot down in 2011. Then people started suing the U.S. and state governments using the argument that they had a duty to protect their citizens from climate change. The approach bore fruit last year, when young climate activists won a suit against Montana that claimed the state’s failure to evaluate climate risks in approving fossil fuel projects violated their constitutional right to a healthy environment. 

That phase also includes a flood of climate lawsuits filed against oil companies in state courts using laws meant to protect people from deceptive advertising, and those cases are finally moving closer to trial after years of delays. Now the strategy has expanded to include racketeering lawsuits, which use the laws that took down the Mafia against Big Oil, and potentially criminal law cases including homicide or reckless endangerment.

Arkush and Braman’s paper suggests that all types of homicide are on the table except for first-degree murder, which requires premeditated intent. One option is “involuntary manslaughter,” or engaging in reckless conduct that causes death, even if it’s unintentional. “Negligent homicide” is similar, but for neglectful behavior. There’s also “depraved heart murder,” which requires engaging in conduct where you knew there was a substantial risk someone would be killed. Other variants include “felony murder” and “misdemeanor manslaughter.” Criminal law differs between states, so an attorney general or district attorney’s approach would depend on the jurisdiction.

Homicide suits could be a powerful force for holding oil companies accountable and forcing them to change their polluting ways. “Where tort law merely prices harmful conduct, criminal law prohibits it — and provides tools to stop it,” Arkush and Braman wrote in the Harvard Environmental Law Review paper. A successful lawsuit could result in courts requiring fossil fuel companies to restructure as “public benefit corporations” that have to balance profits with a commitment to the public good, replace their boards with new members, or make legally binding commitments to forgo certain practices. 

To promote the idea of “climate homicide,” Public Citizen has been organizing panel discussions in recent weeks at law schools including Yale, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and the University of Chicago. Another panel will be held at Vermont Law School on Monday. Public Citizen is also looking into staging mock trials to see how jurors might react to these kinds of cases and what evidence they find compelling.

“There are a number of prosecutorial offices that seem interested in giving these legal theories serious consideration,” Regunberg said. “They understand that climate disasters — extreme heat, wildfires, floods, and more — are endangering their communities, and if there’s a way to stop criminally reckless conduct that’s contributing to these threats, they’re going to explore that possibility.”

The idea has been embraced by Sharon Eubanks, who led the United States’ racketeering lawsuit against tobacco companies in 2005, in which the court found that companies had conspired to deceive the public by covering up the health dangers of smoking. “There were a lot of people who said we were crazy to charge big tobacco with racketeering and that we could never win,” Eubanks told The Guardian. “But you know what? We did win. I think we need that same kind of thinking to deal with the climate crisis.”

So why has no one seriously considered suing oil companies for homicide until now? Recent years have brought advances in the science that connects climate change to extreme weather events and quantifies how corporate emissions have fueled disasters like wildfires, paving the way for these types of cases. Still, the need to include attribution science adds a layer of complexity that hasn’t been present for similar litigation against tobacco or opioid companies, according to Moffa.

And then there’s the fact that prosecutors are reluctant to take corporations to court with criminal law charges. The first time that a corporation was charged under a criminal statute for manslaughter was in 1904, when a steamship owner was found guilty after its ship caught fire and 900 passengers drowned, but the legal strategy never really took off. “So then to say, ‘Why haven’t they ever done this in the environmental law?’ They haven’t really done it in almost any context,” Moffa said.

In their paper, Arkush and Braman argued that fossil fuel companies have been acting as if they were above the law. “Under a plain reading of the law in jurisdictions across the United States, they are committing mass homicide,” they conclude. “Prosecutors should act accordingly.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Taking Big Oil to court for ‘climate homicide’ isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds on Apr 19, 2024.

The reality of climate change came home for Dr. Samantha Ahdoot one summer day in 2011 when her son was 9 years old.

An assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Ahdoot and her family were living in Alexandria, when there was a heat wave. Morning temperatures hovered in the high 80s, and her son had to walk up a steep hill to get to his day camp. 

About an hour after he left for camp, she received a call from a nearby emergency room. Her son had collapsed from the heat and needed IV fluids to recover.

“It was after that event that I realized that I had to do something,” she said. “That, as a pediatrician and a mother, this was something that I had to learn about and get involved in.” 

Dr. Ahdoot made good on that vow. She is the lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ newly updated policy statement on climate change, which appeared earlier this year. The statement urges pediatricians to talk about climate change to their patients. But research suggests that’s not happening very much yet, and there are practical barriers in the way.  

Back in 2007, the AAP was the first national physicians’ group to make a public statement about climate change. The updated statement covers the growing research on the many ways climate disproportionately affects children in particular. Heat raises the risk of preterm birth; infants are among the most likely to die in heat waves. Because their bodies cool themselves less efficiently than adults, children remain more susceptible to heat-related illness as they grow. Children breathe more air per pound of body weight, making them up to 10 times more affected by toxins in wildfire smoke. Excess heat hurts children’s performance in school, especially low-income children with less access to air conditioning. And research suggests that teens and youth are feeling more climate anxiety than older adults.

The new policy statement’s number one recommendation is that its members “incorporate climate change counseling into clinical practice.” This may seem like a tall order, considering the average pediatrician visit is 15 minutes. A 2021 study found that 80 percent of parents agreed that the impact of global warming on their child’s health should be discussed during their routine visits. But, only 4 percent said that it had actually happened in the past year. 

“How do you talk about climate change in a visit where you have to talk about X, Y, Z, do all the vaccines, answer every concern?” said Dr. Charles Moon, chief resident at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York. A member of the AAP Council on Environmental Health and Climate Change, he has been working to build a curriculum at his hospital to start teaching pediatricians and other doctors about this.

 “I don’t think we have all the answers to that yet,” he said. “I do a lot of work teaching other pediatricians, and it requires a little bit of a mindset shift.”   

Dr. Moon sees patients in the South Bronx, nicknamed “Asthma Alley” for its air pollution. Part of his challenge is putting environmental threats in perspective for families who face many different obstacles in their lives, in a way that doesn’t lead to despair or disempowerment. 

Or, as he put it: “If you can’t put food on the table, who wants to hear about climate change?” 

In Oakland, California, Dr. Cierra Gromoff has a lot of experience with families on Medicaid, and she says the pressure on them and their healthcare providers is real. “There are these already incredibly marginalized groups of kids facing other insurmountable things,” she said. “These providers have so little time, they have to focus on the biggest burning fire — whatever systemic problem is going on.” 

A clinical child psychologist, Gromoff has been concerned about the environment since her childhood as an Alaskan Native in the remote Aleutian Islands. She thinks that to overcome these obstacles, state and federal insurance providers should require or reward doctors for taking the time to include environmental health in their assessments. 

She is the co-founder of a telehealth startup, Kismet Health, which is building a tool that could show local environmental threats that are indexed to a patient’s home or school address. 

The tool could help doctors recognize climate risks, by showing if a patient lives near a green space, an urban heat island, or a polluting chemical plant. 

Gromoff said she would like to see free resources that pediatricians can give families on everything from the signs of heatstroke in a baby to eco-anxiety.

“We should have a screening question,” she said. “‘Are you worried about what’s happening to our earth?’ And if they say yes, we should be able to provide some type of handout: What you’re feeling is real. These are small steps you can take.”

The good news, say Moon and Ahdoot, is that interest in the topic is picking up in the medical community. Over half of medical schools are covering climate change in the curriculum, a number that’s more than doubled since 2019. And there are state research consortiums on climate and health in 24 states, Ahdoot said. The American Academy of Pediatrics has been creating continuing education materials on the topic as well. 

Incorporating climate change into clinical practice is not about adding another item to an already long checklist, Ahdoot said. It’s also not about transforming pediatricians into activists, or talking about factors that families can’t do anything about. 

“Pediatricians never want to be proselytizing,” she added. “It always has to be valuable to the individual patient.” 

The goal of the new climate policy for pediatricians is to help doctors translate their climate knowledge into solutions and helpful advice for their patients. A few examples from Ahdoot include: running a test for Lyme disease for patients in Maine, which used to be too cold for ticks; beginning allergy medication in February because pollen arrives earlier in the year; or teaching athletes the warning signs for heat exhaustion.

For Ahdoot, it’s also important to be aware of how climate affects a child’s mental health. Part of the answer, she said, is talking about actions that families can take that benefit both people’s health and the planet, like eating more plant-based diets, and walking or biking instead of driving.

“What’s good for climate,” she said, “is generally good for kids.” 

This story has been updated.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Pediatricians say climate conversations should be part of any doctor’s visit on Apr 19, 2024.

This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN.

In December, Catherine Murupaenga-Ikenn used a power tool to erase the words on a museum display of the Treaty of Waitangi, an 1840 document that asserted British sovereignty over Aotearoa, also known as New Zealand. 

For years, many Māori, like Murupaenga-Ikenn, had criticized their national museum for displaying the English-language agreement that their ancestors did not endorse, wrongly suggesting the Māori people had agreed to relinquish their sovereignty. Activists had spent years waiting for the museum to change the display; when nothing happened, they took matters into their own hands. Her case is now in court.

Murupaenga-Ikenn is now in New York City this week, attending the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the largest annual global gathering of Indigenous advocates and leaders. There, she spoke on the United Nations General Assembly floor on Wednesday, drawing a connection between the disillusionment her people feel with their state government and the frustration Indigenous people feel with the United Nations as a whole. 

A decade ago, global leaders stood in that same room and agreed to respect and promote the rights of Indigenous peoples. At the World Conference of Indigenous Peoples in 2014, they negotiated a 40-paragraph agreement — known as an outcome document — loaded with promises like providing equal access to health care for Native peoples; respecting their contributions to ecosystem management; and working with Indigenous peoples to address the effects of extractive industries. To date, little has been accomplished, and now many like Murupaenga-Ikenn want the United Nations to urgently course-correct.  

“Ten years on from the adoption of the outcome document, what I see is the U.N. is suffering a crisis of Indigenous peoples’ mistrust,” Murupaenga-Ikenn said. 

Wednesday’s meeting, where Murupaenga-Ikenn spoke, was particularly important because it featured Dennis Francis, the president of the General Assembly, a high-ranking official of the United Nations, second only to the secretary-general, António Guterres.

United Nations General Assembly President Dennis Francis speaks during a press conference on January 24, 2024. Kabir Jhangiani / NurPhoto via Getty Images

But unlike the conference in 2014, this conversation focused heavily on the climate crisis. The original outcome document features the phrase “climate change” only once. 

“It is thanks to Indigenous peoples, as guardians as 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity, that the sophisticated traditional knowledge and practices they employ, that we have seen gains in the conservation and sustainable use of our increasingly threatened biodiversity,” Francis said in his remarks to attendees. “We must harness the potential of Indigenous knowledge and innovations to mitigate the effects of climate change.”

A decade ago, the world hadn’t yet experienced month after month of record-shattering heat. Global leaders hadn’t met in Paris to sign international agreements to prevent catastrophic warming. Far fewer people drove electric cars and relied upon renewable energy. The European Union and the U.S. had yet to sign their landmark climate laws.

Now, the United Nations’ weather agency is warning that the world is close to surpassing 1.5 degrees of warming. Scientists are proving that climate change is already exacerbating extreme weather events like heavy rainfall. And leaders say now is more important than ever for U.N. member states to take seriously both the concerns of Indigenous peoples and the potential for their traditional knowledge and practices to provide much-needed solutions.

“So many brothers and sisters have come to this meeting year after year to call to humanity, to states, to multinationals, to ask them to comply with these agreements,” said Leonidas Iza Salazar, a Kichwa-Panzaleo activist from Ecuador, who spoke on behalf of Central and South America and the Caribbean region at Wednesday’s meeting. 

In the 2014 outcome document, such promises include recognizing Indigenous peoples’ knowledge when creating national climate change response plans and protecting Indigenous rights, which include “free, prior and informed consent” to projects on their land. This would mean giving Indigenous peoples the opportunity to agree to energy developments like pipelines and lithium mining on their land before such projects are underway. 

“However after 10 years of having established these mechanisms and having this declaration, the states — rather than creating conditions to meet the commitments they have made to the Indigenous peoples of the world — they have forged ahead with economic policies, mining, extraction, despoiling Mother Earth without limits,” Salazar said. “All of that has brought with that terrible consequences.”

Throughout Wednesday’s meeting, Indigenous peoples took turns sharing their frustration and disappointment with the lack of follow through from state governments, whose officials intermittently stood up to describe their progress and restate their commitments to Native peoples and nations.

Some state governments were more willing to embrace reform than others: A representative from Colombia said the country would support enhanced participation of Indigenous peoples in the U.N. system through the creation of a separate status for them. Right now, Indigenous nations are lumped in with non-governmental organizations in the U.N. system like advocacy groups, and can’t serve on key committees where important conversations happen between U.N. member states.

Many Indigenous advocates spoke up about the need for such enhanced participation in United Nations processes, which states promised to consider in the outcome document. Indigenous peoples’ status at the U.N. still hasn’t changed in the last decade.

Ghazali Ohorella, an Alifuru Indigenous rights advocate from the Maluku Islands in Indonesia, spoke on behalf of the Pacific region and was one of several advocates who urged Francis, president of the General Assembly, to schedule a high-level meeting in 2027 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the signing of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Those meetings, Ohorella said, are a key part of Indigenous advocates’ efforts to hold states accountable for their promises. And while there’s no way to actually hold states accountable, a major event can help Indigenous advocates shine a light on failures, highlight any successes and ensure their concerns are not forgotten. 

“The thing is, with Indigenous peoples, because we’re like a mighty mouse fighting an 800-pound gorilla, you need to keep the pressure on,” Ohorella said. “What we’re here to do is definitely to challenge the status quo and make sure that we’re not just participating in the system, we’re changing it.”

That optimism resonates with Murupaenga-Ikenn from Aotearoa. Murupaenga-Ikenn used to attend the Permanent Forum frequently but then got disillusioned by the lack of progress and stopped attending. 

But recently she decided it was time to come back. A new right-wing government elected last fall in Aotearoa pledged to roll back many of the progressive Indigenous policies that Māori peoples spent decades fighting for. Already, the new government abolished the Māori health agency, despite entrenched health disparities, is minimizing the use of the Māori language, and exploring how to withdraw the country’s support of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Thousands have taken to the streets to protest the changes. 

Murupaenga-Ikenn feels like this is the time to speak out again, and to find allies internationally. Yet halfway through the first week of the Permanent Forum, she’s already frustrated with how repetitive the gathering has been as Indigenous advocates ask state governments over and over to respect their rights. 

“You just want to keep on doing this for another 100 years?” she said. “Good on you, but not me. And certainly not our young people. Because there will be nothing left, nothing left to salvage if we keep on doing this, and only this.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline At UN conference, Indigenous peoples say little has changed after promises made a decade ago on Apr 19, 2024.

The DNA of successful campaigns Channel Comment brendan 19th April 2024 Teaser Media

This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN.

When around 70,000 Indigenous Maasai were expelled from their lands in northern Tanzania in 2022, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. For years, the Tanzanian government has systematically attacked Maasai communities, imprisoning Maasai leaders and land defenders on trumped-up charges, confiscating livestock, using lethal violence, and claiming that the Maasai’s pastoralist lifestyle is causing environmental degradation — a lifestyle that has shaped and sustained the land that the Maasai have lived on for centuries. This rise in criminalization, especially in the face of mining, development, and conservation, is being noted in Indigenous communities around the world and was the key focus of a report released this week at the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII, the largest gathering of Indigenous activists, policymakers, and leaders in the world.

“It’s a very serious concern because the Indigenous people who have been resisting the taking over of their lands and territories, they are the ones who most commonly face these charges and criminalization,” Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples told a packed panel on the topic on Tuesday. “There is a need to focus on criminalization because this is what brings fear to Indigenous communities, and it is also what curtails them in their capacity to assert their right to self-determination.”

The report, “Criminalization of Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights,” lays out the mechanisms by which Indigenous peoples around the world are increasingly facing criminalization and violations of their rights with impunity. Indigenous land, subsistence, and governance rights are often poorly implemented, if at all, leading to violations when they intersect with government and third-party interests, especially in extractive industries and conservation. In addition to historical discrimination, a lack of access to justice for Indigenous rights holders — including environmental and human rights defenders, journalists, and communities — leads to higher rates of arrests and incarcerations. The report provides recommendations for U.N. bodies, states, and other relevant actors to better address this growing threat.

The use of criminal law to punish and dissuade people from protesting or speaking out is typically the way people understand criminalization, said Fergus Mackay, a senior legal counsel and policy advisor to Indigenous Peoples Rights International, an organization that works to protect Indigenous rights defenders. But the bulk of criminalization Indigenous people face actually stems from the inadequate recognition or non-recognition of their rights by governments. “The lack of recognition of Indigenous rights in national legal frameworks is at the heart of this issue,” Mackay said.

This is especially prevalent when those rights intersect with public or protected lands, or areas that overlap with extractive interests, conservation, or climate mitigation measures. For example, in Canada, First Nations fishermen are being arrested and harassed by federal fisheries officers for fishing rights protected by treaty. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Baka Indigenous peoples have been beaten, imprisoned, and prevented from using their customary forest by eco-guards hired to protect wildlife. A 2018 study estimated that more than a quarter-million Indigenous people have been evicted due to carbon-offset schemes, tourism, and other activities that lead to the creation of protected areas.

“The criminalization of Indigenous people could also be considered the criminalization of the exercise of practicing Indigenous rights,” said Naw Ei Ei Min, a member of Myanmar’s Indigenous Karen peoples and an expert UNPFII member at Tuesday’s panel.

Defamation and smear campaigns through social media are often used in the leadup to false criminal charges, especially when Indigenous people speak up against government-supported private companies investing in large-scale projects on their traditional lands, said Tauli-Corpuz. Berta Cárceres, the renowned Indigenous Lenca environmental defender who opposed the development of the Agua Zarca dam in Honduras, had previously been detained on fabricated allegations of usurpation of land, coercion, and possession of an illegal firearm before she was killed in 2016. Tauli-Corpuz, the former Special Rapporteur, along with around 30 other Indigenous leaders, was herself placed on a terrorist list in 2018 by the Philippine government, a move that was criticized harshly by the U.N.

Criminalization comes with serious consequences. In 2021, of the 200 land and environmental defenders killed worldwide, more than 40 percent were Indigenous. According to Indigenous Peoples Rights International, an organization founded in part to address the growing concern over criminalization of Indigenous people, despite representing only 6 percent of the global population, Indigenous defenders suffered nearly 20 percent of attacks between 2015 and 2022, and were much more likely to experience violent attacks.

The U.N. report also pointed to the high rates of incarceration of Indigenous people and their disproportionate risk of arrest. In Canada, dozens of members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, who have long protested the creation of the Coastal GasLink pipeline that will cross their unceded territory, have been arrested and await trial in Canada. That trial is currently on hold because of allegations of excessive force and harassment of the police. 

In countries including New Zealand and Australia, Indigenous people are already massively overrepresented in prisons. In Australia, despite making up only 3 percent of the population, Aboriginal Australians make up almost 30 percent of the incarcerated population. “This really speaks about the racism and discrimination that exists, which is the foundation for filing the criminalization cases against them,” said Tauli-Corpuz.

Indigenous journalists were included in this year’s report as being increasingly at risk of criminalization. In 2020, Anastasia Mejía Tiriquiz, a Guatemalan Kʼicheʼ Mayan journalist, was arrested and charged with sedition after reporting on a protest against the municipal government. And just this year, Brandi Morin, an award-winning Cree-Iroquois-French journalist from Treaty 6 territory in Alberta, was arrested while covering an Indigenous-led homeless encampment in Edmonton.

Indigenous peoples are also affected by the growing use of criminal law to deter free speech and protests. Since the Indigenous-led protests against the Dakota Access pipeline on the Standing Rock reservation in 2016, lawmakers in two dozen states in the U.S. have taken up bills that ratchet up penalties for pipeline protesters. Globally, laws targeting everything from anti-terrorism and national security to free speech only add to the ability for states to lay criminal charges on Indigenous activists. 

Olnar Ortiz Bolívar, an Indigenous Baré lawyer from Venezuela who works to defend the rights of Indigenous communities, has been the target of both physical violence and harassment for his work in the Amazon, an area where illegal miners, criminal organizations, and the government are competing for control of resources, especially gold. He has been an outspoken critic of the government-designated mining area in southern Venezuela known as the Orinoco Mining Arc. Now he fears, that a new bill introduced by the Maduro regime into Congress that effectively turns dissent against the government and protesting into a criminal act will severely affect his ability to continue to speak out against such projects.

“It’s a contradiction because we have rights in theory, but we don’t have the right to practice those,” he said. “What they are doing is taking away the freedom of expression of Venezuelans and, evidently, of the Indigenous people, who are increasingly vulnerable.”

As countries attempt to reach their goals of protecting 30 percent of their lands and waters by 2030 along with growing demand for transition minerals, criminalization of Indigenous peoples is likely to grow, say experts. A survey of more than 5,000 existing “energy transition mineral” projects found that more than half were located on or near Indigenous lands; for un-mined deposits, that figure was much higher. 

The report set forth a series of recommendations to counteract criminalization, emphasizing the importance of revising national laws, improving measures to protect Indigenous human rights defenders and access to justice, and promoting efforts to prevent, reverse, and remedy criminalization and its consequences.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline UN puts spotlight on attacks against Indigenous land defenders on Apr 18, 2024.

Written by Jill Hunkler, who has witnessed the devastating impacts of the petrochemical industry in the Ohio River Valley, including the devastating impacts of the oil and gas industry which provides the feedstock for plastic production. 

I had been living in a sacrifice zone due to the polluting and poorly regulated fracking operations for years when the petrochemical industry arrived creating even more toxic air and water pollution in the Ohio River Valley. Plastic production harms not only frontline communities, but the global community at large with a vast array of negative health impacts, and every aspect of our environment. Therefore, I urge officials to support a global plastics treaty that will address all aspects of the plastic pollution crisis at the upcoming  Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution.  Immediate and mass reduction in plastic production must be mandated, and then the implementation of the systems which free society from the needless reliance on plastic pursued. 

I consider myself a fracking  refugee. I was forced from my home that I built with my own hands at the headwaters of the historically pristine Captina Creek Watershed in Belmont County, Ohio, after being surrounded by oil and gas infrastructure and the associated pollution from a compressor station, 78 fracking wells, transfer stations and an interstate pipeline with numerous gathering pipelines—all within a five-mile radius of my home. I lived in the hollow below the oil and gas infrastructure. 

The air pollution emanating from these facilities contains volatile organic compounds, some of which are known carcinogens, that are heavier than air and hover in the hollows. I never imagined that my quiet, healthy, country way of life would disappear. The negative health impacts we experienced were too much to bear. First, we noticed the odors and had nose, eye, and throat irritation, as well as headaches. The symptoms worsened over time with nausea, vertigo, rashes, mental confusion, disorientation, numbness, and body aches and pains. True wealth is good health, and our health and happiness suffered as long as we stayed in the hollow.

Jill Hunkler stands in front of the Shell Plastic Plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. Photo credit: Mark Dixon, Blue Lens LLC Fracking in the Ohio River Valley

Due to the invasiveness of shale gas development, southeastern Ohio has been described by many as living in an occupied territory. Belmont County is the most heavily fracked in the state. Those of us living in these once peaceful hills are not only dealing with negative health impacts from the oil and gas industry. We are also experiencing unsafe roadways due to heavy industry traffic, air and noise pollution, public, well and spring water contamination, pipeline explosions and well pad fires, including one that contaminated a stream that feeds our mighty Ohio River, resulting in the death of 70,000 fish. 

Fracking for Plastics

Our water supplies are being depleted by industry withdrawals from our reservoirs, ponds, and streams. In 2018, a fracking well blowout in Belmont County caused one of the largest methane leaks in U.S. history, forcing area residents to evacuate from their homes. And in another horrifying instance, a fracking waste water truck accident contaminated Barnesville’s reservoir with radioactive materials. At the time of the truck accident and spill, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency water test results showed a spike in radium, a naturally occurring radioactive element that is brought to the surface during the fracking process.

The Ohio River Valley is not being fracked for energy independence, as were told, but instead for plastics.The fracking required to extract the fossil fuels for plastic production produces toxic, radioactive waste. This waste destroys massive amounts of precious freshwater for its singular use, and makes the region poorer rather than richer in the long run. There are 258 Class II wastewater injection wells in Ohio alone. More than 1.5 billion gallons of wastewater have been produced here. The plastics crisis includes the radioactive waste created by the extraction of materials for petrochemicals. There is no way to safely dispose of this waste and the only way to address it is to stop creating it and reduce plastic production.

A certified thermographer at Earthworks used an optical gas imaging camera to capture methane and other pollutants emitting from a compressor station owned by MarkWest Energy Partners in Barnesville, Ohio, USA. Oil and gas infrastructure like compressor stations move and process the chemicals that become the building blocks of plastics, called “petrochemicals”. David vs Goliath Petrochemical Win

In the fall of 2023,  folks in Belmont County, Ohio  breathed a collective sigh of relief when a Thailand-based chemical company gave up its pursuit to build a toxic petrochemical facility in our backyards. 

It was a long-fought, David vs. Goliath battle, pitting locals against a foreign company that spent millions of dollars on lobbying and public relations to position itself as our economic savior. In truth, this project would only serve the bottom line of an international corporation, at the expense of the health and safety of our community.  In the end, a coalition of local advocates, environmental attorneys and conservation organizations showed Big Oil that we will not lie down and our communities will not trade our health for false promises.  

The saga around the petrochemical facility dates back to 2015, when Ohio Governor John Kasich and Thailand’s largest petrochemical company, PTTGCA, announced that Belmont County had been chosen for the construction of an ethane cracker plant that converts fossil fuels into single-use plastics.  

The PTTGCA facility would have been a major source of air pollution in surrounding communities, spewing cancer-causing pollutants and toxins that can cause damage to immune and reproductive systems. Numerous studies also show petrochemical plants are connected to neurological and respiratory issues in populations living near the facilities. 

It also would have emitted 1.8 millions tons of greenhouse gasses every year.

Industry executives and government officials promised the PTTGCA cracker plant would spur local economic growth, renewed business investment, and the creation of tens of thousands of jobs. However, recent news suggests that oil and gas jobs often go to out-of-town workers, instead of employing locals.

Shell Plastics Case Study

We also have a harrowing petrochemical case-study right up the river, where a multinational oil company made the same claims, but the jobs have yet to materialize, and the local economy continues to struggle. 

In November 2022, a $14 billion Shell petrochemicals complex began operating in Beaver County, PA. So far, the plant has failed to live up to the promises made for economic development and prosperity for the region, even after receiving the largest taxpayer-funded subsidy in Pennsylvania history, and has been a source of alarming air pollution and potential health impacts on the community. 

A study from the Ohio River Valley Institute found that, since the Shell plastic plant was first announced in 2012, Beaver County has seen a declining population, zero reduction in poverty, zero growth in business, and zero growth in employment, even considering  all the temporary construction workers that built the plant. In fact, the county has fallen behind the state and the nation in nearly every measure of economic activity.

The Shell fracked plastic plant in Beaver, PA will make 1.6M tons of plastic while producing 2.2M tons of CO2 every year. Not to mention tons of pollution released into the community every year. Photo credit: Mark Dixon, Blue Lens LLC

The Shell cracker plant has been a source of alarming air pollution, caused  potential health impacts and created a nightmare for the environment and people living nearby. In the first year alone the facility blew through 4 different air pollution limits and exceeded a benzene permit limit and as of February 2024 had 41 malfunctions. These malfunctions triggered malodors, chemical spills, and flaring episodes that illuminated the night sky.

In May of 2023, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection fined Shell almost $10 million for violating state air quality regulations, including exceeding 12-month emissions limits for VOCs, carbon monoxides, and nitrous oxides. This is one of the largest penalties in state history but threatens to position this large polluter in a “pay to pollute” relationship with regulators.  The plant also faces a federal lawsuit from The Clean Air Council and the Environmental Integrity Project for its repeated air pollution violations. 

The economic and environmental track record of Beaver County suggests that the petrochemical “boom” has turned out to be a bust. 

Local advocates will continue to challenge these facilities, the false promises and  expose the connection between fracking and cracking to make more plastic, which is the last thing this beautiful planet needs. 

We will persist and resist the petrochemical buildout in the Ohio River Valley and beyond so that future generations don’t have to choose between a job and their health. Current and future generations are depending on us to make wise economic development decisions that prioritize the protection of our land, and the health and safety of the people. It’s what residents of the Ohio River Valley deserve.

The post The Cradle-to-Grave Impacts of Plastic on Human Health and the Environment Must be Considered in the Plastic Treaty Negotiations appeared first on Earthworks.

Though the “war on drugs” has achieved nothing but violence and environmental degradation, green and progressive voices calling for evidence-based decriminalisation and legal regulation are struggling to take root in mainstream political discourse. As national politics in Europe turns right, a fresh push for change is coming from the cities.

Earlier this year, the Green Mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema hit the headlines when she called for the legal regulation of cocaine. While Halsema’s appeal may sound wild in a world where the “war on drugs” is being waged as fervently as ever, her voice is part of a growing international movement for reform – and Greens across Europe are among those leading the way.  

The mayor’s announcement came just ahead of the conference Dealing with Drugs: Cities and the quest for regulation. Organised by the City of Amsterdam, the conference brought together city leaders, policy experts, and people who use drugs to explore potential routes to legal regulation, under which governments would control the production, availability, and use of drugs – much in the way alcohol is currently regulated throughout most of the world.  

Legal regulation would mark a radical departure from the existing global regime of drug prohibition. Enshrined in international law through a series of United Nations conventions and protocols dating to the 1960s, and boosted by the American call for an international war on drugs in the early 1970s, prohibition criminalises every stage of the drug trade: from cultivation and manufacturing to trafficking, possession, and use.  

War without winners 

Even on its own terms – eliminating production, trade, and use – the war on drugs has been a resounding failure.  Moreover, it has been fought at enormous economic, human and environmental cost. According to the 2016 Alternative World Drug Report, prohibition costs at least 100 billion US dollars per year to enforce, while creating an enormously profitable underground drug market that enriches criminal organisations and undermines economies in countries such as Mexico. Both the illegal drug trade and its policing involve widespread human rights abuses, including murder, mass incarceration, and capital punishment. Finally, activities linked to both the illegal drug market and prohibition – including cultivation, attempts to eradicate crops, and the laundering of drug profits – have been blamed for dangerous levels of deforestation and pollution, from South Africa to South America.  

Yet governing bodies throughout the world continue to pledge support and funding to the elusive aim of eradicating the global drug trade. The European Union is a case in point. The stated objective of the EU Council’s Horizontal Working Party on Drugs, established in 1997, is to reduce the supply and demand for drugs, a goal reiterated in the most recent EU Drugs Strategy (2021-25), which prioritises the dismantling of criminal organisations. 

However, the EU’s main research body on drugs, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), concluded in its 2023 report that the availability of “the commonly used illicit drugs in the European Union remains high”. At the same time, control of this market is still in the hands of organised crime. As Mayor Halsema stated at the Amsterdam conference, “What we can see worldwide, in Europe and in the Netherlands, [is that] there’s more violence, there are more drugs on the market, our economy is getting infected, the justice system is overloaded. We need a change. We can’t go on as we have for the last 50 years.” 

Halsema chose to focus on cocaine because that’s where the main challenge lies for her city. According to Ruben Boomsma of the international network of law enforcement officials LEAP, which advocates for evidence-based drug policy, the trafficking of cocaine via the main ports in the Netherlands, such as Rotterdam and Amsterdam, means that the activities of criminal organisations are having an increased impact on those cities.  

Regulating soft drugs 

Elsewhere in Europe, most Greens and other politicians interested in drug law reform are focussing their efforts on cannabis and other so-called “soft drugs”. Halsema’s own party, the GroenLinks, ran for the November 2023 Dutch elections together with the Labour Party (PvdA). The alliance’s joint drug policy mentions the legalisation of soft drugs with evidence of low risk (cannabis, mushrooms, and MDMA). According to the alliance’s spokesperson on drugs, legislative member Songül Mutluer (PvdA), the policy prioritises health and safety while allowing the parties to “keep an eye on the reality of organised crime and the increasing explosions in our neighbourhoods related to drug criminality”, which poses a particular danger to young people.  

While limiting itself to soft drugs, the Green-Labour position goes further than the existing “toleration” system in the Netherlands, which prohibits drug possession while allowing cannabis to be consumed in the country’s famous coffee houses. While the Netherlands was ahead of the game with its permissive approach to cannabis consumption, in recent years other European countries have gone further. Both Malta and Luxembourg have legalised the cultivation and possession of cannabis for personal use, and Germany – where Greens are part of the coalition government – followed at the beginning of April 2024. Germany’s new cannabis law also allows for the establishment of not-for-profit associations to cultivate and supply cannabis to members, and opens the way for people with previous convictions for cannabis possession to request the removal of those records. 

The move to legalise cannabis is part of a global shift since the turn of the millennium. Other countries and regions – for example, Canada and some American states – have adopted policies of legal regulation. Motivated in part by the desire to take the cannabis market out of criminal hands, the case for legalisation has also been driven by scientific evidence demonstrating the plant’s medicinal benefits.  

At its congress in Vienna last year, the European Green Party passed a resolution supporting a “Green and science-based approach to cannabis law in Europe”, with the goal of giving “a new approach to a cannabis law that ends the negative impacts of prohibition”. Presented by the Polish, German and Luxembourg parties, the motion was adopted with a visible majority. Only the Swedish delegation expressed its reservation against the motion.  

At the same time, some Green MEPs are taking part in informal discussions about cannabis reform. Mikulás Peksa, a Czech MEP from the Pirate Party, which sits with the Greens in the European Parliament, welcomes this “cross-partisan group …that allows us to promote cannabis-related policies”. 

Pioneers of decriminalisation 

The Czech Republic is one of a small number of European countries to take an evidence-based, public-health approach to drug use beyond cannabis. Since 1990, the country has decriminalised the possession of drugs for personal use and supports a range of harm-reduction measures for people who use drugs.  

Harm reduction, a commitment to evidence-based policy and public health, and support for marginalised communities are the values that unite different Green parties across Europe.

But the country most famous for decriminalisation is Portugal. In 2001, Jorge Sampaio’s socialist government implemented a series of policies aimed at prioritising public health and harm reduction. The possession of small quantities of drugs for personal use was decriminalised and replaced with a system of fines and offers of treatment, meaning that people with problematic drug use could get the support they needed rather than crowding the country’s prisons. In addition, harm-reduction measures were put into place, such as needle exchanges and safe consumption rooms (where people can use drugs in a safe space with clean equipment and medical staff on hand). The result was a dramatic drop in HIV infection rates among people who inject drugs, as well as a reduction in drug-related deaths and overall drug use, with rates lower than the EU average.  

“We had a terrible situation back in the late 1990s,” recalls Henrique Vasconcelos, a medical doctor and member of the General Assembly of the Portuguese Green party LIVRE, with reference to drug-related deaths. “The decriminalisation act of 2001 changed things radically. Of course it’s not perfect, it’s not the silver bullet that will end any drug-related issue. But it did a lot of good and it’s still doing a lot of good,” he adds. 

LIVRE promotes a public health-based approach to drugs, grounded in science and an understanding of problematic drug use as a social and economic, rather than criminal, problem. Vasconcelos, who helped to write the party’s health policy, says that “We see drug abuse and drug dependence as part of an intersectional range of issues that is not exclusively about drugs themselves, with chemical or medical issues of addiction, but rather a myriad of issues, such as the housing crisis, atomisation of society, low salaries. All the usual culprits.” 

Fighting stigma in England and Wales 

Harm reduction, a commitment to evidence-based policy and public health, and support for marginalised communities are the values that unite different Green parties across Europe. Alex Armitage, another doctor and currently a Green councillor on the Shetland Islands in Scotland, explains how his own commitment to these values prompted him to initiate a radical reform of the drug policy of the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) a few years ago. 

In 2018, Armitage was living on a council estate in Hackney, East London, and running to be a local councillor. He recalls knocking on hundreds of doors as part of his campaign, and hearing story after story about “how drug prohibition has ruined people’s lives” – from the violence of local organised gangs to police harassing and arresting local youth. “[I heard about] young Black men who’d had a minor conviction and their life was ruined, just because of this tiny amount of cannabis they happened to be carrying. [I saw] the injustice and how harm is inflicted on communities. And it’s all down to the government policy of prohibition. As a doctor, I learned that the first law of medical ethics is do no harm. If you take that ethic into politics, the first thing you would do is end prohibition,” he says. 

In 2019, the GPEW passed its new policy, proposing the full legal regulation of all drugs, based on a system that takes into account up-to-date scientific evidence on the levels of risk posed by different substances. Armitage explains why, unlike most Green parties in Europe, the GPEW Drug Policy Working Group decided to go beyond cannabis and other soft drugs: “The conversation seemed to be focused on cannabis and I thought we needed to move it on to talk about heroin and crack and stimulants, and talk about economics, about criminal justice, about millions of people in producer and transfer countries, all of the global production and ecological destruction and murder and disenfranchisement of communities in the Andes, that all come about as a result of our decision to have an illegal drugs market.”  

The full picture 

This holistic approach to drug reform as a social justice issue echoes the demands of those too often left out of the conversation: people who use drugs, and especially those who use the most stigmatised substances, including opioids. In the words of Judy Chang of the International Network of People Who Use Drugs (INPUD), who also attended the Amsterdam Conference: “We have this drug exceptionalism: cannabis is OK, cocaine is OK. But really, we’re still dealing with drugs that are primarily consumed by middle-class or upper-class [people]. But if we’re really putting lives first, we should be looking at all drugs, because it’s mostly people who are using opioids that are dying.”  

Tackling problematic drug use demands an intersectional approach encompassing effective poverty reduction measures. 

Canada and the United States have experienced a dramatic rise in opioid-related deaths over the past decade, driven in large part by the introduction of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl into the illegal opioid supply. While North America remains the centre of the opioid crisis, in the UK public health experts have warned that the country needs to be prepared for a similar scenario, and concerns have also been raised in the EU.  

For Chang, the reality of the ever-evolving drug market, which sees new synthetic drugs constantly entering the supply, should serve as a warning call. She says that while decriminalisation – whereby the trade and possession of drugs remain illegal but personal possession and use are not a criminal offence – is an important first step, legal regulation is needed to ensure a safe supply of drugs. Chang insists that this is more than a health issue; it is also a matter of human rights. “People who use drugs have always been in favour of legal regulation and the right of people to consume the substances they want – and need, in a lot of instances,” says Chang. “It’s about creating a world where people aren’t criminalised for what they choose to put in their own bodies and what they do to survive.” 

According to Chang, tackling problematic drug use also demands an intersectional approach encompassing effective poverty reduction measures. 

Vasconcelos echoes Chang’s concerns when he stresses that politicians and policymakers need to keep in mind the wider social and economic inequalities underlying problematic drug use: “We cannot run away from hard evidence. But we can and should apply our values, the values that make our party, when it comes to the way we portray the crises that intersect with drug abuse. The way that we suggest that people are treated more fairly and more inclusively. The way that we recognise that disadvantaged people, racialised people, LGBTQIA+ people are at a higher risk of being in a context where drug consumption can lead to drug dependence and addiction.”  

At the end of the Amsterdam Conference, participants – including Mayor Halsema, LEAP, INPUD and an array of other politicians and drug reform experts – signed the manifesto Dealing with Drugs, which calls for a move towards legal regulation, with drug laws based on harm reduction, public health, social justice and education – the same principles promoted by green parties in Portugal, England and Wales, and throughout Europe. 

While the attendees celebrated the conference as a crucial first step towards legal regulation, there is also awareness of the challenges ahead. As Ruben Boomsma from LEAP stresses, prohibition and the message “drugs are bad, don’t use them” have become so embedded in our societies over the past half-century that meaningful change will require a radical cultural shift as well as legal reform. Then there’s the increasingly hostile political environment, with the rise of far-right parties all over Europe, including in countries with a record of decriminalisation and harm reduction programmes, such as the Czech Republic and Portugal.  

Prohibition and the message “drugs are bad, don’t use them” have become so embedded in our societies that meaningful change will require a radical cultural shift as well as legal reform.

In the Netherlands, where the far-right Party for Freedom won the most seats in last November’s elections, Songül Mutluer stresses that while the Labour-GroenLinks joint drug policy is a necessary starting point, the current political environment impedes serious talk of drug reform. “What we’re doing isn’t working,” she says. “But I don’t think there is room for big discussion in the Netherlands at the moment. The most right-wing parties don’t even want to discuss it. That is an understatement. They probably also want to have a discussion on our toleration policy, looking back instead of looking forward.”  

Cities leading change 

For legal regulation to become a reality, reform is needed at national and international levels. This puts city leaders in a difficult situation. As LEAP’s Neil Woods emphasises, the negative consequences of drug prohibition are felt most harshly in urban areas. But while cities and mayors do not have the powers alone to implement and enforce legal change, this doesn’t mean that they can’t speak out, or implement targeted harm-reduction measures, such as safe consumption rooms for people who use drugs, which are now a feature in many cities in Europe, from Portugal to Germany – with Scotland set to be next.  

For Zoë Garbett, a Green Councillor in East London who helped to write the revised GPEW drug policy and is now standing as the Green candidate for Mayor in London’s May elections, local leaders have a crucial role to play in leading the way on drug law reform. “That’s what elected officials should be doing,” she insists. “What we’re trying to effect in London is to do as much as possible within the existing framework, such as deprioritising the policing of cannabis. What Glasgow is doing, setting up safe consumption rooms, is a real inspiration.”  

Garbett believes the position taken by Halsema and other local politicians is an important example of good leadership: “It’s really exciting that mayors across Europe are looking to do as much as possible with their powers to effect change not only in their own cities but also other cities. That’s what elected officials should be doing – using our powers to keep our residents and cities safe. We can’t sit around and wait for politicians at national level to make these changes.”

Reprising her role as Brazil's environment minister, Marina Silva is determined to reverse the rampant destruction of the Amazon. In an e360 interview, she talks about her efforts to crack down on illegal mining and logging and to bolster protections for the nation’s forests.

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Push-polling goes nuclear Channel Comment Jim Green 18th April 2024 Teaser Media

As a conservation journalist, I read a lot of scientific papers, reports and press releases looking for story ideas. And even after doing this for nearly 20 years, many of those documents leave me scratching my head.

It’s not the conservation aspects that confuse me. It’s the jargon — the overly specific language members of a profession use to communicate among themselves that often makes little or no sense to the public (or even well-versed reporters).

Jargon has value, sure. There’s nothing like shorthand for efficiency when you’re talking to your peers. But use that same terminology outside the hallowed halls of your field and you’ll likely be greeted with blank stares — and potentially, resistance to your work.

As I told a group of young ecologists recently, jargon is the kiss of death for effective communication.

So let’s flip the script and kill some jargon. Here are several examples of words and phrases I’ve encountered in recent science communication efforts that do more harm than good.

All Acronyms — The scientific community has an annoying habit of condensing every phrase it can into an ALL-CAPS abbreviation. I call it TMA Syndrome — “too many acronyms” — and I’m not the only critic. A recent study identified thousands of little-used acronyms that, the authors found, only serve to minimize the public understanding of science. It would be fine if these acronyms entered common usage, like USA or TL;DR, but they’re all far from normal parlance. The researchers showed, in fact, that about 79% of acronyms they found across 24 million papers were used fewer than 10 times each. Oh, FFS.

Data Deficient — Is a species endangered? If scientists don’t have the answer to that question, they slap it into this vague category, and that can lead to dangerous false assumptions that a species is doing just fine. Scientist Chris Parsons has suggested we declare “data deficient” species assumed endangered until better information becomes available (and as a way to encourage collecting that information). If that dilutes the power and importance of the word “endangered,” maybe we go with a simple action phrase: research needed.

Developing Nations — This is one of a string of phrases used not just in conservation but in virtually all levels of discourse that value (or devalue) a country based on its wealth and on normative notions of linear progress toward a Western, industrialized ideal, ignoring colonialism, exploitation, white supremacy and saviorism. The journal BMJ Global Health recently catalogued these troubling terms and the damage they cause, while offering some more acceptable alternatives.

Ecosystem Services or Natural Capital — These terms sound like they were invented by someone with a degree from Harvard Business or Trump University. Try this: Nature keeps us alive. There. Fixed it.

Ex Situ and In Situ — Why are we throwing Latin around? These words describe conservation efforts that are either off-site or on-site. Just say so!

Exotic Species — Again, this is colonialist language for plants and animals that humans have moved to new habitats. Calling them “invasive,” “alien” or “non-native” isn’t any better. Indigenous scientist and author Jessica Hernandez uses the word displaced, which has a powerful resonance that instills some respect on these wild species no matter where they live, even if they are harmful to other wildlife.

Extirpated — As serious as this word is, no one understands what it means. Replace it by saying that a species has gone locally extinct or been wiped out of a region.

Fisheries — Technically, this term refers to oceanic or freshwater sites where the fishing industry operates, or where people depend on fish for their food, but that definition has spread like an oil spill to pollute other meanings. Every week I seen biologists use “fisheries” to describe any place where fish live, which unintentionally redefines those locations as worthy of exploitation rather than, you know, the home of those living creatures. Fish habitats will do just fine.

Game — This word, which I see in journals all the time, really means “animals we like to hunt.” That’s not conservation, and “game” animals aren’t the same as a rousing round of Parcheesi. This misnomer needs to be exorcised from scientific papers. More broadly, it should also be removed from the names of state wildlife agencies, where it positions them to serve hunters and fishermen — the very small subset of people who hunt, shoot, trap, or otherwise catch wild animals — rather than the animals themselves.

Habitat Loss — Did the habitat misplace its car keys? “Loss” is too passive a word — species don’t lose something; people take it from them. It also potentially implies that habitat can be found once again, when in many cases it’s gone or changed forever. Let’s get more descriptive: We’re talking about habitat degradation and habitat destruction.

Natural Gas — Technically, so-called natural gas contains about 90% methane, which most people recognize as harmful.  That’s why some climate activists have recently rebranded this fossil fuel methane gas, so it doesn’t appear quite so (ahem) natural. (Climate and conservation jargon frequently intersect, and climate jargon also slows public acceptance and action, which is all the more reason to use decisive, clear language across the board.)

New World and Old World — Biologists typically use these words to describe groups of similar species from different halves of the planet — for example, “Old World monkeys” from Asia and Africa, and “New World monkeys” from the Americas. That demarcation is fine, as it represents different evolutionary tracks, but the terminology derives from a colonialist, Western-oriented mindset. What’s wrong with using geographic descriptors for these species, such as “South American” or “African”?

Pest — This pejorative term is like “weed” — it’s in the eye of the beholder, and it doesn’t belong in scientific analysis. Animals didn’t ask to have your precious crops placed in front of them or to become vectors of disease. Even a mosquito has value (just ask a frog). When we describe species as annoyances, it becomes too easy to eliminate them instead of seeking to restore the ecological balance that kept them “in control” in the first place. I don’t have a replacement for this word, but we need to stop using it as though it’s value-neutral.

Poacher and Poaching — I’ve gotten into the racist, colonialist roots of these words before. Don’t make me repeat myself.

These examples barely scratch the jargonistic surface. I could spend another few paragraphs on overly scientific phrases like “interspecific differences,” “phenotypic plasticity,” “thermal breadth” and “zones of recombination,” all of which I recently encountered.

But they’re a good starting point — an invitation for refining the ways we speak, write and think so we have a better chance of communicating with broader audiences. After all, the more people who understand your message, the further your meanings will travel into hearts and minds. And that can mean all the difference to the species you’re trying to protect.

Do you have jargon you’d add to the list?  Drop us a line about your language pet peeves — or your solutions for better communication.

Previously in The Revelator:

Let’s Rename the Day After Thanksgiving ‘Extinction Friday’

The post Time to Let This Conservation Jargon Go Extinct? appeared first on The Revelator.

Greece plans to create two large marine parks and end bottom trawling, it announced Tuesday. It also aims to cut the volume of plastic waste flowing into Greek waters in half.

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