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The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively with Grist.  

The program is modeled after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, launched in 1933 to help the country make it through the Great Depression. The positions with the new corps could range across a number of fields including energy-efficiency installations, disaster response preparedness, recycling, and wildfire mitigation.

The White House plans to officially launch an online platform in April. At first, only a couple of hundred jobs will be posted, but eventually up to 20,000 young people are expected to be hired in the program’s first year. Interested candidates can apply to the positions through the portal, and the majority of the positions are not expected to require experience.

“The American Climate Corps is a story of hope and possibilities,” said Maggie Thomas, a special assistant to the president for climate change. “There’s an incredible demand signal from young people who we see as being put on a pathway to good-paying careers.”

That path could include work such as installing wind and solar projects, conserving energy in homes, and restoring ecosystems, such as wetlands, to protect towns from flooding. Thomas announced a logo for the program at the Aspen Ideas climate conference in Miami on Wednesday.

The White House announced a new logo for the American Climate Corps on Wednesday ahead of the launch of a long-awaited jobs board next month. Courtesy of AmeriCorps

The American Climate Corps has wide support, meaning that those few hundred open spots available next month might fill up quickly. Some 71 percent of voters approve of the idea, including well over half of Republicans, according to polling Data for Progress conducted last October. And previous polling has shown that half of likely voters under 45 would consider joining the program, given the chance.

“We’re absolutely confident that there are millions of young people who are interested in these programs,” said Saul Levin, the legislative and political director at the Green New Deal Network.

That demand was evident at a series of public listening sessions held by the White House earlier this year. The events were oversubscribed and ran over time with participants eager to sign up for potential jobs, Thomas said. Given the demand, President Biden promised to triple the size of the corps in a decade at his State of the Union speech last week. His newly proposed budget calls for an $8 billion expansion of the American Climate Corps to employ an additional 50,000 corps members per year by 2031. 

Still, that’s nowhere close to the dreams some progressives had for the program: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York had hoped it would put 1.5 million Americans to work addressing the climate crisis. Nor is it comparable to the original Civilian Conservation Corps, which hired 3 million men to plant billions of trees, fight forest fires, prevent erosion, and build trails you can still hike at national parks today.

“We’ll say this again and again — hundreds [of positions] is not enough,” Levin said. “We’re talking about a country on fire. We’re talking about people not being able to breathe the air outside. So the scale needs to be dramatically ramped up.” He sees the president’s call for billions in funding for the program as a signal that the administration is committed to expanding it.

The current version of the American Climate Corps is in many ways a compromise of Biden’s initial plans to revive that program and update it for the problems of the 21st century. The corps was initially funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate bill Biden signed in 2021. But that funding was stripped from the bill before passage. As a result, funding for the American Climate Corps had to be cobbled together from existing funding from seven agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Interior.

One source of funding for these positions is the $2 billion in environmental justice community grants allotted to the EPA in November. The EPA grants could potentially be used by a grassroots community organization that, say, is deploying air monitors in neighborhoods, Thomas said. The group could apply for funding from the EPA and then use the money to hire a small team of people through the American Climate Corps website. 

“We’ve been trying to think creatively about the sources of funds that we are bringing to the table to ensure that we’re building justice and equity into the fabric of the American Climate Corps,” Thomas said. 

Whether Congress approves Biden’s request for $8 billion to expand the corps is very much up in the air, but Thomas hopes that the rollout of the program in the coming months will make its popularity clear. 

“Once you see the impact of what the American Climate Corps will be in communities across the country, it’s going to be really hard for members of Congress to deny the incredible opportunity that exists with a program like this,” she said.

This post has been updated.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline You can start applying for the American Climate Corps next month on Mar 13, 2024.

China has achieved stunning growth in its installed renewable capacity over the last two decades, far outpacing the rest of the world. But to end its continued dependence on fossil fuels, it must now move ahead with planned reforms to its national electricity system.

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This story was co-published with the Tampa Bay Times and produced in partnership with the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

Laurie Giordano stood before a committee of Florida lawmakers in 2020, her hands trembling. She was there to tell the story of her son Zachary Martin, a 16-year-old football player who had died from heat stroke three years earlier.

“No mom should ever drop their kid off at football practice and then never hear their voice again,” she said, pleading for the passage of a bill that would provide heat-illness protections for high school athletes in Florida. 

“Exertional heat stroke is 100 percent preventable and survivable, if we are prepared,” Giordano told the lawmakers. If her son were alive today, she said, he would be fighting for the bill’s protections, like rest and water breaks, which could have saved his life.

Laurie Giordano, left, and her son Zachary Martin pose for a photo in 2014. Zachary died of exertional heat stroke after football practice in 2017. Courtesy of Laurie Giordano

The legislators heeded her call and passed the Zachary Martin Act in her son’s honor just two months later. Since then, no student athlete has died from heat stroke in Florida, which now ranks highest in the country for its school sports safety provisions. 

Two years after Martin’s death in Fort Myers, a Haitian farmworker in his 40s named Clovis Excellent died from heat stroke at a farm just north in Bradenton. He had been working for five hours, pulling stakes from tomato beds in temperatures exceeding 90 degrees Fahrenheit. 

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration, or OSHA, investigated his death and found that, given the intensity of the work, the temperatures he was exposed to were unsafe without regular breaks in the shade. But Utopia Farms II, like many farms in the state, did not require its workers to take breaks, no matter the heat. 

At least seven other outdoor workers died from heat illness in Florida in the two years between Martin’s and Excellent’s deaths, according to federal fatality records. During that time, labor advocates pushed lawmakers to establish heat-illness protections for Florida’s 2 million outdoor workers. These measures included rest breaks, shade, and water, as well as heat-illness first-aid training. 

But those efforts failed. More worker heat-safety bills have been filed in Florida than any other state, but none has made it past a single committee hearing.

Members of WeCount, an advocacy organization for South Florida’s immigrant workers and their families, rally for workplace heat protections in Miami in July 2023. Wilfredo Lee / AP Photo

Florida is the hottest state in the country and has some of the highest rates of hospitalization due to heat illness, which kills more than 1,200 Americans a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. The number of workplace fatalities from heat has doubled since the 1990s, averaging over 40 workplace deaths a year for the last five years. While California, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington have all passed regulations to protect workers from heat illness, there is no national heat standard; OSHA, the federal agency that regulates workplace safety, is in the process of drafting one, but it could take around seven years and there are no guarantees that it will be enacted.

Heat is already the deadliest weather event, and as climate change causes temperature spikes to become more common and unpredictable, the threat will only increase, especially for those most vulnerable to heat illness. No one can predict how communities will adapt — what investments will be made to prepare for the heat waves of the future and how those protections will be distributed — but the disparities in whom lawmakers choose to protect are telling. 

When Zachary Martin, a 16-year-old football player, died from heat stroke, there was widespread press coverage and the Florida legislature voted unanimously to mandate that schools have emergency medical plans to treat heat injuries. 

When Clovis Excellent, a Haitian immigrant in his 40s, died from heat stroke, his name never appeared in the papers, and bills recommending similar protections were largely ignored by lawmakers.

On June 29, 2017, Laurie Giordano was checking her phone in her parked car near Riverdale High School when one of her son’s teammates tapped on the glass. 

“Zach is down,” the boy said. 

Her son Zachary, or “Big Zach,” as his friends called him, had been playing football since he was in eighth grade. The summer before his junior year, he stood 6 feet, 4 inches tall, weighed 320 pounds, and wore a size 15 wide shoe. He wanted to play football in college, maybe even professionally. He worked hard in his classes and pushed himself during preseason practice, determined to be a starting player on the varsity team the next year.

Zachary Martin poses in his high school football uniform. Courtesy of the Zach Martin Memorial Foundation

When she got to the field, she saw Zachary seated on the ground. Two teammates were holding his arms and an assistant coach was propping him up from behind. Coach James Delgado told Grist that they were trying to keep him upright to prevent him from choking. The boy had collapsed after completing about three hours of indoor training and running drills outside in the 90-degree heat. His coaches and teammates had assumed Zachary was dehydrated, so they offered him water, but he immediately vomited after drinking it. Soon, his condition worsened. 

Zachary was moaning. His eyes were closed; his head, drooping. He hardly looked conscious. 

Giordano was shocked. “Everything in me was saying this was not right,” she told Grist. 

Delgado called 911. The fire department was the first to arrive on the scene, followed by the paramedics, who brought Giordano’s son to the hospital. The doctors determined that Zachary was suffering from heat stroke, a condition that can be fatal.

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To help someone, you need to first recognize the signs. If left untreated, heat stroke, the most serious heat illness, can lead to disability or death, according to the CDC.

• Heat illness: Look out for fatigue, sweating, and cramps in the legs, arms, and shoulders. Move to a shaded area and drink water.
• Heat exhaustion: Signs include muscle aches or cramps; headache; excessive sweating and thirst; feeling lightheaded or dizzy; nausea or vomiting; and pale, cool, clammy skin, especially on the extremities. Help the person lay down; apply wet, cool cloths on the body; and elevate the legs.
• Heat stroke: Once the body reaches 103 degrees F, vital systems start to break down, leading to confusion, fatigue, and unresponsiveness; a fast pulse; nausea; and either hot, dry skin or profuse sweating. Try to dunk them in cold, icy water, and immediately call 911. Don’t give them water unless they can maintain a gag reflex.

When a person reaches that stage of heat injury, the body loses its ability to cool itself, and internal temperatures can rise within a matter of minutes to 107, 108, 109 degrees. If the person is not rapidly cooled within the first 30 minutes, their organs can fail. Time is essential.

Zachary made it to the hospital over an hour after he collapsed. The doctors covered him in ice to try to lower his temperature. He was in a coma for more than a week. 

Giordano slept in the hospital every night. She saw him wake up twice: The first time, he tried to pull himself from his bed, half-conscious. It took multiple nurses to restrain him. 

“He was scared,” Giordano said. “He didn’t know where he was.”

The second time, all he could do was squeeze her hand.

Two days later, he died. 

“He fought,” Giordano said. “He fought so hard.” 

On the ride home from the hospital, Giordano remembers turning to her husband. 

“We’re not going to take a loss on Zach,” she told him.

“At the time, I wasn’t even 100 percent sure what had happened.” Giordano told Grist. But she sensed that the school’s response had been inadequate. Days after her son’s death, she set out to discover whether it could have been prevented.

She got on her computer and looked up what heat training Riverdale High School coaches received. The National Federation of State High School Associations certifies coaches throughout the country, and it had provided the training materials for Riverdale’s athletic staff. It had an online course on heat illness, but it was optional. She found that in Florida, no agency ensured that high school coaches were trained in heat-illness prevention.

Watching the online training videos, Giordano found that all the major symptoms of heat stroke — collapsing, disorientation, slurred speech, vomiting — were the exact symptoms Zachary had experienced. She also learned that, if treated quickly, heat stroke fatalities are entirely preventable using a technique called “cold water immersion.” It sounded essentially like dunking someone in a tub of ice water. 

“It can’t be that simple,” Giordano thought.

She looked at resources from the Korey Stringer Institute, a leading researcher in sports medicine that specializes in heat illness, and found that it was. Schools could use “cold tubs” — essentially plastic tubs filled with ice water — to save students’ lives. 

“As soon as I heard the term ‘cold tub,’ I knew exactly what they were talking about. Because I had seen them,” Giordano said.

The week before her son’s collapse, Giordano had seen him outside the high school’s athletic facility loading ice into a large plastic tub filled with water. When she asked him what he was doing, Zachary had said he was helping some teammates who were cramping from the heat. They would sit in the tub after practice to relax their muscles and cool down.

But when Zachary passed out, the tubs were nowhere in sight. And rather than moving Zachary to a shaded area and trying to immediately cool him, which the online training said was critical for survival, his coaches left him on the sundrenched field until the paramedics arrived. 

Giordano realized that the coaches at Riverdale had the tools they needed to save Zachary’s life. But when it mattered, they were not trained to use them.

She learned that the Florida High School Athletic Association, or FHSAA, was responsible for maintaining safety standards for the state’s high school sports teams. She met with its leadership to talk about the possibility of mandating heat-injury emergency plans.

The FHSAA had guidelines about heat-illness prevention but did not mandate training for coaches or the use of the cold water immersion tubs that would have saved Zachary’s life. The agency could investigate schools that were failing to uphold safety standards and penalize them if they failed to do so. But it did not proactively inspect schools, and its enforcement was largely based on self-reporting. The executive director of the organization, George Tomyn, told Giordano that the FHSAA lacked the authority and the capacity to mandate such policies for all of Florida’s schools. 

According to Rebecca Stearns, chief operating officer at the Korey Stringer Institute, many student athletic associations like the FHSAA, which set the statewide standards for high school sports around the country, assume that they are not ultimately responsible for enforcing safety standards in schools. 

“My question to them is always, ‘If not you, then who?’” Stearns said, noting that athletic associations have the medical expertise required to make informed decisions about student safety. Leaving it up to individual schools that lack these resources can lead to negative outcomes, she said. 

The FHSAA did not respond to requests for comment.

Student athletes pose with a cold water immersion tub donated by the Zach Martin Memorial Foundation. Courtesy of the Zach Martin Memorial Foundation

Fort Myers’ local newspaper, the News-Press, wrote over a dozen articles about Zachary’s death and the dispute over the FHSAA’s policies. The story was picked up regionally by Fox 4 News and nationally by HBO’s Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel, which ran a 15-minute segment in which they confronted George Tomyn for not mandating the use of cold water tubs, despite training materials their organization provided that recommended their use. 

The FHSAA debated the issue from 2017 to 2019. Their medical advisory board recommended that schools alter practice expectations based on the heat risk and keep cold water immersion tubs available. But the FHSAA decided not to act on the issue. They felt that the state legislature should be the one to enforce such a mandate. 

Giordano attended these meetings for two years. 

“It was heartbreaking,” she said. 

Two months later, Giordano learned that another student athlete, a 14-year-old named Hezekiah Walters, had died from heat stroke during preseason football practice in the state.

While Giordano continued her fight for student athlete protections, a crew of laborers at Utopia Farms II were working in the fields outside of Bradenton, on Florida’s Gulf Coast. They moved along rows of barren tomato vines, yanking out stakes and preparing for next season’s planting. 

A new employee, a man in his 40s who was working under the name Laurant Tersiuf, was struggling to keep up. 
Tersiuf had started at Utopia only three days prior, and his crew leader, Juan Lozano, had noticed him repeatedly sitting down between the rows to catch his breath and complaining of stomach pain. Lozano was unsure whether Tersiuf had worked in tomato fields before and assumed he was simply unaccustomed to the grueling work.

During the harvest season, tomato workers are paid for every pound they pick, with a typical day’s pay around $80. Hunched over for hours, pickers hurriedly yank tomatoes from the vines and drop them into plastic bins. When the bins are full, weighing over 30 pounds each, the workers hoist them onto their shoulders and rush down the rows to hurl their bin onto a truck that gradually moves along a dirt path, setting the pace for the workers. One worker carries over a ton of tomatoes per day. 

Farmworkers routinely avoid rest breaks because each minute spent resting is a minute of pay lost. Some even deliberately avoid drinking water so that they will not need to stop working to go to the toilet, which can be located hundreds of yards away, according to worker advocates.

By summertime, the tomato harvest is over, and workers are paid by the hour, not by the pace of their work, but it’s still one of the hardest seasons because of the heat. In temperatures that easily exceed 90 degrees, tomato workers clear and prep crop beds for the next growing season, often coming into contact with materials covered in pesticide residue. Some wear long sleeves, pants, gloves, and masks to protect themselves from the chemicals, but, according to a report by the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, this can make workers feel hotter by up to 12 degrees.

Work-safety specialists say these conditions can be life-threatening without the ability to take rest breaks, drink water, and access shade. But in Florida — where workers spend over 100 days of the year in temperatures exceeding the limit the CDC recommends before safety measures are taken — it is up to the workplace to decide whether to provide these basic protections.

A worker picks tomatoes in South Florida’s tomato fields. Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Lozano told Tersiuf he could take a day off if he was feeling sick, but he would lose that day’s pay. Tersiuf took some Pepto Bismol and returned to work. The wet bulb globe temperature, which accounts for factors like cloud exposure and humidity, climbed to 92.3 degrees, over 10 degrees higher than what OSHA deems high risk for workers performing strenuous labor. At 1 p.m. on June 27, 2019, after working for six hours, Tersiuf asked Lozano if he could sit in the shade next to a trailer and rest. 

Around 3 p.m., according to investigators’ records, Tersiuf was found beside the trailer unconscious. The paramedics who arrived noted that his skin was dry and hot to the touch — a sign that his body had lost the ability to sweat. His temperature was 109 degrees. 

Tersiuf was rushed to Lakewood Ranch Medical Center in Bradenton, but the doctors could not stabilize his temperature in time. His body was so hot that his cells began to break down, leading to organ failure. 

Within two days, Laurant Tersiuf was dead. 

When the hospital went through his belongings, they found identification indicating that Tersiuf’s real name was Clovis Excellent. Like many undocumented immigrants, he had probably gone by an alias to avoid immigration enforcement. And like many undocumented workers, his death was never reported by the local papers. Neither were the other heat-related deaths of farmworkers in the two years between Martin’s and Excellent’s deaths. 

Administrators at Utopia Farms II notified OSHA about Excellent’s death, and the agency opened an investigation. OSHA has no mandated policies around heat exposure, despite demands for such provisions since the first years of its founding in the 1970s. They provide recommendations and educational materials about heat illness, but leave it up to businesses to decide what heat conditions are safe for their workers. And if a business chooses not to notify OSHA after a worker is seriously injured, as they are legally required to do, the agency may not even know about the incident. Injuries among undocumented migrant workers are easier to avoid reporting, because migrants often lack family and community members to advocate for them, are unaware of their rights, and fear retaliation. Researchers estimate that government reports on the number of occupational injuries among agricultural workers miss 79 percent of injuries and 74 percent of deaths.

Members of the Farmworker Association of Florida gather for a press conference and vigil in Homestead, Florida, on July 19, 2023, in honor of farmworker Efraín López García, who died from heat complications earlier that month. Giorgio Viera / AFP via Getty Images

In this sense, Excellent’s case is exceptional. Over several weeks following his death in 2019, federal investigators interviewed his co-workers and managers and inspected the fields where he worked. The investigators reprimanded the company for allowing their workers to perform such high-intensity work in extreme temperatures without shade or rest during the hottest period of the day. Utopia Farms II had provided fact sheets about the symptoms of heat illness to their workers in Spanish, English, and Creole, but investigators found that they had no plan to gradually introduce new hires — who make up 70 percent of reported worker-related heat fatalities, because their bodies are not acclimated — to the extreme temperatures. Clovis Excellent had been sent into the fields to work a full shift the same day he was hired and died five days into the job.

To redress Excellent’s death, OSHA requested in a citation letter that Utopia Farms II implement a new safety plan to prevent further heat injuries and send their agency a payment of $13,260. After Utopia challenged the fine, it was amended to $7,956. Because the agency has legal limits on the amount it can fine companies, the penalty was typical for serious violations of OSHA’s safety standards under its general duty clause. 

The basic safety measures from heat illness Utopia had failed to provide are ignored by farms throughout the country, in part because OSHA has not mandated their use. They are merely recommended. If OSHA’s proposed heat standard passes, businesses will be required to change their act. But the agency will most likely struggle to enforce the rule because of perennial funding and staffing issues and their limited fines. In Florida, the agency has employed 59 inspectors to oversee the state’s approximately 10 million workers.

For years, farmworkers throughout Florida had been speaking to local labor organizers about the dangers of heat. Jeannie Economos, an advocate with the Farmworker Association of Florida, had heard countless stories of dizzy spells, muscle cramps, nausea, and dark, painful urination workers experienced after long shifts in the heat. Many told her they felt pressured by their employers to keep working no matter how sick they were and felt powerless to protect themselves.

Economos wondered whether Florida could join the few states that had introduced their own regulations to protect workers from heat illness. She knew that it would be an uphill battle. Florida’s legislature was unfriendly to pro-worker regulation, particularly for migrants, who largely make up the state’s outdoor industries, including construction, landscaping, and agriculture. She anticipated the agricultural industry, which she had battled with for years, would try to stamp out any pro-worker reforms, as they had in the past.

Read Next Extreme Heat 101: Your guide to staying safe and keeping cool Gabriela Aoun Angueira

First, Economos wanted to better understand the problem and document its impacts. In 2017, she helped set up a research study conducted by the Farmworker Association of Florida and Emory University’s School of Nursing, which found that 84 percent of the workers they monitored experienced symptoms of heat exhaustion, like headaches, dizziness, and nausea. More than a third developed acute kidney injury on at least one day of work, which researchers say can be caused by heat exposure, potentially leading to chronic kidney disease. 

With their research in hand, the Farmworker Association consulted with other worker groups to draft a bill proposal. They decided that the rule would be voluntary, with no fines or enforcement mechanisms, hoping that by working with industry to address the problem their effort would be more favorable to the Republican majority. They found a Democratic lawmaker who was willing to sponsor the bill, which was first introduced in 2018. It recommended that outdoor workplaces provide access to water, rest, and shade for workers along with training and emergency medical plans to prevent fatalities.

The first two years it was proposed, the bill never had a hearing. Worker advocates tried to find a Republican sponsor hoping that this would encourage congressional leadership to at least consider the issue. They found a new senator named Ana Maria Rodriguez from Miami-Dade County, a bipartisan, Latino district, who was willing to carry the bill in 2020. 

That same year, the legislation for student athletes was being heard for the first time and was garnering attention. After the flurry of media coverage about Zachary’s case, Giordano was able to get meetings with senators to share her story and recommend reforms. The FHSAA had said that without state legislation they had no mandate to act, so lawmakers began to create one. Within months, a bill was drafted that required schools to monitor temperatures and adjust practice routines to adapt to heat levels. It called for regular water and rest breaks, training for coaches about heat-illness prevention, and cold water immersion tubs to treat students for heat stroke onsite.

Grist / Clayton Aldern

Karen Woodall, a lobbyist for the Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy, who had been working on the heat-illness protection bill for outdoor workers, was watching the progress of the student athlete bill closely. She attended the committee hearings where it was first discussed and noticed that the committee members “were pretty outraged by what they heard.” 

“I got up and said, ‘I know you’re talking about student athletes,” Woodall recalled, “‘but I want you to know that we have a bill about this very thing for outdoor workers.’” 

It felt like the energy around the issue might provide the worker bill with much needed momentum. The AFL-CIO staged a press conference where outdoor workers and their children spoke about the impacts of heat in the workplace and the playing field. One high school athlete, whose father was a migrant farmworker, said he hoped his father would be seen as worthy of the same protections he had been given. 

The bill for student athletes was approved by multiple committees. Representatives and school administrators debated the cost burden of mandating ice tubs and wet bulb globe thermometers, but the consensus was that a significant number of schools were failing to provide critical safety measures, the solutions were simple, and ignoring the issue would lead to more preventable deaths. 

Giordano’s story was a major driver for the issue.

Laurie Giordano, left, at the Capitol in Tallahassee, Florida, in 2020. Bobby Caina Calvan / AP Photo

“You meet a parent that lost a son and that’s a pretty powerful emotional testimony to have,” said Senator Keith Perry, a Republican and the owner of a roofing business, who ended up sponsoring the student athlete bill. “That’s why we started to go ahead and run this bill. … This seemed like a really easy solution to a tragic problem.”

Three months after the Zachary Martin Act was introduced, the Florida legislature voted unanimously for Governor Ron DeSantis to sign it into law. 

Meanwhile, the bill to protect outdoor workers went without a hearing for the third year in a row. 

In 2022, with Senator Rodriguez’s support, the bill was heard for the first time in the Senate Agriculture Committee. Senator Perry was a member of the committee. As the owner of a roofing business, he took an interest in the issue. After hearing from workers, business owners, labor advocates, and the widow of a construction worker who died from the heat, he joined the six other members of the committee in voting for the bill. 

The next day, it was sent to the Health Policy Committee, where it sat unaddressed until the legislative session ended.

When asked why the student bill had succeeded while the worker bill, calling for less strenuous protections, had failed, Perry equivocated, telling Grist that he did not remember the details of the worker bill that he had voted for. But, he said, typically students were in greater need of protection than adults, who were ultimately responsible for their own choices. Like many opponents of statewide protections for outdoor workers, Perry noted that OSHA already provides safety recommendations for avoiding heat injuries in the workplace — though it’s left up to individual businesses to act on them. 

Anna Eskamani, a Democratic state representative who has repeatedly sponsored the worker bill in the House, sees it differently. “We have an anti-immigrant governor who demonizes all immigrants, but especially those that come to our state in search of work,” she said. “Farmworkers are targeted, especially in Florida, by political actors.”

A worker hauls a heavy bag of freshly picked oranges on a farm in Florida. Gaye Ajoy / Farmworker Association of Florida

The bill was reintroduced to the Agriculture Committee this year. A workers’ advocacy group called WeCount spearheaded an effort to take up the issue on the county level as well. They helped push for an ordinance in Miami-Dade County that would fine employers in agriculture and construction who failed to provide water and shaded rest breaks in dangerous heat conditions. 

After a heat dome encircled the U.S. South last summer, organizers rallied large crowds to speak in favor of the ordinance at board hearings, and several prominent county officials, including County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, pledged their support. But facing fierce industry opposition, county officials voted to table the bill, and state congressional leaders moved to preemptively block their decision. Last week, a bill was approved that will void any local ordinances that protect workers from heat. The bill says that if federal OSHA does not create a national heat standard by 2028, the state’s Department of Commerce will have to create a statewide standard. But it doesn’t specify what the standard will require or whether it will include enforcement mechanisms like fines.

WeCount’s policy director, Esteban Wood, believes that the bill is intended to block their efforts in Miami-Dade and dissuade citizens and local officials from pushing for protections, rather than ensuring the safety of the state’s outdoor workers. 

“You become a little disillusioned with the process,” Wood said, noting that after years of resistance, it’s unlikely that the state legislature will pass a bill on its own that provides meaningful protections for workers. “It’s a symptom of a larger issue — of a lack of priority for the health and safety of workers.” 

Since Zachary Martin’s death, Florida schools are now required to monitor temperatures to ensure that students are not exposed to unsafe conditions and that cold water immersion tubs are available in case of emergencies. Since it passed, no student athlete in the state has died from heat. 

Since Clovis Excellent’s death, the legislature has taken no steps to protect outdoor workers from heat, while at least five more Florida workers have died from heat illness.

“I’m just a little incredulous that it hasn’t been passed yet,” said Giordano, who has recently begun to collaborate with WeCount in their efforts to pass protections for outdoor workers, while pushing for a national bill to protect student athletes.“If it’s hot, there should be water, and they should be able to take breaks,” she said, whether you are “working out for football or cheering, or someone working on a roof. 

“What does that hurt?” Giordano said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As heat becomes a national threat, who will be protected? on Mar 13, 2024.

As firefighters contained the largest wildfire in Texas history last week, the electricity provider for the state’s Panhandle region, Xcel Energy, announced some bad news: The wildfire, which burned more than a million acres of land and killed at least two people, seemed to have been caused by one of the utility’s electrical poles. 

“Based on currently available information, Xcel Energy acknowledges that its facilities appear to have been involved in an ignition of the Smokehouse Creek fire,” the statement read, referring to the largest of several fires raging in the area. An investigation from the state’s forest management agency found that the fire began when a decayed wooden pole splintered and fell, sending sparks onto nearby grass. Photos obtained by Bloomberg News appear to show that the pole had been marked unsafe before the fire.

Seizing on this evidence, multiple landowners in the area have already filed lawsuits against the company — as have family members of the fire’s victims, seeking millions of dollars in damages. Xcel has denied that it was to blame for the historic fire: In the same statement, the utility said it “disputes claims that it acted negligently in maintaining and operating its infrastructure.”

The lawsuits are just the latest in a string of high-profile wildfire cases against major electrical utilities, whose flammable power lines are among the most common culprits for major fire events. California companies such as Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison have paid out billions of dollars to fire victims and insurance companies over the past decade. Earlier this month, a jury delivered a verdict against the Oregon utility PacifiCorp, which could owe victims billions of dollars. Xcel itself is fighting hundreds of lawsuits in Colorado over its similar role in the 2021 Marshall Fire near the city of Boulder. These lawsuits have hit utilities with huge charges that they have passed onto customers in the form of rate increases.

The emergence of the trend in Texas, a state that has avoided massive fire losses over recent years, underscores that wildfires are now a national threat to utilities, according to Karl Rábago, a former Texas utility regulator and expert on utility law.

“They’re not pivoting to the world in which we live,” he told Grist. “When we face these situations, we do have a legal system that will likely dole out a measure of pain. The sad thing is, after paying out a certain amount of money, the problem will become so ubiquitous, and so oft-repeating, that we will treat it as business as usual.”

As in many previous lawsuits, the question in Texas is what counts as negligence on the part of a utility. If the fact that Xcel knew the pole needed repairs but hadn’t yet repaired it is sufficient evidence of neglect, the company will likely be on the hook for a large share of the fire damages, which could amount to hundreds of millions. The state utility regulator requires companies to plan for emergencies, and Xcel has told the state in the past that it conducts rotating inspections of old poles. However, most experts agree that utilities need to do more, burying power lines or adding technology that allows for rapid and precise power shutoffs during fire weather. 

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“There is a recognizable negligence, at least, in the failure to ensure that the systems are not extremely vulnerable,” said Rábago. “If your pole [is] 40 years old, it’s probably gotten to be so weak that it’ll get knocked over in severe winds.” Other fires that broke out in the Texas Panhandle at the same time as the Smokehouse Creek Fire have also burned thousands of acres, but investigators haven’t yet determined the cause of those events.

Xcel declined to comment for this story.

Xcel’s subsidiary in the Texas Panhandle delivers power to around 400,000 customers over a vast and sparsely populated service area of around 50,000 square miles. Pacific Gas & Electric in California, by comparison, provides power to 16 million people across a service territory that isn’t much larger. On the other hand, the fire mostly burned open rangeland, destroying far fewer homes than the Marshall Fire or other urban blazes. That could keep the potential damages relatively low.

The Smokehouse Creek Fire and its companion blazes are the most devastating in Texas history, but there is some precedent for holding Lone Star State utilities accountable. Dozens of victims and insurance companies sued the much smaller Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative near Austin for failing to remove dead trees ahead of a 34,000-acre fire. The company and its tree-trimming contractor settled those cases over the following years, with the contractor paying $5 million as recently as 2020. The fire was the most destructive ever in Texas at the time, but the Panhandle complex is many times larger.

“The consequences of utility ignitions are larger than they used to be, and there’s an increasingly clear set of practices that utilities can take, which some do, to avoid these kinds of ignitions,” said Michael Wara, a senior research scholar at Stanford Law School and an expert on how climate change affects utilities. “This is creating a situation where juries are more likely to hold utilities liable when they cause these catastrophic fires, if they haven’t taken appropriate steps.”

Wara said the most cost-effective steps include installing more accurate weather stations and shutting off the power proactively during extreme weather events.

These lawsuits may become more common as climate change ratchets up the potential for massive fires in many parts of the country. The Texas Panhandle has always seen rangeland fires, but studies show that the state’s high plains now see an additional month of “fire weather” each year compared to the mid-20th century. The combination of high temperatures and high winds that started the Smokehouse Creek Fire will only get more common as the Earth continues to warm, which could mean more costly fires and more litigation.

Utilities in other states have responded to fire lawsuits by raising rates on customers and using the money to pay out settlements or upgrade their infrastructure. Most Texans purchase power through a controversial wholesale market that has come under criticism for jacking up prices during extreme weather, but Xcel’s system in the Panhandle isn’t part of that market, so the utility’s customers could see a direct rate increase depending on how the lawsuit shakes out.

The growing trend of utility lawsuits has started to make markets nervous. Warren Buffett, whose company Berkshire Hathaway owns the Oregon utility PacifiCorp, said in his annual letter to shareholders last month that “the regulatory climate in a few states has raised the specter of zero profitability or even bankruptcy … in what was once regarded as among the most stable industries in America.” The legendary investor referred to his failure to foresee this trouble as “a costly mistake.”

In an interesting twist, Buffett then speculated that this threat to utility profits may someday lead more areas to adopt public power models, where governments rather than corporations control electrical infrastructure.

“Eventually, voters, taxpayers, and users will decide which model they prefer,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Texas, as in California, big fires lead to big lawsuits on Mar 13, 2024.

When Suwanna Gauntlett started working on conservation in Cambodia in the early 2000s, hundreds of hectares of rainforest were set ablaze every month to clear the land for illegal sales, and dozens of tigers and elephants had been killed. 

Gauntlett had founded the Wildlife Alliance in 1994 to fight tiger poaching in the Russian Far East, and a decade later expanded the nonprofit’s work to India, Ecuador, Myanmar, and Thailand. In 2000, Cambodia was their next frontier, home to one of the last giant rainforests in Southeast Asia stretching across the country’s Southern Cardamom region — what Gauntlett described as a “remote and completely lawless province.” 

“There were no rangers, no park headquarters, no ranger stations, no law enforcement at all in the area,” Gauntlett said in a 2016 interview with Mongabay. “It was literally the wild, wild west.”

Gauntlett spoke with the news outlet to celebrate the establishment of a new national park, which promised to protect more than a million acres of rainforest. It was a big victory for Gauntlett’s organization, and helped spur an even more expansive project in partnership with the Cambodian government to protect rainforests and sell carbon credits as corporate offsets to fund the work.

The project is part of the United Nations framework called REDD+, which stands for “‘Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries.” The idea is that countries can fund environmental protection projects by selling a project’s carbon credits to corporations. 

But that project, known as the Southern Cardamom REDD+, has come under fire from the nonprofit Human Rights Watch, an international human rights watchdog. 

In a report released February 28, Human Rights Watch investigators describe how the project by the Wildlife Alliance and Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment repeatedly violated the rights of the Indigenous Chong peoples who have called the Cardamom mountains home for centuries. 

According to the authors, the Wildlife Alliance and Cambodian government embarked on the project without first consulting with the Indigenous peoples who lived there, violating their right under international law to free, prior, and informed consent to projects on their land. The report also outlines how Indigenous people were prevented from farming on their land and even thrown in jail for collecting resin from trees. “This is my livelihood and tradition, and I am doing nothing wrong,” a man referred to as Chamson in the report told investigators. 

Luciana Téllez, lead author of the Human Rights Watch report, said the findings reflect a broader trend globally in which Indigenous peoples and other traditional communities manage some of the best-preserved landscapes globally but are repeatedly marginalized and discriminated against. 

“The push to increase the areas that are under protected status is not matched by an impulse to recognize these minority groups’ rights. And we need to see the pace of both of these things match each other,” Téllez said. “We need to see conservation moving at the same rhythm as the move to recognize, protect, uphold the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.”

Overlooking Indigenous peoples while establishing conservation areas is a long-standing global problem. Settlers in the U.S. who saw the continent as a remote and lawless place established many national parks only after the removal of Indigenous peoples. But the practice continues across the globe: In Tanzania, the Indigenous Maasai people fled gunfire in 2022 to make way for a game reserve. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, park guards at Kahuzi-Biega National Park have killed Indigenous Batwa people in the name of conservation. Forced evictions are a feature, not a bug, of the practice known as fortress conservation: The United Nations estimates that since 1990, 250,000 people have lost their homes to make way for conservation projects. 

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In order to comply with international law, conservation projects like the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project should conduct thorough consultation with Indigenous peoples before projects begin. The report noted that for years, Wildlife Alliance and Cambodian government officials made key decisions about the conservation project, including mapping the area, applying for funding, and signing contracts in the region, before embarking on consultations.

Even the establishment of a national park in 2016 enclosed eight Chong communities before mapping or titling their traditional lands, the report found.

Protecting conservation land at the cost of Indigenous rights is a problem that’s expected to continue as countries face increasing pressure to combat climate change. At least 190 nations have pledged to conserve 30 percent of the Earth’s lands and waters by 2030, many of which are home to Indigenous peoples, and the United Nations’ REDD+ framework has added financial incentives to these conservation efforts. 

But Téllez said major questions remain about who actually benefits from carbon offset projects. Human Rights Watch found that in 2021, Southern Cardamom REDD+ made $18 million from carbon credit sales to multinational corporations. At the same time, Indigenous peoples described to investigators that the Wildlife Alliance’s enforcement of the REDD+ program cost them their livelihoods, including forcing some to borrow money when they were unable to farm on their family land. 

“Everybody is banned from entering the forest, but many people have farmland there,” a woman named Sothy told investigators. Another named Pov said, “Wildlife Alliance came to cut down the banana trees. There was no warning or discussion prior to the destruction.”

Téllez said a key problem is the lack of a legally binding benefit-sharing agreement to ensure that the communities affected receive a certain proportion of project funds. Wildlife Alliance and the Cambodian government had committed to complying with voluntary standards set by Verra, a company that sets quality-assurance standards on the voluntary carbon market. But Verra does not require that agreements be made with Indigenous communities to ensure they benefit financially. After learning of Human Rights Watch’s findings, Verra announced it would begin investigating the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project.

Wildlife Alliance says the report is misleading. “Many of the criticisms the report makes about the Southern Cardamom project conveniently fit the narrative HRW had already created as part of their advocacy on international carbon markets,” the Wildlife Alliance said in a statement on their website. 

The organization published a video this week of one of its community managers, Sokun Hort, denying that anyone had been evicted and saying that Human Rights Watch ignored broad community support for the project. The Wildlife Alliance and Cambodia’s Ministry of the Environment did not respond to requests for comment on the report. 

Téllez of Human Rights Watch said the report reflects what investigators heard in dozens of interviews. Even a Cambodian government official told Human Rights Watch that the Wildlife Alliance had been “harassing poor people just for collecting forest products.” 

Téllez is concerned by the organization’s continued denial of the allegations. 

“There isn’t an acknowledgment that some people have been harmed by the project, and there isn’t an acknowledgment that those people are entitled to remedy,” she said. “And so we will continue demanding accountability.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New report slams carbon offset project in Cambodia for violating Indigenous rights on Mar 13, 2024.

An enemy of change Channel Comment brendan 13th March 2024 Teaser Media

As the energy transition accelerates global demand for minerals and metals, the United Nations Environment Programme and the Member States represented at UNEA met last week to address the potential risks and harms posed by mining. Regrettably, the outcomes failed to take the essential steps to address risks posed by mining and lost much of the policy momentum UNEP had built in the lead up to UNEA-6, to the disappointment of many stakeholder and rights holders groups. Member States did not meet the challenges of mineral governance with the urgency the world needs to truly ensure a clean, just, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels. Instead, they posed procedural roadblocks, stripped away the strongest provisions, and finally settled on a text that does not propose meaningful outcomes. 

Earthworks Tailings Campaign Manager Jan Morrill speaks during a panel discussion at UNEA-6.

Mining impacted communities, Indigenous Peoples, workers, and civil society, including Children and Youth, have been working to identify a path forward for the mining industry that promotes intergenerational equity, respect for human rights and Indigenous Peoples’ sovereignty, and responsible environmental stewardship. This path will be dependent on reducing the demand for primary raw materials, reducing material intensity and improving material efficiency, and adopting circular economy approaches. A value chain approach must account for water pollution, land degradation, and ecological destruction at a systemic, holistic level. 

These issues were raised in the International Resource Panel’s 2024 Global Resources Outlook, launched at UNEA-6 amidst ongoing negotiations. The report raises important points regarding the rising trends in global resource consumption and demand, and the need for balanced policy solutions with a stronger demand-side focus. It also highlights the course correction needed to ensure resource efficiency and sufficiency without transgressing planetary boundaries – built environment, mobility, food, and energy represent 90% of the global material demand. Echoing the positions raised by stakeholders during UNEA6 negotiations, the report underscores that a systemic shift is needed to safeguard the future material reality of the planet and the finite resources available for planetary well-being.

UNEP was established to monitor the state of the environment and inform environmental policymaking with scientific evidence. In this regard, it is clear that UNEP has a strong mandate to convene multi-stakeholder dialogues, strengthen capacities, and encourage global coordination on addressing environmental challenges in the mining sector. Despite the disappointing lack of ambition in the newly adopted resolution, UNEP will continue to play a leading role in initiatives such as the UN Secretary General’s Working Group on Transforming Extractive Industries for Sustainable Development and the UN Framework on Just Transitions for Critical Energy Transition Minerals. 

Read our full memo to UNEP here.

The post A Postmortem on UNEA-6 appeared first on Earthworks.

Emissions of methane from Indonesian coal mines are eight times higher than official estimates would suggest, a new report finds.

Read more on E360 →

Citizens of the world’s fourth-largest emitting country are heading to the polls from March 15-17 in an election that is certain to guarantee Russian President Vladimir Putin another six years in office – and unlikely to help curb his country’s carbon pollution. 

Early in his rule, Putin joked that 2-3C of warming might be good for Russia as its people would “spend less on fur coats”.

But more recently he has warned against rising temperatures, in 2015 calling planetary heating an “issue that shall affect the future of the entire humankind”.

He has set targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and get Russia to net zero – balancing any carbon emissions it puts out with CO2 absorption through forests or other solutions – by 2060.

Fossil fuel firms seek UN carbon market cash for old gas plants

But despite these pledges, Russia’s emissions have kept on rising, and its gas-heavy electricity mix has barely changed in Putin’s 24 years in power.

Mikhail Korostikov, a Russian analyst at Climate Bonds Initiative, an organisation that promotes low-carbon investment, told Climate Home that Putin “clearly does not [care about climate change]. It’s absent from his worldview. It’s not part of his agenda.” 

Misleading baseline

Shortly before the world adopted the Paris Agreement to tackle global warming in 2015, Putin announced that Russia would cut emissions by 25-30% below 1990 levels by 2030.

Under the Paris pact, countries are supposed to increase the ambition of their climate plans every five years. So in 2020, Putin raised the goal to a reduction of at least 30%. The next year, he said Russia would reach net zero by 2060.

But the 2030 target is less ambitious than it seems. Like most Soviet countries, Russia’s emissions plummeted in the early 1990s as the  Soviet Union broke up and the economy tanked.

By the late 1990s, when Putin came to power, emissions were already 25% below their 1990 levels.

Emissions then grew slowly during Putin’s time in power, so when he made his 2015 speech, he was only promising either a 1% cut in the 15 years to 2030 or allowing for emissions to actually grow if the effects of forests sucking up carbon are included.

Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a independent scientific project that monitors governments’ climate targets and policies, called Russia’s 2030 goal “highly insufficient” as “it can easily be met with current policies”.

Russia’s emissions continued to rise until the Covid-19 pandemic, which temporarily halted growth there and in other parts of the world.

According to CAT’s analysis, Russia’s economy-wide emissions are expected to continue increasing again to 2030, “when they should be rapidly declining, especially for such a large emitter”.

It also notes that Russia’s Energy Strategy to 2035, adopted in 2021, focuses almost exclusively on promoting fossil fuel extraction, consumption and exports to the rest of the world.

Like most countries, the bulk of Russia’s emissions are from burning fossil fuels for electricity. In Putin’s time in power, Russia’s energy mix has remained largely unchanged, as has its level of emissions. 

Most electricity is generated from Russian gas with smaller amounts from the dirtiest fossil fuel  – coal – and carbon-free sources including nuclear and hydropower.

Russia’s electricity mix has barely changed in 20 years (Photos: IEA/Screenshot)

Yet while power-related emissions have stayed the same, there have been steady rises in other sectors – from transport, industry and homes.

Fossil fuel defender

United Nations carbon accounting rules mean that emissions from burning Russian-produced fossil fuels outside of Russia are not included in its official accounts.

But they do contribute to climate change. Russia is the world’s second-biggest oil and gas producer, after only the United States. Its production of both fossil fuels has risen over the last ten years.

In international climate talks, it has pushed to defend oil and gas. At Cop28, its negotiators fought successfully for what campaigners called a “dangerous loophole” that recognised gas as a “transitional fuel” which “can be used for [emission-cutting] purposes”.

And as the World Bank has sought to go greener, Russia has mounted a rearguard action, teaming up with Saudi Arabia to urge the multilateral financial institution to keep on funding fossil fuels.

China steps away from 2025 energy efficiency goal

Russia is also key to fighting climate change as guardian of a fifth of the world’s forests – home to a bigger share than any other nation.

Here, Global Forest Watch data suggests it has been relatively successful. Whereas farms have spread into forests in countries like Brazil, this has not happened in Russia – although this is likely down to an unsuitable climate rather than policy.

The major threat to Russia’s forests is climate change itself, which is driving hotter summer temperatures, drying the country out and sparking wildfires in its sparsely-populated east and north.

Geopolitical priorities

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, climate change has become even less of a priority for the Russian government, and the issue has been absent from the election campaign.

Western governments portray Putin – the longest-serving Kremlin chief since Josef Stalin – as a war criminal and a dictator. But opinion polls in Russia give him approval ratings of 85%, higher than before the invasion of Ukraine.

With military spending soaring and an international boycott of Russia’s fossil fuels over the Ukraine war hitting government revenues, the budget for state environmental programmes was cut this year.

They include the Clean Air Federal Project, which is tasked with reducing air pollution in dozens of industrial cities, and the Clean County Federal Project, which aims to eliminate toxic waste sites.

The upcoming elections will undoubtedly go in Putin’s favour, analysts say, securing him another term in office. “Putin has some competitors. None of them will get more than 1 or 2 percent” of the vote, said Korostikov of Climate Bonds Initiative, adding that global warming is not a concern for most of  the electorate.

“Nobody’s worried about climate change. People care about ecology. But when it comes to climate, people don’t care because climate change is not felt in Russia,” he said.

The post Despite Putin promises, Russia’s emissions keep rising appeared first on Climate Home News.

Compared to most other political movements, Greens have a track record of inclusive politics, and have long welcomed refugees and Muslims into their ranks. But without a comprehensive approach to the issue of Islamophobia, Green parties sometimes fall into patterns of institutionalised prejudice.

On 9 November 2020, nearly 1000 members of Austria’s security forces raided the homes of 70 people and organisations. The targets were the alleged “roots of political Islam” in the country, but in the three years since not a single person has been convicted, and the raids were ruled unlawful. While many saw the operation as an example of the Islamophobia of Christian Democrat Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, it was a Green Party politician, Justice Minister Alma Zadić, who was formally accountable.  

In Europe, Islamophobia is a prejudice that goes back centuries and is layered with the historical experiences of wars, colonisation, and empire. More recently, the US-initiated “war on terror”, multiple conflicts in the Middle East, and the “migration crisis” have all added to the current wave of anti-Islam sentiment, further exacerbated by Hamas’s attacks inside Israel last year. With EU elections just three months away, resurgent Islamophobia could benefit far-right parties with a hard line on migration, such as Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany. But even Green parties and politicians are not always without prejudice towards Islam. 

In Europe, Islamophobia is a prejudice that goes back centuries and is layered with the historical experiences of wars, colonisation, and empire.

German Greens have found themselves in a difficult position since 7 October, trying to balance Germany’s historically strong relationship with Israel and the legacy of the Holocaust with the need to address rising antisemitism and Islamophobia in the country. In November, Green Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck referred to unacceptable “Islamist demonstrations” in Berlin and across Germany. Habeck also accused Islamic associations in the country of failing to speak out against antisemitism, and threatened to deport people without a residence permit who perpetrated allegedly antisemitic acts. Half of the 5.5 million Muslims in Germany are not citizens, in part because the possibility of holding dual citizenship has only recently been introduced. 

Institutionalised discrimination 

Green parties have a mixed relationship with faith. Radical and progressive Christianity had an influence on green movements, along with atheist and secularist traditions of leftist and liberal politics. Moreover, there are the perspectives of refugees, whom Greens have long welcomed into their ranks. Among them are many who have fled their home countries because of persecution in the name of religion or by religious authorities.  

Greens are more comfortable discussing racism and xenophobia than faith-based discrimination, particularly Islamophobia. Lacking a clear approach or perspective on the subject, they have largely fallen into line with mainstream political currents.  

“Whenever the Green party is in power, a lot of the institutionalised Islamophobia also becomes part of green governmental responsibility,” said Farid Hafez, who was one of those unjustly targeted by the Austrian authorities in 2020. Hafez, who is an academic specialising in Islamophobia and has published extensively on the far right, doesn’t believe that Green minister Zadić was motivated by Islamophobia. After all, the politicians who defended him most were also Green Party representatives.  

One of them was Faika El-Nagashi, an MP since 2019. In her view, Islamophobia entered Austrian mainstream politics in 2015, when Sebastian Kurz became chancellor. “Instead of attacking Muslims very superficially and directly, they were talking about a phenomenon that they called ‘political Islam’, that was difficult to grasp. There was no clear definition of it,” she said.  

One of the first targets of the Right’s culture wars were “Islamic” kindergartens in Vienna, which were accused of fostering extremism. The research behind this claim was deeply problematic and later discredited, but the response of political parties, including the Greens, was to suggest that there was some substance to the allegations, and that they needed to be looked into.  

Greens are more comfortable discussing racism and xenophobia than faith-based discrimination, particularly Islamophobia.

“I was the spokeswoman for integration, I had to deal with the issue. And I was liaising a lot with representatives of various Muslim communities,” El-Nagashi said. She was criticised from within the Green Party and by right-wing think tankers for engaging with Muslim civil society organisations, and was accused of proximity with the Muslim Brotherhood. “There is no deep understanding of the political agenda of vilification of Muslims, or of the anti-Muslim tropes and mechanisms at work. And there is this underlying mistrust towards the issue [of Islamophobia]. But there’s also no strategy to deal with it in general,” El-Nagashi said. 

This was evident in 2020, when the Greens became the junior coalition partner to Sebastian Kurz’s Christian Democrats. El-Nagashi feels that her party did not push back against the Islamophobic parts of the coalition agreement, for example regarding the extension of the headscarf ban in schools (a measure that was later declared discriminatory by Austria’s Constitutional Court). “The story towards the outside is that we are the party for climate and environmental issues. We were always strong on both climate and environment and human rights, but entering this government coalition painfully compromised the human rights component for us,” El-Nagashi said.  

Hafez argues that, more broadly, strategies to dissuade, marginalise and criminalise political and civil activism by Muslims have proven effective in continental Europe. “If you want to make it into politics as a person with a Muslim background, make sure you have no relationship whatsoever to any Muslim society,” he said.  

Lonely fight  

Mariam Salem was inspired to join the Swedish Green Party when she saw Yvonne Ruwaida, a Green politician of Palestinian origin, at an election event over 20 years ago. “She was talking about Palestine and how engaged the Green Party is in the Palestinian issue and I got very interested,” Salem said. She was approached to be part of the electoral list for local elections, and unexpectedly found herself second on the list. 

“From the day those lists became public, we had one particular party that started writing about me mostly on a blog, but also sending articles to the local papers,” she said. The attacks continued for over a year, with articles and statements suggesting that Salem had a hidden agenda, that she was an Islamist in favour of Sharia law. Salem was also the target of verbal attacks and defamatory rumours. “It was really unpleasant, and I wasn’t really expecting that kind of behaviour because I hadn’t been involved in any kind of politics,” Salem said. 

The response from her party was problematic. “Partially, I felt that they [the party] had support [for me]. And partially, I also felt that they were afraid that any of those rumours would be true. And then that would be really bad for the party,” Salem said. In public, she was always defended, but she was not fully trusted. “I felt really lonely in these matters because I don’t think they really understood how it was. If you’re not in that place, you don’t really know. It’s hard to grasp how it is for the person in the middle of it,” she added. 

Steps forward and blunders 

For some Green parties, Islamophobia is an issue they have yet to seriously engage with because the Muslim population in their countries is small. In Poland, for example, the main issue related to Muslims and Islamophobia are illegal pushbacks against asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East on the border with Belarus. 

When it comes to Muslim representation, the UK is an outlier in Europe. The country has a relatively powerful set of Muslim civil society organisations, and representation of Muslims across the political spectrum. Moreover, the current Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and the First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf are Muslims.  

In recent months, the Green Party of England and Wales has seen its support among Muslims rise, thanks in part to its strong position on Israel’s war in Gaza. “The Green Party is a much more professional organisation [and] has been able to get its platform out about Gaza more clearly,” said Benali Hamdache, a Green councillor in North London. He adds that the party has been consistent in supporting human rights in conflicts in Yemen, Sudan, and Kashmir, as part of its foreign policy. “I think the party hasn’t necessarily been afraid to be nuanced and clear in its principles, and I think that has been received well,” he said.  

But there is also a longer-term trend. “I think the party’s outreach to the Muslim community is growing. And I think there is an increasing opportunity as ties to the Labour Party fray,” said Hamdache. Hamdache is one of a number of Muslims who have won local political office as Green representatives. The most prominent of them is perhaps Magid Magid, who started as a councillor on Sheffield City Council in 2016 and was later elected to the EU Parliament.           

What is important is engaging with Muslims as voters, and supporting and investing in candidates who can voice their perspectives and concerns as Green representatives.

However, the Greens in England and Wales have also made some blunders. In 2019 their then co-leader Jonathan Bartley supported a ban on halal (and kosher) meat, which was not party policy. Earlier this year, a Green candidate in a high-profile byelection in an area with a large Muslim population was found to have a history of Islamophobic statements on social media.  

Hamdache says that what is important is engaging with Muslims as voters, and supporting and investing in candidates who can voice their perspectives and concerns as Green representatives. 

Standing up against prejudice 

What is concerning on a European scale, according to Hafez, is evidence that Islamophobic ideas and discourse have seeped into Green parties too. “Slowly but surely, you can see how certain arguments that have been popularised in the hegemonic discourse are now reproduced and have found their way into Green party platforms,” he said. Examples include discourse that targets and marginalises Muslim communities, such as debates around “parallel societies,” “Muslim ghettos”, and “no-go zones”. “That speaks to this general tendency of the popularisation of Islamophobia and the mainstreaming of state Islamophobia. Greens are not, and do not stand, in opposition to that,” he said.  

Several European countries have also attempted to effectively create a domesticated version of Islam, something that Hafez calls a “deeply authoritarian attitude”. European politicians, including most Greens, do not see these attempts from a critical perspective; on the contrary, these policies are seen as part of the solution in the fight against racism. In Germany, where there are deeply problematic attempts to create a domesticated, national version of German “Muslimness”, Hafez found that when Greens held relevant ministries, it made little difference. “I think one of the problems that we are seeing within the Greens, often when they represent a more white, privileged elite, is that they simply don’t care,” Hafez said. 

“I mostly think that people perceive me as a pain, because I always say these things, and most people don’t perceive them the same way I do,” echoed Salem. Green parties are not yet a united voice against Islamophobia in its deepest sense. The values of universal human rights and freedoms, which Greens embrace, together with meaningful engagement with Muslim communities and civil societies, provide a basis to counter the phenomenon. However, moving from principle to action also requires confidence and courage in the face of unfair accusations of extremism. It requires support for those inside and outside the party who speak out against prejudice. “Even today, if I talked about Islamophobia, I would be accused of using Muslim Brotherhood terminology,” said El-Nagasi.

The United States government said it is immune to 27 lawsuits filed by local and state governments, businesses, and property owners over the military’s role in contaminating the country with deadly PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals.” The lawsuits are a small fraction of the thousands of cases brought by plaintiffs all over the country against a slew of entities that manufactured, sold, and used a product called aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF — an ultra-effective fire suppressant that leached into drinking water supplies and soil across the U.S. over the course of decades.

The Department of Justice asked a U.S. district judge in South Carolina to dismiss the lawsuits last month, arguing that the government can’t be held liable for PFAS contamination. Lawyers for the plaintiffs called the move “misguided” and said that dismissing the lawsuits would extend an ongoing environmental catastrophe the Pentagon helped create. 

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known by the acronym PFAS (pronounced PEA’-fass), were invented by the chemical giant DuPont in the 1940s. DuPont trademarked the chemical as “Teflon,” which many Americans came to know and love for its use in nonstick cookware in the back half of the 20th century. 3M, another industry behemoth, quickly surpassed DuPont as the world’s largest manufacturer of PFAS, which have also been used in makeup, food packaging, clothing, and many industrial applications such as plastics, lubricants, and coolants. 

Unfortunately, PFAS cause a host of health problems. PFAS have been linked to testicular, kidney and thyroid cancers; cardiovascular disease; and immune deficiencies.

The Department of Defense became involved in PFAS development in the 1960s. In response to a number of deadly infernos on military ship decks, the Navy’s research arm, the Naval Research Laboratory, collaborated with 3M on a new kind of firefighting foam that could put out high-temperature fires. The foam’s active ingredient was fluorinated surfactant, otherwise known as perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS — one of thousands of chemicals under the PFAS umbrella. Internal studies and memos show that 3M became aware that its PFAS products could be harmful to animal test subjects not long after the foam was patented.  

Starting in the 1970s, every Navy ship — and, soon, almost every U.S. military base, civilian airport, local fire training facility, and firefighting station — had AFFF on-site in the event of a fire and to use for training. Year after year, the foam was dumped into the ocean and on the bare ground at these sites, where it contaminated the earth and migrated into nearby waterways. The chemicals, which do not break down naturally in the environment, are still there today. According to the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, there are 710 military sites with known or suspected PFAS contamination across the U.S and its territories including Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. 

Absorbent booms used to contain aqueous film-forming foam near a scene of a fire in Pennsylvania in 2019. Bastiaan Slabbers / NurPhoto

The Department of Defense, or DOD, has been under growing pressure from states and Congress to clean up these contaminated sites. But it has been slow to do so, or even to acknowledge that PFAS, which has been found in the blood of thousands of military service members, pose a threat to human health. Instead, the DOD, which is required by Congress to phase out AFFF in some of its systems, doubled down on the usefulness of the chemicals as recently as 2023. “Losing access to PFAS due to overly broad regulations or severe market contractions would greatly impact national security and DOD’s ability to fulfill its mission,” defense officials wrote in a report to Congress last year. 

Meanwhile, people living near military bases — and members of the military — have been getting sick. The lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court in South Carolina, which were brought by farmers and several states, seek to make the government pay for the water and property contamination the DOD allegedly caused. 

Even if these lawsuits are allowed to proceed, experts told Grist they are not likely to be successful. That’s because they rely on the 1946 Federal Tort Claims Act, a law that allows individuals to sue the federal government for wrongful acts committed by people working on behalf of the U.S. if the government has breached specific, compulsory policies.

But the Federal Tort Claims Act has loopholes. One of these loopholes, called the “discretionary function” exemption, states that federal personnel using their own personal judgment to make decisions should not be held liable for harms caused. The U.S. government is arguing that members of the military were using their discretion when they began requiring the use of AFFF and that no “mandatory or specific” restrictions on the foam were violated. “For decades military policy encouraged — rather than prohibited — the use of AFFF,” the Department of Justice wrote in its motion to dismiss the cases. 

“Every decision has some discretion to it,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, noting that the discretionary function exemption could be applied to virtually any decision made by a federal employee. “But I don’t think anyone, except maybe the manufacturers of PFAS, had much of an inkling that it was so harmful,” he said. 3M and DuPont did not reply to Grist’s requests for comment.

A maintanence worker at the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs gives a thumbs up to crew on a C-130 aircraft. Andy Cross / The Denver Post via Getty Images

In its motion to dismiss, the government made another argument that experts told Grist is likely to be successful. The Pentagon has the authority under the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act — better known as the Superfund Act — to clean up its own contaminated sites. The Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t classified PFAS contamination as “hazardous contamination” yet, but the DOD says it is already spending billions to investigate and control PFAS at some of its bases. Because the military is voluntarily exercising its cleanup authority under the Superfund Act, its lawyers said in the motion, it should not be held liable for PFAS contamination. 

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and the defendants declined requests for comment, citing the ongoing legal proceedings. 

The U.S. government is the only defendant involved in the PFAS lawsuits that is likely to enjoy immunity. Already, 3M, DuPont, and other chemical companies, faced with the threat of high-profile trials, have opted to pay out historic, multibillion-dollar settlements to water providers that alleged the companies knowingly contaminated public drinking water supplies with forever chemicals. And the judge presiding over the enormous group of AFFF lawsuits has hundreds of other cases to get through that were not brought by water providers. These include personal injury and property damage cases, as well as those seeking to make PFAS manufacturers pay for medical monitoring for exposed populations. 

The scale of the litigation is a clear indication that communities around the U.S. are desperate to find the money to pay for PFAS cleanup — the full cost of which is not yet clear, but could be as much as $400 billion. “We can’t even imagine what it would cost,” Tobias said.

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Pentagon tries to dodge PFAS lawsuits over a product it helped invent on Mar 12, 2024.

If, in the 18 months since the Inflation Reduction Act passed, you’ve found yourself muttering Jerry Maguire’s timeless mantra — “Show me the money!” — a handful of policy analysts has just done exactly that. Their analysis of the nation’s investment in clean energy found that for every dollar the government has contributed to advancing the transition, the private sector has kicked in $5.47, leading to nearly a quarter-trillion dollars flowing into the clean economy in just one year.

Across nearly every segment tracked by Rhodium Group and its collaborators at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, investments have not only increased since President Joe Biden signed the legislation, the rate of growth has quickened, too. In the 12 months from October 2022 through September 2023, $220 billion poured into everything from battery factories to solar farms to emerging technologies like hydrogen, including $34 billion in federal spending, mostly in the form of tax credits.

The report shows, among other things, the scale of investments that the government can spur with a clear commitment to a specific course of action. Both figures reveal a substantive increase in the financial pressure building behind the transition to a clean economy and testify to the role progressive policies play in pushing that economic transformation forward. 

“It’s proving the value of the federal government taking the lead, putting in place policy that says, ‘This is the direction that we’re headed: supporting decarbonization, supporting clean energy,'” said Hannah Hess, an associate director of climate and energy at Rhodium Group who co-authored the report.

By taking that lead, many billions more have flowed into the clean economy. In 2023, the sector as a whole logged new records for yet another year. Utility-scale solar and storage grew more than 50 percent compared to 2022 to a total of $53 billion. Investment in the entire EV supply chain hit $42 billion — up 115 percent over the previous year. Meanwhile, retail spending by businesses and households on things like EVs, heat pumps, and rooftop solar came in at $118 billion, all told.

Nonetheless, several economists and analysts said that, while impressive, the rate of investment revealed in the Clean Investment Monitor still isn’t enough for the U.S. to achieve its climate goals. We can certainly cut emissions by 40 percent, as stated in the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, but we’re still far from the 50 percent reduction needed by 2030 to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement.

“We have more work to do,” said Catherine Wolfram, a professor of energy economics at MIT. While not involved with the Clean Investment Monitor, much of Wolfram’s work at MIT has studied the expected economic impacts of the IRA. Though she doesn’t see the level of investment as yet being sufficient to achieve that ambitious goal, she underscored that the IRA remains a big win, especially as a symbol of America’s commitment to climate action.

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By holding a torch to the path the nation’s economy can take toward a future in which excess emissions fade into myths and fables, the government has garnered investments in projects that won’t receive federal support for years to come. In particular, Hess pointed out that more than one-fifth of the $239 billion spent in the 2023 calendar year on clean investments went toward manufacturing, particularly to all things EV. In many cases, companies are spending tens, sometimes hundreds, of millions of dollars to build factories on the promise that they will receive tax credits once batteries, solar panels, and other products start coming off the assembly line.

This reality has some investors keeping a keen eye on Congress.

Bob Keefe, executive director of the nonpartisan advocacy group E2, said that the dozens of attempts by Republican members of Congress to repeal or otherwise roll back provisions and funding sources in the IRA is making some investors squeamish. 

“Nobody’s going to want to invest in something if the policies that [are] driving it are under threat,” Keefe said. “I mean, just the mention of ‘threat’ is enough to spook people.”

Even with those policy scares and a looming election whose outcome may jeopardize the IRA’s various funding streams, E2 has nonetheless tracked announcements for hundreds of clean energy projects across 41 states since the legislation passed, with $4 billion worth of investments announced in February alone.

As long as the government doesn’t “screw it up,” Keefe said, “We are quite literally on the cusp of the biggest economic revolution we’ve seen in this country in generations.”

The trends for this have crystallized. Yes, the wind industry stumbled on land and at sea, according to the report, but it’s poised to find its footing again. But every other sector saw substantial, even startling, growth — particularly emerging technologies like hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel. That broad category saw a tenfold increase in spending in 2023, hitting $9.1 billion.

Federal investments are already exceeding the Biden administration’s own estimates, and this spending, as Hess pointed out, will only increase. Barring unexpected obstructions, the government is on track to inject not the oft-cited figure of $369 billion, but perhaps as much as $1 trillion or more into the clean economy through IRA-related spending alone, according to estimates by Wolfram and her colleagues.

Wherever the final dollar figure falls, the report from Rhodium Group emphasizes the energy and enthusiasm there is behind this economic transition. To those who aren’t forehead deep in economic forecasting, the outpouring has been so expansive as to be wholly unexpected.

“Nobody could have ever predicted that we would see this type of investment, this type of job creation,” Keefe said. “It’s absolutely incredible.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The IRA has injected $240 billion into clean energy. The US still needs more. on Mar 12, 2024.

Edges of protest Channel Comment brendan 12th March 2024 Teaser Media

Who's the clown? Channel Comment brendan 12th March 2024 Teaser Media

Democràcia il·liberal, autocràcia o fins i tot dictadura: no falten termes per a designar la falta de pluralitat d’opinions, l’absència de llibertat d’expressió i l’opressió de les minories a Hongria. Però fins i tot en un context tan difícil, les iniciatives locals permeten situar la justícia social, l’ecologia i la democràcia en el centre de la política hongaresa des de dins i fora de les seves institucions públiques.

De 1867 a 1918, Hongria va formar part de l’Imperi Austrohongarès, una poderosa força a Europa Central governada per la monarquia dels Habsburg. La República Popular Hongaresa es va proclamar en 1949, després d’oscil·lar entre ser una república i una monarquia (una regència) aliada dels nazis. Era un règim comunista totalitari i membre del Pacte de Varsòvia, aliança militar establerta per la Unió Soviètica.

En 1956, una onada revolucionària va escombrar el país, amb ciutadans que protestaven contra el règim i la influència de l’URSS en la política pública. El govern hongarès va reprimir violentament les protestes, deixant una petjada indeleble en la societat hongaresa.

Malgrat mantenir la retòrica oficial, Hongria va iniciar una liberalització gradual dels seus sectors socials i econòmics en la dècada de 1960. El nom de la sopa tradicional hongaresa va inspirar el sobrenom de “socialisme gulash” per a aquesta política inusual dins del bloc soviètic. El terme també es va convertir en una abreviatura de la bretxa entre el discurs polític (sempre estricte en la forma) i la realitat quotidiana dels ciutadans.

Des del punt de vista econòmic, Hongria va ser un pont entre Occident i Orient de 1960 a 1989. Va ser la porta d’entrada a l’est per a moltes empreses occidentals, i els hongaresos es van beneficiar de béns no disponibles en les altres dictadures comunistes de l’època. En 1989, amb la dislocació d’Europa de l’Est, Hongria va iniciar una transició democràtica des de dalt. Es va introduir un sistema multipartidista sense que cap moviment popular l’exigís (com havia estat el cas de Solidarność a Polònia, per exemple). La república recentment creada no tenia una base popular que establís la seva legitimitat.

El llegat del “socialisme gulash”, combinat amb la manca de legitimitat popular de la república, són dos elements importants per a entendre l’actual context polític hongarès. Però aquestes claus disten molt de ser suficients. El fort desinterès dels hongaresos per la política és un fenomen relativament recent.

L’Orbanisme i el retorn de l’autocracia

En les eleccions parlamentàries de 2010, el partit de Viktor Orbán, Fidesz, es va fer amb dos terços dels escons del Országgyűlés (Assemblea Nacional). Tenien poder suficient per a modificar la Constitució. A partir d’aquest moment, Orbán va posar a Hongria en el camí de l’autocràcia.

Tot i que el propi Orbán ha reivindicat un sentit positiu del iliberalisme, front del que ell anomena no-democràcia liberal, en realitat el seu govern ha restringit cada vegada més els drets democràtics. Encara que el sufragi universal segueix present a Hongria, no es respecta la pluralitat d’opinió i s’abusa de la independència del poder judicial i dels mitjans de comunicació. No obstant això, l’antiliberalisme no és incompatible amb les polítiques econòmiques neoliberals, com les privatitzacions de la sanitat i el turisme.

Malgrat les crítiques de la majoria dels països membres, Hongria continua exercint un important paper estratègic a la Unió Europea, sobretot en la política de reindustrialització. El país s’ha posicionat amb èxit com a actor clau en la producció de bateries i vehicles elèctrics, necessaris per a descarbonizar el sector del transport i fonamentals per a aconseguir la prohibició de la UE de vendre cotxes amb motor de combustió a partir de 2035.

En tornar a dependre econòmicament de les autocràcies, la UE repeteix els mateixos errors del passat. La diferència ara és que els països en qüestió estan en el seu club i no en un altre.

En tornar a dependre econòmicament de les autocràcies, la UE repeteix els mateixos errors del passat. La diferència ara és que els països en qüestió estan en el seu club i no en un altre.

En reforçar els seus poders, Viktor Orbán ha deixat poques opcions als seus oponents. Una opció per a les forces de l’oposició és prendre el poder a nivell local i intentar actuar des de dins de les institucions públiques. Tanmateix, això fa l’efecte que la pluralitat continua existint sota el règim d’Orbán. Una altra opció és actuar fora de les institucions governamentals a nivell local, però això estén la “cultura de la desviació”, ampliant la bretxa entre el govern i la realitat local.

Un peu dins, un peu fora

Szikra (Espurna) és un moviment ecologista d’esquerres sorgit arran de les lluites pels drets socials i l’accés a l’habitatge a Budapest. El moviment es basa en una comunitat molt unida d’activistes per a connectar i donar veu a les iniciatives i lluites locals. El seu objectiu és desafiar les narratives del govern amb altres noves, en particular sobre l’accés a l’habitatge.

Abans de les eleccions parlamentàries de 2022, tots els partits oposats a Viktor Orbán es van unir sota una bandera comuna, Egységben Magyarországért (Units per Hongria), que abasta des de l’esquerra radical fins a la dreta conservadora. El sistema electoral és tal que la meitat dels diputats es designen per representació proporcional (acumulació de resultats a escala nacional) i l’altra meitat per obtenció de majoria en una circumscripció.

En un intent de designar un candidat unificat per a les circumscripcions, els partits de l’oposició van celebrar primàries. András Jámbor, fundador del mitjà de comunicació independent Mérce i membre del moviment Szikra, va ser nominat per als districtes obrers 8è i 9è de Budapest. Després de les eleccions nacionals de 2022, es va convertir en l’únic representant d’un grup d’esquerra radical en l’Assemblea Nacional hongaresa.

Aquesta estratègia de “un peu fora, un peu dins” d’ András Jámbor li permet actuar com a megàfon de polítiques alternatives. Per exemple, quan parla en el Parlament, promou iniciatives de democràcia participativa, fa campanya a favor d’una millor distribució de la riquesa i demana la introducció de subvencions per a la renovació d’edificis que consumeixen molta energia.

Fora de la institució, Szikra multiplica els vincles amb els sindicats locals i els moviments internacionals. Manté relacions amb moviments ciutadans que actuen en contextos polítics similars, com a Polònia.

L’impacte real del moviment és difícil de quantificar. Els obstacles polítics són nombrosos i sovint insuperables. Tenir un diputat en l’Assemblea Nacional és el màxim que poden fer en un context polític tan bloquejat. No obstant això, amb gairebé 300 membres, el Moviment Szikra no té intenció d’aturar-se aquí, i espera augmentar la seva influència en els pròxims anys. En paraules d’Áron Rossman-Kiss, membre del Moviment Szikra: “Si continuem rebutjant la política, mai canviarem res”.

Si l’acció política a Hongria sembla compromesa a escala nacional, l’àmbit municipal no és una excepció. A Budapest i en altres llocs, molts lluiten diàriament contra el sistema d’Orbán.

Ecologistes en el govern local

Un altre vessant de l’oposició està representada per Párbeszéd-Zöldek (Diàleg per Hongria – els Verds). Aliats amb els altres partits d’esquerra, van guanyar les eleccions municipals de 2019 en la capital i tenen majoria en la major part dels 22 districtes de la capital.

Durant el seu mandat, l’administració verda-esquerrana ha estat sotmesa a constants pressions de l’Estat. Mitjançant el seu control de l’òrgan legislatiu, Viktor Orbán impedeix que els representants electes promulguin polítiques locals ambicioses. També ha llevat poder local sobre els serveis públics. Per exemple, les escoles primàries solien ser gestionades pels municipis, però després d’una esmena constitucional, la Constitució hongaresa estipula ara que han de ser administrades per l’Estat. El mateix ocorre amb la xarxa de llevadores o determinades competències urbanístiques.

Els mitjans de comunicació nacionals controlats per Orbán culpen a la suposada incompetència dels municipis de l’oposició de la crisi pressupostària i ignoren la manipulació financera del Govern d’Orbán.

La propietat de la terra és un altre camp de batalla. En comprar terrenys i edificis a través del Parlament nacional, Viktor Orbán està “nacionalitzant” moltes parcel·les i edificis que originalment eren propietat dels municipis. Aquesta estratègia forma part d’una estratègia més àmplia d’exercir pressió financera. Limitant les subvencions nacionals i dirigint les europees als partidaris d’Orbán, o gravant-les amb impostos especials, el partit en el poder manté en suspens als municipis de l’oposició, sobretot als d’esquerres. Això està ocorrent fins a tal punt que la ciutat de Budapest ha d’endeutar-se per a pagar les despeses de funcionament, com la xarxa de transport públic. Els mitjans de comunicació nacionals controlats per Orbán culpen a la suposada incompetència dels municipis de l’oposició de la crisi pressupostària i ignoren la manipulació financera del govern d’Orbán.

Malgrat els obstacles, l’alcaldia ha posat en marxa diverses iniciatives, entre elles un pressupost participatiu. La supressió de places d’aparcament per a facilitar l’ús dels carrers del barri és només un exemple dels projectes seleccionats pels ciutadans. L’ajuntament també està treballant en programes d’igualtat d’oportunitats a les escoles (infantils), per a augmentar la diversitat social i lluitar contra la segregació dels gitanos des d’una edat primerenca. En qüestions de biodiversitat i adaptació al canvi climàtic, el polític local verd Gábor Erőss està fent campanya a favor d’un projecte de bosc urbà. Tot i que és poc probable que la iniciativa tingui èxit, ja que el terreny ha estat recuperat per l’Estat per a construir camps de futbol amb gespa sintètica.

El compromís polític per a “canviar les coses des de dins” a Hongria requereix una certa dosi de valentia i abnegació.

Com molts intel·lectuals hongaresos, Gábor Erőss va estudiar a l’estranger i segueix profundament imbuït de la cultura europea. En particular, s’inspira en ciutats com París per la seva política de cicle-mobilitat i les seves mesures contra la pobresa energètica. Quan se li pregunta com pot la Unió Europea fer costat als municipis de l’oposició enfront de l’Estat d’Orbán, respon: “És ambigu. Abans hi havia un discurs nacionalista dominant que consistia a dir que nosaltres, l’oposició, som “traïdors a la pàtria” perquè demanem a les institucions europees que condicionin les subvencions europees a criteris democràtics. Avui, el debat està superat, i el fet de dirigir-se a les institucions europees s’ha legitimat i és més fàcil de defensar.”

Considera que Europa no és prou federal i que els criteris democràtics han de prevaler sobretot la resta. En l’actualitat, els fons europeus negociats en el marc del Mecanisme Europeu de Recuperació i Resiliència després de la pandèmia de COVID-19 estan “bloquejats” a Brussel·les per a Hongria.

El compromís polític per a “canviar les coses des de dins” a Hongria requereix una certa dosi de valentia i abnegació. En aquest context, cobra especial rellevància una altra forma de compromís: l’acció política fora de les institucions públiques.

Els béns comuns i la cultura de la diversió a Europa de l’Est

Budapest ha demostrat ser propícia a les iniciatives ciutadanes “de baix a dalt”. De la seva herència comunista, aquests països, inclosa Hongria, conserven una certa tradició de solidaritat, empatia i atenció al marge de les institucions públiques o privades. Aquesta cultura del “procomú” és central i està viva en un país on les institucions públiques estan sotmeses a un règim autoritari.

Aquesta realitat ens porta a preguntar-nos: i si els països d’Europa de l’Est fossin de fet els millor posicionats per al necessari canvi de paradigma que exigeix la transició ecològica? En un món decreixent, per exemple, els valors de senzillesa, convivència i ajuda mútua promoguts per la cultura del “comú” serien els fonaments sobre els quals funcionaria la societat.

Encara que constantment amenaçats per la liberalització de l’economia que es va accentuar en els anys 90, molts dels béns comuns de Budapest continuen existint. El gran nombre d’edificis abandonats ha permès l’aparició d’espais alternatius en els últims 30 anys. Molt viva en les dècades de 1990 i 2000, es va estructurar una densa xarxa d’alternatives (bars, iniciatives ciutadanes, cooperatives, etc.) que va aconseguir el seu punt àlgid en 2016-2017. Lluny d’haver desaparegut, la contracultura de Budapest s’ha vist no obstant això afeblida pel COVID-19, el relleu generacional i el procés de turistificació de la ciutat.

En aquest context, el projecte Cargonomia es va llançar oficialment en 2015 (el projecte ja havia començat a gestar-se en 2010). Un grup de cinc amics, impregnats d’aquest estil de vida alternatiu, van decidir deixar enrere el model dominant i experimentar una cosa nova. Utilitzant els seus respectius coneixements i xarxes, van crear una iniciativa que combinava la cultura de la bicicleta, l’agroecologia, el decreixement, la política i la recerca.

En concret, Cargonomia es defineix com la convergència de diverses iniciatives ja existents: Cyclonomia, un taller d’autoreparació de bicicletes, Zsámbok Biokert, una granja ecològica, i Kantaa, un servei de missatgeria autoorganitzat.

A partir de 2010, els membres d’un taller de bicicletes van començar a formar-se en soldadura i van començar a construir, entre altres coses, bicicletes de càrrega per a transportar mercaderies pesants en zones urbanes. A més de mostrar una forma diferent de moure’s per la ciutat i proposar un sistema logístic alternatiu lliure de vehicles tèrmics contaminants, les bicicletes de càrrega van convertir Cargonomia en un punt de trobada per a diferents projectes i un lloc de socialització. Aquest mitjà de transport de baixa tecnologia contribueix a configurar nous intercanvis, basats en relacions econòmiques i socials equilibrades, i a dissenyar un futur més lent i desitjable. Lluny de reduir-se a una “botiga de bicicletes”, Cyclonomia és abans de res un “centre social”, un lloc on els ciutadans poden comprar o manllevar una bicicleta de càrrega per a una mudança, per exemple, o simplement reparar la seva pròpia bicicleta de manera autònoma.

Cyclonomia també ofereix un servei de cicle-logística, que reparteix cistelles de fruita i verdura ecològica local des de la granja Zsámboki Biokert a la ciutat, garantint així la continuïtat entre les zones urbanes i rurals. El servei de missatgeria autogestionat és a càrrec de la petita empresa “Kantaa”, que també forma part de l’univers Cargonomia.

Situada al poble de Zsámbok, a uns 50 quilòmetres de Budapest, la granja Zsámboki Biokert, de 3,5 hectàrees, es va fundar en 2010. Basada en un model d’agricultura ecològica i biodinàmica, la granja produeix fruites i verdures que es venen en el mercat (40%) i en cistelles en cooperació amb Cargonomia a la ciutat (60%). El lliurament es basa en un sistema de comandes anticipades inspirat en l’Agricultura Secundada per la Comunitat (APC). Cada setmana, la granja Zsámboki Biokert distribueix un centenar de cistelles. Amb cinc empleats, la granja crea una dinàmica dins del poble de Zsámbok i ofereix salaris més alts que els que solen guanyar els agricultors hongaresos. Així, Zsámboki Biokert és un espai social i de convivència, que concilia el social i l’ecològic i proposa un model econòmic alternatiu, emancipat de la lògica del benefici. El vincle amb Cargonomia garanteix l’estabilitat de la granja i la seva connexió amb la ciutat.

Els membres de Cargonomia participen en nombrosos actes per a promocionar les seves bicicletes de càrrega i els valors del decreixement que representen. Com moltes de les iniciatives que vam conèixer durant el nostre viatge, els membres de Cargonomia s’enfronten al repte del xoc generacional, ja que la nova generació hongaresa està menys impregnada de la cultura del procomú (i, al revés, més impregnada de l’individualisme occidental) que els seus predecessors (alguns dels quals han emigrat a altres països europeus). Conscient d’aquesta necessitat de transmetre coneixements, l’equip rep a molts visitants de diferents orígens, com a escolars i estudiants internacionals.

En proporcionar una narrativa comuna a les seves iniciatives, Cargonomia basteix un pont entre la pràctica i la teoria. Estratègicament, assumeixen la seva condició d’utopia simple i concreta i de front de difusió de les idees del decreixement, sense caure en el parany de la cerca de beneficis i la carrera per les subvencions. “Cal anar amb compte amb les utopies. El risc està a portar a massa gent amb nosaltres, i si s’esfondra, és un desastre. Estem provant petits experiments… Si Cargonomia s’ensorra, no hi ha milions de persones darrere, així que anem pas a pas”, explica Vincent Liegey, cofundador de Cargonomia.

Aquest malabarisme constant entre les idees i l’acció fa de Cargonomia un exemple de decreixement en acció. A la pregunta de quina estratègia adoptar per a evitar el pròxim crash ecològic, Vincent Liegey respon que el crash és inevitable. El veritable repte és fer comprendre a la gent el que està ocorrent, reforçar la producció local i la solidaritat, i preparar la ment de les persones amb una “pedagogia de la catàstrofe”.

Contràriament al catastrofisme, aquesta pedagogia defensa la necessitat de familiaritzar a la societat amb una idea política perquè, després d’una crisi profunda, la nostra societat prengui el camí del decreixement i no el d’un neoliberalisme cada vegada més totalitari. Aquesta estratègia sembla especialment pertinent a la vista dels efectes de la crisi dels COVID-19, que, malgrat els efímers debats sobre “el món del després”, no ha fet sinó endurir el control dels ciutadans i el poder corporatiu.

Després de la façana de la llibertat

Paradoxalment, Budapest és una de les ciutats més festives que visitem: els nombrosos turistes europeus i la joventut urbana hongaresa poden divertir-se, ballar i celebrar. D’aquesta rica i animada contracultura sorgeix un fort sentiment de llibertat. L’aparent senzillesa, lleugeresa i humilitat del mode de vida hongarès suggereix una vida relativament afable i tranquil·la quan es viu al ritme de la ciutat durant uns dies, mesos o anys com a turista, aprenent o treballador blanc d’Europa o els Estats Units. Aquesta paradoxa pròpia de la ciutat de Budapest és alhora motiu d’esperança i de preocupació. En primer lloc, esperança: fins i tot en un Estat autoritari, persisteixen la creativitat i la festa. Això dista molt de la grisa i trista vida quotidiana dels països totalitaris del segle XX, tal com la retraten les pel·lícules o les lliçons d’història. Aquesta contracultura, encara que afeblida, continua sent un espai per a la difusió de noves idees polítiques que poden desencadenar moviments ciutadans.

Les dones encara son pràcticament invisibles en l’economia. El número de professores universitàries és increïblement baix i la teoria econòmica ortodoxa segueix obviant les perspectives femenines. La Green European Journal va entrevistar a l’economista Edith Kuiper sobre el seu llibre A Herstory of Economics (Polity, 2022), que pretén donar a dones economistes la visibilitat que mereixen i incita a interpretar la història del pensament econòmic a través de la seva perspectiva.

Green European Journal: El seu llibre giren entorn al pensament i l’obra de dones economistes que la professió ha marginat durant segles. ¿A què es degut aquesta injustícia?

Edith Kuiper: La feina feta a dia d’avui sobre les dones en l’economia s’ha centrat principalment en el segle XX, moment en el que l’economia va esdevenir en ciència i es va professionalitzar com a tal. Les primeres dones economistes apareixen a finals del segle XIX, però en el meu llibre em remunto al XVIII, ja que m’interessen els orígens de l’economia política. Analitzo l’obra de dones que escrivien sobre economia sense ser membres de l’acadèmia o política econòmica.

En el context actual és difícil fer-nos una idea de quan jeràrquica i patriarcal era la societat occidental en aquells moments, especialment a Anglaterra. Les dones vivien literalment sota el control dels homes. El sistema legislatiu invisibilitzava a les dones que, a tots els efectes pràctics, esdevenien propietat dels seus marits al casar-se: perdien els seus drets de propietat, herències i la pàtria potestat dels fills. Totes les decisions legals requeien en els seus marits. I la privació de drets s’iniciaven inclús abans del matrimoni: les dones no tenien accés a l’educació, amb l’excepció d’una minoria de dones aristòcrates a les que se’ls permetia unir-se a les classes privades dels seus germans quan el seu tutor els visitava. Aquesta situació tenia conseqüències substancials, i és que quan a una persona li manca educació, no pot llegir ni escriure, conèixer els seus drets o defensar-se legalment, queda exclosa del debat intel·lectual a nivell social, sense parlar de l’accés a feines de qualitat. I, òbviament, és extremadament complicat que una persona en aquesta posició s’organitzi políticament.

Quins efectes va tenir aquest accés a l’educació a través dels tutors dels seus germans del qual algunes dones van gaudir?

En el segle VXIII, algunes d’aquestes dones que van aconseguir accedir a l’educació van fundar escoles per a d’altres dones i van escriure sobre la importància de l’educació. Sarah rimmer (coneguda escriptora de literatura infantil britànica del segle XVIII) és una d’aquestes dones importants. Va escriure un llibre adreçat a les dones sobre com establir una escola. El mateix passa amb les obres sobre economia escrites per dones a nivell general; moltes d’elles s’adreçaven a altres dones.

¿Perquè a altres dones i no al conjunt de la societat?

En aquella època el gènere estructurava profundament la vida de totes les persones. En el segle XVIII els homes controlaven l’esfera púbica i l’economia, mentre que les dones estaven cada cop més tancades en l’esfera privada, sense accés a l’educació ni possibilitats de guanyar-se la vida per si mateixes o llaurar-se una carrera.

El pensament econòmic es desenvolupava en aquest context, allunyat de les dones. L’economia política es desenvolupa en clubs d’homes als quals les dones no tenien accés i en els quals els seus interessos i els temes econòmics que les concernien ni tan sols es tractaven i debatien.

Les dones van quedar excloses de les teories plantejades per Adam Smith, David Ricardo i Thomas Malthus, que constitueixen les bases del pensament econòmic i que van ser inexpugnables fins a finals del segle XIX. La revolució marginalista posterior no va ser menys excloent. Aquest nou vessant va introduir un enfocament més tècnic i dona per descomptat el capitalisme. Les dones van ser excloses perquè les seves teories no parteixen de l’agent econòmic masculí racional i egoista que s’assumia com a neutral i genèric.

Les dones van ser excloses de les teories que van establir les bases del pensament econòmic.

Alguns pensadors van afirmar que les seves teories també concernien les dones, la qual cosa era evidentment fals, però no hi havia cap dona a la sala per a fer-li-ho veure. De fet, s’entenia que les qüestions femenines eren una cosa anormal que havia de romandre relegat a la llar, considerat un entorn aliè a l’àmbit econòmic. La llar en si ja havia quedat exclòs de l’economia política, tal com l’havia definit Adam Smith. Veiem així que les dones no sols quedaven físicament excloses dels llocs on es desenvolupava l’economia, sinó que les seves experiències, la seva agència i els seus interessos també eren ignorats.

¿No resulta obvi per a aquests teòrics que una teoria econòmica construïda al voltant d’un ideal, el de l’home purament racional (probablement blanc i ric) no tindria una aplicació general?

Clar, la idea era que aquests pensadors estaven descrivint homes actius en la vida pública; en general, homes de negocis. Més endavant també es van centrar en els treballadors. Estem parlant d’un ambient acadèmic format per homes blancs de classe mitjana-alta. Eren occidentals, blancs i tenien el control de la societat, així que per a ells era normal pensar que els seus interessos eren el més important del món. No tenien raons per a qüestionar els seus privilegis. Aquesta tradició continua fins als nostres dies.

Per descomptat que aquests intel·lectuals podrien haver qüestionat la idea que representessin a tota la humanitat, però no creien que aquesta fos una qüestió que els anés a permetre avançar en el seu àmbit d’estudi. Podria ser fins i tot disruptiu per a les seves carreres personals. Així que no parlaven ni pensaven sobre això.

Vas esmentar abans que, malgrat tot, va haver-hi algunes dones que van aconseguir accedir a l’educació i van començar a reflexionar sobre l’economia, entre altres coses. Qui van ser aquestes dones?

Aquest és un altre aspecte interessant: les dones no sols van ser excloses de l’acadèmia i del focus d’atenció econòmic; també van ser esborrades de la història de l’economia. Va haver-hi dones que van aconseguir reconeixement durant les seves vides, però els noms de les quals a penes s’esmenten en la literatura econòmica. Un exemple és Émilie du Châtelet. Ha estat redescoberta recentment, però fa deu anys tan sols se la coneixia com una amant excèntrica de Voltaire. Sembla que en realitat va contribuir de manera activa a la Il·lustració francesa. Tenia la seva pròpia comunitat, a la qual acudien matemàtics, filòsofs i altres intel·lectuals, fins i tot algú com Voltaire, per a escriure i debatre sobre temes rellevants. Va traduir l’obra de Mandeville i de Newton al francès, afegint les seves pròpies idees en forma d’introduccions i comentaris. Però els historiadors que han escrit la història del pensament econòmic són homes i han considerat les seves contribucions de poc interès.

L’economia està molt lligada al poder.

Un altre nom important és el de Sophie de Grouchy de Condorcet, qui va traduir la Teoria dels sentiments morals d’Adam Smith al francès i va afegir una sèrie de vuit cartes amb els seus propis comentaris. Aquestes cartes no es van traduir a l’anglès fins al 2008. Com a membre de l’aristocràcia, estava excel·lentment connectada, exercia d’amfitriona del seu propi saló i era popular entre la intel·lectualitat de l’època. No obstant això, els historiadors econòmics esmenten gairebé exclusivament al seu marit i consideren el seu treball irrellevant. De fet, gran part de l’obra d’aquestes pensadores aborda temes que la teoria econòmica no considerava rellevant, com el matrimoni com a institució econòmica, l’educació i el comportament dels consumidors. Aquesta és una altra raó per la qual els historiadors consideren poc interessant el treball d’aquestes dones.

Si bé cada vegada més dones estudien economia en el segle XXI, continuen en el marge. No tenen poder de decisió sobre la direcció de la disciplina perquè continuen sent una minoria en la titularitat de les places de professorat universitari. En el 2021 tan sols el 15% d’aquestes places dels Estats Units estan ocupades per dones. Les dones continuen sent una excepció i això no és bo per a la ciència econòmica.

Quina va ser la teva experiència personal quan vas accedir per primera vegada al camp de l’economia?

En les nostres societats, l’economia funciona com una religió: determina les nostres decisions entorn de qui rep què i per què. Així que volia entendre la lògica darrere de l’economia. M’interessava especialment entendre la raó per la qual l’economia està més interessada a usar a la gent per a produir riquesa que a produir riquesa per a fer feliç a la gent.

En la primera setmana de la carrera em vaig adonar que l’enfocament econòmic ortodox és molt limitat, la qual cosa el converteix en una cosa perillosa. Si li dius una vegada i una altra a les persones que són éssers egoistes, es convertiran en éssers egoistes. En aquesta època l’acadèmia estava dominada per l’economia neoclàssica, el marxisme estava silenciat i altres enfocaments eren marginats i vilipendiats, almenys fins als anys noranta. No hi havia a penes espai per a desenvolupar una perspectiva econòmica alternativa. Això implicava que un estudi que apliqués un enfocament alternatiu no obtenia reconeixement en l’àmbit acadèmic. Recordo que en el meu departament reien fins i tot de Amartya Sen, la premi Nobel. Era l’època en la qual l’economia neoclàssica no sols era dominant en l’acadèmia, també ho era en els espais de decisió en matèria de política econòmica com el Banc Mundial i l’FMI. En totes les universitats s’estudiaven les mateixes teories i els acadèmics crítics plantejaven preocupacions similars a tot el món.

Malgrat tot, un grup de dones decidim començar a estudiar l’economia de les dones. Ens trobem que a penes existien llibres sobre els temes que ens interessaven i això va ser dur i emocionant alhora. En un moment donat vaig conèixer a una col·lega, Jolande Sap, amb la qual compartia una visió similar sobre gènere, feminisme i economia.

Vàrem decidir organitzar una conferència internacional. Vaig ser als Estats Units, on l’acadèmia estava una mica més avançada en aquests temes, i els estatunidencs van venir a Amsterdam per a facilitar l’intercanvi d’idees. D’aquesta manera vam poder entrar en contacte amb gent de tot el món que pensaven que el gènere havia estat un factor estructurant en el desenvolupament de l’economia política i la ciència econòmica. I va anar senzillament fantàstic.

A la conferència van assistir aproximadament 120 persones de diferents parts del món i totes enteníem del que parlàvem. Això va ser un clar senyal de l’important que era el nostre enfocament entorn del gènere i l’economia.

Fins a la data només dues dones economistes han guanyat el Premi Nobel: Elinor Ostrom i Esther Duflo. A què es deu? Fins i tot tenint en compte que només el 15% dels professors universitaris titulars són dones, hauria d’haver-hi suficient material com per a triar a més economistes dones. Creus que existeix un problema dins del comitè que adjudica el Nobel d’Economia?

Sí, el problema és una part de la cultura imperant en el camp de l’economia. Hi ha unes certes preguntes que hauríem de fer-nos: A qui se selecciona per a formar part del comitè? Quins són els seus valors? Conec persones que serien fantàstiques candidates, però la nominació requereix temps i contactes, i les economistes feministes rarament disposen del temps i els contactes necessaris.

En general, el Premi Nobel reflecteix la situació en la qual es troba en aquest moment el camp de l’economia. No tinc cap esperança que en els pròxims vint anys el comitè Nobel li atorgui el premi a una dona afroamericana. Quan Ostrom va ser guardonada Gary Becker va protestar, afirmant que l’economia s’estava convertint en una ciència social o cultural. És una actitud sexista molt arrelada.

Una de les maneres de protegir l’estatus de l’economia com a ciència ha estat incrementar l’ús de les matemàtiques en les teories econòmiques. Però crec que l’èmfasi en les matemàtiques no sorgeix d’una necessitat real. El que passa és que, si bé la física té un objecte d’estudi molt concret, «l’economia» és una construcció social i política. Així que la definició del que és economia no és una cosa òbvia i enfront d’això, els economistes l’han definit al llarg dels anys com una activitat en les quals les dones no participen. El patriarcat s’ha fet lloc en l’economia política des dels seus mateixos inicis. De fet, l’economia està molt lligada al poder; brinda una ideologia que racionalitza les relacions econòmiques. Les persones amb poder econòmic ostenten també el poder social, així que els economistes tenen una plataforma enorme. Per exemple, si 200 economistes afirmen que ha d’incrementar-se el sou mínim això es converteix en notícia.

Quina és la lliçó que l’activisme i els partits polítics progresistes haurien d’extraure del teu llibre?

Escriure el llibre m’ha fet adonar-me de la dimensió de l’impacte del patriarcat en el pensament econòmic. Ja era conscient d’això, però no sabia que havia estat pràcticament fundacional. Malgrat tot, crec que és un llibre reconfortant en el sentit que moltes de les persones que apareixen van fer moltes més coses de les que una creuria basant-se en les narratives dominants. La seva obra aterra el pensament econòmic i el condueix de nou a les nostres experiències viscudes i els nostres problemes quotidians.

El pensament econòmic dominant actual és tan sols una visió del funcionament de l’economia. Pot ser que sigui la dominant, però no deixa de ser una visió limitada.

Van ser dones d’èxit, malgrat que no apareixen en els llibres d’història. De fet, moltes d’elles van anar enormement famoses durant les seves vides. Tothom les coneixia. I, no obstant això, els seus noms van ser esborrats dels llibres d’història.

En aquest sentit, el llibre pot inspirar a pensar de manera diferent sobre l’economia i a reflexionar sobre com fer-la més justa. També pot contribuir al fet que els lectors entenguin que el pensament econòmic dominant actual és tan sols una visió del funcionament de l’economia. Pot ser que sigui la dominant, però no deixa de ser una visió limitada. Jo crido a la teoria econòmica

dominant «economia del statu quo» perquè és incapaç de fer front a canvis substancials en l’economia com, per exemple, el canvi climàtic. El meu llibre demostra que, si integres a les dones, si reconeixes les seves veus, i les veus de les dones racialitzades en particular, és possible aprendre una cosa increïble. Per a entendre el que està ocorrent en l’economia és necessari escoltar aquestes veus i prendre-les de debò.

Esmentes que l’economia statu quo és incapaç de fer front al canvi climàtic. Com podria l’economia feminista ajudar a incloure el tema en l’agenda política?

El moviment feminista i l’ecologista han tingut uns interessos similars o paral·lels al llarg de la història. Les seves preocupacions van ser marginades pel pensament econòmic dominant. Els models econòmics neoclàssics donen per descomptada l’existència de la naturalesa i, com a tal, la seva disponibilitat constant. Passa alguna cosa semblança amb el treball de les dones en l’àmbit domèstic, que es dona per descomptat i no es considera ni un valor ni un cost. Això fa que, fins a un cert punt, tots dos àmbits s’enfrontin a problemes similars.

En el passat, les economistes feministes han titubejat a l’hora d’acostar-se al moviment ecologista, en part a causa de l’essencialisme que corre a vincular la naturalesa i les dones. Economistes feministes com Bina Agarwal van mostrar com aquest no és un enfocament massa útil. Al mateix temps, l’ecologisme ha arribat moltes vegades a conclusions semblants a les de les economistes feministes sense acabar de reconèixer les seves similituds. I això implica que, fins a un cert punt, estem inventant la roda per partida doble i simplement donant-li noms diferents.

Update: On April 18, scientists from the World Weather Attribution group released a study which found that climate change has not directly contributed to the ongoing drought in Zambia. It concluded that the El Niño weather phenomenon is the main driver. Scientists are currently unclear on whether climate change makes El Niño events more extreme.

At international climate talks, developing countries are trying to draw a clear line between expected new funding to help them deal with the worsening “loss and damage” caused by climate change and existing finance for measures to adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas. But in drought-hit Zambia, that distinction is proving hard to make.

Climate-vulnerable nations want wealthy governments to provide additional money to repair and reduce loss and damage via a new fund set up at the Cop28 UN climate summit late last year, but fear that money could be diverted from budgets already earmarked for adaptation.

The lack of a globally agreed definition of what constitutes loss and damage will likely make hard to know whether that is happening – and there is already considerable confusion on the ground.

In a week-long trip around Zambia, Climate Home spoke about the issue with maize farmers in their dried-up fields, besuited bankers in air-conditioned offices, and the minister for green economy and environment around a polished boardroom table.

Asked what they wanted from the UN loss and damage fund, all mentioned one thing first: support for water supplies in the form of irrigation or rainwater collection, to lessen farmers’ reliance on increasingly scarce rainfall.

At the end of February, the president declared the severe drought affecting much of the country as a national emergency, blaming the El Niño weather phenomenon and climate change. He noted that the drought had destroyed nearly half the maize crop and was expected to continue.

Farmer Benson Chipungu’s healthy irrigated corn (foreground) and his dying rain-fed corn (background) on March 7, 2024 (Photo: Joe Lo)

Reliance on rain

“The drought has hit us very bad,” said farmer Benson Chipungu at his house in Chongwe, a meagre batch of corn drying behind him during a rare and brief bout of rain. “The fields are a sorry sight.”

He said he had not followed developments at Cop28 closely, but added “if I was able to access [the loss and damage fund] then irrigation systems is the major thing”.

Clara Shangabile and Gertrude Nangombe, also maize farmers and members of the Katoba youth climate champions group, tuned into Cop28 on a TV at their local secondary school.

Like many corn producers Climate Home spoke to, they want help to move into what they call “gardening”, which means growing high-value crops that don’t need much land, like tomatoes, kale, green beans and peppers. While vegetables require more water per square metre, they use less overall because a smaller sized plot yields the same amount of money as growing corn.

Gertrude Nangombe (left) and Clara Shangabile (right) stand outside Katoba secondary school on March 6, 2024 (Photo: Joe Lo)

Zambia’s green economy and environment minister, Collins Nzovu, who chaired the African Group of nations at Cop28, said the new loss and damage fund – whose arrangements are still being put in place and is unlikely to start disbursing money until 2025 – should contribute to expanding water harvesting and dams. “Food security won’t be guaranteed until we can grow our own crops,” he said.

Asked if these activities fall under adaptation or loss and damage, he told Climate Home: “they are one”. “We are being forced to adapt because of the change in climate,” he said. “I shouldn’t be building any dams if the weather pattern was the same as it was 50 years ago. But now we need that – it’s loss and damage.”

Green economy and environment minister Collins Nzovu, pictured in Lusaka on March 7, 2024 (Photo: Joe Lo)

Blurred boundaries

Climate Home asked watchers of loss and damage talks in the UN climate process – including government negotiators and campaigners – whether irrigation should be classified as adaptation or loss and damage. Their answers were varied and nuanced.

Veteran campaigner Harjeet Singh said large-scale infrastructure projects like dams are adaptation, but community-based irrigation can be a response to loss and damage. He said it was tough to distinguish clearly between the two at the local level “due to frequent overlaps”.

Adao Soares Barbosa, who is a board member for the UN loss and damage fund and a finance negotiator for the Least Developed Countries group to which Zambia belongs, said rainwater harvesting and irrigation are generally viewed as adaptation, but if they are put in place to deal with loss of water induced by climate change, then they fall under loss and damage.

Zoha Shawoo, from the Stockholm Environment Institute, said it is “not very useful to draw strict boundaries” as the two types of activity are “super-blurred on the ground”. Ideally, she said, medium-term loss and damage funding for things like relocation of communities or financial compensation for lost crops would build on emergency humanitarian aid such as food parcels.

A sign in Lusaka’s central business district advertises maids on March 10, 2024 (Photo: Joe Lo)

Support to help families struggling with drought migrate to other places would be useful in Katoba. Shangabile and Nangombe said many of their friends had moved to Lusaka to work as maids. Both are open to the idea of following them, but Nangombe worries about not being her own boss.

“If you break a cup or something, you’re fired,” she said through a translator, adding “the best is to identify something you can do as a person within the same community” – such as diversifying into vegetable production.

Mattias Soderberg, from humanitarian agency DanChurchAid, said helping these women settle into their new lives is the kind of thing the new loss and damage fund should be used for. His organisation, for example, has enabled Kenyan herders displaced by drought to learn to fish.

Board to decide

Zambians are also wondering who will be able to access the fund. In Katoba, Catholic Relief Services project officer Harrison Zimba said the community is setting up a cooperative to access grants and loans as a group, and hopes they will be able to get money from the loss and damage fund.

In Lusaka’s central business district, Cheyo Mwenechanya, head of agriculture at commercial bank Zanaco, told Climate Home his organisation also plans to tap the fund, probably working with government. He would like to channel the money into irrigation.

One certainty is that Zambia, as a member of the UN’s Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, will be eligible.

Wealthy governments have tried to restrict loss and damage funding to countries judged to be “particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change”, as stated in the decision on operationalising the new fund approved at Cop28.

It is unclear how that will be defined in practice – but if recipients are limited to LDCs and small island developing states, then Zambia’s southern neighbours Zimbabwe and South Africa, which are suffering from the same drought, would not qualify.

A map of the world’s least developed countries, as defined by the UN. It does not include SIDs. (Photo credit: Unctad)

All these matters will be decided by the fund’s board. After a three-month delay caused mainly by rich nations squabbling over which of them should get seats, the board is now expected to hold its first meeting by the end of April – around the same time Zambia will be counting its paltry harvest.

The fund will need not just to agree on its rules, but also find new money – and sources of funding are likely to be scarce. The cost of loss and damage for developing countries is projected to reach $290 billion–$580 billion in 2030, according to a 2018 estimate. But wealthy governments pledged only around $0.7 billion at Cop28 in a first round of pledges, with the US offering no more than $17.5 million.

In Zambia, Minister Nzovu described those pledges as “exciting” but said “we need billions, trillions if we are going to develop our economies”. “Those who pollute more – the developed world, the Americans, must get out their cheques and pay for these losses and damages.”

Travel for this story was funded by Catholic Relief Services.

The post Is water provision in drought-hit Zambia climate ‘loss and damage’ or adaptation? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Solar accounted for most of the capacity the nation added to its electric grids last year. That feat marks the first time since World War II, when hydropower was booming, that a renewable power source has comprised more than half of the nation’s energy additions.

Read more on E360 →

The world continues to hit alarming records. Last year was the warmest since record keeping began in 1850. And the 10 warmest years have all occurred in the past decade. The implications for life on Earth are vast. More than 1 million species are already at risk of extinction — a number that’s likely to increase with climate pressures.

Researchers are rushing to understand how a quickly changing planet affects myriad species of plants and animals. One thing is certain: There’s still much we don’t know. Frogs, for example, are succumbing to mass mortalities as heat waves push temperatures above thresholds they can tolerate. But researchers found that we don’t even know the heat tolerance for 93% of described amphibian species.

One of the things we do know is that people need to act quickly to halt climate emissions, and while they do, many plants and animals have just two choices: adapt or move.

Some species are already doing this. “Dark-colored dragonflies are getting paler in order to reduce the amount of heat they absorb from the sun,” wrote biologist Michael P. Moore and evolutionary ecologist James T. Stroud in The Conversation. “Mustard plants are flowering earlier to take advantage of earlier snowmelt. Lizards are becoming more cold-tolerant to handle the extreme variability of our new climate.”

But for many species, adaptation or migration is a task made difficult or impossible by physiology or other human impacts to the environment.

Some recent scientific findings shed light on why.

Concerning Numbers for Numbats

Climate change may pose an existential threat to numbats, endangered Australian marsupials already struggling to fend off threats from habitat loss, domestic cats and red foxes. Numbats are among the few marsupials active during the day, which is when they need to be out and about to feed on termites. But their bodies can’t cope well when it gets too hot.

A new study that used infrared cameras found that numbats experience heat gain even in the shade. Heat that radiates off objects, as well as heat from the ground and air, can cause them to overheat. When ground and air temperatures reach 23°C, numbats can only spend 10 minutes in the sun before getting too hot.

Climate change may leave them with two bad choices: reducing the time they spend looking for food or moving those activities into times when they’re at a higher risk of predation.

A numbat in Western Australia. Photo: Mark Gillow (CC BY 2.0 DEED) The Heat Is On … Birds

A study published in January in Global Change Biology assessed how birds in arid areas were coping with heat waves. “Understanding which birds are most vulnerable to heat waves, and where these birds occur, can offer a scientific basis for adaptive management and conservation,” the researchers wrote.

They studied the vulnerability of nearly 1,200 dryland bird species and found that the vast majority — 888 species — are vulnerable, including 170 that would be “highly vulnerable” and eight “extremely vulnerable.” The biggest hot spots were in Australia, southern Africa and eastern Africa.

While most of the species — about 91% — aren’t threatened or endangered now, the researchers warned that with a warming planet that could change. The finding “suggests that many species will likely become newly threatened with intensifying climate change,” they wrote.

Too Hot for Rhinos

There’s more bad news for animals in arid areas. Unchecked climate change will have dire consequences for white and black African rhinos in southern Africa, where most of these animals live.

A new study in Biodiversity found under a worst-case emissions scenario, by 2085 the rhinos wouldn’t be able to survive in the region’s national parks. Rhinos lack the ability to sweat as a mechanism for evaporative cooling. They can drink more water, wallow, and hang out in the shade, but the researchers say that when temperatures pass a certain threshold that simply won’t be enough to keep them cool. Development makes the situation worse, as rhinos are constrained from migrating by human settlements.

Fish and Their Food

Warming ocean waters can disrupt the ocean food web — starting at the bottom with phytoplankton, tiny bits of algae that are consumed by larger organisms like zooplankton, and then fish. When climate warming reduces phytoplankton in the ocean by 16%-26%, it has an outsized impact on fish, sending their numbers down 38%-55%, according to researchers of a new study in Nature Communications.

The researchers found that temperature doesn’t reduce the amount of phytoplankton, but it does reduce their size, which makes eating enough more challenging for fish.

“Our global analysis sheds light on a hidden vulnerability,” marine ecologist Angus Atkinson, the study’s lead author, told the press. “We see ecosystems adapting to warming by changing plankton size. This suggests the main threat comes from reduced nutrient supply, leading to smaller plankton, longer food chains, and inefficient foraging.”

The researchers also warn that some of the biggest declines could happen in areas with concentrated fishing activity.

When ocean heat records were shattered last year, phytoplankton and associated fish populations felt the effects. Previous research has already found losses of phytoplankton in the Atlantic Ocean, including the Gulf of Maine. And that’s significant not just for marine organisms but also for the rest of us, as phytoplankton also helps store carbon.

Mismatched Timing

Timing is everything in nature. Researchers in Spain looked at 51 species of flowering shrubs, bushes and trees in Doñana National Park and found that warming temperatures have changed the peak flowering time, moving it forward 22 days. And the duration of flowering also shifted for some species. Their study, published in the Annals of Botany, showed that more than half of the species now flower in a more crowded time, leading to increased competition to attract pollinators.

In another study examining the timing of biological events, researchers looking at plants in North America found that warmer spring temperatures caused trees to leaf out earlier, which reduced the amount of time that wildflowers below the trees had to enjoy sunlight before being covered by the tree canopy. Shorter periods of sunlight, they reported, means that the wildflowers have less energy to grow and reproduce — which could lead to future population declines.

We still have a lot to learn about how climate change will affect plants and animals, but the more we look, the more we find species already struggling. Those who lack the ability to move or adapt may soon suffer the consequences of our inaction, especially if we continue to ignore them.

“The evidence indicates that humanity cannot simply assume that plants and animals will be able to save themselves from climate change,” write Moore and Stroud. “To protect these species, humans will have to stop the activities that are fueling climate change.”

Previously in the Revelator:

For Species That Rely on Wind, Climate Change Won’t Be a Breeze

 

The post Adapt, Move or Die? Plants and Animals Face New Pressures in a Warming World appeared first on The Revelator.

Last month, Democratic New York City Council Member James Gennaro introduced a bill that would change the way countless New Yorkers do their laundry — by banning laundry detergent pods.

More specifically, the bill — dubbed “Pods Are Plastic” — proposed a ban on dishwashing and laundry detergent pods coated in polyvinyl alcohol, or PVA, a type of plastic that disintegrates when submerged in water. Laundry and soap companies have long argued that the PVA coating is totally safe and 100 percent biodegradable, but proponents of the bill say that neither of those claims is true.

“Products and profit should not come at the expense of the environment,” Sarah Paiji Yoo, co-founder of a plastic-free cleaning product company called Blueland, said in a statement. Blueland, which manufactures PVA-free laundry and dishwasher tablets, helped write the bill and has been a vocal critic of PVA for years. In 2022, the company helped pen a petition asking the EPA to remove PVA from a list of chemicals it has deemed safe to use. (The EPA rejected the request last year.)

The Pods Are Plastic bill faces uncertain prospects in the New York City Council. If it does pass, however, it will only go a short way toward mitigating laundry-related microplastic pollution. Research suggests that billions of plastic microfibers shear off of our clothing every day — when we wear them, when we wash and dry them. And even more microplastics are released upstream, when clothes are manufactured.

“It’s a multi-faceted issue,” said Judith Weis, a professor emeritus of biological sciences at Rutgers University. To solve it, environmental advocates are calling for more systemic solutions — not just a ban on PVA, but new laws requiring washing machine filters, better clothing design, and a shift away from fast fashion.

Long before consumers crack open a container of Tide Pods, their laundry has already begun generating microplastic pollution. That’s because some 60 percent of clothing today is made with plastic. Polyester, nylon, acrylic, spandex — they’re all just different types of fossil fuel-derived plastic fabric. And more plastic clothing could be on the horizon, as fossil fuel companies pivot to plastic production in response to the world’s transition away from using fossil fuels for electricity generation and transportation.

Most media attention has focused on microplastics that slough off of clothing in the wash. And for good reason: According to a 2019 study in the journal Nature, washing machines can generate up to 1.5 million plastic microfibers per kilogram of washed fabric. Too small to get caught in standard washing machine filters, some 200,000 to 500,000 metric tons of these microfibers slip out into wastewater every year and eventually make their way into the marine environment. That’s about a third of all microplastics that directly enter the world’s oceans.

Tide Pod containers on a grocery store shelf. Alex Tai / Sopa Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

Ocean microplastics are linked to a range of deleterious health effects in marine animals, including inhibited development, reproductive issues, genetic damage, and inflammation. Weis said these observations are alarming for their own sake — “I’m concerned about the marine animals themselves,” she told Grist — but they could also have implications for the health of humans, who might eat microplastics-contaminated seafood. Researchers have found microplastics throughout people’s bodies — in their brains, bloodstreams, kidneys, and, most recently, in 62 of 62 placentas tested — and it’s not yet clear what the impacts could be.

But, as Grist reported last year, there are still many other ways that microplastics escape from our clothing. Just wearing plastic clothes, for instance, causes abrasion and the subsequent release of microplastics into the air. Some researchers think this actually causes more microplastic pollution than doing laundry; they estimate that a single person’s normal clothing use could release more than 900 million microfibers per year, compared to just 300 million from washing. 

And then there’s the manufacturing stage, which is perhaps the least understood source of plastic microfiber pollution. Every part of the clothes-making process can release microplastics, from the initial polymerization of natural gas and oil to the actual weaving, knitting, and subsequent processes that turn fabric into garments. According to a 2021 white paper from the nonprofit The Nature Conservancy and the consulting firm Bain and Company, abrasion from dyeing, printing, and pre-washing clothes releases billions of plastic microfiber particles into factory wastewater every day — and not all of these particles are destroyed or filtered out by wastewater treatment. 

The white paper estimates that pre-consumer textile manufacturing releases about 120,000 metric tons of microplastics into the environment annually — less than laundry or wearing clothing, but the same order of magnitude.

At the opposite end of the textile life cycle are even more opportunities for synthetic clothes to shed microplastics. Disposed textiles that are incinerated can release microfibers — and hazardous chemicals — into the air, while those that are littered or sent to a landfill can release them into the soil. There is some evidence to suggest that earthworms and other organisms can transport these microplastics into deeper layers of soil, where they are more likely to contaminate groundwater.

“While it’s absolutely important to make sure we’re addressing loss that occurs during the wearing and washing phase, … it’s even more important to make sure we’re addressing microfiber pollution across the full life cycle,” said Alexis Jackson, associate director of The Nature Conservancy’s California oceans program.

A woman loads clothes into a front-loading washing machine. In Pictures Ltd. / Corbis via Getty Images

Unlike other sources of microplastic pollution, detergent pods are intentionally added to laundry. They date back to the early 2010s, when Procter and Gamble introduced its now-infamous PVA-coated Tide Pods — described at the time as the firm’s biggest laundry innovation in a quarter of a century. The PVA design, which reportedly took eight years to come up with, really was a breakthrough: It separated cleansers, brighteners, and fabric softeners into discrete chambers so they wouldn’t mix before entering the wash cycle. And, unlike previous designs, PVA film could dissolve in either hot or cold water.

Over the past nine years, laundry detergent pods’ market value in the U.S. has grown by 36 percent to $3.25 billion; it’s projected to exceed $3.5 billion by 2025.

To protect that growth, laundry industry trade groups have assured consumers that pods’ PVA plastic coating will biodegrade and not harm people or ecosystems. The American Cleaning Institute, which represents U.S. cleaning product companies including Procter and Gamble, SC Johnson, and Unilever, contends that, “[w]hen exposed to moisture and microorganisms, PVA breaks down into nontoxic components, making it a more sustainable alternative to traditional plastics.” 

But some experts disagree. Notably, a 2021 literature review conducted by researchers at Arizona State University — and commissioned by Blueland — found that less than a quarter of the PVA that reaches wastewater treatment plants actually degrades; 77 percent, about 8,000 metric tons per year, is released into the environment intact. That’s not because PVA can’t be degraded by microorganisms; it’s just that the right microorganisms are often not present in wastewater treatment plants, or the PVA doesn’t stay at the plants long enough to actually break down. According to research sponsored by cleaning product industry groups, it can take 28 days for at least 60 percent of PVA to break down and 60 days for 90 percent of it to degrade.

There isn’t “a single wastewater treatment plant in the United States where water sits with those microbes for anything close to 28 days,” Charles Rolsky, a coauthor of the Blueland-funded study who now works as a senior research scientist at the Shaw Institute in Maine, told The Washington Post in 2022. “At most, it might be a week, but more realistically it’s days to hours.”

In response to Grist’s request for comment, the American Cleaning Institute decried “the misinformation campaign being waged by Blueland” and said the New York City bill to ban PVA was “unnecessary.” A spokesperson for the trade group directed Grist to previously published statements and an online chart saying that the kind of PVA used in laundry detergent pods is of a higher quality than the PVA analyzed by the Blueland-funded study, and that laundry pod PVA “dissolves completely and biodegrades within hours of wastewater treatment.”

Procter and Gamble referred Grist to the American Cleaning Institute’s communications team.

Shoppers walk past Zara, a fast fashion outlet with locations around the world. Budrul Chukrut / Sopa Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

Getting a hold on the clothing microplastics problem will require a range of solutions. Right now, most of the focus is on washing machine filters that conscientious consumers can install in their homes. The best filters available today can theoretically trap upwards of 80 percent of laundry microplastics. Filter-adjacent technologies — like the Cora Ball or Guppyfriend bag that can be placed in washing machines along with laundry — may also help.

A small number of states have considered laws to make filters mandatory for appliance manufacturers, or to incentivize the purchase of filters through consumer rebates. Some companies — like Samsung — are trying to get ahead of potential regulation by devising their own filter technologies that can be attached to standard machines; others are designing washing machines with built-in microplastics filters.

Meanwhile, scientists are trying to design clothes that won’t shed so many microfibers in the first place. Yarns with more twists and woven structures, for example, tend to release fewer microfibers, as do fabrics cut with heat and lasers (as opposed to scissors). 

“I’m optimistic that science can solve this problem,” said Juan Hinestroza, a professor of fiber science and apparel design at Cornell University. With adequate research funding, he thinks it’ll be possible — within less than a generation — to design synthetic clothing that sheds virtually no microplastics.

Perhaps the most holistic solution, however, would be to regulate and limit the use of plastics for clothing and laundry applications altogether. The fast fashion industry in particular is a big contributor to the microplastics problem, if only because of the sheer quantity of synthetic clothing it produces. Weis said it’s time to hold major apparel companies accountable for their products’ release of microplastics, potentially through extended producer responsibility laws that make companies financially responsible for the trash and pollution they create. New York state is currently considering such a law, although it mostly relates to packaging, not clothes or microplastics. Weis also called for general plastic restrictions as part of the global plastics treaty currently being negotiated by the United Nations. 

Yoo supports similar solutions. In the meantime, though, she’s continuing to push for the New York City bill banning PVA. “This bill is about so much more than just pods,” she said. “I get it when people are like, ‘This is not the biggest problem,’ … but I think this can be a really important starting point. It sends an important signal to businesses that plastic products should not be designed to go down our drains and into our water.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Detergent pods are only the start of clothing’s microplastic pollution problem on Mar 11, 2024.