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      Earthly Order: ‘mercurial professor’ with urgent ideas on climate change

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      Earthly Order: ‘mercurial professor’ with urgent ideas on climate changeIn his ambitious new book, distinguished professor Saleem Ali tries to bridge the gap between politics and science to help plan for a safer future Saleem Ali – whose Twitter bio begins “Mercurial Professor” – is not trying to be the new Stephen Hawking.“People buy all these theoretical physics books in droves because they think having them on the shelves will make them look smart,” opines the distinguished professor of energy and the environment at the University of Delaware. “A Brief History of Time is a very difficult book to read.”Poisoned legacy: why the future of power can’t be nuclearRead moreAli believes his own, anecdote-filled book is far more accessible. Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life is an ambitious effort to bridge the gap between politics and science, drawing on his experience as a National Geographic field explorer who has worked in more than 150 countries.Ali has three passports, having been born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, moved to Pakistan aged nine and lived in Australia for several years. In a phone interview from Delaware, he happily ruffles feathers by defending nuclear power, suggesting that democracies can learn lessons from autocracies and attacking the last sacred space on television: the nature documentary.“Some of these nature biodiversity documentaries can, in fact, create a problem because they lead to niche thinking,” he says. “They are good for some things like biodiversity conservation but they are not making the connections often that you need to do.”Indeed, the 48-year-old revels in complexity and loathes dumbing down – even if it means frustrating literary agents. “When I was writing the book, agents would ask me, ‘What’s your one argument?’ I’d say, ‘You know, I’m writing a book about earth systems, I can’t have one argument. I have to approach the issues with nuance.’ This is the problem we have, unfortunately, in terms of communication of environmental issues.”To illustrate the point, Ali cites predictions that Dubai in the United Arab Emirates will soon be so hot that it will be uninhabitable. “That is such a ludicrous statement from the point of view of looking at how humans have interacted with the environment,” he contends.“Most cities in the western world are uninhabitable in winter without infrastructure, including New York City or London – if you didn’t have heating you wouldn’t be able to survive or you could have a very short existence with hypothermia.“We have developed adaptive mechanisms so to say that Dubai would be uninhabitable in summer without air conditioning makes no sense from the point of view of earth systems. But it makes a good headline because people immediately start panicking and they’re like, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s becoming so bad.’”Humanity will have to adapt, he argues, for example through different types of architecture and more subterranean dwellings. He believes this is the pragmatic way forward in responding to some climate crisis thresholds that are now irreversible – while still aggressively reducing dependence on fossil fuels and refusing to surrender to the worst-case scenario.“If we frame the conversation as, look, this is going to be a future which is not ideal, we wish we had not gone that pathway, we wish we had reduced emissions, but now we need to figure out what’s the best way to adapt to this new future, that would be much more constructive and realistic to work through with some of the people who have been climate deniers.“But it wouldn’t mean complacency. You still need a lot of action around it. That’s where I feel as though we’ve been remiss in attacking this issue.”Ali is among the voices who contend that nuclear power, long anathema to many on the left, deserves a second look. It currently provides about a fifth of electricity in the US, accounting for about half the country’s carbon-free energy, and some companies – including one started by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates – are developing smaller, cheaper reactors that could supplement the grid.But the US has no long-term plan for managing or disposing of radioactive waste that can persist in the environment for thousands of years. Nuclear disasters at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan have cast a long shadow. Although countries such as France are sticking with the technology or planning to build more plants, others, including Germany, are phasing out their reactors.Ali argues: “There has been a completely emotional kneejerk response to Fukushima, especially in Germany, which they are realising now was a mistake. If you look at the actual science in terms of the natural order of how energy is extracted from materials, nuclear energy is the most energy-dense resource.“If you look at the data in terms of the the morbidity and mortality of Fukushima, you had not a single person die of radiation exposure; they died of the tsunami. The International Atomic Energy Agency published a report last year which showed that there were no cancer clusters around there either. And yet you had an entire energy policy recrafted. That is why Germany is in this dependency situation.”Indeed, Ali does not believe that western democracies have all the right answers. He suggests that for decades their leaders have been talking about climate in a fashion that is too narrow, failing to join dots in the public imagination. He is donating all royalties from the book to environmental literacy programmes in developing countries.“There was a strategic mistake made in terms of framing it just as climate change. I always like, with my students, to talk about global environmental change. We’re talking about many aspects of the global system which are changing. When people think of climate change, immediately it is just resonating as, ‘Oh, are we getting more heat or cold?’“That’s not really what’s going on. We’re talking about water scarcity. We’re talking about the ways in which energy is going to be delivered. If we had framed the conversation around global environmental change, it would have been easier to be able to figure out all of these interconnections.”Ali, who has a PhD in environmental planning, continues: “We assume that democratic systems are going to be able to deliver efficient outcomes but the reality is democratic systems are often very short-term-oriented because they are driven by election cycles.“We have the same problem with reference to even business decision making, especially publicly traded companies which are driven by quarterly earnings reports. When you’re talking about long-range impacts, there is definitely a disconnect between both aspects.“We threw the baby out with the bathwater when we started to lobby against planning. ‘Planning’ had these connotations that it was going back to somehow centrally planned economies but you need a certain bureaucracy to continue the planning programmes and we needed to have planning independent of the political apparatus. That’s been another reason why, unfortunately, we have ended up in this current impasse with climate change.”Do autocracies, which Joe Biden warns are locked in a global struggle with democracies, do it better? Ali, whose book draws a contrast between China and India, says: “China is going to have problems in terms of their dependence on coal but there is definitely a much more technically oriented approach to decision making in China. Even if you take out the part about the central planning, the Confucian approach has been much more around let’s bring technocracy to the mix.”Public transport in a classic example, he believes, with China deciding to switch from planes to trains as the dominant mode between major cities and getting it done within a decade. “Here in the US we’re stuck with Amtrak, which they have still not been able to change because there isn’t this sense of let’s work through all of the technical details and make it happen based on those decisions.“That’s also linked to the fact we have a very litigious culture that makes it very challenging to be able to develop new projects. Unfortunately, in current democracies the actual process of getting feedback and stakeholder engagement and litigation becomes an end in itself. There is just no point at which you draw the line and say, OK, now we have to move forward.”This, he continues, is one of the reasons that the outsider businessman Donald Trump was an attractive proposition to millions of frustrated voters in the 2016 presidential election. “People saw that at least there was this willingness to make a decision. Much as I lament many aspects of his policies – building the wall – there was a decision.“In environmental discourse, we often talk about the precautionary principle, that you have to be careful about things, but if you go to the extreme, it becomes paralysis because you can’t make any kind of forward movement. That’s the main problem we have had.”But no, Ali is not calling for dictatorship in America, as he insists: “Democracies can correct that. I don’t see this as being something that only autocracies can do. We just need democracies to be made more efficient and form processes where decisions are based on technical knowledge and, after a certain point, that technical knowledge should trump – for want of a better word – negotiations.”By Ali’s lights, environmental awareness is no longer enough; environmental literacy is critical to the survival of the planet. Or as he puts it: “Depth in understanding of complexity is essential for functional order on Earth.”
      Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life is out on 15 July
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      Giuliani associate Lev Parnas handed 20 months in prison for campaign finance fraud – as it happened

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      Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani who was a figure in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation, was sentenced Wednesday to a year and eight months in prison for fraud and campaign finance crimes.Parnas, who had helped Giuliani connect with Ukrainian figures as part of a campaign to dig up dirt on President Joe Biden’s son, had sought leniency on the grounds that he’d helped the Congressional probe, Associated Press reported.But prosecutors said the Soviet-born businessman’s aid was in response to a subpoena and deserved little credit.Instead, they asked the judge to focus on a jury’s finding that Parnas used the riches of a wealthy Russian to make illegal donations to politicians who might aid the launch of a legal recreational-marijuana business.Prosecutors had asked that Parnas be sentenced to more than six years.An October conviction also supported a finding that he made illegal donations in 2018 to jump-start a new energy company.In March, Parnas pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud, admitting that between 2012 and 2019 he conspired with another person to give investors false information about a Florida-based business, Fraud Guarantee.Fraud Guarantee was promoted as a company that could protect investors against fraud. Giuliani accepted $500,000 from the company to act as a consultant, but was not accused of wrongdoing or charged with any crimes.The criminal case against Parnas was not directly related to his work acting as a fixer for Giuliani as the former New York City mayor tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, before he was elected president.Giuliani, who was working at the time as a personal lawyer for then-President Donald Trump, has said he knew nothing about the crimes of Parnas and others.That’s it from us today, thanks for reading. Here’s how the day unfolded in Washington: Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani and a key figure in Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation, was sentenced to a year and eight months in prison for fraud and campaign finance crimes. Parnas used the riches of a wealthy Russian to make illegal donations to politicians who might aid the launch of a legal recreational-marijuana business. Trump-backed candidates had a mixed Tuesday in Republican primary elections around the country. Colorado voters largely rejected most Trump-supporting candidates in Tuesday’s GOP primaries, although Lauren Boebert, the extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman, won her bid for re-election. Moderate Republicans held off challenges from more extreme challengers in Utah, Mississippi and Oklahoma, but two Trump-endorsed officials triumphed in Illinois.The Supreme Court will issue two key decisions tomorrow which could impact both the climate crisis and immigration. The court has been weighing how much power the Environmental Protection Agency should have to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and is also considering whether Joe Biden can end Remain in Mexico, the controversial Trump-era policy which sends asylum seekers to Mexico while they wait for their immigration cases to be heard.Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, said he would be “willing and able” to defend a law which banned sodomy, in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade.In an interview with News Nation, Paxton was asked about Lawrence v Texas, a 2003 Supreme Court ruling that overturned a state anti-sodomy law and made all such laws invalid nationwide.Last week Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion following the Supreme Court overturning the right to abortion, wrote that the court should also “reconsider” the Lawrence v Texas ruling.In the News Nation Paxton was asked if he would “feel comfortable defending a law that once again outlawed sodomy,” as well as gay marriage and birth control.“I mean, there’s all kinds of issues here, but certainly, the Supreme Court has stepped into issues that I don’t think there was any constitutional issues dealing with, they were legislative issues,” Paxton said. “This [abortion] is one of those issues, and there may be more.”The News Nation host then asked Paxton how he would act if Texas passed a law banning sodomy.Paxton said: “My job is to defend state law and I’ll continue to do that. That is my job under the Constitution and I’m certainly willing and able to do that.”Joe Biden has announced that the US will increase its military forces across Europe with more land, sea and air deployments, as he gathered with Nato leaders for a two-day summit in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Arriving at the meeting in Madrid, the US president announced the stationing of a brigade of 3,000 combat troops in Romania, two squadrons of F-35 fighters in the UK and two navy destroyers in Spain.“The US and its allies are going to step up. We’re stepping up. We’re proving that Nato is more needed now than it ever has been,” Biden said in a short statement he read out before the first summit meeting began.Biden’s announcement is expected to be followed by further commitments by Nato members to a strengthening of forces on the alliance’s eastern flank, which was being discussed by Nato leaders on Wednesday morning.The US president also said the US fifth army corps would establish a permanent base in Poland, extra troops would be committed to the Baltic states and extra air defence systems would be stationed in Germany and Italy.It was, Biden said, a response to Russian aggression, adding: “Together with our allies, we are going make sure Nato is ready to meet threats across every domain, land, air and in the sea”, which came “at a moment when Putin has shattered peace in Europe and the very tenets of rules-based order”.The US sent a further 20,000 troops to Europe earlier this year, taking the total based across the continent to over 100,000. Wednesday’s announcements come on top of that and Biden said the US would “continue to our adjust our posture” if necessary.A lawyer for Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has dimmed prospects for a quick appearance before congressional investigators probing the January 6 Capitol riot, after the attorney asked for more information on her requested appearance.Ginni Thomas on June 16 expressed eagerness to speak with the House of Representatives panel investigating the 2021 assault, telling the Daily Caller she “can’t wait to clear up misconceptions.”The committee sent an invitation that day.On Tuesday, however, Thomas’ lawyer, Mark R. Paoletta, wrote to the committee that he did not “understand the need to speak with Mrs Thomas”.“Before I can recommend that she meet with you, I am asking the Committee to provide a better justification for why Mrs Thomas’s testimony is relevant to the Committee’s legislative purpose,” Paoletta wrote.Earlier this month the Washington Post reported that Thomas emailed 29 Arizona lawmakers in a bid to help overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat.Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani who was a figure in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation, was sentenced Wednesday to a year and eight months in prison for fraud and campaign finance crimes.Parnas, who had helped Giuliani connect with Ukrainian figures as part of a campaign to dig up dirt on President Joe Biden’s son, had sought leniency on the grounds that he’d helped the Congressional probe, Associated Press reported.But prosecutors said the Soviet-born businessman’s aid was in response to a subpoena and deserved little credit.Instead, they asked the judge to focus on a jury’s finding that Parnas used the riches of a wealthy Russian to make illegal donations to politicians who might aid the launch of a legal recreational-marijuana business.Prosecutors had asked that Parnas be sentenced to more than six years.An October conviction also supported a finding that he made illegal donations in 2018 to jump-start a new energy company.In March, Parnas pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud, admitting that between 2012 and 2019 he conspired with another person to give investors false information about a Florida-based business, Fraud Guarantee.Fraud Guarantee was promoted as a company that could protect investors against fraud. Giuliani accepted $500,000 from the company to act as a consultant, but was not accused of wrongdoing or charged with any crimes.The criminal case against Parnas was not directly related to his work acting as a fixer for Giuliani as the former New York City mayor tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, before he was elected president.Giuliani, who was working at the time as a personal lawyer for then-President Donald Trump, has said he knew nothing about the crimes of Parnas and others. It was a mixed Tuesday for Donald Trump-backed candidates in Republican primary elections around the country. Colorado voters largely rejected most Trump-supporting candidates in Tuesday’s GOP primaries, although Lauren Boebert, the extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman, won her bid for relection. In Illinois, Mary Miller, who had been criticized after she declared the Supreme Court’s abortion decision as a “victory for white life” – a spokesman said she had mixed up her words – won in after she was backed by Trump. Darren Bailey, who was also endorsed by Trump, won the Republican gubernatorial primary in the state. Elsewhere John Curtis, and Blake Moore, Republican congressional candidates in Utah, defeated more extreme challengers. Stephanie Bice, a congresswoman from Oklahoma who – like Moore and Curtis – voted to form the January 6 commission, won her primary bid, as did Michael Guest, in Mississippi.Stephen Breyer, the Supreme Court justice, has formally announced his retirement from the Court, effective Thursday.Breyer, who announced earlier this year that he would retire – Ketanji Brown Jackson has already been chosen to replace him – wrote to Joe Biden to confirm he would step down tomorrow.“This past January, I wrote to inform you of my intent to retire from regular active service as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, upon the Court rising for its summer recess,” Breyer wrote.“The Court has announced that tomorrow, beginning at 10 am, it will hand down all remaining opinions ready during this Term. Accordingly, my retirement from active service under the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 371(b) will be effective on Thursday, June 30, 2022, at noon.“It has been my great honor to participate as a judge in the effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law.”‘So much joy’: Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation lauded as ray of hopeRead moreThe extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert won her primary on Tuesday night, shortly after attacking the separation of church and state under the US constitution.“I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk,” she said.A dedicated controversialist first elected in 2020, backed by Donald Trump and described by NBC News as a “Maga lightning rod”, Boebert convincingly beat Don Coram, a state senator, for the nomination to contest the midterm elections.At one event recently Coram, 74, told voters: “My politics are very similar to my driving. To the chagrin of both my wife and my Republican colleagues, I tend to crowd the center line and sometimes I veer over a bit.”In contrast, Boebert has heckled Joe Biden during the state of the union address; made racist attacks on Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota; vowed to carry a gun on to the House floor; and voted to object to results in swing states in the 2020 presidential election.Boebert beat Coram by 31 points.Republican Lauren Boebert wins in Colorado after denouncing separation of church and stateRead moreFox News Channel is airing the January 6 committee hearings when they occur in daytime hours – and a striking number of the network’s viewers have made clear they’d rather be doing something else, according to Associated Press.During two daytime hearings last week, Fox averaged 727,000 viewers, the Nielsen company said. That compares to the 3.09 million who watched the hearings on MSNBC and the 2.21 million tuned in to CNN.It completely flips the typical viewing pattern for the news networks. During weekdays when the hearings are not taking place, Fox News routinely has more viewers than the other two networks combined, Nielsen said.Last Thursday, Fox had 1.33 million viewers for the 2 pm Eastern hour before the hearing started – slightly below its second quarter average, but on par for early summer, when fewer people are watching TV.After the hearing started, Fox’s audience’s sank to 747,000 for the 3 pm Eastern hour and even lower, to 718,000, at 4 pm. Fox cut away from the hearing at 5 pm to show its popular panel program, “The Five,” and fans immediately rewarded them: viewership shot up to 2.76 million people, Nielsen said.The apparent lack of interest explains why the Trump-friendly network stuck with its regular lineup during the committee’s only prime-time hearing, while ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC all showed the Washington proceedings.Presidential historian Michael Beschloss made a joke at Donald Trump’s expense, in the aftermath of Cassidy Hutchinson’s explosive testimony before the January 6 committee yesterday.This morning, Beschloss shared a photo to Twitter of the last meal that Richard Nixon ate at the White House before he resigned as president. “Nixon’s last lunch at White House, 1974,” Beschloss said of the photo. “Record shows that although he was leaving Presidency against his will, he did not throw this plate at the wall.”Nixon’s last lunch at White House, 1974. Record shows that although he was leaving Presidency against his will, he did not throw this plate at the wall. pic.twitter.com/joCuuCsTcg— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) June 29, 2022
      That appeared to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to Hutchinson’s claim that Trump had a habit of throwing food when he was angry. That habit reared its head in December 2020, when the AP published an interview with then-attorney general William Barr, who said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.According to Hutchinson, she walked into the White House dining room that day to see a valet cleaning up a dirty tablecloth. She noticed ketchup dripping down the wall where a television was mounted, and a porcelain plate lay shattered on the floor.Asked whether Trump often engaged in such behavior, Hutchinson said: “There were several times throughout my tenure with the chief of staff that I was aware of him either throwing dishes or flipping the tablecloth to let all the contents of the table go onto the floor.”New York City is suing five companies it says are involved in the sale of illegal, largely untraceable “ghost guns” flowing into the city, Reuters reports:In a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, New York attorneys said the companies have created a public nuisance by selling “unfinished” firearms components that purchasers can build into guns, without undergoing background checks.The result is “a proliferation of unserialized, untraceable, unlawful ghost guns in the city’s streets and homes, making the City more dangerous for both the public and for law enforcement, causing a quintessential public nuisance,” the complaint said.Arm or Ally LLC, Rainier Arms LLC, 80P Builder, Rock Slide USA LLC and Indie Guns LLC were named as defendants The companies did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment.New York City wants the defendants to stop selling ghost gun components and provide records of sales into the city over the last five years. City officials said this month that gun arrests are at a 28-year high.Colorado voters rejected most Trump-supporting candidates in Tuesday’s GOP primaries, and they weren’t the only ones.In Utah Blake Moore, a first-term US congressman who voted for an independent commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection, defeated his more extreme challengers.John Curtis, a moderate Republican, also defeated a primary opponent from the right.Stephanie Bice, a congresswoman Oklahoma from who – like Moore and Curtis – voted to form the January 6 commission, won her primary bid, as did Michael Guest, in Mississippi.Tina Peters, who became nationally known after being indicted for her role in a break-in of her own county election system, lost her bid for the GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state.Still, there were some victories for Trump.Lauren Boebert, the extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman, who has been backed by Trump, won her bid for relection, days after denouncing separation of church and state.Mary Miller, who had been criticized after she declared the Supreme Court’s abortion decision as a “victory for white life” – a spokesman said she had mixed up her words – won in Illinois after she was backed by Trump. Darren Bailey, who was also endorsed by Trump, won the Republican gubernatorial primary in the state.Andrew Giuliani, the anti-vax, Trumpite son of Rudy Giuliani, lost his bid to be governor of New York on Tuesday night.Lee Zeldin, a US congressman who, like the younger Giuliani, supported Donald Trump, defeated his opponent by 19 points, bringing to an end a chaotic, firebrand campaign by Giuliani that failed to catch on with New Yorkers.One of Giuliani’s final campaign events was marked by his father claiming a supermarket employee had assaulted him during a campaign event. Video footage showed a man patting Rudy Giuliani on the back. Giuliani Sr said he could have been killed. Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, has suggested Giuliani, Trump’s on-again, off-again friend/lawyer/advisor, should be prosecuted for falsely reporting a crime.What Rudy Giuliani says happened at ShopRite vs. what actually happened pic.twitter.com/ZQ1Qwi1HC0— The Recount (@therecount) June 27, 2022
      Republicans in Colorado rejected two prominent candidates whose political profiles were centered on election falsehoods, in a fresh reminder that fealty to former President Donald Trump’s lies about mass voter fraud is no guarantee of success with conservative voters, Associated Press reports:Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk who became nationally known after being indicted for her role in a break-in of her own county election system, lost her bid for the GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state. Instead, Republicans selected Pam Anderson, a critic of Trump’s election lies and a former clerk in suburban Denver who is well-regarded among election professionals. She is now positioned to challenge Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold.“I will continue my fight for restoring the confidence of Colorado voters against lies and the politicians or interest groups that seek to weaponize elections administration for political advantage,” Anderson said after her victory.One of Peters’ top Colorado allies, state Rep Ron Hanks, lost his bid for the party’s Senate nomination to Joe O’Dea, a businessman who has repeatedly acknowledged that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. That was a sharp contrast with Hanks, who attended the January 6 rally in Washington, doesn’t believe Biden is a legitimate president and says he discovered a new, animating purpose fighting election fraud after 2020.Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the day’s political news. Here’s what we’re monitoring today:The Supreme Court is expected to give decisions today which could have lasting effects on how the US handles the climate crisis. The court has been weighing how much power the Environmental Protection Agency should have to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.Remain in Mexico, the controversial Trump-era policy which sends asylum seekers to Mexico while they wait for their immigration cases to be heard, is also on the table. The Supreme Court is due to decide whether Joe Biden can end the program, which has kept thousands of would-be immigrants in sometimes dangerous conditions across the US border.After the bombshell testimony that Donald Trump directed his supporters to march on the Capitol, despite knowing many of them were armed, the Secret Service has begun to push back. Numerous outlets have reported that members of the Secret Service are willing to testify that elements of the testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to the then White House chief of staff, are inaccurate. More

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      The 1977 White House climate memo that should have changed the world

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      The 1977 White House climate memo that should have changed the world Years before climate change was part of national discourse, this memo to the president predicted catastropheIn 1977 Star Wars hit movie theaters, New York City had a blackout that lasted 25 hours, and the Apple II personal computer went up for sale. It was also the year that a remarkable one-page memo was circulated at the very highest levels of US government.Years before climate change was part of national discourse, this memo outlined what was known – and feared – about climate change at the time. It was prescient in many ways. Did anyone listen?By July 1977, President Jimmy Carter had only been in office for seven months, but he had already built a reputation for being focused on environmental issues. For one, by installing solar panels on the White House. He had also announced a national renewable energy plan .“We must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century,” he said in an address to the nation outlining its main goals.The climate memo arrived on his desk a few days after the Independence Day celebrations on July 4. It has the ominous title “Release of Fossil CO2 and the Possibility of a Catastrophic Climate Change.”One of the first thing that stands out is the stamp at the top, partially elided, saying THE PRESIDENT HAS SEEN.The memo’s author was Frank Press, Carter’s chief science adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Press was a tall, serious, geophysicist who had grown up poor in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, and was described as “brilliant” by his colleagues. Before working with the Carter administration, he had been director of the Seismological Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, and had consulted for federal agencies including the Navy and NASA.“Carter had a great respect for Frank [Press] and for science,” said Stu Eizenstat, who served as Carter’s chief domestic policy adviser from 1977 to 1981.Press starts the memo by laying out the science of climate change as it was understood at the time.
      Fossil fuel combustion has increased at an exponential rate over the last 100 years. As a result, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is now 12 percent above the pre-industrial revolution level and may grow to 1.5 to 2.0 times that level within 60 years. Because of the “greenhouse effect” of atmospheric CO2 the increased concentration will induce a global climatic warming of anywhere from 0.5 to 5°C.
      These far-sighted assertions were in line with the climate science that originated the previous decade, when the US government funded major science agencies focused on space, atmospheric and ocean science. Research produced for President Lyndon B Johnson in 1965 found that billions of tons of “carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas”.Press’s memo was on the mark. In 2021, for the first time ever, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 reached 420PPM, the halfway point to the doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels that Press posited.
      The potential effect on the environment of a climatic fluctuation of such rapidity could be catastrophic and calls for an impact assessment of unprecedented importance and difficulty. A rapid climatic change may result in large scale crop failures at a time when an increased world population taxes agriculture to the limits of productivity.
      Press was right. We have indeed seen the catastrophic effects of a climatic fluctuation, in the form of increasingly severe weather events including droughts, heatwaves, and hurricanes of greater intensity. Meanwhile, in many parts of the world heating has already stemmed increases in agricultural productivity, and large-scale food production crises are thought to be possible.
      The urgency of the problem derives from our inability to shift rapidly to non-fossil fuel sources once the climatic effects become evident not long after the year 2000; the situation could grow out of control before alternate energy sources and other remedial actions become effective.
      This is correct. By the 2000s, the effects of climate change had become apparent in some regions in the form of more deadly heat waves and stronger floods and droughts.
      Natural dissipation of C02 would not occur for a millennium after fossil fuel combustion was markedly reduced.
      This prediction by Press was actually debunked at least a decade ago. Scientists used to believe that some warming was “baked in”, but scientists have since found that as soon as CO2 emissions stop rising, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 levels off and slowly falls.
      As you know this is not a new issue. What is new is the growing weight of scientific support which raises the CO2-climate impact from speculation to a serious hypothesis worthy of a response that is neither complacent nor panicky.
      But there were other currents mitigating against the sort of response Press calls for. “​​The story of climate policy in the US, generally, is one missed opportunities and unjustifiable delay,” said Jack Lienke, author of the book Struggling for Air: Power Plants and the “War on Coal.”Many other issues may have seemed more pressing, or simply better understood. As he writes in Struggling for Air, “At a time when Americans were still dying somewhat regularly in acute, inversion-related pollution episodes, it is unsurprising that legislators were more concerned with the known harms of sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide than the uncertain, seemingly distant threat of climate change.”
      The authoritative National Academy of Sciences has just alerted us that it will issue a public statement along these lines in a few weeks.
      That public statement, released later that month, emphasized the importance of shifting away from fossil fuel energy and highlighted the urgency of starting to transition to new energy sources as soon as possible: “With the end of the oil age in sight, we must make long-term decisions as to future energy policies. One lesson we have been learning is that the time required for transition from one major source to another is several decades.”So what happened? When Press’s memo made it to the president’s desk, Jim Schlesinger, America’s first secretary of energy, also attached his own note in response:
      ​​My view is that the policy implications of this issue are still too uncertain to warrant Presidential involvement and policy initiatives.
      Carter seems to have heeded this warning, and did not make much progress on climate change mitigation during his presidency. Yet he did sign some significant pieces of environmental legislation, including initiating the first federal toxic waste cleanups and creating the first fuel economy standards.A significant challenge facing Carter was his own contradictory energy aims. Despite his goal of encouraging alternative energy, he also felt there was a national security interest in boosting US oil production in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis.“We realized our dependence on foreign oil was dangerous and, very importantly, alternative energy was in its infancy,” Eizenstat said. “So Carter was both doing conservation and still encouraging more domestic oil and gas as a way of reducing dependence on foreign oil,” said Eizenstat. “As with all policy, you have conflicting goals.”Still, it seems possible that if Carter had been re-elected, the world might have been in a better position regarding climate impacts today. One of the first things Reagan did after winning the election in 1981 was take down the White House solar panels. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry – whose scientists were already studying the ways that fossil fuels were changing the climate – started spending tens of millions of dollars sowing doubt about climate science.Did the Press memo accomplish anything at all? For one person it was in fact a “transformational moment” – this was Eizenstat himself. He says it was instrumental in his own future work on climate change, including his decision in 1997 to serve as the United States’s principal negotiator for the Kyoto global warming protocols.Those protocols set the stage for the first international effort to tackle climate policy on a global level. So even if Press’s memo had a muted impact at the time, his warning wasn’t entirely ignored.TopicsClimate crisisClimate crimesJimmy CarterUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Newly United, French Left Hopes to Counter President in Upcoming Vote

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      Left-wing parties have joined forces ahead of France’s two-stage parliamentary elections, hoping to revive their fortunes and put a break on President Emmanuel Macron’s agenda.ALLEX, France — With its centuries-old stone villages nestled among lavender fields, cows and goats grazing in the mountains and miles of vineyards, the Drôme region resembles a France in miniature.Steeped in tradition and seemingly averse to change, the vast southeastern district, tucked between Lyon and Marseille, has for the past two decades been the political domain of France’s center-right. But with the first round of France’s two-step parliamentary elections approaching on Sunday, the long-excluded left sees a rare opening to challenge President Emmanuel Macron, after his convincing re-election victory in April over Marine Le Pen, his far-right challenger.Largely nonexistent in the presidential campaign, France’s fractious leftist parties have forged an alliance with the aim of making themselves relevant again, blocking Mr. Macron from getting a majority in Parliament and complicating his new five-year term.At least that is the hope of politicians like Marie Pochon, the local left-wing candidate in the third constituency of the Drôme, where left-wing parties outscored Mr. Macron’s in the presidential vote by more than 10 percentage points.Marie Pochon, left, a candidate representing the leftist coalition NUPES, campaigning door to door in Allex, France, a town in the Drôme.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesDuring a recent stop in Allex, a small village of cream-colored stone houses in the eastern part of the Drôme, Ms. Pochon was met with an enthusiasm that had long eluded the left in this part of France.“Keep going, we’re all behind you!” Maud Dugrand, a resident of Allex, told Ms. Pochon as she rang doorbells on a narrow street and handed out leaflets, which one resident, reading a newspaper on his terrace, refused, saying he was already convinced by her.“Our constituency is a laboratory,” said Pascale Rochas, a local Socialist candidate in the 2017 legislative elections who has now rallied behind Ms. Pochon’s candidacy. “If we can win here, we can win elsewhere.”The Drôme, indeed, is a snapshot of small-town France, giving the local election the veneer of a national contest. Until recently, the region was typical of the disarray of the left at the national level, with each party refusing to collaborate and instead clinging to its strongholds.Emmanuel Macron’s Second Term as President of FranceWith the reelection of Emmanuel Macron, French voters favored his promise of stability  over the temptation of an extremist lurch.Cabinet: President Macron’s new government combines continuity with change, as newcomers at the foreign and education ministries join first-term veterans.New Prime Minister: Élisabeth Borne, the minister of labor who previously was in charge of the environment, will be the second woman to hold the post in France.Overcoming Tragedy: Ms. Borne’s father, a World War II resistance member and a Holocaust survivor, killed himself when she was 11, an experience she has rarely discussed in public.Rape Allegations: Two women have accused Damien Abad, the newly appointed minister for solidarity and for disabled people, of raping them. Mr. Abad has denied the allegations.The Socialists and Communists have long dominated the southern Provençal villages, while the Greens and the hard left have battled for the more economically threatened farmlands in the north.Residents discussing the upcoming legislative elections in a market in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, in the Drôme, on Tuesday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut the new leftist alliance — forged under the leadership of the longtime leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon — is now trying to bridge those gaps, uniting Mr. Mélenchon’s own France Unbowed Party with the Socialists, Communists and Greens.Mr. Mélenchon, who came third in April’s presidential race, has portrayed the parliamentary election as a “third round” presidential vote. He has called on voters to metaphorically “elect” him prime minister (the position is appointed by the president) by giving the coalition a majority in the National Assembly, the lower and most powerful house of Parliament.The alliance has allowed the left to avoid competing candidacies and instead field a single candidate in almost all of France’s 577 constituencies, automatically raising its chances of winning seats in Parliament.Stewart Chau, a political analyst for the polling firm Viavoice, said the alliance was “the only dynamic in the current political landscape.”Since her loss in the presidential election, Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally party has failed to drive the public debate around its favorite themes of economic insecurity, immigration and crime, and the two-round voting system, which generally favors more moderate candidates, will most likely result in the far right securing only a few dozen seats in Parliament.Posters featuring Ms. Pochon, in the commune of Saoû.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMr. Chau said Mr. Mélenchon had created a new “center of gravity” for the French left and had “succeeded in pushing through the idea that the game was not up yet,” despite Mr. Macron’s re-election.Opinion polls currently give the leftist coalition — called Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale, more commonly known by its acronym NUPES — a chance of winning 160 to 230 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly.That could be enough to put a break on Mr. Macron’s political agenda in Parliament and upset his second term as president, though it is far from certain.Ms. Pochon, 32, an environmental activist, perhaps best embodies the outreach of the left-wing alliance even in areas that the center-right has long controlled.Economic and social issues vary greatly along the roads that run through the Drôme’s third constituency. Each of its 238 municipalities, populated by only a few thousand people, face specific challenges.Voters mingling after Ms. Pochon’s rally on Tuesday before the first round of voting on Sunday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesEconomic insecurity, a shortage of doctors and a lack of public transportation are the main concerns in the district’s northern farmlands, whereas Provençal villages in the south are more worried about lavender production, a key feature of the local economy increasingly threatened by rising temperatures.To address the variety of issues, Ms. Pochon has drawn on the alliance’s extensive platform, which includes raising the monthly minimum wage to 1,500 euros, or about $1,600; kick-starting ecological transition with big investments in green energy; reintroducing small train lines; and putting an end to medical deserts.“We’re witnessing the emergence of a rural environmentalism, of a new kind of left in these territories,” Ms. Pochon said during an interview.It has also helped that local left-wing forces have teamed up in the election, putting an end to divisions that Ms. Rochas said had been a “heartbreak.”Celia de Lavergne, right, a candidate in Mr. Macron’s center-right party, canvassing for votes at a market.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesIn the Drôme, Macron supporters acknowledged the challenge they face. “NUPES worry us a bit because they’re very present on the ground,” said Maurice Mérabet, as he was handing out leaflets at an open-air market for Célia de Lavergne, the constituency’s current lawmaker and a member of Mr. Macron’s party, La République En Marche.Ms. de Lavergne, who is running for re-election and was campaigning in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, a small town in southern Drôme, said it would “be a close race” between her and Ms. Pochon.She attacked the leftist alliance for its economic platform, saying it was unrealistic and slammed the coalition’s plans to phase out reliance on nuclear power.Instead she highlighted how she has fought to try to get an additional reactor for the local nuclear plant, as part of Mr. Macron’s ambitious plans to construct 14 new-generation reactors.“Being antinuclear is a total aberration,” said Jean-Paul Sagnard, 72, a retiree, as he wove his way through the market’s vegetable stalls. He added that Mr. Macron’s platform was “the one that makes the most sense economically speaking.”Nuclear power and climate change are key issues for voters in the Drôme.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesCriticism about Mr. Mélenchon’s fiery personality is also frequent, even among left-wing supporters.Maurice Feschet, a lavender producer, said that even though he would vote for the leftist alliance on Sunday, Mr. Mélenchon’s calls to elect him prime minister had left him indifferent.“I don’t think that he has what it takes to lead the country,” said Mr. Feschet, standing in the middle of a lavender field.In the narrow streets of the village of Allex, Ms. Dugrand, the supporter of Ms. Pochon, also told the candidate that Mr. Mélenchon “is not my cup of tea.” But she could not hide her excitement at the prospect of the left becoming the main force of opposition to Mr. Macron, after five years during which it was virtually voiceless.“We only have one wish, that something happens,” she said.Campaign posters in Allex, a village in the Drôme, speak to the region’s importance in the upcoming election.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times More

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      New York has a chance to generate all its electricity from clean energy by 2030 | Ross Barkan

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      New York has a chance to generate all its electricity from clean energy by 2030Ross BarkanIf Democrats act, New Yorkers will begin to get the government they deserve. With climate cataclysms here, the political system can’t afford more delays It has been, for progressives in New York, a trying year.Major pieces of legislation that were supposed to reshape the state to safeguard the working class have stalled out. A bill to create a statewide single-payer healthcare system is no closer to passage than it was several years ago. A push to guarantee new protections for tenants as rents soar in New York City could not find the votes. And ambitious legislation to combat climate that did have the votes to go through the state legislature was halted by the speaker of the state assembly.Unlike in Washington, Democrats in New York have no one to blame but themselves. The party holds supermajorities in both chambers, the state senate and state assembly. Progressives have grown their clout in each. A handful of socialists occupy seats as well.The trouble is that institutional forces – those aligned with the real estate and fossil fuel industries in particular – have plenty of clout, too. The left is stronger, in numbers, than it’s ever been, but the state’s power brokers are centrists or those most hesitant to challenge entrenched power structures. This is true in other Democrat-run states too, but it’s been sobering in New York where progressives have nurtured such high hopes for change.The left, of course, has gotten much further in New York in the last few years than it had in the previous decades. In 2019, Democrats took control of the state senate and immediately passed a large number of bills that had been bottled up for years. Legislation to help tenants, reduce the use of cash bail, and protect voting rights and women’s health all easily passed the body and were signed into law. In 2020, the pandemic hit and ambitious legislating was put on hold. The 2021 session was more of the same.This year offered hope. The Build Public Renewables Act, or BPRA, would mandate that the state’s public power provider, the New York Power Authority (NYPA), generate all of its electricity from clean energy by 2030 and establish a process through which it can build and own renewables while closing down polluting infrastructure. The state itself could build out wind and solar energy. With its high bond rating, the NYPA could easily finance projects. Passage of the bill would have profound national implications. New York would be a leader in the fight against the climate crisis and inspire other states with Democratic governors to follow their lead. With Republicans poised to retake Congress, state-level action is crucial.Independent power producers, who fiercely oppose the BPRA, currently build out new power generation infrastructure beyond NYPA. Solar industry trade associations fought the bill bitterly. They have made inroads in the legislature.In turn, a strange thing happened: the BPRA amassed the votes to pass the state assembly – it had already passed the senate – but was never brought up for a vote before the end of the legislative session in early June. The speaker, Carl Heastie, claimed the votes were not there because, apparently, the more than 80 lawmakers who backed the bill did not inform him personally they would vote that way.Advocates and supporters, however, were certain they had the votes. At first glance, it would appear Heastie had a point, since it is theoretically true the speaker cannot know who will vote for what if he has not been told about the intentions of each lawmaker.But that’s not how lawmaking really works in Albany, the state capital. There are hundreds of bills and the speaker cannot personally hear from all legislators before one is put on the floor for a vote. Rather, most Democrats vote reflexively with the speaker unless the bill has an organized constituency in their districts that opposed it. There is no popular, grassroots outcry against the BPRA. Most New Yorkers don’t know what it is.Why did Heastie claim the votes were not there? Some moderate Democrats are wary of passing any far-reaching bills in an election year. Organized labor had opposed earlier versions of the bill, but the New York AFL-CIO had agreed to stay neutral this time. Governor Kathy Hochul may not support the BPRA either, but she would be hard-pressed to not sign the bill if it reached her desk, especially if New York’s large environmental movement and progressive infrastructure mobilized for it.The good news is that the legislation may not be dead for 2022. Though lawmakers depart Albany in June and typically don’t reconvene until the new year to pass bills, Heastie requested the chairs of the assembly’s committees on energy, corporations and environmental conservation convene a hearing on 28 July. A hearing may mean a special session – a chance to get the BPRA to Hochul’s desk before 2023.If the Democrats in Albany act as they should, New Yorkers will begin to get the government they deserve. With climate cataclysms here, the political system can’t afford any more delays.
      Ross Barkan is a journalist based in New York City. He is the author of Demolition Night, a novel, and The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York
      TopicsEnvironmentOpinionEnergyRenewable energyUS politicsNew YorkClimate crisiscommentReuse this content More

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      Us older people must fight for a better America, and world, for younger generations | Bill McKibben

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      Us older people must fight for a better America, and world, for younger generationsBill McKibbenBaby boomers were complicit in the decay of our civic life and cultural fabric – and we must play a serious role in fixing it I had the chance this month to spend a couple of weeks on an utterly wild and remote Alaskan shore – there was plenty of company, but all of it had fur, feathers or fins. And there was no way to hear from the outside world, which now may be the true mark of wilderness. So, bliss. But also, on returning, shock. If you’re not immersed in it daily, the tide of mass shootings, record heatwaves and corroded politicians spouting ugly conspiracies seems even more truly and impossibly crazy.Camping deep in the wild is not for everyone, but there’s another way to back up and look at our chaos with some perspective – and that’s to separate yourself in time instead of space.Until this past year it had never occurred to me to write anything like a memoir, because memoirs were for the exceptional: people who had overcome some great handicap, dealt with some revealing trauma, experienced something so remarkable that the rest of us could learn from the story.By contrast, I’d had as statistically normal an American childhood as was humanly possible. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in Lexington, Massachusetts, emblem of America, at a moment when the suburbs were cresting; I went to fine public schools, and to the kind of mainline Protestant church that then dominated civic life; my father worked at a completely middle-class job, and my mother stayed home with her two sons; my Scout troop raised the flag on the Battle Green to mark the bicentennial. Our house, literally, was on Middle Street. That seemed utterly normal at the time, even boring. But perhaps boring is the new exotic, and that harkening back to those days can provide some interesting lessons.It’s true that America was full of turmoil and clatter in those days, too: the turbulence of the 60s, the tragedy of Vietnam, the two-bit corruption of Watergate. Even so, the world seemed to have momentum, and it was carrying us in the right direction. Voting rights were expanding, thanks to the remarkable activists of the civil rights movement; in the wake of the first Earth Day, which brought 20 million Americans into the streets, we passed landmark legislation to clean our air and water. Women were winning new freedoms, including control over their bodies. If you watched TV at night, you got Walter Cronkite, which is to say we were working with a shared reality.I think it’s pretty clear that the seeds of our current disarray were also sown in those days and often in those suburban places. For one thing, as property values began to take off, those who had made it on the boat were propelled ever higher, and those who had not (often people of color) got left very far behind. Those suburbs helped breed a kind of hyperindividualism, as the Depression and second world war, with their common purpose, receded into the distance. The year I graduated from high school, 1978, was the year of the country’s first tax revolt (California’s Prop 13) and also the year when inequality reached its low point in this country; every decade since the wealth gap has widened. Lexington – which had voted for George McGovern in 1972 – cast its ballots for Ronald Reagan by 1980. We began to believe that government was the problem, that taxation was an imposition, that greed was good. And perhaps lulled by the progress of our early years, we let problems of race, poverty and the environment fester; in the new mythology, markets would somehow take care of them.Forty years later, many of those who remember those times are finally waking up to how much our civic life has decayed. I’ve spent the last year helping to start a coalition of people over 60 to work for progressive change – Third Act, it’s called – and, based on hundreds of conversations, I’d say “gobsmacked” is the operative word for how people feel. We had taken for granted the physical stability of our planet – and now its poles are melting. We had taken for granted the stability of our democracy and now people invade Congress to stop the counting of votes. We had taken for granted the slow but sure scientific progress of our society and now a third of the country does not want to take vaccines. (For those of us who can remember our polio jabs, that’s truly shocking.)Since we’re complicit in this decay (there’s a reason young people started saying “OK Boomer”) we need to play a serious role in fixing it up. It’s been inspiring to watch older people protesting outside fossil-fueled banks, or writing tens of thousands of postcards to high school seniors helping them register to vote or figuring out how to make sure Black voters have access to mail-in voting.But along with that kind of work we have another gift to offer: sufficient perspective to say, loudly and clearly, that what we are living through now is nuts. There’s another kind of society, within living memory, that more or less worked. It had institutions and norms that allowed some kind of common conversation to take place. And saying so is not nostalgia – it’s a highly useful act of witness.
      Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College and the author most recently of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionClimate crisiscommentReuse this content More

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      Did Joe Manchin block climate action to benefit his financial interests?

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      Did Joe Manchin block climate action to benefit his financial interests? Recent revelations that Democratic West Virginian senator quietly made millions from his coal business could come back to haunt him as he eyes a run for re-electionNancy Hilsbos, a former coal miner living in the West Virginia county that Senator Joe Manchin calls home, barely noticed the nondescript office block she passed almost daily.The property, at the top of a rise on the road out of the small city of Fairmont, bears a large sign: “Manchin Professional Building”. Nameplates announce the offices of accountants, financial advisors and insurers. But there is no mention of the most profitable and influential company registered at the address – the Democratic senator’s own firm, Enersystems.Manchin was recently revealed to have quietly made millions of dollars from Enersystems over the past three decades as the only supplier of a low grade coal to a high-polluting power plant near Fairmont. That came as news to Hilsbos and just about everyone else in the city.“What surprised me was that we didn’t know it. One of the most shocking things was that I’ve driven by that place thousands of times in the last 30 years and I had no idea that’s where his business operation was headquartered because there’s no sign,” said Hilsbos.“I wonder why he’s not prouder of what he’s done. Why doesn’t he have a big sign that says Enersystems?”In 2020, Manchin earned nearly half a million dollars from the company, and $5.6m over the previous decade.But Hilsbos, who worked underground for 13 years and was also a union activist, is less bothered by the senator keeping the source of his wealth shielded than what else may have been hidden from view.For years, Manchin has justified voting against curbs on the burning of fossil fuels and other measures to tackle the climate crisis on the grounds that they were bad for West Virginia with its economy and culture rooted in coal mining. Last year, he used his vote in a hung US Senate to block President Biden’s $3.5tn economic plan in part because he said he was “very, very disturbed” that its climate provisions would kill the coal industry.But following the revelations that Manchin has made what most West Virginians would regard as a small fortune from the Grant Town power plant, Hilsbos was left wondering if US climate policy, and by extension the global response to the crisis, has been held hostage to the senator’s financial interests.“If he used it to slow the responsible addressing of climate change issues then that’s an international responsibility,” she said. “What’s wrong is him throwing so much weight against the public interest when he has so much to gain by the continued existence of this kind of facility.”Hilsbos is not alone in her concern.Christopher Regan, a former vice-chair of the West Virginia Democratic party who worked as an aide to Manchin, recalled a time when the senator painted prominent Republican officials in the state as “involved in self-service as opposed to public service”, a line Regan then promoted.“This thing with the coal plant turns that around on him. What’s he doing? Is this for West Virginia? Or is this just strictly for his own narrow pecuniary interest?” he said.Regan said that’s a question that could haunt Manchin as he eyes a run for re-election in two years.Manchin founded Enersystems in 1988 with his brother, Roch, at about the time the state was considering an application to build a power plant in Grant Town, a small former mining community less than 20 minutes drive north of Fairmont.Manchin, then a state senator, helped clear the way for the construction of the power plant while negotiating a deal to become the only supplier of its fuel. Not just any fuel but discarded coal known as “garbage of bituminous”, more popularly called “gob”, that is even more polluting than regular coal.When the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) raised concerns that the Grant Town plant was too close to other coal burning facilities, increasing pollution levels in the area, Manchin intervened and the objections went away. Later, as his state’s governor, Manchin used his political influence to win approval for an increase in the rate charged for electricity charged by the plant which increased bills for ordinary West Virginians. The New York Times reported that, in a highly unusual arrangement, the senator has been getting a cut of those bills.After his election to the US Senate in 2010, Manchin sat on the energy committee, and then became its chair, from where he has blocked environmental regulations that would have hit the Grant Town plant and other gob burning facilities. Manchin also stood in the way of Biden’s multi-trillion dollar Build Back Better plan which potentially threatened the power plant with tighter federal climate regulations. The senator defended the move as necessary in the midst of the Covid crisis, economic uncertainty and with fuel supplies threatened by Russia’s war on Ukraine.But the suspicion remains that he was, at least in part, acting in his own interests. Hilsbos said that the first she knew about the source of Manchin’s wealth came from recent revelations in The Intercept and later the New York Times. They prompted demonstrations outside the power plant in April to demand its closure because of the additional pollution caused by gob.Although Hilsbos said she sympathised with the protesters concerns, she also understood the fears of people in Grant Town, once home to the largest underground mine in the world by the amount of coal produced. The mine closed in the mid-80s, shedding hundreds of jobs. Now the power plant, with about 50 workers, is the only major private employer in a town without a gas station or convenience store.“Some neighbours came forward and said, I’ve always hated that place. But when we went to the town council meeting and tried to explain to them why people were coming from everywhere to demonstrate here, they said, ‘We don’t want you here, don’t come’,” said Hilsbos.“A lot of the people involved in the town council have worked in the mines themselves. They feel like this is what we can do to hold on to our homeland, not have to move away, have this little plant as long as we can.”While few in neighbouring Fairmont knew where Enersystems was, Manchin also maintained a highly visible campaign office opposite the county courthouse in the heart of the city, between Bill’s Bail Bonds and a yoga studio. From there, he built a strong loyalty among West Virginia voters as a conservative Democrat prepared to stand up to the liberal wing of his party and to defend coal.Regan said the senator spent years cultivating an image of himself as his own man, above party politics.“He’s done a good job of it. He had his famous rifle ad, shooting the climate bill during the Obama administration, that he used to gain distance from the Democratic party on the national scale. But the effectiveness of that strategy may be running out. The magnitude of the shift within the state is too large for it to work anymore,” he said.In 2010, Democrats had a firm grip on the West Virginian legislature. Today, the Republicans are in control and they hold the governor’s office.All of West Virginia’s congressional seats have fallen to the Republicans, leaving Manchin as the last Democrat holding statewide office. Manchin won his Senate seat in 2012 with nearly 61% of the vote, beating the Republican candidate by more than 24 points. Six years later, his margin of victory was just three points and he took less than half the vote after openly criticising Donald Trump in a state where the then president was hugely popular and remains so.For all that, Greg Thomas, a prominent West Virginia Republican operative and Manchin opponent, does not think the coal plant revelations will damage the senator with most voters.“If you’re a West Virginia politician and you’re not under some sort of investigation, you’re not trying hard enough to help your people,” he said.“No one here cares about environmentalists protesting Joe Manchin’s personal financial holding. It’s gotten to the point where it’s like, who cares if he does? We assume they’re all corrupt.”Thomas said that Manchin’s political stands against his fellow Democrats have reinvigorated support.“His popularity in West Virginia is coming back after it dropped over his fights with Trump. Pushing back against Biden has helped. His position on energy issues has been big, he said.Manchin’s approval rating among West Virginia voters has surged to 57% from just 40% early last year – and is even higher among Republicans.Regan disagreed, saying that suspicions about his actions over the power plant are “threatening” to the senator because they come on the back of disenchantment among the state’s dwindling band of Democratic voters over his failure to support Biden’s agenda. Manchin’s vote against enshrining abortion rights into federal law as the supreme court appears poised to strike down Roe v Wade will further alienate some Democratic voters in the state.Regan said the last election left Manchin with a margin of victory of fewer than 20,000 votes – a narrow cushion to soak up the loss of angry Democrats who will not turn out to vote for him. He said the Grant Town power plant revelations are likely to stoke the dissatisfaction within that part of the electorate.“Those Democrats he has alienated by being against Build Back Better and the child tax credit, and those very, very popular provisions among Democrats, may cost him in terms of people who don’t vote or people who just simply won’t vote for him anymore. That may cost him the margin he has left and leave him in a bad situation in 2024.”Then there is Trump. West Virginia voted for him in both presidential elections by the largest margin of any state except Wyoming.“I think anybody in 2024 who is not prepared to say that Trump won the election – is not going to be an acceptable candidate anymore,” he said. “He can’t walk into the Republican camp, and he’ll have alienated too many Democrats to win.”TopicsJoe ManchinWest VirginiaUS politicsCoalFossil fuelsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Jamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species’

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      InterviewJamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species’Ankita Rao Progressive congressman from Maryland believes that no other crisis, even the existential threat of the changing climate, can be solved without first protecting the fabric of American democracyWhen it comes to fighting for democracy and climate change – two of Jamie Raskin’s top priorities – the whole thing feels a bit like a game of chicken and egg to the Democratic congressman.On the one hand there is the planet, heating up quickly past the limit that is safe and necessary for human survival, while Congress stalls on a $555bn climate package. On the other, a pernicious movement, spurred by Donald Trump and other rightwing conspiracy theorists, to upend voting rights protections and cast doubt on the current election system.But Raskin, a progressive congressman from Maryland, is clear about which comes first: he said America can’t fix the planet without fixing its government.“We’ve got to save the democracy in order to save the climate and save our species,” he said in an interview with the Guardian in collaboration with Reuters and Climate One public radio, as part of the Covering Climate Now media collaboration.Later Raskin added: “We’re never going to be able to successfully deal with climate change if we’re spending all our time fighting the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and Ku Klux Klan, and the Aryan nations and all of Steve Bannon’s alt-right nonsense.”In the past two years Raskin’s popularity has surged, picking up fuel after his closing remarks at Trump’s second impeachment trial in early 2021, which he led on behalf of House Democrats. “This trial is about who we are,” he said then, in video clips shared millions of times. His impassioned and meticulous rhetoric are a clear intersection of his past as a Harvard-trained constitutional law professor and son of a progressive activist.But it was an exceptional speech also because of the circumstances in which it was given, which both took place in the span of just a week. The first – the loss of Thomas (Tommy) Bloom Raskin, the congressman’s oldest son, who died by suicide at the tail end of 2020 after a long battle with depression. Just six days later Trump’s followers stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to decertify the election results.Raskin, who said Tommy “hated nothing more than fascism”, was moved to help lead the response to the insurrection through the House’s January 6 select committee.His fight to convict Trump is not only about holding the former president accountable. It’s about sending a message to the country that no other crisis, even the existential threat of the changing climate, can be solved without first protecting the fabric of American democracy.“I think for me the struggle to defend the truth is a precondition for defending our democracy, and the struggle to defend our democracy is a precondition for taking the effective action that needs to be taken in order to meet the climate crisis in a serious way and turn it around,” he said.This concept plays out clearly in the country’s uneven political representation. The majority of Americans think the government should be doing more to reduce the impacts of climate change, including taxing corporations based on their carbon emissions. But issues like partisan gerrymandering, where politicians manipulate voting district lines, often allow rightwing politicians to retain disproportionate power across state governments.“The key to understanding the collapse of civilizations is that you get a minority faction serving its own interests by dominating government,” he said, referencing Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. “And then everything collapses, usually through the exploitation of natural resources to a point where it’s unsustainable and untenable. That fits pretty perfectly the situation that we’re in with the GOP and climate change today.”Raskin was an early adopter of the Green New Deal, and during the pandemic he sought to block his fellow representatives from using Covid relief money to further fossil fuel interests. His commitment extends to his personal life, where – inspired again by Tommy – he is a devout vegetarian, convinced that new science and technology will render a meat-centric diet unnecessary.But the stakes for protecting the Democratic party’s climate agenda are especially high right now. The climate protections in Joe Biden’s ambitious “Build Back Better” framework have been drastically whittled down. With the midterm elections revving up, and Republicans expected to dominate in state and local races, Democrats face a small window of opportunity to advance their promise of new jobs and tax credits to incentivize a shift to cleaner energy.Those same midterm races are rife with candidates who are following Trump’s “big lie” – that the 2020 election was not legitimate – and continue to hack away at voting rights protections, such as mail-in voting and weekend voting hours.Raskin remained optimistic about Congress passing climate legislation, noting last year’s climate-friendly infrastructure bill, but said the party must always “be realistic” about what that means, even if it denotes considering alternative energy legislation via Joe Manchin, the moderate Democrat from West Virginia who has stood in the way of several progressive bills in the Senate. (Manchin was also a critical roadblock in Raskin’s wife Sarah Bloom Raskin’s nomination to the Federal Reserve Board.)“The democratic governments and democratic parties and movements of the world have got to confront this reality. Nobody else is going to do it,” Raskin said.There isn’t much leeway when it comes to enacting change. Storms are getting stronger, people are being displaced from their homes, and anti-science politicians are gaining more ground. But Raskin, armed with his father’s message to “be the hope” and his children’s sense of urgency around climate change, is confident his side is going to win.“We should cut the deals that need to be cut but from a position of power and strength by mobilizing the commanding majorities of people across America that believe in climate change and know that we need to act.”TopicsClimate crisisUS Capitol attackUS politicsDemocratsinterviewsReuse this content More