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      How a powerful US lobby group helps big oil to block climate action

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      Climate crimesOilHow a powerful US lobby group helps big oil to block climate action The American Petroleum Institute receives millions from oil companies – and works behinds the scenes to stall or weaken legislationSupported byAbout this contentChris McGrealMon 19 Jul 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 19 Jul 2021 06.38 EDTWhen Royal Dutch Shell published its annual environmental report in April, it boasted that it was investing heavily in renewable energy. The oil giant committed to installing hundreds of thousands of charging stations for electric vehicles around the world to help offset the harm caused by burning fossil fuels.On the same day, Shell issued a separate report revealing that its single largest donation to political lobby groups last year was made to the American Petroleum Institute, one of the US’s most powerful trade organizations, which drives the oil industry’s relationship with Congress.Contrary to Shell’s public statements in support of electric vehicles, API’s chief executive, Mike Sommers, has pledged to resist a raft of Joe Biden’s environmental measures, including proposals to fund new charging points in the US. He claims a “rushed transition” to electric vehicles is part of “government action to limit Americans’ transportation choice”.Shell donated more than $10m to API last year alone.And it’s not just Shell. Most other oil conglomerates are also major funders, including ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, although they have not made their contributions public.The deep financial ties underscore API’s power and influence across the oil and gas industry, and what politicians describe as the trade group’s defining role in setting major obstacles to new climate policies and legislation.EmbedCritics accuse Shell and other major oil firms of using API as cover for the industry. While companies run publicity campaigns claiming to take the climate emergency seriously, the trade group works behind the scenes in Congress to stall or weaken environmental legislation.Earlier this year, an Exxon lobbyist in Washington was secretly recorded by Greenpeace describing API as the industry’s “whipping boy” to direct public and political criticism away from individual companies.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat and strident critic of big oil’s public relations tactics, accused API of “lying on a massive industrial scale” about the climate crisis in order to stall legislation to combat global heating.“The major oil companies and API move very much together,” he said.Whitehouse said the oil and gas industry now recognizes it is no longer “socially acceptable” to outright deny climate change, and that companies are under pressure to claim they support new energy solutions that are less harmful to the environment. But that does not mean their claims should be taken at face value.“The question as to whether they’re even sincere about that, or whether this is just ‘Climate is a hoax 2.0’, is an unknown at this point,” he added.Shell has defended its funding by saying that while it is “misaligned” with some of API’s policies, the company continues to sit on the group’s board and executive committee in order to have “a greater positive impact” from within. The petroleum firm claims that its influence helped manoeuvre API, which represents about 600 drilling companies, refiners and other interests such as plastics makers, toward finally supporting a tax on carbon earlier this year.With Biden in the White House and growing public awareness of global heating, there are signs API’s influence may be weakening as its own members become divided on how to respond.The French oil company Total quit the group earlier this year over its climate policies. Shareholder rebellions are pressing Exxon and Chevron to move away from dependence on oil. Top clean energy executives at Shell quit in December over the pace of change by the company.API is also fighting a growing number of lawsuits, led by the state of Minnesota, alleging that the trade group was at the heart of a decades-long “disinformation campaign” on behalf of big oil to deny the threat from fossil fuels.But despite threats to API’s lasting influence, Whitehouse argues the trade organization represents the true face of the industry. Instead of using its considerable power to push for environmentally friendly energy laws, API is still lobbying to stall progress with the oil industry’s blessing.“Their political effort at this point is purely negative, purely against serious climate legislation. And many of them continue to fund the fraudulent climate denialists that have been their mouthpieces for a decade or more,” Whitehouse said.Since API was founded in 1919 out of an oil industry cooperation with the government during the first world war, it has evolved into a major political force with nearly $240m in annual revenue.Its board has been dominated by heavyweights from big oil, such as Rex Tillerson, the Exxon chief who went on to become Donald Trump’s secretary of state, and Tofiq Al Gabsani, the chief of Saudi Refining, a subsidiary of the giant state-owned Aramco oil giant. Al Gabsani was also registered as a lobbyist for the Saudi government.API also hired professional lobbyists, including Philip Cooney, who went on to serve under George W Bush as chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality until he was forced to resign in 2005 after tampering with government climate assessments to downplay scientific evidence of global heating and to emphasise doubts. Shortly afterward, Cooney was hired by Exxon.API came into its own as the realities of the climate crisis crept into public and political discourse, and the industry found itself on the defensive. The trade group, which claimed to represent companies supporting 10m jobs and nearly 8% of the US economy, played a central role in efforts to combat new environmental regulations.In many cases, API was prepared to carry out the dirty work that individual companies did not want to be held responsible for. In 1998, after countries signed the Kyoto Protocol to help curb carbon emissions, API drew up a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign to ensure that “climate change becomes a non-issue”. The plan said “victory will be achieved” when “recognition of uncertainties become part of the ‘conventional wisdom’”.Much of this is the basis of several lawsuits against API. The first was filed last year by the Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, who accuses the group of working alongside ExxonMobil and Koch Industries to lie about the scale of the climate crisis. The suit alleges that “previously unknown internal documents” show that API and the others well understood the dangers for decades but “engaged in a public-relations campaign that was not only false, but also highly effective” to undermine climate science.The city of Hoboken in New Jersey is also suing API, claiming that it engaged in a conspiracy by joining and funding “front groups” that ran “deceptive advertising and communications campaigns that promote climate disinformation and denialism”.The lawsuits allege that API funded scientists known to deny or underplay climate changes, and gave millions of dollars to ostensibly independent organisations, such as the Cato Institute and the George C Marshall Institute, which denied or downplayed the growing environmental crisis.“API has been a member of at least five organizations that have promoted disinformation about fossil-fuel products to consumers,” Ellison alleges in Minnesota’s lawsuit. “These front groups were formed to provide climate disinformation and advocacy from a seemingly objective source, when, in fact, they were financed and controlled by ExxonMobil and other sellers of fossil-fuel products.”It wasn’t always this way.When Terry Yosie joined API in 1988 as vice-president for health and environment, the trade group had spent years funding scientists to research climate issues after hearing repeated warnings. In 1979, API and its members formed the Climate and Energy Task Force of oil and gas company scientists to share research.Yosie, who moved to API from the Environmental Protection Agency, controlled a $15m budget, part of which he used to give workshops on climate change by EPA officials and other specialists.“I brought them together in front of oil industry senior level executives for the sole purpose of making sure this industry had some understanding as to what other significant stakeholders thought about climate change, where they saw the issue evolving, what information they were relying on,” he said.When Yosie left API in 1992, he believed oil the lobby group was still serious about addressing the growing evidence of climate change. But a year later, it disbanded the task force at the same time that Exxon abandoned one of the industry’s biggest research programmes to measure climate change.Yosie believes that confronted with the true extent of the looming disaster, API and the oil companies ran scared, choosing instead to pursue an agenda informed by climate denialism.“As the climate issue began to move from the periphery to the centre stage, I think there was a collective loss of confidence in the entire industry, a fear that this was not a debate that was winnable,” he said.API and its financial backers founded a front organisation, the deceptively named Global Climate Coalition, to drum up purported evidence that the climate crisis was a hoax. In the late 1990s, the GCC’s chairman, William O’Keefe, was also API’s executive vice-president, a man who falsely claimed that “climate scientists don’t say that burning oil, gas and coal is steadily warming the earth”.API and the GCC led attacks on Bill Clinton’s support for the Kyoto protocol with a “global climate science communications plan” that misrepresented the facts about global heating.The relationship between API and big oil remained exceptionally close throughout. Exxon’s chief executive served on the lobby group’s executive committee for most of the past three decades, and the two worked together in promoting denialism over the climate crisis.The focus of API’s efforts were on Congress, where it led the industry’s opposition to policies, such as the 2009 cap-and-trade legislation to control carbon emissions.“Most of the funding for the Republican party, and probably a very considerable amount of the big dark money funding behind the Republican party, comes out of the fossil fuel industry,” said Whitehouse. Last year, API indirectly gave $5m to the conservative Senate Leadership Fund to back Republican election candidates (many of whom question climate science), and to the campaigns of members of the energy committees in both houses of Congress.The scientists hired by big oil who predicted the climate crisis long agoRead moreGrowing public disquiet, and the departure of oil-friendly Donald Trump from the White House, shifted the ground for API. In March it launched a Climate Action Framework, which for the first time endorsed policies such as carbon pricing. It also stated its support for the Paris climate agreement.API called the plan “robust” but others noted the lack of specifics and its sincerity was called into question when an Exxon lobbyist was caught on camera earlier this year saying that a carbon tax will never happen and that support for the measure was a public relations ploy intended to stall more serious measures.And between API’s lost support from Total, and the Shell executives who resigned in December over what they regarded as the company’s foot-dragging on greener fuels, there are signs of shifting attitudes within the industry itself.Shell and BP have said they will continue to review their support for API. Shell said that where it disagrees with API’s position, the company “will pursue advocacy separately”.However, Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, is sceptical that there has been any significant change in direction.“I think it’s fair to say that API and its prominent member companies have have a broadly shared goal, which is to keep the social licence of the oil and gas industry operating, and therefore enabling them to continue to extract oil and gas for as long as possible, as profitably as possible,” he said.This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate storyTopicsOilClimate crimesFossil fuelsEnergyUS politicsRoyal Dutch ShellnewsReuse this content More

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      America, the Stumbling Giant

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      The United States has been the most powerful country in the world for 130 years and has actively led the international community for 75. With only 4.25% of the world’s population, the US still accounts for a little more than 24% of the world’s GNP. Its military is by far the world’s most powerful, with a budget larger than the next 12 biggest militaries combined. The US has the highest per capita income of any major country and the most diverse and creative economy the world has ever seen. It leads in virtually every technology critical for economic and military predominance, from artificial intelligence to materials science. Its democracy has set a standard the world has looked up to for 240 years.  

      But the American giant is stumbling. Today, Americans fear that the US is in decline. Its economy is progressively skewed to the ultra-rich. Its national government is almost paralyzed. China is challenging Washington’s international power and leadership. American society is more divided than at any time since the Civil War, with up to 40% of Americans believing that a “strong man” leader — a fascist — is preferable to democracy.

      Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?

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      Almost all Americans worry that for the first time in history, their children will be poorer than they are. Many of America’s political moderates and progressives fear that America’s democracy will be replaced by fascistic autocracy and consider former president Donald Trump and the current Republican Party fascist. Yet on the other side of America’s political divide, an NPR/Ipsos poll in December 2020 found that 39% of Americans believe that the country is controlled by a sinister “deep state,” and this enrages them.

      Social Stresses

      My family and I are literally what made America. Since my ancestors arrived in 1620 on the Mayflower off the shore of Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, America was created by “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants,” popularly known as WASPs. The culture that shaped the United States for 350 years was overwhelmingly English, then Western European, with a dominant Puritanical, Protestant ethos.

      For 15 generations, America was also culturally and legally a society for whites. Even for my generation growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, many Americans still changed their surnames to sound more “Anglo” — dropping the last vowel, say, from the Italian (and Catholic) “Lombardi” to “Lombard,” to appear more WASP-like and less “ethnic” or un-American. Fully 10% of the population was black, but they were excluded from power and lived on the cultural periphery. Half the nation still lived in an apartheid “whites only” regime, the legacy of centuries of white domination and black slavery. In the media, one saw only white faces like mine, except in subordinate or, rarely, in “exotic” roles. And, of course, America, like the rest of the world since time immemorial, was only a man’s world.  

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      But with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, America began a stupendous social change, with blacks and women gaining unprecedented rights. Furthermore, non-WASP immigrants have arrived in the US by the tens of millions. When I was born, America was over 88% white. By the year 2045, under 50% will be white. The trend has already been clear for decades. In the past dozen years, the US has elected a black president twice, a black-Indian female vice president, and its second Catholic president.

      Today, the US has a vibrant black middle class. Its Asian population is growing rapidly. Asian and Indian Americans hold many prominent positions in the country’s economic and scientific establishments. Women now hold countless key positions in all sectors of the US economy, including boardrooms. This demographic and social revolution has diversified America but also engendered a nativist, racist reaction and the rise of a fascist: Donald Trump.

      Socially conservative whites — especially the least educated — have literally taken to the streets to “save” their country from these changes. Donald Trump voices their anger and their demands. Having lost the presidential election of 2020 yet having refused to accept verified results, the Republican Party has taken dozens of measures to restrict voting access for non-whites. There has been talk of civil war, and there has been an insurrection.

      Economic Stresses 

      Real incomes have largely stagnated for about 40 years. Globalization has destroyed entire sectors of America’s middle-class economy. Much of US manufacturing has moved abroad to lower-wage economies. In the 1960s, the single male income earner could provide a middle-class life for most families. Today, 60% of families require two full-time incomes to maintain a middle-class life. According to a Brookings paper, women account for “91% of the total income gain for their families.”

      In 2019, a Federal Reserve study found that almost 40% of Americans “wouldn’t be able to cover a $400 emergency with cash, savings or a credit-card charge that they could quickly pay off.” With $41.52 trillion in assets, the top 1% of households control more than 32% of the country’s wealth. With just $2.62 trillion in assets, the bottom 50% own a mere 2%. This concentration of wealth is creating social and political strains.

      America Is No Longer One Nation

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      The Republican Party has based its appeal on these grievances for decades, and Trump, the classic demagogue, exploited them all the way to the presidency. Blaming stagnation and increasing economic insecurity of ordinary Americans — and their loss of white social status — on globalization has been a ploy of Republicans since the mid-1960s. The party has progressively based its appeal on such tropes and fears since.

      Today, Republicans systematically oppose any action by the federal government as a threat to “freedom.” They seek to reduce taxes, gut economic regulations, lower investments in infrastructure and slash expenditure on education, which they deem to be a means of dangerous social engineering. 

      Political Stresses

      As McKay Coppins has pointed out in The Atlantic, after emerging as the leader of the Republican Party in 1994, “Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise.” As speaker of the House of Representatives, Gingrich sought to demonize and destroy the Democratic Party. He refused to cooperate, let alone compromise with the Democrats at any level either in the White House or Congress.

      When Barack Obama was elected president, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acted ruthlessly to oppose everything the Obama administration proposed. Before the 2010 midterm elections, McConnell declared: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Today, McConnell has stated that “100% of his focus is on blocking” President Biden’s agenda.

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      Since the mid-1990s, American politics has turned increasingly polarized, its federal government almost paralyzed. There are two principal reasons the US suffers from political rigor mortis. First, the Republican Party has become increasingly intransigent and partisan. The Democratic Party remains more moderate and open to compromise but has gotten little in return from the Republicans. Second, America’s electoral structures accord a disproportionate weight to rural districts, which is where the anxious, angry and reactionary WASPs and other whites live. The more ethnically diverse, urban and educated citizens tend to live in the major cities, heavily concentrated on the country’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts. 

      On July 1, 2019, Wyoming’s population was 578,759 while California’s numbered 39,512,223. In the presidential elections, Wyoming receives three electoral college votes; California receives 55. This means a vote for president in Wyoming is worth more than 3.72 times a vote in California. However, it is in voting for the US Senate where Wyoming really has an edge. Every state in the US elects two senators, regardless of its population. This makes a vote in Wyoming 68.27 times more valuable than a vote in California. 

      This structural bias toward less populous rural states gives Republicans a tremendous political advantage. It has enabled them to triumph in two of the last six presidential elections despite winning a minority of the popular vote and to frequently hold a majority in Congress and Senate, despite receiving lower overall votes. America is so evenly divided politically that one party often controls the White House while the other dominates Congress, or at least one of its two chambers. Given the partisan gridlock in the US, this virtually brings legislation to a halt.

      The consequences of this electoral and institutional schizophrenia are everywhere to see and experience: American roads, bridges, water mains, harbor facilities and education now lag far behind most developed countries and even many emerging economies. Some foreign visitors to the US have commented that American infrastructure reminds them of the 1950s — which is precisely when much of it was built. The Shinkansen, Japan’s bullet train network, awes Americans, including myself, and it is 50 years old. America has always been a “third-world country” for the ethnically excluded. Now, the strains and failures of America’s social, economic and political paralysis extend more broadly through society. Even the WASPs are not spared.

      Global Stresses 

      Two global issues in particular shape American public life and self-doubts. First, the US is no longer the only great power. China’s rise has been breathtaking. Beijing challenges American preeminence in trade, technology, diplomacy and military strength, posing the greatest challenge to the US since World War II. Many Americans fear that China’s rise is a sign of American decline.  

      Second, global warming threatens the American way of life and shapes much of the political debate about the environment, the economy and the role of government. Signs of a literal cataclysm are already upon us. The West Coast has experienced the worst forest fires in recorded history and is living through the worst drought in 500 years. In 2012, the US Geological Survey estimated that sea levels would rise on the East Coast by nearly 50 centimeters by 2050. In 2021, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association projects the same level of sea rise in Boston and Massachusetts. By 2050, the spot where my Mayflower ancestors began the American experiment 400 years ago will be swallowed by the sea.

      Yet even global warming divides America. Most of the Republican Party believes that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the “deep state” so that scientists can have jobs. Some even assert that the California wildfires are linked to “Jewish space lasers.” These Republican beliefs are an amalgam of lunacy and old fascist tropes. That one of the country’s two major political parties believes such dangerous lies and delusions bodes ill for America’s future. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      During his campaign and since becoming president, Joe Biden has declared that the next four years will be a “battle for the soul of the nation.” He and his party have to end the paralysis of America’s public institutions and democracy, heal social divisions, and reduce growing economic inequality. They must rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure and rise to the challenge of China as a fast-emerging peer competitor in international and economic affairs.

      The Republican Party and nearly 40% of the American population will oppose every step Biden attempts. The rural bias in the country’s political structures consistently grants this 40% control of about half the House of Representatives and Senate. Biden must win majorities to implement his transformative economic, social, political and diplomatic policies with only the slimmest majority possible in the legislature.

      Furthermore, this majority is fragile. Of the 100 seats in the Senate, Republicans have 50, Democrats 48 and independents two, both of whom caucus with the Democrats. The vice president presides over the Senate and supports the president but may only vote in the event of a 50-50 split. Historically, most presidents have struggled to enact their agenda even with strong electoral majorities.

      No president since Abraham Lincoln in 1861 has had to deal with such an array of grave social, political and economic crises. Throughout history, many states have proven unable to address structural, systemic problems with legislation and policies that do not profoundly alter these structures or systems. In most instances, however, this requires major social and political upheaval, sometimes even revolution. This has happened before in America — in 1776, when there was revolution, in 1861, when there was civil war, and in 1929, when there was economic collapse. 

      Within the current framework of American democracy, Biden can probably only succeed in radically addressing America’s daunting democratic, diplomatic, social, political and economic challenges if his party wins a more solid majority in both chambers of Congress. Thus, all eyes, hopes and fears turn to America’s congressional elections of 2022, now only 16 months away. This historic vote may well decide who wins the “battle for the soul of the nation.”

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Activists fear Biden’s climate pledges are falling apart: ‘We aren’t seeing grit’

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      On his first day at the White House, Joe Biden earned praise for following through on several campaign promises, committing the US to strict climate goals and a greener future. Now, nearly six months into his presidency, several of those commitments are being put to the test, and already, many are falling apart.A court last week ruled that the Biden administration did not have the authority to unilaterally pause oil and gas lease sales across the US. The decision came alongside news that congressional bargaining over Biden’s climate and infrastructure bill is hitting a wall with Republicans and the administration is now considering a slimmed-down version.Together, the developments are compounding a list of worries by environmentalists. Many fear Biden’s promises on climate may turn out to be more talk than action.“We aren’t seeing the fight and the grit that gives us the full hope,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director of WildEarth Guardians. “There’s something to be said about posturing and sending the message that you are for real, these aren’t just words, that these are values, and they are going to fight for them and build the right level of support to get things across the finish line.”Last week’s ruling on new oil and gas lease sales, handed down by a Trump appointee, Judge Terry Doughty of the US district court for the western district of Louisiana, creates a major hitch for Biden’s climate action plan. Louisiana’s attorney general and 12 other states originally filed the suit against the Biden administration’s leasing pause, arguing it would harm their states economically. Most of those states heavily rely on the sale of oil and gas and subsidies for the industry.“I think it’s legally wrong,” said Drew Caputo, vice-president of litigation for lands, wildlife and oceans at Earthjustice. “Every presidential administration has delayed or cancelled lease sales. The Trump administration last year delayed offshore oil leases because of the pandemic and changes in the market. There were no complaints, literally, and it was an unremarkable thing because that kind of thing happens all of the time.”Of the judge’s ruling, a spokesperson for the interior department said: “We are reviewing the judge’s opinion and will comply with the decision. The Interior Department continues to work on an interim report that will include initial findings on the state of the federal conventional energy programs, as well as outline next steps and recommendations for the Department and Congress to improve stewardship of public lands and waters, create jobs, and build a just and equitable energy future.” The agency said the interim report will be released in early summer.Drilling on public lands accounts for nearly a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions in the country. In one of his first acts as president, Biden issued an executive order that paused new onshore and offshore federal fossil fuel lease sales in order to let the administration study the future of the practice and its climate repercussions.Now, however, it’s unclear how strongly the administration plans to fight the injunction and whether the Department of Justice will counter in courts – a silence that is frustrating environmental groups. The White House did not return a request for comment.“We don’t know ultimately if the interior [department] is going to appeal or what they are going to do. Worst case scenario is that leasing has to resume,” said Randi Spivak, public lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “He did promise to end federal leasing and we’re going to hold him to it.”So far, the Biden administration’s record on the climate crisis has felt out of step with his messaging. In March, Biden agreed to advance a New Mexico lease sale that was viewed as an 11th hour move by the Trump administration. The justice department later agreed to go to court and back Trump’s decision to grant oil and gas leases on federal land across Wyoming and Montana.Another decision, to allow leases in Alaska’s north slope known as the Willow project, is seen by many as a political maneuver aimed at winning Democratic voters. Alaska’s Republican senator Lisa Murkoswki is set to face a tough re-election next year.The theme of inconsistent messaging continues with Biden’s initial $2tn infrastructure plan. Last week, 11 Republicans moved to back a $1tn bipartisan deal, half the original price tag and investment progressives and climate activists were promised.Some groups and progressive lawmakers have come out against the compromise. Earlier this month, the Democratic US representative Martin Heinrich of New Mexico tweeted: “An infrastructure package that goes light on climate and clean energy should not count on every Democratic vote.” On 16 June, the presidents and CEOs of several environmental groups, including the former Obama White House chief of staff John Podesta, sent a joint letter to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi; Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer; and their Republican counterparts, urging “bold, ambitious and swift measures to tackle the climate crisis”.“The stakes are enormous,” they wrote. “Failure to act at the scale that science and justice require will mean more health and environmental costs for individuals, communities and taxpayers, and more lives and communities devastated and destroyed by wildfires, extreme weather events, infectious diseases, and the deterioration of ecosystems that we depend on for food, employment, and recreation.”Through the infrastructure bill, Biden had promised a commitment to climate action that would involve new green job creation, a transition to renewable energy, and new investments in environmental justice communities. A White House advisory committee just last month announced initial recommendations for tackling pollution near disenfranchised neighborhoods – with many proposals relying on the significant revenue stream first promised by Biden’s infrastructure bill.Still, Biden has experienced notable success with other climate and environmental promises. He recommitted the US to the Paris climate agreement, revoked permits for the Keystone XL pipeline (setting the stage for the Canadian power company to terminate construction this month), and suspended oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge.Separately, federal agencies in recent months have also moved to restore clean water protections stripped by Trump, review soot pollution rules, and repeal and replace a decision to allow roads built through Alaska’s Tongass national forest; they also held the country’s first offshore wind lease sale. Green groups consider all those actions to be wins.“We aren’t pessimistic at this moment, but we are searching a little bit and we are hoping we see things happen,” Nichols said. “Really we want to see something that strikes at the heart of the fossil fuel industry and makes clear this administration does not view the fossil fuel industry as any kind of a friend.” More

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      What Planet Will Our Children and Grandchildren Inherit?

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      Let me start with my friend and the boat. Admittedly, they might not seem to have anything to do with each other. The boat, a guided-missile destroyer named the USS Curtis Wilbur, reportedly passed through the Straits of Taiwan and into the South China Sea, skirting the Paracel Islands that China has claimed as its own. It represented yet another Biden-era challenge to the planet’s rising power from its falling one. My friend was thousands of miles away on the West Coast of the United States, well vaccinated and going nowhere in COVID-stricken but improving America.

      As it happens, she’s slightly younger than me, but still getting up there, and we were chatting on the phone about our world, about the all-too-early first wildfire near Los Angeles, the intensifying mega-drought across the West and Southwest, the increasing nightmare of hurricane season in the Atlantic and so on. We were talking about the way in which we humans — and we Americans, in particular (though you could toss in the Chinese without a blink) — have been wreaking fossil-fuelized havoc on this planet and what was to come.

      Could This Have Been a Zoom Call?

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      And, oh yes, we were talking about our own deaths, also to come at some unknown future moment but one not as far away as either of us might wish. My friend then said to me abashedly, “I sometimes think it’s lucky I won’t be here to see what’s going to happen to the world.” And even as she began stumbling all over herself apologizing for saying such a thing, I understood exactly what she meant. I had had the very same thought and sense of shame and horror at even thinking it — at even thinking I would, in some strange sense, get off easy and leave a world from hell to my children and grandchildren. Nothing, in fact, could make me sadder.

      And you know what’s the worst thing? Whether I’m thinking about that “destroyer” in the Strait of Taiwan or the destruction of planet Earth, one thing is clear enough: It wouldn’t have to be this way.

      China on the Brain

      Now, let’s focus on the Curtis Wilbur for a moment. And in case you hadn’t noticed, US President Joe Biden and his foreign-policy team have China on the brain. No surprise there, though, only history. Don’t you remember how, when Biden was still vice-president, President Barack Obama announced that, in foreign and especially military policy, the US was planning a “pivot to Asia”? His administration was, in other words, planning on leaving this country’s war-on-terror disasters in the greater Middle East behind (not that he would actually prove capable of doing so) and refocusing on this planet’s true rising power. Donald Trump would prove similarly eager to dump America’s greater Middle Eastern wars (though he, too, failed to do so) and refocus on Beijing — tariffs first, but warships not far behind.

      Now, as the US withdraws its last troops from Afghanistan, the Biden team finds itself deep in its own version of a pivot-to-Asia strategy, with its collective foreign-policy brain remarkably focused on challenging China (at least until Israel briefly got in the way).

      Embed from Getty Images

      Think of it as a kind of pandemic of anxiety, a fear that, without a major refocus, the US might indeed be heading for the imperial scrapheap of history. In a sense, this may prove to be the true Achilles’ heel of the Biden era. Or put another way, the president’s foreign-policy crew seems, at some visceral level, to fear deeply for the America they’ve known and valued so, the one that was expected to loom invincibly over the rest of the planet once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991; the imperial power our politicians (until Trump) had long hailed as the greatest, most “exceptional” nation on the planet; the one with “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known” (Obama), aka “the greatest force for freedom in the history of the world” (George W. Bush).

      We’re talking, of course, about the same great power that, after almost 20 years of disastrous wars, drone strikes, and counterterror operations across vast stretches of the planet, looks like it is sinking fast, a country whose political parties can no longer agree on anything that matters. In such a context, let’s consider for a moment that flu-like China obsession, the one that leaves Washington’s politicians and military leaders with strikingly high temperatures and an irrational urge to send American warships into distant waters near the coast of China, while regularly upping the ante, militarily and politically.

      In that context, here’s an obsessional fact of our moment: These days, it seems as if President Biden can hardly appear anywhere or talk to anyone without mentioning China or that sinking country he now heads and that sinking feeling he has about it. He did it the other week in an interview with David Brooks when, with an obvious on-the-page shudder, he told The New York Times columnist, “We’re kind of at a place where the rest of the world is beginning to look to China.” Brrr… it’s cold in here (or maybe too hot to handle?) in an increasingly chaotic, still partly Trumpian, deeply divided Washington and in a country where, from suppressing the vote to suppressing the teaching of history to encouraging the carrying of unlicensed weapons, democracy is looking ill indeed.

      Oh, and that very same week when the president talked to Brooks, he went to the Coast Guard Academy to address its graduating class and promptly began discussing — yes! — that crucial, central subject for Washingtonians these days: freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. (“When nations try to game the system or tip the rules in their favor, it throws everything off balance,” Biden said. “That’s why we are so adamant that these areas of the world that are the arteries of trade and shipping remain peaceful — whether that’s the South China Sea, the Arabian Gulf, and, increasingly, the Arctic.”) You didn’t know, did you, that a guided-missile destroyer, not to speak of aircraft carrier battle groups, and other naval vessels had been anointed with the job of keeping “freedom of navigation” alive halfway across the planet or that the US Coast Guard simply guards our coastlines.

      These days, it should really be called the Coasts Guard. After all, you can find its members “guarding” coasts ranging from Iran’s in the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. Evidently, even the coast of the island of Taiwan, which, since 1949, China has always claimed as its own and where a subtle dance between Beijing and Washington has long played out, has become just another coast for guarding in nothing less than a new “partnership.” (“Our new agreement for the Coast Guard to partner with Taiwan,” said the president, “will help ensure that we’re positioned to better respond to shared threats in the region and to conduct coordinated humanitarian and environmental missions.”) Consider that a clear challenge to the globe’s rising power in what’s become ever more of a showdown at the naval equivalent of the OK Corral, part of an emerging new cold war between the US and China.

      And none of this is out of the ordinary. In his late April address to Congress, for instance, President Biden anxiously told the assembled senators and congressional representatives that “we’re in a competition with China and other countries to win the 21st century. … China and other countries are closing in fast.” In his own strange way, Trump exhibited similar worries.

      What Aren’t We Guarding?

      Now, here’s the one thing that doesn’t seem to strike anyone in Congress, at the Coast Guard Academy or at The New York Times as particularly strange: that American ships should be protecting “maritime freedom” on the other side of the globe, or that the Coast Guard should be partnering for the same. Imagine, just for a second, that Chinese naval vessels and their Coast Guard equivalent were patrolling our coasts, or parts of the Caribbean, while edging ever closer to Florida. You know just what an uproar of shock and outrage, what cries of horror would result. But it’s assumed that the equivalent on the other side of the globe is a role too obvious even to bother to explain and that our leaders should indeed be crying out in horror at China’s challenges to it.

      It’s increasingly clear that, from Japan to the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean, Washington is pushing China hard, challenging its positions big time and often in a military fashion. And no, China itself, whether in the South China Sea or elsewhere, is no angel. Still, the US military, while trying to leave its failed terror wars in the dust, is visibly facing off against that economically rising power in an ever more threatening manner, one that already seems too close to a possible military conflict of some sort. And you don’t even want to know what sort of warfare this country’s military leaders are now imagining there as, in fact, they did so long ago. (Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame only recently revealed that, according to a still-classified document, in response to the Chinese shelling of Taiwan in 1958, US military leaders seriously considered launching nuclear strikes against mainland China.)

      Indeed, as US Navy ships are eternally sent to challenge China, challenging words in Washington only escalate as well. As Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks put it in March, while plugging for an ever-larger Pentagon budget, “Beijing is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system… Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin and I believe that the [People’s Republic of China] is the pacing challenge for the United States military.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      And in that context, the US Navy, the Air Force and the Coast Guard are all “pacing” away. The latest proposed version of an always-rising Pentagon budget, for instance, now includes $5.1 billion for what’s called the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, “a fund created by Congress to counter China in the Indo-Pacific region.” In fact, the US Indo-Pacific Command is also requesting $27 billion in extra spending between 2022 and 2027 for “new missiles and air defenses, radar systems, staging areas, intelligence-sharing centers, supply depots and testing ranges throughout the region.” And so it goes in the pandemic world of 2021.

      Though seldom asked, the real question, the saddest one I think, the one that brings us back to my conversation with my friend about the world we may leave behind us, is: What aren’t we guarding on this planet of ours?

      A New Cold War on a Melting Planet?

      Let’s start with this. The old pattern of rising and falling empires should be seen as a thing of the past. It’s true that, in a traditional sense, China is now rising and the US seemingly falling, at least economically speaking. But something else is rising and something else is falling, too. I’m thinking, of course, about rising global temperatures that, sometime in the next five years, have a reasonable chance of exceeding the 1.5 degree Celsius limit (above the pre-industrial era) set by the 2015 Paris climate accords and what that future heat may do to the very idea of a habitable planet.

      Meanwhile, when it comes to the US, the Atlantic hurricane season is only expected to worsen, the mega-drought in the Southwest to intensify — as fires burn ever higher in previously wetter mountainous elevations in that region — and so on. Within this century, major coastal cities in the US and China like New Orleans, Miami, Shanghai and Hong Kong could find themselves flooded out by rising sea levels, thanks in part to the melting of Antarctica and Greenland. As for a rising China, that supposedly ultimate power of the future, even its leadership must know that parts of the north China plain, now home to 400 million people, could become quite literally uninhabitable by century’s end due to heat waves capable of killing the healthy within hours.

      In such a context, on such a planet, ask yourself: Is there really a future for us in which the essential relationship between the US and China — the two largest greenhouse gas emitters of this moment — is a warlike one? Whether a literal war results or not, one thing should be clear enough: If the two greatest carbon emitters can’t figure out how to cooperate instead of picking endless fights with each other, the human future is likely to prove grim and dim indeed. “Containing” China is the foreign-policy focus of the moment, a throwback to another age in Washington. And yet this is the very time when what truly needs to be contained is the overheating of this planet. And in truth, given human ingenuity, climate change should indeed be containable.

      And yet the foreign-policy wing of the Biden administration and Congress — where Democrats are successfully infusing money into the economy under the rubric of a struggle with China, a rare subject the Republicans can go all in on — seems focused on creating a future of eternal Sino-American hostility and endless armed competition. In the already overheated world we inhabit, who could honestly claim that this is a formula for “national security”?

      Returning to the conversation with my friend, I wonder why this approach to our planet doesn’t seem to more people like an obvious formula for disaster. Why aren’t more of us screaming at the top of our lungs about the dangers of Washington’s urge to return to a world in which a “cold war” is a formula for success? It leaves me ever more fearful for the planet that, one of these days, I will indeed be leaving to others who deserved so much better.

      *[This article was originally published by TomDispatch.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Republicans pledge allegiance to fossil fuels like it’s still the 1950s

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      Joe Biden may be pressing for 2021 to be a transformational year in tackling the climate crisis, but Republicans arrayed in opposition to his agenda have dug in around a unifying rallying theme – that the fossil fuel industry should be protected at almost any cost.For many experts and environmentalists, the Republican stance is a shockingly retrograde move that flies in the face of efforts to fight global heating and resembles a head in the sand approach to the realities of a changing American economy.In a recent letter sent to John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, more than a dozen Republican state treasurers accused the administration of pressuring banks to not lend to coal, oil and gas companies, adding that such a move would “eliminate the fossil fuel industry in our country” in order to appease the US president’s “radical political preferences”.The letter raised the extraordinary possibility of Republican-led states penalizing banks that refuse to fund projects that worsen the climate crisis by pulling assets from them. Riley Moore, treasurer of the coal heartland state of West Virginia, said “undue pressure” was being put on banks by the Biden administration that could end financing of fossil fuels and “devastate West Virginia and put thousands of families out of work”.“If a bank or lending institution says it is going to do something that could cause significant economic harm to our state … then I need to take that into account when I consider what banks we do business with,” Moore, who has assets of about $18bn under his purview, told the Guardian. “If they are going to attack our industries, jobs, economy and way of life, then I am going to fight back.”The shunning of banks in this way would almost certainly face a hefty legal response but the threat is just the latest eye-catching Republican gambit aimed at propping up a fossil fuel industry that will have to be radically pared back if the US is to slash its planet-heating emissions in half this decade, as Biden has vowed.In Louisiana, Republicans have embarked upon a quixotic and probably doomed attempt to make the state a “fossil fuel sanctuary” jurisdiction that does not follow federal pollution rules.In Texas, the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has instructed his agencies to challenge the “hostile attack” launched by Biden against the state’s oil and gas industries while Republicans in Wyoming have even set up a legal fund to sue other states that refuse to take its coal.The messaging appears to be filtering down to the Republican electorate, with new polling by Yale showing support for clean energy among GOP voters has dropped dramatically over the past 18 months.The stone age didn’t end for the lack of stones and the oil age won’t end for the lack of oil.But critics say Republicans are engaged in a futile attempt to resurrect an economic vision more at home in the 1950s, rather than deal with a contemporary reality where the plummeting cost of wind and solar is propelling record growth in renewables and a cavalcade of countries are striving to cut emissions to net zero and, in the case of some including the UK and Germany, completely eliminate coal.“We are seeing desperate attempts to delay the inevitable, to squeeze one more drop of oil or lump of coal out of the ground before this transition,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at New York University. “They are looking to go back to a prior time, but the trend if absolutely clear. The stone age didn’t end for the lack of stones and the oil age won’t end for the lack of oil.”The Republican backlash is characterized by a large dose of political posturing, according to Wagner. “If you have aspirations of higher office in some states, you just want to signal you will sue those hippie liberals,” he said. “These are delay tactics and some of them are very ham-fisted.”The US emerged from the second world war with more than half a million coalminers but this workforce has since dwindled to barely 40,000 people, amid mass automation and utilities switching to cheap sources of gas. Large quantities of jobs are set to be created in renewable energy, but some places built upon fossil fuels risk being left behind.Biden has proposed a huge infrastructure plan which would, the president says, help retrain and retool regions of the US long economically dependent upon mining and drilling. The administration has promised a glut of high-paying jobs in expanding the clean energy sector and plugging abandoned oil and gas wells, all while avoiding the current ruinous health impacts of air pollution and conditions like black lung.But unions have expressed wariness over this transition, with Republicans also highly skeptical. The promise to retrain miners is a “patronizing pipe dream of the liberal elites completely devoid from reality”, said Moore, who added that previous promises of renewable energy jobs have not materialized. “And now they are trying to sell us on the same failed idea again.”However the shift to cleaner energy happens, it’s clear the transition is under way – last year renewable energy consumption eclipsed coal for the first time in 130 years and US government projections show renewables’ overall share doubling by the middle of the century. A key question is whether the completion of this switch will be delayed long enough to risk triggering the worst impacts of disastrous global heating.“The Republican response is predictable and pathetic. It is from a very old playbook,” said Judith Enck, who was a regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency under Barack Obama. “The party will cling to fossil fuels to the bitter end. It’s so sad because so many Republican voters are damaged by climate change, if you look at deaths from the heat or wildfires we are seeing in California. But the party right now is just completely beholden to the fossil fuel industry.” More

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      Biden suspends Trump-era oil drilling leases in Alaska’s Arctic refuge

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      The Biden administration on Tuesday suspended oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a drilling program approved by Donald Trump and reviving a political fight over a remote region that is home to polar bears and other wildlife – and a rich reserve of oil.The interior department order follows a temporary moratorium on oil and gas lease activities imposed by Joe Biden on his first day in office. Biden’s 20 January executive order suggested a new environmental review was needed to address possible legal flaws in a drilling program approved by the Trump administration under a 2017 law enacted by Congress.After conducting a required review, interior said it “identified defects in the underlying record of decision supporting the leases, including the lack of analysis of a reasonable range of alternatives” required under the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock environmental law.The remote, 19.6m-acre refuge is home to polar bears, caribou, snowy owls and other wildlife, including migrating birds from six continents. Republicans and the oil industry have long been trying to open up the oil-rich refuge, which is considered sacred by the indigenous Gwich’in communities, for drilling. Democrats, environmental groups and some Alaska Native tribes have been trying to block it.Bill Clinton vetoed a Republican plan to allow drilling in the refuge in 1995, when he was president, and the two parties have been fighting over the region ever since.The US bureau of land management, an interior department agency, held a lease sale for the refuge’s coastal plain on 6 January, two weeks before Biden took office.Eight days later the agency signed leases for nine tracts totaling nearly 685 sq miles. However, the issuance of the leases was not announced publicly until 19 January, former president Donald Trump’s last full day in office.Biden has opposed drilling in the region, and environmental groups have been pushing for permanent protections, which Biden demanded during the 2020 presidential campaign.The administration’s action to suspend the leases comes after officials disappointed environmental groups last week by defending a Trump administration decision to approve a major oil project on Alaska’s north slope. Critics say the action flies in the face of Biden’s pledges to address climate change.The justice department said in a court filing that opponents of the Willow project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska were seeking to stop development by “cherry-picking” the records of federal agencies to claim environmental review law violations. The filing defends the reviews underpinning last fall’s decision approving project plans.Kristen Miller, acting executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, hailed suspension of the Arctic leasing program, which she said was the result of a flawed legal process under Trump.“Suspending these leases is a step in the right direction, and we commend the Biden administration for committing to a new program analysis that prioritizes sound science and adequate tribal consultation,” she said.More action is needed, Miller said, calling for a permanent cancellation of the leases and repeal of the 2017 law mandating drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain.The drilling mandate was included in a massive tax cut approved by congressional Republicans during Trump’s first year in office. Republicans said it could generate an estimated $1bn over 10 years, a figure Democrats call preposterously overstated.Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Nation steering committee, thanked the president and interior secretary Deb Haaland and said that tribal leaders are heartened by the Biden administration’s “commitment to protecting sacred lands and the Gwich’in way of life”. More

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      in World Politics

      Europe’s Thirst for Virtual Water: Blueberry Fields Forever?

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      Blueberries have long established themselves among the superfoods. They are tasty, low in calories and full of beneficial nutrients. Most importantly, they are a rich source of antioxidants that serve to protect against a range of diseases, most notably cancer. This might explain why the demand for blueberries has steadily increased over the past few years. Between 2015 and 2019, Europe’s blueberry imports increased from 45,000 tons to 113,000 tons. Between 2018 and 2019 alone, the volume of imports rose by more than 40%.

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      Blueberries consist mostly of water. In fact, some 85% of the fruit is H2O. And that’s where the problem starts. In Western Europe, most of the blueberries you find in supermarkets today are imported from Spain; more precisely, from one province in the autonomous region of Andalusia, Huelva, located in the southwest, where Spain borders Portugal. Andalusia is known for the beauty of its major cities like Seville, Granada and Cordoba, and its beach resorts of Marbella, Torremolinos and Malaga.

      Andalusia also happens to be among the poorest autonomous regions in Spain. In 2019, it ranked close to the bottom with respect to GDP per capita; only Estremadura and Melilla ranked lower. In 2016, around 40% of the population lived in poverty; among children, the poverty rate stood at 44%.

      The Blueberry Dark Side

      Andalusia has also been the launching pad for Vox, Spain’s radical populist right. In the regional elections of 2018, Vox gained 11% of the vote, which put the party in a pivotal position. Since neither the left nor the right commanded a majority in the region’s parliament, Vox found itself in a position of kingmaker. At the time, Vox came out in favor of the center right. In Huelva, like across Andalusia, Vox is a major political player. In the November national election of 2019, Vox garnered more than 20% of the vote in Huelva, second only to the socialists who won 36%.

      Vox is a political force to be reckoned with. The party promotes itself as an ardent defender of ordinary hardworking people and of the unity of the Spanish state, threatened by Catalan and Basque independence aspirations. At the same time, the party has vigorously rejected any human responsibility for climate change. Environmental concerns are certainly not on the party’s agenda.

      This brings us back to blueberries from Spain. Over the past several years, the cultivation of blueberries in Huelva province has progressively expanded. Between 2016 and 2020, blueberry spring exports (February to May) increased by more than 80% in volume and more than 40% in value. At the same time, land devoted to blueberries increased from 4.4 squared miles to roughly 14 square miles. As a result, production more than doubled, from 20,815 tons in 2014-15 to 45,506 tons in 2019-20. Altogether, the cultivation of the three major “red fruits” produced in Huelva — blueberries, strawberries and raspberries — provides employment to over 100,000 people, generating roughly €1 billion ($1.2 billion) in revenue.

      Embed from Getty Images

      This is one side of the equation, one that Huelva’s authorities like to propagate. Unfortunately for them, the other (dark) side has once again been making international headlines. Here the focus is on the disastrous impact that cash crops have had on the natural environment, in particular on the Donana national park, a wetland reserve and UN Heritage site that is a refuge for over 2,000 different species of wildlife and serves as a way station for millions of migratory birds every year.

      The national park was already on the receiving end of an environmental catastrophe that severely affected its delicate ecological balance. In 1998, a dam burst at a mine near Seville, releasing up to 5 million cubic meters of toxic slush into the Guadiamar River, the main water source for the park. Cleaning up the mess cost the Spanish state some €90 million. It spent a further €360 million to restore parts of the park. Some of the money came from the European Union. It took several years for the park’s wildlife to recover.

      Yet little was learned from the disaster. By 2016, UNESCO threatened to put the park on its danger list. And for good reason: As The Guardian reported at the time, Donana was “said to have lost 80% of its natural water supplies due to marsh drainage, intensive agriculture, and water pollution from the mining industry.” The article cited a report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) that charged that farmers had been drilling more than 1,000 illegal wells that accelerated “the park’s destruction, as drought-resistant plants replace water-dependent ones in the region.”

      Ecological Crisis

      The expansion of cash crop cultivation in Huelva has only added to the ecological crisis, once again ringing alarm bells not only in individual countries that are among Huelva’s most important customers, such as Germany and the United Kingdom, but also in Brussels. A recent report on the website of Germany’s premier news program, ARD’s “Tagesschau,” set the tone: “Spain’s national park is drying out.” The main reason: Huelva’s red fruit industry has not only encroached on park land but, more importantly, has systematically starved the park of its most important lifeline — water. According to the report, estimates are that roughly 1,000 of the wells dug to irrigate the plantations are illegal. In other words, nothing had changed since 2016.

      By 2020, the European Commission had had enough. It took Spain to court. In December, it charged that Spain had looked the other way and allowed the continued illegal appropriation of groundwater, in the process inflicting serious damage to the nationally and internationally protected Donana wetlands. For all practical purposes, the failure lay largely with the regional Andalusian government. Five years ago, the regional government advanced a plan to protect Donana; five years later, according to an article in Spain’s leading newspaper El Pais, only 17% of the measures had been realized, 43% were incomplete, the rest — nada.

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      The regional government has, however, made an effort to go after Huelva’s most egregious water thieves. In March, two ex-mayors — one a socialist, the other a conservative — were put on trial together with 13 farmers, all of them accused of illegal appropriation of water. At the same time, the government has tried to shut down illegal wells. But with over a thousand currently in operation, the backlog is great, and more often than not the authorities have met with determined resistance.

      At the same time, however, the regional government has continued to license new water rights. In 2017, for instance, the government conceded more than 270,000 cubic meters of public groundwater to a cooperative society, which allowed the cooperative to more than double its production of blueberries in the Sierra de Huelva. All this, as a public official in charge of water management claimed, was done in the name of “sustainable development.” Donana’s endangered wildlife would probably disagree. But then, they don’t have a voice, and those speaking in their name, such as the WWF, have to a large degree been unheeded.

      Virtual Water

      Spanish blueberries produced in Huelva are a prime example of the ludicrousness of a development strategy based on international trade. Spain is a semi-arid, water-poor country. The distribution of water across the national territory is highly unequal. Water is relatively abundant in the north and relatively scarce in the south. Agriculture accounts for a large junk of the country’s total water use, roughly 60%. Yet agriculture contributes just 3% to the country’s GDP and employs roughly 4% of the active workforce. Particularly in the south, decades of agricultural practices have exhausted the soil and turned once fertile land into desert, shrinking the supply of arable land.

      Under the circumstances, producing a crop as water-intensive as blueberries in a semi-arid region borders on the absurd. The amount of water required to produce a certain amount of a product is generally referred to as a water footprint. The water footprint of blueberries is around 840 liters per one kilogram of fruit. This means that embedded in every kilo of blueberries for sale in the local supermarket are more than 800 liters of water. This is what is nowadays known as “virtual water” — the amount of water hidden from and invisible to the end consumer. Virtual water has become an increasingly important concept in international trade theory. What it means in practical terms is that with every kilo of blueberries we import from Spain, we bring in more than 800 liters of water.

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      By now, the absurdity of the situation should be obvious. Not only do we import water from a water-scarce region, but by importing the virtual water embedded in blueberries, we contribute to the depletion of a scarce resource in the exporting region which, in turn, is a major cause of the gradual destruction of one of Western Europe’s largest natural wetlands. And things are likely to get even worse. The upsurge in demand for blueberries and other red fruits has brought new producers into the market.

      As a result, prices have substantially declined, compelling producers to expand production and explore new market opportunities. Just the other day, after years of negotiations, Brazil gave a green light to the importation of blueberries from Huelva after the red fruits industry passed an on-the-ground inspection by a delegation of Brazilian authorities. And Brazil might only be the beginning. Huelva authorities have already set their eyes on even larger markets, notably China and India. In the meantime, environmental advocates are pinning their hopes on the European Court of Justice, which is supposed to consider the case over the next few months. Judgments rendered by the court are binding. Member states are obliged to comply with court decisions without delay. If found guilty, Spain might have to pay heavy fines.

      The WWF, which has been among the most vocal and determined advocates of the Donana national park, is confident that the court will rule in its favor. As Juan Carlos del Olmo, the secretary general of WWF Spain, put it, “Spain is about to be condemned for allowing the destruction of Doñana, a heritage that belongs to all Europeans.” He emphasized that the “Spanish authorities and especially the Regional Government of Andalusia, which have both turned a blind eye to this situation for years,” need “to take real measures to halt the degradation of Doñana.” This means, above all, closing the illegal wells that are “looting the aquifer and destroying biodiversity.”

      2020 marked the fifth anniversary of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, to which Spain has committed itself “at the highest level.” This includes ensuring “the lasting protection of the planet and its natural resources.” It is not entirely obvious how the export of massive amounts of virtual water from Huelva’s blueberry fields is supposed to contribute to the latter goal.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden officials condemned for backing Trump-era Alaska drilling project

      by

      Joe Biden’s administration is facing an onslaught of criticism from environmentalists after opting to defend the approval of a massive oil and gas drilling project in the frigid northern reaches of Alaska.In a briefing filed in federal court on Wednesday, the US Department of Justice said the Trump-era decision to allow the project in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska’s north slope was “reasonable and consistent” with the law and should be allowed to go ahead.This stance means the Biden administration is contesting a lawsuit brought by environmental groups aimed at halting the drilling due to concerns over the impact upon wildlife and planet-heating emissions. The US president has paused all new drilling leases on public land but is allowing this Alaska lease, approved under Trump, to go ahead.The project, known as Willow, is being overseen by the oil company ConocoPhillips and is designed to extract more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years. Environmentalists say allowing the project is at odds with Biden’s vow to combat the climate crisis and drastically reduce US emissions.“It’s incredibly disappointing to see the Biden administration defending this environmentally disastrous project,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that have sued to stop the drilling. “President Biden promised climate action and our climate can’t afford more huge new oil-drilling projects.”The Arctic is heating up at three times the rate of the rest of the planet and ConocoPhillips will have to resort to Kafkaesque interventions to be able to drill for oil in an environment being destroyed by the burning of that fuel. The company plans to install “chillers’ into the Alaskan permafrost, which is rapidly melting due to global heating, to ensure it is stable enough to host drilling equipment.Monsell said the attempts to refreeze the thawing permafrost in order to extract more fossil fuel “highlights the ridiculousness of drilling in the Arctic”. Kirsten Miller, acting executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, said Willow “is the poster child for the type of massive fossil fuel development that must be avoided today if we’re to avoid the worst climate impacts down the road”.The Willow project will involve drilling up to 250 wells and associated infrastructure, such as a processing facility, hundreds of miles of new pipelines and roads and an airstrip, in the north-eastern corner of the petroleum reserve, which is a federally owned tract of land roughly the size of Indiana.Trump’s administration approved the drilling late in the former president’s term and activists hoped Biden would reverse this decision to meet his climate goals. A recent landmark report by the International Energy Agency found that there can be no new fossil fuel projects anywhere if the world is to avoid dangerous global heating.Native Alaskan groups have also opposed the project over fears it will adversely impact the abundant local wildlife, such as polar bears, fish and migrating caribou.“This project is in the important fall migration for Nuiqsut,” said Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, a resident of Nuiqsut, a community in the north slope. “It should not happen. The village spoke in opposition and the greed for profit should not be allowed over our village.” More