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      in US Politics

      Natural but deadly: huge gaps in US rules for wood-stove smoke exposed

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Green Light newsletter Glenn Helkenn lives in a spruce forest, in a tiny log cabin he built himself on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska’s third largest city.Give him an hour and a handsaw and Helkenn says he can harvest enough firewood to heat his 96 sq ft home for a couple of days, even when the temperature drops to -40F. For him, it’s about more than free fuel.“It is what I enjoy doing,” Helkenn said. “You know, it’s the fresh air. It’s the time out in the woods. It’s the snowshoeing. It’s the exercise.”The trouble is about 12,000 much larger Fairbanks-area homes heat with wood too. The city is partially ringed by hills, so smoke can get trapped in low-lying neighborhoods for days or weeks.Fairbanks has some of the dirtiest air in the country, in large part due to smoke from wood stoves. Wood smoke is a serious health threat. It emits high levels of fine-particle pollution that can be inhaled deep into the lungs, exacerbating respiratory problems like asthma and increasing the risk of premature death from heart attacks and strokes.In 2015, the US government required that newer models of wood stoves perform better and began spending millions of dollars to subsidize the transition away from older models. Now, an investigation by state environment officials is revealing a critical flaw in that plan: the latest stoves might not be any less polluting than the previous ones.A review of 250 wood-burning stove certifications found unexplained data omissions and atypical lab practices. When the officials retested about a dozen of the heaters in their own labs, they were not able to reproduce the certification results. They found many stoves were polluting as much as the previous models. One was producing so much pollution that it wouldn’t have met the Environmental Protection Agency’s first-ever standards from 1988.“We pulled the test reports that are supposed to be publicly posted and we compared – did this certification report meet all the rules? And we couldn’t find any that actually met all the rules,” said Cindy Heil, an air official with Alaska’s department of environmental conservation. “That’s a problem.”Alaska, along with a group of north-east air regulators called Nescaum, expanded the review and concluded the certification procedures and EPA’s oversight of them are a “systemic failure”.As long as the stove review process continues virtually unsupervised, people inhaling wood smoke from the stoves will continue to get sick and die early, not just in Alaska but around the US, the state officials said.Fairbanks resident Patrice Lee has been campaigning for cleaner air for 14 years, since her son, who was born with heart defects, collapsed outside his high school on an especially smoky day.Lee says millions of dollars have been wasted trying to get people to burn wood more cleanly when it would have been better spent switching them to another fuel.“We have a whole generation of young people who may never achieve their full lung capacity, or even potentially their cognitive potential, because they’ve been breathing this smoke,” Lee said.Lee says the problem isn’t just stove technology. Wet wood sends more particulates up the smoke stack, so Fairbanks is steeped in public service messages about how to split and store firewood. A new kiln in town dries firewood for three days before it’s offered for sale. A local stove dealership offers classes every Saturday to ensure residents know how to operate their stoves for minimal pollution.And yet Lee can drive around her city on a cold day and see chimneys emitting thick plumes. “This house right here is a habitual offender. Just burns and burns and burns,” she said, pointing out a home in an older neighborhood. An air sensor there, on the porch of an 86-year-old woman, regularly registers the worst readings in Fairbanks, Lee said.Lee doubts the problem will be solved in her lifetime. The attempts to clean up Fairbanks’ air are a story of half measures, technology that didn’t pan out, administrative blunders and political resistance. It’s also been hard for many to accept that burning wood – an activity that seems so wholesome and close to the land – should be subject to intense regulation.Lee says her neighbors are nice people who believe that what they do on their property is their own business.“Their smoke all blows on to my property,” she said. “My most personal property is my body. And when I can’t avoid smoke, that’s invading the most personal property I have.”Airborne particulates from burning wood in homes may be to blame for 10,000 to 40,000 premature deaths annually in the US, according to two studies. In 2017, the particle pollution from residential wood heating was four times higher than the particle pollution from coal-fired power plants.Only about 4% of residential heating in the US is from wood. But that wood heating is responsible for more particulate pollution than any other source – 22%.People in Fairbanks have limited options. Most residents who have wood stoves use them to supplement another heater – typically one that burns oil. But oil costs more. Propane doesn’t perform well in extreme cold. A new utility is trucking natural gas to Fairbanks and piping it to homes, but it’s not available everywhere and residents say the cost of getting it installed is steep.With those factors in mind, the state of Alaska has spent about $12.5m in EPA grants to replace older wood stoves with newer ones in Fairbanks. It has about $15m more available to spend on wood stove programs.At the end of 2020, Congress also approved a 26% tax credit for new wood stoves that meet a certain efficiency level. Ten states provide tax incentives or rebates for the newer stoves, ranging from a 100% tax deduction in Alabama, Georgia and Idaho to a $500 tax deduction in Arizona.In 2015, the Obama administration wrote new rules for wood stoves. They were the first revisions since 1988. The regulation was in full effect as of May 2020. It basically requires that newly manufactured wood stoves meet stricter pollution restrictions and are certified by independent laboratories.But the wood stove industry is suing the federal government over the rule. It also lobbied federal regulators to change testing methods while the rule was under development. The state officials behind the wood stove report argue that led to loopholes that made certification easier.Although the EPA has approved hundreds of new wood stove models, Alaska has double-checked those certifications and allows only a few dozen to be sold or installed in the Fairbanks area, which is not meeting federal standards for particle pollution.“Right now we’ve made compromises and have left some things on the list that we still have concerns on – because we need to have something on the list,” said Heil, the Alaska air official. “We’re hoping through time that will get better and we’ll have more and more confidence.”The EPA is reviewing complaints about the certification program and acknowledged it could revoke approvals for stoves and test labs if appropriate.“Having wood-burning devices that are not meeting the standards is problematic for homeowners, as well as for communities and states working to meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for [particulate matter],” the agency said.The wood stove industry has defended its new models. John Crouch, public affairs director for the trade group the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, said he doesn’t know of any significant data missing from stove test results.Crouch said he was not surprised a second lab can’t reproduce the same results.“This is fire. Fire is pretty random,” he said. “And these are in the laboratory. You can imagine when you get out into the real world. It varies a lot.”Crouch said many Fairbanks residents are still using stoves that predate the standard. Area residents have sent hundreds of older stoves to be crushed in change-out programs, but as many as 2,000 may still be in use, according to state regulators.A company called Blaze King produces some of the most popular wood stoves in Fairbanks – black boxy things with catalytic converters.Blaze King’s vice-president, Chris Neufeld, said he had had to run a regulatory obstacle course to sell stoves in the Fairbanks area. The Alaska DEC added a metric that Neufeld calls arbitrary: a particulate limit of six grams for the first hour, when stoves burn less efficiently.“That same stove that might be burning dirtier at the first hour – in hour three, four and five, it might be immaculate,” he said. “It might be burning super-clean. But we’re not giving it any credit for that.”Neufeld said a first-hour standard is like judging a car by how many miles per gallon it gets driving uphill. One Blaze King stove series did not make Alaska’s approved list for the Fairbanks area, even though it was certified by the EPA. Neufeld suspects a testing fluke.“If the wood fell just the way it was intended, it probably would have been like some of the other stoves that were below one gram per hour in the first hour filter-pull. We just got a bad run,” he said.Paul Miller, the executive director of the group of north-east US air associations, said the issue is a “backwater area for EPA”. He said the agency had not double-checked a stove certification in decades.“It’s like having your car out there and EPA never going back to check to see if one of these millions of cars on the road actually performed as certified by the automaker.”Go behind the scenes with the reporters on this story at Floodlight. More

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      in US Politics

      Deb Haaland confirmed as first Indigenous US cabinet secretary

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      Deb Haaland has been confirmed as the secretary of the interior, making her the first Indigenous cabinet secretary in US history.The 60-year-old from New Mexico will be responsible for the country’s land, seas and natural resources, as well as overseeing tribal affairs.The US Senate confirmed the Democrat on Monday by a vote of 51-40, after she secured the support of Republican senators including Lindsey Graham, Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan and Susan Collins.In a statement after the vote, Haaland said she was “ready to serve”.Thank you to the U.S. Senate for your confirmation vote today. As Secretary of @Interior, I look forward to collaborating with all of you. I am ready to serve. #BeFierce— Deb Haaland (@DebHaalandNM) March 15, 2021
      Haaland is a member of the Laguna Pueblo, one of 574 sovereign tribal nations located across 35 states. She is the most senior Indigenous American in the US government since the Republican Charles Curtis, a member of the Kaw nation situated in what is now Kansas, who served as vice-president to Herbert Hoover between 1929 and 1933.She will lead about 70,000 staff who oversee one-fifth of all the land in the US and 1.7bn acres of coastlines, as well as managing national parks, wildlife refuges and natural resources such as gas, oil and water.Haaland will also be responsible for upholding the government’s legally binding obligations to the tribes – treaty obligations that have been systematically violated with devastating consequences for life expectancy, exposure to environmental hazards, political participation and economic opportunities in Indian Country.According to the 2010 census, 5.2 million people or about 2% of the US population identifies as American Indian or Alaskan Native – descendants of those who survived US government policies to kill, remove or assimilate indigenous peoples.“Native youth look to Representative Haaland as a role model, as a fierce defender of their rights and their communities, and as the living representation of the future of Indigenous communities in this country,” said Nikki Pitre, the executive director of the Center for Native American Youth.New Mexico’s Democratic senator, Ben Ray Luján, who presided over the Senate during Monday’s vote, said Haaland’s appointment sends a signal to young Native Americans.“She’s the embodiment of the old adage that if you see it you can be it,” he said.Haaland’s confirmation comes after several days of grilling by senators over her past criticism of Republicans, even though she had one of the best records of bipartisanship in the previous Congress. She also faced hostile questions from senators from oil and gas states, who claimed her opposition to fossil fuels projects would destroy jobs.Last year, Haaland sponsored a bill that would set a national goal of protecting 30% of US lands and oceans by 2030 – the 30 by 30 commitment since made by Biden in an executive order.In a recent interview, Haaland told the Guardian that as secretary of the interior she would “move climate change priorities, tribal consultation and a green economic recovery forward”.She added: “I’m going to continue to reach across the aisle, to protect our environment and make sure that vulnerable communities have a say in what our country is doing moving forward.”Nick Tilsen, the president and chief executive of the NDN Collective, a grassroots indigenous power organization, said: “Deb Haaland is going to be a breath of fresh air who will fight for lands, jobs and people.”Reuters and Vivian Ho contributed reporting More

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      in World Politics

      The Quest to Paint the World Green

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      Once upon a time, a rich hypochondriac was complaining about pains in his head and stomach. He consulted a wise man who pointed out that the root of the problem lay somewhere else: in the man’s eyes. To resolve the persistent headache and stomachache, the sage suggested focusing on just one color in the surrounding environment — green — and ignoring all others.

      The rich man promptly hired workers to cover everything in sight in green paint so that he could easily follow the peculiar prescription. Ten days later, when the wise man returned in his saffron robe, a worker hurried over to douse him in green paint as well.

      The Nation-State vs. The Climate

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      “You have wasted so much money through your monumental stupidity,” the paint-splattered sage upbraided the rich man. “If only you had purchased a pair of green spectacles, worth perhaps four rupees, you could have saved these walls and trees and pots and pans and chairs and sofas and also a pretty large share of your fortune.” The sage drew himself up to his full height to deliver his final message: “You cannot paint the world green!”

      The moral of this Hindi tale is simple. You cannot change the world. You can only change the way you look at the world. Perception is everything.

      This cautionary tale is particularly ill-suited for these modern times. With the climate crisis pressing down upon the planet, humanity must change the world or face extinction. Figuratively speaking, we must indeed paint the world green — and ignore the so-called wise men who tell us just to put on green-colored glasses.

      In the real world, this choice boils down to either shrinking the global carbon footprint or succumbing to a form of “greenwashing” that offers only an illusory environmental protection. The Biden administration faces this same choice. Will it spend a lot of money to help paint the world green or just hand out tinted lenses, whether green or rose, to make us all think that the planet has been saved?

      How Green Is His Policy?

      The first task for the Biden administration has been to clean up the toxic waste dump of the previous presidency. That has meant rejoining the 2015 Paris climate deal, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and restoring the many environmental regulations that former US President Donald Trump gutted. The new administration has put a pause on new oil and gas drilling on federal lands. It has reversed Trump’s effort to weaken the Clean Air Act. It has supported an international agreement to end the use of hydrofluorocarbons. In all, the administration is looking to roll back around 100 of Trump’s attempts to favor business over the environment.

      Embed from Getty Images

      These moves will bring the United States back to the status quo ante. The administration, however, has more ambitious plans. In his January 27 executive order on “tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad,” President Joe Biden laid out a detailed list of initiatives that runs over 7,500 words. The very fact that the order addresses the “climate crisis” and not just “climate change” is an important signal of the seriousness with which the administration takes this issue.

      The order begins with these words: “We have a narrow moment to pursue action at home and abroad in order to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of that crisis and to seize the opportunity that tackling climate change presents. Domestic action must go hand in hand with United States international leadership, aimed at significantly enhancing global action. Together, we must listen to science and meet the moment.”

      To this end, the administration has declared that the United States will become carbon-neutral by 2050, which will require steep cuts in emissions. “We need to increase tree cover five times faster than we are,” says John Kerry, Biden’s special envoy for climate. “We need to ramp up renewable energy six times faster. And the transition to electric vehicles needs to take place at a rate 22 times faster.”

      But like its initial promise to vaccinate 100 million people in 100 days against COVID-19, the administration is already being pushed to do better. Other countries are competing to become carbon-neutral faster: Sweden has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2045, Austria and Iceland have more informally set 2040 as their goal, Finland is looking at 2035, and both Norway and Uruguay expect to achieve the mark by 2030. Apple, Microsoft and General Electric have all committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2030 as well. General Motors announced at the end of January that it would sell only zero-emission vehicles by 2035.

      A key component of the US race to carbon neutrality is the Biden administration’s version of a Green New Deal. This “clean energy revolution” calls for investing $400 billion over 10 years into transforming the US economy along sustainable lines, creating 10 million good-paying jobs in the clean energy sector and putting environmental justice at the center of these efforts.

      But the administration can do just so much with executive orders and through federal agencies like the Department of Energy. At some point, Congress must decide whether the next four years will be world-transforming or just greenwashing.

      But Congress — especially the Senate — is a problem. It’s going to be difficult to persuade Republicans as well as Democrats like Joe Manchin, who represents the coal-mining state of West Virginia, to sign on to anything truly transformative. But tax credits for wind power and solar energy were included in the December 2020 stimulus package, which Republicans backed. And Manchin is already co-sponsoring the American Jobs in Energy Manufacturing Act, which provides tax incentives to businesses that switch over to clean energy products. Also in the works is a Civilian Climate Corps, modeled on a similar New Deal-era initiative, that would enlist the unemployed and underemployed to help with such tasks as reforestation and protecting biodiversity.

      It will be hard to move Congress on this domestic agenda. The international component may be an even tougher sell.

      Going Green Internationally

      At least on paper, the Biden administration intends to make the climate crisis a way of reshaping much of US foreign policy. The January 27 order reads: “It will be a United States priority to press for enhanced climate ambition and integration of climate considerations across a wide range of international fora, including the Group of Seven (G7), the Group of Twenty (G20), and fora that address clean energy, aviation, shipping, the Arctic, the ocean, sustainable development, migration, and other relevant topics.”

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      The first challenge for the new administration will be to put its money where its mouth is, and one example of that is its contributions to the Green Climate Fund. Established in 2010 to assist poorer countries transition away from fossil fuels, the fund raised about $7 billion out of the $10 billion initially pledged. A major reason for the shortfall was the US, which promised $3 billion but delivered only $1 billion. At the end of 2019, the fund put out another call to replenish its coffers and received pledges of another $9.8 billion.

      Kerry has already announced that the United States will make good on its previous commitment by sending $2 billion to the fund. But he has made no mention of US support for the additional replenishment. Climate campaigners have called on the administration to double its original commitment, as a number of European countries plus South Korea and New Zealand have done, and top up its contributions to $9 billion total. Such a firm action by the US might not only persuade other countries to achieve this higher standard but also pressure outliers like Russia and Australia to join the effort in the first place.

      The more immediate problem, however, will be the rising levels of debt, particularly in the Global South, that the COVID-19 pandemic has turned into an acute crisis. A number of countries — Zambia, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, Brazil — have either defaulted on their loans or are close to it. Meanwhile, the fiscal crisis of poorer countries has pushed several to consider abandoning climate and environment-friendly restrictions on such harmful sectors as industrial mining in order to make financial ends meet. International financial institutions have suspended debt repayments for the world’s poorest nations and are considering various remedies, including the provision of more Special Drawing Rights (SDR) to the worst-off countries through the International Monetary Fund.

      It’s unclear where Biden stands on debt relief or cancellation. But the January 27 executive order on the climate crisis includes the following provision: “[D]evelop a strategy for how the voice and vote of the United States can be used in international financial institutions, including the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, to promote financing programs, economic stimulus packages, and debt relief initiatives that are aligned with and support the goals of the Paris Agreement.” It’s possible that the administration will, instead of debt cancellation, promote some form of debt-for-nature or debt-for-climate swaps, preferably in versions that include a greater range of stakeholders including indigenous groups, or perhaps back the issuance of bonds linked to performance on green indicators.

      The climate crisis will also affect how the United States negotiates trade agreements. Biden’s appointments to key trade positions suggest that he will be putting labor and environmental concerns at the center of US policy. As a presidential candidate, Biden urged making future trade deals contingent on countries meeting their commitments under the Paris agreement, and members of Congress are already pushing the new president to change the US-Canada-Mexico trade deal to reflect this condition. Another potential option is a fossil fuel export ban, for which Biden has expressed some support.

      The new president is planning to hold a Global Climate Summit on Earth Day next month, though it’s unclear how such a meeting would differ from the one held in December 2020 to mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris agreement. Climate campaigners are urging the administration to use this opportunity to focus on “super pollutants” such as methane, black carbon, and HFCs, which contribute disproportionately to global warming.

      In the meantime, preparations for COP26 — the UN climate change conference — are beginning for November in Glasgow, UK. The hostility of the Trump administration and the divided attention span of the Biden team — not to mention the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — may compromise the efficacy of the UN meeting. The Paris agreement came together because of 18 months of intensive preliminary negotiations. A similar effort to forge a pre-meeting consensus for COP26 has been slow to emerge.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Biden administration has made commitments on other environmental issues. It has endorsed a “30 by 30” initiative: protecting 30% of US lands and coastal areas by 2030. This effort would require setting aside 440 million more acres of land for conservation. This pledge, part of a global campaign to preserve biodiversity, would require a significant scaling back of extraction activities on federal lands.

      Cooperation between the US and China is critical for any global environmental effort to move forward. China is currently the leading emitter of carbon in the world, with nearly twice the annual rate of the United States at number two (though the US still leads in terms of cumulative output over time and per-capita carbon footprint). During the Barack Obama years, the two countries created the Clean Energy Research Consortium (CERC), a public-private initiative that spurs research and development in several energy-related sectors. Renewing CERC would be a first step in boosting U.S.-China cooperation.

      Greening national security can and should go well beyond superpower cooperation. The US currently spends $81 billion a year to protect global oil supplies, according to one estimate. The bulk of that money should instead go toward ending reliance on fossil fuels. If access to oil becomes less dependable, that would be an even greater incentive for US allies to accelerate their own transitions to renewable energy.

      An Administration in Search of a Doctrine

      Presidential doctrines have always presented different ways of preserving US global power. The Nixon doctrine was about protecting allies. Jimmy Carter vowed to defend US national interests in the Persian Gulf. Ronald Reagan promised to push back against the Soviet Union worldwide. George W. Bush emphasized unilateral US military action. Donald Trump went on and on about “making America great again.”

      Joe Biden has an opportunity to adopt an entirely different kind of doctrine. He should make explicit what is now implicit in his executive orders, that environmental sustainability will hereafter be the major litmus test for American foreign policy. If this happens, it will be the first time that a presidential doctrine focuses on the good of the planet and not just the good of the United States.

      I’m sure that plenty of foot-draggers in Congress, industry and the media are just waiting for Biden to have his “sweater moment,” an updated version of the televised address when President Carter famously tried to elevate the energy crisis of the late 1970s into a larger discussion of morality and malaise. They will want to paint Biden as a green opponent of the working stiff, a clueless globalist, an America-laster. So, perhaps it’s best for Biden to avoid grand statements of doctrine for the moment and focus instead on painting US foreign policy green, issue by issue.

      The fate of the United States has never been more linked — virally, environmentally, economically and existentially — to the fate of the rest of the world. As such, there hasn’t been a better moment for an American president not just to look at the planet differently, but to join hands with other countries to make it greener.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      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

      The Green New Deal's time has come – but where has Labour's radicalism gone? | Adam Tooze

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      What a difference power makes.The past 18 months saw political defeats for the left on both sides of the Atlantic. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party came to an end after a resounding Conservative victory. The Bernie Sanders campaign went down at the hands of the Democrat establishment. And yet the bitter irony of 2020 was that just as the political hopes of the left were dashed, the strategic analysis of the Green New Deal – the centrepiece of its policy vision – was spectacularly vindicated.The Green New Deal demanded that social and economic policy should be oriented towards the immediate planetary challenge of the environment. Its proponents, groups such as the Sunrise Movement, put a “just transition” front and centre; this means fairly managing the social harms such as unemployment that would arise from an accelerated shift away from fossil fuels. Then, as if on cue, the coronavirus arrived, and delivered a devastating “inequality shock” forcing even the likes of the Financial Times to talk about a new social contract.The Green New Deal’s politics emerged from a recognition of the fact that there was unfinished business from the financial crisis of 2008; climate activists warned that we were harnessed to a dangerous financial flywheel and demanded that finance be turned in a constructive direction. The thinking was based on the notion that the status quo was the one thing that we could not have: the events of 2020 confirmed precisely how dangerous and precarious our reality is.In the US, this feeling was compounded by Donald Trump’s terrifying antics and the killing of George Floyd. Even Joe Biden, as centrist as it gets, has been moved to speak of four converging crises – Covid-19, the economy, racial justice and the climate. Nor is this merely a rhetorical framing. The Biden administration has assimilated a large part of the Sanders agenda. The double stimulus programmes planned for 2021 are unprecedented. The administration is clearly serious about climate. It is forced, by the balance of power inside the Democratic party, to put race and environmental justice at the heart of its policies.This assimilation of the left programme into the centre is made possible by victory. It is based on a confidence that a broad-church progressive coalition can win a majority in the US. Furthermore, the Republicans have done the Democrats the favour of vacating the middle ground almost entirely.The contrast to the UK is painful. Reeling from its bitter defeat, languishing in the opinion polls, Keir Starmer’s Labour party diagnoses a polycrisis too, but it consists not of issues of global significance, but of Brexit, the collapse of the “red wall” and the question of Scotland. Questions of identity overshadow everything. Rather than seriously questioning what the nation might be, as the combination of Trump and Black Lives Matter is forcing liberal America to do, Labour appears to be content with trying to reclaim the union flag from the Conservative party.Starmer’s long-awaited “big speech” last month was an exercise in sophomoric national cliche. He managed to be sentimental even in the passages about British business. References to the blitz and 1945 formed the anchor. The climate crisis got a single line, with one other passing reference. The Mais lecture by the shadow chancellor, in January, was weightier. Unlike Starmer, Anneliese Dodds did in fact seriously discuss the climate emergency, but it is no longer the organising framework that it once was, no longer the pacesetter, the imperative to action. The only thing that matters is to convince some key voters that Labour is responsible enough to be trusted as a steward of the economy. Though “acceleration” was one of Dodds’s key terms – a reference to the way the pandemic has amplified pre-existing trends such as flexible working and digitalisation – she managed nevertheless to offer a curiously muted vision of the huge challenges facing the UK and the world economy.No doubt the pollsters have fine-tuned these messages with target segments of the electorate. But if you do not belong to that audience, if you understand your identity to be complex and multiple, if you have ever been on the bitter end of the politics of patriotism, then flag-waving repels. If a little thought about society and politics has taught you to regard “common sense” as the most dangerous of snares, you cannot but worry about a party so desperate to please the Daily Mail.Labour’s retreat from radicalism means that the initiative belongs to the Johnson government. Having done Brexit, it can look to the future. It leads even on climate. After destroying the miners union in the 1980s, the Tories may end up presiding over historic decarbonisation. After vaccines they will claim Britain’s hosting of Cop26 as a victory too. Ahead of the 2024 election, the Tories will no doubt pivot to “fiscal responsibility”, but as the budget makes clear, they are spending as the situation demands. Labour is left to harp on value for money.The independent Bank of England created by Gordon Brown is now merrily buying bonds to finance Rishi Sunak’s spending. Whereas experts aligned with the Labour party were once leading a global conversation about redefining central bank independence in a progressive direction, the shadow chancellor now proposes to treat its independence as inviolable. Not so the Tory chancellor, who has added climate to the bank’s mandate.No doubt the Corbynite left was too in love with its own radicalism. But the Green New Deal was not radicalism for its own sake. It was radical because reality demanded it. Faced with the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath, the world historic presence of China, Trump, the escalating climate crisis, and an unprecedented global pandemic, what more is needed to demonstrate this point? A politics that does not want to mobilise around these challenges, which prefers to deal in patriotic pastiche, forfeits any claim to be progressive.The disinhibited politics of the new global right recognises this radical reality, though in the form of fantasy, denial and conspiracy. Global capital is swinging full tilt behind its own version of a Green New Deal. Hundreds of billions is now sloshing into renewable energy. The restructuring and job losses about to happen in the global automotive industry will put every previous reorganisation in the shade.In the age of the great acceleration, Corbyn’s politics at least rose to the challenge of recognising that the future would be different. Labour’s new look – the Little Britain to come – promises a nostalgic road back to the future. It is, in reality, a dangerous dead end. More

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      Can red wolves come back from the brink of extinction again?

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      There are perhaps no more than 10 red wolves left in the wild, and they are all in just one place: North Carolina.
      It is an astonishing statistic for a species once hailed as undergoing the most successful reintroduction programme in the US, providing the blueprint for Yellowstone national park’s much-lauded grey wolf rewilding project.
      “The [red wolf] programme has almost entirely crumbled since I’ve been working here,” says Heather Clarkson, who works with the environmental charity Defenders of Wildlife. “It took about 20 years to get the programme to a strong place, that’s the really sad part. Because now it’s crashed. Disappointed barely scratches the surface.”
      In January, following legal action by conservation groups including Defenders of Wildlife, the district court for the eastern district of North Carolina ruled that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), which had cancelled the red wolf reintroduction programme, must resume the release of wolves into the wild. This month the USFWS presented a new plan to the judge and he has given the groups that launched the lawsuit two weeks to lodge any objections.
      Start of the rewilding scheme
      The plan to boost the number of red wolves in the wild began in 1973, when the USFWS set out to capture as many of the remaining wolves as possible to establish a captive-breeding programme.
      In 1980, the red wolf was declared extinct in the wild. Seven years later the first reintroduction was made at the 60,000-hectare (152,000-acre) Alligator River national wildlife refuge in North Carolina. A breeding pair was released, and captive-bred pups were later fostered by the pack.
      At its peak, in 2011, there were as many as 130 red wolves back roaming the marshes, swamps and coastal prairies. Their recovery was the first time in the US that a large carnivore had been declared extinct in the wild and then successfully reintroduced. More

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      Republicans new favorite study trashes Biden's climate plans – but who's behind it?

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Green Light newsletterWyoming’s US representative, Liz Cheney, envisions a dark future for her home state under Joe Biden.If the new administration extends its pause on new oil and gas drilling on public land, it would endanger Wyoming’s economy, kill 18,000 jobs and cause the energy state to lose out on critical education, infrastructure and healthcare funding. Biden would be “cutting off a major lifeline that Americans have relied on to survive during this time”, she has said.But there is a problem with Cheney’s forecast. The numbers she is relying on came from an analysis that is the brainchild of the oil and gas industry.The Western Energy Alliance – which represents 200 western oil and gas companies – proposed the $114,000 publicly funded analysis to state officials, tried to provide matching dollars for it and stayed involved throughout its development, according to public records obtained by Documented and shared with Floodlight and Wyoming Public Media.In February 2020, a Wyoming state senator, who is also the president of an oil company, proposed the spending. The Western Energy Alliance sought to help fund the study but was unable because the industry was in serious decline. It did, however, spend $8,000 publicizing the report, as was first reported by Politico.Records show Governor Mark Gordon’s office was aware of and never disclosed the group’s deep involvement in the study.Now, the Western Energy Alliance is spending thousands more to amplify the warnings in an ad campaign against Biden’s climate policies. The numbers have been cited dozens of times in local and national newspapers, including in the New York Times in a reference to Wyoming officials’ projections.The data has become core to Republican messaging opposing Biden’s climate plans even as critics suggest the study might exaggerate economic impacts by as much as 85%. The author even appeared at a meeting of the Congressional Western Caucus in February, alongside Cheney.While industry-funded research is not uncommon, transparency advocates say it is increasingly being used to produce conclusions favorable to oil and gas companies in order to shape public opinion.“It’s a time-honored practice,” said Bruce Freed, the president and co-founder of Center for Political Accountability. “It gives cover to the industry … they’re not going to pay for anything that will undercut them.”The Western Energy Alliance first approached the University of Wyoming economics professor who authored the report, Tim Considine, in mid-2019 to ask him to write a proposal about his research for state officials, he and the group confirmed. Internal emails show the Western Energy Alliance president, Kathleen Sgamma, pitched the analysis to the governor’s office in February 2020.“Just wanted to let you know that I’m working with the Governor’s office about who will commission and pay for the analysis, so I’m making progress,” Sgamma emailed Considine.A month earlier, Considine had shared his proposal with Sgamma and then offered to amend it based on her preferences if it would “help your fund raising [sic]”.While Considine was conducting his study with state funds, the Western Energy Alliance was part of a team working with state officials to review the report before its release. The group’s spokesperson, Aaron Johnson, got Considine to change his methodology to count more possible economic impacts in Alaska. Johnson later told Considine that the study got “very positive results from industry leaders”.In response to this story, Sgamma defended the study, saying it was by a reputable professor and it shows the sacrifice that the president is asking of westerners.“The bottom line is we didn’t fund it, and that’s usually where the disclosure comes in,” Sgamma said.Considine maintains his analysis was fair and independent. Critics, though, have questioned his closeness with industry, including allegations that when he worked in Pennsylvania he was “the energy industry’s go-to academic for highlighting the positives, and not the negatives, of fossil fuel development”. Considine called the criticisms “an old canard”.“I do not feel that getting comments on my study from the Western Energy Alliance affected my findings. In my judgment there was no conflict of interest to receive industry feedback,” he said.Considine’s past work also includes giving expert testimony on behalf of the coal company Murray Energy in a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as conducting research paid for under a consulting agreement with the coal company Cloud Peak Energy.The $114,000 for the Wyoming study – funded by the public through the Wyoming Energy Authority and Wyoming State Energy Program – was proposed in early 2020 by former lawmaker Eli Bebout, who is the president of Nucor Oil and Gas and has received significant campaign contributions from the industry. Bebout, in an interview for this story, said he didn’t recall any direct involvement with the industry group.Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, declined to discuss the study for this story. “At this time, we believe the study speaks for itself,” said the spokesperson Michael Pearlman, pointing to a news release from December that did not disclose the industry involvement.Aside from the industry ties, the University of Wyoming study’s methodology has raised eyebrows among experts.Considine modeled two scenarios. In one, he considered a complete drilling ban on federal lands, which is not what Biden is proposing. In the other, he looked at a freeze on new leases, which is what Biden has done temporarily. Considine acknowledged in early emails to Sgamma that the latter would be difficult to do with existing data.Considine stands behind his conclusions. He said, if anything, his numbers were underestimates because he projected conservative productivity growth and low oil prices.But Laura Zachary, the co-director of Apogee Economics and Policy – which works with and on behalf of environmental advocacy groups – said the numbers that politicians have been quoting from Considine’s study are “very misleading”. She estimates the study exaggerates economic impacts by 70% to 85%.Another analysis of potential drilling policies, by the environmental group Resources for the Future, contradicts Considine’s conclusions of economic ruin for western states. It found the government could make oil companies pay more to drill on public lands and increase revenues going to states, while reducing climate pollution.“It’s not uncommon [in research] to take funds from industry,” Zachary said of Considine. “But it’s very important, obviously, to not have that guide what your findings are or your research methods as an academic.”The Biden administration has paused new oil and gas leasing on public lands. But companies are still drilling on previously leased lands. The climate pollution from fossil fuels developed on public lands is significant, and Biden has promised to scale it back.The state of Wyoming, meanwhile, has long fought to support fossil fuel development, given the industry’s importance for employment and revenue. The oil and gas industry alone represented nearly 30% of total state revenue in 2019. About 7% of Wyoming’s workforce is in the mining industries, which include oil and gas.The Trump administration heralded unprecedented new access to public lands for energy production, much to the chagrin of environmental advocates. If Biden’s nominee, Deb Haaland, is confirmed to run the interior department, she is expected to reverse course and prioritize the climate crisis.Wyoming’s congressional delegation voted against her nomination, arguing that she has extreme policy views and couldn’t substantively answer key questions. In one congressional meeting, Senator John Barrasso referenced a separate outlook from the American Petroleum Institute in explaining his opposition to Haaland.“I, along with other western senators, have consistently opposed nominees who hold such radical views, he said. “The people of Wyoming deserve straight answers from any potential secretary about the law, the rules and the regulations that will affect their lives and their livelihoods.”Go behind the scenes with the reporters at Floodlight. More

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      'A breath of fresh air': readers on women who changed the world in 2020

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      Amanda Gorman‘She was a breath of fresh air on inauguration day’She is a young, intelligent and brilliant woman who will accomplish great things for good causes such as feminism, [and fighting] marginalisation, oppression, racism, etc. Our world today needs women and men of this calibre in order to live better together. In this difficult period, with the Covid-19 pandemic, it was so wonderful to get a breath of fresh air on Joe Biden’s inauguration day, and the accompanying enthusiasm to maintain good mental and physical health. Young people, especially, need hope for a future that looks so bleak. Nicole Dorion Poussart, retired historian, Quebec City, CanadaGreta Thunberg‘She dedicated her childhood to defend this planet’She dedicated her childhood to defend this planet. She is still very young but knows how to address the public and express her ideas and ideals. I don’t know how she came to be so dedicated – it’s outstanding! We need people who can persuade politicians to do something and cut emissions, save our flora and fauna and the land.Australia could become a desert if we don’t do something about water and stop the multinational companies from making millions from destroying this environment. We have a beautiful country and lots of people I know want to keep it beautiful, but it is difficult. We need people like Greta – I hope she lives for ever! Nathalie Shepherd, 79, originally from Holland but living in Adelaide, AustraliaAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘She is a political powerhouse’AOC is a Democratic representative from New York’s 14th congressional district. She is a political newcomer and a rising star because of her popular democratic-socialist policies and ideas. It’s ideas like the “green new deal”, tuition-free public college, affordable housing and many more that have gained traction among the working class and future generations.Love her or hate her, you’ve got to admit AOC is a political powerhouse. She works tirelessly to amplify progressive voices that have been neglected by our government for decades. It feels really good having a member of the government actually care about the people rather than the handouts they receive from oil companies and evil corporations. Never has a member of Congress been so transparent and supportive of effective political reform. Abdullah Chaudhry, 19, student, Texas, USZelda Perkins‘She’s been really brave in speaking out against Harvey Weinstein’She has been really brave in speaking out about her regret around the NDA she signed [in 1998] after allegations against Harvey Weinstein, who was convicted of rape and sexual assault in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years in prison. Breaking the NDA, and the debate this sparked about how pernicious they are in enabling abusive behaviour to go unchecked, makes her a really important figure and unsung hero in the post-#MeToo landscape.She’s really committed and brave, and clearly not in it for the fame. She has articulated really well the hold that men like Weinstein have on the women who have come into contact with them, and why this is not just about Weinstein, but addressing a toxic power imbalance. Ruth, 45, LondonStacey Abrams‘She’s been nominated for the Nobel peace prize for her work in the 2020 US election’She is a US democratic politician, lawyer, author and voting-rights activist who played a significant role in getting the state of Georgia to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 US presidential election. She was also largely instrumental in ensuring that the new Democrat government had a working majority in the Senate by getting Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff elected in the runoff election that took place in January 2021. She has recently been nominated for the Nobel peace prize for her work in the 2020 election.In this time of political turmoil, I am inspired by Abrams because she has shown what is lacking in so many of our politicians in the UK and US – intelligence, honesty, bravery, transparency, decency, pragmatism, hard work and a wonderful sense of humour. She has shown that an individual can make a difference, and without cynicism. We should thank her, for we owe her a lot. John Glasser, 74, retired computer consultant, Tring, HertfordshireHannah Gadsby‘She touches on topics such as abuse and autism and puts them in easy words’She’s an Australian standup who has done two Netflix comedy specials. Her second one, which was released in May last year, was on her autism. It’s super-funny, but at the same time touches on so many important topics and subjects that are usually quite hard to explain. I’ve watched both her shows at least 10 times so far and I will probably watch them again at some point, because they don’t get boring.She inspires me by putting subjects such as abuse and autism in easy words and explaining feminist concepts so well. It’s highly educating and encourages me to fight my own feminist battles, to put my own struggles in words and explain them to others. I’m still much less agreeable than she is when I’m talking about feminism, so I hope I will be able to put things into words as lightly and at the same time convincingly as she does. Anna, Berlin, Germany More

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      US House passes historic public lands bill pledging to protect nearly 3m acres

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      The US House of Representatives has passed a historic public lands preservation bill that pledges to protect nearly 3m acres of federal lands in Colorado, California, Washington and Arizona.
      The act combines various bills that languished without Senate approval during the Trump administration. Key provisions include permanently banning new uranium mining on land surrounding the Grand Canyon, giving wilderness designation to 1.5m acres of federal land, and preserving 1,000 river miles by adding them to the Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
      “This is one of the largest public lands protection bills to ever go before Congress,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice-president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association. “Wilderness designation is the strongest protection there is to ensure the lands will never be developed. And it can’t be undone with the stroke of pen.”
      The bill, called the Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act, has strong support from the Biden administration, in part because it will help the president achieve his goal of protecting at least 30% of US land from development by 2030 in order to combat climate change.
      Still, the bill must first pass a divided Senate. Given partisan opposition to the measure from some Republican senators, approval could come down to Vice-President Kamala Harris casting a tie-breaking vote.
      Sponsored by the Colorado representative Diana DeGette, the bill passed the House in a 227 to 200 vote, generally along party lines. During debate on Thursday, Republican congressional representatives opposing the act argued that it would, among other things, inhibit firefighting abilities in areas close to or surrounded by wilderness in California and Colorado, and create additional burdens for land managers.
      “This bill won’t help the environment but will instead kill jobs and imperil our national security and American energy dependence,” said the Arkansas congressman Bruce Westerman, the highest-ranking Republican member on the House natural resources committee.
      The package of eight individually sponsored bills incorporated into the Act include:
      Arizona
      The Grand Canyon Protection Act would provide a victory in the decades-long battle fought by the Havasupai tribe, who live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, to protect their drinking water from uranium mining contamination. The bill permanently withdraws more than 1m federally owned acres north and south of Grand Canyon from eligibility for new mining claims.
      “Grand Canyon is the homeland of indigenous peoples, a primary driver of Arizona’s outdoor recreation and tourism-fueled economy, and a worldwide wonder,” said Amber Reimondo, energy director for the Grand Canyon Trust. “The risks of uranium extraction are not worth it now and never will be. We look forward to the Grand Canyon Protection Act becoming law.”
      California
      Four different bills significantly enhance public lands recreation opportunities in the Golden state. A new 400-mile trail along the central coast would connect northern and southern wilderness areas in the Los Padres national Forest. In north-west California, a total of 306,500 acres would be protected through wilderness designation. In southern California, popular recreation areas in the Santa Monica mountains and San Gabriel mountains would be significantly expanded and protected from development.
      Colorado
      Initially introduced by DeGette more than a decade ago, a Colorado measure will add 660,000 acres of public land to the National Wilderness Preservation System. While many of Colorado’s towering mountain peaks are already designated wilderness, the new bill specifically protects lower-elevation areas that are popular for recreation and critical wildlife habitat. Like all lands in the wilderness system, the areas will be off limits to motorized vehicles and resource extraction. An additional measure provides protection to 400,000 acres of federal land through wilderness designation and limiting oil and gas development.
      Washington
      This bill seeks to expand designated wilderness on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and adds 460 river miles to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. More