Beware the Return of Nuclear Power Planats

 As I sat down to craft a holiday commentary, I was distracted by the death knoll of the Fourth Estate, “the last firewall between democracy and autocracy,” as one commentator put it after the Washington Post and the LA Times announced they would not run their planned pre-election endorsement of a presidential candidate.  It was a stunning blow to the principle of a free press, guaranteed by the Constitution, violated now by billionaire bullies Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, and Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the LA Times because they were afraid to upset Donald Trump.

Then another worry gnawed at me. It also involved Jeff Bezos, one of many mega-moguls deeply committed to the re-emergence of nuclear power plants to support their own interests. Bezos is part of a group of investors who have invested in a Canadian company that supports nuclear fusion for start-ups and has raised about $20 million dollars. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is also invested in nuclear energy because like Bezos he wants to be sure he has sufficient electricity to power his mega-business.

According to Nucnet.org, pro-nuke researchers have claimed a “watershed moment” in the development of nuclear fusion technology after “a powerful magnet that [could] hold the key to future generations of unlimited energy” was tested. MIT researchers called it a record-breaking event that opens a clear path to fusion power, “hailed by some as ‘the holy grail of clean energy.’”

Let’s remember the three largest nuclear accidents that have occurred as nuclear energy is being positioned as a scientific miracle. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident at a power plant in Pennsylvania caused a cooling malfunction that  led to part of a reactor core melting down, releasing  radioactive gas.

The 1986 Chernobyl accident was the result of a flawed reactor design operated by inadequately trained personnel, according to World Nuclear.org, which tends to whitewash health and other effects of  nuclear disasters.  Steam explosions and fires ensued releasing radioactive material into the environment. Deposits of radioactive materials spread to many parts of Europe. Thirty people died within weeks of the event and 5000 cases of thyroid cancers were reported, while over 350,000 people were evacuated. It was the largest controlled radioactive release into the environment ever recorded for a civilian operation.

In 2011 the second-largest nuclear accident happened after Japan suffered an earthquake on its coast. A tsunami followed affecting the power supply and cooling capability of three reactors and several spent nuclear fuel storage pools. The result was the release of radioactive material into the air and water, with over 100,000 people being evacuated from their homes. A decade later several towns remained off limits and recently Japan has had to deal with radioactive contamination in wastewater.

Today the United States is the world’s largest producer of nuclear energy and accounts for over 30 percent of global nuclear electricity generation. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2022 the U.S. had 55 operating nuclear power plants working in 28 states. Since then, some have been closed because of safety concerns, and the one in California is slated to discontinue operating in 2025.

The U.S. National Regulation Commission (NRC) licenses plants for 40 years and plant owners can apply for renewal up to 20 years, but  there is no limit on the number of times a license can be renewed. The NRC has approved license renewals for more than 75 percent of U.S. reactors, many of which have been running for 40 years already. One plant in Florida is seeking renewal of a plant that’s already 60 years old.

According to a staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council ( NRDC) nuclear team, “These aging nuclear reactors cannot complete economically with other low carbon energy sources … or with investments in energy efficiency. … New nuclear power plant designs are not proven to be safe, reliable, or economically viable.)   

The NRDC also worries about nuclear proliferation due to renewed and new nuclear power projects. They point out that countries capable of enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium can manufacture nuclear warheads. Several countries have already stored materials and equipment that could be diverted to secret nuclear weapons programs. It’s frightening to note that the U.S currently stores over 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste disposal.  Most of it is kept where it was generated with no permanent disposal solution. 

The NRDC also notes that “with sea levels rising and increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, both operational and decommissioned nuclear plants that store nuclear waste on-site are at risk.”  Already, 55 of 61 U.S. cites are not designed to withstand flooding hazards, which could create a situation like Japan’s disaster.

Jeff Bezos and his billionaire friends don’t mind putting us in danger so that they can realize more obscene profits. They don’t need to worry that word will get out about looming problems with nuclear plants that could feed their need for massive electricity. They know how to ensure it never appears in the major newspapers.  Just buy them up and tear them down.

After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

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 Elayne Clift writes and worries from Brattleboro, Vt. 

The Twin Engines Driving Climate Disasters

 It’s been over 90 degrees where I live in Vermont for days on end. We can’t take evening walks, plant our gardens, or breath all that well since the Canadian wildfires first compromised our air so badly that some of us have experienced respiratory issues. We’re halfway through the summer and we have yet to spend time on the deck with friends. And all that happened before biblical floods started after record monsoon rains that just wouldn’t quit. 

 It's beginning to seem like we’ve been witnessing the final stages of our own well-crafted horror movie for a long time now and the credits are about to roll. Among them are extreme heat and massive fires, along with our prolonged denial of global warming and the urgency of acting to decelerate it.

 We’ve seen otherworldly orange skies, orange fires that resemble the surface of the sun, erupting volcanoes, cars, homes, and debris tossed around like toys in tornadoes, or floating away in immensely powerful rivers. On the news people are beginning to wander around looking like stunned zombies because they’ve lost everything and have no idea what to do next because things will never be normal again. We all know that there is more to come and our resources, financial and emotional, are running low.

 There are those who will say this is too doomsday a scenario to talk about, but we all know it’s going to happen again, and worse. We know that because climate change is rapidly driving unprecedented heatwaves that fuel wildfires -- the two engines hovering over us faster than we thought. We ignore it at our own peril.

 Here’s the reality. As the climate continues to warm, heatwaves will get worse – everywhere. It’s happening in Europe, China, India, the U.S. and pretty much everywhere. Temperatures are already soaring above 110 degrees Fahrenheit and towns in several countries are being forced to evacuate, including in Italy and Greece. Florida could be next. This is not hyperbole. Scientists have been warning us about a global pattern of rising temperatures largely due to human activity and too many of us chose to look away. Now even Pope Francis has called on world leaders to heed the Earth’s “chorus of cries of anguish.”

 “Every heatwave that we are experiencing today has been made hotter and more frequent because of climate change,” says climate scientist Friederike Otto, co-leader of a World Weather Attribution research collaboration.

 Scientists agree that manmade greenhouse gas emissions have rapidly heated the planet and further speculation and theories have led to hundreds of studies conducted for decades, especially   involving situations where heat, floods, and drought have occurred. The important thing is that the situation is getting worse and fast.  Heat events that happened once every ten years before are now three times more frequent, according to Zurich-based climate scientist Sonia Seneviratne.

 Hot, dry conditions help fires spread rapidly, burn longer, and rage more intensely. Heat also means less moisture is retained for vegetation so that it turns to dry fuel for fires. Kim Cobb, director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, noted in June that treacherous heat and fire had burned a large area of the U.S. that month killing more than a dozen people. She said the events embodied the “multiple stressors linked to man-made climate change” that the United Nations has warned about through its scientific panel on global warming. “If ever there was a moment to stop and re-evaluate our fossil fuel emissions trajectory, that moment is now,” she said.

 In his recent book, The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, writer Jeff Goodell says “global warming” sound too soothing, like we can just turn up the AC and all will be well. But, he says, the planet is burning and we’re running out of time, citing dying fish, melted asphalt, and melting glaciers.”  “When it gets too hot, things die,” he says simply.

 Noted environmentalist Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, is another truthteller. “We can’t stop global warming at this point,” he told Democracy Now during a June 7th interview. “All we can do is try to stop it short of the places where it cuts civilizations off at the knees.” He calls on politicians and ordinary people to cut into the status quo. “This is the last of these moments we’re going to have when the world is summoned to action by events and when there’s still time to make at least some difference.”

I’m with him. The time is now to turn off the horror movie we have produced and get to work on saving our planet, ourselves, and our kids’ future. Maybe then we can go back to the backyard deck with our friends, no longer complacent, and ready to do what it takes.

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Signals from the Sea

In the heat of continuing political madness many important issues that should continue to be addressed in news cycles have been sidelined or ignored.  Among crucial missing topics is the necessary reminder that we are living on a soon to be unsalvageable planet.

 As the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference known as COP 27 came to an end in November, the consensus report of 197 countries cited record breaking floods, deadly heat waves, drought, and other extreme weather events, along with related global energy and food shortages as reasons for urgent action before the window closes on at least marginal remediation.

 Those alarming events reflect global warming-related tragedies most often cited because they are the visible signs of impending disaster. The recent storms in California, bomb cyclones in the Midwest, floods from hurricanes in Florida and more speak to what the future holds. The problem isn’t just ours. Countries in Europe, Asia, Africa – indeed, everywhere – are struggling in the face of growing catastrophic events that threaten basic needs and daily life.

 There are two climate change problems that are seldom mentioned. The first is the enormous global threat to coral reefs. As NOAA points out, warming oceans contribute to coral bleaching and infectious disease in reefs as the earth’s surface warms. As sea levels rise, the intensity and frequency of tropical storms bring harm to coral reefs which are vital to marine ecosystems as well as societies that depend on natural resources economically, such as fisheries and tourism.    

 According to a 2021 report in The New York Times, because of climate change the world lost about 14 percent of its coral reefs in the last  two decades. In the report a coral reef specialist sounded a note of alarm. “Coral reefs are the canary in the coal mine telling us how quickly it can go wrong. It’s cause for great concern.”

 Coral reefs cover only a fraction of the ocean floor, but they provide huge benefits to people, according to various experts. Their fish are a critical source of protein for millions of people and their limestone branches protect coasts  from storms. Further, coral bleaching and ocean acidification, caused by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that gets absorbed by oceans, also constitute climate change impacts on the reefs, which has become a growing problem as global ocean temperatures continue to rise. Another problem is that coral polyps hold the food reefs need to live and when the polyps lose algae bleaching reefs may face their demise.

 Another overlooked global warming issue is its impact on migration. Multitudes of vulnerable people have moved away from their plots of land, their communities, their families, and their nations throughout human history as they try to adapt to changing and threatening living situations. Countries like Bangladesh are losing large swaths of land mass and coastal countries are now experiencing permanent land loss. Given that climate change is driving more and more people to become internally displaced or to flee to other countries as “environmentally displaced persons”, it’s clear that countries already face massive immigration challenges which will require addressing the issue in terms of policy and services more quickly and humanely than they do now.

 Clearly this kind of global movement is connected to poverty and economic marginalization along with socio-cultural needs resulting in upheaval and political mismanagement that frequently results in chaos and deprivation. It is not hyperbole to say that the climate crisis is indeed the canary in the coal mine.

According to a forthcoming UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report it is estimated that “143 million people are likely to be uprooted by rising seas, drought, searing temperatures and other climate catastrophes over the next 30 years.” The UN Commission for Refugees adds that “each year, natural disasters force an average of 21.5 million people from their homes around the world” who are denied refugee status due to a 1951 Refugee Convention agreement.  The draft report notes that “The things most Americans value most are at risk. More intensive extreme events and long-term climate changes make it harder to maintain safe homes and healthy families, reliable public services, a sustainable economy, thriving ecosystems and  strong communities.”

 “One problem is just the complete lack of understanding as to how climate is forcing people to move, “Amali Tower, executive director of Climate Refugees, said in a PBS interview. “There is still this idea in the Global North (industrialized nations) that people come here because they are fleeing poverty and seeking a better life, the American Dream. In Europe, it’s the same spin of the same story. But no one wants to leave their home. We’ve got to approach climate displacement as a human security issue and not a border security issue.”

 As Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) tweeted recently, “Stop saying we can’t afford to tackle the climate crisis. You know what we can’t afford? Devastating heat waves, deadly wildfires, flooding, famine, and $178 trillion in damage climate change will wreak over the next 50 years.”

 Clearly, the climate crisis is growing worse. Whether it’s coral reefs or leaky immigrant boats, the seas remind us that we can no longer minimalize, ignore, or trivialize what is happening.  We must face how to move forward, despite broken politics, poor media coverage, and continuing denial.

Actions Have Consequences: The Supreme Court Should Know That

It was like standing alone on a nuclear landscape. Like being in the center of a dystopian nightmare. Like being on a sinking ship without a life vest. At least that’s how it felt to me as the Supreme Court’s decisions were handed down, one after the other in their recent session.

Stunned and frightened like so many others were, I wondered whether the faux Christian, conservative justices on the Court had any idea what the consequences of their hideous decisions would be as they ended a term in which civil rights in America were systematically ended. Did they willfully ignore what would happen because of their Draconian decisions, did they not have a clue, or did they simply not care?

Was this the legacy they wanted to leave their children and grandchildren, let alone the rest of us? Did they have any sense of the consequences, intended or otherwise, for American citizens, and the planet? Do they grasp the context of our Constitution, or the concept of democracy? Do they really hate women and others unlike them this much?

As these questions roiled in my head, I thought about some of the consequences the justices’ rightwing agenda presented, beginning with what would befall women and girls who no longer have agency over their bodies and lives, or access to reproductive health care.

Among them is a ten-year old child pregnant by paternal rape being denied an abortion in Ohio,  women with pre-eclampsia – high blood pressure that can be fatal to mother and baby when not treated urgently, women with gestational diabetes, a condition that can be harmful to mother and baby, women with ectopic pregnancies in which a fertilized egg attaches to the Fallopian tube instead of the uterus, an emergency situation requiring immediate care to prevent a fatal rupture, women whose lives are at risk because of  drastic fetal anomalies.

 Now women with these urgent or other reproductive healthcare needs are too frightened to seek timely reproductive care while providers are increasingly unwilling to offer it, both for fear of being prosecuted. These examples offer a small glimpse into what will happen to women and girls because of the Court’s decision to end Roe v. Wade, but this much we know: Many of them will die. So will women who elect to have an illegal or self-induced abortion for any reason.

I also thought about the death knell being sounded for the fragile, struggling planet on which we live due to environmental degradation and the global warming crisis. Just these staggering statistics are enough to send chills down my spine: “Every hour, 1,692 acres of productive dry land become desert. We are using up 50 more natural resources than the Earth can provide.” What’s more, “We have a garbage island floating in our ocean, mostly comprised of plastics - the size of India, Europe and Mexico combined!” 

Further, “The effects of human-caused global warming are happening now, are irreversible on the timescale of people alive today, and will worsen in the decades to come,” according to NASA. “Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted, and trees are flowering sooner,” while “effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves.”

Against these chilling facts, six Supreme Court justices saw to it that the Environmental Protection Agency would now have limited ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants “making it nearly impossible to cut greenhouse as emissions any time soon.” In their dissenting opinion three justices said the majority had stripped the E.P.A. of “the power to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.”

When it comes to separation of church and state the conservative majority outdid themselves. Recent decisions included a ruling in favor of a Christian group’s plea to allow a flag with a cross on it to fly over Boston’s city hall. Another decision allowed for taxpayer money to cover tuition for students attending religious high schools, while the six Supremes decided in favor of a high school football coach who led Christian prayers on the playing field  after games.

Then there’s states’ rights. Again, the Scotus-6 opined against New York State's concealed carry law requiring state residents to have a permit to carry a gun in public.  That law’s requirements for a permit were specific and in the public interest but when two guys who wanted to carry guns publicly were denied permits, they appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled the state law violated the 14th and Second Amendments. The decision proffered that the Second Amendment protects the public carry of firearms and set up a new test for courts to determine whether a law violates the Second Amendment.  New York's law was struck down, and other laws like New York's are likely to be struck down now.

Is it any wonder these frightening, tip-of-the-iceberg rulings made me feel like we’re approaching nuclear winter?  Bundle up. The Supreme Court is just getting started.

Surviving the Fire Within

Some of us have heartburn. Others feel nauseous or sick to their stomach. A few experience a chronic pain in the neck, while sleep escapes us and night terrors abound. We are irritable and angry, sad and scared, quietly terrified, and decidedly depressed. We weep easily and work to keep anxiety at bay. 

These are just a few of the somatic and psychological symptoms our shared stress serves up as we try to survive in an era of Covid isolation, massive political crime and corruption, the unimaginable possibility of living in a dictatorship, and natural and man made disasters, all of which suggest a doomsday future and an atmosphere of lonely despair.

I simply cannot fathom losing one’s home and possessions under an ominous orange sky amid encroaching showers of sparks, on top of our shared calamities.  I can’t imagine living in Beirut, or a refugee camp that disappears overnight, or a detention center defined by inhumane loneliness. It’s hardly bearable to forego seeing one’s children or hugging a friend, or losing one.

Nor can I begin to know what it feels like to be a doctor, nurse, or other healthcare provider, hospital worker, ambulance driver, EMT, “essential worker” putting herself on the front lines day after day after exhausting day. What does it feel like to watch a person die alone, with only your gloved hand to hold? What goes through your head when you drive a refrigerator truck to a funeral home?

Moving stories of courage, creative interventions, and acts of love, even among strangers, abound to counteract these experiences of human suffering.  We need that antidote. That’s why it is important that we share the stories of both those who succumb and those who remain strong, and that we put a human face on this time of trauma and tragedy.

We need to know what the lost child looked like, what the grieving spouse said, what the lover feels. Their lost loved ones are not simply statistics. They were real people with real life stories whose pain in this moment is more than anyone should have to bear.  Like the fallen on 9-11, their lives had meaning, promise, hope. In their memory, we need to offer acts of kindness every day, and to receive such acts with grace. It’s also why we need to share our own emotional suffering with those who can offer us solace and validate the normalcy of our emotions in this oh, so trying time.

It would not be quite so difficult if it were not for the fact that thousands of lives were needlessly lost, if we were not a leaderless nation on the brink of collapse, if there were less hatred and violence in our midst, if the natural world were not screaming for help, if we had reason to believe that current events were a bizarre anomaly, a blip on the screen, a fluke. But sadly, the convergence of events feels like foreshadowing. It’s a clarion call, and if we don’t respond quickly and appropriately, there will be no turning back, no end of suffering, no metaphorical blue skies, no more time.

Still, if we are to defeat the fires, real and symbolic, destroying our world, and overcome the fires burning like brazen acid within our breasts such that they rob us of peace of mind and threaten our remnants of hope, we must carry on, together and alone. Each of us is called upon to rise every morning, to give solace where it is needed, to ask for help when that is needed as well. We must do what we can to save each other from the flames of despair, whether that be carrying water from the well, climbing the mountain of Martin Luther King, Jr, caressing a frightened child, cooking for the homeless, casting our vote no matter the obstacles,  marching and making good trouble in memory of John Lewis, in short, being fully human in a seemingly inhumane and inhospitable world.

Although things have never seemed as bad as they are now in this confluence of tragedies, we have come through hard times before. We have survived them, flawed and tattered, but ultimately and fragilily intact.  Now we are called upon to do more than survive. We are called to rebuild, restore, re-imagine, not just in the space we occupy, but in all the spaces of the world.

We must understand that we are all part of the Family of Humankind, and that it falls to our generations and to each of us to care about that family, to honor and respect it, to join in its hope and possibility, to open doors to our shared future as we close the portals of past pain and degradation.

It starts now, for time is running out, and “if not us, who? If not now, when?”

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Elayne Clift writes from Saxtons River, Vt.  www.elayne-clift.com

Imagining a New Normal

What will it be like, I wonder, when this terrible pandemic ends? Sure, we will never take toilet paper, pasta, or flour for granted again. We may feel less guilty about binge watching TV. Maybe we’ll even say “I love you” more often. But how will we be changed personally, professionally, culturally?  What lifestyle changes will we choose to make? What will “community” look like? Where will we work and how will we play?

No one knows for sure how we will be irrevocably altered by what has happened, but sociologists, psychologists, writers, and homespun “experts” are beginning to suggest answers to those questions, and to speculate on, or idealize, a remodeled future. Some of these people were invited to weigh in on a “new normal” in a recent article in Politico.

Communications professor Deborah Tannen thinks that having been so vulnerable to calamity will change us forever such that we will become compulsive hand washers who distance ourselves from others. Some analysts counter with the idea that we’ll be drawn together in real and virtual communities that we may not have considered joining or building before we experienced the loneliness of isolation. I agree with their assessment. I think we’ll become closer to family and friends, some of whom we’ve already re-connected with as a result of the pandemic.

Peter Coleman, a psychology professor, suggests that the shock of Covid-19 could put an end to the “escalating political and cultural polarization we’ve been trapped in, and could help us to change course toward greater national solidarity and functionality.” Sociologist Eric Klineberg adds that market-based models for social organization will fail. “When this ends,” he posits, “we will reorient our politics and make substantial new investments in public goods, especially for health and public services.” Given the blatant flaws in our health care system that have been exposed during the current crisis Americans will surely demand urgently needed healthcare reform, whether we call it Medicare for All or universal health care.

The digital lifestyle will likely take on new meaning and new tasks, as Sherry Turkle of MIT says. Whether it’s watching a performance, taking yoga or meditation classes, communicating with legislators, staying connected to long-distance friends and family, or telecommuting to work there are measurable benefits (and some drawbacks) that accompany such a change. One of the benefits is a cleaner environment, as demonstrated by the unpolluted air over cities like Beijing and Sao Paulo, Venetian canals no longer smelling like sewers, rivers running clean again, and the earth’s surface quieting down, which all attest to the benefits of living less frenetic lives and appreciating nature’s healing gifts.  

Two things that will make a comeback in the new normal are a renewed respect for science, and the realization that good governance along with ethical institutions are essential to a functioning democracy, writer Michiko Kakutani suggests. Applying lessons learned from the Trump administration’s failures, he believes people will realize that “government institutions need to be staffed with experts, and decisions need to be made through a reasoned policy process predicated on evidence-based science and geopolitical knowledge.  … We need to remember that public trust is crucial to governance, and that trust depends on telling the truth.”

Consistent with the urgency of good governance in this country is the recognition that we live in a globalized world.  Participation in international organizations, cooperation with other nations, and empathy for multitudes of people who live in conditions we cannot imagine, whether in shanty towns, refugee camps, detention centers, or on the streets has become essential. We can no longer avert our eyes when it comes to human frailty and suffering. 

In the U.S. we also can no longer live with the stark divide between an insanely wealthy one percent world while the 99 percent struggle to survive. As one pundit put it, change is inevitable and social justice actions will make the Occupy Wall Street movement look like child’s play.

There is another change that hasn’t received sufficient attention: More women are likely to be in leadership positions given their proven expertise in handling the pandemic and modeling leadership at all levels. Whether mayors, governors, community organizers, or prime ministers, women have proven their political and practical skills.

For example, New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s early actions, including shutting down tourism and imposing an immediate month-long lockdown, limited the spread of Covid-19 and the death toll dramatically. So did the actions of Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s president, who ordered all planes arriving from Wuhan to be inspected as soon as the outbreak there was identified.  She also opened an epidemic command center and ramped up production of personal protective equipment resulting in a stunningly low number of Covid-19 cases and deaths. These two examples help illustrate that women have proven their decision-making and managerial skills, especially in a crisis.

Julio Gambuto, writing for Cognoscenti, noted that “this is our chance to define a new version of normal, to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes us truly proud. …We can do it in our communities, in what organizations we support, what truths we tell. We can do it nationally by considering “to whom we give power.”

We need only look to New Zealand and Taiwan for models.

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Elayne Clift writes from Saxtons River, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com

Environmental Disasters Loom Large But Remain Unnoticed

These are hard and exhausting times. Impeachment issues and the president’s continual bombardment of lies and insults that call for correction are wearing us out, remaining front and center both in the media and our minds. As a result of our fatigue and alarm, and because media is abrogating its duty to report essential news outside of Trump’s tantrums, it’s not surprising that disastrous decisions by the president, and their consequences, have gone unnoticed. None of the actions and policy changes of the current administration is more urgently in need of increased awareness, and resistance, than those that relate to environmental degradation and destruction posing serious threats to our health and safety.

Among the most egregious decisions of the Trump administration is the recent “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” proposal promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This terribly dangerous idea would require scientists to disclose all their raw data, including confidential medical records, before the EPA would consider academic studies as valid. Scientific and medical research would be severely limited leading to Draconian public health regulations as well as environmental crises. EPA officials call the plan a step toward transparency, but it is clearly designed to limit important scientific information that should drive policy related to clean air and water, among other health-related environmental impacts.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump pledged to roll back government regulations as part of his pro-business “America First Energy Plan.” Once in the White House he immediately signed executive orders approving two controversial oil pipelines and a federal review of the Clean Water Rule and Clean Power Plan. Shortly thereafter, the Clean Water Rule was repealed.

The administration is allowing drilling in national parks and other treasured venues and opening up more federal land for energy development while the Department of the Interior plans to allow drilling in nearly all U.S. waters, opening up the largest expansion of offshore oil and gas leasing ever proposed. This year the administration completed plans for allowing the entire coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to be made available for oil and gas drilling as well.

You have only to look at who Mr. Trump turned to or appointed to head key agencies that deal with energy and environmental policy. For example, three of four members of a transition team mandated to come up with proposals guiding Native American policies had links to the oil industry and his first head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, challenged EPA regulations in court more than a dozen times. Pruitt also hired a disgraced banker with no experience with environmental issues to head the Superfund program, responsible for cleaning up the nation’s most contaminated land.

Other departmental gems include Andrew Wheeler, who replaced Pruitt. He was a coal industry lobbyist and a critic of limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Then there’s Rick Perry who was tasked with developing more efficient energy sources and improving energy education. At Interior, Ryan Zinke who didn’t last long. He was followed by an attorney and oil industry lobbyist who put his personal energy into deregulation and increased fossil fuel sales on public lands. At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a scientific agency that warns of dangerous weather, monitors atmospheric changes, oceans, and more, Trump’s guy was a lawyer and businessman who had advocated against NOAA.

In August, Mr. Trump instructed Sonny Perdue, Agricultural Secretary, to exempt Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the world’s largest intact temperate rain forest, from logging restrictions and mining projects. The president had already told the Department of the Interior to review more than two dozen monuments with a view to reducing the size of Bears Ears National Monument and other sacred land.

National Geographic has been tracking how the administration’s decisions influence air, water, and wildlife. Here are just some of the ways environmental policies have changed since Trump became president. The U.S. has pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, loosened regulations on toxic air pollution, rolled back the Clean Power Act, revoked flood standards accounting for sea-level rise, green-lighted seismic air guns for oil and gas drilling that disorient marine mammals and kill plankton, and altered the Endangered Species Act.

A recent New York Times analysis counts more than 80 environmental rules and regulations “on the way out under Mr. Trump.” So far 53 rollbacks have been completed and 32 are in progress. The Trump strategy, the Times points out, relies on a “one-two punch” in which rules are first delayed, then overridden by final substantive rules. It packs a big punch any way you look at it.

Not long ago I visited Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts where the philosopher, writer and transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau lived for two years in a solitary cabin in the mid-19th century. Often credited with starting the environmental movement, he articulated a philosophy based on environmental and social responsibility, resource efficiency, and living simply. He believed fervently that we must keep the wild intact. “What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” he asked.

It’s a question we should all contemplate in the runup to November 2020.

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Elayne Clift writes about women, health, politics and social issues from Saxtons River, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com

"Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink!"

Those are the words of “the Ancient Mariner,” in a 19th century poem written by Samuel Coleridge. They seem eerily, and creepily, relevant today. While we aren’t floating on a sea of undrinkable salt water, we are facing the threat of not having water to drink.

Flint, Michigan became the canary in the coalmine regarding the crisis in clean drinking water in this country when the nation learned that the drinking water there was full of lead. Looking to cut water costs, the governor had hired an outside firm that came up with the idea of getting Flint’s drinking water from the Flint River, known to be heavily polluted, instead of the Detroit River system. Contamination from the Flint River interacted with the aging lead pipes in Flint’s water delivery system causing dangerous levels of lead contamination for people without water filters.

But the issue of water standards is not just taking place in cities like Flint. It’s also occurring in rural places like Kentucky, Texas, Kansas and elsewhere. And then there’s the very real problem of water shortages occurring in many corners of the world due to climate change and other factors.

Many water problems in this country come from mining, waste from burning coal, and large-scale agriculture, along with aging pipes. In Marin County, Kentucky, for example, people often get their water from wells sunk into flooded, abandoned mines with water loaded with heavy metals. Other communities from West Virginia to North Carolina trace their water problems to waste produced from burning coal stored in liquid ponds that can leak or spill, according to a recent article in the New Republic. Further, in large-scale rural farming areas, nitrogen-based fertilizer slides off farmlands and makes its way into freshwater systems.

In 2016, Reuters released a report about America’s drinking water. It concluded that nearly 3,000 locations in the U.S. have drinking water where the lead contamination is at least double of that found in Flint’s drinking water.  And according to the Centers for Disease Control, at least 2.5 percent of children in this country have elevated levels of lead in their blood, the effects of which may not show up until adolescence.

According to a Michigan State University report referenced on www.desmogblog.com,  the U.S. could see large portions of the population unable to afford water in the near future. This is due to “a variety of pressures ranging from climate change, to sanitation and water quality, to infrastructure upgrades, placing increasing strain on water prices.” It would take an estimated $1 trillion dollars to replace aging water infrastructure in the U.S. alone in the next 25 years. That could triple the cost of water bills to households.

The water crisis is global. Cape Town, South Africa has been in the news recently because it could be the first major city in the world to run out of water. June 4th is designated as Day Zero. That’s when the city’s taps will be turned off, causing residents to have to line up at collection points to get 25 litres of water per day, per person. Climate change-induced drought and a growing population are said to have caused the current crisis.

So far, most of the people facing water shortages live in so-called “developing countries.” In many places women and girls walk miles to find water, sometimes several times a day. But even China regularly sees moderate to severe water shortages, and every year the vast country uses more water than rain replaces. An estimated 25 – 33 percent of Chinese people lack access to safe drinking water.

There is something even more frightening to contemplate about the world’s future, and that is the real possibility of water wars. Conflicts over water could easily break out in the Middle East, especially in Israel, Jordan and Syria. But water conflicts are also possible here. Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California all share water from the Colorado River. Those states have already begun negotiating how to manage the river’s limited water supply.

Statistics about water are telling. According to www.seametrics.com, by 2025 an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagues by water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world’s population will live in water-stressed regions.  780 million people in the world now live without clean drinking water. Extreme drought is expected to render vast expanses of land useless by 2050 while over the past forty years, as the world’s population has doubled, use of agricultural water has quadrupled.

According to the U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment of Global Water Security, by 2030 “humanities ‘annual global water requirements’ will exceed ‘current sustainable water supplies’ by 40 percent. By the year 2040 there will not be enough water in the world to quench the thirst of the world population and keep the current energy and power solutions going if we continue doing what we are doing today.”

The unquenchable thirst described in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is enough to make any mouth dry.  The thought that we may experience such thirst in our lifetimes is unfathomable, but it is real.