/ruling/cryptocurrency mining/Seneca Lake/New York State - On September 25 a New York State Administrative Law Judge ruled against Greenidge Generation’s appeal regarding the Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) denial of a Title V Air Permit. The judge found that granting the cryptocurrency mining operation, which is located next to Seneca Lake (psm article archives), an Air Permit was inconsistent with New York State’s Climate Law titled the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). The judge ruled that the DEC has the authority to deny permits under CLCPA which was passed in 2019. The Act enshrines New York State’s goal to achieve a zero-emission electricity sector by 2040, including 70 percent renewable energy generation by 2030, and to reach economy wide carbon neutrality.
/conservation/ greeen jobs/US presidential executive order - Vestiges of Roosevelt’s successful civilian conservation corp still mark the public lands of upstate NY and elsewhere including cathedrals of trees, trails people enjoy today, and well-crafted stonework. Can this be repeated; this time to help save the planet? President Biden has issued an executive order to form the American Climate Corps. The White House announced on 9/20/23 that the program will employ and train more than 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires. Is this scaleable and will it work? It did before and it should now.
/international/climate change/promises - On September 20 the Climate Ambition Summit was held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. As reported in Politico, despite growing scientific consensus and the reportings of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, that climate change was accelerating, some of the leaders of countries with the largest emissions were noticeably absent including the United States, China, Russia, France, and Great Britain. In the case of the latter, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced Great Britain would back pedal on the country's promise to to delay a ban on new gasoline and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035 and to ease off a plan to replace gas boilers with electric heat pumps.
/international - On August 28 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child issued legal guidance outlining measures governments must take to protect children from climate change. This legal guidance helps to build a connection between children’s rights to a clean, healthy, sustainable world and the environmental crisis, marking a major step forward in ensuring they live in a clean, healthy and sustainable world.
Organizers from several African countries protested the dominant presence at the inaugural Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi (September 4-8) of pro-western corporations, consultancy companies, and philanthropic organizations with selfish motives.
/government/NEPA - The Bitterroot Logging Project is a 143,340-acre logging and burning project spanning the length of the Bitterroot Mountains in western Montana that has been fast-tracked by the federal government, meaning the public cannot formally object to the Bitterroot proposal before it’s approved.
However, Title I of NEPA , which was established in 1970, contains a Declaration of National Environmental Policy which requires the federal government to use all practicable means to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony.
The problem is that NEPA has been increasingly short circuited by Condition-based management (CBM) practices, which characterizes the Bitterroot Project among others across the nation as an ‘emergency’ measure. CBM allows government agencies to push the envelope to see how far they can go without NEPA.
There is a fundamental need given climate change for inclusive public inputs that include land and fire managers, communities, and other stakeholders to develop a common understanding of risk and to determine strategies and actions to reduce that risk.
Unfortunately, government agencies follow the mantra they don’t know where things are going to happen until they get there. Effectively, this mantra, given its limited governmental meaning, excludes any participatory methodology such as a spiral-shaped process of assessments of various impacts that include unknown circumstances.
A critique of the Bitterroot Front Project Draft titled “Condition-based NEPA by Jon Haver frames questions the public should be able to ask toward more effective and informed government actions. This is important because CBM practices on an emergency footing, given climate change conditions, are likely to increase at the public's expense.
/solar/parking lots - Maybe solar farms are not the only or perhaps even the best solution toward mitigating climate change.
In Wired, the French Senate has approved a bill requiring new and existing lots with more than 80 spaces to be at least half covered with canopies of solar panels that sit over the parking spaces to be compliant by 2026. Call it an ecological alternative as rural solar farms can crowd out other land uses and negatively affect ecological systems. One could also say it helps balance the affects of too much concrete which is proven to contribute to climate change. And shoppers find some nice shade when needed.
/international - Globally, anemia is the third-largest cause of disability: Findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study found that nearly 1 in 4 people has anemia. This burden is concentrated among children younger than 5 years and adolescent girls and women, one-third of whom are anemic.
/ruling/Minnesorta/water protectors/justice - On September 21, 2023, a Minnesota judge summarily dismissed misdemeanor charges against three Anishinaabe water protectors who had protested at a pipeline construction site in an effort to stop the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline. The ruling was remarkable because it went against the reality that far too frequently judges rule in the name of justice which is increasingly biased politicized pedagogical territory. She ruled on justice itself and attached a memo demonstrating what that means.
/goverment/federal agency/US Supreme Court - Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo would require fishermen to pay as much as $700 a day for federal Marine observers to collect data onboard to help set fishing guidelines which they have done since 1976. With this case , the discretion allowed federal agencies is back on the table and back in the purview of the US Supreme Court which has already curtailed federal powers in the case of the Clean Air Act. Fishermen say asking them to pay for government monitors is an undue burden, particularly given that environmental conditions, e.g. climate change, have affected their catches. In the bigger picture, this case, which weakens the Chevron Doctrine, has broader implications for how US laws will be interpreted in the future.
/civil rights/vote/cop city- On July 27, federal district judge Mark Cohen issued an injunction ordering the city of Atlanta to allow anyone to gather signatures from registered voters in order to include DeKalb County stakeholders. The judge also extended the original deadline for submission of the petition of August 21 by several weeks.
In a counter attack the city of Atlanta then won a favorable decision from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals which nulified the deadline extension set by the lower court. As reported in Truthout this decision would effectively keep Cop City citizens' referendum off the ballot for the November elections and delay a vote until March, which would conincide with the Republican presidential primary.
Stop Cop City activists and community members have fought against the corporate and governmental spearheading of Atlanta’s Cop City project through every channel available for well over two years. The activists' efforts have included public comments in Atlanta City Council meetings, including one of the largest en masse public comments from diverse stakeholders speaking against Cop City, forest occupations, mostly peaceful civil rights actions, with occasions of violence, (which actions peaceful or not were indiscriminately weaponized by the office of Georgia's Attorney General Chris Carr), through marketing campaigns, and notably by doing the grueling work of collecting signatures in an effort to put the matter of Cop City to a public vote in the first referendum ever employed in Atlanta City.
Over 116,000 signatures collected by volunteers were submitted to the city on September 11. This was well beyond the needed number of signatures required to be on the ballot.
However, city officials appear to have put the referendum effort into a deep freeze saying their hands were tied because of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling. City officials also vaguely claimed the need for signature verification as a stalling tactic to avoid certification.
This follows all other actions on the part of Atlanta City officials designed to not put the matter of Cop City to a public vote.
Let’s be clear. What were people actually signing? A public vote includes those who are for or against Cop City. Everyone should have that right.
In Democracy Now, as disaster's have grown workers without legal status have grown as frontline workers. They work under dangerous and tough conditions and have little recourse, says Saket Soni, author of The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and immigrant dreams in America.
/New York/counties/asylum seekers/ As of September 10 nearly 60,000 asylum seekers were in New York City's care. Mayor Eric Adams said no more room at the inn. He called on the state's counties to share the load. Thirty counties instituted emergency blocking orders. The mayor then filed lawsuits against these counties. Some counties cited poor planning and lack of resources. Others said about Mayor Adams, you should have asked for our opinion first. A list of counties refusing asylum seekers from New York City and their reasoning here.
/back to cop city/atlanta/protesters/charges/ Well the month ends with a crescendo of protest when it comes to Cop City. A letter sent on September 28 to Attorney General Chris Carr , who indicted Cop City protestors as criminals, asked him to drop the RICO charges against the activists. The letter was signed by over 90 well known local and national organizations representing, civil liberties, human rights, and environmental organizations. The letter ends with the request. "As a matter of democratic necessity, we urge you to drop this selective prosecution of political dissidents." John Ruch writes in the Saporta Report, “By the logic of this indictment, every movement for social change would be a target for criminalization.”
/technology - Reported in Politico, California Gov Gavin Newsom recently signed an executive order to shape the state’s own handling of generative AI, and to study the development, use and risks of the technology. Newsom’s order was one of the most definitive moves yet to regulate AI.
/September 29/government/shutdown - There's not much to say. Robert Reich says it best as he recalls the history of his positions as head of the Federal Trade Commission's policy staff and then as the Secretary of Labor. The shutdowns then were not pretty, but this one, imposed by a group of thugs following a hostage blueprint created by the previous president, is plain ugly.
Colonizing by the wealthier classes around the world is escalating at the expense of traditional industries, lives, and community/regional cultures. In the US native grumbles are growing over takeovers such as this utopian promise rendered by silicon billionaires in California. The group’s acquisition of 55,000 acres in southeast Solano County is titled California Forever.
/development/public housing/government/Hong Kong - In Bloomberg CityLab, despite objections from elites, Hong Kong is pressing ahead with plans to build public housing on one of the city’s most exclusive golf courses. The government is taking back a large chunk of land from the Fanling Golf Course, where members pay $51,000 to join, to build 12,000 apartments.
/cop city/neoliberalism/interview - At Real News Network, Mansa Masa, the host of Rattling the Bars, holds a discussion with reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis, who visited the Cop City site, on the real causes of crime in Atlanta and elsewhere. The interview offers insights and behind the scenes looks at why Cop City exists and how it is likely to be duplicated in other cities.
/Latin America/housing/development/government/self empowerment - As reported in Bloomberg News, Chile has a housing shortage. The current President of Chile, Gabriel Boric, acknowledged that Chile has a deficit of more than 600,000 social homes.
Alternatively, Chile along with other Latin American countries, has a number of informal encampments; what Chileans call a “toma,” or landgrab, because they are built on seized property.
There is a long history of people occupying land illegally outside of government control and services in Chile and elsewhere because of lack of housing due to the failures of government programs and/or political will. It is a testimony to the human spirit that residents in these encampments manage to find the resources to make things better (women have often been key players in pulling resources together to achieve this).
The multiple shocks of climate change, in-migrations, unemployement, and the pandemic meant that the Chilean government did not have the capacity to follow through with plans to eliminate encampments like Flor de Población and to provide more housing. So, as in the case of many other encampments the residents stitched together a community with an eye to the future, using whatever materials were at hand. They illegally connected to services and a planned community emerged.
More progressive governmental plans in Chile call for finding ways to support these encampments and transition them legally into municipalities. Meantime, despite the risks of being on their own such as flooding risks in vulnerable areas, the leadership at Flor de Población along with the 124 families who reside there "...have put a lot of thought into how their community is run." This includes such things as a social structure, wider streets to allow water and fire trucks space to move, a cobbled together power grid, and a soccer field. Also, many homes are fully furnished and now built on concrete or cement foundations and some have running water. While the government is attempting to evolve housing strategies, the demand for space in this and other encampments continues to grow.
/coastal ownership/Massachusetts/race/beach access - In the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) weekly newsletter, Top of Mind, Massachusetts has more than 1,400 miles of coastline, only about 170 of them are truly accessible to the public. It’s no accident that coastal communities in the United States are predominantly white. Author Mardi Fuller writes that along with historic racism... even areas with strong legal access protections, poor transit options, expensive parking, and a lack of affordable lodging present serious financial hurdles, particularly for low-income people and people of color. There are also countless instances of landowners with properties next to public lands illegally obstructing entry points or harassing beachgoers.
/farewell- Dianne Feinstein died on September 28, 2023. As the longest serving US senator from California she left her mark. She fought for gun control, the environment, for women, and accountability in government. She is described as a "centrist democrat" who lost favor in a changing and chaotic political world. However, her character, committment, and skill as a politician will be difficult to replace. She was a remarkable leader and trailblazer who helped navigate the US through tough times with honesty and courage.
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