In what’s now Norway, the country with the world’s second-longest coastline, Neolithic fisher-farmers once harpooned enormous bluefin tuna. As centuries passed, Norwegians refined the arduous fishing process, becoming nimble conquerors of the sea. Plentiful species like herring became staples of diet and livelihood. But in the 1960s, annual herring catches that had measured 600,000 tons suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. The population had collapsed.

The cause, it emerged later, was technological. Norwegian fishers had adopted the power block to pull in nets mechanically, massively multiplying their catches. What they didn’t realize was how these hauls tested the limits of fish populations. The herring would take nearly 20 years to recover.

Now, new technology is allowing Norway to pioneer another kind of ocean harvest—and the consequences and damage could be even more devastating and longer lasting. On January 9, 2024, its parliament voted to permit deep-sea mining exploration, with hopes of being the first country to mine the seafloor commercially for minerals like copper and cobalt. Yet where the fishing industry needs stable fish populations, this prospective mining industry—which would extract to build modern electronics—has no inherent need to preserve life. The exploitation threatens to destroy complex ecosystems before scientists have even documented the life forms at risk.

Norway’s proposed mining is extreme even compared to proposals for deep-sea mining elsewhere. Most miners in other regions, including the central Pacific and Indian Oceans, want to harvest polymetallic nodules, which are mineral aggregations on flat seafloor areas. Mining Norway’s volcanic seabed would instead use remote-controlled machinery to completely remove hydrothermal vents and strip mineral crusts off seamounts.

It takes fierce machines to pry rocky surfaces from the seafloor. So far, the companies have kept their methods and equipment clandestine. Yet the enormous robots developed for ocean mining startups elsewhere offer clues as to what may be used: heavy-duty spiked drillers and cutters designed to crush into seamounts and vents.

These seamounts and vents, even inactive ones, support a surprising amount of life that can survive at extreme depths. The minerals on the volcanic formations offer hard surfaces for animals to cling to. Anemones attach to vent chimneys; sponge grounds grow, garden-like, across seamounts. Enormous basket stars with curling tree-like limbs whorl along the seafloor.

Deep-sea ecosystems also take a remarkably long time to establish themselves. On seamounts elsewhere, explained Tina Kutti, an ecologist at Norway’s Institute of Marine Research, some corals live for 3,000 years. While those exact corals may not live on Norway’s seabed, what’s there is likely ancient, too. According to Kutti, as a general rule, deep-sea fauna “grow really, really slowly. They have slow metabolic rates because there’s not so much food.”

And then there’s all the life that’s still undiscovered. The deep sea is incredibly hard for scientists to study. Their research vessels often have to beat harsh weather, while the scientists themselves have to search out geologic formations in pitch-black water, like “children wandering around a forest at night with a flashlight, trying to count trees,” said Eoghan P. Reeves, a geochemist at the University of Bergen. Sometimes, he added, they make discoveries “about places that have been studied for years, when we shine the flashlight in a slightly different direction.”

Even in more accessible marine environments, scientists have struggled to understand how ecosystems function. In parts of the once-bountiful Oslofjord, more than 80 percent of the cod are gone, thanks to overfishing and modern pollutants. Marine experts long thought ocean fish would repopulate the fjord, but recent research suggests uniquely adapted fjord fish are effectively irreplaceable. Other species have fared worse. Today, much of the Oslofjord remains nearly lifeless.

Farther north, fishers along Norway’s coasts noticed unusually large sea urchin populations starting in 1970. The grazing echinoderms devoured kelp forests, and other marine life disappeared with the kelp habitat. Only recently have researchers learned the cause: as technology increased catches and fishers targeted more species, the urchins lost their natural predators. The kelp is slowly growing back today.

One reason for these past collapses was a pervasive belief that fish were so abundant they couldn’t be exterminated—and therefore fishing didn’t need to be regulated. Ocean science, tracing causes of collapse and possible paths to restoration, was key to recovery. Herring made a comeback in under two decades through a fishing moratorium. Urchin harvesting might return kelp forests to the country’s north and central coasts. Even the decimated Oslofjord may stand a chance, with new fisheries management.

The relatively fast recovery of life in shallower seas has been a saving grace. But the consequences of deep-sea mining could last far longer than those of overfishing, given the slow pace of the ecosystems’ regrowth. Species that die at that depth might take centuries to regenerate, according to Kutti. For some, regeneration may not even be possible.

Unlike with coastal environments, scientists are essentially starting from scratch to understand the deep sea. They currently lack the knowledge and technology to detect the damage deep-sea mining might cause—let alone regulate or mitigate it. Norway’s newly approved exploration process requires companies to conduct environmental baseline surveys. Yet these surveys will be of limited use, as they’ll only target areas with potentially attractive mineral deposits. “We have no data below 800 meters,” said Kutti. “It’s been shocking to us that the government hasn’t taken any big initiatives to start studying what fauna lives there on the seabed and in the water column.” Without independent research of the whole seafloor and how its ecosystems connect, attempts at regulation become shots in the dark.

“We [Norwegians] have a close connection to the sea, but also a history of using technology and bravery to conquer the natural power of the sea in quite brutal ways,” Truls Gulowsen, leader of the Norwegian Association for Conservation of Nature, told me.

While humans are capable of decimating ecosystems, we’re equally capable of safeguarding them by implementing restorative and protective measures. But there is another option, too: innovating away from environmentally harmful extraction. One alternative to deep-sea mining might be urban mining—recovering and recycling minerals from our built environment. Innovation isn’t just technology, after all. Sometimes, it’s the creativity to reimagine how things get done.

The post What Will Deep-Sea Mining Do to Norway’s <br>Oceans? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In 2020, Edge Cable Holdings, a Facebook subsidiary, was burying a new fiber-optic cable into the seabed near Tierra Del Mar, Oregon. Working beneath a rugged mixture of basalt rock mounds, unconsolidated sands, and sandstone bedrock, the company’s drilling operation went awry. Stalled out, they ditched their metal pipes, drilling fluids, and other construction materials in the ocean: Out of sight, out of mind.

When Oregon’s Department of State Lands learned of the abandonment, they ordered Edge Cable Holdings and Facebook (now Meta) to pay a fine. But the damage was done. Two sinkholes formed along the installation path and most of the materials will remain lodged in the seafloor forever. These items, and thousands of gallons of drilling fluid, pose an ongoing risk to the surrounding seafloor ecosystem. Despite public outrage, the company returned to complete the cable in 2021, with debris from the first attempt still lodged in the seabed.

The cable was not the first to slither into Oregon’s stretch of the Pacific Ocean, and it’s by no means the last. Big technology companies including Amazon, China Mobile, and Google are flocking to Oregon’s coastline to land transpacific fiber-optic cables. Most recently in August 2023, the Department of State Lands approved a 9,500-mile fiber-optic cable connecting Singapore, Guam, and the United States.

What has transformed Oregon into an undersea cable hotspot—and how is the installation process affecting a vibrant ocean ecosystem? The explanation resides in tax breaks, swift permitting processes, cheap energy, vast amounts of open land for data centers, and a historical carelessness for the environment shared by the state and tech companies alike.

Fiber-optic cables transmit data with pulses of light through thin glass fibers. In 2022, they provided over 98 percent of the world’s internet services and international phone calls. There are more than 745,000 miles of submarine fiber-optic cables in operation around the world—that’s enough cable to wrap around the Earth’s equator more than 29 times. It’s the work of cables, not satellites, that connect us on a global scale.

Although undersea cables seem to be torn from the pages of a futuristic science fiction novel, they aren’t a new technology. The first functional telegraph cables crossed the Atlantic seabed in the 1860s.

The Pacific, a wider and deeper ocean basin and therefore more difficult to wire, received its first transoceanic cable in 1902. By the early 1900s, the global seafloor hosted around 200,000 miles of telegraph cables. And by the 1950s, that number reached nearly 500,000 miles of telephone and telegraph cables, with fiber-optic cables first joining the mix in the 1980s.

Back then, many transpacific cables landed in California, Washington, and British Columbia, where they could link up with transportation hubs and industrial centers on land. That began to change in 1991, when Oregon landed its first transpacific fiber-optic cable. Called the North Pacific Cable, the privately owned line connected Oregon to Alaska and Japan. In the three decades since, the state has welcomed a new fiber-optic cable every four or five years, in tandem with new data centers—large, high-security buildings that store rows of servers. These servers host the internet’s millions of websites.

There are significant onshore incentives for cable owners to land their lines in Oregon. Oregon’s “enterprise zones” tax-exemption program allows individual towns to negotiate property tax breaks for big construction projects, thereby saving companies millions of dollars each year. In exchange for the tax breaks, tech companies provide a small influx of jobs and tax revenue to small communities hurting from the decline of the timber industry. In 2015, Oregon lifted its cap on enterprise zones to attract even more data centers, just as more cables arrived along the shoreline.

Consider Meta, which owns a 4.6 million square foot data center complex in rural Prineville, Oregon. Although it’s far from the ocean in a former timber town, this data center connects to a network of underground fiber-optic cables, including the controversial undersea cable installed near Tierra del Mar. In 2015, the Oregonian reported that the data center complex received $30 million in tax breaks that year alone.

For Meta, as well as Amazon, Google, and Apple, Oregon offers a win, win, win.

So who exactly is losing?

The coastal ecosystem. During installation, it’s standard practice to bury cables multiple feet into the seabed to avoid snags by fishing vessels. The most common burial method is plowing, during which a remotely operated vehicle cuts a ditch into the seafloor and inserts the cable into the trough. Another method, jetting, uses high-pressure fluids to liquefy sediments on the seafloor, easily slicing a clean line into the seabed in which the cable can burrow. Companies also use directional drilling to bore diagonally into the seabed from the shore. All of these methods squish or displace any worms, crabs, sea stars, urchins, anemones, corals, or sponges living within the trenching path.

Once installed, submarine cables settle into the seafloor ecosystem. In search of hard substrate to call home, marine life will colonize the cable’s exterior. After a few decades of service, cable owners have historically abandoned their lines in the ocean, a decision that is both cheaper for companies and often results in less disturbance for colonizing species. Inert but not biodegradable, most dead cables will sit in the ocean indefinitely, hidden from the public who is usually none the wiser.

The 2020 Facebook/Edge Cable Holdings abandonment prompted Oregon to pass a 2021 law instituting firmer planning and decommissioning regulations for new undersea cable projects. Still, the increasing scrutiny doesn’t appear to be slowing the big tech companies. As Amazon builds its recently approved line to Guam and Singapore, the tech giant is also building another data center in Umatilla, Oregon, a small town on the Columbia River.

Data centers are no better for terrestrial environments than submarine cables are for marine. The buildings suck significant amounts of power from the grid. Oregon’s renewable energies, like hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River, can’t cover data centers’ growing energy demands, meaning utility providers must tap into fossil fuels and increase their greenhouse gas emissions. Despite Oregon’s efforts to decrease the state’s carbon footprint, some regions are moving backward in the fight against climate change. Big tech companies, and their big buildings, are spurring that reversal.

Across Oregon, communities and ecosystems are confronting the physical impacts of a world that runs on internet—impacts that our regulatory systems have yet to reckon with.

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When I was growing up in the ’80s in Santiago, Chile, during the Pinochet dictatorship, air quality was the environmental problem most present in our lives. It determined whether we could drive that day, how overwhelmed hospitals would be, and whether or not we would have physical education at school.

Global warming was unheard of. And plastic was our friend: a cheap, versatile, and durable material that let us play, move about, and simplify our lives. We never anticipated its long-lastingness would become a problem.

During those politically tumultuous years in the country, my childhood was marked by a comforting routine. We still had four recognizable seasons, with gray and rainy winters and long, warm summer days. On Sundays my family ate lunch at my grandparents’ apartment: white rice and turkey topped with applesauce, boxed ice cream and “dulces chilenos” (traditional sweet pastries) for dessert, and Coca-Cola or bottled juice to drink—a special treat reserved only for weekends.

In my household, among my father’s few domestic responsibilities was being in charge of the reusable bottles. I can recall how diligently he kept tabs on them, filling their crate in the laundry room to ensure that each PET (for polyethylene terephthalate) or glass bottle we used found its way back to the market.

In those days, deciding to use returnable bottles was not necessarily driven by environmental consciousness or finances. It was simply how things were done. Buying liquids meant planning ahead, returning empty bottles to our local Almac (short for almacén, or grocery store)—which later became Ekono (económico, Spanish for thrifty), and then Lider (acquired by Walmart in 2009). My dad would insert the bottles one by one into the mouth of a reverse vending machine, and receive a ticket. Then, when he brought the crate, filled with new drinks, to the checkout counter, he would present the ticket and get a discount.

In 1989, Chile had its first presidential election in 20 years. Democracy returned and a new sense of freedom emerged. The country was not only experiencing important political and social changes, but also economic growth that promoted development and consumption. Soon, going to the grocery store became an overstimulating family trip with upbeat music, store specials announced over speakers, and furry “mascots” offering hugs and frightening kids. Previously predictable shelves now showcased new brands, with fancier packaging.

With all the new choices, consumer behavior changed too, spontaneous purchases became the norm to many Chileans, and planning ahead fell by the wayside. The bottle vending machines vanished from supermarkets—supposedly due to high maintenance costs and the need for extra personnel to handle the delicate glass bottles. We began buying single-use plastics. Our family’s old red crate never left the house again.

Plastic was not originally intended for single-use. Marketers promoted Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic invented in 1907, as “the material of a thousand uses.” Its logo was the symbol of infinity. But somehow, the promise of making life easier turned throwaway into a lifestyle.

In the years since, plastic production has sharply increased worldwide, more than doubling over the last two decades to more than 450 million tons annually. It contributes to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions, and disproportionately affects marginalized communities living close to plastic production and waste sites. A great deal of plastic waste ends up in the oceans, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a U.K.-based organization that advocates for a circular economy.

On our current track there could be more plastics than fish in the seas by 2050. This waste degrades marine habitats and endangers species. It also poses threats to human health through the food chain, and affects the tourism, fishing, and aquaculture economies.

Currently, 50% of the plastic produced worldwide serves a single-use purpose. If we reused just 10% of our plastics products, we would divert almost half of the plastic waste that winds up in the oceans each year.

Chile, where things are once again shifting, can help show the way. There, in 2012, an entrepreneur named José Manuel Moller brought back the old vending machines—with a new twist. For low-income households in Chile who live day-to-day, non-perishable staples like rice became unaffordable when sold in one-kilogram, pre-packaged plastic bags. Such families had to purchase smaller bags, with significantly higher costs per gram—in effect, paying a “poverty tax.”

To address the problem, Moller’s company Algramo began dispensing products such as rice, beans, lentils, sugar, and laundry detergent into returnable containers, installing vending machines in small local grocery shops to distribute the items. It made the staples affordable. It also helped small businesses and low-income customers reduce plastic waste.

Over the years, Algramo extended its reach from Chile as far afield as supermarkets in the U.K. Recently, Moller received the Champion of the Earth Award, one of the United Nations’ highest environmental recognitions. Chile has further encouraged reuse through new regulations like the country’s 2022 single-use plastic law, which not only prohibits disposable utensils like forks, knives, straws, plates, and cups, but also compels supermarkets and convenience stores to provide and receive reusable bottles.

While working for the Chilean Plastic Pact, part of the Plastics Pact Global Network, which connects national and regional initiatives to implement solutions towards a circular economy for plastic in response to global plastic waste and pollution, I’ve learned that the problem is not plastics, but the way we use them. That is why the goal is to build a new plastics economy that allows this long-lasting material to circulate endlessly, never reaching landfills or littering our oceans. Recycling alone, which reaches only about 9% of the U.S.’s plastic waste, won’t be enough. Reusable packaging is key.

I see glimmers of promise.

In the U.S., nonprofits like Upstream and companies like Blueland are leading the push toward reusable packaging. Last week representatives from 175 countries are meeting in Canada to advance a legally-binding global treaty to end plastic pollution, following previous rounds of talks in Kenya, France, and Uruguay. Reuse standards for global scalability and its possible financial mechanisms should be a central part of the document.

For me, reuse connects me to my Chilean childhood, a time when life was simpler and followed a different rhythm. It’s time to return to the symbolic red crate.

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On October 19, the United States and Mexico announced that they had formed a panel to review an ongoing dispute over corn. Though drug trafficking and migration tend to take center stage in the relationship between the two countries, for months, they have been engaged in another type of conflict—a food fight.

In 2021, Mexico’s Supreme Court outlawed genetically modified corn seeds, constitutionally enshrining the argument that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) permanently damage biodiversity, that genetic diversity within crops is indispensable for responding to climate change, pests, and disease, and that corn’s diversity in particular is vital to food security for Mexico and the globe alike. In February of this year, the country followed the ban with a decree outlawing GMO corn for human consumption.

In response, the U.S. has argued that Mexico is violating the updated North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, now called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Trade officials, Congress, and lobbyists from the U.S. and Canada, anxious over the prospect of lost exports, have painted Mexico’s decree as protectionist and emotional. But Mexico’s insistence on its right to regulate GMOs isn’t just about corn. It’s a major step for rolling back free trade’s homogenization of farming, food, and culture worldwide.

GMO foods became commercially available in 1994, the year that NAFTA took effect. In GMO crops, genetic material from a different organism is inserted into a host plant’s DNA. Biotech firms use the technology to produce desired traits in crops, such as resistance to pests or chemical herbicides.

The overwhelming majority of U.S. corn is genetically modified. GMO methods typically increase harvest outputs, and have helped the U.S. become the world’s leading producer and exporter of the grain. Simultaneously, free trade policies that favor GMO crops have turned Mexico—corn’s place of origin and the center of its genetic diversity—into one of the world’s largest importers of the grain.

Mexico has at least 59 distinct corn races, providing genetic reservoirs that are unmatched anywhere else in the world. For Mexicans, maíz (corn) is the most important food item for calories and household budgets. Maíz is central to tamales, pozole, huaraches, and more, but its importance also goes beyond meals. Corn is a cultural inheritance. Indigenous communities see it planted into origin stories like the Mayan text Popul Vuh and represented in Aztec gods like Cintéotl, who rose from under the ground to protect maíz.

In 1994, however, NAFTA eliminated tariffs protecting Mexican corn farmers, arguing that everyone would benefit from lower-priced U.S. corn.

The reality was different. After NAFTA was enacted, nearly 5 million Mexican farmers—most of whom grew at least some corn—lost their rural livelihoods. At the same time, the agreement opened the door for processed imported corn products in junk and fast food, causing dramatic rises in obesity and diabetes.

Then, in 2006-2007, corn prices skyrocketed when energy markets drove up demand for ethanol, the corn-based energy source, to offset high oil prices. Because Mexico was reliant on imported corn by this time, the country experienced a “tortilla crisis,” with consumer prices for the staple spiking.

The GMO ban was put in motion in 2021, when Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced a phase-out of GMO corn, to be effective by February 2024. Conceding to U.S. pressure, this year’s decree limited its ban to corn for human consumption, such as that used for tortillas or masa (dough). Mexico will still import corn-based animal feed, the primary American export, and can still import other GMOs, like cotton and canola.

In their ongoing and aggressive opposition to the decree, U.S. trade and agriculture officials have argued that there is no scientific basis for banning GMO corn. But the truth is there is no international consensus on GMO safety.

For years, Mexican scientists have raised concerns about multiple types of dangers from GMO corn. For instance, recent research found significant amounts of glyphosate—a herbicide used to farm GMO crops that a World Health Organization agency has determined likely causes cancer—in the urine of Mexican children, including newborns. This is expected to be from consuming GMO corn, either through direct consumption or exposure to the mother’s diet through breastfeeding.

The scientists have also shown that GMOs damage the plants themselves. GMOs disrupt plants’ natural growth processes and their gene sequencing, which determine their morphology and physiology. Because corn is fertilized through open-air pollination, it’s particularly vulnerable: just a light breeze can blow pollen from GMO plants into fields of non-GMO corn, or maíz nativo. Recent plant gene and data research into maíz nativo has shown that the non-GMO crops now have a reduced capacity to respond to threats like drought and invasive species.

Even as Mexico believes it has good reasons for outlawing GMOs, the U.S. says it does not have the right to do so. But there are multiple legal avenues for Mexico to argue that its ban is allowable under the USMCA.

First, the free trade agreement does not require Mexico to import GMOs. Chapter 3 expressly states that the agreement does not mandate any “authorization for a product of agricultural biotechnology to be on the market.” Second, Mexico can point to the treaty’s allowance for domestic controls over food safety. Chapter 9 allows each country to adopt measures it “determines to be appropriate” for “protection of human, animal, or plant life or health.”

Finally, Mexico can point out that Chapter 24 specifies that environmental issues—including “conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity”—are matters of national sovereignty.

In fact, environmental controls were one of the key selling points for the trade treaty to be approved by U.S. Congress. American legislators worried that if Mexican businesses did not comply with environmental regulations, such as over clean air or clean water U.S. exporters would be undercut.

Unfortunately, in the current dispute, the trade pact’s environmental clauses risk being subject to a double standard, with enforcement sought when environmental protections serve U.S. exports but ignored when they seek to safeguard access to a daily staple and maintain the health and safety of Mexican people.

But even as the countries treat these issues as questions of national sovereignty and economics, the ability to regulate GMOs is also of global concern. Corn is the world’s most grown crop, and maintaining its genetic diversity is crucial for food security worldwide: If a bacteria or fungus evolves to wipe out GMO corn, for instance, it’s crucial that there are other strains still available to grow. To preserve the biodiversity of corn—and of other crops—trade agreements must allow governments to craft and enforce policies that promote sustainable farming and safe food.

In this light, Mexico’s decree is an example for trade officials worldwide. After three decades of prioritizing commerce, it’s time to prioritize other aspects of cross-border coexistence and conviviality, like biodiversity, food security, and public health.

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On December 30, 2021, residents of Curtis Bay, a neighborhood in southern Baltimore, felt a loud boom. The foundation of the row homes and two-story buildings shook as though there had been an earthquake. Instead, a fireball had exploded, engulfing the south service entrance of a tunnel at the CSX coal pier. Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) issued a cease-and-desist to CSX, a multi-billion-dollar rail corporation, due to poor air quality and the damage to the structure. But once MDE agreed that the air quality levels were acceptable, the agency deemed the incident under control, and allowed CSX to continue with business as usual.

The primary cause of the explosion in Curtis Bay was methane gas buildup and coal dust in the coal silo towers. CSX claimed it was an isolated incident. But the massive explosion illustrates the ways that existing state environmental regulatory apparatuses fail to adequately protect community residents from polluting industries, whether out of a lack of political will or of resources to regulate.

In response, Baltimoreans have taken matters into our own hands. Bringing together a coalition of residents and environmental/climate justice movements, we have built a direct action and long-term campaign that highlights the importance of solidarity across Baltimore communities and state lines, and that connects all nodes of the commodity chain. This on-the-ground work can serve as a model for other communities in the worldwide fight to breathe clean air and drink unpolluted water.

The neighborhood of Curtis Bay has long been Baltimore’s “sacrifice zone”—an area whose residents, largely communities of color and poor whites, bear the brunt of the pollution and adverse health effects that stem from industrial development. In the late 1800s, the neighborhood stored guano harvested from nearby islands to fertilize Maryland’s tobacco-farming lands. This evolved into chemical and fertilizer companies, and today we see non-renewable fossil fuel storage and export, the nation’s largest medical waste incinerator, the city’s landfill, and more than 15 other polluting industries. The open-air coal pier is just one more hazard among many. The neighborhood has the highest respiratory illnesses from toxic stationary emissions in the entire U.S.; at this year’s Earth Day celebration in Curtis Bay, one resident noted: “We have seen people spitting up black dust. We wash cars and a quarter inch of dust layers our cars … I pulled 400 pounds of coal dust out of my gutter.”

After the CSX explosion, Curtis Bay residents held two city council hearings to ask for governmental enforcement of environmental and human health regulations. At the first, the representatives from CSX failed to show up. At the second, residents were only given two minutes to speak. The representatives from CSX were given far more time to assure residents that they had increased the tunnel’s airflow, and that no more explosions would take place.

After the meetings, the city council made the decision not to require MDE to impose additional regulations on CSX. This wasn’t surprising, given that the agency was in the process of being defunded by then-governor Larry Hogan to the point where it was incapable of regulating industries and protecting residents from hazards. Beyond just CSX, Maryland residents are seeing an uptick in hazardous chemical leaks and explosions. This May, between 50 and 75 gallons of nitric acid spilled from a vacuum truck owned by W.R. Grace Chemical; despite complaints from residents about foul odors, coal dust, and other toxins, MDE has failed to investigate the incident.

Given this inaction from both MDE and city government, residents of Baltimore have had to take matters into our own hands.

First, we studied other cases. In Richmond, California, city council members held federal railways accountable and moved towards covering coal dust on trains and protecting communities. In November of 2021, the City of Richmond reached a historic agreement with the Levin-Richmond Terminal Corporation to phase out storage of coal and petcoke, a byproduct of oil refining that burns similarly to coal but with even higher carbon emissions, by the end of 2026.

Next, we held two protests at the Curtis Bay CSX Coal Pier to galvanize city-wide support for a broader campaign against the transport and storage of coal in Baltimore. At the second protest, borrowing tactics from the U.K.-headquartered movement Extinction Rebellion, we sang Christmas carols that focused on the fossil fuel industry’s role in exacerbating the climate crisis, and hung a banner on the gate to the coal facility that read “No Coal for Christmas.”

Curtis Bay residents are also filing a class action lawsuit against CSX, seeking damages and accountability following the explosion. The complaint also seeks to create a medical monitoring fund, because residents’ exposure to coal dust, lead, arsenic, silica, and particulate matter creates an increased risk of developing latent illnesses, including cancer.

Finally, the Curtis Bay Community Association and the South Baltimore Community Land Trust (SBCLT) have been working with a team of scientists to collect real-time air pollution and meteorological data from residential and industrial areas of Curtis Bay, and are using trail cameras to capture activities at the CSX Coal Terminal. Their monitors and data have been used to get MDE to do their job: Many of the scientists have been in direct contact with representatives from MDE to illustrate “unsafe” plumes in the air or elevated levels of PM 2.5 and PM 10, and have been encouraging them to declare an air quality emergency. But even with the data, action and regulation have been an uphill battle.

In an era of austerity, in which environmental protection agencies have been gutted, residents and citizen scientists are having to do the work of government agencies. But global supply chains are far bigger than the jurisdiction of a given regulatory apparatus. While these actions within Baltimore are important, it is also essential to build long-term, solidaristic connections with other impacted communities along the CSX coal line and supply chain—to make a movement that links labor exploitation of coal workers and train conductors to residents living in sacrifice zones. Those of us from affected areas must penetrate regional, state, and even international bounds in our resistance. In the upcoming months, we will follow our political commitments along the rail lines, traveling to Appalachia to better understand labor conditions within CSX and in other communities impacted by coal dust. Eventually, we hope to bring about a massive work stoppage or regional strike, and then incorporate the labor struggles of places where our coal travels, like Japan and Brazil.

By building a climate and environmental justice movement at the intersection of extraction zones, labor, and impacted communities, we hope to build worker and community power and capacity to move toward a more sustainable future.

The post The Fireball in Baltimore That Ignited a Climate Justice Movement appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Hawai‘i is a spectacular place—not just visually exciting, but also located above incredible geological forces and beneath amazing atmospheric conditions. As a meteorologist who reports on earth science news, I call the Aloha State home because of the multiple scientific processes that come together here every day to create a true paradise.

The casual joke shared among locals is that we live on an island that is actively trying to kill us. Hawai‘i has a long history of epic natural disasters and will be a home for earthquakes, tsunamis, flash floods, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions for thousands of years to come. But the wildfire tragedy on August 8 on Maui has turned the joke on its head, leaving my neighbors and me to wonder whether it’s more than just nature that doesn’t have our best interests at heart. Why don’t leaders take better advantage of our vast scientific knowledge to prevent future catastrophes?

I live in Waikoloa Village on the Big Island of Hawai‘i’s west coast, which the Hawai‘i Wildfire Management Organization declared one of the communities most at-risk of fire in the state. Here, down-sloping, east-to-west trade winds tend to warm and dry the air, leading to an abundance of warm sunny days year-round. But when the atmospheric pattern is just right over the Pacific, as was the case when Hurricane Dora passed well south of Hawai‘i on August 7, 8, and 9, those winds can be fierce, potentially damaging, and extraordinarily dry. The same is true for many other leeward (downwind) communities in Hawai‘i in the shadows of old volcanic mountains that blunt most precipitation away to the windward (wind-facing) side.

Waikoloa Village, a community of about 7,400 people sitting about 900 feet above sea level, is also uniquely situated on ancient lava flows from two volcanoes. Over time, invasive grasses introduced by ranchers and landscapers have spread on what was once a completely barren landscape, coming to life in infrequent rainy periods, and going dormant or dead for most of the year.

The community is packed tightly together in a mix of one- or two-story homes of wooden frame construction, with larger parcels and condominium complexes here and there. It is essentially a giant cul-de-sac, with a single road leading in and out. During a 2021 evacuation event in which fire threatened the village, many were trapped in traffic for hours. Fire fighters successfully fought that battle, but we cannot rest peacefully knowing they may not prevail next time.

Maui’s Lahaina, like Waikoloa Village, had previous experience with wildfire threats. Yet in both places, there have been few policy changes or necessary investments in recent years: no substantial changes to building codes, evacuation programs, communication systems, or land use issues where flammable invasive vegetation runs rampant. Many utility lines, including several that run on poles through the grassy regions upwind of Waikoloa Village, remain exposed to the elements, as was the case in Lahaina, where electrical sparks ignited the recent tragedy there. On Hawai‘i Island, government officials make promises for Waikoloa Village, but have done little beyond permitting new construction and inviting in new residents. Commitments and deadlines to install emergency sirens, roadway improvements like traffic lights, and the construction of new roadways to improve evacuation routes come and go with the regularity of the trade winds.

The author’s backyard is surrounded by a tinderbox of flammable invasive grass. Photo by author.

There is a sincere sense of loss in our state after the August 8 fires. But in addition to missing hundreds of people, we’re also missing out on a sense of urgency, purpose, and intent to prevent the next disaster. This is inexcusable, in part because we have the forecasting technology and knowledge to make better broad policy decisions as well as to sound the alarm in advance of specific events, like the August 8 fire, as well as broader threats, like the current drought.

We are currently in the midst of ENSO, El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a recurring climate pattern involving changes in the temperature of waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Over an ENSO period ranging from about three to seven years, the surface waters across a large swath of the tropical Pacific Ocean warm or cool by anywhere from 1°C to 3°C, compared to normal. This oscillating warming and cooling pattern directly affects rainfall distribution in the tropics and can have a strong influence on weather across the United States and other parts of the world. El Niño and La Niña are the extreme phases of the ENSO cycle; between these two phases is a third phase called ENSO-neutral.

While these phenomena impact the entire United States, Hawai‘i may find itself particularly vulnerable to bad weather this year, as a wet La Niña fades and a dry El Niño arrives. In May, Kevin Kodama, hydrologist at the Honolulu office of the National Weather Service, shared their 2022-2023 Wet Season Rainfall Summary. According to Kodama, the October–April wet season in Hawai‘i was an unusual one, starting off with severe or extreme drought in portions of all four of Hawai‘i’s counties, which gave way to the state’s ninth wettest wet season over the last 30 years. The Big Island saw the most rain, with rainfalls recorded at 130–170% of average.

Now, the National Weather Service is predicting an active 2023 hurricane season combined with severe drought by the end of dry season in October. Drought is most likely in the leeward areas, especially in Maui County and the Big Island—the two islands that saw fires break out on August 8. The bumper crop of invasive grass and scrub that blossomed earlier in the wet season is becoming a wasteland of drying fire fuels.

The forecast is crystal clear: Meteorological ingredients will conspire for ripe fire weather conditions in the months ahead. More lives could be at risk. And even as it is so obvious to forecasters and the public at large that more disasters are coming, the outlook on what the government will do, if anything, is cloudy at best.

Thus far, rather than capitalize on the loss, the media attention, and the tremendous amount of federal aid coming in, leaders here are digging their heads into the sand, doing what they did ahead of the Lahaina fire: hoping that disaster doesn’t happen. And because of that, the aloha spirit is being severely challenged, allowing a fog of anxiety and anger to rise. For this meteorologist, the overall outlook for Hawai‘i isn’t as sunny as it should be.

The post Will Hawai’i Succeed in Killing Me? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Being in mining was never part of my plan. As a young boy, I dreamed of becoming a priest with a pilot’s license, living and working in remote Australian communities. I got an advertising degree, joined the foreign service, and spent five years working for the government, including three years as a junior diplomat in Samoa. But I never really fit in. I resigned from the foreign service in January 1999, when I was 27, and returned to my hometown, the remote and dusty mining town of Mount Isa in outback Australia.

There, instead of attending cocktail parties and rubbing shoulders with prime ministers and ambassadors, I mowed lawns, raked leaves, and did landscape work. About 10 months into my career break, my older sister Cassie handed me a newspaper advertisement for a “Senior Advisor, Indigenous Affairs” position at Mount Isa Mines, one of Australia’s oldest and most profitable copper, lead, zinc, and silver mines. MIM, as it’s known, wanted to hire an Indigenous Australian who grew up in the local community and understood its issues and challenges—someone like me. I didn’t expect to get the job, but I did.

Today, more than 20 years later, I am one of just a few Indigenous senior leaders working in the Australian mining industry. As the Chief Advisor for Indigenous Affairs for Australia at the Anglo-Australian metals and mining corporation Rio Tinto, I help our executive leadership team and board of directors improve our relationships with, and outcomes for, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, employees, and communities.

People like me are go-betweens, walking in two worlds. We are translators for companies and communities. We help them understand each other to achieve mutual benefits.

There are many complexities and challenges. Mining, a symbol of industrial progress and wealth creation, has unfortunately also left a legacy of exclusion, displacement, and exploitation of Indigenous peoples worldwide. In Australia, where the main exports are iron ore, coal, gas, and gold, the industry has spent decades disregarding and excluding the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who are Indigenous to the nation’s lands and waters.

Back when I took my first industry job, at MIM, many in my community thought I was either brave or naïve. But I believe Indigenous peoples must sit at the decision-making tables within corporations, not as passive stakeholders but as active influencers. We can actively secure redress for past misdeeds and lead an approach within the industry that will respect cultural heritage, drive economic benefit, and achieve environmental integrity.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands and possessed the land under our own laws and customs. Science suggests that we’ve been here for at least 65,000 years; the British colonized Australia less than 250 years ago. Over time they took our lands from us, and wrote laws that made it hard for us to fight back.

Indigenous people were powerless observers. In the 1950s to 1970s, mining companies discovered iron, coal, uranium, and industrial minerals such as bauxite, copper, lead and zinc in many places. Indigenous people rarely had any say, or ability to intervene, when commonwealth, state, and territory governments granted companies mining leases. Outsiders oversaw the destruction of our sacred sites, without recompense.

That includes near Mount Isa, my hometown. When I stepped into my role at MIM in 2000, the Kalkadoon Traditional Owners of the region had no stake in, and received no economic benefit from, mining operations. Open-pit mines had left large, gaping craters in their ancestral land. The Traditional Owners had no formal engagement with the mine, no dedicated Indigenous employment programs, and no social investment initiatives. They were organizing a native title claim aimed at legally recognizing and securing the Kalkadoon people’s historical rights to their ancestral lands and seeking a more inclusive approach to land and resource management for the future.

Leadership at MIM recognized that it was time to develop a better relationship. That’s where I came in.

Understandably, people expressed a lot of frustration in the initial meetings between the company and the Indigenous community. I felt about as welcome as a roast turkey at a vegetarian dinner party. I was verbally abused, physically intimidated, and called all sorts of names (nicer ones included “company man” and “sell-out”)—by people who were almost like family to me.

Over time, I built connections and trust. Soon after I started at MIM, I went to my boss, the mine site’s executive general manager, and convinced him to provide office space for the Traditional Owners to organize their title claim and conduct meetings. It was a small thing, but it signalled goodwill. Kalkadoon leaders still use the space today, as the registered office for their Native Title corporation.

This was an important lesson: A simple gesture of respect goes a long way—often much further than years of legal negotiations or purely transactional interactions. In September 2001, the Kalkadoon people, the Queensland Government, and MIM, among other mining companies, negotiated an Indigenous Land Use Agreement that paved the way for roughly 90 exploration licenses in the vicinity of Mount Isa. And that was only the start of what has become an enduring relationship between MIM and the Kalkadoon people.

I believe we are entering a new era of recognition for Indigenous people’s rights. The looming fight against climate change compels companies to listen to us. It’s often stated that Indigenous peoples represent about 5% of the world population but hold 80% of the remaining natural resources and biodiversity, including critical minerals. What will be the role of Indigenous people in the “just transition” to a low-carbon future—and is a green future that depends on more mining even possible?

Indigenous people still struggle. Our life expectancy is about 20 years less than non-Indigenous Australians, and I have seen many family and community members die early from preventable diseases. Proportionately, we are the most incarcerated people on earth. Our languages are disappearing, and colonization has eroded our cultural practices.

Still, I’d like to think we’re in a better place overall than when I started in this industry. Indigenous communities have more equal say, and greater control, than ever before—and the fact that more Indigenous people are coming up through the ranks and taking our rightful place in seats at corporate tables across the country has a lot to do with it. My hope is that the economic and social position of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia, too, will rise.

The post I’m Indigenous Australian, and I Work for a Mining Company appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

At the turn of the 20th century, floods, fires, and waste plagued the United States. Industries burned through resources and blew toxins into the air, with few restrictions. States and federal governments were only beginning to approach questions of the environment and did so in piecemeal ways.

In 1907, responding to the need to improve transportation, President Theodore Roosevelt tasked the Inland Waterways Commission with studying how to better manage rivers. The commissioners recognized a need for interstate coordination in this effort. Two in particular—Gifford Pinchot and William John “WJ” McGee—went further. They asked Roosevelt to invite all the country’s governors to Washington to discuss the pressing issues of water and natural resources.

Roosevelt complied, inviting the governors of all the states and territories, along with representatives from hundreds of civic, economic, and media organizations, to the White House. The resulting Conference of Governors, beginning on May 13, 1908, and lasting three days, offered a glimpse of political and economic collaboration that extended beyond normal boundaries of party, state, industry, and even time. The conference represents a not-so-distant precedent for today’s need to extend our political thinking beyond narrow parameters.

According to the New York Times, the Conference of Governors’ unprecedented composition and purpose promised “history-making possibilities.” The paper reported 44 governors attending, though the published proceedings identified 36. Alongside them, four at-large members were invited to “represent the public,” which appears to have meant ensuring the discussion integrated economic concerns: steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, railroad executive James J. Hill, labor leader John Mitchell, and Democratic mainstay William Jennings Bryan. Finally, 500-some representatives from myriad organizations—trade associations, unions, publications, and the like—joined as observers.

At the opening dinner, the attendees dined with Supreme Court Justices, members of the Cabinet and Congress, and other prominent officials in the White House’s state dining room while the United States Marine Band played.

Despite the night’s pomp, the tone of the following day’s conference was serious, even somber. According to Roosevelt’s opening address, “Conservation as a National Duty,” nothing less than the “continuance of the Nation” was at stake. During the 50-minute speech, interrupted by frequent nonpartisan applause, the president asserted the importance of cooperative planning and for elevating community rights over individuals’ pursuit of riches. “In the past we have admitted the right of the individual to injure the future of the Republic for his own present profit,” Roosevelt said. “The time has come for a change.”

Others shared this view. The following day, railroad executive James J. Hill spoke on “The Natural Wealth of the Land and Its Conservation.” Hill spent most of his allotted time offering chilling statistics of shrinking forests, diminishing ores, and declining soil fertility. He argued that these statistics represented not only a bleak economic future but also a potentially violent political one, borne out of desperation and poverty.

Hill believed that if industry leaders understood the dire resource situation, they would manage resources more carefully. Espousing a key element of Progressive conservation doctrine—that of applying sound business principles to resource management—he compared the nation to a corporation and the leaders gathered as a board of directors. The “board” needed to consider the resource wealth available and marshal it responsibly, he suggested, looking toward long-term investments over near-term profits, or they would ruin “a national patrimony that can never be restored.”

As the conference concluded, the governors approved a slate of resolutions and presented them to President Roosevelt. The declaration reiterated the themes of resources as foundational wealth, the importance of planning, and the need to cooperate. Its final line announced the governors’ intent plainly: “Let us conserve the foundations of our prosperity.”

By the end of the three days, the governors were also eager to discuss collaborating on other matters, such as extradition laws and divorce standards. They resolved to meet regularly thereafter. That commitment eventually turned into the National Governors Association, which now meets twice a year.

Another effect of the summit was that Roosevelt appointed the National Conservation Commission, which would inventory the nation’s resources. The commission produced a three-volume report that appeared in February 1909 and featured a detailed accounting of the nation’s dwindling stocks of various resources, including estimated dates for when they would be exhausted.

These achievements were all the more striking because the Progressive Era was no harmonious nonpartisan moment. Progressives saw themselves in a battle between good and evil on behalf of “the people” versus “the interests.” Muckraking journalists took down corruption from city halls to corporate boardrooms. Roosevelt used the power of government to tame big business. One of the biggest victims was James J. Hill himself: Roosevelt ordered the investigation that led to the 1904 Northern Securities Co. v. United States case that broke up Hill’s holding company. Roosevelt also invited his political rival Bryan to the conference.

Still, the participants overcame these differences and set their eyes on the nation’s shared future. As Secretary of State Elihu Root urged in his address to the group, they performed their duties not only for their parochial interests but also for “the common good.” Pinchot later wrote that the Conference of Governors “a conception of the land they lived in that was brand new,” and suggested history might remember the conference as one of history’s turning points. More measured historians have called it one of the “climactic moments” of Roosevelt’s presidency.

Today, Roosevelt’s concerns about the risks to the “continuance of the Nation” have transformed into warnings about global catastrophes. Twenty-first-century environmental concerns extend past accounting stocks of national resources. Now, researchers aim to identify thresholds of global ecological viability. Researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, for instance, have investigated planetary boundaries to determine the requirements for sustaining life. Our worries encompass the globe and question whether the planet can maintain its resilient capabilities.

Meanwhile, the “common good” is more elusive than ever. While pulses of reform have appeared—the rise of regional planning in the interwar period, the emergence of land-use planning for conservation and urban development in the 1960s and 1970s—coming together over future shared interests feels like a faraway ambition. Imagine a similar conference today, in which Joe Biden invited Gretchen Whitmer, Ron DeSantis, and Elon Musk to share a stage. Commitments to base politics and baser instincts would produce only vitriol and communicate only enmity.

In our hyper-partisan moment, looking beyond short-term advantage has become a dwindling resource. The 1908 Conference of Governors may not have been the grand historical turning point Pinchot imagined, but it can be a touchstone. A common focus and commitment beyond party, nation, personal interest, and the present has been possible and must be again for the good of the planet and all its people. As the stakes have risen beyond a nation’s supply of resources, so must the solutions and the seriousness with which policymakers, industrial leaders, and civic organizations approach the future.

The post When American Governors and Moguls Came Together to Prevent Environmental <br>Catastrophe appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Who are you to be calling me aggressive?

Yes, I’m the 5-year-old female otter from the waters off Santa Cruz, about whom you’ve been reading scary headlines.

Now, I do sometimes approach surfers or kayakers in ways that they interpret as threatening. It’s also true that, on occasion, I separate surfers from their boards, and exercise my right, as a Californian, to ride the waves myself.

But have I ever done anything aggressive, at least by Santa Cruz standards? It’s not like I ever swiped a street parking space near the Boardwalk, or bid $200,000 over asking on a three-bedroom in Seabright.

Which is why it’s downright slanderous to say, as the city of Santa Cruz has on signs posted near the coast, that I’m an “aggressive sea otter” so dangerous that people shouldn’t go in the water. It’s offensive that the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife speculates that my behavior “may be associated with hormonal surges”—hey, feds, you can’t say that about a female anymore!

And if I could find a lawyer, I might have a case against those biased human media who have called me “wayward,” “rogue,” and a “renegade”—without ever bothering to ask me for comment.

The real aggressors in this otter’s story are all too human. And I’m not just talking about the paparazzi who, now that I’ve made the international news, are paddling out into the Santa Cruz waves to try to take my photo.

As of this writing, there are no confirmed cases of me hurting anyone, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Still, I’m being relentlessly hunted, by state officials and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, as if I were a dangerous fugitive.

Yes, I’ve bitten a few holes in some boards. But c’mon! Human Californians can shoplift in Union Square, steal catalytic converters on Nob Hill, and smoke meth in the Tenderloin without any real fear of prosecution, much less imprisonment.

This otter spooked a few surfers, and my freedom is at stake. For now, the state’s plan is to capture me (they may have succeeded by the time you read this) and remove me from my home in the Santa Cruz waters. Eventually, they would relocate me to a zoo or aquarium, placing me in front of audiences with little compensation besides a few meals—like a character actor in a Netflix show.

But it could get worse for me. Experts have raised the possibility that, if I’m ever accused of doing harm to a human, I’ll be euthanized—without a trial before a human jury, much less a panel of my fellow marine mammals.

And you thought Governor Newsom had put a moratorium on executions.

Of course, deadly attacks on otters are a human tradition. There are only around 3,000 of us southern sea otters living off the California coast today because of mass slaughter by fur traders of the 18th and 19th centuries.

So, don’t I have every reason to bite back?

I am among the otters born in captivity and returned to the wild, with a number (841) and a transmitter for monitoring. My mother, according to reports, showed what the humans call aggression, perhaps because they fed her.

After I was first reported for “aggressiveness” a couple years ago, a team of state and aquarium officials yelled loudly at me and beat a paddle in my direction in an effort to make me afraid of people. This intervention didn’t work, which is no surprise.

I can’t really help it if I run a little hot. My metabolism requires that I eat one-quarter of my body weight each day in fish and crab and urchins. I have to eat even more when I’m pregnant. It’s also hard for me to keep warm; I don’t have blubber like those media darlings, the elephant seals.

If I weren’t a fugitive, I might find it funny, or at least ironic, that I’m in trouble for confronting surfers. Because surfers, who constantly paddle right into my ecosystem, are far more aggressive than me. Santa Cruz has a long history of surfers who defend their breaks violently, and even create gangs. But I’m the threat here?

To the contrary, I should be seen as an asset, even a model for Californians. I’m out here breeding—two pregnancies so far that anyone knows about—while the human birth rate is dropping so fast onshore that California is losing population. My presence, and that of other sea life, is vital to the tourism that powers the Central Coast economy. I’m also an environmental steward, because I eat the sea urchins that can devour kelp forests. The same state government now hunting me has considered introducing otters along the North Coast, to make those ecosystems healthier.

Despite all we do for society, my fellow otters and I are excluded from participation in decisions in California, even as the state seeks to control me. This is primitive, and hypocritical for a state that purports to be committed to democracy and environmental justice. Efforts are underway, here and elsewhere, to create multi-species constitutions and democratic governance for important commons spaces on this planet, like the Amazon or the oceans.

As the University of Leicester politics professor Rob Garner has written, “the interests of animals are affected—often devastatingly—by collective decisions and, therefore, they, or—more specifically—their representatives, have a democratic right to have some say in the making of those decisions.”

I shouldn’t be evading state officials. I should be helping to govern them. Because the real aggression I see in California is your anthropocentrism.

The post I’m the Santa Cruz Otter. Why Shouldn’t I Bite Back? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.