Malte Mueller / Getty Images
By David Korten
Our present course puts humans on track to be among the species that expire in Earth's ongoing sixth mass extinction. In my conversations with thoughtful people, I am finding increasing acceptance of this horrific premise.
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic, along with climate change, drives home the lesson that we must honor and care for Earth. The increasing frequency of the appearance of deadly viruses reminds us of the consequences of disrupting the natural systems by which life on Earth organizes to create and maintain the conditions essential to both its own existence and ours.</p>
<p>This is a time for learning and conscious collective choice like no other in the human experience. Defining lessons are coming from a variety of "teachers," including the pandemic and climate change, protests against systemic racism, and oddly enough, Donald Trump.</p><p>Perhaps we can now recognize and accept the limits of Earth's regenerative systems and our need to help Earth heal from the damage of our recklessness. The Earth is strong, but also vulnerable. As Earth cares for us, we either care for it or bear the consequences of our recklessness.</p><p>The pandemic may be seen as a not-so-subtle warning to humanity that we may be sacrificed, if necessary, to protect the health of the planet. On the path to human extinction, the most vulnerable will go first, but there will be no human winners.</p>
<p>COVID-19's attack also exposes the culpability of the economic system that bears major responsibility for our assault against Earth and each other. We now see with ever greater clarity the disconnect between two economies. One is a financial economy devoted to generating unearned profits for monopolists and speculators. The other is an economy of Earth's regenerative systems and humans doing work essential to the well-being of people and planet. We can get along just fine without financial speculation, and labor devoted to wasteful or destructive purposes to make money for rich people. We cannot survive without the regenerative systems of a living Earth and the beneficial labor of both human and nonhuman beings.</p><p>We also see more clearly the devastating consequences of concentrating power in the hands of the financial elite. For example, the pandemic has exposed the long and vulnerable supply chains that only serve the interests of exploiters who locate industry where wages and taxes are lowest and environmental regulations are most lax to produce consumer goods for the world's affluent. Disruptions of those supply lines led to shortages of critical products, such as nose swabs and face masks, that we're only now realizing can be more quickly and securely obtained through local producers—assuming we still have some that can take on the job.</p><p>Another lesson we're learning involves the nature of money. COVID-19 prompted the U.S. Congress and Federal Reserve to create trillions of dollars in instant money for purposes both good and bad. Never has it been so clear that money is just a number that national governments can create from nothing. Consequently, lack of money should never be a society's defining constraint so long as idle or misdirected resources are available for new money to put to work meeting real needs.</p><p>Of course, meeting essential needs is very different from creating money to keep stock prices inflated and to bail out businesses, such as the corporate travel industry that electronic communication may have rendered obsolete. Too much of the money instantly created by Congress and the Fed was aimed at propping up financial markets while the real economy floundered. Therein lies another lesson: Follow the money and know its purpose, which takes us to the lessons of the Trump disaster.</p><p>With his perpetual deceptions, his assaults on the integrity and competence of government, and his persistent denial of responsibility for their devastating consequences, Trump reminds us of how much we depend on honest and functioning government at all system levels. He is forcing state and local governments (and also other nations) to take on new responsibilities because they know they cannot wait for leadership from his feckless administration.</p><p>In sending unidentified Department of Homeland Security officers to impose his will on the people of Portland, Oregon, and other cities, Trump is reminding us of the dangers of tyranny and the importance of having political leaders who are honest, intelligent, of sound mind, and committed to a strong democracy. We are becoming ever more conscious of the fatal error of electing politicians who believe government is inherently burdensome and best minimized.</p><p>These are all lessons essential to the future we seek and to our choices in the upcoming election.</p><p>During a July 23 <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=319548652768061&ref=watch_permalink" target="_blank">webinar hosted by YES! Media</a> that I took part in, Nafeez Ahmed, executive director of the System Shift Lab and research fellow at the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems, noted that the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=319548652768061&ref=watch_permalink" target="_blank">emergence of the new depends on the disintegration of the old</a>. While many of us have been eager to welcome the new, we are not always so ready to accept the disintegration of the old. Yet the point that Nafeez drove home in our webinar is that both are part of the process of transformation.</p><p>As the institutions of the imperial civilization of our past disintegrate, it exposes the extent to which their power has rested on a foundation of war, racism, and violence devoted to enforcing mass servitude and securing the rights of property owners. Succumbing to the enticements of money worship, we celebrate the successes of a miniscule super-wealthy minority, and the fiction that we might one day join them.</p><p>Let us welcome the growing recognition that returning to business as usual is neither possible nor desirable. We must accept our current mission to birth a <a href="https://davidkorten.org/home/ecological-civilization/" target="_blank">new civilization</a> devoted to the well-being of people and Earth: A civilization in which money is just a tool, and nurturance of life is the prime purpose.</p><p><span></span><em>David Korten is co-founder of YES! Media, president of the Living Economies Forum, a member of the Club of Rome, and the author of influential books, including "When Corporations Rule the World" and "Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth." His work builds on lessons from the 21 years he and his wife, Fran, lived and worked in Africa, Asia, and Latin America on a quest to end global poverty.</em></p><p><em><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2020/07/30/covid-earth-economy-climate-change/" target="_blank">YES! Magazine</a>.<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/r/entryeditor/2646932009#/" target="_self"></a></em><em></em></em></p>
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Women sort potatoes in the Andes Mountains near Cusco Peru on July 7, 2014. Thomas O'Neill / NurPhoto / Getty Images
By Alejandro Argumedo
August 9 is the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples – a celebration of the uniqueness of the traditions of Quechua, Huli, Zapotec, and thousands of other cultures, but also of the universality of potatoes, bananas, beans, and the rest of the foods that nourish the world. These crops did not arise out of thin air. They were domesticated over thousands of years, and continue to be nurtured, by Indigenous people. On this day we give thanks to these cultures for the diversity of our food.
<p>Yes, even in a globalized world and food system. Most diversity in crops – and livestock – is still found in the regions where they have been around longest, adapting to climatic extremes, pests, and diseases through millennia interaction with human cultures – as we have weathered our own storms and pandemics. Known as primary regions of crop and livestock diversity, these places are central to the present and future viability of food systems. They are also the homelands of many Indigenous peoples.</p>
<p>For centuries, crop diversity has enriched the world, but has been taken out of the hands of Indigenous people in doing so. That story is only beginning to shift as the rest of the world starts to give Indigenous farmers the respect they are due. Community initiatives like the <a href="https://parquedelapapa.org/" target="_blank">Parque de la Papa</a> (Potato Park), in the primary region of potato diversity in the Andes of Peru, are connecting with worldwide conservation efforts on the farmers' own terms.</p><p>Six Quechua communities established the Parque to ensure the survival of the thousands of traditional potato cultivars they grow. They then co-designed a unique agreement with the <a href="https://cipotato.org/" target="_blank">International Potato Center</a> genebank in Lima and the nonprofit <a href="https://andes.org.pe/" target="_blank">Asociacion ANDES</a> to return 410 native potato varieties to the Parque communities. Scientists had collected these from the region's communities since the 1960s, but many had disappeared from farmers' fields in the recent decades. That first agreement led to more collaborative research and monitoring, and today the Parque's diversity is conserved in farmers' fields, in new community seedbanks, in the CIP genebank in Lima, and, as a final safety backup, 7,000 miles north in the <a href="https://www.seedvault.no/" target="_blank">Svalbard Global Seed Vault</a> – where the Indigenous farmers who deposited them still retain their rights over their seeds.</p><p>Indigenous farmers and cooks in the primary regions of diversity are resilient. They know all about getting through trying times. Through it all, they have persisted: through loss of access to land and other resources; through industrialization, subsidies, and trade agreements that undermine rural livelihoods; through civil strife and political neglect. Often working in places of extreme topography, they have faced the most severe impacts of the climate catastrophe. This year they have been struck disproportionally, sometimes threatened in their very existence, by the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>In some countries, legislation finally respects their rights to traditional knowledge and livelihoods. Yet a larger transformation is still needed – to redress injustices, secure access to land, and generate a greater range of opportunities in food and agriculture.</p><p>I believe that a key agent of this transformation will be a global network that is already beginning to unite stewards of food traditions in primary regions of diversity. The potential is clear in the direct connections that Indigenous communities are making with chefs, civil society, and commercial endeavors to create – together – market opportunities for agriculturally resilient and nutritious local foods. It is encouraging that consumers are increasingly showing a willingness to try diverse foods, while recognizing the work of farming communities. A boom in community-based development and wider marketing of products made with local crop and livestock diversity is a small sign of the big shift coming.</p><p>Another emerging opportunity for Indigenous communities is the increased capacity to learn from the successes and challenges of others. While communities in primary regions of diversity often maintain a broad menu of domesticated and wild species, their food systems generally center on a few key species. Potatoes and quinoa in parts of the Andes; maize and beans in Mesoamerica; bananas and tubers in the highlands of Papua New Guinea: such emblematic foods can be pillars around which to co-organize global networks of custodians of agricultural biodiversity, building on existing networks of small-scale and Indigenous farmers. One such effort is hosted by the <a href="https://inmip.net/" target="_blank">International Network for Mountain Indigenous Peoples</a>. Inspired by the Parque de la Papa, it now includes communities in Bolivia, China, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, and Tajikistan, each organized around different emblematic Indigenous crops. With time, the initial focus on relatively "charismatic" crops can be leveraged to benefit other, less well-known species and their stewards, too.</p><p>I draw hope and excitement from seeing Indigenous communities achieve recognition in local, national, and international policy arenas, and watching them strengthen their work by seeking out collaborations based on mutual respect. That kind of collaboration can reach across dramatically different scales, from farmers' fields, homes, and tables, to community actions like local seedbanks, to the large public genebanks that make crop conservation a global effort, and a global good. Meanwhile, redressing the imbalances that disadvantage Indigenous communities, and undervalue the diversity they generate and maintain, will mean reframing this diversity and its engendering biocultural processes as central community assets.</p><p>Celebrating Indigenous people on August 9 is not just about having a party; it helps keeps diversity and community on their feet as globalization shifts the ground from under us all.</p><p><em>Alejandro Argumedo is Director of Programs and Andes Amazon Lead of Swift Foundation (<a href="http://www.swiftfoundation.org/" target="_blank">www.swiftfoundation.org</a>); he is a recognized indigenous peoples' food rights activist currently acting as the international coordinator of the International Network of Mountain Indigenous Peoples (INMIP).</em></p>
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Danny Choo / CC BY-SA 2.0
By Olivia Sullivan
One of the many unfortunate outcomes of the coronavirus pandemic has been the quick and obvious increase in single-use plastic products. After COVID-19 arrived in the United States, many grocery stores prohibited customers from using reusable bags, coffee shops banned reusable mugs, and takeout food with plastic forks and knives became the new normal.
<p>Despite recent scientific evidence that <a href="https://storage.googleapis.com/planet4-international-stateless/2020/06/26618dd6-health-expert-statement-reusables-safety.pdf" target="_blank">reusables don't transmit the virus</a>, the plastic industry has <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-06-08/is-plastic-the-coronavirus-hero-the-plastics-industry-thinks-so" target="_blank">lobbied hard</a> for a return to all things disposable plastic. Inevitably, a lot of that plastic will continue to flow into our environment.</p><p>While COVID-19 has certainly thrown a wrench into the hard-earned progress we'd been making in reducing waste, eliminating plastic pollution entirely was always going to be challenging — with or without a pandemic. The jarring rise of single-use plastics is an expedited version of a familiar trend. Plastic production has been <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/07/plastic-age/533955/" target="_blank">steadily increasing</a> for quite some time.</p><p>As a zero-waste advocate, I've seen how the tsunami of plastic continuously being produced and flooding our planet has made achieving zero-waste goals incredibly difficult. The sheer amount makes it hard to safely and efficiently dispose of plastic, no matter how hard we try.</p>
<p>But as I examine the problem, and search for solutions, I keep coming back to one noteworthy example.</p><p>In 2003 the small Japanese town of Kamikatsu set an ambitious zero-waste declaration, aiming to be 100% waste-free by 2020. The goal was to produce no trash, meaning everything from food packaging to unwanted clothing to yesterday's newspaper should be reused, repurposed into new goods, or recycled.</p>
<div id="b7811" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="909a9d9b34be97cbd835be64fb59c05c"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1181178899704639489" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">#DYK decorative leaves adorning Japanese dishes create jobs? Seniors in #Kamikatsu, Tokushima, grow & collect them,… https://t.co/XP1d96tG47</div> — The Gov't of Japan (@The Gov't of Japan)<a href="https://twitter.com/JapanGov/statuses/1181178899704639489">1570449969.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Now that 2020 has arrived, we can see the result: In the 17 years since establishing its goal, Kamikatsu transitioned from openly incinerating all its trash to reusing and recycling 80% of its waste.</p><p>While the town made incredible progress, it ultimately fell short of its 100% goal. Its main issue? Unrecyclable plastic packaging and mixed materials still end up in the trash.</p><p>As <a href="https://phys.org/news/2019-06-japan-town-recycle.html" target="_blank">one resident explained</a> to the AFP news agency last year, "Our lifestyle depends mainly on plastic. Consumers can reduce plastic waste to a certain extent, but we'll still have waste if producers keep making plastic products."</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU0MjYzOC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1OTUyNDMxM30.n_UVlEF30a9o3Q-BOJj3vViY7YVKv7d-I3EeulDxWnQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="4df79" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e10cd8a3bc3c98e43ec7b68464d35cc1" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Kamikatsu, Japan. Yuki Shimazu / CC BY-SA 2.0
<p>This reveals a worldwide truth: Even products made mostly from easily recyclable materials like paper, aluminum or cardboard can't be sorted and recycled if they contain plastic components that can't be separated.</p><p>The truth is, some materials simply aren't recyclable, and <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782" target="_blank">only 9%</a> of all the plastic ever created has <em>been </em>recycled. As Kamikatsu's residents have painstakingly proven, no matter how many categories consumers sort their waste into or how diligently they scrub down their plastic food containers, most plastics <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Greenpeace-Report-Circular-Claims-Fall-Flat.pdf" target="_blank">cannot be recycled</a>.</p><p>Meanwhile we keep hearing the <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/504091-the-insanity-of-plastic-recycling" target="_blank">industry-driven narrative</a> that recycling can stop plastic from choking our marine life or littering our natural places. That's intentionally misleading.</p><p>Around the world, as in Kamikatsu, plastic is everywhere. With excessive amounts of plastic products and packaging stocked on store shelves, it's clear that zero-waste goals cannot be achieved by consumers alone. Plastic is not a "zero waste" material, so in order to achieve zero waste, companies must stop making so much plastic.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU0MjY0MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxOTExMDAxNX0.YpMVEj2xK5D4TDypbZJGuJXnjMa17zprUVWxexuy5mk/img.jpg?width=980" id="a5cff" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2db1e7aa34db8c561ecab63c8ee06ff2" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Marine debris collected at Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. NOAA
<p>We can achieve that. The first steps include banning some of the worst and most polluting single-use plastics, placing a pause on the development of new plastics facilities, and protecting state and local governments' ability to enact more stringent regulations.</p><p>We must also shift the paradigm by holding producers responsible for the waste they create. By requiring new plastic products to contain recycled plastic and making producers fund the collection and recycling of plastic products, producers would be incentivized to design longer lasting products that can <em>actually</em> be reused and recycled.</p><p>These goals — outlined in numerous scientific studies and advocacy reports — have some forward motion. In the United States, a federal bill was recently introduced in both the House and the Senate, the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5845" target="_blank">Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act</a>. If passed this bill — or others like it on the local, state or national levels — could help move the world beyond single-use plastics and make that needed systemic change a reality.</p><p>The bill hasn't moved forward since it was introduced this past February, but the world is still on a deadline. A recent study published in the journal <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/07/22/science.aba9475" target="_blank"><em>Science</em></a> looked at rising levels of plastic production and said "coordinated global action is urgently needed to reduce plastic consumption, increase rates of reuse, waste collection and recycling, expand safe disposal systems and accelerate innovation in the plastic value chain."</p><p>Requiring producers to stop making nonrecyclable products designed to be thrown out is the first step toward achieving that goal. Only then will Kamikatsu and other towns, cities and countries around the world finally be able to eliminate plastic pollution and reach 100% zero waste.</p><p><em>The opinions expressed above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of </em>The Revelator<em>, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.</em></p><p><a href="https://therevelator.org/author/oliviasullivan/" target="_blank">Olivia Sullivan</a> <em><em>is a zero waste associate with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) working on a campaign to move the United States beyond plastic.</em></em></p><p><em><em><span></span>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/cities-zero-waste/" target="_blank">The Revelator</a>. </em></em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Coronavirus Shines Light on Zoos as Danger Zones for Deadly Disease Transmission Between Humans and Animals
03 August
Insights + Opinion
An elephant at Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island. In Defense of Animals
By Marilyn Kroplick
The term "zoonotic disease" wasn't a hot topic of conversation before the novel coronavirus started spreading across the globe and upending lives. Now, people are discovering how devastating viruses that transfer from animals to humans can be. But the threat can go both ways — animals can also get sick from humans. There is no better time to reconsider the repercussions of keeping animals captive at zoos, for the sake of everyone's health.
<p>COVID-19, the illness that's caused by the novel coronavirus, is the result of human contact with animals, though the exact source remains a subject of debate. The risk of such zoonotic disease transmission drastically increases in any setting <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/08/human-impact-on-wildlife-to-blame-for-spread-of-viruses-says-study-aoe" target="_blank">where wild animals are confined</a><a href="http://theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/08/human-impact-on-wildlife-to-blame-for-spread-of-viruses-says-study-aoe" target="_blank"> in close proximity to humans</a>, including public display facilities like zoos. Unfortunately, the risks posed by zoonotic transmission go beyond COVID-19. A recent <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/uoc-asa041320.php" target="_blank">study</a> found that more than 40 percent of zoo animals in Spain were infected with a parasite that can be passed to humans and causes a disease known as <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/gen_info/faqs.html" target="_blank">toxoplasmosis</a>, which can lead to damage to the brain, eyes and other organs in human beings. Across the U.S., another dangerous zoonotic disease has long been lurking in our midst at zoos: <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/basics/default.htm" target="_blank">tuberculosis</a> (TB).</p>
<p>TB is a deadly, highly infectious disease that has long existed in captive populations of African and Asian <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/elephants">elephants</a> in zoos and circuses across the U.S. According to the World Health Organization, TB is one of the <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis" target="_blank">top ten </a>causes of death worldwide, killing millions of people each year. Although TB rates have been on the decline for decades in the U.S., captive elephants represent a persistent <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2015/03/elephant-tuberculosis-epidemic-zoo-and-circus-animals-passing-tb-to-humans-and-one-another.html" target="_blank">reservoir</a> of the virus. Incredibly, "licensees and registrants who own elephants" are <a href="https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/newsroom/stakeholder-info/sa_by_date/sa_2015/sa_10/ct_elephant_tb_policy" target="_blank">not required</a> to test elephants for the virus. Even if they were, these tests, known as "trunk washes," are difficult to conduct and can be unreliable. This means that zoos may be bringing the unsuspecting public into contact with infected elephants. Because TB is no longer common in the U.S., children are not vaccinated against it, making them particularly susceptible.</p>
<p>The risk of elephants transmitting TB to humans is generally greater among those who work closely with elephants, though it is thought that TB can spread from elephants to humans <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166032/" target="_blank">through air</a> also. The risk of wider contagion, especially to zoo guests, is therefore a possibility. Many zoo exhibits bring people through indoor barns where elephants spend much of their time, separated only by bars and a few feet of space. Even more intimate encounters, such as rides or feedings that enable people to come into direct physical contact with elephants, are particularly concerning given their amplified transmission opportunities.</p><p>TB has long been known as a <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/02/19/dont-think-about-contagious-elephants-whose-job-is-it-to-combat-and-contain-tuberculosis/" target="_blank">potentially serious issue in U.S. zoos</a>. Many people have been infected over the years, including, as recently as 2019. In 2013, seven staff members were <a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2016/01/officials_identify_tuberculosi.html" target="_blank">infected</a> at the Oregon Zoo in Portland, following an outbreak among three bull elephants. Elephant infections persisted there into <a href="https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/07/10/pregnant-asian-elephant-at-oregon-zoo-may-have-tuberculosis/#:~:text=The%20Oregon%20Zoo%20announced%20today,Chendra%20as%20potentially%20having%20TB." target="_blank">2019</a>. Also, last year, some staff members <a href="https://www.pdza.org/connect/newsroom/press-releases/staff-test-positive-for-latent-tuberculosis/" target="_blank">tested positive</a> for latent TB at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington. Both the Bronx Zoo in New York City and the Saint Louis Zoo in Missouri also have had elephants test positive in recent years.</p>
<p>The threat of deadly disease transmission, however, does not only affect humans. In a process called <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3938448/" target="_blank">reverse zoonosis</a>, diseases such as influenza A virus, herpes simplex 1, measles and methicillin-resistant <em>Staphylococcus aureus</em> (MRSA) have been documented as passing from humans to animals. Regarding TB, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y9ztj4ls" target="_blank">studies have shown</a> that the causative agent that leads to human infection of TB is also present in elephants, suggesting a reverse zoonosis of the disease from humans to elephants. This opens the possibility that humans could actually be the <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y9ztj4ls" target="_blank">cause</a> of TB infections in captive elephants.</p><p>Another incident of reverse zoonosis occurred at the Bronx Zoo recently. In April 2020 the zoo announced that one of its tigers <a href="https://newsroom.wcs.org/News-Releases/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/14010/A-Tiger-at-Bronx-Zoo-Tests-Positive-for-COVID-19-The-Tiger-and-the-Zoos-Other-Cats-Are-Doing-Well-at-This-Time.aspx" target="_blank">tested positive</a> for COVID-19. While no other cats were tested, the tiger's sister, along with two other tigers and three African lions, developed symptoms including a dry cough, suggesting they might have also been infected.</p>
<p>One of the main reasons that zoos can be hotbeds for deadly disease transmission — which threatens elephants, tigers and other captive animals as well as human beings — is that captive animals can suffer from compromised immune systems due to the confines of captivity, rendering them more susceptible to illness. In many facilities, tigers and elephants are often held in cramped enclosures that bear little resemblance to their natural wild habitats. They can be forced to perform or interact with the public on a daily basis or endure living in solitary confinement. The Bronx Zoo, for example, has forced an elephant named Happy to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/nyregion/bronx-zoo-elephant-lawsuit-happy.html" target="_blank">live alone</a> since 2006, a crushing sentence for a highly social species. These types of living conditions can cause a range of physical and psychological ailments, which have been <a href="https://www.idausa.org/campaign/elephants/10-worst-zoos/" target="_blank">well documented</a>. Captive elephants tend to live shortened lifespans in contrast to those in the wild and suffer from diseases and conditions virtually unseen in the wild. The cumulative effect of these factors renders elephants prone to the TB contagion.</p>
<p>The fact that TB has continued to infect captive elephant populations in the U.S. for decades reveals the extent to which zoos are incapable of providing adequate living conditions to prevent the spread of this disease, despite their best efforts. While zoos and their supporters continue to argue that keeping animals captive is necessary to raise awareness and get people to care about them, seeing animals trapped in unnatural environments that prevent them from thriving doesn't do anything to teach us about how they live or how they should be recognized, respected and protected in the wild.</p><p>We can hope that the world will soon return to some semblance of normalcy, but if this pandemic has taught us anything, it's that we can't continue with business as usual when it comes to our relationship with wildlife and the environment — at least not if we want to survive. In the meantime, we can protect captive animals and ourselves by avoiding zoos.</p>
<p><em>Marilyn Kroplick is the president of <a href="https://www.idausa.org/" target="_blank">In Defense of Animals</a></em><em>.</em><br/></p>From Your Site Articles
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An example of a dry field in San Joachin Valley, California, during the California drought that lasted from 2012 to 2016. Citizens of the Planet / Education Images / Universal Images Group / Getty Images
By Jose Pablo Ortiz Partida
The immediate emergency of COVID-19 has been a powerful reminder that the most valuable things in our lives are our families, friends, and the welfare of our communities.
<p>The current pandemic is a threat to those closest to us today in a way that presages what we will experience on an accelerating basis due to the climate emergency. In a place like California's San Joaquin Valley (SJV), Latinos account for <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-25/coronavirus-covid-19-farm-workers-san-joaquin-valley" target="_blank">70 percent</a> of COVID-19 cases, even though they represent 42 percent of the population. Improving access to clean and affordable water even as the pandemic grows more urgent, is critical to reducing the types of burdens worsened by the COVID-19 crisis. Continuing the hard work on groundwater sustainability required by the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) could lessen the impact of future crises in the valley. The low level of preparation communities have experienced around the pandemic, echos what these same communities face for water management on a daily basis and will face with future climate change threats unless fundamental changes are made locally.</p>
Thousands of People in the SJV Live Without Reliable Access to Water.
<p>California is the wealthiest state in the most prosperous country in the world, and yet, there are close to one million people living without reliable access to safe, clean, and affordable drinking water. Most of these people are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/us/california-central-valley-tainted-water.html" target="_blank">concentrated in disadvantaged communities</a> in the SJV. California identifies <a href="https://oehha.ca.gov/calenviroscreen/sb535" target="_blank">disadvantaged communities</a> as areas that experience disproportionate levels of a combination of poverty, air and water pollution, high unemployment, and high rates of cardiovascular diseases and asthma. According to a report from the UC Davis Center for Regional Change, residents in these communities are <a href="https://regionalchange.ucdavis.edu/publication/water-justice" target="_blank">over 60% Hispanic</a>.</p><p><span></span>The SJV is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world, <a href="https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/water-and-the-future-of-the-san-joaquin-valley-overview.pdf" target="_blank">producing more than half of California's agricultural output</a> with over 200 different crops and annual revenue of about 20 billion US dollars. The astonishing volume of water that agriculture requires has led to over-exploitation of groundwater and the continuous lowering of groundwater levels that has impacted water quality and quantity.</p><p>Groundwater is the primary source for household water needs and agricultural water supply. Yet, thousands of people are unable to drink and use the water in the SJV, because there are multiple contaminants in it. Some of the water pollution comes from natural sources and includes substances like arsenic, but most of it has emerged due to agricultural practices. These contaminants include pesticides and nitrates, which are linked to cancer, birth defects, and blue baby syndrome.</p><p>In years with average precipitation, water flowing in California's rivers from rain and melted snowpack meets about 60 percent of the state's water demand and groundwater meets the remainder. However, during dry years water supply sources shift and put severe stress on groundwater levels. During the California drought from 2012 to 2016, groundwater use, mostly from agricultural water pumping, <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/droughts-exposed-california-s-thirst-groundwater-now-state-hopes-refill-its-aquifers" target="_blank">grew to 80 percent</a> in some regions of the SJV increasing overdraft. Groundwater overdraft occurs when water extractions exceed recharge into an aquifer. An analogy is your bank account; extract more money than is put in, and your account will go dry. Aquifers are like a shared account, with some people taking out more than others. Consequently, thousands of domestic wells ran dry, unable to reach water due to lowered groundwater levels, in large part due to increased agricultural water pumping, and affecting thousands of people across the valley.</p><p>We think about drought as standalone events, but in reality, human actions triggered by droughts can have effects that continue long after the drought has ended, like permanently lowering the water table. In the SJV, the last drought has permanently reduced the capacity of some aquifers because overdraft left air in between soil particles instead of water, and the soils subsided eliminating the space for water storage. Overdraft also leads to infrastructure damage from land subsidence, that is when the ground levels drop, plus reduction of surface water, and an increase in water quality problems. That range of concerns brought by overdraft formed the basis of SGMA.</p>Groundwater Sustainability Plans Could Fix Part of the Problem but Are Currently Inadequate.
<p>SGMA passed in 2014 and is the first legislation in California to mandate sustainable management of groundwater resources. SGMA is intended to bring about groundwater sustainability by the year 2040. Local water agencies describe the means to achieve this goal in their Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs). For those interested in the details of SGMA, <a href="https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Groundwater-Management/SGMA-Groundwater-Management" target="_blank">here is a thorough description of it</a>. The focus of this post is on the latest developments.</p><p>The 21 most critically over-drafted groundwater basins submitted their GSPs at the beginning of the year and are now under review by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). External reviews of these plans argue that some of them do not sufficiently address current and future impacts on disadvantaged communities. For example, the Groundwater Leadership Forum (a group of organizations funded by the <a href="https://waterfdn.org/" target="_blank">Water Foundation</a> focused on ensuring the success of SGMA and of which UCS is part) also reviewed several GPSs and found gaps in how drinking water, climate change, stakeholder involvement, managed wetlands, and groundwater-dependent ecosystems were addressed in the plans. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) reviewed 36 plans submitted for basins overlapping the SJV. They found Kings Basin (surrounding Fresno) stands out for having the highest number of domestic wells that may go dry, about 600 of them, under the proposed water level sustainable thresholds and yet the local groundwater plan considers that an <a href="https://www.ppic.org/blog/will-groundwater-sustainability-plans-end-the-problem-of-dry-drinking-water-wells/" target="_blank">insignificant impact from continued overdraft</a>. This is concerning and unacceptable. Public comments can be consulted in the <a href="https://sgma.water.ca.gov/portal/gsp/all" target="_blank">SGMA portal from DWR</a>.</p><p>I, and many others are concerned that multiple GSPs have questionable integrations of climate change projections. GSPs are considering numerous projects to tackle their local overdraft, yet they are not planning for the uncertain future that climate change is bringing. To reduce some of the vulnerabilities that we see now, GSPs need to integrate climate change and show benefits on the range of future scenarios.</p><p>Another concern is that on May 14, the <a href="http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/FullBudgetSummary.pdf" target="_blank">Governor announced</a> a $40 million cut on funding for SGMA. Part of the money was expected to support 37 new staff positions at DWR to uphold its statutory obligation on reviewing GSPs. While the budget still allocated $26 million of existing Proposition 68 bond funds to help with implementation projects in critically overdraft basin, it is unlikely that DWR will have the capacity to review the GSPs thoroughly. However, the governor's budget did prioritize safe and affordable drinking water and the State Water Board approved <a href="http://californiawaternewsdaily.com/infrastructure/state-water-board-approves-2020-21-funds-to-improve-access-to-healthy-drinking-water/" target="_blank">$130 million for 2020-2021</a> to projects that support such objective on vulnerable communities.</p>Without Bold Action and Preparation, Climate Change Threats May Bring Similar Impacts to Those of COVID-19.
<p>The lack of drinking water causes many residents in the valley to rely on bottled water as their primary source for drinking and cooking. Panic buying at the beginning of the pandemic left stores across the valley without bottled water. In the case of COVID-19, unsafe and unreliable access to water has endangered a multitude of low-income communities by preventing them from performing protective, hygienic acts, handwashing, in particular, and forcing them to go to public water supply kiosks. As we've all learned, hand washing is one of the most necessary measures needed to slow and stop the spread of a virus. Without a correct implementation of groundwater sustainability plans under SGMA, many of these risks will continue.</p><p>Shelter in place orders resulted in people losing their jobs and hence, their source of income and being unable to pay utility services. Small utility services were also impacted because of low economic margins of operations in which small drops in income translate to being unable to provide service. Fortunately, many organizations and individuals wrote a letter to Governor Newsom that prompted him to issue an <a href="https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/04/02/governor-newsom-issues-executive-order-protecting-homes-small-businesses-from-water-shutoffs/" target="_blank">executive order</a> protecting homes and small businesses from water shutoffs.</p><p>We now have the opportunity to give meaning to these current hardships by learning from them to prevent hardships from climate change. Climate change is a threat intensifier. In this case, the threat is a virus, and historical inequities and water vulnerabilities increased its impact on the most vulnerable among us. An example of the unpreparedness of the system to support our vulnerabilities during times of crisis is seen in the case of school children who rely on school lunches as their main meal of the day but are now unable to access this resource due to school closures. Some farmworkers, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-undocumented-immigrant-farmworkers-agriculture.html" target="_blank">while cataloged as 'essential' by the federal government</a> during this crisis, are undocumented and were not part of the stimulus package. The height of irony is <a href="https://www.kvpr.org/post/covid-19-deepens-food-insecurity-san-joaquin-valley" target="_blank">farmworkers struggled with access to food distribution</a> when they needed it.</p>There Is No Scenario Where Water Is Not Absolutely Necessary to Lessen the Impacts During a Crisis.
<p>One of my <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/cecilia-moura/covid-19-air-pollution-and-health-impacts-an-interview-with-pediatric-pulmonologist-dr-denise-serebrisky" target="_blank">colleagues wrote</a> that moments of crisis often expose the weak points of a system. In the SJV, the weak points of the water system have been exposed for years and won't be strengthened without managing water resources sustainably. This is evidenced by the number of people in the SJV without access to safe, clean, and affordable drinking water. Considering that about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/28/california-water-wells-dry-sgma" target="_blank">95% of valley residents</a> depend on groundwater for at least part of their water, it is critical that GSPs explicitly include strategies for addressing some of the current and future water issues in the SJV.</p><p>Numerous, various kinds of climate threats will come, whether they develop as <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0804-2" target="_blank">floods, heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, or other climate hazards</a>, we need to be prepared and do everything possible to improve sustainable water management for all. While future climate-change-derived crises most likely will be different than COVID-19, there is no scenario where water is not absolutely necessary to lessen the impacts.</p>
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President Donald Trump holds up a "Trump Digs Coal" sign at a Make America Great Again Rally in Huntington, West Virginia on August 3, 2017. SAUL LOEB / AFP / Getty Images
By Varshini Prakash and John Podesta
At the 2019 Republican Retreat, Donald Trump promised his allies that he would make this election about climate change: "I want to bring them way down the pike," he said, "before we start criticizing the Green New Deal."
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<p>At his Tulsa rally in June, and in many of the campaign "speeches" he's given since then, the president's long riff on the climate proved he hasn't forgotten the promise he made to Republicans. Trump's obsession with the Green New Deal—from his fixation on the completely debunked notion that windmills cause cancer, to his nonsense about cows and hamburgers, to his racist and misogynistic ramblings about Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who introduced the Green New Deal Resolution—is much more central to his reelection effort than it appears at first glance.</p><p>For whatever reason, Trump has decided that the Green New Deal—a proposal to save our country from environmental and economic disaster—is going to be his main electoral punching bag in the 2020 campaign.</p><p>If that's the fight he wants to pick, we say: Bring it on. And new polling shows the Democratic Party should welcome the fight, too.</p><p>Trump and the GOP appear poised to spend the election attacking Joe Biden's plan to create millions of high-paying jobs by falsely arguing that it will cost $100 trillion, and destroy all the cows, cars, and airplanes. The goal of these absurd lies is to distract us from the truth: He and his party have no plan to address the climate crisis aside from further lining the pockets of oil and gas executives. But the American people want climate action.</p>
<p>New polling from Climate Power 2020 finds 71 percent favor bold government action on climate change, while only 18 percent oppose it. And talking about climate moves votes for Democrats. When presented as a choice between a Democratic congressional candidate in favor of bold climate action and an anti-action Republican, the vote moves 14 points in the Democrat's favor. This jump is even bigger—21 points—for centrist Republican and Democratic voters. These numbers are astronomical, and they make clear that running aggressively on climate is the Democratic Party's biggest political opportunity this election.</p><p>Trump's record on climate is damning. He put oil and coal lobbyists in charge of protecting our environment—and they immediately went to work rolling back over 100 environmental safeguards, allowing corporate polluters to pump more toxic pollution and chemicals into our air and water. So that companies like Chevron can keep making billions in profits and pay zero in federal taxes, he's waged a war on our clean energy industry that's cost our economy over 1.1 million jobs. Future generations will face devastating health impacts and extreme weather disasters, all because Trump spent four years allowing fossil fuel lobbyists to dictate his every move on the climate, clean energy, and the environment.</p>
<p>Trump is picking this fight because he thinks he can convince voters that bold climate action is a threat, not a necessity. But hyperbolic attacks don't work. Polling shows the American people see it for what it is: another distraction from the same guy who's called both climate change and the novel coronavirus a hoax, who had the audacity to claim that thousands of Americans did not die under his watch in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and who never listens to scientists, experts—or even his own military leaders at the Pentagon, which have recognized climate change as a national security threat for years.</p><p>But here's the deal: Running boldly on tackling the climate crisis, running on a Green New Deal, these are policies that can be popular in all 50 states. Democrats should run toward, not away from these fights. The evidence is clear: If we loudly make the case for bold climate action, we will win.</p><p><span></span>John's gray hair is a testament to our 44-year difference in age. Those familiar with each of us may not think we have a lot in common. One of us chaired Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, and one of us was Bernie Sanders's leading climate surrogate in 2020. But we're both clear: We've never seen our country so eager to elect leaders who will take bold action to stop the climate crisis.</p>
<p>Neither have we ever known a country in such dire need of such bold action. In a moment of historic unemployment, Democrats want to put millions of people back to work now by investing in bold climate action that would create millions of clean energy jobs and begin to repair decades of environmental injustice. That's what the American people want too. By 23 points, voters support investing trillions of dollars in clean energy infrastructure.</p><p>We have paid an inconceivable price for Trump's refusal to heed experts and science in a crisis. But as Americans claw out of unemployment, as folks scrape together the money to properly honor the lives they have lost, we have become unified by our acute fear of living through another crisis of this scale.</p><p>The climate crisis is the crisis we fear. Trump wants to fight about it. That's good. So do we.</p>
<p><em>This story originally appeared in</em> <em><a href="https://www.thenation.com/" target="_blank">The Nation </a></em><em>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
- Kamala Harris Becomes Latest 2020 Dem to Support a Green New ... ›
- 5 Key Questions About the Green New Deal - EcoWatch ›
- 81% of Voters Support a Green New Deal, Survey Finds - EcoWatch ›
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The Americans With Disabilities Act at 30: A Cause for Celebration During COVID-19?
27 July
Insights + Opinion
President George H.W. Bush signing the American Disabilities Act into law on July 26, 1990. George Bush Presidential Library and Museum / NARA
By Joseph J. Fins and Samuel Bagenstos
When President George Herbert Walker Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law on July 26, 1990, we doubt he was thinking about protecting people with disabilities during a pandemic. How could he? It was unimaginable to conjure up the catastrophe wrought by the coronavirus. We can excuse that oversight.
<p>But Congress should have known better. Of the US$3 trillion dollars appropriated in the <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/cares" target="_blank">CARES Act</a> in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/04/21/hhs-announces-nearly-1-billion-cares-act-grants-support-older-adults-people-with-disabilities-community-during-covid-19-emergency.html" target="_blank">less than $1 billion</a> was dispersed to the states to support older people and individuals with disabilities. This neglect of people with disabilities impairs the ADA on its 30th anniversary.</p><p>But advocacy from the disability rights community has had a marginal effect. The Democratic <a href="https://edlabor.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2020-05-12%20Heroes%20Act%20-%20Health%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf" target="_blank">House version</a> of the HEROES Act now being debated in the Senate has done much better. It includes <a href="https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2020/05/18/house-oks-covid-19-relief-plan-with-more-payments-for-people-with-disabilities/28354/" target="_blank">significant</a> funds to assist people with disabilities during the pandemic, earmarking $10 billion to $15 billion to pay for home and community-based services for the next year. This Medicaid funding can help keep people with disabilities in their homes and out of <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/shared-congregate-house/guidance-shared-congregate-housing.html" target="_blank">congregate and institutional settings</a> where they are especially vulnerable to COVID-19.</p>
<p>The House version of the bill also helps to fund hazard pay and needed access to personal protective equipment for essential health care workers who support people with disabilities. And it offers $200 million in funding for housing and provisions for paid leave for family caregivers. It also provides $500 cash payments to dependent adults with disabilities – individuals who did not qualify for stimulus checks in the original CARES Act in March.</p><p>But all this remains aspirational. As of this writing it is doubtful that the Republican <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-gop-white-house-reach-tentative-1-trillion-pact-break-n1234663" target="_blank">Senate version</a> will be as attentive to the needs of disabled Americans. Senate Republicans seek to slash the $3 trillion House bill by a third. Hopefully, the needs of people with disabilities will make the cut just as we commemorate the passage of the ADA.</p>
<p>No doubt this will be a weekend of celebrations lauding the ADA. And there is much to celebrate. Jon Meacham in his <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/112696/destiny-and-power-by-jon-meacham/" target="_blank">biography of the first President Bush</a> hailed the ADA as "the most sweeping civil rights measure in a generation."</p><p>A central mandate of the ADA is to make the goods of society accessible to people with disabilities and overcome their segregation in civil society through reasonable accommodation that allows them to go to work, live with their neighbors, and avoid institutionalization.</p><p>But let's not delude ourselves with historic sentimentality as disability law is placed under tremendous stress by the pandemic. It would be especially tragic, and run counter to the ADA, if the disabled community were returned to the shadows by COVID-19 either through neglect or inattention.</p>
<h3>Disability Rights Are Civil Rights</h3><p>It is too easy to forget disability rights as the nation rightly addresses the legacy of structural racism prompted by the Black Lives Matters movement. But to do so would be to ignore the deep intersections between racial and disability injustice. And it would fundamentally misread the legacy of the civil rights movement, one of whose many contributions – and derivatives – was disability rights.<br></p><p>The stories of civil and disability rights are intertwined. One historical anecdote speaks to the close linkage: Before the passage of the <a href="https://www.access-board.gov/the-board/laws/rehabilitation-act-of-1973" target="_blank">Rehabilitation of Act of 1973</a>, a precursor of the ADA, <a href="https://mn.gov/mnddc/ada-legacy/ada-legacy-moment11.html" target="_blank">Sen. Hubert Humphrey first tried to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964</a> to ban discrimination against people with disabilities in federally funded programs. As the nation gains a deeper appreciation of civil rights, it is important to remember that disability rights are civil rights.</p><p>And they are not fair weather rights. In our view, the ADA must be operative in good and bad times. People with disabilities are especially vulnerable during the pandemic. They disproportionately live, or are at risk of living, in congregate settings where they can become tinder for the virus. And the everyday inconveniences of the pandemic suffered by folks without a disability are doubly challenging for people with a disability.</p>
<h3>ADA Compliance During COVID-19</h3><p>Those without disabilities complain about wearing a mask or being deprived of dinner at the neighborhood bistro. But people with disabilities have more formidable challenges. Just imagine you're disabled and need to get a COVID-19 test. Your state has set up a drive-through testing center. The problem is you can't drive or are unable to sit in a car for several hours to wait for the test.</p><p><a href="https://www.disabilityrightsnebraska.org/" target="_blank">Disability Rights Nebraska</a> has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services about TestNebraska, the state's COVID-19 mobile testing program, claiming the program discriminated against people with disabilities. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts essentially conceded the discrimination when he <a href="http://netnebraska.org/article/news/1221753/disabled-advocates-say-testnebraska-not-accessible" target="_blank">told Nebraska's PBS and NPR</a> that "what we needed to do is to continue to work on getting the system down for the regular customers, so to speak, if you want to think about it – the drive-up customers that the system was originally designed to serve."</p><p>What did Gov. Ricketts mean by regular customers? Are people with disabilities somehow irregular and unworthy? Invoking a <a href="https://www.csus.edu/indiv/c/chalmersk/econ184sp09/johnrawls.pdf" target="_blank">Rawlsian theory of justice</a>, not to mention the mandates of the ADA, shouldn't people with the greatest need be who the state prioritizes?</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.disabilityrightsnebraska.org/resources/covid19-updatesandresources.html/article/2020/06/18/federal-civil-rights-complaint-against-testnebraska-people-with-disabilities-are-regular-people-governor-ricketts" target="_blank">letter to Roger Severino</a>, the director of the HSS Office of Civil Rights, Disability Rights Nebraska cites one responsible citizen with a disability who had trouble getting tested. She had developed a sore throat, fatigue, nausea and muscle aches, all potential signs of COVID-19. She lived at home and depended upon a ventilator. Her doctor told her to go to the drive-through testing site. But she was unable to drive there safely by herself and was worried that she might expose someone else if they drove her to the site. Her doctor told her to wait and see how things went and call an ambulance if she needed to go to the emergency room. Clearly this barrier to care is a violation of the letter and spirit of the Americans with Disability Act and cannot stand.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/as-cases-surge-lines-for-covid-19-tests-sometimes-stretch-miles-in-the-summer-heat/2020/07/01/f0951586-ba4b-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html" target="_blank">endless lines of cars</a> snaking through parking lots in Florida, Arizona and Texas waiting for COVID-19 testing reminds us of the final scene from "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_Dreams" target="_blank">A Field of Dreams</a>." The headlights stretch out into the Iowa twilight affirming that if you build it they will come. But in the context of COVID-19 that's not enough. You need to build it so that everyone can come. This means accommodating all who are currently living with disabilities and the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32700223/" target="_blank">newly disabled survivors of COVID-19</a> who will be left with lifelong challenges. As we celebrate every life that is saved, we need to remember that <a href="https://fedace.org/files/MSCFEDACE/2020-1/14-12-39-6.admin.FEDACE_triptico__elDanoCerebralAdquiridoInfantil.pdf" target="_blank">those lives deserved to be lived</a>.</p><p>As the nation celebrates the 30th anniversary of the ADA, this law is more important than ever. Congress must include adequate funds in the forthcoming HEROES Act to ensure ADA compliance during the pandemic. Anything less turns any celebration into a hollow bromide.</p>
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<em>Joseph J. Fins is the E. William Davis Jr, M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics and a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University.</em><br/>
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<em>Samuel Bagenstos is the Frank G. Millard Professor of Law at the University of Michigan.</em>
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<em>Disclosure statements: </em><em>Joseph J. Fins receives funding as follows: "</em><em>I am principal investigator of an NIH BRAIN Initiative grant entitled, 'Cognitive Restoration: Neuroethics and Disability Rights.' I also receive book royalties from Cambridge University Press for 'Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics and the Struggle for Consciousness' which addresses ethics, brain injury and disability rights. From 2017-18, I was principal investigator on a grant from the Greenwall Foundation entitled, 'When Neuroscience meets Disability Law: An Ethical Mandate to Address the Needs of Patients with Severe Brain Injury.' Professor Bagenstos is a co-investigator on this grant. Finally, I am Principal Investigator of a study entitled, 'Assistive Technology in Pediatric Brain Injury following In-patient Rehabilitation: Access, Barriers and Burdens on Patients and Families.' (in collaboration with Blythedale Children's Hospital) funded by the Weill Cornell Medicine Clinical Translational Science Center (CTSC) and Blythedale Children's Hospital. Affiliations: Board of Trustees, Hastings Center; Advisor to the Board, An Saol Foundation, Dublin Ireland; and Co-Chair, Advisory Board, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) Model System, Spaulding Rehabilitation Network, Harvard Medical School and Partners Health Care.</em>
</p><p>
<em>Samuel Bagenstos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.</em>
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<span></span><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-americans-with-disabilities-act-at-30-a-cause-for-celebration-during-covid-19-143399" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</em>
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By Bill McKibben
The upcoming election looks to be an apocalyptic turning point for our democracy—and our planet. In Turnout! Mobilizing Voters in an Emergency, political visionaries and movement leaders such as Bill McKibben define the urgency of this moment and provide a manual for turning out voters in an age of extreme inequality, climate change, and pandemic.
<p>It is a cliché at this point to describe an election as "the most important of our lifetimes." Every election is key—they're how we take stock of where we are as a nation. They're part of a chain stretching into the past and into the future. </p><p>But if you wanted to make the argument—and I do—that this year actually is special, the climate crisis might be as good a place as any to start. And that's because it comes with a feature that most political issues don't: a deadline. In October 2018, the world's climate scientists issued a special report, assessing our chances of meeting the targets set at the global climate talks in Paris a few years before. Those targets were modest—they called for attempting to hold the planet's temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Since we've already raised the temperature 1 degree, and that's been enough to melt half the summer sea ice in the Arctic, kill off vast swaths of coral reef, and set big patches of the Earth on fire, it's not like the Paris targets are desirable. (Desirable was the world many of us were born onto.) They're crucial. And if we hope to meet them, the scientists were quite explicit: We have to fundamentally transform our energy systems by 2030. They helpfully defined that fundamental transformation: We need to cut our carbon emissions in half. In 10 years.</p><p>Anyone who has ever spent time around governments knows that speed is not one of their hallmarks. If we have any hope of meeting that target set for a decade out, we need to be hard at work just about … now. If another four years of inaction passes, the chance is over, and with it the planet as we've known it.</p><p>The past four years, of course, have been more than a time of annoying stasis—it's been a period of active regression. The Trump administration has tried, with a good deal of success, to undercut every environmental law on the books, paying particular attention to climate change. A rogue's gallery of coal lobbyists and oil executives have taken the top jobs in the environmental and energy bureaucracies and used the posts to give their industries free rein across the landscape. Where the Obama administration had scored modest successes—ratcheting up the gas mileage for cars, for instance—they've sprinted in the opposite direction.</p>
<p>Above all, of course, they've removed America from those Paris climate accords, in an act of breathtaking vandalism. It took decades for the international community to reach those agreements, and now the country that has poured the most carbon into the atmosphere is also the only country not engaged in the only global effort to do something about it.</p><p>It's not that the Paris accords were so amazing—even the people negotiating them acknowledged at their signing in 2015 that they fell short of the task. Even if all the countries on Earth kept their pledges, the mercury would still rise nearly 3 degrees Celsius. But the calculation was that perhaps once countries began implementing renewable energy on a large scale, they'd find it cheaper and easier than they reckoned, and a virtuous spiral would ensue, allowing much faster progress. At first, it seemed to be working—throughout the past decade the world's engineers kept dropping the price of sun and wind, and the pace of installations started to quicken. But then appeared Trump, who labeled global warming a hoax manufactured by the Chinese and who believed that wind turbines caused cancer. It was as if the road along which we were supposed to be accelerating was suddenly filled with potholes; momentum slowed, not just here but in much of the rest of the world. (The appearance of Trump-like figures in other countries didn't help—Brazil's Bolsonaro, for instance, started opening up the Amazon to intense exploitation, an act as reckless as opening a new fleet of gas-fired power plants.) Having lost three decades to the oil industry's campaign of disinformation, we were now losing time again.</p>
<p>And time, as I have indicated, is the most precious asset here. Most of our problems linger—my entire adult life we've been engaged in the fight to try to provide medical care to Americans. It's infuriating that we haven't done it yet; Trump's efforts to cut back access will, of course, kill many and bankrupt more. But at least they won't make it harder to solve the problem once we finally decide to—the day will come when some president is able to make our country match every other industrialized nation, and the preceding decades will not have made it harder. The climate crisis isn't like that—as a team of scientists reported in November, we're about to cross a whole series of tipping points, ranging from destabilizing Antarctic ice sheets to slowing down vast ocean currents. These are not reversible; no one has a plan for refreezing the poles.</p><p>Every election that passes, we lose leverage—this time around our last chance at limiting the temperature rise to anything like 1.5 degrees would slip through our fingers. Which is why we need to register and vote as never before. It's also, of course, why we need to do more than that: many of us are also hard at work this year taking on the big banks that fund the fossil fuel industry, trying to pull the financial lever as well as the political one. And even within the world of politics, we need to do much more than vote: no matter who wins, Nov. 4 and 5 and 6 are as important as Nov. 3; we have to push, and prod, and open up space for the people we work to install in office.</p><p><span></span>But in the autumn of an even-numbered year, we have a superpower that will wither as soon as Election Day passes. Our vote is our chance to have a say. In the case of the climate, that is not just about what will happen for the next four years. It's about what will happen for the next 10,000 years.</p>
<p><em><u><a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/authors/bill-mckibben/" target="_blank">BILL MCKIBBEN</a> </u>is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, the founder of 350.org, and the winner of the 2014 Right Livelihood Award. He is a YES! contributing editor.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from </em><em><a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2020/07/20/election-climate-change/" target="_blank">YES! Magazine</a>.</em><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/r/entryeditor/2646807687#/" target="_self"></a></p>From Your Site Articles
- Trump Seeks to Frack the 2020 Election - EcoWatch ›
- Latino Voters Worried About Climate Change Could Swing 2020 ... ›
- Climate Change Is a Top Concern in 2020 Election - EcoWatch ›
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A polar bear with two playful cubs. Jennie Gosché
By Jennie Gosché
In late 2019, before the world was completely upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, I was presented a last-minute chance to photograph polar bears outside one of the northernmost villages in the United States — Kaktovik, Alaska. It was an opportunity I couldn't refuse, and as the COVID-19 pandemic now stretches into summer 2020, I'm grateful I accepted.
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzUxMzU2My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NDg0NDEyOX0.ducqI5scB-Y8YGfBjJy8MH782PWfHnMc3M2N5yrh9dE/img.jpg?width=980" id="86ac9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="99cd2f84506e478d8022f6c9a3064b44" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Polar bears adorn the sign leading into Kaktovik. Jennie Gosché
<p>Kaktovik is an Inupiat native village of around 250 people on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, located on barrier islands at the edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. My first trip there took place in September 2016, and I traveled with the purpose to photograph the <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/news/southern-beaufort-sea-polar-bear-population-declined-2000s#:~:text=The%20polar%20bear%20was%20listed,ice%20loss%20on%20their%20populations." target="_blank">threatened Southern Beaufort Sea polar bear population</a>. The coastal region of the Arctic Refuge in fall is a special place to photograph these magnificent animals, as they congregate on dirt and sand spits of land waiting for the winter ice of the Beaufort Sea to make its way to the Alaska shore.</p><p>During the late summer and early fall, Inupiat boat owners from Kaktovik guide "tourist" photographers out to view polar bears from a safe distance in the placid lagoon adjacent to the raging waves of the Beaufort Sea. I joined one such group of photographers led by <a href="https://hughrosephotography.com/" target="_blank">Hugh Rose</a>, a professional photographer and geologist who lives in Fairbanks, and we took a short charter flight from Deadhorse to Kaktovik, landing in a morning snowstorm. But by afternoon, the sun was out and we had three and a half days of sunshine that combined with the ice and snow to create great conditions in which to photograph polar bears.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzUxMzU2Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MDE1ODE5M30.wlTpUch74PsdZbvOOVmlJLlEfOS3UHI9S1yb1orCbf4/img.jpg?width=980" id="f9de2" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="57baaf66d893539215aba68cdae72e8c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
The welcome sign at the Waldo Arms Hotel. Jeff Stamer / www.firefallphotography.com
<p>We were out in the lagoon twice a day, breaking only for lunch at our hotel, the modest but welcoming <a href="http://www.waldoarmshotel.net/" target="_blank">Waldo Arms Hotel</a> owned by Walt "Waldo" Audi and Merlyn Trainer — one of only two options for places to stay in Kaktovik when visiting. The boat guides are skilled, and they have to be, because knowledge and awareness of depths in the lagoon is critical to prevent a boat from getting stuck in shallow water.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzUxMzU2Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNDM3NTQ1NH0.erl1bkwyRS9tYzJTVnPD5FL4eUk4e7EMLnv7bKmcQmI/img.jpg?width=980" id="e1274" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="28ddc335167786f68044d07a092f1d82" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Polar bear viewing is done by boat for the safety of both people and polar bears. Jennie Gosché
<p>This trip we were in a boat with a heated cabin, a perk since we were there later in the season. Our boat driver, however, told us that at that very same time the previous year, the lagoon was completely frozen over. He shared this as we floated on the lagoon in open water, though ice was visible in places and we occasionally heard pieces rubbing against the hull of the metal boat.</p><p>____________________________________________________________________________________________________________</p><p>With rapidly rising temperatures, <a href="http://forestry.alaska.gov/Assets/pdfs/firestats/2019%20Alaska%20Fire%20Statistics.pdf" target="_blank">increases in wildfires</a>, thawing permafrost, receding glaciers, <a href="https://www.alaskapublic.org/2019/11/21/new-report-sheds-more-light-on-climate-change-impacts-to-alaska-native-villages/" target="_blank">eroding coastlines</a> and disappearing sea ice, <a href="https://www.cjr.org/special_report/whats-become-of-arctic.php" target="_blank">Alaska and the Arctic are on the front lines of climate change</a>. It has hit Alaska's rural communities and <a href="https://www.alaskapublic.org/2019/11/21/new-report-sheds-more-light-on-climate-change-impacts-to-alaska-native-villages/" target="_blank">Alaska Native villages especially hard</a>, including villages like <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/11/25/changes-in-climate-make-alaskas-traditional-ice-cellars-unreliable/" target="_blank">Kaktovik</a>. Warming waters and the disappearing Arctic ice cap are also impacting ocean life, from plankton to <a href="https://www.ktuu.com/content/news/Polar-bears-face-swimming-to-land-or-ecological-trap-as-sea-ice-diminishes-567243261.html" target="_blank">polar bears</a> to whales. And the decline in sea ice is making it <a href="https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/environment/indigenous_impacts.html" target="_blank">increasingly unsafe for humans and wildlife to travel across it</a> to hunt marine mammals like seals, walrus and bowhead whales.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzUxMzU2OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0ODkyMzUyMH0.yboTwh7hnlLyKF3hiJn3JAF_ClTFFXjxSx0bFMDvLLM/img.jpg?width=980" id="7fcbc" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="dd629612d9e0b2b3d95ca96a1fafe6d3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Coastal erosion is causing permafrost to thaw and break off, here along the Arctic coastal plain in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area of the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska. Brandt Meixell, U.S.Geological Survey
<p>The Inupiat are primarily subsistence hunters and whalers, harvesting whales each summer (in addition to caribou and other wildlife), the meat from which is shared by the entire village. It is a staple of their diet and has been for thousands of years, but as temperatures warm, the lack of ice combined with changes in whale migration patterns and timing could make hunting progressively more difficult.</p><p>The Inupiat <a href="https://www.fws.gov/refuge/arctic/pbcommunity.html" target="_blank">share their whale meat with the polar bears</a>, something they have done for many years. This gesture provides much needed food for polar bears, especially as they spend longer periods of time on land due to the receding sea ice. When I visited Kaktovik in 2016, my most memorable photo is of a cub on top of whale bones, shaking what looks like animal skin in its mouth.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzUxMzU3MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5Nzc3NzE0N30.0SxXCDo5Vaia13GII3uEk5IYSs2d6pxfUU1bW9AM7B4/img.jpg?width=980" id="16645" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="babdb9d27ca6834212bc276596e92df3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Bears have learned to scavenge whale carcasses left over from successful whaling hunts. Jennie Gosché
<p>As I returned to the village in late 2019, however, they had moved the bone pile away from the lagoon to an area off-limits to tourists. I was told the bone pile now only stays on land for a short time, and then the bones are pushed into the ocean. Eventually, this change could affect the overall health of the Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears, as many of them increasingly den on land in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and utilize the shared whale meat for sustenance during the summer and early fall before they enter their maternal birthing dens in November.<br>____________________________________________________________________________________________________________</p><p>Which brings me back to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as wild a place as any other on Earth but one also under threat of oil and gas development. While in Kaktovik I learned that there is not a consensus in the village on the question of allowing oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge. Climate change and impacts to wildlife are serious concerns, so much so that more than 60 village residents <a href="https://www.adn.com/opinions/2017/12/13/those-who-would-open-anwr-do-not-speak-for-kaktovik/" target="_blank">signed a petition in 2017 opposing drilling on the Arctic Refuge coastal plain</a>.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzUxMzU3My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMzY1Mzk4OH0.mbTdFW-RUFS12gFR5cnUKtB7aERaAYyfBpAo7FpL6EU/img.jpg?width=980" id="a986f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a69634ab2a4cb7218e73571fb67e8825" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Oil production facilities dominate the region around Prudhoe Bay, to the West of the Arctic Refuge. Florian Schulz / www.florianschulz.org
<p>Helping to prevent development in the <a href="https://www.alaskawild.org/places-we-protect/arctic-refuge/" target="_blank">Arctic National Wildlife Refuge</a> — a place that supports the greatest variety of plant and animal life in the entire circumpolar north — is very important to me, not least of all because the <a href="https://www.alaskawild.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/USGS-wildlife-report-statement-1-26-2018-FINAL.pdf" target="_blank">U.S. government has admitted</a> it simply doesn't have enough information about the impacts of oil and gas development on the coastal plain to protect its wildlife and other values. Oil drilling <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2019/11/20/477495/trumps-energy-policies-put-alaska-climate-crosshairs/" target="_blank">will compound the devastating climate impacts</a> already being felt by villages in the region, increasing carbon emissions, worsening climate pollution and further harming front line communities.</p><p>Especially now, in the midst of an uncertain present and looking forward to an uncertain future, we need to press pause on Arctic Refuge development. Instead of recklessly rushing ahead, more research over extended periods of time is needed so that we can fully understand the potential impact oil drilling will have on local villages, our climate and wildlife like the majestic polar bear.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzUxMzU3NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMjY0MDg3NX0.dZU0z5o9B6w9N7iMkL0RIC1EL86kfp1CX8QoksRnTkM/img.jpg?width=980" id="5c491" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="00847007e12c1478891865721f7dc0c6" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
A mother nurses her cubs. Jennie Gosché
<p><em>Jennie Gosché has traveled to the Arctic seven times to photograph polar bears. Having visited the five countries where polar bears are found (Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Russia, the United States and Canada), Kaktovik, Alaska, has become her favorite place to photograph them. Jennie's photography has been exhibited in Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and Maryland. She is a member of Alaska Wilderness League.</em></p>
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COVID-19 has led to a boom in telehealth, with some health care facilities seeing an increase in its use by as much as 8,000%. Geber86 / Getty Images
By Jennifer A. Mallow
COVID-19 has led to a boom in telehealth, with some health care facilities seeing an increase in its use by as much as 8,000%.
<p>This shift happened <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocaa067" target="_blank">quickly and unexpectedly</a> and has left many people asking whether telehealth is really as good as in-person care.</p><p>Over the last decade, I've <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5Zl62KMAAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank">studied telehealth as a Ph.D. researcher</a> while using it as a registered nurse and advanced practice nurse. Telehealth is the use of phone, video, internet and technology to perform health care, and when done right, it can be <a href="https://effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov/products/telehealth/technical-brief" target="_blank">just as effective as in-person health care</a>. But as many patients and health care professionals switch to telehealth for the first time, there will inevitably be a <a href="https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/patient-experience-evolving-providers-embrace-telehealth" target="_blank">learning curve as people adapt to this new system</a>.</p><p>So how does a patient or a provider make sure they are using telehealth in the right way? That is a question of the technology available, the patient's medical situation and the risks of going – or not going – to a health care office.</p>
Telehealth Technologies
<p>There are three main types of telehealth: synchronous, asynchronous and remote monitoring. Knowing when to use each one – and having the right technology on hand – is critical to using telehealth wisely.</p><p><a href="https://www.cchpca.org/about/about-telehealth/live-video-synchronous" target="_blank">Synchronous telehealth</a> is a live, two-way interaction, usually over video or phone. Health care providers generally prefer video conferencing over phone calls because aside from tasks that require physical touch, nearly anything that can be done in person can be done over video. But some things, like the taking of blood samples, for example, simply cannot be done over video.</p><p>Many of the limitations of video conferencing can be overcome with the second telehealth approach, remote patient monitoring. Patients can use devices at home to get objective data that is <a href="https://www.cchpca.org/about/about-telehealth/remote-patient-monitoring-rpm" target="_blank">automatically uploaded to health care providers</a>. Devices exist to measure blood pressure, temperature, heart rhythms and many other aspects of health. These devices are great for getting reliable data that can show trends over time. Researchers have shown that remote monitoring approaches are as effective as – and in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnr134" target="_blank">some cases better than</a> – in-person care for many chronic conditions.</p><p>Some remaining gaps can be filled with the third type, <a href="https://www.cchpca.org/about/about-telehealth/store-and-forward-asynchronous" target="_blank">asynchronous telehealth</a>. Patients and providers can use the internet to answer questions, describe symptoms, refill prescription refills, make appointments and for other general communication.</p><p>Unfortunately, not every provider or patient has the technology or the experience to use live video conferencing or remote monitoring equipment. But even having all the available telehealth technology does not mean that telehealth can solve every problem.</p>Ongoing Care and First Evaluations
<p>Generally, telehealth is right for patients who have ongoing conditions or who need an initial evaluation of a sudden illness.</p><p>Because telehealth makes it easier to have have frequent check-ins compared to in-person care, managing ongoing care for chronic illnesses like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1463-1326.2009.01057.x" target="_blank">diabetes</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1474515119826510" target="_blank">heart disease</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1258/jtt.2009.090812" target="_blank">lung disease</a> can be as safe as or better than in-person care.</p><p>Research has shown that it can also be used effectively to diagnose and even treat new and short-term health issues as well. The tricky part is knowing which situations can be dealt with remotely.</p><p>Imagine you took a fall and want to get medical advice to make sure you didn't break your arm. If you were to go to a hospital or clinic, almost always, the first health care professional you'd see is a primary care generalist, like me. That person will, if possible, diagnose the problem and give you basic medical advice: "You've got a large bruise, but nothing appears to be broken. Just rest, put some ice on it and take a pain reliever." If I look at your arm and think you need more involved care, I would recommend the next steps you should take: "Your arm looks like it might be fractured. Let's order you an X-ray."</p><p>This first interaction can easily be done from home using telehealth. If a patient needs further care, they would simply leave home to get it after meeting with me via video. If they don't need further care, then telehealth just saved a lot of time and hassle for the patient.</p><p>Research has shown that using telehealth for things like minor injuries, stomach pains and nausea provides the <a href="https://emj.bmj.com/content/21/4/438.short" target="_blank">same level of care as in-person medicine</a> and reduces <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10903127.2019.1568650" target="_blank">unnecessary ambulance rides and hospital visits</a>.</p><p>Some research has shown that telehealth is not as effective as in-person care at diagnosing the causes of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2017.0240" target="_blank">sore throats</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05091" target="_blank">respiratory infections</a>. Especially now during the coronavirus pandemic, in-person care might be necessary if you are having respiratory issues.</p><p>And finally, for obviously life-threatening situations like severe bleeding, chest pain or shortness of breath, patients should still go to hospitals and emergency rooms.</p>
Balancing Risk
<p>With the right technology and in the right situations, telehealth is an incredibly effective tool. But the question of when to use telehealth must also take into account the risk and burden of getting care.</p><p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2020.04.016" target="_blank">COVID-19 increases the risks of in-person care</a>, so while you should obviously still go to a hospital if you think you may be having a heart attack, right now, it might be better to have a telehealth consultation about acne – even if you might prefer an in-person appointment.</p><p>Burden is another thing to consider. Time off work, travel, wait times and the many other inconveniences that go along with an in-person visit aren't necessary simply to get refills for ongoing medication. But, if a provider needs to draw a patient's blood to monitor the safety or effectiveness of a prescription medicine, the burden of an in-person visit to the lab is likely worth the increased risk.</p><p>Of course, not all health care can be done by telehealth, but a lot can, and research shows that in many cases, it's just as good as in-person care. As the pandemic continues and other problems need addressing, think about the right telehealth fit for you, and talk to your health care team about the services offered, your risks and your preferences. You might find that that there are far fewer waiting rooms in your future.</p>
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Increasingly, thinking about the future of cities suggests that chiefly relying on cars as a form of transport has run its course. Andreas Komodromos / Flickr / CC by 2.0
By Kevin J. Krizek
Sticking closer to home because of COVID-19 has shown many people what cities can be like with less traffic, noise, congestion and pollution. Roads and parking lots devoted to cars take up a lot of land. For example, in Phoenix, Los Angeles and New York City these spaces account for over one-third of each city's total area.
<p>When stay-at-home orders went into effect in many parts of the U.S. in March, streets and parking lots went dormant seemingly overnight. Within days, municipalities across the U.S. started <a href="http://pedbikeinfo.org/resources/resources_details.cfm?id=5209" target="_blank">shifting these spaces</a> to other uses that better suit people.</p><p>As a professor of environmental design and transport, I've worked for decades to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lfb0Tu4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao" target="_blank">unravel the many factors</a> that keep people reliant on cars, SUVs and trucks. Weather, time constraints, children – there are many reasons that prevent people from using transportation modes like bicycles. Yet with a simple first step – starting to reconfigure city streets – meaningful change can begin to break down traditional transportation barriers and usher in a new culture of getting around town by means other than cars.</p>
The Dangerous, Expensive Automobile
<p>In large U.S. cities, nearly half of all car trips are <a href="https://doi.org/10.32866/10777" target="_blank">less than four miles</a>. Using cars to travel such short distances has many costs.</p><p>For example, consider traffic fatalities. Two pedestrians or cyclists die every hour on U.S. city streets, a national trend that's been <a href="http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/180624.aspx" target="_blank">worsening</a> in recent years, even though cycling and walking rates are <a href="https://bikeleague.org/content/new-data-bike-commuting" target="_blank">steady or declining</a>. Pollution from cars contributes to climate change and worsens air quality. Designing cities around cars <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-are-stranded-in-transit-deserts-in-dozens-of-us-cities-92722" target="_blank">marginalizes individuals who don't have them</a>.</p><span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b5c9ddfda1e03726192181fedaef4a35"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/h-I6HFQXquU?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>In my view, this is the time to move beyond the "grab the keys" mentality on the way out the door, as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2015.1057196" target="_blank">millennials</a> and <a href="https://washpirg.org/blogs/blog/usp/don%E2%80%99t-believe-hype-%E2%80%93-millennials%E2%80%99-transportation-habits-are-changing" target="_blank">GenXers</a> already are doing. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/opinion/ban-cars-manhattan-cities.html" target="_blank">New visions</a> for streets, where cars use less space and are replaced by smaller vehicles built for individual riders, are gaining currency.</p><p>These modes of transport might be <a href="https://electrek.co/2020/06/19/cityqs-enclosed-electric-car-ebike-begins-taking-pre-orders/" target="_blank">new forms of e-bikes</a>, e-scooters or hoverboards. These novel vehicles, which were already <a href="https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/06/17/four-signs-this-might-be-micromobilitys-big-moment/" target="_blank">attracting attention</a> before COVID-19, complement conventional bicycles, whose <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/nyregion/bike-shortage-coronavirus.html" target="_blank">sales have boomed</a> during the pandemic.</p>
New Thinking, Different Results
<p>Increasingly, thinking about the future of cities suggests that chiefly relying on cars as a form of transport <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/opinion/us-infrastructure-plan.html" target="_blank">has run its course</a>. By minimally modifying the existing infrastructure, it is possible for city leaders to repurpose roads and parking spaces while ensuring the same ease of being able to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2020.102336" target="_blank">reach daily services</a>.</p><p>Emerging forms of mobility and changing mindsets can help deliver these opportunities. Bicycles and bicycle-like vehicles provide a catalyst to shift how city streets are used.</p><p>Research demonstrates that people will adopt new ways of getting around town when they are confident that an entire route, including intersections and parking lots, is safe for travel. Some COVID-19-induced street changes that have emerged recently, such as <a href="https://globaldesigningcities.org/publication/global-street-design-guide/designing-streets-people/designing-for-motorists/traffic-calming-strategies/" target="_blank">reducing the number of traffic lanes</a> and <a href="https://www.insider.com/cities-closed-streets-for-pedestrians-covid-lockdowns-2020-5#eventually-new-york-city-aims-to-open-a-total-of-100-miles-of-streets-for-free-use-to-pedestrians-2" target="_blank">closing streets to traffic</a>, are a good first step. But they lack the network component.</p><p>Networks quickly develop the more people use them. The quickest way to build one that is scaled and purposed for people begins by identifying streets used to make short trips. These are places near neighborhood retail districts, schools and other activity centers.</p><p>Informed by local data, leaders can make decisions about which streets should give priority to vehicles such as bicycles, not cars. Changes might include physically demarcated lanes and signs making statements like "Cars are guests." Initially, these changes might require waivers to exempt them from adhering to current engineering guidelines and standards – restrictions that stifle innovation.</p><div id="96008" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3bf9becba1577cd577d5dbdcf6a08dc6"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1264305002203492352" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Avenue B, as it should B, as it was meant to B, serving a variety of active road users AND promoting social distanc… https://t.co/KPWPu4wdzu</div> — madamwestbikes (@madamwestbikes)<a href="https://twitter.com/madamwestbikes/statuses/1264305002203492352">1590268776.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>Now large and small U.S. cities are experimenting with different strategies and contending with long-standing equity concerns about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/upshot/pandemic-city-planning-inequality.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage" target="_blank">which streets</a> to change. For example, Minneapolis has <a href="https://www.minneapolisparks.org/news/2020/04/03/minneapolis-park-and-recreation-board-announces-three-more-parkway-closures-to-motor-vehicles-to-allow-pedestrians-more-space-for-social-distancing/" target="_blank">closed a number of parkways to cars</a>, reserving them exclusively for cyclists and walkers.</p><p>Pioneering cities like <a href="https://bikeportland.org/2020/04/29/heres-what-to-expect-with-portlands-new-slow-streets-plan-314117" target="_blank">Portland, Oregon</a>, <a href="https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/stay-healthy-streets" target="_blank">Seattle</a> and <a href="https://www.oaklandca.gov/projects/oakland-slow-streets" target="_blank">Oakland</a> are using this time to test ways of sharing a broader array of streets among cyclists, walkers and car users. Researchers are providing tools to identify the most promising places to reallocate space for <a href="https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.13421" target="_blank">pop-up cycle ways</a>.</p><p>Enacting change now – in a strategic manner and while travel levels are down – may be an opportunity to reap <a href="https://twitter.com/BrentToderian/status/1280517484362129409" target="_blank">quick gains</a> with <a href="https://twitter.com/Jamesdestafford/status/1278735426312945664" target="_blank">high impact</a>. I believe that a better transport future is within reach by taking advantage of the space dominated by automobiles. This is the time to leverage current low-traffic conditions so that streets and roads can be converted to accommodate new technology and transport.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kevin-j-krizek-1114954" target="_blank"><em>Kevin J. Krizek</em></a><em> is a Professor of Environmental Design, University of Colorado Boulder.<br/>
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<em>Disclosure statement: Kevin J. Krizek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</em>
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<em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-fewer-cars-on-us-streets-now-is-the-time-to-reinvent-roadways-and-how-we-use-them-140408" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</em>
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