Vote Elevates Community Rights Over Corporate Privileges—Bans Fracking and Injection Wells
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
The Ferguson Township charter amendment was drafted by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) at the invitation of the community groups Community Rights Activism for Ferguson Township (CRAFT), a group of local citizens, lead by Pam Steckler and Groundswell, headed up by retired Penn State professor Jeffrey Kurland. Groundswell organized last year’s successful charter amendment campaign in State College Borough.
When Kurland presented the petitions to the Centre County Board of Elections for inclusion on the ballot, Ferguson Township officials threatened to file an injunction in county court, seeking a ruling on the question’s constitutionality. CELDF, representing the petitioners, notified the Township that in similar cases it had argued, the courts had ruled in favor of petitioners’ rights against prior restraint. Following receipt of that information, Solicitor Lewis Steinberg advised the Township Commissioners that residents must first have their say at the polls.
The amendment survived pre-election public opposition by the Township Commissioners, Municipal Solicitor Lewis Steinberg and Township Manager Mark Kunkle, including Township-funded mailers sent to each household in the community and commentaries on the Township’s official website advising residents to vote against the Community Bill of Rights.
Despite claims made by opponents, the Community Bill of Rights amendment does not “regulate” oil or gas extraction. Rather, it asserts fundamental rights that are beyond regulation by the state and then protects those rights by prohibiting corporate behavior deemed by the community to pose threats to those rights. Fracking and related activities are permitted by the state and allow corporations to site drilling and injection wells against the consent of the community. The amendment recognizes the rights of community members as superior to the regulatory laws of Pennsylvania and finds the issuance of such permits, in violation of those rights, to be an illegitimate exercise of state power.
With passage of the law, Ferguson Township joins a dozen other communities in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Ohio and New Mexico that have taken a stand for fundamental rights by banning fracking and related activities.
Corporations that violate the prohibitions or that seek to drill or site injection wells in the Township will not be afforded “personhood” rights under the U.S. or Pennsylvania Constitution, nor will they be afforded protections under the Commerce Clause or Contracts Clause under the federal or state constitution.
Visit EcoWatch’s FRACKING page for more related news on this topic.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved two Lysol products as the first to effectively kill the novel coronavirus on surfaces, based on laboratory testing. Paul Hennessy / NurPhoto via Getty Images
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently issued a list of 431 products that are effective at killing viruses when they are on surfaces. Now, a good year for Lysol manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser just got better when the EPA said that two Lysol products are among the products that can kill the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
<p>The two products are Lysol Disinfectant Spray and Lysol Disinfectant Max Cover Mist. In a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-approves-first-surface-disinfectant-products-tested-sars-cov-2-virus" target="_blank">press release</a>, the agency said that the two products were both successful in laboratory testing at preventing the spread of the virus.</p><p>While there are 431 products on the EPA's list of disinfectants that are strong enough to stave off "harder-to-kill" viruses than the novel coronavirus, the two Lysol products are the first to be tested directly against the virus behind the global pandemic and be proven effective, as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/health/epa-lysol-disinfectant-covid-19-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a> reported.</p><p>While the EPA plans to test more products against the coronavirus specifically, it has so far only approved the two Lysol products as effective at removing the virus from surfaces.</p>
<p>That doesn't mean you just spray the disinfectant, wipe it away, and the virus is gone. The tests showed it was effective after two minutes, which means spraying it, leaving it, and then vigorously scrubbing are important steps to ensuring the sprays remove the coronavirus.</p><p>Reckitt Benckiser has already seen its profits rise more than 13 percent in the first half of the year as individuals and businesses have prioritized sanitizing surfaces, as <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/elanagross/2020/07/07/lysol-products-kill-coronavirus-on-surfaces-epa-testing-shows/#19a7571a242f" target="_blank">Forbes</a> reported. The company also made headlines in April when it had to disavow President <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" target="_self">Trump</a>'s claim that a disinfectant inside the body could knock out the virus in one minute.</p><p>"We must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route)," the company said in <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/media-erupt-over-trump-comments-on-disinfectant-heres-what-he-said" target="_blank" title="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/media-erupt-over-trump-comments-on-disinfectant-heres-what-he-said">statement</a> at the time, as Forbes reported.</p>
<p>Now, the company has the distinct advantage of being allowed to advertise on its label that it can kill the novel coronavirus, which is technically named SARS-CoV-2. Before any product can legally advertise that it can kill a particular pathogen, the claim must be authorized by the EPA, according to <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-two-lysol-products-effectively-kill-coronavirus-on-surfaces-epa-20200707-cokk42xibzh7pmeqp35wcnyewm-story.html" target="_blank">The New York Daily News</a>.</p><p>"In the face of the pandemic, Lysol continues to work with a wide range of scientific and health experts to educate the public on the importance of hygiene," said Rahul Kadyan, executive vice president of Reckitt Benckiser in North America, as CNN reported.</p><p>"Hygiene is both the foundation of health and essential in preventing the spread of illness causing germs," said Kadyan <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/epa-approves-lysol-disinfectant-spray-for-use-against-covid-19-301088721.html" target="_blank">in a statement</a>. "The EPA's approval recognizes that using Lysol Disinfectant Spray can help to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on hard, non-porous surfaces."</p>
<p>According to the press release, Lysol is currently testing other products to measure their efficacy against the coronavirus.</p><p>Other common products on the EPA's disinfectant list include the Scrubbing Bubbles Multi-Purpose Disinfectant, Clorox Bleach Blanqueador and Arm & Hammer Essentials Disinfecting Wipes, though none of them have been tested against the novel coronavirus, as the <a href="https://www.today.com/health/two-lysol-sprays-first-disinfectants-proven-work-against-covid-19-t186106" target="_blank">Today Show</a> reported.</p><p>Along with wiping down surfaces, the CDC continues to ask the public to practice social distancing, wear protective face coverings in public, and wash hands thoroughly and often in order to effectively prevent the spread of COVID-19, as <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/epa-approves-1st-disinfectant-sprays-kill-covid-19/story?id=71647880" target="_blank">ABC News</a> reported.</p>
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U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveils the Green New Deal resolution in front of the U.S. Capitol on February 7, 2019 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong / Getty Images
For all its posturing on climate change, the Democratic Party has long been weak on the actual policies we need to save us from extinction. President Barack Obama promised his presidency would mark "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow," and then embraced natural gas, a major driver of global temperature rise, as a "bridge fuel." Climate legislation passed in the House in 2009 would have allowed industries to buy credits to pollute, a practice known to concentrate toxic air in black and brown neighborhoods while doing little to cut emissions.
<p>Even this year, with interest in the issue at an all-time high, the candidates the <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Democratic_Senatorial_Campaign_Committee" title="Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee" target="_blank">Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee</a> endorsed — like Amy McGrath, who eked out a victory in Kentucky's Senate primary, and former-Governor John Hickenlooper, who handily won Colorado's — have evinced skepticism about the Green New Deal, a resolution pending in Congress to put trillions of dollars into a transition to renewable energy plus job-training for a new clean economy.</p><p>On June 4, however, when the Democratic National Committee's Environment and Climate Crisis Council released a rigorous set of proposals for the party's 2020 platform, it offered climate voters some hope. The 14-page document's solutions for the warming planet included investment in communities that suffer every day with the consequences of industrial waste, shoring up public health services and making sure everyone has enough to eat. It also advises changing the structure of the society that allows police to kill unarmed black people with relative impunity.</p><p>"There's just no way to address the climate crisis without taking on systemic racism," says Michelle Deatrick, chair of the council. "They're intertwined and integrally related."</p><p>But proposals are not a platform; they don't represent any official statement of purpose from the DNC on climate or anything else. The climate council, founded in August 2019 after party members failed to persuade Chairman Tom Perez to hold a climate debate, is but one of three groups involved in crafting the party's final climate policies. Another, the eight-member Biden-Sanders Climate Task Force, will offer recommendations from the likes of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and environmental justice leader Catherine Coleman Flowers. Then it's yet another committee that will draw up the actual climate platform with former Vice President Joe Biden, the party's presumptive nominee.</p>
<p>On its face, that process looks reasonable: A task force and a council inclined to progressive ideals will push the ultimate deciders to take bigger steps toward a zero-carbon future. The problem, Deatrick says, is that once the platform has been agreed upon by that final, 15-member committee, it rarely changes when it goes before the full committee for approval.</p><p>"It's mostly a formal vote," she says. The state and local officials in the DNC, despite the crucial knowledge they bring from their jurisdictions, "historically have had no impact on the final product." But this year, with its great convergence of catastrophes that have defined the spring and summer of 2020, <em>has</em> to be different. "We need to have an inclusive and transparent process around the creation of the platform," Deatrick says. "This is a great opportunity for Democrats to show that we are the party of listening and deep considerations of ideas."</p><p>Among those ideas is that none of the problems we're facing can be disentangled from the others. "The nature of environmental problems is bound up in the history of race in America," says Adrien Salazar, senior campaign strategist for climate equity with the social-justice think tank Dēmos. "The only way that [polluting] industries have been viable at all is because there are communities where they can pollute, places that have ended up being the sacrifice zones for the rest of America."</p><p>Racial inequality, he says, "undergirds the very fabric of American society."</p>
<p>"You can't have climate change without sacrifice zones,"<a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/racism-killing-planet" title=" wrote" target="_blank"> wrote</a> Hop Hopkins, director of strategic partnerships for the Sierra Club, in a recent essay. "And you can't have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can't have disposable people without racism."</p><p>Robert Bullard, the author and researcher often called "the father of the environmental justice movement," has found that toxic hot spots across the U.S., from Louisiana's "Cancer Alley" to the refinery rows of Texas, <a href="https://drrobertbullard.com/african-americans-on-the-frontline-fighting-for-environmental-justice/" title="align closely" target="_blank">align closely</a> with Jim Crow housing segregation and other discriminatory zoning practices. "America is segregated," he says, "and so is pollution."</p><p>The injustice bleeds into public health and disease transmission: The COVID-19 virus<a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20061713v1" title=" travels" target="_blank"> travels</a>, scientists hypothesize, on the sooty particles that blight communities on the front lines of industrial pollution. Those same places emit the greenhouse gases warming the atmosphere. In other words, it's not just pre-existing conditions causing the disease to hit harder in black communities. It's literally the air people breathe.</p><p>There are people tasked with air-quality regulation who argue that the common air contaminants that make people sick – the ground-level ozone that irritates lung tissue, the particulate matter that triggers cancer – belong to a different category than the greenhouse gases that trap the earth's heat. Mustafa Santiago Ali, vice president of environmental justice, climate and community revitalization for the National Wildlife Federation, remembers hearing as much during the 24 years he spent at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "I've had these conversations with some of the best scientists in the world," he says. "And what I know is that it is impossible, <em>impossible, </em>to hit the numbers that we need to hit to win on climate change if you're not focused on environmental justice."</p>
<p>Fossil-fuel infrastructure, for instance, blights "lower-wealth communities," Santiago Ali says. "So if you focus on that, you're going to begin to minimize the impacts of oil and gas." Pipelines cut through indigenous land in the Midwest and end up on Louisiana's Gulf Coast. "If you stop those pipelines, you stop the climate-killing export of oil."</p><p>Cars and trucks drive global warming, too, and their proliferation is made possible by "policies of running highways through certain communities, moving wealth into certain communities and dropping off pollution in lower-wealth communities along the way." Writer Peter Simek has <a href="https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2016/03/the-racist-legacy-of-americas-innercity-highways/" title="noted" target="_blank">noted</a> that you can find the locations of Dallas' Freedmen's Towns — communities established by emancipated slaves during and after the Civil War — by following the highways engineers built on top of them. "Some of the most powerful planners in America were forthright about their intention to use their power as transportation engineers to rewire a society built on racial and economic segregation," he wrote.</p><p>If you stop dehumanizing people in order to pollute, you stop degrading the environment, Santiago Ali says. If you don't, we literally won't survive. "There's no way of pulling climate out and saying, 'We're going to win on this but not focus on any of these other issues," he says. "That's just bad arithmetic."</p>
<p>Whether the platform committee does better math depends on how well it responds to outside pressure: The group is diverse, but not necessarily progressive. (Journalist Emily Atkin in her newsletter<a href="https://heated.world/p/dnc-snubs-progressive-climate-activists" title=" Heated" target="_blank"> Heated</a> has broken the group down in a useful<a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PloB-PNkeg8j2s0UFFnFFPfcoxTMalI8S6pm8PhrVJ0/edit?usp=sharing" title=" spreadsheet" target="_blank"> spreadsheet</a>.) Fear surrounds this election — fear that pushing too hard on climate and racial injustice both will alienate white voters of the Rust Belt; fear that people will equate an expensive clean energy transition with the loss of jobs in oil and gas. Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mineworkers Union, told<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-climate-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-democratic-party-irked-by-councils-insurgent-climate-plan-sources-idUSKBN23M1DO" title=" Reuters" target="_blank"> Reuters</a> that the circulation of the climate council's policy recommendations "has already cost Democrats potential votes in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan."<span></span></p><p>Deatrick, who in addition to her environmental work is a longtime union supporter from Michigan, isn't worried. "We have to walk the talk," she says. "We have to make sure that we commit to policies that support those workers, replace pensions, provide health care." What she's learned on three months of listening tours around the country is that people are less afraid of economic transitions than they are of the chaos a changing climate will bring.</p><p>"We have a real opportunity to reinvigorate the part of the electorate – which is the vast majority of Democrats and Independents as well – who rate the climate crisis among their top priorities," Deatrick says, along with health care and racial inequality. She wants to make sure that when the draft of the climate platform is drawn up, those people are heard. The DNC "has not laid out what that listening process will be," she says. "And we don't have much time left."</p>
<p class=""><em>This story originally appeared in</em> <em><a href="https://capitalandmain.com/" target="_blank">Capital & Main</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
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About 30,000 claims contending that Roundup caused non-Hodgkin's lymphoma are currently unsettled. Mike Mozart / CC BY 2.0
Bayer's $10 billion settlement to put an end to roughly 125,000 lawsuits against its popular weed killer Roundup, which contains glyphosate, hit a snag this week when a federal judge in San Francisco expressed skepticism over what rights future plaintiffs would have, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
<p>The $10 billion settlement does not actually need judicial review and is set to move forward. The issue is that $1.25 billion from the settlement does need a court order to be approved. That part deals with future lawsuits by <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/cancer" target="_self">cancer</a> patients who have not yet gone to court and by others who have not yet been diagnosed. The U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said in an order Monday that he had questions about the legality and fairness of the agreement and was "tentatively inclined" to reject it, as the <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-judge-questions-Bayer-s-1-25-billion-plan-15391982.php" target="_blank">San Francisco Chronicle</a> reported.</p><p>In a court filing on Monday, the judge described a plan to create a class action for future litigants as problematic, and he set a July 24 hearing date to address the matter, as <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-07/bayer-s-roundup-cancer-settlement-plan-hits-snag-as-judge-balks" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a> reported.</p>
<p>"We appreciate the judge's order raising his preliminary concerns with the proposed class settlement, which we take seriously and will address" at the hearing, Chris Loder, a U.S.-based spokesman for the Germany-based chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer, said in an interview.</p><p>Chhabria said he "is skeptical of the propriety and fairness of the proposed settlement." He raised concerns about the creation of a scientific panel to decide whether the key ingredient, glyphosate, causes cancer and whether the agreement unfairly limits potential plaintiffs from suing, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/roundup-lawsuit-settlement.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.</p><p>Right now about 30,000 claims contending Roundup caused non-Hodgkin's lymphoma are left unsettled. Some lawyers in the U.S. have vowed to file another wave of new suits that could add tens of thousands to the logjam of existing cases, according to Bloomberg.</p>
<p>"Thankfully, Judge Chhabria has seen the ruthless plan as an outrageous attempt to deprive every future victim of Monsanto's killer Roundup of their right to fair and full compensation and to a jury trial," Tom Kline and Jason Itkin, plaintiffs' attorneys for users of the weedkiller who haven't settled their suits, said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg on Tuesday.</p><p>Bayer has lost a series of high-profile multi-million dollar cases for Roundup's role in causing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in people who used the Monsanto brand herbicide. That series of losses has seen investors flee from Bayer since it acquired Monsanto for $63 billion in 2018.</p><p>To stem the tide of suits, Bayer insisted that the protection against future suits is a linchpin of the current settlement. Without it, the bulk of the $10 billion deal has the potential to fall apart, according to The New York Times.</p>
<p>In addition to the $8.8 billion to $9.6 billion to cover about 95,000 cases, $1.25 billion was set aside to finance the scientific panel and assist impoverished Roundup users with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. As The New York Times described, that panel would then decide whether glyphosate caused cancer and, if so, what exposure level was dangerous. Both Bayer and claimants would be bound to accept the findings in future litigation.</p><p>New York-based lawyer Hunter Shkolnik opposed the novel class-action idea from the onset. He described it as "nothing more than a legally infirm, backroom deal to protect Monsanto rather than compensating Roundup cancer victims," in an emailed statement to Bloomberg.</p>
<p>Judge Chhabria asked on Monday whether it was lawful to remove judges and juries from the equation and to shift the question of whether Roundup caused cancer to a panel of scientists.</p><p>According to The New York Times, he also noted the three previous multimillion-dollar verdicts and asked, "Why would a potential class member want to replace a jury trial and the right to seek punitive damages with the process contemplated by the settlement agreement?"</p><p>Furthermore, Chhabria also worried that the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/science/">science</a> on glyphosate's cancer-causing properties is still evolving. That led him to question whether it would pass legal muster to have claimants bound by one study that didn't find toxicity when a future, more rigorous study may find the opposite, as Bloomberg reported.</p>
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Hundreds of sudden elephant deaths in Botswana aren't just a loss for the ecosystem and global conservation efforts. Mario Micklisch / Flickr / CC by 2.0
By Charli Shield
When an elephant dies in the wild, it's not uncommon to later find its bones scattered throughout the surrounding landscape.
<p>That's one way you can tell other elephants have passed through the area, says George Wittemyer, a wildlife conservation biologist at Colorado State University who's been researching African elephants in Kenya's Samburu National Reserve for more than 20 years.</p><p>Another sign, long-term elephant conservationist Joyce Poole adds, is the presence of tracks worn through the grass leading to its body. "The vegetation will be gone and the carcass will be surrounded by elephant dung because so many elephants will have visited and stayed," Poole says.</p><p>While scientists are yet to pinpoint what exactly struck down a reported 356 elephants in Botswana's Okavango Delta area, what we do know is that these deaths are not only significant for ecologists and conservationists — but elephants themselves. </p>
Elephant Burial Grounds
<p>Highly social creatures that form deep familial bonds, elephants have long been observed gathering at the site where a peer or family member has died — often spending hours, even days, quietly investigating the bodies or the bones of other dead elephants.</p><p>Although the popular idea that dying elephants are instinctively drawn to special communal graves — so-called "elephant graveyards" — is a myth, their tendency to go out of their way to visit the bones and tusks of the deceased isn't unlike human rituals at graveyards, says animal psychologist Karen McComb.</p><p>"They spend a lot of time touching and smelling skulls and ivory, placing the soles of their feet gently on top of them, and also lifting them up with their trunks," McComb, who's been studying African elephants for 25 years in Kenya's Amboseli National Park, told DW.</p><p>The most striking part of watching an elephant experience loss, Poole recalls, is the quietude. She still remembers one of the first elephant deaths she witnessed; a mother who birthed a stillborn calf. That elephant stayed with its baby for two days, trying to lift it and defending it from vultures and hyenas.</p><p>"I was so struck by the expression on her face and her body. She looked so dejected. It was really like, 'Oh God, these animals grieve…'. It was just so different," Poole told DW. </p>Witnessing Emotions in Animals
<p>Not all scientists are comfortable concluding that elephants grieve. Among the more than 30 reports of elephant reactions to death that Wittemyer co-reviewed in <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-019-00766-5" target="_blank">a study published in November 2019</a> were accounts of "enormous variation and nuance" he says. "It can be incredibly involved and intricate for extended periods or can be relatively cursory checks."</p><p>In Wittemyer's own experience, it can be difficult not to attribute some kind of emotional experience to the more involved interactions between elephants and their dead.</p><p>He shares the story of an "extraordinary event" involving the death of a 55 year-old matriarch in Kenya in a protected area that happened to be near his place of work. She was visited by multiple unrelated families while she was dying, including another matriarch that exerted such enormous effort attempting to lift her to her feet that she broke her tusk, which Wittemyer says, is "like breaking a tooth." </p><p><span></span>"It was a remarkable example of this heightened emotional state, it was very clearly a very stressful interaction," he says.</p>A Different Sensory World
<p>One factor that limits our ability to fully grasp the way elephants process and respond to loss is our markedly different sensory experiences of the world.</p><p>An elephant's world is fundamentally olfactory — based on smell. Ours is visual. Previous <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25053675/" target="_blank">research</a> has shown elephants possess the most scent receptors of any mammal, and can <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17949977/" target="_blank">use smell</a> to discern the difference between different human tribes from the same local area.</p><p>That could explain why elephants exhibit such interest in sniffing the bones and tusks of others, as a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1617198/" target="_blank">2005 study</a> from McCombs highlighted. When presented with the skulls and ivory of long-dead elephants and those from other large herbivores, including rhino and buffalo, McCombs and her team found elephants approached and were specifically attracted to the remains of their own species. </p><p>Without access to the smells an elephant picks up on, Wittemyer says "an enormous amount of stuff" could be missed by humans when studying these behaviors.</p><p>While scientists cannot say what the elephants are thinking, it is clear that death — whether of a relative, a close companion, or just another member of their species — has some kind of meaning for elephants. </p><p>And why wouldn't it? Asks Poole, who points to the fact that elephants' survival depends on their social and familial relationships.</p><p>"Through the course of evolution they have evolved these complex rituals to hold families together. Those have to be driven by some sort of positive emotions, otherwise why would they bother?"</p><p>"They recognize that death, for somebody, is a big loss."</p>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from </em><em><a href="https://www.dw.com/en/elephant-deaths-botswana-what-it-could-mean/a-54079677?maca=en-VAM_volltext_ecowatch-28485-html-copypaste" target="_blank">Deutsche Welle</a>.</em><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/r/entryeditor/2646364470#/" target="_self"></a></p>From Your Site Articles
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‘Among the Most Ruinous Presidential Decisions in Recent History’: Trump Begins WHO Withdrawal
2h
Health + Wellness
Trump sits during a meeting about safely reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic on July 7, 2020, in Washington, DC. JIM WATSON / AFP via Getty Images
The Trump administration began the formal process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO), a White House official said Tuesday, even as coronavirus cases continue to surge in the country.
<p>President <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/donald-trump" target="_self">Donald Trump</a> first began attacking the WHO's handling of the new coronavirus in April, when he made the decision to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-who-funding-coronavirus-2645722550.html" target="_self">halt funding</a>. But <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-health" target="_self">public health</a> experts and Congresspeople from both sides of the aisle say leaving the organization will make Americans, and people around the world, less safe in the midst of a pandemic that has sickened more than 11 million people and killed more than 544,000, according to Wednesday morning <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html" target="_blank">figures from Johns Hopkins University</a>.</p><p>Lawrence Gostin, who directs the WHO's Collaborating Center on National & Global Health Law, said the withdrawal was "among the most ruinous presidential decisions in recent history," according to a statement reported by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/world/coronavirus-updates.html?smtyp=cur&smid=fb-#link-7536f61f" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.</p><p>"It will make Americans less safe during an unprecedented global health crisis," Gostin, who cosigned a <a href="https://oneill.law.georgetown.edu/letter-to-congress-on-who-withdrawal-from-public-health-law-and-international-relations-leaders/" target="_blank">letter</a> to Congress from 750 health and legal experts opposing withdrawal, said. "And it will significantly weaken U.S. influence on W.H.O. reform and international health diplomacy."</p>
<div id="9153d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2369a1a33aa73794a885ae5aaa19ad92"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1280600975867289601" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Thread explains why US w/drawal from @WHO is unlawful & unethical, among most ruinous presidential decisions in his… https://t.co/BK4SsmPARP</div> — Lawrence Gostin (@Lawrence Gostin)<a href="https://twitter.com/LawrenceGostin/statuses/1280600975867289601">1594154039.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>Trump first announced he would pull the U.S. from the organization May 29, arguing that it had responded too slowly to the pandemic and was under the "total control" of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/china" target="_self">China</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/07/07/888186158/trump-sets-date-to-end-who-membership-over-its-handling-of-virus" target="_blank">NPR reported</a>. But the organization issued its first warning about the new virus Jan. 4, just five days after the first announcement from local health authorities in Wuhan, China, The New York Times pointed out. It had completed a detailed report by the next day.</p><p>In order to withdraw from the WHO, the U.S. must pay any unpaid dues — which stood at $198 million as of June 30 — and give a year's notice, NPR explained. The UN confirmed to reporters that it had received that notice and was checking with the WHO if all the conditions for withdrawal had been met.</p><p>"On 6 July 2020, the United States of America notified the Secretary-General ... of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, effective on 6 July 2021," UN Secretary-General António Guterres's spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric wrote in an email to reporters.</p>
<p>The yearlong delay means the withdrawal might not go into effect at all if Trump loses to Democratic rival and former Vice President <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/joe-biden" target="_self">Joe Biden</a> in November's Presidential election.</p><p>"Americans are safer when America is engaged in strengthening global health," Biden tweeted in response to the news. "On my first day as President, I will rejoin the<a href="https://twitter.com/WHO" target="_blank"> @WHO</a> and restore our leadership on the world stage."</p>
<div id="bb485" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="eb75831d048b6be5b5be8d58a106cd3e"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1280603719831359489" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Americans are safer when America is engaged in strengthening global health. On my first day as President, I will re… https://t.co/qNgyOKHOlE</div> — Joe Biden (@Joe Biden)<a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/statuses/1280603719831359489">1594154693.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>But it isn't only Democrats speaking out against Trump's withdrawal.</p><p>"I disagree with the president's decision," Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in a statement reported by <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-administration-gives-formal-notice-withdrawal-who-n1233100" target="_blank">NBC News</a>. "Certainly there needs to be a good, hard look at mistakes the World Health Organization might have made in connection with coronavirus, but the time to do that is after the crisis has been dealt with, not in the middle of it. Withdrawing U.S. membership could, among other things, interfere with clinical trials that are essential to the development of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/vaccines" target="_self">vaccines</a>, which citizens of the United States as well as others in the world need. And withdrawing could make it harder to work with other countries to stop viruses before they get to the United States."</p><p>Public health experts agreed with Alexander's assessment of the risk. In their letter to Congress, the 750 health and legal experts wrote that, by leaving the organization, the U.S. would lose access to the WHO's system for sharing data and vaccines. The U.S. also contributes more funds than anywhere else to the WHO's Health Emergencies Program, which means withdrawal will cost the whole world funds for contact tracing and vaccine development.</p><p>The U.S. historically has contributed around 15 percent of the WHO's overall budget, or $450 million a year. Beyond COVID-19, that money helps fund programs fighting health concerns like polio, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.</p><p>"Pulling funding could reverse hard-won progress and erode the ability of the U.S. to shape and lead policy," the letter writers said.</p>
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Refrigerated trucks function as temporary morgues at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal on May 06, 2020 in New York City. As of July, the states where COVID-19 cases are rising are mostly in the West and South. Justin Heiman / Getty Images
The official number of people in the U.S. who have lost their lives to the new coronavirus has now passed 130,000, according to tallies from The New York Times, Reuters and Johns Hopkins University.
<p>The grim news comes amidst a surge in U.S. cases. <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coronavirus-cases-us-2646324392.html" target="_self">More than 50,000</a> new cases a day were reported several times over the past week, The New York Times pointed out. And the country still has the world's worst outbreak with nearly three million cases, double the world's second-highest caseload in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/brazil" target="_self">Brazil</a>, Reuters reported.</p><p>In an interview streamed Monday with National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said the U.S. had never successfully exited the first wave of the pandemic.</p><p>"I would say this would not be considered a wave," Dr. Fauci said, as The New York Times reported. "It was a surge, or a resurgence of infections superimposed upon a baseline that really never got down to where we wanted to go."</p>
<div id="12c0d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a04ea6b6f3c7247987a538fb52521a0d"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1280207832512466945" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">https://t.co/MjUNsLdMXN</div> — NIH (@NIH)<a href="https://twitter.com/NIH/statuses/1280207832512466945">1594060307.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>In the interview, Fauci said the surge could perhaps be attributed to cities and states reopening too soon.</p><p>"The European Union as an entity, it went up and then came down to baseline," Fauci said, <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/06/anthony-fauci-us-coronavirus-surge-really-not-good/5388472002/" target="_blank">according to USA TODAY</a>. "Now they're having little blips, as you might expect, as they try to reopen. We went up, never came down to baseline, and now it's surging back up. So it's a serious situation that we have to address immediately."</p><p>At least 32 states are reporting higher rates of new cases this week compared to last, according to Johns Hopkins data reported by USA TODAY.</p><p>The states where cases are rising are mostly in the West and South, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-trends-graphic-idUSKBN2472PZ?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1NBZZ_Vv5bv5ozfxVZzZrw47Ma_U3AOJfBjCa0CRJ9e0taYOiovQqKXeM" target="_blank">Reuters</a>, while cases continue to fall in the Northeast.</p>
<p>Arizona surpassed 100,000 cases Monday, according to New York Times data, and cases there have doubled in the past two and a half weeks. Both Idaho and Texas broke records for the most new cases reported in a single day Monday, at more than 400 and more than 8,800 new cases respectively.</p><p>"The situation is that we are experiencing rampant community spread," chief Dallas County elected official Clay Jenkins tweeted.</p>
<div id="83d55" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="eeaabe613386ceea4e2ed191f16b77d5"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1279885904623079425" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">.@DCHHS reports 1,062 cases. Today we are fortunate to report no new deaths; however, we do have over 1,000 new cas… https://t.co/FMefsIWFx6</div> — Clay Jenkins (@Clay Jenkins)<a href="https://twitter.com/JudgeClayJ/statuses/1279885904623079425">1593983553.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>Despite Monday's grim milestone of 130,000 deaths, the rate of increase of deaths in the country has continued to decline, Reuters reported. However, a surge in deaths can come weeks or even months after a surge in cases, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-health" target="_self">public health</a> experts said. And at least five states have seen their death rates rise, including Arizona, which reported 449 deaths in the last two weeks of June compared to 259 in the first two weeks. As of July 3, intensive care units in the state were at 91 percent capacity, an all-time high, <a href="https://apnews.com/46a23bcf72b624dc25d7703dc269c727" target="_blank">The Associated Press reported</a>.</p><p>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) predicts that the U.S. death toll will climb to between 140,000 and 160,000 by July 25, according to Reuters. It further projects that deaths will rise in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.</p>
<p>The surge in cases has drawn critical attention to President <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/donald-trump" target="_self">Donald Trump</a>'s handling of the crisis. Throughout the pandemic, he has made misleading statements about the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coronavirus-infections-trump-2645393552.html" target="_self">risks</a> of the new disease and the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-coronavirus-medicine-science-2645823308.html" target="_self">effectiveness of various treatments</a>. During a speech on the Fourth of July, he said that 99 percent of COVID-19 cases were "totally harmless," as USA TODAY reported.</p><p>New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the president out for the statement on Monday.</p><p>"He is facilitating the virus," Cuomo said, as <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/506019-cuomo-trump-enabling-the-virus" target="_blank">The Hill reported</a>. "He is enabling the virus by statements like that. And you're seeing the infection rate go up, and you're seeing the economy suffer, and he is part of that current debacle that we are in."</p>
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<p>To fight the surge in cases, Fauci urged Americans to keep up the social distancing, since new outbreaks had been linked to large indoor gatherings.</p><p>"Avoid crowds," he said, as The New York Times reported. "If you're going to have a social function, maybe a single couple or two — do it outside if you're going to do it. Those are fundamental, and everybody can do that right now."</p>
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A man walks on pink snow at the Presena glacier near Pellizzano, Italy on July 4, 2020. MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP via Getty Images
In a troubling sign for the future of the Italian Alps, the snow and ice in a glacier is turning pink due to the growth of snow-melting algae, according to scientists studying the pink ice phenomenon, as CNN reported.
<p>The algae will make the snow melt faster. The salmon-hue that has tinged the snow is from algae that carry carotenoid pigment, which reflects the distinctive color. While most algae thrive in warm freshwaters, these are known as cryophilic, meaning they thrive in colder temperatures, where they create the "watermelon snow" effect, according to <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/07/06/bizarre-pink-snow-in-the-alps-is-actually-a-bad-omen-for-earth/" target="_blank">Salon</a>.</p><p>The concern is that the algal bloom on the snow will accelerate the effects of the climate crisis. As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/06/algae-turns-italian-alps-pink-prompting-concerns-over-melting" target="_blank">Agence France-Presse</a> (AFP) reported the plant, known as <em>Ancylonema nordenskioeldii</em>, is often found in Greenland's so-called Dark Zone, where the ice is also melting.</p><p>Normally ice reflects more than 80 percent of the sun's radiation back into the atmosphere, but as algae appear, they darken the ice so that it absorbs the heat and melts more quickly, according to AFP.</p>
<p>"Everything that darkens the snow causes it to melt because it accelerates the absorption of radiation," said Biagio Di Mauro of Italy's National Research Council to AFP. "We are trying to quantify the effect of other phenomena besides the human one on the overheating of the Earth." He noted that the presence of tourists could also have an effect in weakening the snow.</p><p>Di Mauro told CNN that the spring and summer had very little snowfall high in the Alps, which has seen higher than average temperatures. "This creates the perfect environment for the algae to grow," he added.</p><p>Di Mauro emphasized that the algal bloom is particularly bad news for the glaciers, which may see a rapid melting. That would be in line with glaciers around the world that are starting to fade away as global heating continues to push up atmospheric temperatures.</p>
<p>"A classic reminder of how uncertainty is not our friend," said Dr. Michael E. Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University, to Salon by email. "In this case, we're seeing an amplifying feedback wherein biological darkening (due to Algae growing on the surface of melting ice), leads to more solar absorption by the ice and even faster melting. We call this a 'positive feedback' but it is anything but positive. It reflects a process which is leading to faster melting of the glaciers than our simple models predict."</p><p>As CNN noted, Di Mauro has come across cold temperature algae before. He has previously studied the Morteratsch glacier in Switzerland, where an algae called <em>Ancylonema nordenskioeldii</em> has turned the ice purple.</p>
<p>Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology, told Salon that "photosynthetic organisms are designed to absorb sunlight. Some small fraction of the energy in sunlight goes into making carbohydrates but most of it goes into heating the organism and its local environment. If that organism is living in snow, the snow is likely to melt."</p><p>This algae has also been found in southwestern Greenland as well in as the Andes and Himalayas. Globally, glaciers are melting. A <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctic-glacier-sea-level-rise-2645574336.html" target="_self">March study</a> found an Antarctic glacier had retreated three miles and can cause five feet of sea level rise if it melts completely. A <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/himalayan-glacier-melt-doubled-2638927563.html" target="_self">2019 study</a> found that Himalayan glacier melt has doubled since 2000. Additionally, conservationists and scientists have held funerals for glaciers in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/iceland-glacier-funeral-2639890762.html" target="_self">Iceland</a> and the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/swiss-alps-pizol-glacier-funeral-2640547054.html" target="_self">Swiss Alps</a>.</p>
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