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This plastics company is trying to stop Black residents from visiting a slave burial site on Juneteenth

by BeaZKJTlag Posted on June 18, 2020

A group of Black residents from St. James Parish, Louisiana, got the green light on Thursday to hold an hour-long Juneteenth prayer service on a burial plot containing the remains of formerly enslaved people. The ceremony, planned for Friday, has been a point of contention — not due to fears over coronavirus, which has hit the community particularly hard, but because the site technically belongs to Taiwanese plastics manufacturer Formosa.

This decision is the latest incident in a long series of legal battles between the company and the community. When they found out about the remains last year, RISE St. James — a grassroots environmental justice group that has been trying to stop the plastics company from setting up shop since 2018 — had members pay visits to the site, which is part of a former sugarcane plantation, to pray, sing and place flowers. But that all changed in January when the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality approved permits for the company to construct a $9.4 billion petrochemical complex on the location.

Sharon Lavigne, president of RISE St. James, told Grist that the last time she visited the location, authorities told her that Formosa didn’t grant access permission to the site and that if she ever returned, she would be arrested.

Formosa told Grist that the company is still working to communicate with agencies to conduct research and learn more about the identities of the people buried on their property. Internal documents obtained by RISE St. James via a public records request, however, show Formosa’s own archeological findings concluded the site was indeed a slave burial ground. But in an email to Grist, Jim Harris, the company’s spokesperson, claimed “no archaeologist has been able to confirm the identity or ethnicity of the remains discovered on [Formosa] property.”

In accordance with state laws, the company said they are working to identify any descendants associated with the remains, and would eventually gather community input on the deceased’s identities. “Once this process is complete,” the company said it will “work with the state archaeologist and any identified relatives to have the remains respectfully re-interred in a proper cemetery.”

On Monday, RISE St. James received a letter from Formosa declining to give them access to the burial site on Juneteenth — a holiday that falls annually on June 19 and celebrates the end of slavery in the United States. But later that same day, a state judge granted the organization a temporary restraining order, allowing them to move forward with the prayer ceremony. Judge Emile R. St. Pierre wrote that Formosa won’t suffer any harm as a result of a peaceful prayer service, adding that holding the event was within the residents’ constitutional rights.

Formosa then submitted a motion to dismiss the restraining order which led to the trial, asking once for the judge to reconsider his decision and halt the Juneteenth prayer service due, at least in part, to the safety and liability concerns of construction evidently happening at the site. Lavigne contested that she has not seen any active construction happening on the site.

“[Formosa] recognizes the importance of acknowledging this historical and meaningful day,” Harris said. “However, once the judge has an opportunity to consider all factors in this matter, we believe he will determine that the safety and liability concerns of an active construction site are significant enough to restrict unauthorized access to the property.”

Tensions between St. James Parish’s Black residents and companies like Formosa are informed by the region’s long-standing legacy of industrial pollution. St. James Parish is part of Louisiana’s “cancer alley,” an 85-mile industrial corridor along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The area’s Black population has been particularly hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many residents already have underlying health conditions from industry-linked pollution that put them at risk of contracting the virus. Research from the Tulane University Environmental Law Clinic identified high levels of fine particulate matter concentrated in Louisiana’s southeast industrial corridor, which experts say could also impact the severity of COVID-19 cases.

On Thursday, the state judge reaffirmed RISE St. James ability to hold a Juneteenth Ceremony, but Formosa still marched to the state’s capital in Baton Rouge to file an appeal, which the court also rejected.

Regardless, Lavigne told Grist that she is determined Friday’s Juneteenth event will happen no matter what. “The judge already made his decision, I feel like victory is mine,” Lavigne said. “We’re going to beat them, and I can feel it in my spirit.”

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This plastics company is trying to stop Black residents from visiting a slave burial site on Juneteenth

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The Mountains of Saint Francis: Discovering the Geologic Events That Shaped Our Earth – Walter Alvarez

by Myrna Posted on June 12, 2020

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The Mountains of Saint Francis: Discovering the Geologic Events That Shaped Our Earth

Walter Alvarez

Genre: Geology

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: December 17, 2008

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


One of the world's leading geologists takes readers into Italy's Apennine Mountain Range—the Mountains of Saint Francis—on a journey to discover the fascinating secrets of the Earth's deep history. Modern geologists, Walter Alvarez among them, showed in the last decades of the twentieth century that the history of our planet has witnessed events profoundly more dramatic than even the most spectacular chapters in human history. More violent than wars, more life altering than revolutions—understanding the geologic events that have shaped the Earth's surface is the quest and the passion of geologists. In the knowledgeable and graceful prose of Alvarez, general readers are led to explore the many mysteries that our planet guards. The author has chosen Italy as a microcosm in which to explore this amazing past for several reasons. First, it is the land where the earliest geologists learned how to read the history of the Earth, written in nature’s rock archives. Second, it is where Alvarez and his Italian geological friends have continued to decipher the rock record, uncovering more historical episodes from the Earth’s past. And third, the lovely land of Italy is unusually rich in geological treasures and offers examples of the key processes that have created the landscapes of the entire world. The Mountains of Saint Francis begins in Rome. We discover that the landscape of Rome was built by violent volcanic eruptions in the very recent past, almost certainly witnessed by our human ancestors. Next we travel to Siena and come face to face with a fundamental discovery of the geologists—that much of the dry land that we currently inhabit was once underwater, beneath ancient seas or oceans. Then we stop in the small medieval city of Gubbio and contemplate the amazing secret that the limestone rocks kept hidden for 65 million years—that a huge asteroid smashed into the Earth, disrupting the environment so severely that the dinosaurs, and perhaps half of the other forms of life inhabiting the Earth at the time, disappeared forever, opening the way for the rise of the mammals and eventually of humans. The impact theory that came from those Italian limestones at Gubbio was one of the great geological discoveries of the twentieth century. Just as important to the field of geology was the theory of plate tectonics—the understanding that the outer layer of the Earth is divided into crustal plates that move around, sometimes carrying continents into collisions with one another, like the great collision between Italy and Europe that built the Alps. And yet, to explain the Mountains of Saint Francis requires something more than a collision between continents. These are mountains that are still jealously guarding the secret of their past, and in this book we go along with the geological detectives as they try to uncover that secret. It is a journey that has seen the land of Italy lifted out of the sea, squashed and folded, torn apart, left high and dry when the Mediterranean Sea evaporated away, and then flooded when the Atlantic waters poured back in. The story of the Earth's history is fascinating in its own right, but with Alvarez as the tour guide, the journey takes on a human dimension, full of stories about the landscape and history of Italy and about the great geologists who uncovered the deep past of this land. It is a journey recounted in warm tones and subtle colors, reflecting the transcendent beauty of Italy itself.

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The Mountains of Saint Francis: Discovering the Geologic Events That Shaped Our Earth – Walter Alvarez

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Does New York need a new natural gas pipeline? It’s about to decide.

by lavondawaugh411 Posted on May 11, 2020

Last week, more than 100 protesters tuned into a virtual rally for a milestone push in a three-year battle against the Williams Pipeline, a controversial project that would bring a new supply of natural gas into New York City and Long Island. With individual pleas, homemade signs, musical performances, and speeches from the likes of Bill McKibben, Cynthia Nixon, and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, the protestors tried to summon the people power of a live event to tell New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration to stop the pipeline once and for all.

“We can’t pretend we are making progress on combating climate change if we continue to build out fracked gas infrastructure that will lock in emissions for years to come,” said Stringer, who is rumored to be considering a run for New York City mayor in 2021. “Let’s finish stopping this pipeline and move on to building out a cleaner, more sustainable city.”

The rally was held ahead of the May 17 deadline for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to rule on a key permit for the project. The pipeline would cut through northern New Jersey and then out about 23 miles into New York Harbor to connect with the existing gas system. One year ago, the agency denied the permit on the grounds that it failed to meet the state’s water quality standards. New Jersey’s environmental agency did the same. Both rejections were issued “without prejudice,” meaning Williams could reapply — which it quickly did.

National Grid, a gas utility that operates in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, would be the sole customer of the pipeline’s gas. As the fate of the project hangs in the balance, so do National Grid’s long-term plans — and, according to many observers, the fate of New York City and New York State’s climate goals. Both the city and state passed landmark laws last year that seek to drastically reduce carbon emissions by 2050. The city’s Climate Mobilization Act specifically aims to cut emissions from buildings — the majority of which come from natural gas heating systems.

After the Williams Pipeline permits were denied last summer, National Grid began rejecting new customer applications, claiming that it would not be able to meet future demand unless the pipeline was built. Real estate developments were stalled, new restaurants were left in limbo, and homeowners finishing up repairs couldn’t get the gas turned back on. The issue came to a head in November when Governor Cuomo accused the utility of extorting New Yorkers and threatened to revoke its license. The resulting settlement required National Grid to go back to the drawing board and come up with a slate of alternatives to make sure New Yorkers aren’t left in the cold if the pipeline isn’t built.

In February, before the novel coronavirus swept the country, the utility released a report with 10 ideas. One of them was the Williams Pipeline. The rest were smaller projects, none of which would alone solve the supply problem, the report said, although a scenario with some combination of them could. Most of the solutions involved building new gas infrastructure, like a liquefied natural gas terminal where gas would be delivered by tanker, or a smaller “peak shaving plant” that would store excess gas during the summer for when demand ramps up in the winter.

Some of the solutions on the menu were projects National Grid was already working on, like the construction of a new compressor station that will increase the amount of gas received through an existing pipeline. There were also three “no infrastructure” options that would expand existing programs that reduce demand for gas, like incentives for people to weatherize their homes and to replace their gas boilers with electric heat pumps. (National Grid is already required to offer these kinds of programs under New York State law.)

Critiques of the company’s report poured in from activists, environmental groups, politicians, and even the City of New York during a series of virtual public meetings the company was required to hold and in an online forum for public comments. During the meetings, National Grid President John Bruckner asserted that the company had not decided on any particular solution yet. However, some commenters felt the company’s report continued to make it seem like the Williams Pipeline was the only viable way for National Grid to avoid another moratorium, which could scare regulators into approving it. “If targets are not met, will have to restrict new gas customer connections,” the report reads, referring to potential scenarios with minimal to no new gas infrastructure.

Several groups, like the Environmental Defense Fund and NY Renews, an environmental justice coalition of more than 200 groups across New York State, criticized the company for failing to analyze the emissions impacts of each option, which would be necessary in order to evaluate whether they’re compatible with New York’s climate targets.

In comments submitted on behalf of New York City, lawyer Adam Conway wrote that adding new gas infrastructure runs counter to the city’s policies, and therefore only the “no infrastructure” options were viable tools for National Grid to address supply and demand gaps. An analysis performed by Synapse Energy Economics, a research and consulting firm, on behalf of the Eastern Environmental Law Center, alleged that National Grid’s assessment was flawed even prior to the pandemic, and that the company does not actually face an impending supply shortage. It found that the utility did not account for city and state energy efficiency and emissions reduction programs that will reduce demand for gas in the coming years.

At both the virtual meetings and among the online comments, some parties, like a nonprofit called Heartshare that provides utility grants to low-income households and the Community Development Corporation of Long Island, argued that the Williams Pipeline would be the safest option to ensure that low-income New Yorkers have an affordable way to heat their homes.

But National Grid agreed to play ball and evaluate its options again. On Friday, one week after the comment period closed, the company filed a supplemental report that incorporated some of its critics’ suggestions, including a greenhouse gas analysis and an update to the way the forecasted gap between supply and demand was calculated — which slightly reduces the projected gap. The new report narrows down the solutions and proposes two viable paths forward. Option A consists of the compressor station upgrade, a combination of “no infrastructure” measures to reduce demand, and a brand new option that was not in the original report — upgrading an existing liquified natural gas plant to increase its capacity. Option B is the Williams Pipeline.

If all of the criteria National Grid considered are given equal weight — safety, reliability, cost, compatibility New York’s climate targets — the report recommends Option A. However, if greater importance is placed on reducing risk and making sure the company can meet demand, “then the preferred choice is Option B” it says — the pipeline.

The company’s settlement with New York indicates that one of these paths will have to be decided upon by early June. Whether or not Option B is really on the table now sits in the hands of the Department of Environmental Conservation and Governor Cuomo.

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Does New York need a new natural gas pipeline? It’s about to decide.

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Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy – Alastair Gee & Dani Anguiano

by Myrna Posted on May 5, 2020

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Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy

Alastair Gee & Dani Anguiano

Genre: Nature

Price: $12.99

Publish Date: May 5, 2020

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


The harrowing story of the most destructive American wildfire in a century. There is no precedent in postwar American history for the destruction of the town of Paradise, California. On November 8, 2018, the community of 27,000 people was swallowed by the ferocious Camp Fire, which razed virtually every home and killed at least 85 people. The catastrophe seared the American imagination, taking the front page of every major national newspaper and top billing on the news networks. It displaced tens of thousands of people, yielding a refugee crisis that continues to unfold. Fire in Paradise is a dramatic and moving narrative of the disaster based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with residents, firefighters and police, and scientific experts. Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano are California-based journalists who have reported on Paradise since the day the fire began. Together they reveal the heroics of the first responders, the miraculous escapes of those who got out of Paradise, and the horrors experienced by those who were trapped. Their accounts are intimate and unforgettable, including the local who left her home on foot as fire approached while her 82-year-old father stayed to battle it; the firefighter who drove into the heart of the inferno in his bulldozer; the police officer who switched on his body camera to record what he thought would be his final moments as the flames closed in; and the mother who, less than 12 hours after giving birth in the local hospital, thought she would die in the chaotic evacuation with her baby in her lap. Gee and Anguiano also explain the science of wildfires, write powerfully about the role of the power company PG&E in the blaze, and describe the poignant efforts to raise Paradise from the ruins. This is the story of a town at the forefront of a devastating global shift—of a remarkable landscape sucked ever drier of moisture and becoming inhospitable even to trees, now dying in their tens of millions and turning to kindling. It is also the story of a lost community, one that epitomized a provincial, affordable kind of Californian existence that is increasingly unattainable. It is, finally, a story of a new kind of fire behavior that firefighters have never witnessed before and barely know how to handle. What happened in Paradise was unprecedented in America. Yet according to climate scientists and fire experts, it will surely happen again.

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Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy – Alastair Gee & Dani Anguiano

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As coronavirus ravages Louisiana, ‘cancer alley’ residents haven’t given up the fight against polluters

by ElmerEPINnnpn Posted on May 4, 2020

Four years ago, Sharon Lavigne was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis. Blood tests revealed that she had aluminum inside her body. Lavigne has lived all her life in St. James Parish, which sits on an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River that connects New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Since the 1980s, it’s been known as “cancer alley.”

According to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data, seven out of 10 U.S. census tracts with the nation’s highest cancer risks are located in this corridor, which is already home to more than 150 chemical plants and refineries. When she got her diagnosis, Lavigne didn’t think any of this might be related to her failing health, or that of so many of her friends and neighbors.

“That should’ve been my wake-up call,” Lavigne, 67, told Grist. “But I was teaching in school, uninterested with what’s going on. I was only interested in my job, going home, resting, and taking care of my children and grandchildren. That all changed when I found out that a new plant was coming.”

When she heard that another petrochemical company was planning to set up shop nearby, Lavigne left her job as a special education teacher in 2018 and founded RISE St. James, a grassroots environmental justice group, to try to stop any new development that could further endanger the health of her community. Though the novel coronavirus has hit her parish especially hard — its COVID-19 death rate is the fourth highest in Louisiana and five times higher than the overall U.S. death rate — Lavigne and her allies have not given up the fight.

But the company has a head start. In 2014, the St. James Parish Council had quietly changed the land use plan for Lavigne’s district from “residential” to “residential/future industrial,” welcoming new industry with little public input. Then, this January, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) approved permits for the Taiwanese plastics manufacturer Formosa to build a $9.4 billion petrochemical complex in St. James Parish, despite data showing that it could more than double the amount of toxic pollutants in the area. Formosa’s own models show that it could emit more of the carcinogenic compound ethylene oxide than just about any other facility in the country. These levels would exceed the benchmark that the EPA uses to determine if exposure poses cancer risks. (That benchmark is not legally binding, and a Formosa spokesperson wrote in a statement to Grist that the company does not expect its emissions to reach the level specified on its permit applications.) The gargantuan facility will consist of 14 separate plastics plants, two of which are ethylene glycol plants.

On March 31, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General, an independent agency watchdog, put out a report stating that the EPA and LDEQ failed to provide critical information to nearby residents about ethylene oxide emissions and the elevated cancer risks associated with the toxic chemical. In response, however, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler demanded that the OIG withdraw the report.

A house sits by the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Giles Clarke / Getty Images

Adding insult to injury for the predominantly black residents who live near the proposed facility in Lavigne’s district, Formosa’s chosen location sits on two former 19th century sugarcane plantations and a slave burial ground. Although Formosa did not initially disclose this information, a public records request by RISE showed that the company knew that formerly enslaved people were buried beneath the land during its obligatory land survey in 2018. Legal complaints filed against the proposed development cite not only the environmental impacts of building the facility but also the historic and cultural harm of erasing this history.

Formosa has publicly maintained that it followed thorough and conscientious procedures to identify and mitigate both the environmental and cultural impacts of its proposed development. The spokesperson wrote to Grist that Formosa “has met with hundreds of people in the parish” and regularly updates community leaders and stakeholders. The company has also paused construction during the COVID-19 pandemic, citing “an abundance of caution” and concern for its workers.

“Emission modeling was conducted and demonstrated that [Formosa’s] emissions will have predicted ambient concentrations that will be below the state and federal standards established to protect human health and the environment with an added margin of safety,” Janile Parks, the Formosa facility’s director of community and government relations, wrote in an email to Grist. “To address community concerns and as part of [Formosa’s] land use ordinance with St. James Parish, [Formosa] will voluntarily place air quality monitoring along its eastern property boundary to provide data on air emissions.”

A deadly combination

African Americans in “cancer alley” are facing not only the country’s most severe health outcomes in terms of pollution-linked cancer, but also some of its most severe COVID-19 outcomes. As of late April, about 56 percent of those dying from the novel coronavirus in Louisiana were African American, though they comprise only 33 percent of the state’s population. And as of April 26, eight out of the 10 parishes in Louisiana with the highest COVID-19 death rates are in the southeast industrial corridor that includes “cancer alley.”

The Formosa spokesperson wrote to Grist that “officials have not suggested there to be any link between industrial emissions and COVID-19.” The company instead pointed to Louisiana’s elevated rates of diabetes, obesity, and hypertension, which “are especially high among minority communities.”

But research has suggested a link between air pollution and COVID-19 outcomes, independent of other factors. When researchers at Harvard’s school of public health released a study last month showing a relationship between particulate matter (PM 2.5) pollution levels and increased death rates from COVID-19, experts and advocates in Louisiana began to think about what the study means for their state. Kimberly Terrell, director of community outreach at the Tulane University Environmental Law Clinic, identified Louisiana’s PM 2.5 hotspots and looked at the COVID-19 outbreaks in those locations.

“There’s a cluster of COVID-19 deaths along the industrial corridor,” Terrell said at an online press briefing. “The strength of that Harvard study is that it looked at the entire nation, and it looked at a really huge population of people and found this relationship between pollution and death rate — and that relationship can be hard to see, because it’s often obscured by other things like access to healthcare, poverty, unemployment, risk of getting the virus.”

Clayton Aldern / Grist

So Terrell set out to look more closely at that relationship. She scraped the raw data from the Harvard study and performed her own analysis. The majority of PM 2.5 hotspots are concentrated along “cancer alley” — and so are the highest death rates from COVID-19. Terrell also measured other COVID-19 risk factors and preexisting health conditions by plotting out the geographic distribution of diabetes and obesity across the state. She found that “cancer alley” residents do not suffer from conditions like diabetes or obesity at higher rates than folks in other parts of the state. This suggests that high levels of PM 2.5 concentrated in Louisiana’s southeast industrial corridor could have had a decisive effect on the severity of its COVID-19 outcomes.

And based on recent trends, the pollution behind all this is set to continue or even worsen. In Louisiana, air quality measurably improved from 2000 to 2015. However, since 2016 the state has reversed that trend. PM 2.5 pollution is increasing again, specifically in the southeast part of the state.

A red light

Myrtle Felton, a member of RISE St. James, has seen her loved ones pass away one by one from cancer and other respiratory illnesses. Back when no industrial facilities loomed over her backyard, she used to enjoy tending to her garden for most of the day. But in the 45 years that Felton has lived in St. James Parish, petrochemical plants have been appearing left and right. Since then, Felton said that she doesn’t like to be outside anymore because of the dirty air.

“So many people here have died of cancer. 2014 was a real awakening for me, because I lost five people that were very close to me,” Felton told Grist. “My sister-in-law died first of cancer in February, then my brother-in-law the next month, then my husband, he died of respiratory problems. If that’s not a red light going on telling me something is wrong, then what is?”

Outside her window, she can already see two chemical facilities on the horizon, and if it wasn’t for the pandemic, she said dark smog would usually obscure her view of the facilities. She worries about what will happen when Formosa’s operations begin.

“Somebody needs to come in and do something,” Felton told Grist as she broke into tears. “Don’t just listen to what I’m saying, feel my heart.”

For now, Formosa is weathering the coronavirus outbreak, but with their permits approved by the state, the next step is to gear up for construction. Residents of St. James Parish vow to continue their fight by telling their stories.

“Feel my pain,” Felton said. “I’m tired. We’re tired.”

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As coronavirus ravages Louisiana, ‘cancer alley’ residents haven’t given up the fight against polluters

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In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration – Shane O’Mara

by Myrna Posted on April 18, 2020

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In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration

Shane O’Mara

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $12.99

Expected Publish Date: May 12, 2020

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


A hymn to walking, the mechanical magic at the core of our humanity. In this captivating book, neuroscientist Shane O’Mara invites us to marvel at the benefits walking confers on our bodies and brains, and to appreciate the advantages of this uniquely human skill. From walking’s evolutionary origins, traced back millions of years to life forms on the ocean floor, to new findings from cutting-edge research, he reveals how the brain and nervous system give us the ability to balance, weave through a crowded city, and run our “inner GPS” system. Walking is good for our muscles and posture; it helps to protect and repair organs, and can slow or turn back the aging of our brains. With our minds in motion we think more creatively, our mood improves, and stress levels fall. Walking together to achieve a shared purpose is also a social glue that has contributed to our survival as a species. As our lives become increasingly sedentary, O’Mara makes the case that we must start walking again—whether it’s up a mountain, down to the park, or simply to school and work. In Praise of Walking illuminates the joys, health benefits, and mechanics of walking, and reminds us to get out of our chairs and discover a happier, healthier, more creative self.

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In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration – Shane O’Mara

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Don’t be April fooled, Google did not just swear off funding climate deniers

by cazare1rbw Posted on April 1, 2020

Congratulations! After an approximately 4 billion year–long March, we’ve made it to April 1st. Under normal circumstances, this day would be filled with jolly fun, like cars covered in plastic wrap, sugar in the salt shaker, fake product launches, and of course, the infamous annual Google prank.

But after days or weeks of being shut in our homes, washing our hands to oblivion, eyes glued to charts and maps showing the coronavirus spreading around the country and the number of cases and deaths ticking upward, pranks don’t have much appeal right now. Out of respect for the essential workers who are risking their lives to get us through this, Google officially called off its annual joke.

But it did appear to make a big announcement today. A very convincing statement from CEO Sundar Pichai appeared at the address agreenergoogle.com today, with an exciting message: The company will stop funding climate change deniers.

“In lieu of our normal April Fools’ joke, today we’re getting serious,” it says. The site goes on to list eight organizations that Google has funded or otherwise worked with that have opposed measures to fight climate change like the Paris Agreement and Obama’s Clean Power Plan. It includes an apology for “putting profits over the planet” and for stalling on changing its ways for so long. COVID-19 has forced the company to reckon with the perils of ignoring science, it says.

Sigh, if only that were the case. The site is a prank put out by the New York City arm of the climate protest group Extinction Rebellion. While not everyone will appreciate the group using a global health crisis to further its mission, the message is more sobering than funny. There are more truths on the page than jokes: Google has made substantial contributions to major climate deniers in Washington, including the eight groups listed on the site. It has also been criticized by its own workers for not doing enough to cut its carbon footprint. Despite being a carbon neutral company, the company’s operations still run on fossil fuels, which it makes up for by buying renewable energy and carbon offsets.

As the prank highlights, Google’s funding of climate denial is dangerous. We’re now experiencing something similar to the climate crisis but at “warp speed” and seeing the fatal consequences when people in power fail to heed scientists’ warnings and then downplay the seriousness of a global public health threat. Dumb April Fools’ Day jokes aside, misinformation kills.

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Don’t be April fooled, Google did not just swear off funding climate deniers

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Paris Fashion Week meets the Paris Agreement on the Balenciaga runway

by KayleigBalog Posted on March 4, 2020

Balenciaga launched its fall 2020 collection on a flooded runway with images of fiery blazes and rushing waves projected across the ceiling. The first few rows of seats were empty because they were almost entirely underwater, and models strutted through the swampy raised stage in drapey oversized raincoats, Matrix-like full-length black leather jackets, and bodysuits that look straight out of the Black Panther wardrobe trailer, complete with knee and shoulder pads. One model was styled as a walking mace, his jacket flanked with sharp spikes.

Yes, the brand best-known for sock shoes, an ugly-cool take on the dad sneaker, and platform Crocs put climate change front and center in its Paris Fashion Week show on Sunday.

Estrop / Getty Images

Estrop / Getty Images

Clearly, the fire and brimstone vibe was intended as a warning about the catastrophe to come if we do not stem the rising tide of carbon emissions. Demna Gvasalia, Balenciaga’s creative director, hasn’t given any interviews about the show, but the outfits seem to imagine a world where rising seas, bursts of flames, and other environmental assaults are commonplace concerns and where protection from the elements is literally built into the fabric of our lives.

Estrop / Getty Images

Estrop / Getty Images

While I think it’s pretty cool any time the rich and famous are shaken out of their distorted version of reality and confronted with the signs of our times, the implications of Balenciaga’s show are complicated. First of all, it’s debatable whether shoving the apocalypse narrative in people’s faces is really all that helpful if you’re trying to make a case for climate action. Second, and far less debatable, the fashion industry is a disaster for the planet.

Data on the fashion industry’s footprint is not perfect, since brands have only recently begun measuring it, but here’s what we know: The industry uses exorbitant amounts of water, potentially as much as 2 percent of all freshwater use globally, in addition to being a major source of water pollution. It creates an extraordinary amount of waste, both in making the clothes and in creating a culture where people throw millions of tons of clothing into the trash every year. It contributes to deforestation, because common materials like rayon and viscose are made with wood pulp. And finally, the industry is believed to be responsible for a whopping 10 percent of global carbon emissions.

Anyhoo. If Balenciaga wants to warn people about climate catastrophe, I would hope the company is doing more than designing our future fire- and flood-proof uniforms. So is it?

Turns out, yes. Balenciaga’s parent company, Kering, is one of the more forward-thinking in the biz. In 2016, Kering set a goal of reducing its emissions intensity across most of its business by 50 percent by 2025, a goal which it’s currently on track to achieve, according to documents filed with the Carbon Disclosure Project. (Intensity, in this case, means the amount emitted per dollar of profit, so as the company grows, it will become more carbon efficient.) Kering was also the first ~luxury~ company to have its emissions targets approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative, a program that helps companies align their business with the Paris Agreement.

The company’s operations are powered by 100 percent renewable energy in seven out of the more than 20 countries where it does business. It is in the process of eliminating hazardous chemicals in its supply chains and works with other major international brands to do the same. Kering also forbids the use of leather linked to deforestation in the Amazon.

While its approach isn’t perfect — the company offsets some of its emissions through reforestation projects under the United Nations’ REDD program, which ProPublica exposed to be deeply flawed — I have to admit, I’m pretty impressed by the depth and breadth of what Kering has done so far. It takes a lot of time and money for an international fashion superpower to look up and down all of its supply chains and figure out what, exactly, its impact on the planet is every year.

So while I don’t think the end times are nigh, as was implied on the runway, golf claps for Balenciaga for talking about climate change, and for putting its money where its mouth is.

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Paris Fashion Week meets the Paris Agreement on the Balenciaga runway

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Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World – Richard C. Francis

by Myrna Posted on February 8, 2020

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Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World

Richard C. Francis

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: May 25, 2015

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


Without domestication, civilization as we know it would not exist. Since that fateful day when the first wolf decided to stay close to human hunters, humans and their various animal companions have thrived far beyond nearly all wild species on earth. Tameness is the key trait in the domestication of cats, dogs, horses, cows, and other mammals, from rats to reindeer. Surprisingly, with selection for tameness comes a suite of seemingly unrelated alterations, including floppy ears, skeletal and coloration changes, and sex differences. It’s a package deal known as the domestication syndrome, elements of which are also found in humans. Our highly social nature—one of the keys to our evolutionary success—is due to our own tameness. In Domesticated, Richard C. Francis weaves history and anthropology with cutting-edge ideas in genomics and evo devo to tell the story of how we domesticated the world, and ourselves in the process.

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Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World – Richard C. Francis

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Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond – Lydia Denworth

by Myrna Posted on January 28, 2020

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Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond

Lydia Denworth

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $12.99

Publish Date: January 28, 2020

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


A Next Big Idea Club Must-Read Nonfiction Book of Winter 2020 A revelatory investigation of friendship, with profound implications for our understanding of what humans and animals alike need to thrive across a lifetime. The phenomenon of friendship is universal and elemental. Friends, after all, are the family we choose. But what makes these bonds not just pleasant but essential, and how do they affect our bodies and our minds? In Friendship, science journalist Lydia Denworth takes us in search of friendship’s biological, psychological, and evolutionary foundations. She finds friendship to be as old as early life on the African savannas—when tribes of people grew large enough for individuals to seek fulfillment of their social needs outside their immediate families. Denworth sees this urge to connect reflected in primates, too, taking us to a monkey sanctuary in Puerto Rico and a baboon colony in Kenya to examine social bonds that offer insight into our own. She meets scientists at the frontiers of brain and genetics research and discovers that friendship is reflected in our brain waves, our genomes, and our cardiovascular and immune systems; its opposite, loneliness, can kill. At long last, social connection is recognized as critical to wellness and longevity. With insight and warmth, Denworth weaves past and present, field biology and neuroscience, to show how our bodies and minds are designed for friendship across life stages, the processes by which healthy social bonds are developed and maintained, and how friendship is changing in the age of social media. Blending compelling science, storytelling, and a grand evolutionary perspective, Denworth delineates the essential role that cooperation and companionship play in creating human (and nonhuman) societies. Friendship illuminates the vital aspects of friendship, both visible and invisible, and offers a refreshingly optimistic vision of human nature. It is a clarion call for putting positive relationships at the center of our lives.

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Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond – Lydia Denworth

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