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Tag: energy and utilities

  • Climate activists dye Spanish Steps fountain water black | CNN

    Climate activists dye Spanish Steps fountain water black | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A group called Ultima Generazione or Last Generation have poured what they described as a charcoal-based black liquid into the water of the Barcaccia fountain at the base of the Spanish Steps in central Rome.

    The group posted a video on Twitter, showing three men and a woman inside the fountain opening paper bags of a black powder.

    “It is absurd that this gesture should shock you, when we are experiencing a drought emergency that is putting agriculture, energy production in crisis,” the group said in the tweet.

    The group was stopped by Carabinieri officials and Rome Capital police on Saturday, a police spokesperson said.

    They are in custody pending charges of defacing a public monument and entering a fountain.

    The water remained black with visible stains to the marble fountain on Saturday afternoon.

    Rome’s mayor Roberto Gualtieri visited the fountain – designed by Pietro Bernini in 1629 – and posted a photo of himself staring at the inky water.

    “Rome is at the forefront in the fight against climate change and in the protection of the artistic heritage,” he said.

    “Throwing black liquid into the Barcaccia, risking ruining it, is an absolutely wrong gesture that does not help the environment,” he added, saying work was under way to ensure there was no permanent damage.

    The same group glued themselves to a plinth in the Vatican museums, to Sandro Botticelli’s “Primavera” masterpiece at the Uffizi galleries in Florence and to the Unique Forms of Continuity in Space statue at the Museo del Novecento in Milan last year.

    They are also facing charges in Rome for throwing orange paint on the Italian Senate façade in January this year.

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  • Officials say water and air are safe after train carrying highly flammable ethanol derails in Minnesota | CNN

    Officials say water and air are safe after train carrying highly flammable ethanol derails in Minnesota | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The day after a train carrying a highly flammable chemical derailed and burst into flames in a small city in southwestern Minnesota, crews are still working to clear the area as officials reassure residents the water and air are safe.

    Of the 22 cars that derailed in Raymond, Minnesota, Thursday morning, four containing ethanol ruptured and caught fire, the US Environmental Protection Agency said. Other cars carrying the substance were also at risk of releasing the chemical, the EPA said.

    Other cars that derailed contained corn syrup, the Kandiyohi County Sheriff’s Office said. No injuries have been reported.

    Sen. Amy Klobuchar said at a Friday news conference at the site that it “seems” there is no contamination within the soil.

    “No one was hurt. The ground is good. The air is good. So, let’s just see what we can do going forward to make sure it does not happen again,” the Minnesota Democrat said.

    There are currently 100 people at on the scene of the derailment cleaning up the cars. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, Klobuchar said.

    The EPA said it has been at the crash site and monitoring the air for particulate matter and other compounds, noting there hasn’t been severe impact to the community thus far. And the train operator, BNSF Railway, said it did not find any impact to the drinking water and the air either, it said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

    “Our concern, after the safety of the people here, was what was going to happen with the air and they have done multiple tests and they will continue to do that,” Klobuchar said.

    The cars are expected to be running again – barring a major blizzard – in the next few days, according to Klobuchar and remediation efforts are also underway to help residents who were impacted by the incident.

    Klobuchar said she and fellow Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith are looking into rail safety legislation in Congress.

    In the meantime, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said in a tweet Friday that he’s “grateful for the swift, coordinated response” of local, state, and national partners.

    “Yesterday’s derailment amplifies the critical need to pass my budget’s investments in rail safety to prevent this from happening again,” Walz said.

    The response to the derailment and fire included 28 fire departments, including several volunteer departments who remained at the crash late Thursday, the sheriff’s office had said in a post online.

    The derailment happened around 1 a.m. Thursday in Raymond, a small city of some 800 residents.

    Homes within a half-mile of the derailment were evacuated, but the order was lifted later in the day, according to the sheriff’s office.

    The derailment in Minnesota comes less than two months after a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals crashed in the Ohio community of East Palestine.

    The blaze burned for days, and toxic chemicals were released into the air and killed thousands of fish. Many residents there have complained of health problems after the derailment and raised concerns about the impact of the chemicals.

    Firefighters work near piled up train cars, near Raymond Thursday.

    In Minnesota, preliminary information from the crash suggested 14 of the train’s 40 cars were carrying hazardous materials, “including ethanol, which was released – leading to a fire,” US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN Thursday morning.

    Ethanol can explode when mixed with vapor and air. Exposure to ethanol can lead to coughing, dizziness, the feeling of burning eyes, drowsiness and unconsciousness.

    “Ethanol, like many chemicals, can be toxic if inhaled or comes into contact with skin or is ingested. But it requires a certain concentration to be a health hazard,” said Purdue University professor Andrew Whelton, an expert in environmental chemistry and water quality.

    Ethanol is highly soluble in water, meaning it will be relatively easy to dilute.

    “Dilution is one way to reduce the risk” of health issues from any water that may be contaminated with ethanol, Whelton said.

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  • Key inflation gauge in Europe hits record high even as overall price rises slow sharply | CNN Business

    Key inflation gauge in Europe hits record high even as overall price rises slow sharply | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Inflation in Europe has fallen to its slowest pace in more than a year, though stark signs of persistent underlying pressure on prices will complicate policymakers’ next move on borrowing costs.

    Prices in the 20 countries that use the euro rose 6.9% this month compared with a year ago, the European Union’s statistics agency said Friday.

    That’s a sharp decline from 8.5% in February and the lowest inflation rate since February 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sending energy prices soaring. The pullback in inflation this month was driven by a 0.9% year-on-year fall in energy prices.

    But the latest data includes evidence of lingering upward pressure on prices. The price of food, alcohol and tobacco climbed 15.4% year over year, up from 15% in February. And prices for services rose 5%, up from 4.8%.

    More worryingly, core inflation — a measure that strips out volatile food and energy prices — ticked up to 5.7% in March from 5.6% in February, reaching a new record high.

    That is likely to create a headache for policymakers at the European Central Bank, who have been hiking borrowing costs aggressively. They have had to balance the need to tame inflation with limiting stress to the economy. The recent turmoil in the banking sector has also underscored the dangers that rapid interest rate rises pose to some lenders and to the wider financial system.

    Europe’s economic growth is also at risk from emerging efforts by banks to conserve cash following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank in the United States and the downfall of Credit Suisse, which could make it more expensive to take out loans.

    Stubbornly high core inflation makes it harder for the ECB to judge whether it has done enough to rein in inflation.

    “Descending headline inflation thanks to cooling energy prices will not be enough for the ECB to stop tightening, as policymakers are looking for clear signs of core inflation easing,” Riccardo Marcelli Fabiani of Oxford Economics said in a note to clients.

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  • A train carrying highly flammable ethanol derails in Minnesota, sparking an hourslong fire. Now 4 more cars with ethanol could spill | CNN

    A train carrying highly flammable ethanol derails in Minnesota, sparking an hourslong fire. Now 4 more cars with ethanol could spill | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A train hauling ethanol derailed Thursday morning in Raymond, Minnesota, igniting several rail cars and forcing a mandatory evacuation of the city of about 800, officials said.

    The fire was still burning more than 8 hours after the derailment, the US Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement late Thursday morning.

    “Four cars containing ethanol, a highly flammable product, ruptured, caught fire and continue to burn,” said the EPA, which had members at the scene by 6:30 a.m.

    And there’s a risk that more ethanol could spill.

    “Four additional cars containing ethanol may also release,” the EPA said. “The local fire department is currently the lead for the response and ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city. The evacuation remains in place.”

    The EPA team is on the ground in Raymond to conduct air quality monitoring.

    Preliminary information suggests 14 of the train’s 40 cars were carrying hazardous material, “including ethanol, which was released – leading to a fire,” US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN on Thursday.

    In addition to ethanol, the train was carrying mixed freight including corn syrup, said Lena Kent, general director of public affairs for BNSF Railway.

    Ethanol can explode when mixed with vapor and air. Ethanol exposure can lead to coughing, dizziness, the feeling of burning eyes, drowsiness and unconsciousness.

    First responders work the scene of a train derailment Thursday in Raymond, Minnesota.

    The derailment happened around 1 a.m. Homes within a half-mile of the derailment were evacuated, the Kandiyohi County Sheriff’s Office said.

    “There have been no injuries as a result of the crash or emergency response,” the sheriff’s office posted on Facebook. “BNSF specialists are on scene and continued mitigation is occurring.”

    Brittney Phelps and her family were startled by a knock on their door at 1:30 a.m. It was a first responder going door to door telling residents to flee as a precaution.

    “I heard a loud crash but didn’t think anything of it ‘til ambulances were outside the house,” Phelps said.

    She soon smelled the stench of ethanol and saw the wrecked train cars and large fire, Phelps told CNN.

    The derailment happened at about 1 a.m. Thursday, the Raymond Fire Department said.

    The Minnesota Department of Transportation closed a nearby highway due to the derailment and blaze, the fire department said. The main railroad track is blocked, and an estimated time for reopening the line was not available.

    “The City of Raymond is not accessible to the public, so Unity Church in Prinsburg is willing to be a drop off location for bottled water and snacks for the firemen,” the wife of a fire department member said, according to the department’s Facebook page. “These brave souls have been working hard for hours already, and have several hours of work ahead for them.”

    The cause of the derailment is under investigation. A team from the National Transportation Safety Board is expected to arrive at the site Thursday afternoon, the NTSB said.

    Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and state emergency management leadership will travel to Raymond on Thursday to visit the site of the derailment, the governor’s office said.

    The derailment happened nearly two months after another train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio – igniting a dayslong inferno, spewing poisonous fumes into the air and killing thousands of fish. The Ohio health department is preparing to offer health tests to first responders as part of a long-term effort to monitor the health of those who responded to the disaster.

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  • Crucial Antarctic ocean circulation heading for collapse if planet-warming pollution remains high, scientists warn | CNN

    Crucial Antarctic ocean circulation heading for collapse if planet-warming pollution remains high, scientists warn | CNN

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    Brisbane, Australia
    CNN
     — 

    Melting ice in the Antarctic is not just raising sea levels but slowing down the circulation of deep ocean water with vast implications for the global climate and for marine life, a new study warns.

    Led by scientists from the University of New South Wales and published Wednesday in the journal Nature, the peer-reviewed study modeled the impact of melting Antarctic ice on deep ocean currents that work to flush nutrients from the sea floor to fish near the surface.

    Three years of computer modeling found the Antarctic overturning circulation – also known as abyssal ocean overturning – is on track to slow 42% by 2050 if the world continues to burn fossil fuels and produce high levels of planet-heating pollution.

    A slow down is expected to speed up ice melt and potentially end an ocean system that has helped sustain life for thousands of years.

    “The projections we have make it look like the Antarctic overturning would collapse this century,” said Matthew England, deputy director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, who coordinated the study.

    “In the past, these overturning circulations changed over the course of 1,000 years or so, and we’re talking about changes within a few decades. So it is pretty dramatic,” he said.

    Most previous studies have focused on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the system of currents that carry warm water from the tropics into the North Atlantic. The cold, saltier water then sinks and flows south.

    Its Southern Ocean equivalent is less studied but does an important job moving nutrient-dense water north from Antarctica, past New Zealand and into the North Pacific Ocean, the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean, the report’s authors said in a briefing.

    The circulation of deep ocean water is considered vital for the health of the sea – and plays an important role in sequestering carbon absorbed from the atmosphere.

    According to the report, while a slowdown of the AMOC would mean the deep Atlantic Ocean would get colder, the slower circulation of dense water in the Antarctic means the deepest waters of the Southern Ocean will warm up.

    “One of the concerning things of this slowdown is that there can be feedback to further ocean warming at the base of the ice shelves around Antarctica. And that would lead to more ice melt, reinforcing or amplifying the original change,” England said.

    As global temperatures rise, Antarctic ice is expected to melt faster, but that doesn’t mean the circulation of deep water will increase – in fact the opposite, scientists said.

    In a healthy system, the cold and salty – or dense – consistency of melted Antarctic ice allows it to sink to the deepest layer of the ocean. From there it sweeps north, carrying carbon and higher levels of oxygen than might otherwise be present in water around 4,000 meters deep.

    As the current moves northward, it agitates deep layers of debris on the ocean floor – remains of decomposing sea life thick with nutrients – that feed the bottom of the food chain, scientists said.

    In certain areas, mostly south of Australia in the Southern Ocean and in the tropics, this nutrient-rich cold water moves toward the surface in a process called upwelling, distributing the nutrients to higher layers of the ocean, England said.

    However, Wednesday’s study found that as global temperatures warm, melting sea ice “freshens” the water around Antarctica, diluting its saltiness and raising its temperature, meaning it’s less dense and doesn’t sink to the bottom as efficiently as it once did.

    The report’s co-author, Steve Rintoul from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, said sea life in waters worldwide rely on nutrients brought back up to the surface, and that the Antarctic overturning is a key component of that upwelling of nutrients.

    “We know that nutrients exported from the Southern Ocean in other current systems support about three quarters of global phytoplankton production – the base of the food chain,” he said.

    “We’ve shown that the sinking of dense water near Antarctica will decline by 40% by 2050. And it’ll be sometime between 2050 and 2100 that we start to see the impacts of that on surface productivity.”

    England added: “People born today are going to be around then. So, it’s certainly stuff that will challenge societies in the future.”

    Fishing boats at a floating fish farm off Rongcheng, China.

    The report’s authors say the slowing of the Antarctic ocean overturning has other knock-on effects for the planet – for example, it could shift rain bands in the tropics by as much as 1,000 kilometers (621 miles).

    “Shut it down completely and you get this reduction of rainfall in one band south of the equator and an increase in the band to the north. So we could see impacts on rainfall in the tropics,” said England.

    Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in its latest report that the impacts of rising global temperatures were more severe than expected. Without immediate and deep changes, the world is hurtling toward increasingly dangerous and irreversible consequences of climate change, it added.

    The IPCC report found that the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels was still possible, but it’s becoming harder to achieve the longer the world fails to cut carbon pollution.

    England points out that the IPCC predictions don’t include ice melt from Antarctic ice sheets and shelves.

    “That’s a very significant component of change that’s already underway around Antarctica with more to come in the next few decades,” England said.

    Rintoul said the study was another urgent warning on top of all the ones that have come before it.

    “Even though the direct effect on fisheries through reduced nutrient supply might take decades to play out, we will commit ourselves to that future with the choices we make over the next decade.”

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  • Philadelphia officials say drinking water remains safe for now after a chemical spill in the Delaware River | CNN

    Philadelphia officials say drinking water remains safe for now after a chemical spill in the Delaware River | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The City of Philadelphia says it is now confident tap water from the Baxter Drinking Water Treatment Plant will remain safe to drink until at least 11:59 p.m. Monday following a chemical spill in the Delaware River.

    At a news conference late Sunday afternoon, city officials said they had not found any contamination in Philadelphia’s water supply and there would be no disruptions to schools or city services on Monday.

    “There has not been any contamination in the Philadelphia water system,” Mike Carroll, the city’s deputy managing director for transportation, infrastructure and sustainability, told reporters.

    “We have enough water to sustain a safe use for drinking, cooking – all purposes – through till at least 11:59 p.m., Monday, March 27,” Carroll said. “The potential for contamination is diminishing over time.”

    The Philadelphia Police Department and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection had also conducted a flyover across the Delaware River and saw no visual evidence of contamination plumes, Carroll said.

    “In this case, because we were talking about essentially ingredients that go into latex paint, we would have been able to see a kind of white plume under the river surface,” he said.

    The city earlier sent out mobile phone push alerts recommending area residents use of bottled water from 2 p.m.

    “Contaminants have not been found in the system at this time but this is out of caution due to a spill in the Delaware River,” the alerts shared with CNN said.

    The alert also provided a link to a community website for updates.

    But an updated statement Sunday afternoon the city said new hydraulic modeling and sampling results showed “there is no need to buy water at this time.”

    “This updated time is based on the time it will take river water that entered the Baxter intakes early Sunday morning to move through treatment and water mains before reaching customers,” the statement reads. “The water that is currently available to customers was treated before the spill reached Philadelphia and remains safe to drink and use for bathing, cooking and washing.”

    A ShopRite store in South Philadelphia said it was selling out of bottled water before 2 p.m. Sunday after the alerts were sent out.

    When the store is able to restock shelves, it plans to limit cases of bottled water to three per customer, a store worker told CNN.

    Carroll said in a statement issued earlier on Sunday that the contamination occurred Friday and involved a latex product that spilled along a Delaware River tributary in Bristol Township, Bucks County.

    “As has been reported, on Friday night a chemical spill occurred in Bristol Township, Bucks County which released contaminants into the Delaware River,” Carroll said. “The Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) became aware of this through the Delaware Valley Early Warning System (EWS) and has been evaluating the situation since that time to understand potential impacts to the public. Although early indications have not revealed contamination, we are still monitoring the situation and conducting testing.”

    Trinseo PLC, which owns the facility where the spill occurred, said in a statement on its website Sunday it “appears to be the result of equipment failure.”

    The latex product chemical spill happened on Friday evening at a facility in Bristol, Pennsylvania, which manufactures acrylic resins, according to the statement.

    The company estimated 8,100 gallons of solution – which is half water and half latex polymer – was spilled.

    “The latex emulsion is a white liquid that is used in various consumer goods. Its pigmentation makes the water-soluble material visible in surface water,” the statement reads.

    The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said an “unknown amount” of the spilled product had entered the Delaware River. Water sampling is ongoing and contaminants have not been detected at drinking water intakes, the department said in a Sunday statement.

    Fish and wildlife are said to have not been affected, according to the statement.

    “Since the first hours after the incident, the Department of Environmental Protection has been at the facility where the spill originated and will be staying until there is no longer a threat to those impacted in Bucks and Philadelphia counties,” the department’s acting secretary Rich Negrin said in the statement. “We are working closely with our partners to monitor the spread of the contaminants and we will hold the responsible party accountable.”

    On its website, the Philadelphia Water Department said it provides water to more than “2 million people in Philadelphia, Montgomery, Delaware, and Bucks counties.”

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  • French airports, schools and oil refineries hit by national strike over pension age increase | CNN Business

    French airports, schools and oil refineries hit by national strike over pension age increase | CNN Business

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    Paris
    CNN
     — 

    French transport networks, oil refineries and schools were hit by widespread disruption Thursday as workers staged a national strike to protest an increase in the retirement age that was pushed through parliament without a vote.

    Though sporadic demonstrations had popped up in Paris and other cities after the French government forced the bill through last week, Thursday marked the first day of coordinated action since then. It is the ninth day of strikes since the bill was introduced in January.

    Only two out of 14 metro lines in Paris were operating a normal service. RER train services, which run in the city and its suburbs, were severely reduced and only half of high-speed TGV trains were working. The nationwide strike has also affected air traffic, with 30% of flights impacted at Paris Orly airport.

    Unionized workers blockaded a major oil refinery in Normandy and another one in Fos-sur-Mer in the south of France, according to a government spokesperson.

    “We are intervening in a targeted manner to unblock oil storage tanks that are blocked by demonstrators,” the minister of energy transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacherin, said in a statement.

    “If the strike is a fundamental constitutional right, blockading is not one… The police is mobilized in difficult conditions and has my full support.”

    The government renewed its requisition order requiring workers to go back to work at the two blockaded refineries, the government spokesperson said.

    The government’s plan to raise the retirement age for most workers by two years was opposed by huge numbers of people. But despite protests that drew more than a million people onto streets across the country, President Emmanuel Macron’s government did not back down. It rammed the legislation through the French National Assembly last week using a constitutional clause that allows the government to bypass a vote.

    The country’s generous pension system and early retirement have long been a point of pride since they were enacted after World War II. Under the new law, the retirement age for most workers will be 64, still one of the lowest in the industrialized world.

    As a result of the refinery strikes, kerosene stocks at Charles De Gaulle airport, which serves Paris, were “under pressure,” and those at Orly airport were being monitored, according to the civil aviation authority.

    Earlier in the day, around 70 protesters blocked terminal one at Charles de Gaulle airport, an airport spokesperson told CNN.

    About 20% of teachers in public education also took part in the strikes, according to France’s education ministry.

    A protester stands near burning garbage bins during a demonstration as part of protests against the pension reform, in Nantes, France, March 23, 2023.

    Macron and his government have defended the retirement reform as necessary to keep the pension system funded. Taxes on current workers pay for the benefits of retirees, and as people live longer — and more baby boomers retire — the system would otherwise eventually go bankrupt, though the threat is not immediate.

    When the proposal was unveiled in January, the government said the reforms were necessary to prevent a projected 13.5 billion ($14.7 billion) euro hole opening up in the pension system in 2030.

    During an interview with two of France’s main television networks Wednesday, Macron said the bill should be enacted by the end of this year. He also defended the decision to push through the reform as financially necessary, no matter how unpopular it was.

    “It’s in the greater interest of the country. Between opinion polls and the national interest, I chose the national interest,” Macron said.

    — CNN’s Joseph Ataman and Olesya Dmitracova contributed to this report.

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  • Biden designates area sacred to tribes as largest national monument of his presidency | CNN Politics

    Biden designates area sacred to tribes as largest national monument of his presidency | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden on Tuesday officially designated a new national monument in Southern Nevada while speaking at a conservation event at the Interior Department.

    At more than 506,000 acres, the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument is one of the largest tracts of land to come under federal protection so far during Biden’s presidency, preserving Nevada’s Spirit Mountain and the desert around it.

    “It’s a place of reverence, a place of spirituality, a place of healing,” Biden said Tuesday. “It will now be recognized for the significance it holds and be preserved forever.”

    Biden’s proclamation is a major victory for the surrounding Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, which has been advocating for the monument’s creation for around three decades.

    “Avi Kwa Ame is the point of Mojave creation; it’s a very important and integral part of our history and belief system,” Ashley Hemmers, the tribal administrator for Fort Mojave, told CNN. “For us, that mountain is a living landscape; it’s like a person. If something were to happen to it, it would be like losing a loved one.”

    During an emotional speech Tuesday, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland highlighted Interior’s work to honor and uplift tribal nations and their knowledge of the land.

    “We’re incorporating Indigenous knowledge and honoring tribes for their role in stewarding our lands and waters since time immemorial,” Haaland said, tearing up during her speech.

    “I was thinking about how the federal government tried to erase Indigenous people in so many ways; taking their lands, taking their children, taking their lives and taking away bison that were so central to many tribal nations,” she added, talking about a recent order she signed to restore American bison. “The bison are still here here, and Indigenous people are still here.”

    Biden also designated the Castner Range National Monument in Fort Bliss in West Texas, which was a training site for the Army during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

    “It’s a place of incredible beauty,” Biden said of Castner Range, describing the Mexican poppies that grow there as “transforming desert hills into a sea of yellows and oranges.”

    Together, the two monuments will protect close to 514,000 acres of new public lands. In addition, Biden is directing Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo to consider protecting all US waters around the Pacific Remote Islands as part of a new national marine sanctuary.

    Biden made the announcement at a summit for tribal leaders and elected officials that was hosted by the White House and Interior Department.

    As they met, climate and youth activists demonstrated outside the Interior Department’s headquarters to protest the recently approved Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. The Biden administration approved the controversial Willow Project last week. The drilling project, which is slated for the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, galvanized a surge of online activism against it in recent months. Environmental advocates have filed two lawsuits in federal court to stop the project.

    Inside the department, the focus was on protecting the new national monuments and the area around Spirit Mountain, which Biden initially vowed to designate as a national monument in November at the White House tribal nations summit.

    “When it comes to Spirit Mountain and the surrounding canyons and regions in southern Nevada, I’m committed to protecting this sacred place that is essential to the creation story of so many tribes that are here today,” Biden said in his November speech, adding, “And I look forward to being able to visit Spirit Mountain and experience it with you as soon as I can.”

    Spirit Mountain – known as Avi Kwa Ame in Mojave language – sits in the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts in Southern Nevada. It is a sacred site for more than 10 tribal nations and is the site of tribal ceremonies and rituals.

    Designating the new monument has rankled some clean energy groups who warn it could hamper wind and solar energy development in Southern Nevada.

    While Interior and the Bureau of Land Management have identified millions of acres in Nevada for renewable energy development, much of the public land within the proposed monument area can’t be considered for clean energy development because they are part of the critical habitat for a desert tortoise species, the Department of Interior said last year.

    There is a pending application for a solar project on about 2,575 acres that the department has identified as exempt from conservation, an Interior spokesperson said last year.

    Outside of the monument area, the Bureau of Land Management has identified more than 9 million acres of federal land that could be used to build utility-scale solar panels, as well as 16.8 million acres of federal land that could be developed for wind energy.

    Hemmers said that while the tribe wants to actively encourage recreation on the newly created national monument, it wants to see energy and clean energy development done elsewhere in Nevada.

    “They can both protect an area while also walking towards an energy future that gets us to our climate goals,” Hemmers said.

    Hemmers, who watched Biden declare his intention to designate Avi Kwa Ame a national monument in November along with her elderly grandmother – a survivor of the brutal, federal Native American boarding school program – said seeing the proclamation finalized would bring an immense sense of “relief.”

    “It would give me a sense of relief that people in my community cannot have that burden on their shoulders, being threatened by possibly losing a piece of us,” she told CNN.

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  • FCC cracks down on spammy text messages | CNN Business

    FCC cracks down on spammy text messages | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Federal Communications Commission is cracking down on spammy text messages with new rules for telecom companies, citing a surge of consumer complaints in recent years tied to unwanted robotexts.

    The new rules require phone providers to block text messages from suspicious sources including phone numbers that appear to be “invalid, unallocated, or unused.” Carriers will also have to block text messages coming from phone numbers that claim not to ever send text messages, or that the government has identified as numbers not used for texting, the FCC said.

    The move mirrors a similar US government effort to shut down illegal robocalls, which has led to at least one phone provider being cut off entirely from the US telephone network. Robocall monitoring services say the effort has largely been successful at reducing the volume of robocalls. But in recent years, an explosion of spam and scam text messages appears to have taken their place, leading to more than 18,000 consumer complaints at the FCC last year.

    The FCC is mulling additional regulations that could, among other things, apply Do Not Call registry protections to text messages for the first time. The FCC said it is also considering making it harder for marketers to use a single consumer consent to flood that user with calls and text messages from multiple sources and numbers.

    Unwanted or scam robotexts can be an even greater risk to consumers than unwanted robocalls, the FCC said, because unlike phone calls, text messages may contain malicious links that can infect a smart device with dangerous software.

    “Scam artists have found that sending us messages about a package you never ordered or a payment that never went through along with a link to a shady website is a quick and easy way to get us to engage on our devices and fall prey to fraud,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement.

    The FCC voted to adopt the new rules in a unanimous 4-0 decision.

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  • Libyan armed group says barrels of missing natural uranium recovered | CNN

    Libyan armed group says barrels of missing natural uranium recovered | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Libyan armed group claims to have found the barrels of natural uranium that went missing in southern Libya.

    A spokesman for the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), Khaled Al Mahjoub said on Facebook that the barrels were found 3 miles (5 km) from a warehouse where they were being stored.

    A video posted by Mahjoub showed a man wearing a hazmat suit vocally counting 18 blue barrels that allegedly contain the missing natural uranium. The IAEA had said that “10 drums” were missing from the warehouse.

    A total of 2.5 tons of natural uranium in the form of uranium ore concentrate were reported missing by the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] this week, after inspectors conducted verification activities Tuesday.

    “We are aware of media reports that the material has been found, the Agency is actively working to verify them,” the IAEA said on Thursday. CNN reached out to the IAEA to confirm whether the barrels found by the LNA are the same ones reported missing by the UN nuclear watchdog.

    The barrels were stored in a guarded warehouse in southern Libya, but the guards were stationed further away over concerns of radioactivity, Mahjoub said in a post on Facebook.

    A barrel-sized hole was found cut open to the side of the storage warehouse, Mahjoub added.

    Mahjoub claimed that a Chadian group might have been responsible for stealing the barrels thinking it was arms, but abandoned the barrels after not properly knowing what was inside. The LNA did not provide evidence to support that claim.

    The group also said that forces were tasked with guarding the warehouse after an IAEA team visited the warehouse in 2020 and marked the barrels containing uranium.

    The IAEA had said that the missing uranium posed “little radiation hazard but it requires safe handling.”

    “The loss of knowledge about the present location of nuclear material may present a radiological risk as well as nuclear security concerns,” the IAEA said before the LNA statement.

    Libya has had little peace or stability since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising against Moammar Gadhafi. The country split in 2014 between warring factions in the east and west.

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  • A radioactive cylinder has gone missing in Thailand. Authorities are now scrambling to find it | CNN

    A radioactive cylinder has gone missing in Thailand. Authorities are now scrambling to find it | CNN

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    Bangkok, Thailand
    CNN
     — 

    Authorities in Thailand are scrambling to locate a metal cylinder with dangerous radioactive contents that went missing from a power plant this week, warning the public of serious health risks should they come across it.

    The revelation comes just two months after Australia was forced to launch a similar hunt to find a tiny radioactive capsule that was eventually located by the side of a highway.

    But while that Australian capsule was lost in the country’s remote outback hundreds of miles from the nearest major city – the Thai canister has disappeared in a much more populated area.

    The cylinder, measuring 30 centimeters (4 inches) long and 13 centimeters (5 inches) wide, was reported missing during routine checks by staff on March 10, at the coal power plant in Prachin Buri, a province in central Thailand, east of the capital Bangkok.

    The province has a population of nearly half a million people and houses some of Thailand’s best national parks, including the famed Khao Yai National Park which is popular with both local and international tourists.

    The parks are a common day trip from nearby Bangkok, a sprawling megacity of some 14 million people.

    Used for measuring ash, the cylinder was part of a silo and contains Caesium-137, a highly radioactive substance that scientists say is potentially lethal.

    Search teams and drones have been deployed to recover the missing cylinder, according to a statement from the Office of Atoms for Peace (OAP), a government regulator for radioactive and nuclear research in Thailand.

    Deputy Secretary General Pennapa Kanchana told CNN on Wednesday they were using radioactive detection equipment to locate the cylinder.

    “We are searching in waste recycling shops in the area,” she said. “We are (using) survey equipment to detect for signals. For areas we cannot reach, we have dispatched drones and robots.”

    Also involved in the search are Thai police, who believe the cylinder has been missing since February but was only officially reported lost by the National Power Plant 5 company on Friday.

    Police have examined CCTV footage from the plant, Si Maha Phot district police chief Mongkol Thopao told CNN – but were hindered by “limited views” of the machine.

    “It is unclear if the item was stolen and sold to a recycling shop or misplaced elsewhere,” Mongkol said. “We have dispatched our teams to recycle shops around the area… we still couldn’t find it.”

    Experts warn that Caesium-137 can create serious health problems for people who come into contact with it: skin burns from close exposure, radiation sickness and potentially deadly cancer risks, especially for those exposed unknowingly for long periods of time.

    Caesium-137 has a half-life of about 30 years, which means it could pose a risk to the population for decades to come, if not found.

    Pennapa, from the Office of Atoms for Peace, urged the public not to panic.

    “If general people (come into) contact unknowingly, the health effects will depend on the level of the (radiation) intensity. If it’s high, the first thing we will see is skin irritation.”

    It is not the first time something like this has happened in Thailand.

    In 2000, according to the Congressional Research Service report, canisters containing another radioactive isotope, cobalt-60, were bought by two scrap collectors, who took it to a junkyard where it was cut open.

    Some workers suffered burn-like injuries, and eventually three people died and seven others suffered radiation injuries, the report said. Nearly 2,000 others who lived nearby were exposed to radiation.

    But Pennapa said the canister that is currently missing is far less radioactive than the incident in 2000.

    The most recent case in Thailand follows a similar incident in Western Australia in January when a tiny capsule, also containing Caesium-137, went missing along a remote outback highway while being transported from an iron ore mine to a depot in Perth.

    After a challenging six-day search, the capsule was eventually found and officials are still investigating how it apparently fell off the back of a vehicle during transit.

    Nuclear radiation experts in Australia who previously spoke to CNN said that the loss of that capsule was “very unusual” and spoke about challenges of recovering such a tiny device.

    But a good thing, they said, was that the search area was extremely isolated.

    “So it would be very unlikely to have much impact (on people),” said Ivan Kempson, an associate professor in Biophysics from the University of Southern Australia.

    But there had been some past examples, Kempson noted, of people finding similar things and suffering radiation poisoning.

    “The concern… is the potential impact on health of the person who would find the capsule,” he said.

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  • China has shattered the assumption of US dominance in the Middle East | CNN

    China has shattered the assumption of US dominance in the Middle East | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    With a grandiose diplomatic flourish China brokered a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, in the process upending US calculus in the Gulf and beyond.

    While the United States has angered its Gulf allies by apparently dithering over morality, curbing arms supplies and chilling relations, Saudi Arabia’s King-in-waiting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, has found a kindred spirit in China’s leader Xi Jinping.

    Both are bold, assertive, willing to take risks and seemingly share unsated ambition.

    Friday’s announcement that Riyadh and Tehran had renewed diplomatic ties was unexpected, but it shouldn’t have been. It is the logical accumulation of America’s diplomatic limitations and China’s growing quest to shape the world in its orbit.

    Beijing’s claim that “China pursues no selfish interest whatsoever in the Middle East,” rings hollow. It buys more oil from Saudi Arabia than any other country in the world.

    Xi needs energy to grow China’s economy, ensure stability at home and fuel its rise as a global power.

    His other main supplier, Russia, is at war, its supplies therefore in question. By de-escalating tensions between Saudi and Iran, Xi is not only shoring up his energy alternatives but, in a climate of growing tension with the US, also heading off potential curbs on his access to Gulf oil.

    Xi’s motivation appears fueled by wider interests, but even so the US State Department welcomed the surprise move, spokesman Ned Price saying, “we support anything that would serve to deescalate tensions in the region, and potentially help to prevent conflict.”

    Iran has buy-in because China has economic leverage. In 2021 the pair signed a trade deal reportedly worth up to $400 billion of Chinese investment over 25 years, in exchange for a steady supply of Iranian oil.

    Tehran is isolated by international sanctions and Beijing is providing a glimmer of financial relief.

    And, in the words of Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last year, there’s also the hope of more to come as he sees geopolitical power shifting east.

    “Asia will become the center of knowledge, the center of economics, as well as the center of political power, and the center of military power,” Khamenei said.

    Saudi has buy-in because war with Iran would wreck its economy and ruin MBS’s play for regional dominance. His bold visions for the country’s post fossil-fuel future and domestic stability depend on inwardly investing robust oil and gas revenues.

    US State Department spokesman Ned Price pictured in July 2022.

    It may sound simple, but the fact the US couldn’t pull it off speaks to the complexities and nuance of everything that’s been brewing over the past two decades.

    America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have burned through a good part of its diplomatic capital in the Middle East.

    Many in the Gulf see the development of the war in Ukraine as an unnecessary and dangerous American adventure, and some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s territorial claims over Ukraine not without merit.

    Chinese and Saudi flags in Riyadh in December 2022.

    What the global West sees as a fight for democratic values lacks resonance among the Gulf autocracies, and the conflict doesn’t consume them in the same way as it does leaders in European capitals.

    Saudi Arabia, and MBS in particular, have become particularly frustrated with America’s flip-flop diplomacy: dialling back relations over the Crown Prince’s role in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi (which MBS denies); then calling on him to cut oil production swiftly followed by requests to increase it.

    These inconsistencies have led the Saudis to hew policy to their national interests and less to America’s needs.

    During his visit to Saudi last July, US President Joe Biden said: “We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia, or Iran.” It seems now that the others are walking away from him.

    On Beijing’s part, China’s Gulf intervention signals its own needs, and the opportunity to act arrived in a single serving.

    Xi helped himself because he can. The Chinese leader is a risk taker.

    His abrupt ending of austere Covid-19 pandemic restrictions at home is just one example, but this is a more complex roll of the dice.

    Mediation in the Middle East can be a poisoned chalice, but as big as the potential gains are for China, the wider implications for the regional, and even global order, are quantifiably bigger and will resonate for years.

    US President Joe Biden (center-left) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (center) in Jeddah in July 2022.

    Yet harbingers of this shake-up and the scale of its impact have been in plain sight for months. Xi’s high-profile, red-carpet reception in Riyadh last December for his first overseas visit after abandoning his domestic “zero-Covid” policy stirred the waters.

    During that trip Saudi and Chinese officials signed scores of deals worth tens of billions of dollars.

    China’s Foreign Ministry trumpeted Xi’s visit, paying particular attention to one particular infrastructure project: “China will deepen industrial and infrastructure cooperation with Saudi Arabia (and) advance the development of the China-Saudi Arabia (Jizan) Industrial Park.”

    The Jizan project, part of China’s belt and road initiative, heralds huge investment around the ancient Red Sea port, currently Saudi’s third largest.

    Jizan lies close to the border with Yemen, the scene of a bloody civil war and proxy battle between Riyadh and Tehran since 2014, sparking what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

    Significantly since Xi’s visit, episodic attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Jizan have abated.

    There are other effects too: the plans to upscale Jizan’s container handling puts Saudi in greater competition with the UAE’s container ports and potentially strains another regional rivalry, as MBS drives to become the dominant regional power, usurping UAE’s role as regional hub for global businesses.

    Xi will have an interest seeing both Saudi Arabia and the UAE prosper, but Saudi is by far the bigger partner with higher potential global economic heft and, importantly, massive religious clout in the Islamic world.

    Where the UAE and Saudi align strongly is eschewing direct conflict with Tehran.

    A deadly drone attack in Abu Dhabi late last year was claimed by the Houthis, before the rebels quickly rescinded it. But no one publicly blamed the Houthis’ sponsors in Tehran.

    A once shaky ceasefire in Yemen now also seems to be moving toward peace talks, perhaps yet another indication of the potential of China’s influence in the region.

    Beijing is acutely aware of what a continued war over the Persian Gulf could cost its commercial interests – another reason why a Saudi/Iran rapprochement makes sense to Xi.

    Iran blames Saudi for stoking the massive street protests through its towns and cities since September.

    Saudi denies that accusation, but when Iran moved drones and long-range missiles close to its Gulf coast and Saudi, Riyadh called on its friends to ask Tehran to de-escalate. Russia and China did, the threat dissipated.

    Tehran, despite US diplomatic efforts, is also closing in on nuclear weapons capability and Saudi’s MBS is on record saying he’ll ensure parity, “if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”

    Late last week US officials said Saudi was seeking US security guarantees and help developing a civilian nuclear program as part of a deal to normalize relations with Israel, an avowed enemy of Iran’s Ayatollahs.

    Indeed, when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel late January, concerned over a rising Palestinian death toll in a violent year in the region, potential settlement expansions and controversial changes to Israel’s judiciary Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Blinken about “expanding the circle of peace,” and improving relations with Arab neighbours, including Saudi Arabia.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May 2021.

    But as Saudi seems to shift closer to Tehran, Netanyahu’s mission just got harder. While both Saudi and Israel strongly oppose a nuclear-armed Iran, only Netanyahu seems ready to confront Tehran.

    “My policy is to do everything within Israel’s power to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” the Israeli leader told Blinken.

    Riyadh favors diplomacy. As recently as last week the Saudi foreign minister said: “It’s absolutely critical … that we find and an alternative pathway to ensuring an (Iranian) civilian nuclear program.”

    By improving ties with Tehran, he said, “we can make it quite clear to the Iranians that this is not just a concerns of distant countries but it’s also a concern of its neighbors.”

    For years this is what America did, such as brokering the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, in 2015.

    Xi backed that deal, the Saudis didn’t want it, Iran never trusted it, Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump’s withdrawal confirmed Iran’s fears and sealed its fate, despite the ongoing proximity talks to get American diplomats seated at the table again.

    Iran has raced ahead in the meantime, massively over-running the bounds of the JCPOA limits on uranium enrichment and producing almost weapons-grade material.

    What’s worse for Washington is that Trump’s JCPOA withdrawal legacy tainted international perceptions of US commitment, continuity and diplomacy. All these circumstances perhaps signaled to Xi that his time to seize the lead on global diplomacy was coming.

    Yet the Chinese leader seems to accept what Netanyahu won’t and what US diplomacy is unable to prevent: that sooner, rather than later, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. As such, Xi may be fostering Saudi-Iran rapprochement as a hedge against that day.

    So Netanyahu looks increasingly isolated and the Israeli leader, already under huge domestic pressure from spiking tensions with Palestinians and huge Israeli protests over his proposed judicial reforms, now faces a massive re-think on regional security.

    The working assumption of American diplomatic regional primacy is broken, and Netanyahu’s biggest ally is now not as hegemonic as he needs. But by how much is still far from clear.

    It’s not a knockout, but a gut blow, to Washington. How Xi calculates the situation isn’t clear either. The US is not finished, far from it, but it is diminished, and both powers are coexisting in a different way now.

    Earlier this month, the Chinese leader made unusually direct comments accusing the US of leading a campaign against China and causing serious domestic woes.

    “Western countries led by the United States have contained and suppressed us in an all-round way, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our development,” Xi told a group of government advisers representing private businesses on the sidelines of an annual legislative meeting in Beijing.

    Meanwhile, Biden has defined the future US-China relationship as “competition not confrontation,” and he has built his foreign policy around the tenets of standing up for democracy.

    It is striking that neither Xi, nor Khamenei, nor MBS are troubled by the moral dilemmas that circumscribe Biden. This is the big challenge the US president warned about, and now it’s here. An alternative world order, irrespective of what happens in Ukraine.

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  • The Willow Project has been approved. Here’s what to know about the controversial oil-drilling venture | CNN Politics

    The Willow Project has been approved. Here’s what to know about the controversial oil-drilling venture | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    On March 13, the Biden administration approved the controversial Willow Project in Alaska.

    ConocoPhillips’ massive Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope moved through the administration’s approval process for months, galvanizing a sudden uprising of online activism against it, including more than one million letters written to the White House in protest of the project and a Change.org petition more than 3 million signatures.

    Here’s what to know about the Willow Project.

    ConocoPhillips’ Willow Project is a massive and decadeslong oil drilling venture on Alaska’s North Slope in the National Petroleum Reserve, which is owned by the federal government.

    The area where the project is planned holds up to 600 million barrels of oil. That oil would take years to reach the market since the project has yet to be constructed.

    ConocoPhillips is a Houston-based energy company that has been exploring and drilling for oil in Alaska for years. The company is the only one that currently has oil drilling operations in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, though its two operating projects are smaller than Willow would be.

    Willow was proposed by ConocoPhillips and originally approved by the Trump administration in 2020. ConocoPhillips was initially approved to construct five drill pads, which the Biden administration ultimately reduced to three. Three pads will allow the company to drill about 90% of the oil they are pursuing.

    The Biden administration felt its hands were tied with the project because Conoco has existing and valid leases in the area, two government sources told CNN. They determined that legally, courts wouldn’t have allowed them to fully reject or drastically reduce the project, the sources said. If they had pursued those options, they could have faced steep fines in addition to legal action from ConocoPhillips.

    Now that the Biden administration has given the Willow project the green light, construction can begin. However, it is unclear exactly when that will happen, in large part due to impending legal challenges.

    Earthjustice, an environmental law group, is expected to file a complaint against the project soon and will likely seek an injunction to try to block the project from going forward.

    Environmental groups and ConocoPhillips are each racing against the clock. Construction on Willow can only be done during the winter season because it needs ice roads to build the rest of the oil project’s infrastructure – including hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines and a processing facility. Depending on the weather, the Alaska’s winter season could end sometime in April.

    If environmental groups secure an injunction before then to stop or delay the project, it could delay construction for at least a year. And since the project needs to be fully constructed before the oil can be produced, it could take years for the oil pumped out of Willow to reach the market.

    The Willow Project will almost certainly face a legal challenge. Earthjustice has told CNN it is preparing a complaint, and it has already started laying out their legal rationale, saying the Biden administration’s authority to protect surface resources on Alaska’s public lands includes taking steps to reduce planet-warming carbon pollution – which Willow would ultimately add to.

    “We and our clients don’t see any acceptable version of this project, we think the [environmental impact] analysis is unlawful,” Jeremy Lieb, an Alaska-based senior attorney for Earthjustice, previously told CNN.

    The state’s lawmakers say the project will create jobs, boost domestic energy production and lessen the country’s reliance on foreign oil. All three lawmakers in Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with President Joe Biden and his senior advisers on March 3, urging the president and his administration to approve the project.

    A coalition of Alaska Native groups on the North Slope also supports the project, saying it could be a much-needed new source of revenue for the region and fund services including education and health care.

    “Willow presents an opportunity to continue that investment in the communities,” Nagruk Harcharek, president of the advocacy group Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, told CNN. “Without that money and revenue stream, we’re reliant on the state and the feds.”

    Other Alaska Natives living closer to the planned project, including city officials and tribal members in the Native village of Nuiqsut, are deeply concerned about the health and environmental impacts of a major oil development.

    In a recent personal letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Nuiqsut Mayor Rosemary Ahtuangaruak and two other Nuiqsut city and tribal officials said that the village would bear the brunt of health and environmental impacts from Willow. Other “villages get some financial benefits from oil and gas activity but experience far fewer impacts that Nuiqsut,” the letter reads. “We are at ground zero for the industrialization of the Arctic.”

    In addition, a surge of online activism against Willow has emerged on TikTok in the last week – resulting in over one million letters being sent to the Biden administration against the project and over 2.8 million signatures on a Change.org petition to halt Willow.

    By the administration’s own estimates, the project would generate enough oil to release 9.2 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon pollution a year – equivalent to adding 2 million gas-powered cars to the roads.

    “This is a huge climate threat and inconsistent with this administration’s promises to take on the climate crisis,” Jeremy Lieb, an Alaska-based senior attorney at environmental law group Earthjustice, told CNN. In addition to concerns about a fast-warming Arctic, groups are also concerned the project could destroy habitat for native species and alter the migration patterns of animals including caribou.

    Willow advocates, including Alaska lawmakers, vow the project will produce fossil fuel in a cleaner way than getting it from other countries, including Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.

    “Why are we not accessing [oil] from a resource where we know our environmental track record is second-to-none?” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said during a recent press conference.

    Yes. During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden vowed to end new oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters – which he initially carried out as part of an early executive order.

    However, the drilling pause was struck down by a federal judge in 2021, and since then the Biden administration has opened up several areas for new drilling. Several of these new oil and gas drilling areas have been challenged in court by environmental groups.

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  • Australia, the UK and US are joining forces in the Pacific, but will nuclear subs arrive quick enough to counter China? | CNN

    Australia, the UK and US are joining forces in the Pacific, but will nuclear subs arrive quick enough to counter China? | CNN

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    Canberra, Australia
    CNN
     — 

    More than a year after the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia dropped the tightly held news they were combining submarine forces, the trio released more details Monday of their ambitious plan to counter China’s rapid military expansion.

    Under the multi-decade AUKUS deal, the partners will build a combined fleet of elite nuclear-powered submarines using technology, labor and funding from all three countries, creating a more formidable force in the Indo-Pacific than any of them could achieve alone.

    But the long timeline and huge financial costs – running into the hundreds of billions for Australia alone – poses questions about how far the partners’ plans could stray from their “optimal pathway” in the decades to come as governments, and potentially priorities, change.

    In a joint statement Monday, US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and UK counterpart Rishi Sunak said the “historic” deal will build on past efforts by all three countries to “sustain peace, stability, and prosperity around the world.”

    The plan begins this year with training rotations for Australian personnel on US and UK subs and bases in the expectation that in roughly 20 years, they’ll commandeer Australia’s first ever nuclear-powered fleet.

    But there’s a long way to go between now and then, as outlined in a series of phases announced by the leaders as they stood side-by-side in San Diego Harbor.

    From 2023, along with training Australians, US nuclear-powered subs will increase port visits to Australia, joined three years later by more visits from British-owned nuclear-powered subs.

    Come 2027, the US and UK subs will start rotations at HMAS Stirling, an Australian military port near Perth, Western Australia that’s set to receive a multibillion dollar upgrade.

    Then from the early 2030s, pending Congress approval, Australia will buy three Virginia-class submarines from the US, with an option to buy two more.

    Within the same decade, the UK plans to build its first AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine – combining its Astute-class submarine with US combat systems and weapons.

    Soon after, in the early 2040s, Australia will deliver the first of its homemade AUKUS subs to its Royal Navy.

    As a series of bullet points on the page, the plan seems straightforward.

    But the complexities involved are staggering and require an unprecedented level of investment and information sharing between the three partners, whose leaders’ political careers are set to be far shorter than those of the man they are working to counter: China’s Xi Jinping.

    Last week China’s political elite endorsed Xi’s unprecedented third term, solidifying his control and making him the longest-serving head of state of Communist China since its founding in 1949.

    The most assertive Chinese leader in a generation, Xi has expanded his country’s military forces and sought to extend Beijing’s influence far across the Indo-Pacific, rattling Western powers.

    Richard Dunley, from the University of New South Wales, said Australia was under pressure to respond after years of inaction and the proposal is an impressive scramble for a workable plan.

    “It’s a last roll of the dice. And they’ve managed to just about thread the eye of a needle coming up with something that looks plausible.”

    A rush of diplomacy took place before Monday’s announcement, partly to avoid the shock impact of the initial announcement in 2021, when French President Emmanuel Macron accused former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison of lying to him when he pulled out of a 90 billion Australian dollar deal to buy French subs.

    That deal would have delivered new submarines on a faster timeline, but they would have been conventional diesel-powered vessels instead of state of the art nuclear ones.

    Australia learned from that diplomatic row and its senior leaders – including Albanese – made around 60 calls to allies and regional neighbors to inform them of the plan before it was announced, according to Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles.

    China wasn’t one of them.

    Biden told reporters Monday that he plans to speak with Xi soon but declined to say when that would be, adding that he was not concerned Xi would see the AUKUS announcement as aggression.

    That contrasts with the sentiment emerging from Beijing including its accusations the trio is fomenting an arms race in Asia.

    At a daily briefing Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the AUKUS partners had “completely ignored the concerns of the international community and gone further down a wrong and dangerous road.”

    He said the deal would “stimulate an arms race, undermine the international nuclear non-proliferation system and damage regional peace and stability.”

    Peter Dean, director of Foreign Policy and Defense at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, said the Chinese claims are overblown.

    “If there is an arms race in the Indo-Pacific, there is only one country that is racing, and that is China,” he told CNN.

    The US will sell up to five Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.

    Smaller countries around the region are watching the AUKUS plan with concern that a greater presence in their waters could lead to unintended conflict, said Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto, from the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.

    “With more rotational presence of US and UK subs in Australia, there is a greater necessity for China to surveil these units and thereby, increase the likelihood of accidents or incidents at sea,” he said.

    Biden stressed Monday that he wanted “the world to understand” that the agreement was “talking about nuclear power not nuclear weapons.”

    According to a White House fact sheet, the US and UK will give Australian nuclear material in sealed “welded power units” that will not require refueling. Australia has committed to disposing of nuclear waste in Australia on defense-owned land. But that won’t happen until at least the late 2050s, when the Virginia-class vessels are retired.

    Australia says it doesn’t have the capability to enrich it to weapons grade, won’t acquire it and wants to abide by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) principles on non-proliferation.

    The AUKUS plan is an admission by Australia that without submarines that can spend long periods of time at great depths, the country is woefully unprepared to counter China in the Indo-Pacific.

    “It is hugely complex and hugely risky,” said Dunley from the University of New South Wales.

    “But when the original announcement and decision was made in 2021, there were very few good options left for Australia. So I think they’ve come out as well as they could have done,” he added.

    Multiple challenge are posed by a project of this scale, which includes many moving parts with potential knock-on effects to the timeline and cost.

    The deal involves upgrades to ports and fleets, including expanding the operational life of Australia’s Collins-class submarines to the 2040s, to aid in the transition to nuclear.

    “You’re having to take submarines out for quite a significant chunk of time to refit them, and if there are delays or issues that could cascade and you could see issues where Australia actually doesn’t have enough submariners to maintain its current forces of mariners, let alone augment that,” Dunley said.

    As all three countries race to expand their fleets, training enough staff could become a serious challenge, Dunley said.

    The security element of the roles mean the pool of skilled workers is inevitably shallow. Efforts are being made in all countries to entice trainees to a life below the surface of the sea for months at a time – potentially not an easy sell in a competitive jobs market.

    And then there’s the funding.

    The Australian government says it’ll find 0.15% of gross domestic product every year for 30 years – a cost of up to $245 billion (368 billion Australian dollars).

    Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the deal will ultimately require healthy economies, and all three countries are dealing with cost of living pressures.

    “The UK economy is not doing great. And part of what it will need is a thriving economy, such that it can maintain the level of spending needed,” he told a reporter briefing.

    Xi’s move to allow himself to retain the Chinese leadership for life means he could be approaching his 90s by the time Australia and Britain have launched their new AUKUS fleets.

    By then, the landscape of the Indo-Pacific could be vastly changed.

    Xi, 69, has made it clear that the issue of Taiwan, an island democracy that China’s Communist Party claims but has never ruled, cannot be passed indefinitely down to other generations.

    For now, Australia says it is confident of continued bipartisan support in Washington for program, which will rely on the ongoing transfer of nuclear material and other weapons secrets from the US.

    “We enter this with a high degree of confidence,” Defense Minister Marles said Monday.

    However the risk remains that in future years an inward-facing US leader in the style of former President Donald Trump – or even perhaps Trump himself – could emerge to threaten the deal.

    Charles Edel, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the deal was about much more than a combined effort to change China’s calculations about its security environment.

    “It’s meant to transform the industrial shipbuilding capacity of all three nations, it’s meant as a technological accelerator, it’s meant to change the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, and, ultimately, it’s meant to change the model of how the United States works with and empowers its closest allies.”

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  • First nor’easter of the season set to hit the Northeast and New England | CNN

    First nor’easter of the season set to hit the Northeast and New England | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally appeared in the weekly weather newsletter, the CNN Weather Brief, which is released every Monday. You can sign up here to receive them every week and during significant storms.



    CNN
     — 

    Much of the Northeast and New England so far has experienced an unusually quiet winter season (aside from areas around the Great Lakes). However, it is all changing this week.

    We are already into meteorological spring as of March 1, which means we did not see a single nor’easter in the winter months, and hardly any snow for some of the East Coast’s big cities. But a major spring nor’easter is in the making and will have far-reached effects on the Northeast and New England this week.

    “Overnight Monday, a coastal low pressure will strengthen rapidly into a major nor’easter that significantly impacts the Northeast beginning later Monday night through Wednesday,” the Weather Prediction Center said.

    A nor’easter is a coastal storm with winds out of the northeast. Nor’easters are notorious for bringing huge impacts such as heavy rain, snow, strong winds, power outages and coastal flooding.

    “The greatest concerns that I have about this storm is the fact that there will be heavy, wet snow that will combine with high winds, essentially causing power outages,” David Novak, director of the Weather Prediction Center, told CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam. “The weight of the snow will be extreme. It’s known as ‘snow loading’ and has to do with the heavy, wet type of snow we are expecting.”

    Areas around New York City will begin feeling the storm’s effects later today. Heavy rain and windy conditions will be the opening act, before the storm peaks tonight through Tuesday evening. Closer to Boston, the storm will peak Tuesday into Wednesday.

    “The heavy-wet nature of the snow, combined with max wind gusts up to 50 mph, will result in scattered to widespread power outages and tree damage,” the prediction center explained. “Similar impacts could be felt along the I-95 corridor from New York City to Boston.”

    Along Cape Cod and the islands, winds could gust as high as 60 mph. Further inland, winds will top 50-55 mph, adding to the threat of falling tree limbs and power outages.

    More than 20 million people are under winter alerts in advance of the storm, including cities like Boston and Worchester in Massachusetts, Albany and Syracuse in New York and Portland, Maine.

    Heavy, wet snow could fall at 2-3 inches per hour, resulting in up to a foot of snow in the higher elevations of the Northeast. The area includes the Catskills and southern Adirondacks in New York, Berkshires and Worcester Hills in Massachusetts, Monadnocks and White Mountains in New Hampshire, and southern Green Mountains in Vermont. Localized snow totals of 24 to 30 inches are possible.

    “We’re trying to tell people not to focus on the amount of snow that you’ve got. Some areas are going to have a lot and other areas will only get four or five inches,” noted Glen Field, warning coordination meteorologist at the weather service office in Boston. ” Anything more than four inches of heavy wet snow will be enough loading to knock down trees, power lines, and lose power,” he added.

    Novak said there will be a sharp difference between low and top snow totals. Some areas around Boston could see up to 7 inches of snow, he said, while other sections, like downtown, might see little to no snow.

    Along with rain, snow, gusty winds and possible power outages, another big concern along the coast will be coastal flooding and beach erosion. For coastal areas in New York and Connecticut, residents can expect water to run a foot to a foot and a half above normal levels. This could result in flooding in coastal communities. Also, four-foot waves will break along the shoreline, leading to beach erosion.

    Get the latest on the nor’easter here

    The storm is coming late in the season, however, it is not unheard of. Nor’easters can strike the Northeast through April. In 1997, a nor’easter on April Fools’ Day buried New England. However, it is odd the first one of the season is striking so late. According to Field, New Englanders knew better than to count on the season finishing without a nor’easter.

    “I think everybody was still expecting that we were going to get one,” Field said.

    By late Wednesday, the nor’easter will push out, leaving chilly and windy conditions.

    Ahead of the storm, Maine Gov. Janet Mills ordered state offices closed Tuesday.

    “I encourage Maine people to stay off the roads if they can, plan for extra time if traveling, and give plenty of space to road crews and first responders working hard to keep us safe,” Mills said.

    New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency for five counties – Morris, Sussex, Warren, Passaic and Bergen – in the northern part of the state.

    Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont ordered a partial activation of the state emergency operations center, starting Tuesday.

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  • Biden will announce sweeping protections preventing new Arctic drilling ahead of Willow decision | CNN Politics

    Biden will announce sweeping protections preventing new Arctic drilling ahead of Willow decision | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden on Monday is expected to announce sweeping new protections for federal lands and waters in Alaska, according to an administration official, as the administration is poised to soon approve a major oil drilling project in the state.

    Biden will declare the entire US Arctic Ocean off limits to future oil and gas leasing and will announce new rules to protect over 13 million acres in the federal National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska from drilling. In all, the administration will move to protect up to 16 million acres from future fossil fuel leasing.

    The announcement comes as the administration is preparing to green-light the ConocoPhillips’ Willow project, a massive oil drilling venture in the National Petroleum Reserve. By the administration’s own estimates, Willow would generate enough oil to release 9.2 million metric tons (10 million US tons) of planet-warming carbon pollution a year – equivalent to adding 2 million gas-powered cars to the roads.

    The protections will extend to the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay special areas – places that are important habitat to grizzly bears, polar bears, caribou and migratory birds. The official said the administration views the new actions as a “firewall” against both future fossil fuel leasing and expansion of existing projects on the North Slope.

    CNN reported on Friday that the administration is soon set to approve Willow. The expected approval is a victory for Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation and a coalition of Alaska Native tribes and groups who hailed the drilling venture as a much-needed new source of revenue and jobs for the remote region. It is a major blow to climate groups and Alaska Natives who oppose Willow, arguing the project will hurt the president’s ambitious climate goals and pose health and environmental risks.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pushed back Friday, saying no final decision on the project had been made and that the US Department of the Interior would make an “independent decision on the Willow Project.”

    The administration official said deliberations on Willow are focused on the legal challenges the administration faces if it tries to stop or substantially limit the venture, given ConocoPhillips’ existing, decades-long leases. These existing leases are limiting the administration’s options with the project, the administration official said.

    The additional protection measures may not be enough to assuage the concerns of climate and environmental groups, who have been pushing hard against the project.

    “These conservation decisions by the Biden administration are positive steps, but not nearly sufficient to blunt the impact of any version of the Willow oil and gas project,” Karlin Itchoak, Alaska senior regional director for The Wilderness Society, said in a statement.

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  • Biden administration approves controversial Willow oil project in Alaska | CNN Politics

    Biden administration approves controversial Willow oil project in Alaska | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration has approved the massive Willow oil drilling project in Alaska, angering climate advocates and setting the stage for a court challenge.

    The Willow Project is a decadeslong oil drilling venture in the National Petroleum Reserve, which is owned by the federal government. The area where the project is planned holds up to 600 million barrels of oil, though that oil would take years to reach the market since the project has yet to be constructed.

    By the administration’s own estimates, the project would generate enough oil to release 9.2 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon pollution a year – equivalent to adding 2 million gas-powered cars to the roads.

    The approval is a victory for Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation and a coalition of Alaska Native tribes and groups who hailed the drilling venture as a much-needed new source of revenue and jobs for the remote region.

    But it is a major blow to climate groups and Alaska Natives who opposed Willow and argued the project will hurt the president’s ambitious climate goals and pose health and environmental risks.

    The project has galvanized an uprising of online activism against it, including more than one million letters written to the White House in protest of the project, and a Change.org petition with millions of signatures.

    Environmental advocates are expected to challenge the project in court. Earthjustice, an environmental law group, has been preparing a case against the project and intends to argue the Biden administration’s authority to protect resources on Alaska’s public lands includes taking steps to reduce planet-warming carbon pollution, which the Willow Project would ultimately add to.

    Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen blasted the administration’s decision on Monday.

    “We are too late in the climate crisis to approve massive oil and gas projects that directly undermine the new clean economy that the Biden Administration committed to advancing,” Dillen said. “We know President Biden understands the existential threat of climate, but he is approving a project that derails his own climate goals.”

    The venture was approved with three drilling pads instead of two. In recent weeks, the Biden administration had looked at reducing the number of approved drilling pads down to two and boosting nature conservation measures to try to assuage concerns climate and environmental groups had about the project.

    But ConocoPhillips and Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation aggressively lobbied the Biden White House and Interior Department for months to approve three drilling pads, saying the project would not be economically viable with two.

    Ultimately, the administration felt they were constrained legally and had few options to cancel or significantly curtail the project – which was initially approved by the Trump administration. The administration determined that legally, courts wouldn’t have allowed them to fully reject the project, two government sources familiar with the approval told CNN.

    Many oil drilling leases on the site were decades-oil, which the administration felt gave ConocoPhillips certain existing legal rights. Reducing the drill-pads to two would have allowed the company to drill about 70% of the oil they were initially seeking.

    Still, the final scope of the project will cover 68,000 fewer acres than what ConocoPhillips was initially seeking, the sources said.

    CNN has reached out to ConocoPhillips for comment.

    Biden on Monday is also expected to announce sweeping new protections for federal lands and waters in Alaska in tandem with Willow approval.

    Biden will declare the entire US Arctic Ocean off limits to future oil and gas leasing and will announce new rules to protect over 13 million acres in the federal National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska from drilling. In all, the administration will move to protect up to 16 million acres from future fossil fuel leasing.

    The protections will extend to the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay special areas – places that are important habitat to grizzly bears, polar bears, caribou and migratory birds. On Sunday, an administration official said the administration views the new actions as a “firewall” against both future fossil fuel leasing and expansion of existing projects on the North Slope.

    This story has been updated with more information.

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  • Record-strength Cyclone Freddy pounds Mozambique after making second landfall | CNN

    Record-strength Cyclone Freddy pounds Mozambique after making second landfall | CNN

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    Cyclone Freddy battered central Mozambique on Sunday after making landfall for a second time in a month, breaking records for the duration and strength of tropical storms in the southern hemisphere.

    Communications and electricity supply in the storm area have been cut so the extent of the damage and number of casualties were not clear.

    More than 171,000 people were affected after the cyclone swept through southern Mozambique last month, killing 27 people in Mozambique and Madagascar. More than half a million are at risk of being affected in Mozambique this time, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

    UNICEF said in a statement that Freddy made landfall with sustained winds of nearly 150 kilometers per hour (93 miles per hour), causing “severe damage and cutting off children and families from critical services.” After passing the port town of Quelimane, the storm continued inland towards the southern tip of neighboring Malawi, satellite data showed.

    However, the national power company Electricidade de Moçambique said that by mid-afternoon electricity had been restored in most areas, with the exception of Milange, Lugela, Maganja da Costa, Namanjavira and parts of the city of Mocuba.

    “The wind was very strong into the night … There is a lot of destruction, trees fallen down, roofs blown off,” Guy Taylor, the UNICEF chief of advocacy, communications and partnerships for Mozambique, told Reuters by satellite phone from Quelimane. He had no word yet on casualties or numbers of displaced.

    “It’s potentially a disaster of large magnitude, and additional support will be needed,” Taylor said, adding that heavy rains were continuing to fall.

    A tree lays across a street in Quelimane on Sunday after Freddy made its second landfall in Mozambique.

    In Malawi, authorities were bracing for the cyclone to pass near the southern tip of the landlocked country by evening, bringing torrential rains and flooding, the department of meteorological resources and climate change said in a statement.

    Freddy developed on February 6 off the northwest Australian coast, before tracking thousands of miles across the South Indian Ocean towards southeast Africa, affecting the islands of Mauritius and La Réunion on the way.

    The storm hit the eastern coast of Madagascar on February 21 before slamming into Mozambique a few days later, bringing torrential rain, destructive winds and flooding which has destroyed houses and affected nearly 2 million people.

    It then looped back out towards the Mozambique Channel, gaining energy from the warm waters, and headed toward the southwestern coast of Madagascar.

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  • Saudi oil giant Aramco becomes latest energy firm to post record profits | CNN Business

    Saudi oil giant Aramco becomes latest energy firm to post record profits | CNN Business

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    Dubai
    CNN
     — 

    Saudi Arabian oil giant Aramco on Sunday reported a record annual net profit of $161.1 billion for 2022, up 46% from the year earlier, on higher energy prices, increased volumes sold and improved margins for refined products.

    The profits follow similar reports in February from international peers BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil and Chevron which have mostly posted record profits for last year.

    Oil prices swung wildly in 2022, climbing on geopolitical worries amid the war in Ukraine, then sliding on weaker demand from top importer China and worries of an economic contraction.

    “Given that we anticipate oil and gas will remain essential for the foreseeable future, the risks of underinvestment in our industry are real – including contributing to higher energy prices,” Aramco’s chief executive Amin Nasser said in the results statement.

    To address those challenges, the company is not only focused on expanding oil, gas and chemicals production, but also investing in new lower-carbon technologies with potential to achieve additional emission reductions, Nasser said.

    Aramco’s capital expenditure rose 18% to $37.6 billion in 2022 and the company said it expects this year’s spending to be around $45.0 billion to $55.0 billion including external investments.

    Aramco declared a dividend of $19.5 billion for the fourth quarter, an increase of 4% from the previous quarter.

    Its board also recommended to issue bonus shares, with eligible shareholders receiving one share for every 10 shares owned.

    Free cash flow reached a record of $148.5 billion in 2022, compared to $107.5 billion in 2021.

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  • Opinion: I was diagnosed with colon cancer at a young age. We’re seeing a lot more cases like mine | CNN

    Opinion: I was diagnosed with colon cancer at a young age. We’re seeing a lot more cases like mine | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sara Stewart is a film and culture writer who lives in western Pennsylvania. The views expressed here are solely the author’s own. View more opinion articles on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    If I could pick one refrain I heard the most from doctors and nurses during my months of treatment for colon cancer in 2018, it’d be this: “You’re so young!” Often, they would follow this up by telling me they were seeing more and more people my age, and younger, being similarly diagnosed. Their distress has been confirmed in a new report released last week, at the start of Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.

    “(T)he proportion of colorectal cancer cases among adults younger than 55 increased from 11% in 1995 to 20% in 2019. There also appears to be an overall shift to more diagnoses of advanced stages of cancer. In 2019, 60% of all new colorectal cases among all ages were advanced,” CNN noted from the report.

    I was 45 the year I received my shocking diagnosis: stage-3 colon cancer. It was just a few months after the American Cancer Society changed its recommendation for the age at which people should get routine colonoscopies, revising it downward from age 50 to, wouldn’t you know it, 45.

    Because I’m a relentlessly inquisitive patient — sometimes to the annoyance of my doctors — I would always ask their thoughts on the reason for this trend of younger colorectal cancer diagnoses. And always the answer would be the same: some variation of “well, it’s hard to say.”

    While I recognize medical professionals find it difficult to speculate, and might be in legal jeopardy if they do, I also find it infuriating that there isn’t more open discussion about the link between industrially-produced toxins and colorectal cancer. The National Cancer Institute reported in 2020 on scientists “examining factors in the environment as potential causes of early-onset colorectal cancer. Such factors include things like air and water pollution, chemicals in soil and food, and pesticide use.”

    A Spanish study concluded that same year that “residing in the proximity of industries may be a risk factor for colorectal cancer.” But there have been scant studies since then focusing on connecting colorectal cancer and environmental toxins. Considering it’s the fourth most commonly-diagnosed cancer in this country and the second leading cause of cancer deaths, it stands to reason there ought to be substantially more studies dedicated exclusively to it.

    There is a tendency, when one experiences the terror of a potentially fatal disease, to want to deal with it and then, if you’re very lucky, put it behind you. But as the years go on in the wake of my treatment — I’ll be at my five-year mark of no evidence of disease this summer — I find myself increasingly frustrated with a lack of systematic investigation of possible environmental causes.

    In the category of “risk factors” for younger colorectal cancer patients, there are a few regular culprits, grouped under “lifestyle”: certain diets, lack of exercise, excessive weight. For what it’s worth: I am a healthy eater, a thin person and a fitness fanatic with no genetic conditions that would favor colorectal cancer. I’m not arguing that these conditions aren’t contributors, but given the scope of the increase in diagnoses, it seems worth considering that something else could be at play.

    A couple of recently-interviewed experts seem to agree. Dr. Kimmie Ng, director of the Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, told NBC News that “it isn’t just diet and lifestyle, there is something else. We see so many young patients with colorectal cancer who follow very healthy lifestyles and diets.” And Dr. Folasade P. May, an associate professor of medicine in the University of California, Los Angeles Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases, says that “when something is affecting people who have their birth years in common, then we know it’s something in the environment that has led this whole group of people to have higher rates.”

    Yes! Finally!

    There are an alarming number of reports linking cases of cancer, including colon cancer, to environmental toxins. Industrial toxins and heightened colon cancer rates (often, among other cancers) have been linked in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey; Merrimack, New Hampshire; Satellite Beach, Florida; Akron, Ohio; a school near Ground Zero; Rikers Island, a jail in New York; Juliette, Georgia; and Peterborough, Ontario – the latter being the former site of a General Electric plant.

    Of course, as the Satellite Beach story acknowledges, “The complex interplay of genes and infectious and chemical agents obscure cancer’s many causes. Relatively small numbers of cases to work with, limited available data on occupational risks, lifestyle and demographic factors also complicate cluster investigations.” I’m aware that it’s rare for cancer cluster investigations to find an increase in cancer rates because cancer is so common, and it’s rarer still to find a clear cause for the cancer.

    But I don’t think anyone could reasonably argue there isn’t a large-scale problem with carcinogens in our environment. We are at a global tipping point where, as The Guardian reported last year, “the cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the planet now threatens the stability of global ecosystems upon which humanity depends.” A study released just last month found that “at least 330 species are contaminated with cancer-causing ‘forever chemicals.’” Those chemicals, known as PFAS and present in widely-used items such as nonstick pans and firefighting foam, are only just now under consideration by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to restrict their presence in drinking water in this country.

    The sheer scale of the problem seems completely overwhelming. So we need to do the things that are within our power, prevention-wise: making healthy choices and being more open in talking to doctors about worrying symptoms, even if it’s embarrassing (it is). Colonoscopies should be available, maybe even recommended, for people in their 30s and early 40s. Perhaps even in their 20s.

    For prevention on an environmental level, I’d like to suggest a model I found here in western Pennsylvania, when I wrote about a tiny town called Grant Township. The people here were fighting an oil and gas company’s attempt to install a fracking waste well that could potentially poison their groundwater with cancer-causing chemicals. As the residents in this coal-centric region know all too well, the only way to prevent toxic pollution is to stop it from happening in the first place. Once it’s in the ground, or air, or water, deep-pocketed companies can and will obfuscate and litigate for years while regular people get sick and die. (I’m still regularly freaked out by the sight of neon-orange streams and rivers in this part of the country, visible proof of the dangers of mine runoff.)

    Six years after my story ran, I’m thrilled Grant is still free from toxic dumping – and has garnered some major attention for its efforts. Jon Perry, a then-township supervisor in Grant, asks in a New Republic story: “Should a polluting corporation have the right to inject toxic waste, or should a community have the right to protect itself?” Their case is currently in front of the state supreme court, so we will soon know Pennsylvania’s stance. (The oil and gas company, for its part, has said in federal district court that Grant’s pushback “is deliberate, arbitrary, and irrational, exceeds the limits of governmental authority, amounts to an abuse of official power, and shocks the conscience.”)

    As we watch colorectal cancer numbers ticking disturbingly upward in the young, maybe it’s time to start asking that kind of question more often and more loudly. Is it easy? No. Is it worth it? Ask anyone who’s survived the hell of chemotherapy, and you’ll have your answer.

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