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Tag: summer (season)

  • One of Lima’s top beaches to close Sunday over pollution

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    One of the most popular beaches in Peru’s capital Lima will close for one day on Sunday, in a rare move by authorities who say that heaps of garbage left each weekend has made the cherished spot unusable.

    Agua Dulce, which stretches for about a kilometer (0.6 miles), hosts up to 70,000 visitors every weekend during the summer season from December to March.

    “This measure is a way to make vacationers aware of the pollution they are generating on the beaches,” the mayor of Lima’s Chorrillos district, Richard Cortez, told reporters.

    The brief closure will allow crews to clean up the sandy coastline.

    City officials say nearly 20 tons of trash — from plastic and glass bottles to food waste — is collected every week at Agua Dulce. This week, one cleaning crew cleared half of a roasted pig, buried in the sand.

    “This has been going on for years,” said Cortez. “The best message we can send to visitors is to close the beach. We must not end up having to close it permanently.”

    Lima is home to more than 10 million people.

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  • Extreme heat might have been the ‘nail in the coffin’ for these critical Florida coral | CNN

    Extreme heat might have been the ‘nail in the coffin’ for these critical Florida coral | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    This summer’s record-breaking marine heat wave may have been the “nail in the coffin” for an iconic species of coral that serves as a building block of marine life around Florida. Still, scientists see other “signs of hope” in the state’s reefs.

    Elkhorn coral populations – which had already been teetering on the brink of local extinction in Florida – have been “decimated” by the extreme ocean heat, according to Liv Williamson, a coral expert and assistant scientist from the University of Miami.

    “This heat wave was the nail in the coffin for these populations,” Williamson said. “There were already so few elkhorn coral individuals on Florida’s reefs that various genetic rescue plans were underway, but now almost all the corals we would have used for such efforts have died.”

    Elkhorn and staghorn coral are some of the only so-called branching corals found in the Carribean. They were also the first coral species to gain protected status under the Endangered Species Act, Jennifer Moore, a threatened coral expert for NOAA told CNN.

    The branching part of these corals is key; their tree-like appendages grow faster than other coral and spread out like a rainforest canopy, providing protection for fish and other vertebrates, which helps the overall ecosystem thrive.

    Both coral species are slightly more heat-tolerant than other corals to begin with, Moore told CNN, but more likely to die once they bleach – a process in which they turn white as they expel their algal food source in response to heat stress.

    This summer’s die-off happened to both wild elkhorn and to corals bred to be more heat-tolerant. Coral conservationists have been trying for years to use those varieties to restore the disease-ravaged population.

    Some of the planted corals were bred to withstand ocean temperature up to 2 degrees Celsius above normal. But the water around Florida and the Caribbean this summer was up to 3 degrees Celsius above normal, causing mass bleaching and the die-off, Williamson said.

    As the world continues to warm because of human-caused climate change, marine heat waves are becoming more common and extreme, scientists say.

    “This summer has just illuminated how extreme things can get so quickly and I just don’t think we are prepared for that,” Williamson told CNN.

    Back in the 1960’s and 70’s elkhorn and staghorn corals “were so common it was like blades of grass,” Moore told CNN, but have become so rare “you cry in your mask when you see a live one on the reef.”

    A 2020 study of the elkhorn coral population in the upper Florida Keys found it was “functionally extinct,” or unable to reproduce effectively on its own and contribute to the ecosystem, and may face local extinction over the next 6 to 12 years. The researchers said the trends likely applied to all of Florida’s elkhorn.

    “There are simply too few, too far away from each other,” Williamson said.

    Staghorn coral are bleached near Key Largo. When coral are stressed, they expel their algal food source and slowly starve to death.

    “Although there are a small number of individuals still alive, the species has dwindled so much that they no longer play an effective role in the ecosystem in the way that they once did, and they no longer have a viable population,” Williamson said.

    Any deaths would have a “dramatic impact” at restoration sites just starting to see enough coral density to make an ecological impact, Moore said.

    Staghorn coral may have faired slightly better than elkhorn this summer, Williamson said, but still faces similar long term challenges.

    The grim news comes despite other signs of hope at the region’s reefs. Florida reefs are only just able to start recovering now that ocean temperatures have dropped from bathtub-like 90s to levels the heat-sensitive corals can better tolerate.

    Scientists fear this summer's ocean heat was the
    Elkhorn coral used to be widespread around Florida.

    Scientists have known since the summer that a mass bleaching event and die-off was happening, but they still don’t know the full extent of it or how bad it will be in the long run. Bleached coral may still be alive and recover now that water temperatures are cooler. Conversely, more coral could die because of vulnerability to disease in the months that follow bleaching, coral experts said.

    “We are definitely looking at a major mortality event, we just won’t know the extent of it for a couple more months,” Moore told CNN.

    For now, some coral scientists like Moore are hanging their hats on “shockingly fast” signs of recovery at reefs recently surveyed and on the prospects of using science learned from this event to give the species a better chance to survive the next heat wave.

    “To see corals that were 100% bleached two or three weeks ago regaining their algae and regaining their color also shows there’s resilience in the system,” Moore said. “That gives me a lot of hope. I don’t really know where it’s all going to land, so I can’t really tell you if it’s worse or better than I feared in July, but I am cautiously optimistic because of these little glimmers of hope. We just need to figure out how to maximize it so that we can help this system recover.”

    Others are still struggling to cope with the loss and the prospect of what feels like a Sisyphean effort to save such a vital species, especially in the face of climate change. Scientists like Williamson are left feeling “heartbroken” after witnessing their life’s work obliterated in a matter of weeks.

    “It’s hard to express the loss that my fellow coral conservationists and I feel, watching the pillars of this vital reef ecosystem collapse and the fruits of our labors destroyed,” Williamson wrote on Instagram.

    “Even if we do plant these nursery fragments back onto the reefs, what’s to say they will survive next summer, or the one after that?” Williamson told CNN.

    The prospects for coral recovery lie in a herculean rescue effort this summer. Coral conservationists moved corals to deeper water, cooler nurseries and harvested diverse genetic specimens and then put them in a “living gene bank” on land. Scientists like Moore plan to use the specimens to plant corals yet again.

    “Emotional fatigue was across everyone, because in some cases these were corals that they grew from babies and put out on the reef,” Moore said. “To see them bleach and potentially die is really, really emotionally draining. Yet, because we didn’t just sit there and watch them die – that’s what give me hope.”

    “I think we have lots of tools to prevent extinction and I’m not going to quit,” Moore told CNN.

    Scientists are cautiously optimistic that some of the coral can recover.

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  • Putin’s war is forcing Russians to ditch a favorite holiday destination | CNN

    Putin’s war is forcing Russians to ditch a favorite holiday destination | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    For more than nine years, Russian tourists vacationing in Crimea didn’t need to give much thought to the fact that their country was waging war on Ukraine – or that their sun lounger was parked on occupied territory.

    But with Kyiv’s counteroffensive underway, the southern Ukrainian peninsula is no longer the safe haven such holidaymakers had become accustomed to since Moscow annexed it in 2014.

    Crimea has experienced a spate of attacks in recent weeks, including a seaborne raid by Ukrainian special forces on Thursday and a series of drone attacks on Friday. The bridges that connect Crimea to Russia and to southern Ukrainian areas under Russian control have been struck repeatedly in recent months.

    Ukraine has claimed responsibility for some of these strikes and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has warned its assaults will continue.

    The attacks are forcing Russian tourists to reconsider their plans. Svitlana, a Russian woman who used to work as a manager at a tourist agency in Crimea, told CNN the security situation has caused her work to dry up.

    Svitlana asked for her last name to remain private, as she was scared about the consequences of speaking to Western media. She left Crimea earlier this summer and moved to St. Petersburg in Russia.

    “I recently went there again in the hope that everything will end soon and they will agree on something to end the conflict. But I stayed for four months and realized that nothing will end anytime soon,” she told CNN.

    “Tourism is all gone. There was less tourism last year and this year it has completely disappeared. Last year, tourists canceled reservations when it all started and this year they didn’t even book,” she said.

    Crimea is economically dependent on the tourism industry, which is why the Russian-installed local authorities keep encouraging visitors to come despite the attacks. The Crimean Ministry of Resorts and Tourism has set up a new helpline for Russian tourists this summer and said it was working with hotels to make sure those who arrive or leave late because of security issues do not face additional charges or cancellations.

    Tour operators and hotels are also offering heavily discounted trips and free perks to lure in more tourists. The Russian Union of Travel Industry said that hotel prices in Crimea have dropped by 30% this summer season compared to 2022 because of falling demand.

    But the discounts are not working. The Russia-appointed administration said the average booking rate for August stood at 40%, meaning the majority of hotel rooms remained empty this summer.

    Svitlana said that most people who are still vacationing in Crimea are booking low budget holidays, either camping or staying in the cheapest hotels or private accommodation. People who could afford to stay in the more upscale resorts are going to other, safer destinations.

    She told CNN she did not enjoy her time in Crimea. “I’m so tired of the constant warplanes overhead, of the constant military in the city, of the wounded, of these poor people running away with frightened eyes, of the military equipment that almost crushed me a couple of times,” she said, recalling an incident when an armored personnel carrier nearly collided with her car.

    Crimea has always been popular with Russian tourists, many of whom remember vacationing there during Soviet times. But the number visiting the peninsula ballooned following Moscow’s annexation in 2014.

    While 5 million came in 2015, the first full year under Russian control, that number had risen to 9.4 million by 2021, according to the Russia-installed Crimean tourism ministry.

    Svitlana still remembers the bumper season. “Profits brought that year were more than in the last 10 years. During the pandemic, people stayed at home and then rushed into (Crimea) when everything opened,” she said.

    Ukraine says the influx of Russian citizens hasn’t been limited to tourism. Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in March that 800,000 Russians had moved to Crimea permanently since it was annexed.

    People relax on a beach on the Black Sea in Yalta, Crimea, on June 19, 2023.

    The peninsula has seen a flow of cash from tourism and the Russian government, which has poured money into Crimean infrastructure.

    Chief among these investments was the $3.7 billion Kerch Strait Bridge, Europe’s longest bridge and a pet project of Putin. Its 2018 opening was hailed as the physical “reunification” of Crimea with the Russian mainland.

    The 19-kilometer (nearly 12-mile) bridge made it even easier for Russian tourists to travel to Crimea at a time when the rest of the world had become a lot more expensive. Many Western countries imposed economic sanctions on Russia following the annexation, and the value of the ruble nosedived.

    After Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, a number of countries closed their doors to Russian tourists. The European Union suspended its visa facilitation agreement with Russia, making it harder for Russians to apply for an EU visa. According to the Association of Russian Tour Operators (ATOR), trips by Russians to European countries were down by 88% in the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2019, the last year unaffected by travel bans or pandemic restrictions. There are no direct flights between Russia and the EU.

    Crimea suddenly became one of the few sunny beach destinations Russian tourists could still visit without having to spend a lot of money.

    “People come to Crimea because Europe is closed and prices are very expensive in Turkey now. Where else can we rest? Sochi (a resort city in Russia) is crowded, (and has) crazy prices. We have nowhere else (to go) so people go to the Crimea,” Svitlana told CNN.

    But the Kerch bridge’s strategic and symbolic importance has made it an attractive target for the Ukrainians.

    The first strike came last October, when a huge explosion severely curtailed road and rail traffic on the bridge. While Kyiv did not comment on the incident at the time, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) acknowledged in June that it was behind the attack.

    Another major assault came last month, when a Ukrainian experimental sea drone caused serious damage to the road lanes of the bridge, and, according to Russian officials, killed two civilians.

    The attack was frightening enough to scare away many of the Russian tourists who had still been planning to come. The Russia-appointed head of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov, said that 10% of holiday bookings in Crimea were canceled in the following days.

    ATOR said hotel bookings dropped 45% in the second half of July compared to the first half.

    Security on the bridge has increased following the attacks and ATOR said last month that on some occasions, traffic jams stretching for eight miles formed on it.

    The authorities told tourists to avoid the bridge and travel instead through occupied Ukraine, a route that is about 800 kilometers (500 miles) long and cuts through numerous areas heavily impacted by the war, including Mariupol, which was nearly leveled by Russian bombardment last spring.

    “There are military and police checkpoints along the route,” the guidance tells tourists wanting to travel to Crimea through the occupied areas, adding that clearing each checkpoint shouldn’t take “more than 10 minutes per vehicle.” The guidance suggests bringing cash and downloading all maps in advance so that they can be accessed without internet.

    Explosions are seen in June near the Kerch bridge that connects occupied Crimea to Russia.

    The security situation is unlikely to improve any time soon.

    Kyiv’s forces have stepped up attacks in the past two months, striking both the peninsula and ships navigating Ukrainian territorial waters around it several times. The Crimean port city of Sevastopol is a major naval base for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

    The Ukrainian military said that its latest operation against the peninsula on Thursday morning had left at least 30 Russians dead.

    Ukraine has been using aerial and sea drones to target ammunition depots, oil storage facilities and other structures. “All these targets are official targets because it will reduce their capacity to fight against us (and) will help to save the lives of Ukrainians,” Reznikov, the defense minister, said last month in an interview with CNN.

    Asked if Ukraine’s goal was to permanently disable the bridge, Reznikov responded that it was “normal tactics to ruin the logistic lines of your enemy, to stop the options to get more ammunition, to get more fuel, to get more food.”

    According to the Ukrainian government, more than 50,000 people fled Crimea to other parts of Ukraine after the annexation. However, Crimean NGOs estimate the number of refugees might be twice as high, as not everyone has officially registered with the government.

    Roughly 2.5 million people lived in Crimea before the annexation.

    Many of those who left had their properties confiscated and auctioned off by the Russian authorities, with the proceeds going to Russia’s armed forces, according to the authorities. Holiday homes owned by Ukrainians living elsewhere – including a Yalta apartment belonging to President Volodymyr Zelensky himself – were nationalized by Russia, according to the Russia-appointed chairman of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov.

    Svitlana told CNN that some of the properties confiscated by the Russian authorities were passed onto Russian citizens and people coming to Crimea from Russian-occupied areas in southern Ukraine.

    Those loyal to Kyiv who have stayed have been subjected to a brutal regime. Human rights groups have documented cases of activists, politicians, public figures and residents being kidnapped and held by pro-Russian authorities.

    Remaining Ukrainian citizens have been forced to apply for Russian citizenship. Those who have refused have been persecuted, according to the Crimean Human Rights Group.

    CNN has spoke to one Ukrainian resident of Crimea who confirmed the atmosphere of terror. The person was so scared for their safety that they asked for their identity to be concealed and no quotes to be published.

    Ukrainian officials, including Zelensky, have repeatedly said the war will not end until Crimea is back under Ukrainian control.

    Before its annexation, Crimea was home to about 5% of the Ukrainian population and accounted for almost 4% of its GDP. “We cannot imagine Ukraine without Crimea. And while Crimea is under the Russian occupation, it means only one thing: The war is not over yet,” Zelensky told CNN in an interview last month.

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  • Tourists lost their summer vacations. Maui’s locals lost everything | CNN Business

    Tourists lost their summer vacations. Maui’s locals lost everything | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The agony wrought by the deadliest US wildfire in a century is only beginning in Lahaina, Hawaii, where the inferno virtually wiped the town off the map.

    Fear, anger and despair are setting in for some locals, who are now imploring that repair efforts should focus on not just clearing the way for tourists, but meeting the needs of the people who call Lahaina home.

    Rick Avila, 65, a longtime Lahaina resident who lost his house to the blaze said one of the biggest immediate concerns for the community is finding long-term affordable housing for those who lost their homes. He and his wife have found temporary shelter at a friend’s vacation rental condo, but many others now “feel like they have to leave the community,” he told CNN.

    “A lot of them are going to Kihei and Wailuku and Kahului – and then a lot of them are leaving the island completely,” Avila said of his friends and neighbors in the days since the blaze, and referring to three cities on the other side of Maui.

    Still, Avila emphasized that Lahaina is a strong and tight-knit community, and the people will find a way to rebuild from the ground up.

    Lahaina resident Mike Cicchino, who was among the fire survivors forced to jump into the ocean as the flames encroached the town, told CNN, “We just went through a nightmare, and we’re about to go through another nightmare trying to, basically, not stay homeless.”

    Cicchino is among those joining the growing chorus of people asking tourists not to come visit, “because we don’t have any places for locals to stay.”

    “We’re in desperate need out here,” Cicchino added. “A lot of people have nowhere to go.”

    As Avila put it, “At this point, there’s no reason for tourists to come here.” Restaurants and shops are either burned or shuttered as staffers deal with the crisis, he noted, and while many of the resorts and hotels are left standing, their employees are scattered and shell-shocked.

    In an aerial view, homes and businesses are seen that were destroyed by a wildfire on August 11, 2023 in Lahaina, Hawaii.

    He urged potential visitors to “respect the ‘aina [Hawaiian land] and the people who live here.”

    “As soon as everything’s up and running, then we will welcome back visitors, because the hotel people are going to need to work,” Avila added. “But let us get a little bit of a handle on it first.”

    Lahaina is like no other place in the world, bordered by the turquoise Pacific Ocean on one end and green mountains on the other. Once the royal capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, it went on to become an agricultural hub and cultural melting pot that served as a conduit for the American dream for so many families – including my own.

    CNN Business Writer Catherine Thorbecke (center) with her late grandparents in Lahaina, Hawaii, circa 2013. Her grandparents passed away before the 2023 fires, but the home they lived in and gardens they planted are destroyed.

    My mother was born and raised in Lahaina. Her family immigrated to Maui from Okinawa, Japan, as part of the influx of laborers that were brought in to work on the island’s sugar cane plantations. She was in Lahaina visiting family when the fire broke out and is among the lucky ones who survived. Her family home burned to the ground, and much of the neighborhood she grew up in is now in ashes.

    It will be difficult for her community to rebuild: After Lahaina’s historic sugar cane mill shuttered in 1999, the hospitality industry quickly took over as the main economic engine of the community. The explosion of tourism over the years, however, has strained natural resources and astronomically driven up the cost of living – dividing the haves and have-nots in ways that felt untenable even before the fire’s devastation.

    Hawaii Governor Josh Green’s office said last month that the state has the most expensive housing in country. Homeownership has become nearly impossible for many locals, as available housing supply often gets converted into short-term rental units, hotel developments or second homes for millionaire visitors. Half of all housing units in Lahaina are not owner-occupied, according to Census data. The median listed home price in Lahaina as of July was some $1.5 million.

    Most locals in Maui work in jobs that serve tourists. Roughly one in five workers in Maui County are in the accommodation and food service sector, where the average salary is $52,322, according data released by the state.

    Meanwhile, prices in Hawaii are more than 13% higher than the national average, marking the highest regional price parity in the country, per the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ measure.

    People looking down to downtown Lahaina from Lahaina Bypass in Lahaina, Hawaii on August 13, 2023.

    As a result of all these factors and more, over half of Maui’s residents are struggling to make ends meet and are categorized as “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed” (or ALICE) or below, per a 2022 study released by the local nonprofit Aloha United Way in partnership with the Bank of Hawaii. The ALICE designation means that households earn above the federal poverty level and thus often do not qualify for public assistance, but still cannot afford basic cost of living in their county.

    Relying so heavily on the tourism industry also creates fragility for Maui’s economy. In April 2020, at the onset of the Covid crises in the US and height of pandemic restrictions, the unemployment rate on Maui skyrocketed to 33.4% – more than twice the national average at the time of 14.7%

    Green on Monday said his office is asking for moratorium on home sales as Maui looks to rebuild. And Hawaii’s Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs urged Maui homeowners affected by the fires to use caution and to report unsolicited offers to buy their properties to the agency.

    Looking beyond just the short-term needs, there is already growing concern that developers will now try to swoop in and buy up the land where people’s homes were destroyed, possibly rebuilding Lahaina into a Las Vegas-strip style tourism base.

    The fear of land grabs from outsiders trying to cash-in on the tragedy and push more local people out of Maui are very real. Community groups have begun sharing resources, calling for people to report incidents of speculators circling their property in search of a deal. Thousands of people have also signed multiple petitions calling for a temporary moratorium on foreclosures amid the tragedy.

    Despite the decades of change as visitors reshaped much of Hawaii, Lahaina treasured its history and residents worked hard to preserve the cultural heritage that made it so unique. Unlike the skyscrapers and luxury retail outposts on the Waikiki strip in neighboring Oahu island, Lahaina’s downtown – now largely razed – remained largely low-rise and dotted with small businesses built around a beloved, 150-year-old Banyan tree.

    A woman digs through rubble of a home destroyed by a wildfire on Friday, Aug. 11, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii.

    “Many have characterized Lahaina, in the coverage of these fires, as a tourist mecca or tourist destination, and it’s certainly attracted the interest and love of many, many people,” Ilihia Gionson of the Hawaii Tourism Authority told CNN. But Lahaina also has a “deep history,” Gionson, who is Native Hawaiian, added, pointing to its place as the historic capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

    “It’s also important to keep first and foremost in mind what the families of the area are going through, because it’s really in the families and in the hearts of the kama’aina, the residents of those places, that those kinds of stories, those kinds of histories live,” Gionson said.

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  • How Biden’s SAVE student loan repayment plan can lower your bill | CNN Politics

    How Biden’s SAVE student loan repayment plan can lower your bill | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    While the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program in late June, a separate and significant change to the federal student loan system is moving ahead.

    Eligible borrowers can now enroll in a new income-driven repayment plan that could lower their monthly bills and reduce the amount they pay back over the lifetime of their loans.

    If borrowers apply this summer, the changes to their bills would take effect before payments resume in October after the yearslong pandemic pause.

    Once the plan, which Biden is calling SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education), is fully phased in next year, some people will see their monthly bills cut in half and remaining debt canceled after making at least 10 years of payments.

    Unlike Biden’s blocked one-time forgiveness program, the new repayment plan will provide benefits for both current and future borrowers who sign up for it.

    But the benefits will come at a cost to the government. Estimates vary, depending on how many borrowers end up enrolling in the plan, ranging from $138 billion to $475 billion over 10 years. As a comparison, Biden’s student loan forgiveness program was expected to cost about $400 billion.

    The SAVE repayment plan has gone through a formal rulemaking process at the Department of Education. The agency has previously created several other income-driven repayment plans in the same manner without facing a successful legal challenge.

    Some parts of the SAVE plan will be implemented this summer and others will take effect in July 2024. Here’s what borrowers need to know.

    Currently, there are several different kinds of income-driven repayment plans for borrowers with federal student loans. The new SAVE plan will essentially replace one of those, known as REPAYE (Revised Pay As You Earn), while the others are phased out for new borrowers.

    Under these plans, payments are based on a borrower’s income and family size, regardless of how much outstanding student debt is owed.

    There is also a forgiveness component. After making at least 10 years of payments, a borrower’s remaining balance is wiped away.

    Borrowers must have federally held student loans to qualify for the SAVE repayment plan. These include Direct subsidized, unsubsidized and consolidated loans, as well as PLUS loans made to graduate students.

    Parents who took out a federal PLUS loan to help their child pay for college are not eligible for the new repayment plan.

    Borrowers with Federal Family Education Loans, known as FFEL, or Perkins Loans that are held by a commercial lender rather than the government will need to consolidate into a Direct loan in order to qualify.

    Private student loans do not qualify for the new SAVE repayment plan or any other federal repayment plan.

    Borrowers can apply for the SAVE plan by submitting a recently updated application for income-driven repayment plans found here.

    The application may be available intermittently during an initial beta testing period, according to the Department of Education. If the application is not available, try again later.

    Applications submitted during the beta period will not need to be resubmitted once a full website launches later this summer.

    Borrowers can expect to receive an email confirmation after applying.

    People who are already enrolled in the REPAYE repayment plan will be automatically switched to the SAVE plan.

    Borrowers can log in to StudentAid.gov and go to their My Aid page to see what repayment plan they are enrolled in.

    The Department of Education says that it will process applications submitted this summer before payments resume in October.

    “It may take your servicer a few weeks to process your request, because they will need to obtain documentation of your income and family size,” according to the department’s website.

    Under the SAVE plan, monthly payments can be as small as $0.

    Other income-driven repayment plans already offer a $0 monthly payment for some borrowers. But the new SAVE plan lowers the qualifying threshold.

    A single borrower earning $32,800 or less or a borrower with a family of four earning $67,500 or less will see their payments set at $0 if enrolled in SAVE.

    Increase in protected income threshold: Like in existing income-driven repayment plans, a borrower’s discretionary income, generally what’s left after paying for necessities like housing, food and clothing, will be shielded from student loan payments.

    The new SAVE plan recalculates discretionary income so that it’s equal to the difference between a borrower’s adjusted gross income and 225% of the poverty level. Existing income-driven plans calculate discretionary income as the difference between income and 150% of the poverty level.

    This change will result in lower payments for borrowers.

    Interest limit: Under the new payment plan, unpaid interest will not accrue if a borrower makes a full monthly payment.

    That means that a borrower’s balance won’t increase even if the monthly payment doesn’t cover the monthly interest. For example: If $50 in interest accumulates each month and a borrower has a $30 payment, the remaining $20 would not be charged.

    Lower payments for married borrowers: Married borrowers who file their taxes separately will no longer be required to include their spouse’s income in their payment calculation for SAVE. This could lower monthly payments for two-income households.

    Automatic recertification: Borrowers will now be able to allow the Department of Education to access their latest tax return. This will make the application process easier because borrowers won’t have to manually provide income or family size information. It will also allow the department to automatically recertify borrowers for the payment plan on an annual basis.

    Cut payments in half: Payments on loans borrowed for undergraduate school will be reduced from 10% to 5% of discretionary income.

    Borrowers who have loans from both undergraduate and graduate school will pay a weighted average of between 5% and 10% of their income based upon the original principal balances of their loans.

    For example, a borrower with $20,000 from their undergraduate education and $60,000 from graduate school will pay 8.75% of their income, according to a fact sheet provided by the Biden administration.

    Shorter time to forgiveness: Currently, borrowers who pay for 20 or 25 years under an income-driven repayment plan will see their remaining balance wiped away.

    Under the new SAVE plan, those who borrowed $12,000 or less will see their debt forgiven after paying for just 10 years. Every additional $1,000 borrowed above that amount would add one year of monthly payments to the required time a borrower must pay.

    Borrowers who consolidate their loans will receive partial credit for their previous payments toward forgiveness.

    Borrowers will also automatically receive credit toward forgiveness for certain periods of deferment and forbearance, as well be given the option to make additional “catch-up” payments to get credit for all other periods of deferment or forbearance.

    Automatically enroll struggling borrowers: Borrowers who are 75 days late on their payments will be automatically enrolled in the best income-driven plan for them, as long as they have agreed to allow the Department of Education to securely access their tax information.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • It’s the summer of changed climate. Get used to it | CNN Politics

    It’s the summer of changed climate. Get used to it | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a hot take on the summer of 2023: The climate you grew up in is gone, replaced by something new and changing, but also inalterably different – where the Atlantic Ocean can reach hot-tub temperature, heat is a recurring public health concern and people will have to adapt their way of living.

    In this year of epic heat, it’s time to start thinking about how the climate changed rather than the fact of its changing.

    From a historical standpoint, we are in uncharted territory. This is not just the hottest month in human history. It may be the hottest month in 120,000 years, according to scientists in Europe.

    Nearly half the US is under a heat advisory this week, and the country’s largest power grid was on alert.

    The warnings that more fires, floods and storms would occur as the atmosphere heated up are here.

    A large portion of the country has seen smoke come and go from those Canadian wildfires. Tourists in Greece were forced to flee in the country’s largest-ever evacuation.

    Towns unused to flooding were under water this year in Vermont. Torrential rain flooded Boston’s Fenway park.

    The West Coast of the US, for instance, has gotten a respite so far from wildfires thanks to epic rainfall earlier in the year.

    But we can expect more heat more often. Asked by CNN’s Zain Asher about a heat index in Iran that approached 150 degrees Fahrenheit, Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, said to prepare for more.

    “What we know is the heat will become much more intense, much more frequent, and that if we don’t act urgently to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then the outlook will be very serious with, as you said, temperatures that are beyond the limits of physiological survival.”

    Are we acting urgently? Asher pointed out California is phasing out gas-powered car sales. Romanello said the basic move would be to commit to phase out fossil fuels. But countries are not yet on that path or anywhere close to it.

    Take a look at Arizona, where Phoenix has endured nearly a full straight month of 110-plus-degree days.

    Cacti can’t stand the heat and are dying. Hospitals have been taxed. Doctors are treating people burned just by falling on the ground, according to one CNN report.

    The Phoenix area medical examiner has brought in extra refrigerated containers for bodies, like it did during spikes of Covid-19, to deal with potential overflow. Maricopa County has 25 heat-related deaths so far, but another 249 are under investigation.

    The urban density that creates economic opportunity also makes cities hotter than their surrounding areas. There can be variation up to 8 degrees between portions of a city with trees and green space and those that are mostly pavement.

    “These giant swings in temperature over short distances in cities, known as the urban heat island effect, make heat waves even worse,” writes CNN’s Rachel Ramirez of a new report by the nonprofit research group Climate Central. “Areas blanketed with asphalt, buildings, industry and freeways tend to absorb the sun’s energy then radiate more heat, while areas with abundant green space – parks, rivers, and tree-lined streets – radiate less heat and provide shade.”

    Ramirez notes that cities are looking for new ways to adapt, like painting roads white in Los Angeles, painting roofs in New York and more.

    Coral reefs off the Florida Keys, unable to stand the 100-plus-degree temperatures charted in some areas, are suffering a mass bleaching event, according to CNN’s Eric Zerkel, who writes experts were stunned at the two-week escalation that could kill some reefs off.

    That’s a very real and grim consequence. More theoretical is the possibility that the series of currents that circulates water around the oceans simply collapses.

    A study published in the journal Nature this week suggested the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current, which includes the Gulf Stream, could collapse as early as 2025. Melting ice could dilute ocean water and alter the currents, which would affect everyone on the planet.

    The reason gas prices have spiked in recent days? On top of OPEC holding back supply, excessive heat is affecting productivity at oil refineries.

    In the US, while President Joe Biden has made pledges to make the US carbon neutral in the coming decades, he is not completely opposed to new oil projects. It was seen as a political win for him and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, that the Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for a new pipeline running through West Virginia.

    That news came the same day the White House announced new relief measures for people suffering from the record heat, including the creation of a new “heat hazard alert” system to clarify precautions for workers.

    “I don’t think anybody can deny the impact of climate change anymore,” Biden said, announcing the measures.

    A majority of Americans – 52% – said in Gallup survey in March, before this heat wave, that protecting the environment should be prioritized even if it hurts the economy. That’s compared with 43% who said the government should prioritize economic growth even if it hurts the environment.

    However.

    The numbers may fluctuate depending on how people feel about the health of the economy. But the share who prioritize economic growth over the environment has on the whole risen in Gallup’s polling over the long term. Between 1985 and 2002, that number never topped 40%. The partisan divide over climate change is also the largest it has ever been.

    The geophysicist Bill McGuire, a professor at University College London and author of “Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide,” writes for CNN Opinion this week that people’s vacations as we know them are over.

    He points to tourists who had to flee the island of Rhodes in Greece to get away from wildfires.

    “It would be a big mistake to regard these as freak events and to continue holidaying as usual in the years ahead,” McGuire writes. “On the contrary, the extreme weather conditions across southern Europe this summer are a wake-up call – a reminder that not even our vacations are insulated from the growing consequences of global heating.”

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  • Why your dream European vacation is already booked solid | CNN

    Why your dream European vacation is already booked solid | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel’s weekly newsletter. Get news about destinations opening, inspiration for future adventures, plus the latest in aviation, food and drink, where to stay and other travel developments.



    CNN
     — 

    When it comes to planning a European vacation, travel industry experts have traditionally advised tourists hoping to save money and avoid crowds to visit popular destinations like Italy, France, and Spain in off-season windows, like late winter or early spring.

    But as the bounceback of international travel in the post-pandemic landscape shows little signs of slowing, alternative strategies may soon be necessary to score lower prices and escape overcrowding amid increasingly round-the-calendar tourism in European hotspots.

    Indeed, online booking platforms, tour operators and hotel companies confirm what those selfies-from-abroad splashed across your social media streams are bragging about: US travelers are already packing their bags for trips across the Atlantic, long before the summer season even kicks off.

    According to the Consumer Index Report for Q1 2023 recently released by flight tracking platform Hopper, international trips now account for 56% of searches by US travelers, marking a whopping 46% jump from last year. Of those searches, 34% are for European cities.

    Those figures are in line with data from the The State of Travel in 2023 report by Going, formerly known as Scott’s Cheap Flights, which monitors airfares. In the report, 60% of respondents said they plan to take more international trips in 2023 compared to 2022; nearly a third of respondents had already booked an international trip for 2023.

    Tour companies that operate in Europe are seeing a notable spike, too. Huw Owen, co-founder of TravelLocal, said the UK-based operator’s recent bookings and 2023 forecast reflect an “astronomical” surge in demand for international trips, with a nearly 500% jump in bookings between August 2022 and January 2023 compared to the corresponding period in 2021 and 2022.

    Off-season bookings are also booming for the company, with US travelers making up more than half of the customer base, Owen told CNN Travel.

    “It’s just a force of nature, and you can almost feel it underneath your feet like a wave,” he said. “I guess the pub philosophy version of this is if you keep people cooped up for two years, then you’re going to see this surge in demand.”

    While the international travel resurgence may delight tourism-based businesses owners in the wake of the pandemic downturn, a less rosy picture may be in store for travelers themselves in the form of shrinking off-seasons and their traditionally lower airline ticket prices and hotel rates.

    Airline ticket prices, in particular, are especially susceptible to shifts in supply and demand, as the aviation industry is acutely impacted by capacity constrictions. “In an already high demand market, where demand is set to continue building year to year, constrained supply will continue to put intense pressure on consumer travel prices,” Hopper said in its Q1 Consumer Travel Index.

    Travelers still in planning mode may have already noticed an uptick in airline prices. According to a Hopper spokesperson, international flights are currently averaging $876 round-trip, up 35% from the same time last year. Europe-bound flights are at $801, up 27% from the same time as last year.

    “If you’ve got a supply-demand issue and a peak season, which Europe still does, it’s going to push people either geographically to the periphery or by season to the periphery,” Owen said. “Again, I think it’s a good thing. Europe in some ways needs that to happen.”

    In fact, it’s already happening in some places. London, for example, is shaping up for another monster year of tourism, with “strong visitor numbers across all seasons,” Laura Citron, CEO of Visit London, told CNN Travel via email. “The latest forecasts showing flight bookings for March and April are looking very strong, and even set to exceed 2019 levels.”

    Portugal, whose popularity has surged over the last few years, particularly among digital nomads and the retirement set, also has seen a notable uptick in tourism during typically off-season months.

    Chitra Stern, CEO of Martinhal Resorts, a collection of four upscale family properties across Portugal, with a fifth hotel/residence hybrid scheduled to open this year, told CNN Travel that January 2023 bookings for Martinhal’s Lisbon property in the city’s popular Chiado neighborhood were 115% higher than January 2022 bookings. That could put the property on track to surpass numbers for 2022, its best year since opening in 2017.

    Stern also noted that hotels and online travel agencies, or OTAs, have always used a strategy known as yield management that enables them to sell a single room at different prices to different customers in order to maximize revenue. As a result, booking as early as possible can be even more critical in scoring the best rate – especially in light of the current surge in tourism.

    “We have winter rates and you yield within those winter rates, spring rates to yield within, and also in summer, but if you’re coming in summer and you’re booking really last minute, it’s going to be more expensive,” Stern said. “But there are people who can only look at the last minute and are willing to pay the price. If you book ahead of time, it’s actually a lower price to book for the summer.”

    “But there are people who can only look at the last minute and are willing to pay the price. If you book ahead of time, it’s actually a lower price to book for the summer.”

    Slovenia is among countries that might still offer cheaper options for travelers.

    Even with the surge in tourism, Going founder Scott Keyes says travelers keen to visit the continent this year shouldn’t let the specter of higher prices or more crowds deter their dreams of a European getaway.

    In fact, Keyes notes, “transatlantic flight volume is now 10% higher than it was pre-pandemic and poised to grow further in 2023,” which could offer some relief in terms of ticket pricing.

    “While there are certainly expensive flights available – especially if you wait until May to book a summer flight to Europe – there are also tons of cheap Europe fares popping up once again,” he told CNN Travel via email.

    Travelers are also increasingly looking to off-the-tourist-track destinations that offer a similar experience but at lower prices than their more famous – but expensive and overcrowded – counterparts.

    Eastern European countries including Slovenia and Albania, for example, are becoming better known for their wine and gastronomy; the Azores, a necklace of islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal, is another on-the-rise destination, Owen said.

    “What we’re seeing now is like a vanguard of American exploration of fringe parts of Europe that will become much better known and more mainstream in, say, 10 years,” he said. “You’ve probably got a few glory years now where you can go out and see this stuff, and you’re not there with 20,000 other people.”

    Top photo credit: Adobe Stock

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  • Faucets in McCarthy’s district are running dry after years of drought. Constituents want him to do more | CNN Politics

    Faucets in McCarthy’s district are running dry after years of drought. Constituents want him to do more | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Shortly after Benjamin Cuevas and his family moved into their new home three years ago in Tooleville, California, he realized something was horribly wrong.

    In the middle of the day, the water pressure would drop completely. Cranking up both hot and cold could only coax a little drip out of the faucet.

    Then there was the water itself, contaminated with chemicals from agriculture runoff and treated with so much chlorine that it turned his family’s black clothing gray in the wash. His daughter and her baby live in the house, and Cuevas’s wife only bathes her granddaughter in the bottled water they receive from the county for drinking.

    Cuevas is not alone; the entire town of under 300 people faces the same water crisis. In many rural parts of the state, faucets and community wells are running dry after years of drought and heavy agriculture use pulls more water from the same groundwater residents use.

    One local nonprofit told CNN that about 8,000 people in the San Joaquin Valley need thousands of gallons of hauled water just to keep their taps flowing – and that number is growing.

    Benjamin Cuevas stands next to a town water tank in Tooleville.

    Newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has represented Tooleville for the past decade – though the small town is just outside his newly redrawn congressional district. The Republican lawmaker has long represented Kern and Tulare counties, and his redrawn seat adds portions of Fresno County.

    Throughout his tenure, this region of California has spent more time than any other part of the country in exceptional drought – the US Drought Monitor’s most severe category – a drought scientists say has been made more intense by human-caused climate change. Recent rainfall has put a dent in the region’s surface drought, though experts have told CNN it will do little to solve the ongoing groundwater shortage.

    Tulare, Kern and Fresno counties have endured more than 200 weeks in exceptional drought over the past decade, according to Drought Monitor data.

    Multiple people CNN spoke to for this story said McCarthy and his office don’t often engage on this issue in the district, especially compared with neighboring members of Congress. And they wish he would do more with his power in Washington – especially now that he holds the speaker’s gavel.

    McCarthy proposed an amendment this past summer to set up a grant program to help connect small towns like Tooleville with larger cities that have better water systems. The measure passed the House but died in the Senate. But as more and more wells go dry, McCarthy has made a point to vote against other bills addressing climate change and drought, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law.

    “In my experience, he has never engaged with us on any of these kinds of emergencies,” said Jessi Snyder, the director of community development at local nonprofit Self-Help Enterprises, who focuses on getting hauled water to entire communities that have gone dry.

    Cuevas moved to Tooleville three years ago.

    In a statement to CNN, McCarthy’s office said he has been “a staunch advocate on water issues in the Central Valley and California” since he was first elected to the House. McCarthy has joined his colleagues to “introduce broad legislative solutions every Congress related to this topic since our water situation continues to worsen,” his spokesperson Brittany Martinez said.

    But McCarthy does not mention climate change when talking about his district’s drought, and his office did not respond to questions from CNN about whether he believes climate change is playing a role. Instead, he often blames the drought on state mismanagement of water and has called for new and larger dams and reservoirs to be built to capture rainwater during wet years.

    Water experts in California say that’s missing the new reality.

    “Part of what’s happening now is the reality that there is no more new water,” said Peter Gleick, co-founder and senior fellow of California-based water nonprofit Pacific Institute. “The knee-jerk response of politicians has always been build another dam; find more water. There is no new reservoir that’s going to magically solve these problems. It’s now a question of managing demand.”

    When a call comes in from yet another community whose well has run dry, it’s a race against time for the staff at Self-Help Enterprises.

    The Visalia, California-based nonprofit has a self-imposed deadline of just 24 hours to drive out to the impacted community with emergency tanks to keep water flowing for showers, laundry and cleaning, as well as with five-gallon jugs of higher-quality water for drinking.

    “The team goes all hands-on deck,” Tami McVay, Self-Help’s director of emergency services, told CNN. “Everybody knows what their role is, and they just go get it done. And we move forward to the next one.”

    A tanker truck makes a water delivery in Tooleville.

    Rick Jackpot Fernandez of Kyle Koontz Water Hauling hooks up a hose to one of the town's water storage tanks.

    These days, there’s always a next one. Snyder said the summer of 2022 marked “a new level of crisis” as entire small communities of 80 to 100 homes started running out of water, in addition to individual homes.

    “It’s been a real struggle because it’s hard to provide a backup source of water to a whole community instead of one household,” she said.

    More than 1,400 wells were reported dry last year, according to the state of California, a 40% increase over the same period in 2021. Self-Help staff see this in person on the ground. New families are flowing into their hauled water program, but none are leaving. During the dry, warm-weather months, McVay estimates her nonprofit fields around 100 calls a day, dropping down to about 30 per week in the winter months.

    The punishing multi-year drought is what Brad Rippey, a meteorologist at the US Department of Agriculture, calls California’s “latest misery.” California has spent eight of the last 11 years in drought, with the last three years being the driest such period on record, state officials said in October. Human-caused climate change – which is raising global temperatures and making much-needed rain and snow less frequent in the West – is contributing to the severity, Rippey said.

    “The impacts are multiplying. You have these droughts piling on top of droughts with cumulative impacts,” including wildfires, he added.

    To supplement the dwindling groundwater supply in Tooleville, officials in Tulare County and nonprofits like Self-Help deliver five-gallon water jugs to the residents for drinking and 16,000 gallons of hauled water into tanks for washing their clothes, doing dishes and taking showers.

    Six five-gallon jugs of water are delivered to a resident's home in Tooleville.

    There’s so much demand in the warm months for the hauled water that a 16,000-gallon delivery lasted some communities just a few hours before needing to be refilled, Snyder said.

    “We literally cannot pump the water out of the tanker trucks fast enough to fill the storage tanks,” she added. “We can’t ever get ahead of it; physics is against us. It’s nuts and really stressful.”

    California’s extreme heat wave this summer pushed water usage even higher as residents watered grass and farms pumped more for crops. In Tooleville, Cuevas watched as the orange and lemon trees in his yard withered and died. Outdoor watering restrictions meant he couldn’t save his trees, even as some of his neighbors flouted the restrictions with noticeably green lawns.

    “Everything just perished,” Cuevas said. “It’s not a good feeling to see other people enjoying [the water], while you’re doing your part.”

    Seeing the nearby Friant-Kern Canal every day – which carries melted snowpack water from Northern California to Central Valley farms – is a nagging reminder of what his family doesn’t have.

    “It’s terrible,” Cuevas told CNN. “Just joking, I’d say I’ll go out there and put a hose [in it] running right back to my house.”

    Tooleville resident Maria Olivera has lived in town since 1974.

    Olivera cooks with bottled water.

    As Cuevas’s own trees died, commercial farms in the area were still producing – although their future is also uncertain. Farms are also having to drill deeper wells to irrigate orange groves and acres of thirsty pecan and pistachio trees.

    With this rush on groundwater, shallow residential wells don’t stand a chance. In West Goshen, a small town that sits outside McCarthy’s district in Tulare County, resident Jesus Benitez told CNN he burned through three well pumps – costing $1,200 a piece – during the warmer months when his neighbor, a farmer who grows alfalfa and corn, started irrigating his crops.

    “They’ve got the money to go every time deeper and deeper in the ground; we don’t have that luxury,” Benitez said.

    Two town wells in nearby Seville nearly ran dry this summer, said Linda Gutierrez, a lifelong resident who sits on the town’s water board. Across the street from the town’s wells is a pistachio farm, and when they start irrigating, the groundwater level plummets, she said.

    But she doesn’t blame the farmers. Like many who live in the area, her husband is a farm worker. There’s a lot of pride in the region’s far-reaching agriculture, and many feel it should be sustained.

    “You can’t not have farmers because you need food, but we have to have water in order to survive,” Gutierrez said. “There’s a very tricky balance to establish. Right now, if they don’t irrigate, we have water, but also a year from now we have no food.”

    A water usage notice is posted on a fence surrounding the Yettem-Seville water storage tanks.

    As big of a societal problem as drought and water shortages are, they are also intensely personal. Self-Help’s McVay gets emotional when talking about school children in the area getting beat up because they don’t have clean clothes or ready access to a shower.

    “They don’t have water in their homes to take baths, or brush their teeth, or have clean laundry, and they’re getting bullied,” she said. “Being made fun of because they’re taking baths at the local gas station bathroom. It’s not fair – the stress that it causes the parents because [they] start to feel like they’re failing as a parent.”

    Multiple local and state elected officials and leaders of nonprofits focusing on water delivery in the San Joaquin Valley said McCarthy isn’t engaged enough on what they consider one of his district’s most dire crises.

    McVay said outreach from McCarthy’s office on dry residential wells is “slim to none, and I am not saying that to discredit them at all.”

    “I have had more conversations, more engagement and just more wanting to know how they can assist from Congressman Valadao and his office than probably any other on the federal side,” McVay added.

    Snyder said Rep. David Valadao, a Republican representing neighboring Kings County as well as portions of Tulare and Kern, and his staff “will show up in a community at the time of a crisis” and are actively engaged on how they can support efforts to get people water.

    Other members of Congress, including Democratic Rep. Jim Costa and Republican Connie Conway, who left office earlier this month, have also been more accessible and engaged on the issue, Snyder said.

    “Kevin McCarthy, no,” Snyder added.

    A sign reading

    Oranges grown on trees in a grove in Tulare County.

    While McCarthy is popular in his district and influential among California and Central Valley Republicans, California state Sen. Melissa Hurtado, a Democrat who represents parts of the San Joaquin Valley plagued by drought, told CNN there are concerns that McCarthy’s ambition for House speaker has superseded his district’s needs.

    “He’s focused on that leadership position instead of actually working on issues to address the impacts of his district,” Hurtado told CNN. “Quietly, the word out there is it’s been a while that he’s actually delivered something for the region, given his focus on the leadership position. Maybe that’s part of his greater vision for helping this region out.”

    McCarthy’s office did not respond to questions about how he’ll use his position as House speaker to address climate change-fueled droughts in California and around the nation. Nor did it respond to the critiques about his lack of engagement.

    “The Leader has consistently worked in a bipartisan, bicameral fashion to deliver this life-giving resource for the families, agriculture producers and workers, and communities in the Central Valley and throughout California, and our Republican congressional delegation heavily relies on his steadfast leadership and decades of expertise when crafting their own pieces of water legislation,” McCarthy’s spokesperson Martinez told CNN in a statement. “When Democrats have held the majority, they time and time again blocked the progress and innovation of their House GOP colleagues.”

    McCarthy delivers remarks to supporters alongside Ronna Romney McDaniel, Republican National Committee chair, and Rep. Tom Emmer on November 9.

    In July, McCarthy spoke on the House floor about Tooleville’s plight, seeking to set up a federal grant program to help connect it and other small towns to larger cities’ water supply.

    “In our district, the community of Tooleville has run out of water as the groundwater table drops and aging infrastructure fails or becomes obsolete,” McCarthy said at the time. “Tulare County advises me that if California’s droughts continue, more small and rural communities in our district with older infrastructure could meet the exact same fate.”

    McCarthy’s measure authorized a grant program but didn’t contain any funding. And even though the bill passed the House, it died in the Senate, and it’s unclear whether it will come up again in the new Congress.

    Connecting Tooleville’s water infrastructure with that of nearby Exeter has been a decadeslong pursuit that is finally close to happening thanks to a state mandate and funding. The project will mean more reliable and cleaner water for residents like Cuevas. But it’s expected to take eight years for the two systems to fully merge.

    The Friant-Kern Canal carries melted snowpack water from Northern California to Central Valley farms.

    McCarthy is also co-sponsoring a bill with Valadao that would enlarge certain reservoirs and kickstart construction on a new reservoir in the Sacramento Valley. But some nonprofit leaders and local officials say these solutions would prioritize agriculture over residents.

    “We need more solutions beyond storage and dams,” said Susana De Anda, executive director of the San Joaquin Valley-based environmental justice nonprofit Community Water Center. “[McCarthy] lacks understanding of the real critical problems we’re experiencing around the drought and our communities.”

    Seeking to attract younger voters concerned about climate change to the Republican Party, McCarthy last year convened a Climate, Energy and Conservation Task Force to develop the party’s messaging and policies around the issue. And House Republican delegations have attended the last two United Nations climate summits.

    Cars drive past a sign on the outskirts of Tooleville.

    But all indications suggest that addressing human-caused climate change is not going to be a focal point of McCarthy’s now that he has the speaker’s gavel. McCarthy and House Republicans have shown they don’t want to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels, and few in the party are willing to connect global temperature rise to worsening droughts and extreme weather.

    McCarthy dissolved Democrats’ Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and he has vowed to investigate Department of Energy grants for electric vehicle components, as well as alleged “collusion” between environmental groups and China and Russia to “hurt American Energy,” according to a recent statement.

    “Our representatives don’t talk about climate change; it’s a real problem,” De Anda said. “Climate change is real. Our communities are the canaries in the coal mine. We get hit first.”

    It’s part of the reason Cuevas is hoping to move away in a couple years. He’s hopeful the water situation will improve by connecting Tooleville to a larger town’s water system; otherwise, he’s afraid he won’t be able to entice another buyer due to the water issues.

    “I’m happy I had a chance to buy it, but we are planning to move,” Cuevas told CNN. “Right now, if I try, I ain’t going to get nothing, not even what I paid for the home.”

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  • Belching lakes, mystery craters, ‘zombie fires’: How the climate crisis is transforming the Arctic permafrost | CNN

    Belching lakes, mystery craters, ‘zombie fires’: How the climate crisis is transforming the Arctic permafrost | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Four years ago, Morris J. Alexie had to move out of the house his father built in Alaska in 1969 because it was sinking into the ground and water was beginning to seep into his home.

    “The bogs are showing up in between houses, all over our community. There are currently seven houses that are occupied but very slanted and sinking into the ground as we speak,” Alexie said by phone from Nunapitchuk, a village of around 600 people. “Everywhere is bogging up.”

    What was once grassy tundra is now riddled with water, he said. Their land is crisscrossed by 8-foot-wide boardwalks the community uses to get from place to place. And even some of the boardwalks have begun to sink.

    “It’s like little polka dots of tundra land. We used to have regular grass all over our community. Now it’s changed into constant water marsh.”

    Thawing permafrost — the long-frozen layer of soil that has underpinned the Arctic tundra and boreal forests of Alaska, Canada and Russia for millennia — is upending the lives of people such as Alexie. It’s also dramatically transforming the polar landscape, which is now peppered with massive sinkholes, newly formed or drained lakes, collapsing seashores and fire damage.

    It’s not just the 3.6 million people who live in polar regions who need to be worried about the thawing permafrost.

    Everyone does – particularly the leaders and climate policymakers from nearly 200 countries now meeting in Egypt for COP 27, the annual UN climate summit.

    The vast amount of carbon stored in the northernmost reaches of our planet is an overlooked and underestimated driver of climate crisis. The frozen ground holds an estimated 1,700 billion metric tons of carbon – roughly 51 times the amount of carbon the world released as fossil fuel emissions in 2019, according to NASA. It may already be emitting as much greenhouse gas as Japan.

    Permafrost thaw gets less attention than the headline-hogging shrinking of glaciers and ice sheets, but scientists said that needs to change — and fast.

    “Permafrost is like the dirty cousin to the ice sheets. It’s a buried phenomenon. You don’t see it. It’s covered by vegetation and soil,” said Merritt Turetsky, director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder. “But it’s down there. We know it’s there. And it has an equally important impact on the global climate.”

    It’s particularly pressing because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has stopped much scientific cooperation, meaning a potential loss of access to key data and knowledge about the region.

    Warmer summers — the Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average — have weakened and deepened the top or active layer of permafrost, which unfreezes in summer and freezes in winter.

    This thawing is waking up the microbes in the soil that feast on organic matter, allowing methane and carbon dioxide to escape from the soil and into the atmosphere. It can also open pathways for methane to rise up from reservoirs deep in the earth.

    “Permafrost has been basically serving as Earth’s freezer for ancient biomass,” Turetsky said. “When those creatures and organisms died, their biomass became incorporated into these frozen soil layers and then was preserved over time.”

    As permafrost thaws, often in complex ways that aren’t clearly understood, that freezer lid is cranking open, and scientists such as Turetsky are doubling efforts to understand how these changes will play out.

    Permafrost is a particularly unpredictable wild card in the climate crisis because it’s not yet clear whether carbon emissions from permafrost will be a relative drop in the bucket or a devastating addition. The latest estimates suggest that the magnitude of carbon emissions from permafrost by the end of this century could be equal to or bigger than present-day emissions from major fossil fuel-emitting nations.

    “There’s some scientific uncertainty of how large that country is. However, if we go down a high emissions scenario, it could be as large or larger than the United States,” said Brendan Rogers, an associate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts.

    He described the permafrost as a sleeping giant whose impact wasn’t yet clear.

    “We’re just talking about a massive amount of carbon. We don’t expect all of it to thaw … because some of it is very deep and would take hundreds or thousands of years,” Rogers said. “But even if a small fraction of that does get admitted to the atmosphere, that’s a big deal.”

    Projections of cumulative permafrost carbon emissions from 2022 through 2100 range from 99 gigatons to 550 gigatons. By comparison, the United States currently emits 368 gigatons of carbon, according to a paper published in September in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

    Smoke from a wildfire is visible behind a permafrost monitoring tower at the Scotty Creek Research Station in Canada's Northwest Territories in September. The tower burned down in October from unusual wildfire activity.

    Not all climate change models that policymakers use to make their already grim predictions include projected emissions from permafrost thaw, and those that do assume it will be gradual, Rogers said.

    He and other scientists are concerned about the prevalence of abrupt or rapid thawing in permafrost regions, which has the power to shock the landscape into releasing far more carbon than with gradual top-down warming alone.

    The traditional view of permafrost thaw is that it’s a process that exposes layers slowly, but “abrupt thaw” is exposing deep permafrost layers more quickly in a number of ways.

    For example, Big Trail Lake in Alaska, a recently formed lake, belches bubbles of methane — a potent greenhouse gas, which comes from thawing permafrost below the lake water. The methane can stop such lakes from refreezing in winter, exposing the deeper permafrost to warmer temperatures and degradation.

    Bubbles of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — appear on the surface of Big Trail Lake in Alaska.

    Rapid thawing of the permafrost also happens in the wake of intense wildfires that have swept across parts of Siberia in recent years, Rogers said. Sometimes these blazes smolder underground for months, long after flames above ground have been extinguished, earning them the nickname zombie fires.

    “The fires themselves will burn part of the active layer (of permafrost) combusting the soil and releasing greenhouses gases like carbon dioxide,” Rogers said. “But that soil that’s been combusted was also insulating, keeping the permafrost cool in summer. Once you get rid of it, you get very quickly much deeper active layers, and that can lead to larger emissions over the following decades.”

    Also deeply concerning has been the sudden appearance of around 20 perfectly cylindrical craters in the remote far north of Siberia in the past 10 years. Dozens of meters in diameter, they are thought to be caused by a buildup and explosion of methane — a previously unknown geological phenomenon that surprised many permafrost scientists and could represent a new pathway for methane previously contained deep within the earth to escape.

    “The Arctic is warming so fast,” Rogers said, “and there’s crazy things happening.”

    A lack of monitoring and data on the behavior of permafrost, which covers 15% of the exposed land surface of the Northern Hemisphere, means scientists still only have a patchwork, localized understanding of rapid thaw, how it contributes to global warming and affects people living in permafrost regions.

    Rogers at the Woodwell Climate Research Center is part of a new $41 million initiative, funded by a group of billionaires and called the Audacious Project, to understand permafrost thaw. It aims to coordinate a pan-Arctic carbon monitoring network to fill in some of the data gaps that have made it difficult to incorporate permafrost thaw emissions into climate targets.

    The project’s first carbon flux tower, which tracks the flow of methane and carbon dioxide from the ground to the atmosphere, was installed this summer in Churchill, Manitoba. However, plans to install similar monitoring stations in Siberia are in disarray as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    “It’s always been more challenging to work in Russia than other countries … Canada, for example,” Rogers said. “But this (invasion), of course, has made it exponentially more challenging.”

    Sebastian Dötterl, a professor and soil scientist at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university, who studies how warmer air and soil temperatures change plant growth in the Arctic, was able to travel to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic this summer to collect soil and plant samples.

    However, the field trip cost twice as much as initially budgeted because the group was forbidden to use any Russia-owned infrastructure, forcing the team to hire a tourist boat and reorganize its itinerary. But Dötterl said the more pressing issue is that he can no longer interact with his counterparts at Russian institutions.

    “We are now splitting a rather small community of specialists all over the world into political groups that are disconnected, where our problems are global and should be connected,” he said.

    Turetsky agreed, saying that the war in Ukraine had been a “disaster for our scientific enterprise.”

    “Russia and Siberia are huge, huge players. … Many of the (European Union-) and US-funded projects to work in Siberia to do any kind of lateral knowledge sharing, they’ve all been canceled.

    “Will we stop trying? No, of course not. And there’s a lot we can do with existing data and with global remote sensing products. But it’s been a real setback for the community.”

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  • Nantucket Whaler Launches Summer 2022 Collection

    Nantucket Whaler Launches Summer 2022 Collection

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    Featuring Breathable Fabrics, Soft Textures, Natural Colors and Casual Style for Men

    Press Release
    –

    Jun 30, 2022


    WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., June 30, 2022 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Nantucket Whaler, the classic American lifestyle brand inspired by exploration and Nantucket Island, has introduced its Summer 2022 Collection. For Nantucket Whaler, the focus this season is on breathable fabrics, enhanced by natural colors, to create classic and casual styles for men. Much of the brand’s authentic collection is designed and manufactured in the United States, including in New England. The Nantucket Whaler Summer 2022 Collection for men is available now, only at nantucketwhaler.com.

    Building on the brand’s core basics, the Summer 2022 Collection is inspired by sand and saltwater on the beaches of Nantucket and beyond. The apparel assortment ranges from long sleeve linen to seersucker short sleeve shirts, perfect for warm days and salty breezes in the sun. These airy summer essentials offer an elevated simplicity to the classic American brand and stay true to the authentic heritage of Nantucket Island. Following current trends, the newest collection offers casual resort styling with camp collars and shirt tail hems that allow Nantucket Whaler’s timeless designs to be dressed up or down for the warm days ahead.

    The Summer 2022 Collection’s new apparel items can be perfectly paired with Nantucket Whaler’s staples that consumers know and love. The Rover Short, Coble Chino, and Jibe Jogger all offer a chic combination when styled with the textured linen and seersucker shirts due to the high variety of garment-dyed colors in those pants. Nantucket Whaler’s best-selling chino, the Nomad Pant, is a year-round fan favorite for its AdvantEdge stretch fabric and ocean-washed finish that’s truly a winning combination.

    “With the summer season underway in Nantucket, we are excited to share the fresh, island-inspired Summer 2022 Collection,” says Morgan Rose, Senior Designer for Nantucket Whaler. “We anchored our favorite garment-dyed bottoms with updated woven tops that bring texture and depth of sun and sea-inspired color. I describe the collection as offering classic styling that’s both relevant and easy to wear.”

    Nantucket Whaler looks to the style of generations built around a nautical lifestyle to design the brand, which can be seen in this Summer Collection.

    “The Nantucket Whaler Design Team was able to capture the inspiration behind the collection and provide shoppers a chance to feel like a New England native,” said J. Michael Prince, President & CEO of USPA Global Licensing, the parent company of Nantucket Whaler. “Every season, we evolve our products with innovation and style while maintaining our authentic connection to Nantucket.”

    About Nantucket Whaler

    Nantucket Whaler, a lifestyle brand, is inspired by exploration and island history dating back to 1837. The brand’s heritage is steeped in the mystique of Nantucket Island and the generations of people who built a life exploring the sea. Nantucket Whaler’s style translates the grit, strength, and endurance of those early nautical explorers into well-crafted clothes for modern consumers who embody those same core values. 

    As a proud sponsor of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), Nantucket Whaler supports the non-profit organization in its dedication to the conservation of whales and dolphins through inspiring global action. WDC, a leading global organization, defends these remarkable creatures against the many threats they face through campaigns, lobbying, conservation projects, field research and education. Visit whales.org for more information.

    ###

    For Additional Information, Contact: 

    Stacey Kovalsky – Senior Director, Global Communications
    Phone +001.561.790.8036 – Email: skovalsky@uspagl.com

    Kaela Drake – PR & Communications Coordinator
    Phone +001.561.461.8596 – Email: kdrake@uspagl.com

    Source: Nantucket Whaler

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  • Nearly 5 million kids might miss out on food assistance if these states don’t act by Friday | CNN Politics

    Nearly 5 million kids might miss out on food assistance if these states don’t act by Friday | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Nearly 5 million children in eight states could lose out on some extra funds for food unless their state officials sign up for a federal relief program by Friday.

    The Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer program, known as P-EBT, is providing $120 over the summer to families whose children qualify for free or reduced-price meals or attend schools in low-income areas where all students receive free meals.

    While the vast majority of states are participating in the program this summer, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, South Dakota and Texas have yet to join.

    The funding is crucial for families who are having trouble affording groceries, housing, utilities and other necessities, which are all more expensive now, advocates say. Many of these parents depend on the free or reduced-price breakfast and lunch program during the school year, but only about 1 in 7 eligible kids receive meals over the summer.

    “For a lot of families that are struggling, the summer is the hungriest time of the year,” said Lisa Davis, senior vice president at Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign.

    The P-EBT program was launched in the spring of 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic forced schools to close. The funds provided parents with money to buy groceries to make up for the meals their children were missing in school.

    Congress renewed the measure several times, most recently in December as part of the fiscal 2023 spending package. But this final extension cut the benefit to help offset the cost of a permanent summer EBT program that starts next year. Lawmakers also limited it to school-age children – younger kids are not eligible this summer because the Covid-19 public health emergency has ended.

    Last summer, families received $391 – providing a total of $13.7 billion in benefits to 35 million kids, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

    Alaska and South Dakota were the only states not to participate, while Idaho only provided the funds to younger children in day care programs, said Kelsey Boone, a senior child nutrition policy analyst at the Food Research & Action Center.

    Some states have said they don’t have the capacity to administer the summer program this year, according to Boone. However, she points out that each of the eight states participated in the summer P-EBT program either in 2021 or 2022, or both years.

    Mississippi opted not to sign up for this summer’s program now that the Covid-19 public health emergency has ended, the state’s Department of Human Services said.

    “Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) was a supplemental benefit for households with students who temporarily lost access to free or reduced-price school meals due to pandemic-related school closures or distance learning,” the agency said. “Existing pre-pandemic summer feeding programs continue to operate across Mississippi school districts.”

    Alaska, meanwhile, decided not to apply for the summer benefits because of staffing constraints, said Gavin Northey, child nutrition program manager at the state’s Department of Education & Early Development.

    Agencies in the other six states did not return requests for comment.

    Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has urged the states that have yet to sign up for the summer program to do so, noting in a tweet in June that “hunger doesn’t take a break when school is out for the summer.”

    “I encourage these governors to enroll their states and ensure millions of children can receive the nutritional benefits essential to our nation’s economic health and security,” he tweeted.

    In Texas, at least 3.7 million children would be eligible for the summer P-EBT program, said Mia Medina, senior program manager for No Kid Hungry Texas. Some 40% of parents of children in public school experienced food insecurity, including skipping meals or running out of food, in the past 12 months, according to a poll the nonprofit group commissioned earlier this year.

    Last summer, about 3.5 million children in the Lone Star State received a total of more than $1.4 billion in benefits, according to Gov. Greg Abbott’s office.

    Families in Montana are also having a tougher time affording food, said Lorianne Burhop, chief policy officer at the Montana Food Bank Network. Some local pantries are seeing record demand, and parents are visiting multiple times a month.

    Some 32,000 children received a total of $12.5 million in summer P-EBT benefits last year, according to the state Department of Public Health and Human Services. But this year, officials said they were concerned about administering the program and about whether it was needed, according to Burhop.

    “Our state is really missing a key opportunity to help Montana families keep food on the table,” she said.

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