Australia Blocks Coal Mine Near Great Barrier Reef

Australia exports an enormous amount of coal, so it is no small matter for Canberra to block a proposed open pit coal mine only six miles from the Great Barrier Reef.  The reef is under stress from warming ocean temperatures causing coral bleaching.  It has suffered four mass bleaching events in the last six years. Allowing the pit to go forward would pose an additional burden of pollution. As one of the world's largest exporters of coal, Australia has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 43% from 2005 levels. The country's new center-left government has promised to shift the previous Conservative government's pro-mining policies. Australia'S Green Party has been urging the Labour government to block all new coal and gas projects in order to meet the country's pledged climate goals. Another 26 coal mines are planned. [photo courtesy: GBR Marine Reef Park Authority]

Environment minister Tanya Plibersek, said that the mine would pollute groundwater and freshwater creeks that run into the reef and seagrass meadows that feed dugongs and provide habitat for breeding fish. She is the first minister to use powers to block projects under Australia's 22 year-old Environmental and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The Central Queensland Coal project would have consisted of two open pit mines yielding 10 million metric tons of coal a year for twenty years or more.  Conservationists hailed the decision.Australians expressed their opposition to the project from the outset. The federal government received 9,000 submissions in ten business days, the majority of which were against the project.

F-16s or Mig 29s for Ukraine?

More:  Zelenskyy seeks weaponry in surprise trips to London, Paris   Greeted with cheers of "Slava Ukraini" in the UK parliament, Ukraine's president made his nation's pitch for more weaponry, including fighter jets, in London and Paris ahead of a defense ministers' meeting in Brussels. He told his British audience that Air Force pilots are 'king' in Ukraine.

[06.02.2023} Mig-29s.  By far the more suitable weapons system for the Ukraine conflict. Why you ask?  Several reasons are apparent.  The Ukraine Air Force already operates this system, so a minimal amount of training would be necessary, and spare parts are available, if in short supply.  The Mig jet is built to operate from less than ideal airfields.  Like a lot of western equipment the F-16 is complex and to be really effective it must operate as part of a network of compatible command and control, air defense, and electronic warfare equipment.  That infrastructure is absent in Ukraine.  Moreover, stocks of Migs are readily available nearby.  Poland operates a fleet of the Soviet-era jets and F-16s that it wants to replace with more advanced F-22s and F-35s.  That country offered to send its Migs to Ukraine in March last year, if the United States replaced them F-16s.  The Pentagon shot that offer down. 

What the Ukrainians need is replacement aircraft, not a new model that poses logistical and training difficulties.  Training a pilot to operate a Fighting Falcon in combat could take a year.   They have used their Air Force in a restricted manner in order to keep losses at a sustainable level.  Given the plethora of surface to air missiles in the conflict, the Air Force role has been marginalized.  With replacements, Ukraine can afford to take greater operational risks.  Ukraine is again asking for fighter jets, presumably to use them for fending off the Russian spring offensive, and launching one of its own towards the Sea of Azov. To be successful in an armored push, some air superiority is needed.  Now that NATO has decided to supply offensive weaponry in the form of 300+ more modern tanks, it should reconsider allowing the transfer of a familiar and sustainable aircraft from Poland or elsewhere.  Slovakia recently retired its fleet of upgraded, NATO-compatible Fulcrum fighter-bombers. [photo] Designed in the 70's to fight against the F-16, this aircraft is a capable weapons system suited to the Ukrainian battle space.

Sending the longer range GLSDB (90+ miles) cruise missile system is a useful development since it will allow Ukraine's artillery units to reach logistical targets on its recognized borders with Russia.  A full suite of western weapons should make the difference on the battlefield, but time is running and a prolonged conflict is in Russia's favor.  How Ukraine intends to retake the Crimea without a navy is intriguing.

Biden Drills Baby, Drills

Biden's administration just approved the largest oil drilling project on federal land in Alaska's North Slope.  The gullible among you may recall they he came into office promising to end new drilling on federal land. He said on campaign in New Hampshire, "And by the way, no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”  Conoco-Phillips won approval from the BLM for its Willow Project that covers hundreds of acres of the National Petroleum Reserve, which is pristine habitat for geese and caribou. The project is estimated to generate 9.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.  The Reserve represents one of the surest deposits of oil in the nation, that could produce 576-614 million barrels over 30 years, or about enough to satisfy 30 days of consumption.

The Bureau did identify a "preferred alternative" in its final supplemental environmental assessment (SEIS)-- a 550 acre parcel that would avoid caribou migration routes and yellow-billed loon nesting sites. Millions of migrating birds inhabit nearby Teshekpuk Lake [map] Biden has thirty days to make a final decision to allow the project to go forward.  Conoco is in the cat-bird seat in this leasing process, since it already owns two operating well sites in the same area.  The company said in a news release that it could work with the preferred SEIS "E" option with three core drill sites identified in the report, but warned it would abandon the project as uneconomic if the sites are reduced to two.  Apparently the extra 'periods' in his campaign statement are forgotten.  

Conservationists are not satisfied that the administration has worked hard enough against the Willow Project.  Earthjustice, the environmental litigation group, says SEIS option E only reduces the carbon emissions by 3-9% from Conoco's original proposal.  The administration has also promised to cut nationwide emissions in half from 2005 levels by 2030, but rejected criticisms of its support for Willow saying the President has done more for climate change than any other president, while meeting the nation's energy needs.  Alaska's two senators also support drilling the Reserve, along with some members of the local tribes.  The administration has approved more than 6,000 federal gas and oil permits, more than the Trump administration in its first two years.

TWIT: The Outlaw Trump

Pundits are beginning to realize what US Person has known all along: Trump is the head of a corrupt organization, and has been so for four decades.  Ever since he began dealing with the Mafia in New York to get his tower built when the mob had shut down concrete trucks in the city; to the casinos in Atlantic City where the Russian mob hung out while he washed their millions; to his repeated tax evasion and financial fraud; to the culmination of his criminal activity, the attempted take down of the US government through a multi-spoke conspiracy, Trumpillini has evaded and subverted the laws of the land.  Greg Barack noted in his Salon article on the subject, that he, "is not an outlaw of negligence, incompetence or ignorance....Trump knows the subtle difference between what is lawfully right and lawfully wrong.... he is an expert on criminal intent."

As the criminal investigations involving him and his businesses drag on, the picture of Trumpillini's RICO is coming into focus.  The acronym stands for Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization.  An enterprise determined to be a RICO can be prosecuted, dismantled, and its officers jailed.  Trumpillini's penchant for white collar crime is lately seen in DOJ's investigation of his PAC, Save America, the vehicle he uses for raising funds by propagating the myth of a stolen election since 2020.  Another Washington, DC grand jury has issued subpoenas to several mid-level aides involved.  Since its inception Save Amenrica has raised $135 million including $30 million from his campaign funds.   Combining all of these activities with the January 6th Insurrection and the Mar-a-Lago Papers case into one giant prosecution is probably too complex and unwieldy.  But they are related because they have as their hub one corrupt individual. 

Generally, a RICO prosecution involves a pattern of criminal conduct through an enterprise over a period of time for financial gain.  That definition fits what Trumpillini has been engaged in for years like a glove. What is truly ironic is that his main cappo, Rudy Giuliani, used the federal RICO statute to bring down the New York mob in the 80s.  Fanni Willis, the Fulton County DA investigating Trumpillini for his election fraud in Georgia, used a state version of the statute to prosecute gangsters in Atlanta.  Under the Georgia statute, making or attempting to make a false statement to any state department or agency is defined as "racketeering".   That certainly describes what Trumpillini tried to do when he told Georgia election officials that the election was fraudulent.  What makes RICO laws powerful, is that the head of a corrupt organization does not have to directly commit illegal acts to be found guilty.  He merely has to participate in the racketeering activity by having others in the organization do it for him. Certainly Giuliani, when he promoted baseless claims of election fraud in Georgia and elsewhere, was doing so at the behest of his Padrino.  The lesson here: even Presidents can be criminals. 

credit: G. Le Lievre
BC Idonwanna sez: No way out.

The Final End of the Pebble Mine?

Environmentalists have been fighting the Pebble Mine project near Bristol Bay, Alaska for nearly two decades.  They forced major mining companies to give up on the project, but a successor in interest has been doggedly pursuing the project through administration on both sides of the political divide.  The EPA issued a final determination this week under the Clean Water Act Section 404(c).  The agency determined that dumping mine wastes into the Bristol Bay watershed would have adverse impacts on the pristine salmon habitat of the watershed [see map]  The watershed contains a salmon spawning ground that supports a fishing industry worth $2 billion and employs 15,000 local people. Bristol Bay produces nearly half of the world's Sockeye salmon.

Without required permits, Northern Dynasty Minerals, a Canadian firm, is severely restricted to where they can dump thousands of tons of mine waste from the proposed open pit copper and gold mine. The compay is also appealing the denial by the Army Corp of Engineers in 2020 of its construction permits.  All of this opposition is making the project increasingly uneconomic despite the size of the mineral deposit

In addition to the latest regulatory victory, native peoples formed a corporation that granted conservation easements to more than 44,000 acres to protect them from future mine development in perpetuity.  EPA has used its Clean Water Act authority to block a project only three times in thirty years.  So despite the company's and Alaska's threat to sue the EPA over its final determination, the suit is unlikely to succeed.  Conservationists and tribes are breathing easier, but the zombie mine has come back before.  The minerals beneath the salmon are just too valuable to ignore.

Dodo Redux

A bioscience startup is making the news again with its announcement that it would attempt to resurrect the dodo bird using genetic sequencing. Colossal Biosciences was founded in 2021 by Ben Lamm, tech entrepreneur and George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University.  The company first announced it would bring back the wholly mammoth and then a year later the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger.  With new funding a avian genomics group was formed. [credit: D. Eskridge]

The dodo is the icon of species extinction caused by man.  It went extinct on Mauritius island in the Indian Ocean in the mid 17th century.  The large, flightless bird was literally hunted to eradication by humans for food.  It was unafraid of man, having existed for millennia without him, giving rise to the undeserved reputation for stupidity, and the expression "deader than a dodo".  Its survival was hampered by a low reproductive rate, typically laying just one egg on the ground where introduced rats or monkeys could easily eat it.

A tiny piece of dodo mitochondrial DNA was extracted by paleobiologist Beth Shapiro and her team at UC Santa Cruz in 2002.  Analysis showed the dodo's closet living relative to be the Nicobar pigeon. [photo below] By 2022 the entire dodo genome was sequenced.  This accomplishment allowed geneticists to ponder whether the extinct bird could be brought back to life.  This almost magical feat might be accomplished using dodo genetic material being implanted into an egg of a closely related species, like the Nicobar pigeon. [photo below] While theoretically possible, it is technically difficult and there is no guarantee that a chimera would survive birth and rearing.  Dolly the sheep is the famous first example of a successful cloning in mammals.  But the same cloning pathway does not exist in avian species.  Shapiro says there is no access to avian eggs at the same stage of development as mammal egg cells.  So, Colossal is working on extracting primordial germ cells from birds that would be genetically engineered to create a dodo-sized pigeon that could successfully hatch a chimera.  One advantage in working with egg-laying species is that all of the early development takes place inside an egg fairly rapidly compared to a woolly mammoth fetus developing in a surrogate womb for nearly two years.

Nicobar pigeon

Creating a living creature is only the beginning of the problem.  There are no adult dodos around to teach the new dodo how to behave like, well, a dodo.  To compound the problem the environment is completely changed from what existed 300 years ago.  Dodos lived in a pristine forest on an isolated Indian Ocean island with no large predators around.  According to mariner accounts, there were thousands of them.  Bringing  an isolated, extinct bird into a modern world has significant ethical considerations.  A habitat where re-created dodos could survive would have to be found, or more likely created.  Shapiro admits to being a fan of the dodo; she even has a dodo tattoo. Nevertheless, she says that resurrecting extinct species is not a solution to the extinction crisis.  She stated the problem succinctly, "Extinction is forever."

COTW: The Dirty Secret of the National Debt

It is a fact that the wealthy in the United States have become rentiers rather than taxpayers.  Over the last fifty years the wealthy have moved from 90% tax rates under Eisenhower to owning interest on the national debt. One of the largest contributors to the national debt, currently at $31.4 trillion, is the reduction in tax revenue collected from corporations and the wealthy. Trump's tax cuts reduced the effective rate of taxation on the rich to below that paid by the middle class to 23%.  Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary, says that under Trump the federal budget deficit increased by $113 billion, while corporate tax receipts decreased by $90 billion, accounting for 80% of the deficit,  

Of course--unless you live in the MAGAverse--the government has to pay interest on that debt, which has hit a record $475 billion. (fiscal 2022)  Most of that interest is paid to wealthy investors in US debt instruments via hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies and personal estates.  So the wealthy are getting a return on their invested money from the rest of us paying taxes to get services we all need. Such a deal! LOOK, at this chart:

Congressional figures show the percent spent on interest alone will increase to 3.3% of GDP by 2032 and to 7.2% by 2052.  Despite what the crazies on the right are telling you, its not government spending that is the problem, its the lack of taxation on the rich who are getting richer from our tax payments!  The solution is simple: make the rich and their corporations pay more taxes.   Kevin McCarthy, your fiscal hypocrisy knows no bounds.