What Justice John Paul Stevens’s Papers Reveal About Affirmative Action - Twenty years ago, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote, in a draft opinion, that white applicants could not be favored over Asian Americans. Why did she delete those lines—and why did Justice Clarence Thomas adopt them in his own opinion? - link
How Trump Compares with Presidents Who Burned Their Papers - The Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore sees historic parallels—as well as willful and unprecedented behavior by the freshly indicted ex-President. - link
What Can Joe Biden Do About Benjamin Netanyahu? - The President is clearly displeased by the Prime Minister’s anti-democratic turn but seems wary of testing his influence. - link
Does It Matter That Neil Gorsuch Is Committed to Native American Rights? - The Justice doesn’t just join with the liberals on the bench when it comes to tribal rights; he often seems to lead them. - link
Prigozhin Showed Russians That They Might Have a Choice - This weekend, the country saw someone other than Putin act politically and—even more important—wield force. - link
From Vox
The nuclear industry’s big bet on going small -
NuScale currently is the only company with a small modular reactor design that has cleared regulatory benchmarks. | NuScale Power
Small modular reactors might be the nuclear industry’s best hope for a renaissance.
This year, the US nuclear energy industry did something it hasn’t done in more than 30 years: It built and completed new nuclear power plants as two reactors located at Plant Vogtle in Georgia came online.
The original price tag was $14 billion, backed by $12 billion in loan guarantees from the US Department of Energy, but the cost of the project, which missed its planned activation in 2016, ultimately ballooned to more than $28.5 billion. A similar nuclear project in South Carolina was eventually canceled due to cost overruns, but still stuck the state with a $9 billion bill. In 2017, Vogtle’s manufacturer, Westinghouse, filed for bankruptcy. And as construction proceeded in Georgia, six other reactors shut down across the US due to age or rising operating expenses.
It’s a disheartening story at a time when advocates say the case for nuclear energy is the strongest it’s been in ages. The Biden administration has set a target of 100 percent clean electricity by 2035 and reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the whole economy by 2050. There is a long way to go. Right now, the share of clean energy on the power grid is 41 percent, and nearly half of that currently comes from nuclear power. The Department of Energy estimated that the US would need upward of an additional 770 gigawatts of new clean electricity generation to reach net zero. “[N]uclear power is one of the few proven options that could deliver this at scale,” according to a March report from the Energy Department.
So the US, and the world, would need vastly more nuclear energy to power a cleaner economy. But with such high costs and wariness around conventional giant reactors, the global nuclear industry is increasingly betting that the best way to reach those big targets is to go small.
Small modular reactors (SMR) have emerged as one of the most popular approaches for the next generation of nuclear power plants. Rather than designing giant, custom-crafted reactors at sprawling power plants that churn out gigawatts of electricity, industry stalwarts and startups are now developing smaller, factory-built atom splitters. In theory, they could be deployed cheaper and faster than current designs, meeting existing needs for power while filling new niches in the economy like hydrogen production. The hope is that SMRs could bypass or overcome some of the biggest obstacles to nuclear energy and the transition to clean energy.
And more are on the way. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are around 50 SMR designs under various stages of development, from the drawing board to construction. In May, Westinghouse revealed its own plans for a 300 MW SMR. This year, EDF, the national utility of France — where nuclear makes up 70 percent of the electricity mix — created a subsidiary called Nuward to develop a 170 MW reactor. Rolls-Royce created a subsidiary to build SMRs in the United Kingdom.
Governments are stepping up their support as well. The Inflation Reduction Act folds in tax credits for zero-carbon energy sources, including nuclear. A bipartisan group of US senators released the ADVANCE Act in April, which would make it cheaper and easier for SMR developers to apply for licenses from regulators.
The big barrier is that the business landscape for energy in general and nuclear in particular is more challenging than ever. Nuclear energy has seen its operating costs rise over time while renewable energy prices continue to fall. And with interest rates rising during the fight against inflation, borrowing money to build new designs is becoming more expensive. Going small might be the nuclear industry’s best chance to overcome the longstanding problems that have stalled nuclear energy for decades — but it’s still a long shot.
How NuScale’s SMR design works
NuScale Power, with a market cap of $530 million, has received more than $600 million in grants from the US Department of Energy since 2014 to support the development of its small modular reactors. It began building components for its first power plant earlier this year in South Korea.
“SMRs are no longer an abstract concept,” said Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff in a January press release. “They are real and they are ready for deployment thanks to the hard work of NuScale, the university community, our national labs, industry partners, and the NRC.”
In April, NuScale and Doosan Enerbility commenced the first production forgings for the first NuScale Power Modules™, progressing our groundbreaking #SMR technology into the manufacturing phase. pic.twitter.com/ura6QInhwX
The design approved by US regulators uses 12 light-water reactors in a plant, each producing 50 MW, much smaller than most conventional reactors that range in the hundreds of megawatts. But the company has since shifted to a larger power output design. NuScale has now submitted a proposal for a higher capacity module producing 77 MW in a six-unit configuration based on results from early tests.
“We saw an advantage to uprating the power,” said Jose Reyes, chief technology officer for NuScale. “As we learned more about the performance of the machine itself, we realized we had quite a bit of margin.”
The new design will require another round of checks and approvals and has pushed back the timelines for NuScale’s projects. In both designs, the reactor module is about 15 feet in diameter and 76 feet tall. Each design would produce about 462 MW of electricity in total.
One key advantage to SMRs is that the reactors would be built at a factory before being shipped to sites around the world. That’s unlike conventional reactors, which are typically built on-site, albeit with large, pre-fabricated parts, which means they require specialized construction equipment and transportation infrastructure. Since they’re tailored to a specific customer, the builders can’t easily apply lessons from one plant to another, making it hard to achieve economies of scale and adding to the construction and operation costs of conventional nuclear power.
While NuScale’s reactor design is standard, the plants they’re installed in can be scaled up or down in terms of capacity by adjusting the number of reactor modules. They can also be built in more remote locations, unlike most conventional nuclear power plants that require a power input from the grid to run auxiliary systems like cooling or on-site backup generators.
Like many of the new generation of nuclear reactor concepts, NuScale’s reactor was designed with passive safety systems that can automatically stop it if something goes wrong. Unlike conventional reactors, “we don’t require any integration to the grid for safety,” Reyes said, reducing the risk of outages and larger potential failures like meltdowns. Another perk of using a handful of small reactors at a plant rather than a couple big ones is that when a reactor is down for refueling or maintenance, a smaller chunk of power goes offline.
NuScale now has projects underway in Wisconsin, Missouri, and North Carolina. Its first US plant, called the Carbon Free Power Project, will be built at Idaho National Laboratory and is scheduled to reach full production by 2030, generating 462 megawatts of electricity to be sold to a consortium of utilities. NuScale is also working to build its plants in countries including Romania, South Korea, and Poland.
Another advantage of NuScale’s design over conventional nuclear is that it can ramp power up and down more readily and has the built-in capability to follow power demand. “We can go from 20 percent power to 100 percent power in 96 minutes,” Reyes said. Conventional nuclear power plants are optimized to run at a high, steady rate, which makes them a poor fit as intermittent wind and solar power plug into the grid, bringing sudden crests and dips in electricity production.
The market is stacked against nuclear power
SMR developers may be going small, but they still face many of the same big headwinds as other energy companies, including supply chain disruptions, inflation, and rising interest rates that make financing and building more expensive. And while some SMRs are built on existing nuclear power designs, they are still first-of-a-kind in terms of their smaller scales and how they work together in a plant. Companies have to learn how to transport a nuclear reactor rather than building one on site, for example. This creates the potential for cost overruns as companies run into the usual initial snags.
NuScale has already revised its cost estimates upward for its first plant, the Carbon Free Power Project. It was initially projected to produce power at $58 per megawatt-hour, but has now risen to $89 per megawatt-hour as costs of materials like steel have grown and interest rates surged.
“The biggest issue that the nuclear [industry] has to tackle is the topic of risk of that investment,” said Bill Lacitiva, a partner at McKinsey who leads its nuclear energy work. While the upfront costs may be lower than conventional nuclear for utilities, SMRs will still need years, if not decades, to pay back their investment, raising worries that SMRs could fall into the same pits as their bigger brethren. “The history has not been positive in that respect when investors look at this,” Lacitiva said.
SMRs also have to contend with many of the high fixed costs that come with nuclear energy. Complying with nuclear energy regulations is expensive and limits where developers can build plants. Though some SMR designs incorporate new safety features, regulatory agencies have to readjust their processes to evaluate new technologies, and that on its own can be tedious.
It also takes a specialized, highly trained workforce to build and operate nuclear facilities, but the industry is already struggling to retain personnel as earlier generations of workers retire. And it’s hard to recruit new staffers when the country goes decades between building new reactors. Nuclear fuel also requires specialized processing. And most countries, including the US, still don’t have a permanent place to store nuclear waste.
At the same time, many electricity systems in the US have shifted to competitive markets, where power plants bid to provide electricity at the lowest possible cost. Grid operators can buy electricity a day ahead or in real time. When wind and solar power are available, they’re often the cheapest source of power and can undercut more expensive nuclear energy.
Nuclear does have a valuable trait in that it can produce a steady stream of electrons without emitting greenhouse gasses, providing reliable baseload power. But in some markets, it’s hard to reward this function, and as long as there isn’t a price on carbon, coal and gas plants can often perform this task cheaper.
That’s why SMR developers like NuScale are also pitching their plants as a way to power industrial processes, to produce hydrogen or to desalinate water, creating other revenue streams.
Governments may have to step up their support as well. That includes taxing greenhouse gas emissions, smoothing over the regulatory process, and providing more backstops to assure skittish investors. “The successful long-term deployment of SMRs hinges on strong support from policy makers and regulators to leverage private sector investment,” according to the International Energy Agency’s 2022 report on nuclear power.
But given the need for more energy and fewer greenhouse gas emissions, the potential for nuclear energy is hard to ignore. The US currently has about 95 gigawatts of nuclear capacity, much of it from reactors that are decades old and inching toward the ends of their lives, so the US will need to begin constructing more nuclear power just to maintain its 47 percent share of carbon-free electricity on the grid. As everything from cars to stoves to furnaces switches to electricity, power demand is poised to grow. And if nuclear is aiming to dethrone natural gas and coal — currently 60 percent of US electricity — it will take even more. “An aggressive case … could be more than 300 gigawatts total of nuclear needed, which is roughly 250 gigawatts of new [additional power],” Lacitiva said. “Those are massive numbers, and construction on a scale that at least the nuclear industry has never seen.”
All these hurdles may be too tall for SMRs to vault on their own. For nuclear to truly clear the bar, the industry will need a decades-long commitment from policymakers to see this build-out through, including financing, research and development, and a coherent climate strategy that favors cleaner sources of energy over fossil fuels. The technology has to get much cheaper too. Nonetheless, SMRs could be a crucial tool to help fix one of the biggest problems the world faces.
Why America’s first trans state senator is running for Congress -
Sarah McBride, then the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, speaking at the US Capitol in 2019. | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
9 questions with Delaware’s Sarah McBride, who could become the first trans member of Congress
She’s already the highest-ranking openly transgender elected official in the country, but Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride wants to soon clear a new bar — by getting elected to Congress next year.
McBride would become the first trans person to do so, if she wins the campaign she announced on Monday for Delaware’s sole House seat.
Though the primary is expected to be contested, she enters the race as the favorite, with the backing of labor organizers and national Democratic groups, as well as Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings and scores of state politicians. Boosting her in-state name recognition and national brand are her ties to the White House and the Bidens — she worked on the campaign of President Joe Biden’s son Beau when he ran for attorney general, interned in the Obama White House, and had the foreword to her memoir written by the president himself in 2018 (Biden has not endorsed McBride or any other candidate in the race).
I spoke with McBride on the day of her campaign launch — which coincided with the anniversary of several key dates in the struggle for equality and queer rights. McBride is running as an openly trans person during a wave of unprecedented legal attacks against trans and other queer people in Republican-dominated states, and as Americans’ acceptance of same-sex relationships wavers.
“It’s important for all of us to remember that progress is not linear. It happens in fits and starts and sometimes it’s two steps forward and one step back,” McBride told me. “Yes, there are some elements that are worse now than they were five or 10 years ago. But by every measure, we have made progress since the start of this movement and we can never forget that. I have seen too much change in my own life to not respect how far we’ve come.”
I asked McBride nine questions about her campaign, her policy goals, and her hopes for 2024 and beyond. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
So tell me — what are you hearing from voters?
Certainly one of the top issues I hear about consistently is the need for government to do more for workers and families, especially when they hit hard times, even before Covid — certainly since Covid — and the challenges facing caregivers in our state, from new parents to adults caring for aging parents, to spouses looking out for one another through illness and health challenges. I’ve consistently heard that we need to do more to help people take care of themselves and their family members.
That’s why in the Delaware General Assembly I led the charge to pass paid family and medical leave. When we started that process, political observers said it would take a decade or more to bring together Democrats and Republicans, unions and small business owners, to get it done. We were able to get it done in two years. But ultimately, I believe that to address the challenges facing workers and families, we need federal action.
What have you learned from your campaigns and from other trans representatives’ campaigns for the statehouse around the country?
The main thing that I’ve taken away from my campaigns, in my time in public office, is that we do genuinely have much more in common than divides us. That we share common hopes and aspirations and in our state of neighbors here in Delaware.
The second thing I’d say is that whenever a candidate like me declares for an office, political observers will sometimes question whether it’s possible. And we’ve seen that time and time again in blue districts and purple districts. We’ve seen it in big states and small states. We’ve seen it for state House and state Senate. And what I’ve seen is that voters are fair-minded. They are judging candidates based on their ideas, not their identities.
I think it undersells and undervalues voters to think that they care more about my gender than they do which candidate will actually deliver for them.
There’s no question that we are at a particularly critical moment for vulnerable communities in our country, and Republican politicians, in an effort to distract from their policy failures and complete lack of agenda, have focused in on transgender people as their scapegoat.
I’m eager to talk with voters up and down the state, to introduce myself to those who I haven’t had a chance to meet yet, for them to learn more about me, and yes, to have the opportunity to bring my whole self to Congress that includes my identity, but it also includes my life experience. It includes my policy chops. It includes my time serving as a caregiver to my husband during his battle with terminal cancer. We are all a collection of the experiences and identities we bring to the table.
What are the policy priorities that you have spent time thinking about, or pushing so far?
First, government needs to do a lot more to help workers and families get through hard times — whether that’s the challenging joys of raising a child or the terror of a serious illness — which is why as a member of Congress I’ll prioritize building on policies like paid family and medical leave.
To ensure that Delawareans across our state have access to affordable childhood education is really going to require federal investment. [We should also] lower the cost of prescription drugs and expand access to health care, which is work I’ve done as the Senate health and social services committee chair. Also, recognize that we have to do all we can to keep our communities safe and to uphold our rights, which is why I’ll fight for access to reproductive health care in Congress like I have in the Senate. It’s why I’ll champion gun safety legislation, as I have done in the state Senate.
And it’s why I’ll also make sure that all of us are kept safe by protecting our planet through meaningful policies to combat climate change.
Where do you consider yourself on the political spectrum? Would you consider yourself a centrist Blue Dog? Would you consider joining the Squad, an ultra-progressive?
I will be Sarah McBride in Congress. I’m going to be myself and there’s no other way I can be. I think we have to reject the false notion that we have to choose between being bold and building bridges.
How would you grade President Biden’s first term so far?
President Biden has been an exceptional president. He has been exactly the person that we need at this moment to get our country back on track.
Now, three years into his term, we have the largest investment in our infrastructure since the 1950s, done on a bipartisan basis. We have the most significant gun safety legislation passed on a bipartisan basis since the 1990s, the largest expansion of health care since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and of course, the most significant investment in combating climate change in our nation’s history. That is a record that Democrats should be proud of.
Now, of course, there’s unfinished work. There were certainly elements of Build Back Better that didn’t pass. And I’m confident that the president is going to be running his reelection campaign, in large part, on passing those policies. I’m eager, as someone who has long worked with President Biden and worked with his son, our late Attorney General Beau Biden, to cast my vote in Congress to bring over the finish line those critical policies for families and workers across the country.
Sounds like you’re endorsing him?
Without hesitation and absolutely.
You do have a long history with the Bidens, including the president. Have you thought at all about what 2024 might mean for your race, in terms of Republicans trying to exploit your relationship with the president?
I’m proud that the president has never wavered in his clear commitment to equality for the entirety of the LGBTQ community and I’ve been moved every time the president talks about our friendship in public. I am confident that voters are going to see any attacks by Republicans to try to weaponize the president’s friendship with someone like me as cold-hearted, cruel, and once more a distraction from issues that voters actually care about.
So if Republicans seek to do that, I think voters will once again collectively shrug at the Republicans’ attempt to weaponize a vulnerable community for their own political gain. And once again, they will see that it’s not an effective strategy come Election Day.
At a time when trans rights are under assault and Republican lawmakers are using pretty charged rhetoric, have you given much thought to working with them in Congress?
I’ve certainly thought about what it’s going to be like to work with the full range of talent that exists in Congress, both those with incredible skills and those who aren’t representing the best values that exist in our country.
But the reality is, for democracy to work you have to be able to work with people who disagree with you on perhaps every other issue but the one before you.
I’m running because we need someone who’s willing to roll up their sleeves, dive into the details and work with anything to get things done because ultimately, the people of this state deserve nothing less. We can’t let the pettiness of politics get in the way of opportunities for progress.
If you had a moonshot policy idea or proposal that you could make happen right now, what would that be?
I believe that it is critical that the United States fill out the gaping hole in our social safety net by ensuring that every family has a cradle-through-career support system for their children, that lowers costs for families, improves outcomes for young people, and makes our society more competitive and compassionate.
That starts with paid leave. It continues through affordable child care and universal pre-K. It means better investments into our public schools, and of course, support for students who are either going on to two- or four-year college, or vocational training, or directly into the workforce.
That, to me, is one of the most important economic and moral issues of our time.
Back to reality: Given the very real limitations that exist in Congress, what’s something you feel you can’t change?
First of all, I reject the premise that there is something that we can absolutely not change.
But there are real, serious challenges we face as a society, from wealth disparities, to the challenge that comes with a civic society where we can’t have a shared conversation and a shared set of facts. There are real structural challenges that we as a society face, that we as a democracy face.
And ultimately at the core of a healthy democracy is the notion that government will be responsive to people, that democracy can work and function. And to do that we have to deliver for people.
The alarming decline of Earth’s forests, in 4 charts -
A section of forest in the Brazilian Amazon that was burned by cattle ranchers, seen on August 16, 2020. Cattle ranching is the largest driver of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. | Andre Penner/AP
Deforestation raged ahead again in 2022, even after scores of countries pledged to protect their forests.
Over the last decade, dozens of companies and nearly all large countries have vowed to stop demolishing forests, a practice that destroys entire communities of wildlife and pollutes the air with enormous amounts of carbon dioxide.
A big climate conference in Glasgow, in the fall of 2021, produced the most significant pledge to date: 145 countries, including Brazil, China, and Indonesia, committed to “halt and reverse” forest loss within the decade. Never before, it seems, has the world been this dedicated to stopping deforestation.
And yet forests continue to fall.
A new analysis by the research organization World Resources Institute reveals that deforestation remained rampant in 2022. More than 4 million hectares (about 10 million acres) of forests vanished from the tropics that year in places like Brazil and Central Africa, according to the analysis, which is based on data from the University of Maryland. That’s a Switzerland-size area of forest gone, WRI said.
Alarmingly, the world lost 10 percent more tropical forest in 2022 compared to the previous year, indicating that countries are, on the whole, moving in the wrong direction. This is especially troubling considering that tropical forests are among the most important ecosystems on Earth. They help regulate weather, store vast amounts of carbon, and provide homes to the richest assemblages of wildlife on the planet.
“Since the turn of the century, we have seen a hemorrhaging of some of the world’s most important forest ecosystems, despite years of efforts to turn that trend around,” Mikaela Weisse, director of WRI’s forest monitoring platform Global Forest Watch, told reporters on a press call last week. “This year’s data show that we are rapidly losing one of our most effective tools for combating climate change, protecting biodiversity, and supporting the health and livelihoods of millions of people.”
The analysis did reveal a bit of good news: Once hot spots of deforestation, Indonesia and Malaysia have reined in forest loss in recent years, and that trend continued in 2022. These ecosystems are both incredibly rich in carbon and home to iconic endangered animals like orangutans and tigers.
On the whole, however, the world is still failing to arrest global deforestation, leading scientists to question how well various commitments and decades of conservation efforts work. Each year brings the same disappointing result — more forests gone — underscoring the need for solutions that extend far beyond simple pledges.
Where forests were cut down last year
Nearly all deforestation — i.e., the intentional and permanent destruction of trees — occurs in the tropics, the focus of WRI’s analysis. Countries in more temperate climates like Canada and Russia also lose a lot of trees each year (largely to wildfires) but that loss is often temporary; new trees crop up where old ones burned down.
Remarkably, just one country was responsible for more than 40 percent of all tropical deforestation last year: Brazil. It lost 1.8 million hectares (4.4 million acres) of primary forest, most of which occurred in the Amazon, the largest rainforest on Earth home to an extraordinary array of plants and animals. (“Primary forests” refers to well-preserved, old-growth forests.)
Forest fires caused a small portion of that loss in Brazil, according to WRI. But if you take fires out of the equation, Brazil had the highest level of deforestation in 2022 since 2005.
Although it has far fewer forests, the neighboring country of Bolivia also faced troubling rates of deforestation last year. The county lost nearly 0.4 million hectares (just under 1 million acres) of primary forest — the highest yearly amount on record and roughly a third more than it lost the prior year.
Halfway around the world in Africa’s Congo Basin, the planet’s other major rainforest, was yet another hot spot of destruction. Last year, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the basin’s largest country, razed more than half a million hectares (1.3 million acres) of primary forest, furthering the trend of rising deforestation in an ecosystem home to rare species including chimpanzees and forest elephants.
A handful of other African countries, including Ghana, Angola, and Cameroon, stand out; destruction there seems to be ramping up quickly. Deforestation in Ghana, for example, surged by nearly 70 percent between 2021 and 2022, according to WRI.
So, what’s driving this loss?
Growing food is still by far the primary source of destruction
The main reason why people cut down forests today is to raise cattle for beef or to plant crops like soybeans, oil palm, and coffee. The reality is that it’s often easier or cheaper to clear a chunk of virgin rainforest for farmland than to use land that’s already been cleared of trees.
In the Brazilian Amazon, as much as 90 percent of all deforestation is linked to cattle ranching. Often, ranchers or companies will first cut down high-value trees and sell them as timber. Then they’ll burn or clear the remaining vegetation before planting grass and bringing in cattle.
Elsewhere, other food commodities are flattening forests. In Bolivia, for example, Mennonite communities have replaced a lot of natural forest with soybean farms. In 2019 alone, soy farms destroyed nearly 50,000 hectares of forest, according to a separate WRI analysis. (Ironically, a successful effort to eliminate soy-related deforestation in Brazil — namely, a 2006 moratorium that prohibited grain traders from buying soy grown on land that was recently forest — may have fueled a spike in soy-related forest loss in Bolivia, where there are fewer forest protections in place.)
Much of Bolivia’s forest was also burned by fires last year, WRI said. Those fires weren’t purely natural disasters; many of them were set by people to clear land and then grew out of control due, in part, to drought in the region. (Another unfortunate irony: Deforestation can make droughts worse, so destroying forests fuels a dangerous feedback cycle.)
The story is a bit different in tropical Africa, where deforestation occurs in smaller patches and is closely tied to poverty. Many people in DRC, for instance, cut down trees for wood fuel and to plant small farms to feed themselves. Industrial farming isn’t a big issue, as it is in South America and Southeast Asia, according to Paolo Omar Cerutti, a forest scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research, a research group.
Yet in some other African countries, including Ghana, farms of cocoa (the plant used to make chocolate) and oil palm, mining, and cattle ranching are linked to recent destruction, even within protected areas.
Why is deforestation still so high?
For many years now, most of the countries and companies responsible for tropical deforestation have been publicly committed to protecting forests. Big meatpacking companies in Brazil, for example, agreed to only buy cattle from land without forest loss more than a decade ago; dozens of other companies have made similar pledges, including food giants like Nestle.
Meanwhile, in 2014 — well before the Glasgow climate conference — dozens of countries pledged to end deforestation by 2030, including DRC, Colombia, and other forest-rich nations. Over the years, all kinds of other efforts have emerged to end deforestation, such as an initiative called REDD+, which essentially aims to compensate poor countries for protecting their forests.
The harsh reality is that, at least so far, these efforts have hardly dented deforestation. “Globally, we are far off track and trending in the wrong direction when it comes to reducing deforestation,” Rod Taylor, global director for forests at WRI, told reporters during last week’s press call.
Guerchom Ndebo/AFP via Getty Images
Forests cleared for small farms in northeast Democratic Republic of the Congo, seen on September 1, 2022.
One simple problem is that pledges are far easier to make than to act on, said Ruth DeFries, a professor of ecology and sustainable development at Columbia University.
“All these high-level commitments sound good in a public forum, but they have no teeth,” DeFries said of country-level pledges. “There’s no enforcement and very little reason for countries to have accountability.”
After pledging zero deforestation at high-profile international events, officials from a country’s environmental ministry go home, where they may face competing interests — such as from their agricultural ministry — and a general lack of political will to follow through on their promise. Changes in government leadership can also undermine those efforts.
Jonne Roriz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A group of cattle on a farm within a protected area in Para state, Brazil, on October 5, 2021.
There is perhaps no better example of this disconnect than in Brazil. In the spring of 2021, former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro pledged to stop deforestation by 2030 while his government was actively enabling environmental destruction. During his presidency, Bolsonaro stripped enforcement measures, cut spending for science and environmental agencies, fired environmental experts, and pushed to weaken Indigenous land rights.
Part of the issue in Brazil (and throughout much of the tropics) is that the agriculture industry has a lot of political power; it can roadblock efforts to fulfill environmental pledges, even today. While Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has a track record of curtailing forest loss — and has vowed to protect the Amazon — environmental advocates warn that the country may still lack the political will for serious change, as long as Big Agriculture remains a dominant force in the country.
“We have the opportunity again of being a champion on climate, and Lula has promised to do that,” said Ana Paula Vargas, Brazil program director at Amazon Watch, an environmental advocacy group. “But how can he do it if Brazil’s economy is based in big agribusiness?”
Corporate pledges to avert deforestation often fall short, too, as good as they might sound to consumers. Companies that operate complex supply chains, such as those that sell beef or palm oil, can easily hide environmental destruction, or may even be unaware of it themselves.
Brazil, again, offers a strong example: Some companies that slaughter cows for beef say they’re monitoring their supply chains to ensure that they aren’t driving deforestation; they’ve agreed to only source cattle from suppliers withoutrecent forest loss. Yet those same cattle may have traveled through several other farms where deforestation happened before reaching the slaughterhouses’ direct suppliers, according to Amintas Brandão Jr., a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin Madison. So in reality, those companies are implicated in environmental harm and misleading consumers.
Zooming out, what underlies many failed efforts to end the destruction of rainforests is a simple fact: People can make more money by destroying forests than protecting them, said Kemen Austin, a tropical forest expert at the Wildlife Conservation Society. That’s because the benefits they provide — storing carbon, producing oxygen, cleaning water, making homes for animals that people eat, and so on — are typically not accounted for.
Indonesia: An example of what works
This new analysis isn’t all bleak. It also shows that some strategies to fight deforestation appear to be working.
For much of the last few decades, Indonesia and Malaysia razed an extraordinarily large amount of tropical rainforest. Companies were clearing forests and replacing them with plantations of trees that produce palm oil, a now-ubiquitous ingredient found in everything from baby shampoo to ice cream.
But in the last 10 years or so, a combination of government policies, better monitoring of forest fires, and advocacy campaigns targeting palm oil companies caused deforestation to slow, as Vox previously reported. WRI’s new analysis reaffirms this trend: In 2022, forest loss in Indonesia and Malaysia remained low.
“Indonesia has reduced its primary forest loss more than any other country in recent years,” Liz Goldman, a researcher with Global Forest Watch, said on the press call.
These results are especially encouraging considering that palm oil prices spiked in the spring of 2022, which tends to raise the incentive to plant palm oil trees. That said, there’s typically a lag between rising palm oil prices and deforestation, so forest loss data for 2023 could be a better test of whether the region’s anti-deforestation policies work.
In past decades, even Brazil had remarkable success in slowing deforestation. When Lula first became president, starting in 2003, his administration ramped up forest monitoring and enforcement, and backed a number of initiatives to protect forests, DeFries said. At the time, there was more political will in Brazil to solve the problem, she said — partly because politicians and the Brazilian public didn’t want the reputation as being destroyers of the Amazon.
That changed with Bolsonaro, who empowered the agriculture industry, which in turn fueled rampant rates of deforestation.
How to end deforestation
In the face of yet another year of severe forest loss, it’s these stories from Indonesia and Brazil that give environmental advocates hope. With political will, anti-deforestation policies — such as those restricting commodities tied to forest loss — and strong corporate accountability campaigns can work.
“With political will” is of course a hefty caveat. Yet there are ways to build the necessary support, DeFries says, starting with informing the public about the crisis of deforestation and how it threatens us all, whether or not we live anywhere near the Amazon rainforest. It’s not just about cute animals losing a place to live but our very existence: Deforestation fuels climate change and directly threatens human health by giving viruses more opportunities to spill into our populations.
Insights/Universal Images Group via Getty
A brown-throated sloth hangs from a tree within a forest in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
There are a handful of other reasons to think that deforestation rates won’t be high forever.
On the policy front, the European Union recently passed a regulation that prevents companies from selling or exporting beef, coffee, and a handful of other commodities in the EU if they’re grown on land where forests were recently cleared. (One major limitation of the EU regulation is that the European market for these goods is relatively small compared to, say, Asia.)
Plus, tools to map and monitor changes in the world’s forests using satellites are improving quickly, making it easier to hold countries and companies accountable for their actions.
In the years ahead, one other major obstacle could stand in the way of progress: There will be millions more mouths to feed. Indeed, global food demand is set to increase by more than 50 percent by mid-century, according to WRI. And in the past, more food has meant more deforestation.
This challenge is solvable, too. The world can grow more food without destroying more forests, WRI has found, though doing so requires some big changes in the way our food system operates. Farms and ranches will have to become far more efficient, for example, and meat-eaters will need to consume more plant-based foods. (If you’re wondering what youcan do: Experts say eating less beef is probably the single best way an individual can benefit forests.)
If there is one takeaway from all of this, it’s that a future rife with environmental destruction isn’t inevitable. The tools exist to fix the problem, said Brandão Jr., who’s from the Brazilian Amazon. “There is no need for more deforestation,” he said.
From The Hindu: Sports
Regency Smile, A Star Is Born, Artemis Ignacia, Knight In Hooves, Dedicate and All Attractive shine -
Bumrah bowling seven overs a day at NCA nets, no timeline yet on comeback - Ramji Srinivasan, former strength and conditioning coach of Team India, said extreme care should be taken while bringing back Bumrah
PCB unsure but ICC ‘confident’ Pakistan will travel to India for ODI World Cup - PCB did not want to play Afghanistan on a spin-friendly track in Chennai and also wanted to avoid facing Australia in Benglauru.
Ilkay Gundogan agrees to join Barcelona on a free transfer - The Germany midfielder’s last act as a Manchester City player — and captain — was to lift the Champions League trophy, which completed a treble of major titles for the English club.
2023 ICC ODI World Cup in India | Full schedule, venues, time, teams and where to stream - All you need to know regarding fixtures, teams participating, match timings, venues and where to watch all the matches of the 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup to be hosted by India
From The Hindu: National News
Explained | Rehana Fathima case: Obscenity laws and the policing of female sexuality - The Kerala High Court’s recent decision in the Rehana Fathima obscenity case draws attention to the definition, or lack thereof, of obscenity in Indian law, and how such cases undermine the agency and bodily autonomy of women
Mamata injured as chopper makes emergency landing due to bad weather: official - Mamata was going to Bagdogra Airport from Jalpaiguri to take a flight to Kolkata
Spotted deer hunted down in Chintoor Agency - Tribal folk set out on a hunting spree during the Bhumi Panduga time in the region endangering the wildlife, say forest officials
Abin, who arranged fake certificate for Nikhil, taken into custody - He arrived at Cochin International Airport at Nedumbassery from the Maldives
Mamata rattled as BJP fighting corruption: Bhupender Yadav on Bengal CM’s allegation against BSF - CM Mamata had asserted that “law and order is a State subject” and the Centre has no role in it
From BBC: Europe
Ukraine likely to have retaken land occupied by Russia since 2014, UK’s MoD says - It comes as Ukraine’s president says the country’s counter-offensive is making advances on all fronts.
Ex-Audi boss Stadler avoids jail in VW emissions scandal - Rupert Stadler is given a suspended term and a fine for fraud and negligence over Dieselgate.
Spanish swimming pools in Catalonia told not to ban topless bathing - Activists are celebrating a ruling by the Spanish region to enforce an equality law on going topless.
UK to work more closely with EU on financial services - The UK and EU pact is being seen as a step towards better relations over financial services.
Ukraine war: Russia executed 77 civilians detained by its forces, UN says - The UN says more than 800 people have been arbitrarily detained, with evidence of widespread torture.
From Ars Technica
SpaceX making more than 1,000 changes to next Starship rocket - “Hot staging” and engine upgrade to debut on SpaceX’s next Starship test flight. - link
World’s largest predatory shark had elevated body temperature - A warmer body would have made for a faster shark. - link
The tiniest hitchhikers: Nematodes leap onto bumblebees via electric fields - Worms lept at an average speed of 0.86 meters per second, close to human walking speed. - link
Couple develops rare disease after beetles eating their furniture get mites - When your pests have pests, you’re in for a bad—and very itchy—time. - link
US allocates $42B in broadband funding—find out how much your state will get - Texas and California lead way as 19 states will get at least $1 billion each. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
Forging A Return To Productive Conversation: An Open Letter to Reddit -
To All Whom It May Concern,
For fifteen years, /r/Jokes has been one of Reddit’s most-popular communities. That time hasn’t been without its difficulties, but for the most part, we’ve all gotten along (with each other and with administrators). Members of our team fondly remember Moderator Roadshows, visits to Reddit’s headquarters, Reddit Secret Santa, April Fools’ Day events, regional meetups, and many more uplifting moments. We’ve watched this platform grow by leaps and bounds, and although we haven’t been completely happy about every change that we’ve witnessed, we’ve always done our best to work with Reddit at finding ways to adapt, compromise, and move forward.
This process has occasionally been preceded by some exceptionally public debate, however.
On June 12th, 2023, /r/Jokes joined thousands of other subreddits in protesting the planned changes to Reddit’s API; changes which – despite being immediately evident to only a minority of Redditors – threatened to worsen the site for everyone. By June 16th, 2023, that demonstration had evolved to represent a wider (and growing) array of concerns, many of which arose in response to Reddit’s statements to journalists. Today (June 26th, 2023), we are hopeful that users and administrators alike can make a return to the productive dialogue that has served us in the past.
We acknowledge that Reddit has placed itself in a situation that makes adjusting its current API roadmap impossible.
However, we have the following requests:
Commit to exploring ways by which third-party applications can make an affordable return.
Commit to providing moderation tools and accessibility options (on Old Reddit, New Reddit, and mobile platforms) which match or exceed the functionality and utility of third-party applications.
Commit to prioritizing a significant reduction in spam, misinformation, bigotry, and illegal content on Reddit.
Guarantee that any future developments which may impact moderators, contributors, or stakeholders will be announced no less than one fiscal quarter before they are scheduled to go into effect.
Work together with longstanding moderators to establish a reasonable roadmap and deadline for accomplishing all of the above.
Affirm that efforts meant to keep Reddit accountable to its commitments and deadlines will hereafter not be met with insults, threats, removals, or hostility.
Publicly affirm all of the above by way of updating Reddit’s User Agreement and Reddit’s Moderator Code of Conduct to include reasonable expectations and requirements for administrators’ behavior.
Implement and fill a senior-level role (with decision-making and policy-shaping power) of “Moderator Advocate” at Reddit, with a required qualification for the position being robust experience as a volunteer Reddit moderator.
Reddit is unique amongst social-media sites in that its lifeblood – its multitude of moderators and contributors – consists entirely of volunteers. We populate and curate the platform’s many communities, thereby providing a welcoming and engaging environment for all of its visitors. We receive little in the way of thanks for these efforts, but we frequently endure abuse, threats, attacks, and exposure to truly reprehensible media. Historically, we have trusted that Reddit’s administrators have the best interests of the platform and its users (be they moderators, contributors, participants, or lurkers) at heart; that while Reddit may be a for-profit company, it nonetheless recognizes and appreciates the value that Redditors provide.
That trust has been all but entirely eroded… but we hope that together, we can begin to rebuild it.
In simplest terms, Reddit, we implore you: Remember the human.
We look forward to your response by Thursday, June 29th, 2023.
Both superheroes are exhausted after a long week of non-stop crime fighting, and decide to chill for a few a hours at the local watering hole.
Robin knows his friend has been working way too hard and for long hours. So he thinks, what the heck, he can get drunk and relax. He decides to remain watchful and orders non-alcoholic beer, while Batman orders a bottle a scotch for himself.
The booze takes the edge off and Batman opens up about his dead parents, the millions he’s lost on Bitcoin, his romantic relationship failures… He’s almost crying.
A couple of hours later he finishes the bottle and is totally shit-faced. Robin pays the bill, and they exit the bar and head off to where they parked the Batmobile.
Batman can barely walk. He realizes he can’t drive so he hands the Batmobile’s keys to Robin. “You’re driving tonight, kiddo”.
Robin’s jaw drops. He can’t believe his luck. After all these years, he’s finally driving this machine! And boy, is he going to test its limits! He puts Batman in the passenger seat, lowers it and buckles him up.
He turns on the engine, grabs the stick shift, shifts into first and slams down the gas pedal. He quickly shifts into second, third gear. He goes from 0-60 in 2.5 seconds. He’s driving through Gotham’s streets like a maniac. He takes a hard turns and downshifts to control the steer. He enters the freeway and is quickly upshifting gears again.
He wants to take this baby to the limit so he repeatedly takes exits and climbs back unto the freeway. He takes exit ramps at 90 mph. He’s pushing over 150. And he’s controlling the car with the stick alone, masterfully upshifting and downshifting. He’s barely touched the brakes. Batman hasn’t made a peep.
After a while, he realizes he’s pushed the Batmobile enough and probably came to busting the gearbox. He drives back to the Batcave.
He parks the Batmobile and opens the door to exit, but a hand stops him.
“Kiss me, Robin.”
“Say what, Batman?!?”
“Kiss me, Robin!”
“Batman, what the heck? You know I’m not gay!”
“Robin, shut up and give a me kiss.”
“I don’t know what gave you that idea, but im not into you!”
“Oh come on, Robin. You’ve always known that the Batmobile is automatic.”
A Blonde, a Brunette, and A Red Head are sentenced to death. -
They are lined up in the yard to be killed. The main guard went up to the Brunette. “You have a choice on how you would like to die: by electric chair, firing squad, or hanging. Which will it be?”
The Brunette replied, “I’ll take the electric chair.”
She was led away by two other guards to the electric chair. She was strapped in and the executioner flipped the switch. The Brunette flinched before noticing that nothing happened. Not even a spark.
“Nothing’s happening,” cried the Brunette.
“What? That’s impossible! How?!” yelled the executioner.
“I don’t know, but maybe it’s a sign?” The Brunette replied.
“A sign from above! This must be divine intervention! Release her!”
The guards followed the executioner’s orders and unstrapped the Brunette, leading her back out. She passed the Red Head as she walked back. She leans towards the Red Head.
“The chair’s not working.” she whispered. The Red Head nodded and she watched as the Brunette was led away. The main guard approaches the Red Head. “I present to you the same choice. Which will it be?”
The Red Head replied, “I’ll do the electric chair.”
She was led away by the two other guards to the electric chair. Like the Brunette before her, she was strapped in and the executioner flipped the switch. The Red Head flinched but again, nothing happened, not even a spark.
“It didn’t do anything,” cried the Red Head.
“Again? Impossible!” yelled the executioner.
“Who knows, it could be a sign?” The Red Head replied.
The guards followed the executioner’s orders and unstrapped the Red Head, leading her back out. She passed the Blonde as she walked back. She leans towards the Blonde.
“The chair’s not working.” she whispered. The Blonde nodded and she watched as the Red Head was led away. The main guard approaches the Blonde. “I present to you the same choice. Which will it be?”
The Blonde replied, “Well, since the chair is broken, I guess I’ll do the firing squad.”
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24754399/Screen_Shot_2023_06_26_at_7.43.29_PM.png)
US Government Accountability Office
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24749015/01_overall_time_series_fact_checked.png)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24749018/00_big_chart_fact_checked.png)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24749021/05_Top_10_v3_factchecked.png)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24741066/Brazil_map_TCL_2022_EMBARGOED_FOR_June_27__2023.png)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24741133/GettyImages_1243000910.jpg)
Guerchom Ndebo/AFP via Getty Images
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24741159/GettyImages_1237859019.jpg)
Jonne Roriz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24749025/02_Brazil_Indonesia_time_series_fact_checked.png)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24741151/GettyImages_590647287.jpg)
Insights/Universal Images Group via Getty
