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Stone Age People Survived a Supervolcano Eruption by Adapting to Dry Periods, Archaeologists Suggest

News Feed
Monday, March 25, 2024

Indonesia's Lake Toba, formed by a volcanic eruption around 74,000 years ago. In the new study, researchers uncovered fragments of glass from the eruption at an archaeological site in northwest Ethiopia, pointing to the volcano's global impacts. Goh Chai Hin / AFP via Getty Images Around 74,000 years ago, a massive supervolcano called Toba erupted in Indonesia, creating the largest known natural disaster in the last 2.5 million years. Now, an archaeological site in northwest Ethiopia, called Shinfa-Metema 1, may point to how humans adapted to the widespread changes in climate induced by the catastrophic eruption. People at this site shifted to eating more fish during dry periods that seem to be linked to the volcano, according to a study published last week in the journal Nature. “This points to how sophisticated people were in this time period,” John Kappelman, first author of the new study and a paleoanthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin, tells the New York Times’ Carl Zimmer. “This on-the-ground evidence contradicts the popular model that the ‘volcanic winter’ caused by the Toba eruption almost drove humans and our closely related ancestors to extinction,” Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia who did not contribute to the findings, tells the Washington Post’s Carolyn Y. Johnson. “Instead, all evidence from Shinfa-Metema and elsewhere now indicates that human populations were flexible enough in their adaptations to overcome environmental challenges, even those introduced by the Toba volcanic super-eruption of 74,000 years ago,” he adds. Kappelman’s team first came across the Shinfa-Metema 1 site in 2002. Excavations revealed fossil mammoth teeth and ostrich eggshells, as well as bones with cut marks, writes New Scientist’s Michael Le Page. Archaeologists estimate humans populated the site for five to ten years, during a time with seasonal dry periods. The researchers dated the pieces of ostrich eggshell to around 74,000 years ago, the time of the Toba eruption. And the same layers of sediment contained rocks with tiny fragments of volcanic glass, suggesting people lived there both before and after the blast in Indonesia, writes CNN’s Katie Hunt. The site had an unusually high abundance of fish compared to other Stone Age sites, suggesting that people captured more fish as waterholes shrank during the dry season. “People start to increase the percentage of fish in the diet when Toba comes in. They’re capturing and processing almost four times as much fish [as before the eruption],” Kappelman says to CNN. “It is sophisticated behavior… to fish, instead of hunting terrestrial mammals,” Kappelman tells the Washington Post. “That kind of behavioral flexibility is kind of a hallmark of modern humans today.” The researchers also uncovered 16,000 chipped rocks that could be arrowheads, suggesting the site’s inhabitants used bows and arrows to hunt. If confirmed, these artifacts would be the earliest evidence of archery, per the New York Times. Humans’ apparent adaptability at this site might shed light on early migrations, some researchers say. Modern humans spread out from Africa on multiple occasions more than 100,000 years ago, but people without African ancestry are tied genetically to a dispersal that occurred within the last 100,000 years. Previous research had suggested that early humans migrated during humid periods that offered more plants and food sources. Instead, the finding that Stone Age people adjusted to arid conditions suggests humans may have ventured out of Africa during dry periods. They could have followed “blue highways” created by seasonal rivers, moving between small waterholes as they depleted each one, according to a statement from the University of Texas at Austin. Rachel Lupien, a geoscientist at Aarhus University in Denmark who did not contribute to the findings, tells the Washington Post that she isn’t convinced by this theory yet. Comparing the short-term climate at Shinfa-Metema 1 to the climate in other locations, or across thousands of years, overlooks other variables that contribute to climate and rainfall, she says to the publication. “Of course this new work doesn’t mean that humid corridors were not still important conduits for dispersals out of Africa, but this work adds credible additional possibilities during more arid phases,” Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the research, tells CNN. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Humans living in northwest Ethiopia around 74,000 years ago switched to eating more fish following the eruption, a behavior that might have enabled migration out of Africa

An aerial photo of a lake surrounded by green hills
Indonesia's Lake Toba, formed by a volcanic eruption around 74,000 years ago. In the new study, researchers uncovered fragments of glass from the eruption at an archaeological site in northwest Ethiopia, pointing to the volcano's global impacts. Goh Chai Hin / AFP via Getty Images

Around 74,000 years ago, a massive supervolcano called Toba erupted in Indonesia, creating the largest known natural disaster in the last 2.5 million years.

Now, an archaeological site in northwest Ethiopia, called Shinfa-Metema 1, may point to how humans adapted to the widespread changes in climate induced by the catastrophic eruption. People at this site shifted to eating more fish during dry periods that seem to be linked to the volcano, according to a study published last week in the journal Nature.

“This points to how sophisticated people were in this time period,” John Kappelman, first author of the new study and a paleoanthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin, tells the New York Times’ Carl Zimmer.

“This on-the-ground evidence contradicts the popular model that the ‘volcanic winter’ caused by the Toba eruption almost drove humans and our closely related ancestors to extinction,” Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia who did not contribute to the findings, tells the Washington Post’s Carolyn Y. Johnson.

“Instead, all evidence from Shinfa-Metema and elsewhere now indicates that human populations were flexible enough in their adaptations to overcome environmental challenges, even those introduced by the Toba volcanic super-eruption of 74,000 years ago,” he adds.

Kappelman’s team first came across the Shinfa-Metema 1 site in 2002. Excavations revealed fossil mammoth teeth and ostrich eggshells, as well as bones with cut marks, writes New Scientist’s Michael Le Page. Archaeologists estimate humans populated the site for five to ten years, during a time with seasonal dry periods.

The researchers dated the pieces of ostrich eggshell to around 74,000 years ago, the time of the Toba eruption. And the same layers of sediment contained rocks with tiny fragments of volcanic glass, suggesting people lived there both before and after the blast in Indonesia, writes CNN’s Katie Hunt.

The site had an unusually high abundance of fish compared to other Stone Age sites, suggesting that people captured more fish as waterholes shrank during the dry season.

“People start to increase the percentage of fish in the diet when Toba comes in. They’re capturing and processing almost four times as much fish [as before the eruption],” Kappelman says to CNN.

“It is sophisticated behavior… to fish, instead of hunting terrestrial mammals,” Kappelman tells the Washington Post. “That kind of behavioral flexibility is kind of a hallmark of modern humans today.”

The researchers also uncovered 16,000 chipped rocks that could be arrowheads, suggesting the site’s inhabitants used bows and arrows to hunt. If confirmed, these artifacts would be the earliest evidence of archery, per the New York Times.

Humans’ apparent adaptability at this site might shed light on early migrations, some researchers say. Modern humans spread out from Africa on multiple occasions more than 100,000 years ago, but people without African ancestry are tied genetically to a dispersal that occurred within the last 100,000 years. Previous research had suggested that early humans migrated during humid periods that offered more plants and food sources.

Instead, the finding that Stone Age people adjusted to arid conditions suggests humans may have ventured out of Africa during dry periods. They could have followed “blue highways” created by seasonal rivers, moving between small waterholes as they depleted each one, according to a statement from the University of Texas at Austin.

Rachel Lupien, a geoscientist at Aarhus University in Denmark who did not contribute to the findings, tells the Washington Post that she isn’t convinced by this theory yet. Comparing the short-term climate at Shinfa-Metema 1 to the climate in other locations, or across thousands of years, overlooks other variables that contribute to climate and rainfall, she says to the publication.

“Of course this new work doesn’t mean that humid corridors were not still important conduits for dispersals out of Africa, but this work adds credible additional possibilities during more arid phases,” Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the research, tells CNN.

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Defying Climate Change: Yellowstone’s Lake Ice Isn’t Melting Like Others

According to recent research led by scientists from the University of Wyoming, the duration for which Yellowstone Lake remains ice-covered each year has remained constant...

Yellowstone Lake, North America’s largest high-elevation lake, freezes over completely in late December or early January and usually thaws in late May or early June. The period of ice cover has not changed in the last century, despite warming temperatures in the region. Credit: Lusha TronstadAccording to recent research led by scientists from the University of Wyoming, the duration for which Yellowstone Lake remains ice-covered each year has remained constant over the past century, even amidst rising regional temperatures.That is an unexpected finding, as most lakes around the world are experiencing shorter durations of ice cover, the scientists note in a new paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.“We show that contrary to expectation, the ice phenology of Yellowstone Lake has been uniquely resistant to climate change,” wrote the scientists, led by Lusha Tronstad, lead invertebrate zoologist with UW’s Wyoming Natural Diversity Database and Department of Zoology and Physiology, and Isabella Oleksy, a former UW postdoctoral researcher now on the University of Colorado-Boulder faculty. “The unchanging ice phenology of Yellowstone Lake stands in stark contrast to similar lakes in the Northern Hemisphere.” Other researchers involved in the study are from Utah State University, Colorado State University, and Colorado Mesa University.Geographic and Environmental ContextSituated at 7,733 feet above sea level in the heart of Yellowstone National Park, Yellowstone Lake is North America’s largest high-elevation lake, roughly 20 miles long and 14 miles wide with a surface area of 132 square miles. It freezes over completely in late December or early January and usually thaws in late May or early June.Records for the lake’s ice-off date have been recorded each year by Lake Village Ranger Station staff since 1927, and the ice-on date has been recorded since 1931. In addition to studying those records, the scientists analyzed climate data for the same period, 1927-2022, including air temperatures and precipitation. They also compared Yellowstone Lake’s data with seven similar lakes in northern Europe.The lack of long-term change in the duration of Yellowstone Lake’s ice cover was unexpected because the Yellowstone region has seen a warming climate, the researchers say. Since 1950, annual temperatures have increased by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The changes are particularly pronounced at the high elevation of Yellowstone Lake, where air temperatures increased by about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit between 1980-2018.“Using local weather data, we found some evidence for increased summer, fall, and spring temperatures, primarily in the last three decades,” the scientists wrote about air temperatures at Yellowstone Lake. “Given the key role of air temperatures in driving ice formation and break-up, it is noteworthy that we did not find evidence for corresponding shifts in ice phenology.”The Role of Snow in Ice PhenologyWhy the apparent discrepancy?While it is possible that fall minimum temperatures — which are important in predicting ice formation — are not rising as quickly as overall temperature trends in the region, a more likely explanation is that increased snowfall at Yellowstone Lake has served as a buffer against warmer weather, the scientists say.Snow cover, particularly in spring, can delay ice break-up. Cumulative spring snow, which was strongly correlated with delayed ice-off dates, has nearly doubled over the last century at Yellowstone Lake, the research showed. In general, precipitation has increased in spring and fall there.That differs from the Upper Green River Basin to the south, where snowfall has declined or been relatively stable at high elevations.“Shifts in local precipitation, especially increases in fall and spring snow, appear to be buffering (Yellowstone Lake) ice phenology against warming temperatures,” the researchers wrote.But, the scientists are not sure how long this phenomenon will last, noting projections of continued warming and shifting precipitation regimes in the high Rocky Mountains.“Our results, paired with recent analyses of climate projections, suggest a ‘tipping point’ may be coming when ice phenology abruptly changes for Yellowstone Lake,” they wrote. “This tipping point will largely stem from the ongoing shift from snow- to rain-dominated precipitation regimes in the fall and spring.“… Increased spring rainfall has not yet caused a detectable long-term trend toward earlier ice break-up, potentially because of the counteracting effects of increased spring snow. As temperatures warm further, and fall and spring snowfall decreases, ice phenology may rapidly change on Yellowstone Lake.”If that happens, “there may be wide-ranging consequences for nutrient cycling, lake productivity, fisheries, and recreation,” the scientists concluded.Reference: “Despite a century of warming, increased snowfall has buffered the ice phenology of North America’s largest high-elevation lake against climate change” by Lusha Tronstad, Isabella Oleksy, Justin P. F. Pomeranz, Daniel Preston, Gordon Gianniny, Katrina Cook, Ana Holley, Phil Farnes, Todd Koel and Scott Hotaling, 8 April 2024, Environmental Research Letters.DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad3bd1

Climate
Mountains

UAW’s Latest Labor Victory Is a Huge Climate Win, Too

Angel Gomez, a second-shift underbody mechanic at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was on the line when United Auto Workers won the factory union election. “I heard hollering,” said Gomez, as the news broke through the shop floor on Thursday, April 18. “There were people who’d been trying to do this for fourteen years, they’ve been putting in the work through all these failed elections, and finally they got it. It was a good feeling.”Renee Berry, 58 years old and a veteran of those two failed elections, was even more ecstatic. Apologizing over and over again on the phone for being so emotional, she told me the ballot count was agonizingly slow: Yes, no, no, yes, yes. “I almost had an anxiety attack,” she said. “We put our blood sweat and tears in this plant.”The Volkswagen plant had become a litmus test for the South. After UAW’s union campaigns at the plant were defeated in 2014 and 2019, the popular adage was that labor just couldn’t win here. The country’s media outlets of record united to declare the south a resource pit, a place where labor goes to die. And it’s true that states here are right-to-work, where the power of unions is severely curtailed by legal barriers to organizing and wages overall are far lower than the national average. But as this election shows, the South is home to an energetic homegrown labor movement that’s patient and insistent in the face of a hostile political climate. That, combined with an injection of federal investment in renewable energy industry, is pushing the region towards a very different trajectory than the one imagined by conservative politicians who have opposed these developments.Corporations, and the incredibly wealthy people who run them, have become Republicans’ biggest donors, swaying even more moderate politicians into virulent anti-unionism. That’s trickled down to local politics in places like Chattanooga, where many people lacked unionized family members or much context for the what union membership might mean. “It was just a lot of people who are ambivalent, and just seemed like, I’m not sure, a lot of these guys, you really just needed to give them just a little bit of information, like a little bit of like, Hey, this is what could be possible,” said Zach Costello, a worker who was on the organizing committee. It was often easier to convince people like Berry, whose dad was a union steelworker: she knew it meant healthcare, a pension, higher wages, and job security. They and Gomez fanned the embers, despite Southern politicians over the past few decades doing their best to stamp the spark of the labor movement out.The Volkswagen plant is the first new auto industry union in the South in eighty years, and the only union plant owned by a foreign automaker. “In the nineties, governors began trying to entice foreign auto plants to come to the south,” said Stephen Silvia, a labor economist at American University. “They told auto producers that wages are lower, taxes are lower, land is cheaper, and we cultivate a nonunion environment.”It all began when Tennessee offered Nissan generous incentives to establish a plant in the community of Smyrna. Nissan became the first foothold in a wave of industry relocation to the South, and amongst the state’s owning class, a sign of incoming prosperity. “We’re all gonna be rich!” exclaimed the mayor of Smyrna at the time, according to an account in the Journal of Southern History. In 1989, UAW’s attempts to organize the Nissan plant lost by a two-one margin. The companies’ union-busting playbook—frightening ads that threatened the plant’s closure, captive audience meetings, rhetoric about losing jobs, and offers of competitive pay should the union lose—became the playbook for anti-union campaigns across the region ever since. As unions lost, the auto industry’s landscape tilted southwards, meaning that about half of auto workers now work in nonunion plants, which are mostly located in the Southeast. Before that time, nearly all autoworkers belonged to a union. Auto manufacturers located themselves in rural areas, often establishing racist hiring practices to keep solidarity out of the shop floor. Other industries trickled into the region, too—aviation, tech, chemical manufacturing, and paper products, just to name a few. All made their homes in various states where business came cheap and easy.Climate regulations and the Inflation Reduction Act’s generous incentives are now stimulating electric vehicle manufacturing. Despite the Biden administration’s pro-labor economic agenda, IRA funding—and thus billions of dollars in public and private investment—has largely gone to areas with low union density, spurring worries among auto workers that the EV shift could create a second tier of lower-paid, nonunion workers spearheading the transition to electric vehicles, working in dangerous conditions with flammable elements like lithium.In 2022, Volkswagen broke ground on EV production and assembly; the same year, the Mercedes plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama—UAW’s next battle, organizers tell me—began manufacturing an electric SUV. In the most recent union contract between UAW and the Big Three automakers, General Motors and Stellantis agreed to allow joint-venture EV manufacturing plants under the union umbrella, and now, Tennessee may be the next step.Since the beginning conversations about reducing dependence on fossil fuels—a necessary transition that nonetheless could have deleterious impacts on workers across steel, coal, oil, auto, and building trades industries—workers have demanded a “just transition”: an energy transition that prevents as much of the workforce as possible from being dislocated, allows for training and opportunity, and provides jobs equal to or better than the ones that came before. Environmental organizations have taken up the demand, too, seeing that a united front for labor rights and environmental justice is more powerful than keeping the two at loggerheads, as right-wing politicians might prefer. A just transition is what workers in the South are demanding as the IRA funds flood in.“We’re seeing a bunch of EV manufacturers come here,” said Michael Adriaanse, “and they should be union.” Adriaanse organizes with the Blue Oval Good Neighbors Committee. In rural, working class Black communities in west Tennessee, this labor and community coalition is mobilizing to bargain with Blue Oval City, a Ford joint venture electric vehicle plant that’s the recipient of the largest public investment the state of Tennessee has ever made, with an added $9.2 billion in funding from the Department of Energy. The VW victory has given workers hope for their efforts to negotiate good jobs and community benefits with the EV industry, he added. But it’s going to be hard won.“Anti-union sentiment across the country is virulent, and laws across the country don’t support unionization,” said Vonda McDaniel, who serves as a part of the Blue Oval coalition and is president of the Middle Tennessee Central Labor Council. Lawmakers in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama passed bills just this year and last year barring state incentives to companies that voluntarily recognize unions. In 2022, Tennessee enshrined right-to-work into its constitution. The prospect of this election had Southern governors running scared, so much so that the governors of Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia wrote a joint public condemnation of the union drive. In Alabama, which boasts the seventh highest poverty rate in the country, Governor Kay Ivey lambasted UAW, saying that “the Alabama model for economic success is under attack.” Research has shown that any economic growth in right-to-work states tends to benefit the already wealthy. In its previous attempts to organize Volkswagen, the UAW attempted a top-down strategy, where they tried to simply persuade Volkswagen to recognize the union. The UAW employed a different strategy this time, a bottom-up strategy that truly involved deep organizing in the plant. “This has to be personal, person to person, door to door,” McDaniel said.The simple power of conversations worked for Zach Costello, who found that once people started talking about their conditions, they started flipping themselves more than he really flipped them, often across partisan lines. “You really saw a lot of people you would expect, because of their political leanings, to not really be pro-union,” he said. “But people are ready to throw out culture war crap, when they’re talking about real things that affect them.”McDaniel now hopes national unions—many of which have been wary of investing resources in the region—see the success of this strategy. Currently, state-level politics in the South mean many unions tend to write it off, refusing to engage their resources in what they have seen as a losing battle.Outside the automotive industry, other regional rank-and-file workers and labor organizers see these victories reinvigorating their own long-term struggles for economic and racial justice. While Tennessee is still ranked thirteenth lowest state for union representation, its union membership is the fastest-growing in the country, across all job sectors. UAW’s changing strategy and priorities certainly made the win possible, but so, too, did the genuine exuberance and support of the statewide and Southern labor movement, which has been chipping away at poor working conditions, workplace inequality, and depressed wages for two hundred years—through the end of slavery, through miners’ rebellions and textile strikes, through Black sharecroppers’ uprisings, and the Memphis garbage collectors’ strike that saw Martin Luther King’s final speech. Workers in Tennessee say they’ve been working for this kind of breakthrough.“Something feels different in Tennessee,” said Bobbi Lyn Negrón, a public school teacher and member of the Metropolitan Nashville Educators Association, which won a fight against school privatization only this week. “But we still have workers across the South that have been resisting.” Negrón listed a few fights off the top of her head: Memphis fragrance factory workers who’ve been on strike; an active campus workers’ union in the eastern part of the state that’s won repeated graduate stipend raises. Amid a dispiritingly anti-labor state political climate, this feels like a moment of true possibility. “We have a saying in Spanish, ‘like candela’,” Negrón said, “meaning the fire in us is going to ignite.”

Angel Gomez, a second-shift underbody mechanic at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was on the line when United Auto Workers won the factory union election. “I heard hollering,” said Gomez, as the news broke through the shop floor on Thursday, April 18. “There were people who’d been trying to do this for fourteen years, they’ve been putting in the work through all these failed elections, and finally they got it. It was a good feeling.”Renee Berry, 58 years old and a veteran of those two failed elections, was even more ecstatic. Apologizing over and over again on the phone for being so emotional, she told me the ballot count was agonizingly slow: Yes, no, no, yes, yes. “I almost had an anxiety attack,” she said. “We put our blood sweat and tears in this plant.”The Volkswagen plant had become a litmus test for the South. After UAW’s union campaigns at the plant were defeated in 2014 and 2019, the popular adage was that labor just couldn’t win here. The country’s media outlets of record united to declare the south a resource pit, a place where labor goes to die. And it’s true that states here are right-to-work, where the power of unions is severely curtailed by legal barriers to organizing and wages overall are far lower than the national average. But as this election shows, the South is home to an energetic homegrown labor movement that’s patient and insistent in the face of a hostile political climate. That, combined with an injection of federal investment in renewable energy industry, is pushing the region towards a very different trajectory than the one imagined by conservative politicians who have opposed these developments.Corporations, and the incredibly wealthy people who run them, have become Republicans’ biggest donors, swaying even more moderate politicians into virulent anti-unionism. That’s trickled down to local politics in places like Chattanooga, where many people lacked unionized family members or much context for the what union membership might mean. “It was just a lot of people who are ambivalent, and just seemed like, I’m not sure, a lot of these guys, you really just needed to give them just a little bit of information, like a little bit of like, Hey, this is what could be possible,” said Zach Costello, a worker who was on the organizing committee. It was often easier to convince people like Berry, whose dad was a union steelworker: she knew it meant healthcare, a pension, higher wages, and job security. They and Gomez fanned the embers, despite Southern politicians over the past few decades doing their best to stamp the spark of the labor movement out.The Volkswagen plant is the first new auto industry union in the South in eighty years, and the only union plant owned by a foreign automaker. “In the nineties, governors began trying to entice foreign auto plants to come to the south,” said Stephen Silvia, a labor economist at American University. “They told auto producers that wages are lower, taxes are lower, land is cheaper, and we cultivate a nonunion environment.”It all began when Tennessee offered Nissan generous incentives to establish a plant in the community of Smyrna. Nissan became the first foothold in a wave of industry relocation to the South, and amongst the state’s owning class, a sign of incoming prosperity. “We’re all gonna be rich!” exclaimed the mayor of Smyrna at the time, according to an account in the Journal of Southern History. In 1989, UAW’s attempts to organize the Nissan plant lost by a two-one margin. The companies’ union-busting playbook—frightening ads that threatened the plant’s closure, captive audience meetings, rhetoric about losing jobs, and offers of competitive pay should the union lose—became the playbook for anti-union campaigns across the region ever since. As unions lost, the auto industry’s landscape tilted southwards, meaning that about half of auto workers now work in nonunion plants, which are mostly located in the Southeast. Before that time, nearly all autoworkers belonged to a union. Auto manufacturers located themselves in rural areas, often establishing racist hiring practices to keep solidarity out of the shop floor. Other industries trickled into the region, too—aviation, tech, chemical manufacturing, and paper products, just to name a few. All made their homes in various states where business came cheap and easy.Climate regulations and the Inflation Reduction Act’s generous incentives are now stimulating electric vehicle manufacturing. Despite the Biden administration’s pro-labor economic agenda, IRA funding—and thus billions of dollars in public and private investment—has largely gone to areas with low union density, spurring worries among auto workers that the EV shift could create a second tier of lower-paid, nonunion workers spearheading the transition to electric vehicles, working in dangerous conditions with flammable elements like lithium.In 2022, Volkswagen broke ground on EV production and assembly; the same year, the Mercedes plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama—UAW’s next battle, organizers tell me—began manufacturing an electric SUV. In the most recent union contract between UAW and the Big Three automakers, General Motors and Stellantis agreed to allow joint-venture EV manufacturing plants under the union umbrella, and now, Tennessee may be the next step.Since the beginning conversations about reducing dependence on fossil fuels—a necessary transition that nonetheless could have deleterious impacts on workers across steel, coal, oil, auto, and building trades industries—workers have demanded a “just transition”: an energy transition that prevents as much of the workforce as possible from being dislocated, allows for training and opportunity, and provides jobs equal to or better than the ones that came before. Environmental organizations have taken up the demand, too, seeing that a united front for labor rights and environmental justice is more powerful than keeping the two at loggerheads, as right-wing politicians might prefer. A just transition is what workers in the South are demanding as the IRA funds flood in.“We’re seeing a bunch of EV manufacturers come here,” said Michael Adriaanse, “and they should be union.” Adriaanse organizes with the Blue Oval Good Neighbors Committee. In rural, working class Black communities in west Tennessee, this labor and community coalition is mobilizing to bargain with Blue Oval City, a Ford joint venture electric vehicle plant that’s the recipient of the largest public investment the state of Tennessee has ever made, with an added $9.2 billion in funding from the Department of Energy. The VW victory has given workers hope for their efforts to negotiate good jobs and community benefits with the EV industry, he added. But it’s going to be hard won.“Anti-union sentiment across the country is virulent, and laws across the country don’t support unionization,” said Vonda McDaniel, who serves as a part of the Blue Oval coalition and is president of the Middle Tennessee Central Labor Council. Lawmakers in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama passed bills just this year and last year barring state incentives to companies that voluntarily recognize unions. In 2022, Tennessee enshrined right-to-work into its constitution. The prospect of this election had Southern governors running scared, so much so that the governors of Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia wrote a joint public condemnation of the union drive. In Alabama, which boasts the seventh highest poverty rate in the country, Governor Kay Ivey lambasted UAW, saying that “the Alabama model for economic success is under attack.” Research has shown that any economic growth in right-to-work states tends to benefit the already wealthy. In its previous attempts to organize Volkswagen, the UAW attempted a top-down strategy, where they tried to simply persuade Volkswagen to recognize the union. The UAW employed a different strategy this time, a bottom-up strategy that truly involved deep organizing in the plant. “This has to be personal, person to person, door to door,” McDaniel said.The simple power of conversations worked for Zach Costello, who found that once people started talking about their conditions, they started flipping themselves more than he really flipped them, often across partisan lines. “You really saw a lot of people you would expect, because of their political leanings, to not really be pro-union,” he said. “But people are ready to throw out culture war crap, when they’re talking about real things that affect them.”McDaniel now hopes national unions—many of which have been wary of investing resources in the region—see the success of this strategy. Currently, state-level politics in the South mean many unions tend to write it off, refusing to engage their resources in what they have seen as a losing battle.Outside the automotive industry, other regional rank-and-file workers and labor organizers see these victories reinvigorating their own long-term struggles for economic and racial justice. While Tennessee is still ranked thirteenth lowest state for union representation, its union membership is the fastest-growing in the country, across all job sectors. UAW’s changing strategy and priorities certainly made the win possible, but so, too, did the genuine exuberance and support of the statewide and Southern labor movement, which has been chipping away at poor working conditions, workplace inequality, and depressed wages for two hundred years—through the end of slavery, through miners’ rebellions and textile strikes, through Black sharecroppers’ uprisings, and the Memphis garbage collectors’ strike that saw Martin Luther King’s final speech. Workers in Tennessee say they’ve been working for this kind of breakthrough.“Something feels different in Tennessee,” said Bobbi Lyn Negrón, a public school teacher and member of the Metropolitan Nashville Educators Association, which won a fight against school privatization only this week. “But we still have workers across the South that have been resisting.” Negrón listed a few fights off the top of her head: Memphis fragrance factory workers who’ve been on strike; an active campus workers’ union in the eastern part of the state that’s won repeated graduate stipend raises. Amid a dispiritingly anti-labor state political climate, this feels like a moment of true possibility. “We have a saying in Spanish, ‘like candela’,” Negrón said, “meaning the fire in us is going to ignite.”

Climate
Business
Culture

Congress Ponders Competing Bills to Aid Tribes and Wildlife

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Nine years ago, Glenn Olson joined a panel whose members, in ordinary circumstances, would rarely appear in the same room together—let alone work as a collaborative team. Olson, chair of bird conservation and public policy at the National Audubon […]

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Nine years ago, Glenn Olson joined a panel whose members, in ordinary circumstances, would rarely appear in the same room together—let alone work as a collaborative team. Olson, chair of bird conservation and public policy at the National Audubon Society, sat with executives from Shell Oil, Toyota Motors, and the National Rifle Association, as well as with sportsmen, scientists and former government officials. The panel’s stated goal was to design a new system of funding conservation, one that would ensure the long-term flourishing of the nation’s wildlife. State and territorial wildlife agencies currently receive most of their funding from hunting and fishing fees and equipment purchases. This revenue is prioritized for game species, while non-game species have to rely on the approximately $60 million agencies receive from the federal budget every year—an amount that, once divided among more than 50 agencies, forces many state and tribal wildlife managers to pick and choose which species to protect. If annual funding was increased to $1.3 billion, Olson’s panel reported, those agencies could reach thousands more “species in greatest conservation need,” restoring some populations before they become endangered. The America’s Wildlife Habitat Conservation Act includes $300 million for local wildlife agencies and $20 million for tribes every year for five years. The panel laid the groundwork for what is now known as the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. If passed, RAWA would secure an annual $1.3 billion for wildlife agencies and $97.5 million for conservation work by tribal nations. Since it was first introduced in 2021, RAWA has been backed not only by environmental groups but by corporations hoping to avoid the costs associated with federal endangered species regulations. In a polarized Congress, the bill has earned unusually broad bipartisan support. “We got to the point where we just got more and more co-sponsors,” Olson said. “Everybody came together and said, ‘This looks like a durable solution.’” This year, RAWA is poised for another vote on the Senate floor. The bill continues to gain co-sponsors on both sides of the aisle, but lawmakers have yet to settle on a funding source. Now, a new conservation bill may compete for supporters, particularly among Republicans. Last week, the America’s Wildlife Habitat Conservation Act (AWHCA) cleared the House Committee on Natural Resources with a 21-17 vote along party lines. The new bill seeks $300 million for local wildlife agencies and $20 million for tribes every year for five years. These funds would be “subject to appropriation” by Congress, however, meaning the full amount may not be granted each year. And to offset this spending, the bill would rescind $700 million of the federal funding appropriated to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the Inflation Reduction Act. (NOAA plans to use most of its funding from the federal investment for coastal resilience and conservation projects.) The $320 million was the amount the bill’s authors felt comfortable offsetting, said an aide to the House Committee on Natural Resources. Regarding the rescission, the aide said that the committee looked at departments that had received funding from the Inflation Reduction Act but had yet to spend it. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, would also amend the Endangered Species Act, enabling states to submit their own recovery plans for threatened species to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In some cases, the agency would be required to establish “objective, incremental goals” for recovery, with regulations becoming less stringent as those goals are met. The bill would also limit the agency’s ability to designate critical habitat on private lands and remove the requirement that federal agencies update their land-management plans every time a new species is listed or new critical habitat is designated. Supporters of Westerman’s bill say the proposed funding mechanism appeals to fiscally conservative Republicans, and they argue that the amendments to the Endangered Species Act would encourage private landowners and government agencies to collaborate on species recovery. Environmental advocates, however, say the bill is riddled with dealbreakers. RAWA supporters contend that the five-year sunset provision would limit what agencies can accomplish and even who they can hire. In contrast, RAWA would provide the baseline funding necessary for long-term environmental projects, such as forest restoration. Many supporters also worry that the proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act will weaken species conservation plans. As the new bill left the committee, Rep. Jared Huffman, (D-CA), lamented the loss of the “gold standard” embodied in RAWA.  “We still need base funding for tribes, and RAWA has been the most promising avenue for that.” When it comes to tribal-led conservation, RAWA offers multiple benefits that are not reflected in the new bill. For one, it would provide almost five times the amount of funding—a critical difference, since that money would be distributed across more than 574 federally recognized tribes and over 100 million acres of land. For another, RAWA drops any matching requirement for tribes, relieving them of the obligation to constantly reapply for more grants. Tribes are already undertaking significant conservation work, said Julie Thorstenson, executive director of the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society, citing historical and ongoing contributions to the recovery of bison, salmon and the black-footed ferret. The amount of annual funding proposed by RAWA would allow them to expand the scope of their work and take on a more active role in national conversations, rather than dividing their budget between conferences with partners and action on the ground. “We still need base funding for tribes, and RAWA has been the most promising avenue for that,” Thorstenson said. Mike Leahy, senior director of wildlife, hunting and fishing policy at the National Wildlife Federation, said that the annual funding requested by RAWA is the minimum—not an inflated estimate—of what is needed to protect over 12,000 at-risk species nationwide. While acknowledging Rep. Westerman’s intentions, Leahy pointed out the bill has a major “political problem,” given that most Democrats firmly oppose rescinding any money from the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, RAWA faces its own challenges: Its sponsors still have yet to agree on a source of funds for the billion-dollar plan, though many ideas have been proposed. Previous iterations of the bill sought funding from oil and gas leases, taxes on cryptocurrency and fees paid by polluters. Like Leahy, Olson applauded the new bill’s willingness to dramatically increase funding for conservation.  But it lacks the widespread support that has fueled RAWA for nearly a decade, and, as Olson pointed out, “In order to be durable, it almost has to be bipartisan.”

Climate
Conservation
Government

3 policy-aligned progressives vie to replace U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer in 3rd Congressional District

The winner of the May 21 Democratic primary is likely to cruise to victory in November, as registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district by more than 3-to-1.

The trio of progressive Portland-area Democrats leading the race to succeed U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer in Congress are barely distinguishable from each other when it comes to policy positions.But each of the candidates say they have a track record and leadership style that best qualify them to replace Blumenauer, an influential lawmaker who climbed to significant influence during his nearly 30 years in the U.S. House. All three are current or former elected officeholders with experience representing parts of Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District, which stretches from the Willamette River to Hood River.Eddy Morales, a Gresham city councilor and former Washington D.C.-based organizer, is emphasizing his plans to build affordable housing and overhaul the U.S. immigration system. Former Multnomah County Commissioner and corporate lawyer Susheela Jayapal says she’ll seek more federal investment for housing, homelessness services and climate change. State Rep. Maxine Dexter, a medical doctor whose district includes the west side of Portland, is calling for health care reforms as well as investment in housing, homelessness and clean energy.It’s likely the winner of the May 21 Democratic primary will cruise to election in November. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in the district more than 3-to-1.The seat is open for the first time in a generation after Blumenauer, 75, announced his retirement last spring. He handily won reelection 13 times after his first successful campaign in 1996.If elected, the three front-runners all said they would join the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is chaired by Jayapal’s sister, U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington.They also share support for the Green New Deal, reproductive rights and Medicaid for All, although Dexter says smaller reforms are first needed to pave the way for single-payer health care. So far, the candidates have found common ground in polite debates.But they say differing personal, professional and electoral track records set them apart in important ways.Dexter, 51, was raised in a working-class family in Washington state. She is a practicing critical care physician and pulmonologist in Kaiser Permanente hospitals and is in her second full term in the Oregon House. She is supported by Democratic state lawmakers, the American Medical Association and gun control advocacy groups.As the chair of the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness, Dexter helped pass major investments in affordable housing and rental assistance championed by Gov. Tina Kotek. She has also sponsored legislation that ramped up the distribution of a life-saving opioid overdose reversal medication and banned restaurants’ use of Styrofoam takeout containers.Jayapal, 61, was born in India and moved to the U.S. when she was 16 to attend college. She was general counsel for Adidas until 2000 and since served on a slew of nonprofit boards. She began representing Northeast Portland on the Multnomah County Commission in 2019.Jayapal pitches herself as a strong progressive and coalition-builder. As a county commissioner, she says she helped increase rent assistance for low-income families. She also pushed a program that helps residents replace wood stoves with climate-friendly heat pumps and enthusiastically supported the county’s $51 billion lawsuit against oil and gas companies over the deadly 2021 heat dome. Jayapal is endorsed by environmental groups, Multnomah County Commission Chair Jessica Vega Pederson and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.Morales, 44, was raised in Woodburn and Portland by an immigrant mother from Mexico. A gay man, he could be Oregon’s first out LGBTQ member of Congress. In the 5th District, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a lesbian, is one of two Democrats seeking the party’s nomination.Morales spent more than a decade organizing voters and says he helped generate key support for the Affordable Care Act and youth immigrant “dreamers.” A city councilor in Gresham since 2019, he touts the city’s development of affordable housing complexes and a program to reduce youth gun violence during his tenure. He is endorsed by a bevy of labor unions, the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, Georgia voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams and nine state lawmakers.Campaign financeAs of March 30, the most recent data available, Jayapal had raised $611,000, the most of any candidate, federal records show. Morales had raised $494,000 and Dexter had pulled in $338,000. All three have raised funds from a mix of individual donors and liberal political committees, according to the nonprofit analysis site Open Secrets.Dexter, however, is buoyed by a notably mammoth $1.25 million from the 314 Action Fund, a political action committee that aims to elect progressives with backgrounds in science.No other committee is independently spending to support or oppose the other candidates, according to Open Secrets. Last year, some observers speculated that pro-Israel political groups would oppose Jayapal over her brief reluctance to condemn Hamas for the group’s Oct. 7 attack. Jayapal has since criticized Hamas while calling for a ceasefire amid Israel’s brutal response. Morales and Dexter offered similar statements this spring, and pro-Israel spending in the contest has not materialized.Sarah Bryner, director of research and strategy at Open Secrets, said spending could intensify as the primary approaches.Michael Jonas, a Portland attorney and owner of Rational Unicorn Legal Services, is also vying for the Democratic nomination. He has raised about $16,000 and touts endorsements from metro-area LGBTQ organizations, civic leaders and entrepreneurs. Other Democratic candidates are Ricardo Barajas, Nolan Bylenga and Rachel Lydia Rand.In the Republican primary, attorney Joanna Harbour has raised $6,000 in direct donations. A perennial candidate, she captured about a quarter of votes cast when running against Blumenauer in 2020 and 2022. Two other Republicans, Gary Dye and Teresa Orwig, are also running for the nomination.The 3rd District seat is up for grabs for the first time since 1996, when Blumenauer was first elected. He spent 28 years in the U.S. House and rose through the ranks to become a member of the influential Ways and Means committee, which writes tax bills and oversees government programs including Social Security and Medicare. He is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.Any of the three front-runners would enter Congress with far less influence than Blumenauer. However, Jayapal said it’s “certainly possible” that constituents would benefit from her close relationship with her sister.“I think she can open doors for me. That is a reality,” she told The Oregonian/OregonLive.Susheela JayapalNakamuraEnvironmental championJayapal earned her law degree from the University of Chicago and worked for two decades as a financial analyst and corporate lawyer before stepping away from paid work to raise her children. Since 2000, she has held volunteer leadership roles at Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette, the Oregon Community Foundation and other nonprofits.During her nearly five years on the Multnomah County Commission, Jayapal said, her influence was limited by the powerful role of the commission’s chair, who has wide latitude to steer the board’s agenda. She casts herself as a pragmatist who worked behind-the-scenes to fill funding gaps and help steer the county through the pandemic and intertwined crises of homelessness, behavioral health and addiction.Jayapal said she was an early proponent of long-term rental assistance, which can prevent residents from becoming homeless, and battled to pass a modest pay raise for employees at nonprofits that provide much of the county’s services for unhoused residents. She was a vocal critic of the Zenith Energy fossil fuel storage site in Northwest Portland and the use of leaded gasoline at Portland International Raceway.Jayapal has “real policy bonafides” and doesn’t mince words when advocating for climate action, said Damon Motz-Storey, director of the Oregon chapter of the Sierra Club, which endorsed her.“Those are the things that we look for in a climate leader,” they said.If elected, Jayapal said she would work to ramp up federal investment in affordable housing and rental assistance, which is often unavailable to residents because of high demand. Along with a Green New Deal and the establishment of a single-payer health care system, she calls for legislation to prevent deforestation and leaks of methane, a greenhouse gas responsible for 30% of global temperature rise.Maxine Dexter, a doctor in her second term in the Oregon House, says she would use her clinical experience as well as her successes building relationships in the state Legislature to increase her odds of accomplishing policy wins in Congress.Dave Killen / The OregonianData-driven doctorGrowing up, Dexter attended public schools and worked a unionized job in a grocery store. She graduated from the University of Washington’s medical school.She has worked as a doctor for more than 20 years. In 2020, she was appointed to fill a vacancy in the state Legislature. Dexter said her family currently lives slightly outside of the 3rd District but plans to move back in.Dexter said she has effectively pursued evidence-driven solutions to health policy, affordable housing and homelessness, climate change and other complex issues.“We can solve these problems if we have experts in the room,” she told The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board.Dexter criticizes the role of for-profit companies in health care and recently sponsored a failed bill that would have limited the influence of private equity companies in owning medical practices or centers. In 2021, Dexter helped pass a law that directed the state health agency to study the creation of a public health insurance option serving more low-income Oregonians. That plan has come to fruition and will roll out in July.As chair of the House housing committee, Dexter advanced “some of the biggest housing reforms and housing investment packages this state has ever seen,” said former House Speaker Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis, who endorsed her.If elected to Congress, Dexter would aim to simplify what she called an overly complicated health care system. She said her “ultimate goal” is advancing a single-payer health care system without causing “chaos” in the process. Dexter said she would also work to expand a federal low-income housing tax credit and seek federal funding for detox beds.Eddy Morales, a Gresham City Council member who spent about a decade working on political causes in Washington, D.C., said tragedies that left three of his siblings dead motivate him to fight to revise past policy failures.Mark Graves/The OregonianD.C., Oregon experienceOn the campaign trail, Morales stresses his family’s lived experience with policy failures. His two brothers died in gun violence and his sister died from opioid and alcohol addiction, he says.“These are the things that have really motivated me for the last 25 years,” Morales said.He touts his longtime work as an organizer for progressive causes. He has served as president of the Gresham City Council. Morales founded East County Rising, a political committee that works to engage voters in east Multnomah County, call attention to their priorities and promote candidates of color and other progressive candidates for local offices.He also served as treasurer of the Democratic Party of Oregon, including during the time when the party falsely reported its largest ever contribution, $500,000, came from a Nevada cryptocurrency funds processor instead of an executive at now-disgraced cryptocurrency firm FTX. Although Morales was not copied on the string of emails in which party officials agreed not to name the true donor, a state lawyer wrote that Morales “did not perform the necessary due diligence to confirm the accuracy of the contributor.”The state party returned the funds once criminal wrongdoing by FTX executives including Sam Bankman-Fried came to public attention, Morales noted. “I am glad he and his cronies have been found guilty and sentenced,” Morales said.Morales got his start advocating for farm workers as a student at the University of Oregon. Beginning with a stint as president of the United States Student Association, Morales was based for about a dozen years in Washington, D.C., a perch from which he advocated for the Affordable Care Act on behalf of the nonprofit Center for Community Change. He also mobilized Latino voters in the South and Southwest for The Democracy Alliance.“Eddy has a skill or a personality to motivate people, to engage people,” said Gresham City Councilor Dina DiNucci, who has endorsed his bid for Congress. He is also adept at building political alliances, she said.In Gresham, Morales helped advance two affordable housing complexes largely funded by Metro housing bonds: the 225-unit Rockwood Village and the 180-unit Wynne Watts Commons, which is billed as the largest net-zero energy, affordable housing complex in the region.As a member of Congress, Morales said he would work to fund multi-generational affordable housing and update first time homeownership grants that he says are outdated. He would also advance offshore wind development and work toward a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. immigration system that reunites separated families and safeguards the asylum-seeking process, he said.-- Grant Stringer is a freelance journalist in Portland; stringer.grantj@gmail.com; @Stringerjourno

Climate
Energy
Forests

Q&A: Thousands of American Climate Corps Jobs Are Now Open. What Will the New Program Look Like?

From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by producer Aynsley O’Neill with Maggie Thomas, the special assistant to the president for climate in the White House.  At an Earth Day event in Virginia just outside of Washington, D.C. this week, President Biden announced the official start of his […]

Short answer: A lot like FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the New Deal’s most popular programs, which put millions to work—but much more diverse.Interview by Aynsley O’Neill, Living on EarthFrom our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by producer Aynsley O’Neill with Maggie Thomas, the special assistant to the president for climate in the White House. 

Climate
Conservation

Suggested Viewing

Silent Skies - The First Electric Plane Flyover

Silent Skies follows the groundbreaking journey of three Pennsylvania college students who orchestrated and piloted the first ever fully electric airplane stadium flyover. Stunning fans with a whisper-quiet show, this event signaled the dawn of America's transition to electric aviation. The students completed a record breaking trip flying the airplane from its base in Hartford, CT to the stadium in Easton, PA, recharging at enroute airports directly from a fleet of electric F-150 trucks. The air travel industry faces an unprecedented challenge: decarbonization. Historically, new aviation technologies are met with consumer skepticism. Demonstrating electric aircraft today, ahead of widespread adoption, is key for building consumer trust, political support, and sustained investment. The flyover was witnessed by 10,000+ attendees, thousands more on ESPN+ and created a precedent for the FAA to approve manned electric aircraft demonstrations over populated areas. Textron eAviation and Ford amplified the event through their social media channels and the film premiered at San Francisco Climate Week.

Technology
Transportation
Climate

A Whale's Worth

The Canary Islands are a whale Paradise. Their waters hold more than a third of the world’s species, making it the most important enclave in the European Union, and one of the most relevant globally.Today, this paradise is being threatened by different human pressures, such as boat collisions, plastic consumption and climate change. This struggle aggravates their mortality each year and makes us face ourselves as the ones responsible for their survival, forcing us to rethink how much we value these animals currently.How much is a whale worth? Can you put a price on the life of such a majestic animal? How can we estimate that value? How has the value that human beings give to whales changed throughout history? What are whales used and needed for?To answer all these questions, Natacha Aguilar, an eminent Canarian scientist and whale expert, backed up by a group of scientists and non-profit organizations, will guide us in a spectacular journey through time and space to discover the never-told stories of the lives of these animals.

Animals
Culture
Climate

Evangelicals for Climate Action

This film introduces Evangelical Christians working for action on climate change and the environment. They explain how they became passionate about the environment, their fears about the future of our planet, and how their passion is based on their deep faith and love for creation. They call on all other Evangelicals to join them.

Climate
Culture

Uncovering the Permian Climate Bomb

The fossil fuel industry is building a global threat in the oil fields of West Texas. Miguel Escoto, who has lived close to this region his whole life, witnesses the industry’s villainy for the first time by viewing oil and gas site emissions through optical gas imaging cameras, becoming a stand-in for a world that has yet to grasp the gravity of the Permian Climate Bomb.

Pollution
Activism
Climate

We Trees

Ever wonder what trees think of us now that we have created a climate disaster? This 2-minute film answers that question. As Bill McKibben recently tweeted about the film, “Who speaks for trees? In this short and elegant video, the trees themselves.” It has been screened at Green Fest (Serbia), The Colorado Environmental Film Festival, The Wildlife Conservation Film Festival and Winner of Merit at the Nature Without Borders Film Festival.

Forests
Chemicals
Climate

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