AUDIO:

POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; REGISTER TO VOTE; APPLY FOR MAIL-IN BALLOT; No, aspartame is not a ‘possible carcinogen,’ FDA says in response to WHO ruling; “We are dying”: Houston workers protest new state law removing water break requirements; Opinion: Tribal Nations Must Honor, Not Destroy, Buffalo Nation; US and NATO grapple with critical ammo shortage for Ukraine; What to know before Japan releases water from Fukushima nuclear plant; How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’; More

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) on KPFT FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Station. You can also hear the show:

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Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/EwrSlzZC31w

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1. No, aspartame is not a ‘possible carcinogen,’ FDA says in response to WHO ruling; As anticipated, an arm of the World Health Organization has said aspartame is a “possible carcinogen” — but does that label mean much? By Nicoletta Lanese | LIVESCIENCE.COM | JULY 14, 2023, published 1 day ago
   1. MIKE: In a nutshell, the W.H.O. says that aspartame is carcinogenic if a person consumes twelve 12-oz. cans of aspartame-sweetened beverage per day. The US FDA basically says that’s a standard that few human beings are likely to meet, and thus it’s ridiculous to consider aspartame carcinogenic based on such an outlandish consumption.
   2. ANDREW: As I understand it, the WHO classifying something as a “possible carcinogen” is less of a warning and more of a call for more research (and more research funding). The average consumer doesn’t have anything to worry about from this announcement, especially since no recommended daily limits are actually changing.
   3. MIKE: It’s worth noting that ingesting too much of anything can kill you. Even drinking too much water can kill you by messing up the electrolyte balance in your body. So use your own judgment on aspartame. You can read the full story from the link at the top of this piece.
   4. MIKE: And speaking of drinking water …
2. “We are dying”: Houston workers protest new state law removing water break requirements; The protesters called House Bill 2127 the “law that kills” and said it will leave those who labor outdoors at the mercy of their employers. by Emily Foxhall and Francisco Uranga | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | July 14, 2023, 4 PM Central
   1. Luz Martínez was working on remodeling a school without air conditioning in the summer when one of her coworkers fell over, vomited and passed out from the heat.
   2. On Friday, she joined other workers, labor advocates and politicians on the steps of Houston’s City Hall to protest a new Texas law that will take away cities’ power to help workers who must endure the Texas heat.
   3. House Bill 2127, which takes effect on Sept. 1, will do away with local rules that require water breaks for construction workers. The cities of Austin and Dallas, for example, require 10-minute breaks every four hours. San Antonio officials had been considering a similar ordinance.
   4. “We are human beings who need respect,” Martínez said. “We really need to be allowed to work without problems, without any barriers … Believe me, we are dying inside those buildings when they take away our water and our [break] time.”
   5. Protesters at the news conference, many speaking Spanish, called HB 2127 the “law that kills” and said it will leave lawn crews, construction workers and others who labor outdoors at the mercy of their employers.
   6. “That’s why we are here, first to denounce the evil in which this law has been enacted,” said Teodoro Aguiluz, executive director of [the Central American Resource Center — Houston] (CRECEN), which advocates for immigrants in Houston. “Second, to make it clear that from now on our organizations will work to stop this injustice, this evil of this law.”
   7. This summer has already been a punishing one, with record-high temperatures throughout the state, a reminder that climate change continues to worsen heat in Texas. At the morning news conference, protesters sweat as they wore hard hats and held white crosses in honor of construction workers who have died from the heat. Organizers offered water and Gatorade.
   8. The bill marked another unwelcome example of state government taking power from local governments, said Sergio Lira, president of the Greater Houston chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens. Houston officials sued to stop the law, which the mayor said will gut a wide array of local ordinances such as those related to tow-truck companies, outdoor music festivals and noise.
   9. Houston does not have a local ordinance requiring water breaks for workers. …
   10. There are no specific national workplace standards for preventing heat-related illnesses. Without local laws, preventing heat-related illnesses on the job falls on workers and their supervisors, who may not know the danger signs.
   11. Already, workers have suffered.
   12. One person who wrote remarks for Friday’s protest spoke of having a paycheck docked because they took water breaks. Another said his supervisor ordered him to work even as he suffered cramps in his legs and arms and felt nauseous. A third said she quit her job in a warehouse because the heat was too much.
   13. Just two weeks earlier, a man named Felipe Pascual collapsed in the Houston area while working and died because of the heat, advocates said. They set a pair of weathered work boots on the ground in his honor.
   14. “Eliminating access to water breaks is a low blow to workers; we won’t forget it,” said Linda Morales, president of the Gulf Coast chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement. “The temperature outside may change in October, but our human temperature will not forget what Greg Abbott has done to our Latino workers.”
   15. Two county commissioners — one from Harris County, which includes Houston, and another from neighboring Fort Bend County — excoriated Abbott and Texas legislators for passing what they called an unfair, immoral bill. A poster showed a cartoon of Abbott placing a construction worker on a grill with a spatula.
   16. “How many people must die before we do something?” asked Fort Bend County Commissioner Dexter McCoy, who added that he wasn’t aware of any cities in his county that require water breaks for workers. …
   17. MIKE: Andrew and I discussed this story when the bill got passed and signed. From this article, I got two takeaways: one from the beginning and one from the end.
   18. MIKE: My first takeaway was the inhumanity of our Republican state government for outlawing mandatory water breaks for outdoor workers in Texas. I use the word “inhumanity” not just as a conjugation of inhumane, but as inhuman. If our State government had any humanity, they would have mandated water breaks for outdoor workers.
   19. MIKE: If there was any justice in this world, the State legislature would have taken those votes outside; in an asphalt parking lot; during mid-day; in a place with no shade; and with no water nearby. Perhaps they might then have had second thoughts about what they were legislation. They were legislating torture, and that might have taught them so.
   20. MIKE: My second takeaway was surprise that, as Fort Bend County Commissioner Dexter McCoy noted, he wasn’t aware of any cities in his county that require water breaks for workers. That makes his presence at this protest a little hypocritical. Fort Bend County may not have the power to legislate work rules, but Commissioner McCoy has the moral authority to press Fort Bend cities and towns to legislate such rules, in the event the become legal again.
   21. MIKE: And then I got curious. I never worked any place as an hourly employee that didn’t offer paid break time and unpaid lunch time. I always thought that this was a federally mandated requirement. Apparently, not so.
   22. MIKE: This is from the US Department of Labor website: “Federal law does not require lunch or coffee breaks. However, when employers do offer short breaks (usually lasting about 5 to 20 minutes), federal law considers the breaks as compensable work hours that would be included in the sum of hours worked during the workweek and considered in determining if overtime was worked. Unauthorized extensions of authorized work breaks need not be counted as hours worked when the employer has expressly and unambiguously communicated to the employee that the authorized break may only last for a specific length of time, that any extension of the break is contrary to the employer’s rules, and any extension of the break will be punished. Meal periods (typically lasting at least 30 minutes), serve a different purpose than coffee or snack breaks and, thus, are not work time and are not compensable.”
   23. MIKE: I also got some information from the Texas Guidebook for Employers. To no one’s surprise, Texas does not require work breaks, paid or otherwise. But there is this interesting tidbit: “Coffee breaks” (rest breaks) are paid, since they are regarded as promoting productivity and efficiency on the part of employees and thus benefit the employer – 20 minutes or less in duration.
   24. MIKE: On that basis, I’m half surprised that the government of Texas doesn’t encourage paid amphetamine breaks. If caffeine benefits employers, what might “speed” do?
   25. MIKE: So, you learn something every day. Another argument implicitly made for unions.
   26. ANDREW: Indeed, though I wouldn’t think that Commissioner McCoy’s presence is any more hypocritical than the presence of the unnamed Harris County commissioner (who I annoyingly and curiously couldn’t identify from a Google search). Houston and Harris County didn’t have any water break law either. But I do join you in hoping that cities across the state, including in Harris and Fort Bend counties, adopt ordinances to mandate water breaks that would come into effect if HB 2127 gets struck down or repealed.
   27. REFERENCE: Breaks and Meal Periods — S. Department of Labor
   28. REFERENCE: [Texas] Fair Labor Standards Act – What It Does and Does Not DO — TEXAS GUIDEBOOK FOR EMPLOYERS
3. Opinion: Tribal Nations Must Honor, Not Destroy, Buffalo Nation; By Jaedin Medicine Elk | NATIVENEWSONLINE.NET | July 13, 2023
   1. MIKE: This opinion piece is written in the first person, and I’ll be reading it that way. It resisted excerpting, which would have diminished its impact and meaning, so I’ll be reading this short piece in full:
   2. I expected the recent meeting of those involved with the Interagency Bison Management Plan to be highly emotional given the national and international outrage over the indiscriminate killing of so many Yellowstone buffalo this year.
   3. Instead, it was business as usual with no remorse from anyone for killing over 25% of the herd as state and tribal hunt managers talked about how well it went and claimed there were no problems.
   4. If you considered the 1,250 dead bulls, pregnant females, and calves from the buffalo’s perspective, however, the conversation would have gone much differently. But none of the “managers” or tribal representatives did that.
   5. The dominant, colonized culture has made its way into our Tribal Nations. But we can’t live as tribal people when all we think about is ourselves and our rights and not Mother Earth or the wildlife our ancestors loved and depended on.
   6. Killing hungry, pregnant female buffalo at the [Yellowstone] Park’s border isn’t what we should be doing. We need to allow these matriarchal family groups – mainly pregnant females and grandmothers – to teach the young ones the migration corridors so more buffalo can establish themselves on the lands that are their birthright.
   7. The buffalo know what to do; they just need our help to allow them to do it. It’s the humans who need to be managed. As buffalo culture tribal people, when we see things like Blood Creek at Beattie Gulch in the new documentary by Yellowstone Voices: A Path Forward for the American Bison, we must speak up, not participate in the massive kill.
   8. We have to stop treating these buffalo like they are just meat animals that don’t have a right to roam free on Turtle Island. We’re treating the Buffalo Nation as the Veho (whites) want us to, controlling and destroying these buffalo to appease Montana and the livestock interests – with our help! They want us to forget our ancient relationship and obligations to the Buffalo Nation.
   9. When first joining this issue, I expected powerful native voices who see what is going on to say something. But I came to find out the reality is, people are afraid to say anything as tribal members. We don’t want to fight our own people, but at the same time, when it’s our people helping facilitate the destruction of a wild buffalo population, what are we supposed to do? Sit by and let buffalo keep dying because Tribal people have been brainwashed to believe humans are everything and we matter the most? This ‘hunt’ isn’t the right way to reconnect with the Buffalo Nation. They’ve had our back since we made that spiritual connection. Now it’s time we had theirs.
   10. The older I get, the more I understand why our elders tell us to learn our language and culture. When I started being with wild buffalo, things became more clear as to how our ancestors lived their ways of life, copying the Buffalo Nation that kept them going for thousands of years.
   11. Today the Buffalo Nation is like our own Tribal nations…forgotten. Our relationship and connection to them is likewise forgotten because tribal members are killing pregnant female buffalo and preventing the next generation of buffalo from seeing the sun, moon, grass, blue skies, rain, and everything this beautiful Turtle Island has to offer. The Buffalo Nation is looking to tribal nations to help them, not just kill as many as we can because we have treaty rights to do so.
   12. The laws made by men can be unmade by men and now is the time to “un-make” the “management plan” that is decimating wild Buffalo Nation and allow them to once again roam free.
   13. Jaedin Medicine Elk is a co-founder and board president of the Montana-based Roam Free Nation.Jaedin is Northern Cheyenne, a Sundancer and Sacred Pipe Carrier from a traditional Buffalo Culture family.
   14. ANDREW: This article can certainly serve as yet another reminder that simply because someone in power is of a marginalized identity, that doesn’t mean they will always do the right thing. However, I’m sure that state and possibly federal law and agencies are exerting pressure on tribal leaders to make this happen. I say this only to observe that just getting tribal leaders to respect buffalo will likely not solve the problem– the tribes will then have to argue for change or overturn settler policy. I hope they’ll be successful.
   15. MIKE: I actually think your comment raises some interesting points. First, that not all Native Americans think and believe alike. There are groups that have argued for years for their right to hunt buffalo, much like Innuits reserve the right to hunt whales. But there is apparently this faction that wants less or no buffalo hunting in order to grow the herds.
   16. MIKE: A second consideration here is grazing land. It takes a lot to support a buffalo. Was that a consideration here?
   17. MIKE: Third, the article includes a comment about the kill zone being “at the Park’s border”. American bison, commonly called buffalo, are among the Earth’s last megafauna. The word “megafauna” should tell you all you need to know about how large they are, how much they need to consume, and how bad it can be if and when these individuals or herds stray off the Park.
   18. MIKE I’m not steeped in these issues and I’m not Native American. I don’t know the answers to these questions. I only pose them.
   19. REFERENCE: Native American Legends: Veeho (Weeho, Wihio) — NATIVE-LANGUAGES.ORG
4. US and NATO grapple with critical ammo shortage for Ukraine; By Natasha Bertrand, Oren Liebermann and Jennifer Hansler | CNN.COM | Updated 2:32 PM EDT, Tue July 18, 2023
   1. The US and Europe are struggling to provide Ukraine with the large amount of ammunition it will need for a prolonged counteroffensive against Russia, and Western officials are racing to ramp up production to avoid shortages on the battlefield that could hinder Ukraine’s progress.
   2. The dwindling supply of artillery ammunition has served as a wake-up call to NATO, US and Western officials told CNN, since the alliance did not adequately prepare for the possibility of a protracted land war in Europe following decades of relative peace.
   3. UK Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace told CNN last week that while NATO was poised early on for a “night one, day one” offensive, “no one had really asked themselves the question, well, what if ‘day one, night one’ becomes ‘week two, week three, week four?’ How much of our exquisite capabilities have we actually got in stock? And I think that’s been the broader question.”
   4. US officials emphasized to CNN that there is a set level of munitions in US stockpiles around the world, essentially an emergency reserve, that the military is not willing to part ways with. The levels of those stockpiles are classified.
   5. But officials say the US has been nearing that red line as it has continued to supply Ukraine with 155mm ammunition, the NATO standard used for artillery rounds. The US began ramping up ammunition production last year when it became clear that the war would drag on far longer than anticipated. But the ammunition will still take “years” to mass produce to acceptable levels, National Security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN Sunday.
   6. The US decided to send cluster munitions to Ukraine to help alleviate a potential shortage in the meantime, providing Kyiv with a supply of American weapons that haven’t been tapped into so far. But because cluster munitions can pose a long term risk to civilians, their transfer to Ukraine is only intended to be a stopgap measure until more unitary rounds can be produced, officials said.
   7. A German government source told CNN that Berlin has taken steps to try to close existing gaps in ammunition stocks and to increase ammunition reserves … Ammunition from that new production line is expected to be delivered this summer, the source said …
   8. Meanwhile, the UK will invest an additional £2.5 billion into stockpiles and munitions, and will also increase “investment in the resilience and readiness of the UK’s munitions infrastructure, including storage facilities,” according to the country’s newly released Defence Command Paper Refresh.
   9. To date, the US has provided Ukraine with over 2 million 155mm artillery rounds, according to the Pentagon. The Defense Department has set a goal of producing 70,000 artillery shells per month and is now producing just under 30,000 shells monthly, according to an Army spokesperson – up from around 15,000 per month when the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.
   10. But Ukraine is still burning through the available supply. …
   11. A year and a half into the war, Ukraine’s rate of artillery fire has hardly abated, even as its own stockpiles have been on a slow, steady decline. Ukrainian troops now typically fire between 2,000 and 3,000 artillery shells per day at Russian forces, a US defense official told CNN. The rate was higher before the counteroffensive began, as Ukraine conducted shaping operations to prepare to advance on Russian positions.
   12. Some US officials had hoped the Ukrainians would be relying less on artillery at this point and more on combined arms maneuvers, a more efficient and sophisticated style of fighting that the US has been training Ukrainian forces on for months.
   13. But Russia extensively mined the land Ukraine is trying to recapture, slowing down the counteroffensive and forcing the Ukrainians to use artillery to destroy targets from further away.
   14. On Tuesday, Secretary Austin said that the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which met virtually earlier that day, discussed Ukraine’s “urgent need for ammunition.”
   15. “We also discussed plans to ramp up production at both the national level and the multinational level through the European Union’s important initiative to produce more ammunition,” Austin said. …
   16. “This [counteroffensive] is happening more slowly than people predicted,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the National Press Club last month. “I am not surprised by this. They are advancing confidently, purposefully, making their way through very difficult minefields.”
   17. But US officials became so concerned in recent weeks about the US’ ability to resupply Ukraine that President Joe Biden decided to send Kyiv highly controversial cluster munitions. The move was politically dicey and risked alienating European allies, many of whom have banned the munitions because of the risk they pose to civilians.
   18. It was necessary, though, because of how low US stockpiles are, Sullivan told CNN Sunday.
   19. Upon taking office, the Biden administration “found that overall stocks of 155 munitions…was relatively low,” he said.
   20. Biden ultimately ordered the Pentagon “to work rapidly to scale up the ability of the United States to produce all the ammunition we could ever need for any conflict at any time,” Sullivan said. “Month on month, we are increasing our capacity to supply ammunition.”
   21. Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer, a member of Senate’s Armed Services and Appropriations Committees, told CNN, “I think members of the military had to be concerned from the get-go on this.”
   22. Using the example of a Lockheed Martin production line for Javelin anti-armor missiles that could produce 2,100 missiles a year while Ukraine was using 500 of the missiles a day, Fischer said, “That’s a red flag right there.”
   23. Fischer is pushing for a greater investment in arms manufacturing to meet the challenge of a belligerent Russia in Europe and a Chinese military asserting its presence in the Pacific.
   24. “It’s serious stuff. I’m not out there saying the sky is falling, but we need to be focused on this,” said Fischer. “We can’t lose the focus, and we need to be able to ramp up production.
   25. Army spokesperson Ellen Lovett told CNN last week that “the Army’s production ramp up of 155mm artillery ammunition continues as planned. … Lovett added that the Army’s plans to significantly increase production of other key systems going to Ukraine, including [Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS)], Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, “are also on contract and underway.”
   26. The initiative has underscored to US officials just how long it takes to significantly ramp up production, including the expansion of existing plants and the building of new ones, and how the US should have taken meaningful action in this space far earlier to prevent ammunition stockpiles from dwindling to dangerously low levels.
   27. “We discovered that the ability to mass produce that ammunition would take not days or weeks or months, but years, to get to the level that we needed,” Sullivan said. “It’s interesting, the previous president used to talk frequently about how his generals told him that they were running out of bullets. When we came into office, nothing was underway to solve that problem. We are solving that problem.”
   28. Wallace, the UK defense secretary, said the UK has “just started buying production line places to manufacture 155 shells, of which some of those [manufactured] will go to Ukraine.”
   29. Said a UK source to CNN, “The UK, like other allies, is constantly looking at production expansion to replenish our stockpiles as well as being able to continue supporting Ukraine.”
   30. But another problem NATO has run into writ large is incentivizing contractors to substantially ramp up production of supplies that governments have not been purchasing en masse in recent years, specifically the 155mm artillery shells, a senior NATO official told CNN last week. …
   31. At the NATO summit in Vilnius last week, the French and Ukrainian defense ministers signed an agreement which includes the establishment of a framework for the joint production of spare parts and maintenance of foreign weapons and equipment.
   32. The Pentagon has also asked Congress, as part of the 2024 defense budget, to provide enough funding to allow DoD to strike multi-year contracts with defense contractors.
   33. [US Air Force General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., Biden’s nominee to serve as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a congressional hearing last week,] “For all the services in this year’s budget submission, we asked for multi-year procurement. And that multi-year procurement was designed to help increase our stocks, but [what it also] does for us is help provide predictability to the Defense Industrial Base, to their supply chains, and to their workforce.”
   34. [UK Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace] said that NATO is realizing the importance of not allowing certain crucial supply chains to fall dormant.
   35. “All of us have had to struggle stimulating our supply chains, some of which went to sleep,” he told CNN. He added that “as an alliance, we can’t just take for granted” the idea that another country will step in to fill the gap, like the US did with cluster munitions.
   36. “What is clear is that we don’t have in our inventories at the moment the necessary munitions to shut down airfields and break through lines, like we might have done in the old days,” Wallace said. “If you can’t use cluster munitions, because we’ve all quite rightly signed this treaty [banning them], you need to innovate and come up with something else.”
   37. MIKE: What surprises me is that this problem came as a surprise. It’s not like the US has not seen high materiel-consumption wars in the past years. Aside from Russia-Ukraine, there’s been Armenia-Azerbaijan, and the US initial invasions in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
   38. MIKE: Granted that these were the sorts of high-intensity, short-duration wars that US generals expected, but they should have foreseen the potential for high-intensity, long-duration wars between peer and near-peer competitors. It should certainly have been obvious that you need the potential capacity to replace munitions and weapons about as fast as you use them.
   39. MIKE: Of course, no one can just snap their fingers and make these things happen. The military has certainly had a generous budget, so the money to plan these sorts of investments should have been there, but there’s always politics. Earmarks for certain weapons systems being produced in certain places. Earmarks to build or maintain weapons systems that the military says it doesn’t want. Prohibitions about investing in or building certain things.
   40. MIKE: There’s certainly blame to go around for this short-sightedness and subsequent munitions shortfall, but my point is that it was entirely predictable.
   41. MIKE: There is one other thing I want to point out from this part of the article where it says, “US officials became so concerned in recent weeks about the US’ ability to resupply Ukraine that President Joe Biden decided to send Kyiv highly controversial cluster munitions. … It was necessary, though, because of how low US stockpiles are, Sullivan told CNN Sunday.”
   42. MIKE: The lesson here is that in a “back-to-the-wall” situation, a country’s military will do what it needs to do, and the civilian leadership will likely wince in moral and political agony before permitting them to do it. WW2 is an excellent example when you look at the attacks on civilian infrastructure, mass fire bombings, and the ultimate use of the atomic bombs. In Total War, if a nation had a capability to use against the enemy, it was used.
   43. The war in Ukraine also proves the point. The Russians escalated to a “Total War” strategy before the Ukrainians did (with the incremental help of the West), but the Ukrainians are nearly there out of retaliatory necessity.
   44. MIKE: What kind of “back-to-the-wall” situation would it require for some nuclear power like North Korea, Pakistan, India or Israel — to name just a few — to “go nuclear” in the modern era?
   45. MIKE: Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.
   46. ANDREW: I have consistently been arguing for a negotiated peace in this war, and the longer it drags on, the stronger my argument gets. Death, displacement, supply chain disruption, and now ammo shortages. No one can fight this war forever, and expecting Russia to fall to attrition before Ukraine is totally destroyed and its allies are completely defenseless is not a bet I’d find worth making.
   47. ANDREW: Even from a war hawk standpoint, this war is making less sense by the minute. Many military strategists are concerned about potential war with China. From what I’ve heard, China’s military supply to Russia has been way less significant than the military supply of the US to Ukraine. What if this war brings all of the US’s ammunition stockpiles down to their emergency reserve levels? The US is already finding this war between peers more costly than anticipated. If China pushes against the US militarily, Washington may find itself fighting two wars of peers at once, and potentially with a lot fewer resources than they thought they’d have. 
   48. ANDREW: For the record, I don’t think China wants war with the US, and I think preparing for it is fearmongering. But the fact remains that it’s front-of-mind for many analysts, and the preparedness consequence of continuing to encourage and supply Ukraine to fight until Russia completely submits should be ringing alarm bells in those analysts’ heads.
   49. ANDREW: Instead, I believe the US should encourage Ukraine to seek a just but dignified peace that secures the integrity of Ukraine’s pre-war loyal territories while respecting the right of self-determination in the breakaway territories and allows Russia a “golden bridge to retreat across“, as Sun Tzu puts it. Russia has already lost a lot of people and materials themselves in this war. I strongly doubt they will want to fight another war of peers any time soon. I believe negotiation can work, and the sooner it is allowed to, the sooner the death in Ukraine and the pressure on the rest of the world can stop.
5. What to know before Japan releases water from Fukushima nuclear plant; By Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Julia Mio Inuma | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | July 8, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
   1. Japan plans to release more than 1 million metric tons of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean, a process set to begin this summer and continue for three decades or more.
   2. For years, the contaminated water — equivalent to more than 500 Olympic-size swimming pools — has been stored in large metal tanks near the plant, the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. But Japan is running out of space to build more tanks to accommodate the contaminated groundwater and rainwater that continues to enter the site.
   3. The pending release has become highly politicized by neighboring countries, including South Korea and China. Fukushima’s fishing and agricultural industries are also worried about potential reputational harm on their products, which still carry the stigma of radioactive exposure.
   4. The Japanese public is split on the plan, and many remain distrustful of the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), which has been criticized for playing down bad news about the severity of the disaster in the early days.
   5. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the international nuclear watchdog, on July 4 released its final report giving a stamp of approval for Japan’s plans. Its director general, Rafael Grossi, is traveling to Fukushima, Seoul and Pacific island nations to announce the findings and address concerns.
   6. Here’s what to know about the upcoming discharge.
   7. The contaminated water that had been stored will be treated to remove most of the radioactive materials except for tritium (more on that below).
   8. The wastewater will be diluted to 1,500 becquerels — a unit of radioactivity — of tritium per liter of clean water. For comparison, Japan’s regulatory limit allows a maximum of 60,000 becquerels per liter, while the World Health Organization allows 10,000. That means the concentration of tritium will be “far below” international regulatory standards, according to the Japanese government.
   9. The water will then be released through an underwater tunnel about 3,280 feet (one kilometer) from the coast of Japan, away from areas where fishing routinely takes place. The process is expected to take 30 years or longer.
   10. What is tritium? Tritium is a form of hydrogen with two extra neutrons and it emits low levels of radiation. Like hydrogen, it combines easily with oxygen to form water, or in this case “tritiated water,” which is difficult to distinguish from ordinary water.
   11. We’re actually exposed to small amounts of tritium every day, because it exists in tap water, in the rain and in the air.
   12. In fact, tritium is already being discharged into rivers and oceans from other nuclear facilities around the world at higher concentrations than the treated water that is set to be released from Fukushima, said Tony Irwin, nuclear energy expert and honorary associate professor at the Australian National University. Facilities in China, South Korea, Taiwan, France, the United States and elsewhere release treated water that contains tritium, within regulatory standards.
   13. “We go and have a CT scan or something like that, and you get multiple times the radiation doses without any harm,” Irwin said. “Low levels are no problem. Very high levels are a problem. But the sort of levels we’re talking about with this discharge are negligible.”
   14. What did the IAEA review find? In 2021, Japan asked the IAEA for an independent assessment of its plan to release the water.
   15. After a two-year review and sampling the treated water, the IAEA found that Japan’s plan is “consistent with relevant international safety standards” and its radiological impact on people and the environment would be “negligible.”
   16. The agency now has an office at the site and will monitor the process there, and publish independent data.
   17. “I don’t have a magic solution for the doubts and concerns that may exist, but we do have one thing … we are going to stay here with you for decades to come … until the last drop of the water has been safely discharged,” Grossi said at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
   18. Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency on Friday gave TEPCO approval to release the water, the final step required to begin the process. …
   19. ANDREW: From this article, I believe that most of the concerns about this plan are emotional. Which is fair! I don’t think anyone would like the idea of knowing that nuclear waste– even heavily treated, less-radioactive-than-some-tap-water nuclear waste– is being dumped right in their backyard.
   20. ANDREW: Still, from a scientific point of view, this looks as safe as it can be, and it seems a lot safer than leaving a bunch of the untreated waste in a bunch of storage tanks somewhere that could leak. I’m not sure about the ecological impact exactly– just because the treated waste is being discharged away from where fishing takes place doesn’t mean it’s being discharged away from fish, coral reefs, or other sea life entirely– but if the expected impact truly is minimal, I think they’ve been about as responsible as they can be there too.
   21. ANDREW: I think the best way to assuage the fears of other nearby nations would be to invite members of those nations’ own nuclear regulatory agencies to supervise and publish their own independent findings alongside the IAEA. That way, those governments can be alerted ahead of time to any potential issues and might be able to petition to pull the plug on the project (or put the plug in, as the case may be). It might be a little bit of a hard sell politically, but it would be an empathetic, emotional solution to an emotional problem.
   22. MIKE: Until the first of the US space shuttles blew up on launch, NASA had no idea what the failure rate would be in-flight. After a total of 135 missions, there had been 2 shuttle failures. That was a catastrophic failure rate of 1-2%.
   23. MIKE: Until we had the first nuclear power plant accident of consequence, we had no idea how often they would occur. According to The Guardian, they “have identified 33 serious incidents and accidents at nuclear power stations since the first recorded one in 1952 at Chalk River in Ontario, Canada.
   24. MIKE: The 5 most serious in reverse order of severity over the past 80 years were Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident, Pennsylvania, USA 1979 (INES Level 5)); Windscale Fire Nuclear Disaster, Sellafield, UK 1957 (INES Level 5)); Kyshtym Nuclear Disaster, Russia 1957 (INES Level 6)); Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Japan 2011 (INES Level 6)); and Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster, Ukraine 1986 (INES Level 7)).
   25. MIKE: And then there are the other 28. All within 80 years
   26. MIKE: So while this can be averaged and statisticalized in many ways, one might draw the conclusion that nuclear power is safe until it really, really isn’t. And this doesn’t even mention the still-insoluble problem of nuclear waste. IMHO, between the costs, complexity and risks, nuclear power is not something we should go back to building.
   27. REFERENCE: Japan turns to livestreamed fish in Fukushima safety campaign — ALJAZEERA.COM
   28. REFERENCE (WITHIN ARTICLE): What was the 2011 Fukushima disaster? Return to menu
   29. REFERENCE: Nuclear power plant accidents: listed and ranked since 1952 — THEGUARDIAN.COM
   30. REFERENCE: The five worst nuclear disasters in history — PROCESSINDUSTRYFORUM.COM
6. How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’; Residents feel trapped and choked by dust, while experts warn environmental damage is ‘solving one problem by creating others’. By Oliver Wainwright in Desert Center, California | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Sun 21 May 2023 06.00 EDT, Last modified on Mon 22 May 2023 16.37 EDT
   1. Deep in the Mojave desert [sic], about halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix, a sparkling blue sea shimmers on the horizon. Visible from the I-10 highway, amid the parched plains and sun-baked mountains, it is an improbable sight: a deep blue slick stretching for miles across the Chuckwalla Valley, forming an endless glistening mirror. …
   2. Over the last few years, this swathe of desert has been steadily carpeted with one of the world’s largest concentrations of solar power plants, forming a sprawling photovoltaic sea. On the ground, the scale is almost incomprehensible. The Riverside East Solar Energy Zone – the ground zero of California’s solar energy boom – stretches for 150,000 acres, making it 10 times the size of Manhattan.
   3. It is a crucial component of the United States’ green energy revolution. Solar makes up about 3% of the US electricity supply, but the Biden administration hopes it will reach 45% by 2050, primarily by building more huge plants like this across the country’s flat, empty
   4. But there’s one thing that the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) – the agency tasked with facilitating these projects on public land – doesn’t seem to have fully taken into account: the desert isn’t quite as empty as it thought. It might look like a barren wilderness, but this stretch of the Mojave is a rich and fragile habitat for endangered species and home to thousand-year-old carbon-capturing woodlands, ancient Indigenous cultural sites – and hundreds of people’s homes.
   5. Residents have watched ruefully for years as solar plants crept over the horizon, bringing noise and pollution that’s eroding a way of life in their desert refuge.
   6. “We feel like we’ve been sacrificed,” says Mark Carrington, who, like Sneddon, lives in the Lake Tamarisk resort, a community for over-55s near Desert Center, which is increasingly surrounded by solar farms. …
   7. Concerns have intensified following the recent news of a project, called Easley, that would see the panels come just 200 metres from their backyards. Residents claim that excessive water use by solar plants has contributed to the drying up of two local wells, while their property values have been hit hard, with several now struggling to sell their homes. …
   8. Elizabeth Knowles, director of community engagement for Intersect Power, the company behind the Easley project, said it knew of residents’ concerns and was exploring how to move the project further from the community. “Since being made aware of their concerns, we have been in regular contact with residents to listen to their concerns and incorporate their feedback into our planning efforts.”
   9. The mostly flat expanse south-east of Joshua Tree national park was originally identified as a prime site for industrial-scale solar power under the Obama administration, which fast-tracked the first project, Desert Sunlight, in 2011. It was the largest solar plant in the world at the time of completion, in 2015, covering an area of almost 4,000 acres, and it opened the floodgates for more. Since then, 15 projects have been completed or are under construction …
   10. But as the pace of construction has ramped up, so have voices questioning the cumulative impact of these projects on the desert’s populations – both human and non-human.
   11. Kevin Emmerich worked for the National Park Service for over 20 years before setting up Basin & Range Watch in 2008, a non-profit that campaigns to conserve desert life. He says solar plants create myriad environmental problems, including habitat destruction and “lethal death traps” for birds, which dive at the panels, mistaking them for water.
   12. He says one project bulldozed 600 acres of designated critical habitat for the endangered desert tortoise, while populations of Mojave fringe-toed lizards and bighorn sheep have also been afflicted. “We’re trying to solve one environmental problem by creating so many others.”
   13. Such adverse impacts are supposed to be prevented by the desert renewable energy conservation plan (DRECP), which was approved in 2016 after years of consultation and covers almost 11m acres of California. But Emmerich and others think the process is flawed, allowing streamlined environmental reviews and continual amendments that they say trample conservationists’ concerns. …
   14. For Alfredo Acosta Figueroa, the unstoppable march of desert solar represents an existential threat of a different kind. As a descendant of the Chemehuevi (CHE-meh-way’-vee) and Yaqui (YAH·kwee) nations, he has watched as what he says are numerous sacred Indigenous sites have been bulldozed.
   15. “The history of the world is told by these sites,” he says, “by geoglyphs, petroglyphs, and pictographs. Yet the government has chosen to ignore and push aside the creation story in the name of progress.”
   16. His organisation, La Cuna de Aztlan, acts as custodian of over 300 hundred such sites in the Lower Colorado River Basin, many of which, he says, have already been damaged beyond repair. He claims that a 200 ft-long geoglyph of Kokopelli, a flute-playing god, was destroyed by a new road to one of the solar plants, while an image of Cicimitl, an Aztec spirit said to guide souls to the afterlife, is also threatened. “The solar projects cannot destroy just one sacred site without destroying the sacredness of the entire area,” he adds. “They are all connected.” …
   17. But a more fundamental question remains: why build in the desert, when thousands of acres of rooftops in urban areas lie empty across California?
   18. “There are so many other places we should be putting solar,” says Clarke, of the National Parks Conservation Association, from homes to warehouses to parking lots and industrial zones. He describes the current model of large-scale, centralised power generation, hundreds of miles from where the power is actually needed, as “a 20th-century business plan for a 21st-century problem”.
   19. “The conversion of intact wildlife habitat should be the absolute last resort, but it’s become our first resort – just because it’s the easy fix.” …
   20. ANDREW: It is very easy to get swept up in the excitement of a potential political solution to a problem, but this story and many others like it are reminders that theory is never as comprehensive as practice. Natural habitat preservation, animal welfare concerns, water use, and perhaps most importantly, Indigenous sovereignty, these are all just some of the things that any green energy project needs to take into account to the satisfaction of the people impacted before construction begins. Otherwise, projects aiming to save people from the harm of global warming can end up causing a million different other kinds of harm.
   21. ANDREW: The point of installing more solar on buildings: I completely agree, especially because distributed generation like that would be much more resistant to blackouts, but many local ordinances are unfortunately standing in the way. I don’t know whether a network of state laws or one big federal law would be the best strategy, but the way needs to be cleared legally for any building in the US to install solar panels, and it needs to happen quick if we want to have a viable alternative to large, centralized solar farms.
   22. MIKE: This story had some additional resonance for me because I’ve been to this area twice; once by accident, and once on purpose. It’s a dry, dusty, mainly thinly inhabited area.
   23. MIKE: Desert Center, originally called Desert Training Center, got its name because it was originally a WW2 training center for General George Patton’s tank troops. The area has some interesting history.
   24. MIKE: But to the point at hand: When we think of large solar farms in the desert, this area at first sight would seem the perfect place, but it seems that everything impinges on someone or something everywhere.
   25. MIKE: Lake Tamarisk Resort itself is an intrusive presence in this landscape, and no doubt disrupted quite a bit of habitat in its construction and continuing presence, making these homeowners’ complaints a little ironic. The tension and conflict between history, ecology, renewable energy, and humans is both ancient and ongoing.
   26. MIKE: To one of Andrew’s points, Texas has in fact made it illegal to prevent a homeowner from installing solar panels. Homeowners Associations (HOAs) can have some say in the esthetics, but cannot forbid someone from putting them up. So, a rare “yay” to the Texas legislature.
   27. MIKE: I agree that we should be installing much more solar at point-of-use (which is a fancy way of saying “rooftops”) before bulldozing lots of desert habitat. I’m grateful for my solar panels and storage every day, and I advocate for them. But even they have their environmental problems at the end of their useful lives.
   28. MIKE: Ultimately, in this mix of problematic solutions, we should not forget energy efficiency. Using less electricity is at least as good as producing more, if not better.
   29. REFERENCE: Lake Tamarisk Desert Resort
   30. REFERENCE: Lake Tamarisk Desert Resort – About

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1. Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter Information
   1. It’s time to snail-mail (no emails or faxes) in your application for mail-ballots, IF you qualify TEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
   2. Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
   3. Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2022
      1. Austin County Elections
      2. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
      3. Chambers County (TX) Elections
      4. Colorado County (TX) Elections
      5. Fort Bend County takes you to the proper link
      6. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
      7. Harris County ((HarrisVotes.com)
      8. LibertyElections (Liberty County, TX)
      9. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      10. Walker County Elections
      11. Waller County (TX) Elections
      12. Wharton County Elections
   4. For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, Consider visiting Vote.ORG.   Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
   5. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
   6. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, HARRIS COUNTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
      1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
      2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
      3. Current utility bill
      4. Bank statement
      5. Government check
      6. Paycheck
      7. A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
      8. You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
         1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
         2. Sick or disabled;
         3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
         4. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
         5. Make sure you are registered:
         6. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
         7. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
         8. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
         9. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
2. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and if eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL NEW MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2023.
   1. Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
   2. Just be registered and apply for your mail-in ballot if you may qualify.
   3. You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking

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