“Ukraine covers less than 6 percent of Europe’s land area, but it’s home to more than a third of the continent’s biodiversity. It’s also highly industrialized, with hundreds of chemical plants, nearly 150 coal mines, and more than a dozen nuclear reactors — including Europe’s largest.
So, one obvious problem is the destruction of these facilities. In March, shelling in the northern Ukrainian town of Novoselytsya caused an ammonia leak at a fertilizer factory, threatening residents by contaminating groundwater and soil. Then there are those exploding tanks of nitric acid. Meanwhile, damage to coal-fired power plants can cause electrical water pumps to fail, allowing contaminated water in mines to spill over and pollute the groundwater.”
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“Russia has also attacked oil and gas storage facilities, lighting up the sky with explosions that pollute the air and release carbon dioxide.”
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“The stuff inside the rockets that both sides are using can poison the environment, too, according to the Ukrainian advocacy group Center for Environmental Initiatives Ecoaction. When they explode, artillery rockets can produce a number of noxious substances including hydrogen cyanide vapor and nitrogen oxides, which can cause acid rain, Ecoaction said.
In April, the Ukrainian army shot down a Russian missile, and some of the debris fell on an agricultural site, leaking toxic chemicals into the soil and water, CNN’s Ivana Kottasová reported. Officials told people living nearby not to drink water from wells and there were reports of dead fish in a river several miles away, Kottasová reported.”
“The problem is that there’s very little evidence that surveillance technology effectively stops these kinds of tragedies. Experts even warn that these systems can create a culture of surveillance at schools that harms students. At many schools, networks of cameras running AI-based software would join other forms of surveillance that schools already have, like metal detectors and on-campus police officers.
“In an attempt to stop, let’s say, a shooter like what happened at Uvalde, those schools have actually extended a cost to the students that attend them,” Odis Johnson Jr, the executive director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, told Recode. “There are other things we now have to consider when we seek to fortify our schools, which makes them feel like prisons and the students themselves feel like suspects.”
Still, schools and other venues often turn to surveillance technology in the wake of gun violence.”
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“Even more advanced forms of surveillance tech have a tendency to miss warning signs. So-called weapon detection technology has accuracy issues and can flag all sorts of items that aren’t weapons, like walkie-talkies, laptops, umbrellas, and eyeglass cases. If it’s designed to work with security cameras, this tech also wouldn’t necessarily pick up any weapons that are hidden or covered. As critical studies by researchers like Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru, and Deborah Raji have demonstrated, racism and sexism can be built inadvertently into facial recognition software. One firm, SN Technologies, offered a facial recognition algorithm to one New York school district that was 16 times more likely to misidentify Black women than white men, according to an analysis conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. There’s evidence, too, that recognition technology may identify children’s faces less accurately than those of adults.”
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“Research conducted by Johnson, the Johns Hopkins professor, and Jason Jabbari, a research professor at Washington University in St. Louis, found that a wide range of surveillance tools, including measures like security cameras and dress codes, hurt students’ academic performance at schools that used them. That’s partly because the deployment of surveillance measures — which, again, rarely stops mass shooters — tends to increase the likelihood that school officials or law enforcement at schools will punish or suspend students.
“Given the rarity of school shooting events, digital surveillance is more likely to be used to address minor disciplinary issues,” Barabas, the MIT researcher, explained. “Expanded use of school surveillance is likely to amplify these trends in ways that have a disproportionate impact on students of color, who are frequently disciplined for infractions that are both less serious and more discretionary than white students.”
This is all a reminder that schools often don’t use this technology in the way that it’s marketed. When one school deployed Avigilon’s software, school administrators used it to track when one girl went to the bathroom to eat lunch, supposedly because they wanted to stop bullying. An executive at one facial recognition company told Recode in 2019 that its technology was sometimes used to track the faces of parents who had been barred from contacting their children by a legal ruling or court order. Some schools have even used monitoring software to track and surveil protesters.”
“Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law, later signed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott, that raised the age to buy long guns, including AR-15-style rifles, from 18 to 21; required a three-day waiting period between when a firearm is purchased and when the buyer can get access to that gun; allowed trained school staff to carry guns; and put $400 million toward mental health services and school security.
It also created an extreme risk law, or “red flag law,” that can bar individuals who are believed to pose a danger to themselves or others from possessing firearms — a measure that has gotten increasing attention in the wake of the recent streak of mass shootings as a policy solution that could draw bipartisan support nationally and in other states.”
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“Florida’s red flag law allows the police to petition a judge for what’s called an “extreme risk protection order,” which can temporarily bar an individual from having a gun for up to a year. Police have to provide evidence that the individual poses “significant danger” to themselves or the public, which can include recent violent acts or threats of violence. If the individual continues to pose such a danger after one year, police can seek a one-time extension for another year.”
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“Florida’s red flag law has been identified as a potential model for other red states. But at the moment, it doesn’t seem as though there is a critical mass of Republicans who are interested in enacting red flag laws in states that don’t already have them. That’s true even in Texas and Oklahoma, where Republican lawmakers haven’t budged in the wake of the Uvalde and Tulsa shootings.”
“the president plans to use the Defense Production Act to boost clean energy in the United States by putting a two-year freeze on tariffs for solar panels coming to the country from Southeast Asia and simultaneously scaling up the domestic production of clean energy technologies.
This is the latest in a series of moves that show the White House is beginning to treat climate change and clean energy as national security issues. It’s also the kind of thing climate activists have been asking the Biden administration to do for months. The executive actions could bring thousands of manufacturing jobs to the country while also making the US less dependent on foreign oil and gas, particularly as the war in Ukraine continues.”
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“Defense Production Act (DPA) authorization specifically targets solar technology, heat pumps, insulation, green hydrogen, and grid components like transformers. Those might not seem very similar to, say, repurposing automobile production lines to build tanks, but in the past few years we have seen the definition of national security shift to encompass more than just military spending. It now includes everything from the manufacture of equipment to treat Covid-19 to baby formula. Biden’s latest move sends a message that clean energy technologies are worth investing in because they are critical to the security of the country, and the government is willing to support their production even if the market would prefer cheaper imports.”
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“More than 230,000 people work in the American solar industry as of 2020, mostly in installation, and “the vast majority of those jobs depend on solar imports,” according to Stokes, who is also the senior policy counsel at the electrification nonprofit Rewiring America.
Hundreds of solar projects around the country had been put on hold in the last two months while developers waited to find out if they’d have to pay billions in tariffs. The newly announced freeze, however, should allow those projects to move forward immediately, while also giving American solar manufacturers time to ramp up production to meet the needs of future projects.”
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“the DPA authorization also includes funding to ramp up the production of four other technologies: green hydrogen technology, which can be used to store clean energy and clean up carbon-heavy industries; grid components like transformers, which will help build a more modern, resilient grid that can handle an influx of renewable energy; heat pumps, which use electricity to heat and cool homes more efficiently than fossil fuel-dependent systems like furnaces; and building insulation, which is an overlooked tool in fighting climate change, making homes more energy-efficient and keeping them heated and cooled for longer.”
“In the first United Nations General Assembly vote in early March, 141 countries affirmed that Russia should “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw,” and in another resolution, 140 countries voted for humanitarian protections of Ukrainians.
But when the General Assembly voted in early April to expel Russia from the Human Rights Council, the majority was smaller. Ninety-three countries voted in favor, but 58 abstained and 24 voted against. The abstentions included Egypt, Ghana, India, and Indonesia, which were leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement — countries that created their own transnational grouping rather than back the US or Soviet Union during the Cold War. Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, and South Africa also abstained. China voted against.
The US and NATO have led unprecedented sanctions against Russia. But almost no countries in the Global South have signed onto them.
Analysts looking at these responses see a reinvigorated nonaligned movement. “When you see a return to what looks a lot like Cold War politics, then it’s quite natural that people start to reach for the Cold War conceptual toolbox,” Richard Gowan, the UN director of the International Crisis Group, told me. “It’s a mirror to the ‘NATO is back’ talk.”
The Non-Aligned Movement of the 1960s was not about neutrality. It put forward a unifying agenda for developing countries caught between warring superpowers. A similar platform for the 21st century hasn’t emerged yet, but with the majority of people in the world living in the Global South and the Ukraine war heightening tensions between two of the world’s largest powers, there are signs that it could.”
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“The first reason relates to economics and trade. Russia is a major exporter of energy, food, and fertilizer. Many countries can’t afford to cut economic ties with Moscow. India also depends on Russia for arms sales. Though Russian investment is not in the top of countries in Latin America, it’s still a factor.”
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“Second, there remains skepticism toward the US and NATO. The US invasion of Iraq was a violation of international law, and many nations see the West’s other regime-change efforts in Afghanistan and Libya as similarly flawed with ongoing spillover effects, according to experts with whom I spoke.
That skepticism extends to sanctions.”
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“As Guillaume Long, the former foreign minister of Ecuador, told me, “A lot of Latin Americans feel and think that sanctions are applied in a sort of selective, politicized way with a lot of double standards — basically, a tool of the US hegemony rather than a tool of global justice.” He cited the unpopularity across Latin America of the US’s coercive economic measures against Cuba and how civilians are negatively affected by US sanctions on Venezuela.”
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“The third factor is enduring solidarity with Russia, given its anti-colonial positions at times during the Cold War, when it was still part of the Soviet Union. The USSR was a superpower itself, making strategic foreign policy choices in its own perceived interest. Among more left-leaning governments, Russia also has a legacy of supporting independence from colonial powers. In particular, the African National Congress in South Africa was close to the Soviet Union and looks fondly on Russia for its staunch anti-apartheid position. Botes noted South Africa’s connections to Ukraine, too, and told me that Odesa, when it was part of the USSR, hosted ANC training camps.
More recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin has aggressively reached out to the Global South.”
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“Some countries may avoid choosing a side as an insurance policy in case Russia were to win over Ukraine. And Russia is an important force in the international system, especially in the United Nations. “If you’re a Latin American country, and you’re trying to get some votes at the UN, you know, 50 percent of the time you might get the support of Russia,” Long said. “But you can be sure that Ukraine will vote with the United States.”
For all of those reasons, something approximating a nonaligned position has begun to take shape.”