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Unfathomably, it's been a year since a horrific Hamas assault set off a more horrific Israeli genocide in which an insatiable, unraveling Zionist project has slaughtered, burned, starved, maimed and broken hundreds of thousands, mostly women and children, in the ungodly name of vengeance. A year of blood, terror, protests, rulings, another self-immolation and ceaseless dead babies, doctors, teachers, poets. Yet still, "The word 'ceasefire' is a wish, a dream." And in Gaza, "Every day, we live in hell."
The official death toll in Gaza is now almost 42,000; doctors who have volunteered there say the true toll is at least 118,908, or almost triple that. There are over 97,000 wounded, and most of Gaza's two million people are homeless. Given the ongoing violence, the tens of thousands missing, the unprecedented humanitarian crisis - famine looming, illness spreading, meager food, water, medical care - those obscene numbers will likely continue to soar. Meanwhile, Israel's unhinged genocidal campaign has failed to achieve its mythical "total victory" over Hamas while successively obliterating one red line of "civilized" warfare after another - bombing schools, hospitals, mosques, shelters, using starvation as a weapon, killing hundreds of civilians to rescue four captives, targeting journalists and doctors, and so heedlessly, relentlessly bombing residential areas that entire families, babies to grandparents, have been wiped out. Still, complicit Western allies, mostly us, send killing weapons and look away.
The result: "A year of war against children that has made Palestine the most precarious place in the world to be a child." Duly sacrificed on the altar of Israeli impunity are over 16,700 children killed, including newborns; at least 30,000 wounded, some as young as two with multiple limbs amputated; and many thousands of already disabled children seeing their fragile worlds implode: "They destroyed what was inside us." In an angry letter to Biden urging, "End this madness now!" 99 U.S. doctors who worked in Gaza describe healthy newborns dying of malnutrition, the "first time I held a baby's brain in my hand - the first of many," children regularly shot in the head or chest despite international rules deeming them innocents, and, in their dreams, the cries and screams of maimed children and grieving mothers "our consciences will not let us forget....Their mutilated bodies are a monument to cruelty."
Still it goes on, so pitilessly some media have changed update headlines from "Operation al-Aqsa Flood" to, say, "Israel's Genocide: Day 356." Last week, Israel intensified strikes on whatever's left of Gaza in eight massacres that killed 99 people, mostly sleeping women and children sheltering in schools - a sentence that should not exist. Among those killed was Wafa al-Udaini, a prominent English-speaking reporter who wrote for Palestinian and U.S. outlets. The 175th journalist killed by Israel, she documented the Palestinian struggle - what women endure in Israeli prisons, the horror of children's bodies shredded in a night strike, kids' occasional joy - to reflect their pain, courage, resilience and longing; she also mentored young Palestinian women writers to help them "tell their own stories in their own voice." Her words and work as both journalist and refugee, said one editor, were "her way of reclaiming her people’s narrative, why we do what we do on a daily basis...She was not just a storyteller – she was the story."
Untold thousands more dead, of course, have not been even identified, never mind celebrated. Last month, Israel tried to deliver 88 bodies, badly decomposed with no accompanying data, to Khan Younis' Nasser Hospital in a container truck, a grotesque repudiation of an International Law mandate that victims of armed conflict be "handled with dignity and properly managed." Gaza's Ministry of Health refused to receive them, and sent the truck back. "We cannot allow them to disappear into an anonymous grave,” they said. “Each of these individuals has a family, a history, a life that deserves recognition. We are demanding that their humanity be honored.” For families of over 10,000 missing, caught in a harrowing, months-long wait, ""Every day feels like a cruel game. You cling to hope, then you lose it again. And there's no end, no peace." Says Amina Nasir, 52, who's lost both her son and her brother, “I have nothing left. No news, no body, no grave. Just memories and questions. Its a torture I can't describe."
And now Lebanon, where Israel burrows ever deeper into another quagmire without end or strategy, another place of dust, screams, sirens, rubble, bodies in pieces, nowhere to go. "We are all the same," writes Mohammed Mhawish of "a solidarity beyond words." "For the people of Lebanon, Gaza is not a distant cause; it is a mirror of their own suffering, a continuation of the story we’ve been living for decades. We know the bombs killing their children are the same ones killing ours." On the mournful one-year marker, that sense of oneness prompted tens of thousands worldwide to protest, and fight to end, the ongoing genocide. In the U.S., the focus was rightly on our persistent, unconscionable, American-taxpayer-funded arming of Israel despite its routinely revealed war crimes, and irregardless of Biden Administration claims it's been "working tirelessly" on a ceasefire. Critics: "That is not a thing." The brutal, bottom-line truth: Without U.S. arms, funds and diplomatic cover, "This genocide would not have been possible.”
On Saturday, the anniversary also spurred Arizona journalist Samuel Mena Jr. to set himself on fire during protests to renounce the genocide and what he saw as his own role in it. In a long essay, he described a U.S. of "hypocrisy, falsehood, and misdirection" that joins global colonial projects as its leaders and journalists deny their deadly impact. Despite so many dead children, "We took at face value this war is a war against Hamas. How many Palestinians were killed that I allowed to be branded as Hamas..struck with a missile cosigned by the American media?" To the painful query, "What are you going to do?" he said to the thousands of children who lost a limb, "with as much of my conviction as I possibly can, that, "I give my left arm to you (and) pray my voice was able to raise up yours." After he was hospitalized with non-life-threatening burns, the post was met with ugly comments - "They should've let you burn" - and calls for empathy. "However you view what Sam did," said a friend, “Sam was (only) asking for (us) to see each other’s humanity.”
To date, Israel's unrepentant leaders seem unable to do so. "Israel doesn’t need an excuse to exterminate Palestinians," said one weary Gazan. “Where is justice in this world?” "After a year," said another, "our souls feel suspended in time...as though the world has simply accepted our suffering as the natural state of affairs." Still, people endure "the long wait for the day the death stops." In the small coastal city of Deir al-Balah, where fishing, palm trees and calm have been erased for rubble, tents, traumatized children, a resident grows a yellow rose, a jasmine tree, basil, two palm trees, three olive trees: "That's how I define hope." A 24-year-old teacher writes for "the heavenly souls" of her family of 14 killed in a strike that "flew them away to fairer places"' as she, the only survivor, wheelchair-bound in the hospital, tells the stories of the burned and mourning children there. Once we die, her father said, "People will listen to our stories." Now, "Out from under the rubble, I see my martyrs waving for me. They all stand again. They smile. They live. They go back home."
Once they started invading us.
Taking our houses and trees, drawing lines,
pushing us into tiny places.
It wasn’t a bargain or deal or even a real war.
To this day they pretend it was.
But it was something else.
We were sorry what happened to them but
we had nothing to do with it.
- Naomi Shihab Nye,withthanksto Vox Populi
To begin a conversation
about Palestine & Israel
First, you must say:
I am your brother
& you are my sister...
Then, you can speak of history
and compare your losses.
- Yahia Lababidi, whose new book is now out
Renowned activist Greta Thunberg was detained on Saturday at a climate protest in Brussels aimed at ending European Union fossil fuel subsidies.
The protest included hundreds of campaigners from Extinction Rebellion and other groups; they came together under the name United for Climate Justice (UCJ). One group of them marched in an area near the European Parliament, while another group that included Thunberg blocked a section of the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique.
"Our politicians have failed us," Paolo Destilo, a UCJ spokesperson, toldPolitico. "European leaders' continued support for the fossil fuel industry raises serious questions about their commitment to effective climate action."
Another UCJ spokesperson, Angela Huston Gold, pointed to devastating floods that recently hit Europe and Africa as a warning sign for the planet.
"Increasingly frequent and extreme natural disasters are likely to claim a billion victims by the end of the century, mainly due to the use of fossil fuels," Huston Gold said in a statement, citing a 2023 study in Energies, a journal. "To avoid ecological and social collapse, fossil fuel subsidies must end now."
😊Happy to see @GretaThunberg keeping us company! pic.twitter.com/yVwj1IPeTR
— stopfossilsubsidies (@stopfossilsubs) October 5, 2024
The European Commission published a report last year showing that the EU spent 123 billion euros ($135 billion) on fossil fuel subsidies in 2022, an increase on previous years that was caused by policy decisions following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (2022 was the last year included in the report.) The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development listed still higher figures for 2022.
EU's Eighth Environment Action Program, which entered into force in May 2022, calls for a phaseout of fossil fuel subsidies, but national governments haven't taken action, so progress is "uncertain," according to the European Environment Agency, which is part of the EU.
Thunberg on Saturday told Politico that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who's been in office since 2019, was not a green champion.
UCJ on Tuesday sent an open letter to von der Leyen and other EU institutional leaders calling for a phaseout of fossil fuel subsidies by 2025. "The EU should provide technical and financial assistance to member states facing challenges in meeting phaseout deadlines and offer incentives for achieving milestones ahead of schedule," it says.
Staffers at the European Commission were in fact among the demonstrators in Brussels on Saturday, Politico reported.
"There's a lot of tools the institutions have now to fight climate change, but since the [European Parliament elections in June] there's been a lot of backtracking," one commission staffer told Politico, given anonymity in order to speak freely.
"It's now all about competitiveness and the 'clean industrial deal,' whatever that means," the staffer added. "The urgency has been lost—the Parliament has shifted to the right, the commission in many ways has shifted to the right—and discussion of the climate has faded into the background."
Thunberg, who's now 21, came to fame as a 15-year-old activist in Sweden who helped form the global school strikes for climate movement. She's been arrested numerous times, including at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Denmark earlier this month.
Thunberg and other activists who sat with interlocked arms on the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique were arrested and taken to the police station, according toThe Brussels Times.
Consumer advocates demanded congressional hearings on alleged price fixing by oil giants on Monday after the Federal Trade Commission banned an executive from serving on the board of Chevron, saying he had colluded with international representatives to keep oil prices high.
The FTC said it would prohibit John B. Hess, CEO of the Hess Corporation, from serving on Chevron's Board of Directors as part of Chevron's acquisition of the company, citing Hess' public and private communications "with the past and current secretaries general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and an official from Saudi Arabia."
"In these communications, Mr. Hess stressed the importance of oil market stability and inventory management and encouraged these officials to take actions on these issues and speak about them at different events," said the FTC.
The FTC's complaint marks the second time since May that an oil executive has been accused of collusion and price fixing to ensure Americans would continue paying high prices for gas, adding an estimated $500 per year, per vehicle, in fuel costs for the average U.S. household.
Democratic lawmakers have demanded a probe by the Department of Justice into collusion by fossil fuel companies, following the FTC's revelation that Scott Sheffield, founder of Pioneer Natural Resources, communicated with OPEC representatives via text messages, WhatsApp, and in person to encourage high oil prices.
"Americans who are struggling to make ends meet cannot afford any more price fixing collusion between Big Oil CEOs and foreign countries."
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said that "jail time should seriously be considered," highlighting the financial pain Sheffield's actions added to households already struggling to afford groceries, childcare, and other essentials.
The five largest U.S. oil companies have reported more than $250 billion in profits over the last two years.
"We cannot allow fossil fuel companies to gouge the American public in concert with OPEC while raking in record profits," said Tyson Slocum, director of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen's energy program. "The FTC is lifting the veil on an effort, apparently by multiple U.S. oil companies, to communicate with foreign actors to artificially raise energy prices for American families and around the world. We reiterate the call for Congress to immediately hold hearings to investigate illegal conduct by Big Oil."
Government watchdog Accountable.US described the news as "another Big Oil CEO caught colluding with OPEC."
"Americans who are struggling to make ends meet cannot afford any more price fixing collusion between Big Oil CEOs and foreign countries," said Chris Marshall, a spokesperson for the group. "They should be held accountable to make sure consumers pay a fair price at the pump."
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, went on Fox News on Sunday morning to lay out the case for the Democratic ticket and attack Republicans' economic policies.
In a 15-minute interview with Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream, Walz pushed back on many right-wing talking points and drew a sharp distinction between the two parties economic leadership. He celebrated the work of U.S. Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, and attacked former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.
"We saw a blockbuster jobs report this week," Walz said. "We saw interest rates come down, and we've also seen that Vice President Harris is laying out a middle-class agenda."
"I was in Ohio yesterday, in Cleveland, in Cincinnati, and talking about this," he added. "Folks in Ohio know that Donald Trump's policies led to 180,000 manufacturing jobs leaving."
Walz mentioned the high unemployment rates that the U.S. faced when Trump left office, though those were affected by the pandemic, as well as Harris' intention to address price gouging by corporations, a popular initiative.
Walz drew particular attention to Trump and Harris' tax plans.
"I think the fundamental difference here is, Donald Trump kept his promise. He cut taxes for the wealthiest," Walz said, before explaining that Harris, on the other hand, was "asking those at the top to pay their fair share" so as to pay for programs such as the child tax credit.
Donald Trump wants to cut taxes for the wealthiest and make middle-class families foot the bill. Again. @KamalaHarris has laid out a plan focused on things like a $6,000 Child Tax Credit to put more money in people’s pockets.pic.twitter.com/MJ5MF20Nh6
— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) October 6, 2024
Bream tried to corner Walz on abortion and immigration but the governor maintained his composure, seeming to be more poised than he had been during the vice presidential debate on Tuesday night. He called Bream's inquiries into whether there would limits to late-term abortions a "distraction."
Bream also grilled Walz on some personal statements that have been called into question. Seeming to want to draw a contrast with Trump, Walz said "I will own up when I misspeak."
This was Walz' first appearance on a Sunday morning talk show since he was named Harris' running mate. Both Dana Bash and Jake Tapper of CNN have recently commented on Harris and Walz' absence from television programs, suggesting they should make more appearances.
In his first public statement since being released from prison in June, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday urged European lawmakers to take action to protect journalists from being prosecuted for their reporting work, warning that his yearslong case is directly tied to self-censorship and the chilling of press freedom.
Assange spoke to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights (PACE) at the Council of Europe, which includes members from across the continent, in Strasbourg, France, and warned that current legal protections for journalists and whistleblowers "were not effective in any remotely reasonable time," as evidenced by the 14 years he spent in prison or otherwise in confinement for his work.
"I want to be totally clear," said Assange. "I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today because after years of incarceration I pleaded guilty to journalism. I pleaded guilty to seeking information from a source."
Watch Assange's testimony below:
Assange was released from Belmarsh Prison in London in June after being incarcerated there for five years. His release was secured when he agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security materials in a deal with the U.S. government.
He had spent years fighting U.S. efforts to extradite him, threatening him with a sentence of up to 170 years in a federal prison, as punishment for state secrets WikiLeaks published.
The media organization reported on a series of leaks provided by former U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning regarding the Army's killing of unarmed civilians in Iraq, as well as publishing diplomatic cables.
"I was formally convicted by a foreign power for asking for receiving and publishing truthful information about that power, while I was in Europe," said Assange, who is Australian, on Tuesday. "The fundamental issue is simple: Journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs."
Assange told PACE members that he had believed that Article 10 of European Convention of Human Rights, which protects the right to freedom of expression and freedom of the media, would protect him from prosecution.
"Similarly, looking at the U.S. First Amendment to its Constitution... No publisher had ever been prosecuted for publishing classified information from the United States," said Assange. "I expected some kind of harassment legal process. I was pre-prepared to fight for that."
He continued:
My naiveté was in believing in the law. When push comes to shove, laws are just pieces of paper and they can be reinterpreted for political expediency.
They are the rules made by the ruling class more broadly. And if those rules don't suit what it wants to do, it reinterprets them or hopefully changes them... In the case of the United States, we angered one of the constituent powers of the United States. The intelligence sector... It was powerful enough to push for a reinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
He said he ultimately "chose freedom over unrealizable justice," as the U.S. was intent on imprisoning him for the rest of his life unless he entered the guilty plea.
Assange added that his case set a "dangerous precedent," and that since his arrest he has observed "more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth, and more self-censorship."
"It is hard not to draw a line from the U.S. government crossing the Rubicon by internationally criminalizing journalism to the chilled climate for freedom of expression now," said Assange.
His comments echoed the findings of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which published its annual press freedom index in May. The group found that "in the Americas, the inability of journalists to cover subjects related to organized crime, corruption, or the environment for fear of reprisals poses a major problem."
The U.S. fell 10 places in the annual ranking, with citing "open antagonism from political officials" such as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, "including calls to jail journalists." RSF also cited the government's pursuit of Assange's extradition.
In Europe, said Assange on Tuesday, "the criminalization of news-gathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere."
Human Rights Watch said Monday that the Israeli military's attacks on key exit routes are preventing civilians from fleeing areas that are under heavy bombardment and hampering humanitarian aid operations, likely in violation of international law.
The group pointed specifically to Israeli forces' bombing late last week of the primary border crossing between Lebanon and Syria. The attack, as Al Jazeerareported at the time, cut off "a road linking the two countries that was being used by hundreds of thousands of people to flee Israeli bombardments in recent days."
Citing aid workers on the ground, the BBCreported that Israel's destruction of the crossing's main road "hinders both the movement of people and also food and humanitarian supplies" by preventing vehicle access. In desperation, some have still tried to "make the journey on foot," the BBC added, "with pictures showing families clambering over rubble and scrambling through the four-meter crater in the road to get out of the country."
Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said in a statement Monday that "by making a border crossing inaccessible at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing fighting and many others are in need of aid, the Israeli military threatens considerable civilian harm."
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed the border crossing was being used to transfer weapons to the Lebanese paramilitary group and political party Hezbollah, but Fakih noted that "even if that crossing is used for military purposes, Israel would need to take into account the expected civilian harm compared to the anticipated military gain from the attack."
Desperate Syrian refugees - & some Lebanese - fleeting bombardment in #Lebanon are crossing the border into Syria on foot, dragging children and the contents of their homes around two massive craters in the middle of no man’s land after #Israel’i jets bombed the border crossing. pic.twitter.com/CEvAjLiPTP
— Leila Molana-Allen (@Leila_MA) October 7, 2024
Since mid-September, Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed more than 2,000 people and forced more than a million others—roughly a fifth of the country's population—from their homes, leaving shelters overwhelmed. Many have been forced to sleep on the streets after fleeing Israel's bombs and ground forces.
"The shelters are not ready to host the number of displaced people and 629 are already full," Gheith Bittar, executive director of the nonprofit Shift – Social Innovation Hub, said in a statement last week. "We will get to a point where we won’t be able to cope. Without funds, we cannot sustain our support to the shelters. The ground invasion will only increase the number of people forced to flee, and we have already seen an increase on a daily basis with the continuous bombardment. The situation will only get worse as winter approaches."
"People are coming to us traumatized," Bittar added. "Most of them have lost their houses and relatives. Some of them were scared because of the scale of bombardment as they were fleeing, and many others because of their fear of the unknown coming to a new city. People are suffering, they have many, many issues to think about."
A displaced father of four is pictured with his children on October 6, 2024 in Beirut. (Photo: Nael Chahine/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
Lebanese civilians faced additional evacuation orders on Monday as the Israeli military sent more troops into the country and escalated its bombing campaign.
The New York Timesreported Monday that the IDF "told the residents of more than two dozen towns and villages in southern Lebanon to 'immediately evacuate' their homes and head north."
In the face of the intensifying assault on Lebanon and ongoing bombardment of Gaza, HRW said Monday that "Israel's key allies"—most notably the United States—"should suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel, given the real risk that they will be used to commit grave abuses."
"Israel's allies risk complicity in unlawful attacks," warned Fakih, "if they continue providing arms and other substantive support despite the obvious risk of atrocities."
Israeli forces also killed a Palestinian boy on his way home from school in the occupied territory.
Palestinians are mourning the death of a 66-year-old nonviolent activist who was brutally beaten by Israeli troops in the illegally occupied West Bank on Monday.
Middle East Monitorreported that Israeli occupation forces raided the home of Ziad Abu Ehlayyel in Dura, near Hebron, in an effort to arrest one of his sons. The soldiers beat the elderly man until he lost consciousness. He was rushed to Dura Hospital, where he passed away a short time later.
Abu Ehlayyel was a well-known community activist with a history of confronting—and being assaulted by—Israeli troops. The Palestine Chroniclepublished a video montage of some of his best-known encounters with occupation forces.
Quds News Network, the source of much of the Chronicle's video, also published footage showing Abu Ehlayyel stepping in front of Israeli troops as they're firing on Palestinian protesters.
"We don't want you to shoot anyone, we don't want you to kill anyone; this is a nonviolent procession, why do you keep shooting at them?" Abu Ehlayyel asks the soldiers in the video. "Why don't you stop your settlers from attacking us?"
Also on Monday, Israeli occupation forces shot and killed Hatem Ghaith, who according to reports was either 12 or 13 years old, during a raid in the village of Kafr Aqab, north of Jerusalem.
Defense for Children International-Palestine said Ghaith was on his way home from school when Israeli occupation forces raided the nearby Qalandia refugee camp. Israeli troops then opened fire on a group of young Palestinians, shooting Ghaith in the stomach from a distance of approximately 100-150 feet. The boy was rushed to Ramallah Governmental Hospital, where he was pronounced dead after unsuccessful resuscitation attempts.
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the world's attention has largely been focused on Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed or wounded around 150,000 Palestinians and displaced, starved, or sickened millions more in a war for which the U.S.-backed country is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
Meanwhile, attacks by Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 695 Palestinians—more than 1 in 5 of whom are children—in the West Bank, according to the most recent figures from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Last week, at least 18 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting the Tulkarem refugee camp. An Israeli military spokesperson said the target of the strike was a Hamas official in charge of infrastructure in the camp.
OCHA has also documented more than 1,400 attacks by Jewish settler-colonists against Palestinians in the West Bank, as well as many
attacks on civilian infrastructure and agriculture including the olive trees upon which many Palestinians rely for their livelihoods.
The Biden-Harris administration's new rule mandating the replacement of lead pipes provides "yet another example of the stark difference between the two presidential candidates," an advocate said.
The Biden administration on Tuesday set a final rule requiring the replacement of nearly all of the nation's lead pipes within ten years, a clean drinking water initiative that drew praise from public health experts and advocacy groups.
The new rule, which The New York Times and The Washington Post both called "landmark," was brought forth by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and requires the replacement of an estimated 9.2 million lead service lines serving millions of people across the country. Lead is a neurotoxin that can cause long-term damage to the brain and nervous system, particularly to children.
The administration of former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, had "slowed the pace of lead service line replacements," according to Food & Water Watch, an advocacy group.
"We applaud the Biden-Harris administration for strengthening the rule to remove lead from our drinking water," Mary Grant, a campaign director at Food & Water Action, said in a statement. "These long-awaited improvements will replace the weak regulation adopted by Donald Trump, and in doing so, will protect millions of people from lasting harm from this dangerous neurotoxin."
Grant said the new rule highlighted the stakes of the upcoming presidential election, in which Trump faces Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
"Today's action is yet another example of the stark difference between the two presidential candidates," she added. "Only Vice President Kamala Harris is serious about the safety of our drinking water. A Trump reelection could reverse progress on safe water."
This is a historic victory for public health. Lead pipes have poisoned American drinking water for decades, affecting as many as two-thirds of children under 6 in cities like Chicago.
Clean water is a RIGHT, not a privilege. Thank you, @EPA @POTUS! 👏💧https://t.co/ZQyTt0mMI4
— Progressive Caucus (@USProgressives) October 8, 2024
Lead, prized for its durability, has been used in water pipes since Ancient Rome—the English word "plumbing" descends from the Latin word "plumbum," meaning lead.
Congress banned the construction of new lead pipes in the U.S. in 1986 and passed the Safe Drinking Water Act, which includes regulations on lead, in 1991.
However, phasing out the use of older pipes has gone very slowly, to the frustration of public health experts. There has been "no meaningful improvement in protecting communities" in three decades, until now, according to a statement from Earthjustice, an advocacy group.
"Lead contamination is a longstanding public health emergency, and the Biden-Harris administration's rule is a monumental step forward in addressing the urgent need for safe, clean drinking water," said Patrice Simms, Earthjustice's vice president of litigation for healthy communities.
People of color and on low incomes are disproportionately affected by lead contamination, which is often found in big cities. Chicago has more lead pipes than any other U.S. city.
Flint, Michigan—a majority Black city—faced a public health crisis caused by lead pipes starting in 2014. Then-President Barack Obama signed an emergency declaration and sent aid to the city in 2016. More than 100,000 residents were exposed to elevated lead levels.
Still, the federal government didn't move to tighten lead rules until November 2023, when the EPA issued a proposal to do so. The announcement of the final rule on Tuesday was accompanied by an outpouring of support—and relief.
"A game changer for kids and communities, EPA's finalized lead and copper rule improvements will ensure that we will never again see the preventable tragedy of a city, or a child, poisoned by their lead pipes," Mona Hanna, a pediatrician in Flint and a public health professor at Michigan State University whose research helped expose the crisis there, said in the EPA statement announcing the rule change.
Betsy Southerland, the former director of science and technology in the EPA's water division, also celebrated the agency's move, according to an Environmental Protection Network statement:
The American people have known for over 30 years that there is no safe level of lead and have waited too long for lead pipes to be replaced. Finally, the lead pipes that deliver water to over 9 million homes will be replaced before they damage the mental and physical development of another generation of children. Today is the first time there is an actual deadline for lead pipe replacement to happen and significant financial and technical assistance to get the job done.
The White House is counting on the initiative being popular, especially in swing states in the Midwest. President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit Wisconsin to "tout" the new policy, the Timesreported. The EPA's statement says it will "create good-paying local jobs."
Natalie Quillian, a White House deputy chief of staff, said that "all Americans, no matter where they come from, should have access to their most basic needs, including being able to turn on the tap and drink clean drinking water without fear," according to the Post.
The new rule, in addition to mandating the replacement of pipes, establishes a stricter standard for lead contamination, moving it from 15 parts per billion to 10 ppb and requiring public utilities to provide filters if that level is exceeded. Some advocates had called for a standard between 0 and 5 ppb.
Utilities are expected to challenge the new rule in court, as they've done with the EPA's regulations on "forever chemicals" in drinking water.
"Climate change clearly warmed the Gulf waters that fueled Milton's development, likely supercharging its rapid intensification and making this hurricane much more dangerous."
As Floridians raced to prepare for and escape the path of Hurricane Milton, an analysis published Monday showed that high sea-surface temperatures fueling the monstrous storm's rapid intensification were made between 400 and 800 times more likely by the climate crisis.
The research organization Climate Central noted that Milton, which is expected to make landfall in the populous Tampa Bay metropolitan area on Wednesday night, is a "historically powerful" storm that has "undergone extreme rapid intensification over sea surface temperatures warmed by climate change."
Sea-surface temperatures in the area where Milton has developed "are at or above record-breaking highs," Climate Central observed, conditions that have allowed the storm to quickly become what the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC)
described as an "extremely serious threat to Florida," a state still reeling from the destructive Hurricane Helene.
"Climate change clearly warmed the Gulf waters that fueled Milton's development, likely supercharging its rapid intensification and making this hurricane much more dangerous," said Daniel Gilford, a meteorologist at Climate Central. "Fossil fuel pollution is amplifying this threat."
As New York Times climate reporters Raymond Zhong and Mira Rojanasakul explained Monday, "For a year and a half now, the upper layer of the world's oceans has been at or near its hottest temperatures on record."
"The seas absorb most of the extra heat that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap near Earth's surface," the pair wrote. "So the same human-caused forces that have been bringing abnormal heat to towns, cities, and landscapes are helping to warm the oceans."
Milton exploded from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in just over 24 hours—intensification that scientists Jeff Masters and Bob Henson called "a spectacular and ominous feat." The storm has since weakened slightly to a Category 4 as it moves across the Gulf of Mexico, but it is still expected to be devastating.
"It is very likely that Milton will be a highly destructive hurricane costing over $10 billion for Florida—and Milton could end up placing among the costliest U.S. hurricanes on record, depending on the eventual details of landfall," they wrote Monday. "The risk is also high that Milton will be very deadly if people in low-lying areas do not heed evacuation orders and flee the hurricane."
Many Florida counties are under voluntary or mandatory evacuation orders as Milton barrels toward the state just days after Helene ripped through the region, wreaking deadly havoc across six states.
"Some of the same communities ravaged by Helene are now facing this new threat. Millions of Floridians may be asked to evacuate," the American Red Cross said in a statement. "Helene and Milton are both examples of how extreme weather is becoming more frequent and intense. In this case, meteorologists say Helene's intense and far-reaching rainfall—which extended hundreds of miles from the coast—can be attributed to the climate crisis. And Milton is already the third-fastest rapidly intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic, according to more than 40 years of data from the National Hurricane Center."
The Associated Pressnoted late Monday that "as evacuation orders were issued, forecasters warned of a possible 8- to 12-foot (2.4- to 3.6-meter) storm surge in Tampa Bay."
"That's the highest ever predicted for the region and nearly double the levels reached two weeks ago during Helene," AP reported, citing a spokesperson with the NHC.