An initiative at Africa’s first climate summit to boost production of the continent’s carbon credit program by nearly 20 times by 2030 brought pledges of hundreds of millions of dollars.
United Arab Emirates (UAE) investors pledged to purchase $450 million worth of Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) credits. ACMI was launched at COP27 in Egypt last year.
“We must see in green growth, not just a climate imperative but also a fountain of multi-billion dollar economic opportunities that Africa and the world is primed to capitalise,” said President of Kenya William Ruto, as Reuters reported.
Market-based financing mechanisms like carbon offsets are being encouraged by leaders in Africa. Carbon credits can be created by projects in developing countries that help keep emissions in check like transitioning to green energy or tree planting. The “credits” are then purchased by companies to help them meet their climate goals. One credit equals one ton of carbon dioxide saved.
Environmental groups denounced the focus on carbon credits at the Africa Climate Summit (ACS) in Nairobi, Kenya, which was attended by almost 25,000 delegates and more than 30 heads of state.
“[I]t is regrettable that the Africa Climate Summit is becoming a bazaar for carbon credit speculators and propagandists that serve to greenwash rather than reduce harmful emissions,” said Thandile Chinyavanhu, Greenpeace Africa climate and energy campaigner, as Climate Home News reported. “They are risky diversions from real climate and biodiversity action that requires ending fossil fuel expansion and industrial destruction of our ecosystems.”
Governments in Africa view carbon credits and the like as essential ways to obtain hard-to-come-by funding from wealthy donors, reported Reuters.
“There hasn’t been any success for an African country in attracting climate finance,” said Bogolo Kenewendo, a United Nations climate adviser, as Reuters reported.
In 2021, the carbon offset market was worth about $2 billion and has been projected to climb to from $10 to $40 billion by 2030.
In addition to the $450 million from the UAE Carbon Alliance, an investment pledge of $200 million for ACMI credit projects was made by Climate Asset Management, a partnership between climate change advisory and investment firm Pollination and HSBC Asset Management.
Britain also planned to announce $62 million in UK-backed projects, and a $64 million debt swap was announced by Germany with Kenya that would make money available for renewables.
African Development Bank Vice President Kevin Kariuki told Reuters that African countries would advocate for the expansion of International Monetary Fund special drawing rights at COP28 in Dubai later this year. The drawing rights could make $500 billion in climate financing available, which could also be leveraged as many as five times.
“The private sector really remains an untapped opportunity that now must be seized,” said Commonwealth of Nations Secretary-General Patricia Scotland, as reported by Reuters.
The Great Salt Lake, home to millions of migratory birds and the source of $2.5 billion in annual economic activity in Utah, has been rapidly shrinking for years. A new lawsuit filed by conservation groups on Wednesday says the Utah government directly contributed to the lake’s decline by authorizing excessive diversions of water for agriculture, industry, and other uses.
The lawsuit hinges on the public trust doctrine, a legal principle that says states shoulder the responsibility to protect public resources like shared waters and lands. The plaintiffs have asked a district court in Utah to declare the state’s actions a violation of that public trust duty and to direct officials to restore the lake to healthy water levels. Without immediate action, they warn, heavy metals and sediments from the drying lakebed will blow downwind and into the lungs of Utah residents, turning the lake into a “toxic dust bowl.”
“Wherever you have an environmental nightmare, if you look hard enough or wait long enough, you’re going to have a public health nightmare,” Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, one of the plaintiff groups in the case, told Grist. “And that’s exactly what we fear.”
The lake relies on upstream water flowing from several rivers and streams to maintain its water levels. But out of the approximately 3 million acre-feet of water that would normally flow into the lake each year, more than 2 million acre-feet are diverted for various purposes. Around three-quarters of that water is used for irrigating alfalfa and other crops. The industrial extraction of minerals, including salt, directly from the lake accounts for another 9 percent. Other industries and cities use another 9 percent, with 90 percent of citybound water destined to water lawns and other decorative outdoor plants. Meanwhile, climate change has increased evaporation and worsened drought in the Southwest, accounting for about 10 percent of the lake’s overall decline.
Researchers warned earlier this year that the Great Salt Lake may completely disappear in five years if water loss continues at current rates. As of last year, the Great Salt Lake had lost 73 percent of its water and 60 percent of its surface area compared to baseline historical levels.
Aerial view of the Great Salt Lake on August 02, 2021, near Corinne, Utah.
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Moench and other health advocates worry that without intervention, the Great Salt Lake will end up like the Aral Sea, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Once the fourth largest lake in the world, today it is now almost completely dried up after decades of water diversions for agriculture. Toxic dust and water pollution, along with declining economic conditions, led to a significant rise in respiratory illnesses, cancer, and other chronic diseases in the region. According to a 2003 study, overall life expectancy for nearby residents dropped 13 years as the lake shrank.
In Utah, the drying lakebed has already led to deadly dust storms in the region. While in the short term, dusty air may only lead to itchy eyes, a cough, and difficulty breathing, Moench says that long-term exposure to air pollution raises the risk of many leading causes of death, including heart disease, lung disease, strokes, and cancer. Sediment from a dried up Great Salt Lake also contain pollutants like arsenic, mercury, lead, and nickel — potent neurotoxins that can impair brain function and development and cause cancer.
In addition to the public health risks, a depleted lake would also harm the Utah economy and environment. The Great Salt Lake supports brine shrimp fishing, recreation, and other industries. The ecosystem sustains around 9,000 local jobs and even boosts Utah’s skiing businesses by increasing annual snowfall through its evaporation.
Scientists and even Utah state officials say that for the Great Salt Lake to return to sustainable water levels, the government would need to reduce the amount of upstream water allocated toward agriculture, mineral extraction, and other activities. But the plaintiffs say the state’s Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water Rights, and Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands have been reluctant to adopt any strategy that limits existing uses of water. Utah leaders have also failed to include tribal nations in formal discussions about protecting the Great Salt Lake, even though Indigenous peoples including the Ute, Shoshone, and Paiute nations have lived near and managed the lake for thousands of years.
Stu Gillespie, an attorney at Earthjustice and lead counsel for the lawsuit, told Grist that as climate change and human activities continue to deplete water resources, state governments will be held increasingly accountable for their responsibility to protect public waters like the Great Salt Lake. Reminding them of their obligations under the public trust doctrine, he said, could be a viable way to get state governments like Utah’s to finally act.
“The public trust is being increasingly called upon to address this crisis, and it’s up to the courts to enforce it,” said Gillespie.
August was another month of relatively good news for the Amazon rainforest: The rate of deforestation has continued to decline significantly.
Earlier this week, Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister, announced a 66.1 percent decrease in Amazon deforestation compared to last August. That amounted to a loss of about 217 square miles, according to Reuters. These figures come during a time of year when destruction of the rainforest is usually quite high, and follows a similar trend seen in July.
So far this year, the rate of deforestation is 48 percent lower than in 2022 and is at levels not seen since 2018. The numbers are another victory for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has made protecting the Amazon a policy priority.
“These results show the determination of the Lula administration to break the cycle of abandonment and regression seen under the previous government,” Marina Silva said, according to the BBC.
The Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, covers some 2.5 million square miles — an area roughly twice the size of India. It’s a critical carbon sink for greenhouse gas emissions and home to 20 percent of the world’s fresh water. But deforestation and climate change are degrading the Amazon and its ability to sop up carbon from the atmosphere. Some scientists fear that if deforestation continues, the rainforest could reach a point beyond which it cannot recover and would become a grassy savannah.
“This shows the importance of governments acting on climate change,” Erika Berenguer, a senior research associate focused on the Amazon at Oxford University, said of the figures released this week. She is currently doing field work in the rainforest, and says the decreasing rate of deforestation is an important signal for voters.
“Often people vote and feel disempowered,” she said. “This shows how an election can change the fate of the Amazon.”
Some scientists, however, prefer to follow the annual rather than monthly deforestation data. “It’s a hopeful story,” said Alexandra Tyukavina, a geographer at the University of Maryland who focuses on tropical forest loss. But she adds that there could be a lag in capturing deforestation via satellite imagery and “there is quite a bit of deforestation happening in the second half of the year.”
While the progress so far has been critical, Berenguer calls it “low-hanging fruit” that largely revolved around getting back to where the country was before Bolsarano. “Then you have to pick the fruit at the top of the trees and it’s much more difficult,” she said. “The question becomes what we do to reduce rates even more from what they were pre-Bolsonaro.”
The Lula administration has set a goal of zero deforestation by 2030. But whether he meets that goal, or how close he comes, remains an open question and there is at least some cause for skepticism. A meeting of Amazon nations early this year, for example, failed to reach an agreement on important barriers to progress, such as deforestation targets and the future of oil and gas development in the rainforest.
“We cannot just give ourselves a pat on the shoulder and be happy about it,” said Berenguer. “We cannot get too comfy.”
Google Maps is expanding with three new tools to help map rooftop solar potential, air quality and pollen. The tools utilize Google’s artificial intelligence, machine learning, environmental data and aerial imagery to provide more information on the environment.
The company first started its Project Sunroof in 2015 to estimate solar potential. On Aug. 28, Google announced a new Solar API that maps resources for detailed data on rooftop solar potential. The new tool will share the solar potential for over 320 million buildings in 40 countries, according to a company press release.
Google’s Solar API was trained to pull data on roof geometry, trees and shading from aerial imagery, in addition to other factors like weather patterns and energy costs. The tool shows users potential energy savings and is designed to make the process of solar panel installation quicker and easier.
“The Solar API is a key input — it instantly gives us the data we need to analyze rooftops to determine how much sunlight they get to create customer proposals within the same workflow,” said Walid Halty, co-founder and CEO of Mona Lee Solar, a solar installation company, in a statement. “By doing this remotely and instantly, we have greater cost savings and can provide a better customer experience, helping our business grow quickly in this space.”
In addition to the Solar API, Google also announced Air Quality API, which provides in-depth air quality information to users. This project pulls from data sources including government monitoring stations, sensors, meteorological data, satellites, live traffic data and more to produce location-specific and highly detailed air quality information.
The tool shows the air quality index (AQI), the dominant pollutant, hourly history of air quality in an area and even a breakdown of the major pollutants in an area. According to Google, this information can help users make decisions regarding their health, from determining when it’s safe to spend time outdoors to planning a travel route with the best air quality.
The company announced a third tool, Pollen API, which offers information on pollen count from top pollen sources. It relies on land cover, climatological data, annual pollen production for different plants and other data to determine pollen levels and risks. This could help the around 400 million people globally who have allergic rhinitis, according to the World Health Organization, and the 67 million adults in the U.S. who have seasonal allergies.
According to Google, these new tools can help developers and businesses plan sustainable solutions and help users lessen their environmental impact.
“Looking ahead, we aspire to drive both short-term progress and long-term breakthroughs. No company — no matter how ambitious — can solve a challenge as big as climate change alone,” wrote Saleem Van Groenou, product manager for Google Maps Platform. “One of the most powerful things we can do is build technology that allows us, our customers, and individuals around the world to take meaningful action. We’re optimistic about what’s possible with the Solar API and our suite of Environment APIs.”
Jesika Gonzalez will tell you that she wasn’t the biggest fan of Porterville, California, while she was growing up.
“When I was younger, I was very, like, angsty,” the 18-year-old said as she flicked her purple hair over her shoulder. “Whatever, this town’s small, nothing to do.”
Porterville is a predominantly Hispanic working-class town in the Central Valley of California, where environmental hazards include some of the worst air qualityin the state; the past year’s torrential rains that inundated hundreds of acres of farmland; and a heat wave that pushed temperatures past 110 degrees Fahrenheit this July.
But Porterville has this going for it: Its school district pioneered a partnership with Climate Action Pathways for Schools, or CAPS, a nonprofit that aims to help high school students become more environmentally aware while simultaneously lowering their school’s carbon footprint and earning wages.
CAPS is part of a growing trend. Like similar programs in Missouri, Illinois, Maine, Mississippi, and New York City, CAPS is using the career-technical education, or CTE, model to prepare young people for the green jobs of the future before they get out of high school.
For Gonzalez, a self-described tree-hugger, the program has changed the way she looks at her hometown. These days, she downright appreciates it, “because I’ve had the opportunity to see that sustainability is everywhere.”
CAPS started in part because a local solar engineer, Bill Kelly, wanted to share his expertise with students in the school district’s career-technical education program. Kirk Anne Taylor, who has a deep background in education and nonprofit management, joined last year as executive director with a vision to expand the model across the state, and far beyond just solar power.
CAPS students are trained for school-year and summer internships that teach them about the environment and how to lower the carbon footprint in school buildings and the larger community. They earn California’s minimum wage, $15.50 an hour.
For instance, Gonzalez and her classmates held a bike rodeo for younger students. They’ve created detailed maps of traffic and sidewalk hazards around schools, to promote more students walking and biking to schools.
Other CAPS participants give presentations, educating fellow students about climate change and green jobs. They are helping manage routes and charging schedules for the school’s growing fleet of electric buses. They work with farmers to get local food in the cafeterias.
Their most specialized and skilled task is completing detailed energy audits of each building in the district and continuously monitoring performance. In the first year of the program, some of these young energy detectives discovered a freezer in a high school holding a single leftover popsicle. Powering this one freezer over the summer vacation meant about $300 in wasted energy costs, so they got permission to pull the plug.
Climate Action Pathways for Schools, or CAPS, students pose for a photo in Porterville, California.
Climate Action Pathways for Schools
The popsicles add up. Over the past few years, by reviewing original building blueprints, inputting data into endless Excel spreadsheets, and cajoling their classmates and teachers into schoolwide efficiency competitions, CAPS students have saved the district $850,000 on a $2.9 million energy budget — this in a district that was already getting about two-thirds of its energy from onsite solar. And 100 percent of the most recent participants are going on to college, far higher than the students who aren’t in the district’s career-technical education program.
CAPS is small, just 18 students this year. But its model sits right at the intersection of several big problems and opportunities facing the country. One is that in the wake of the pandemic, public school achievement, attendance, and college enrollment are all suffering, especially in working-class districts like Porterville. This is likely not entirely unconnected to the fact that young people are suffering a well-publicized mental health crisis, of which eco-anxiety is one part.
Career technical education programs like this one have been shown to lead to higher graduation rates and to put more students, especially working-class students, into good jobs.
And there’s massive demand for green workers in particular: Skilled tradespeople like electricians are already in short supply, making it difficult for homeowners and businesses to install clean energy technologies. The Inflation Reduction Act and associated investments are expected to create nine million new green jobs over the next decade.
Some CAPS students are also changing community attitudes toward climate change, starting with their own families.
Gonzalez says her dad is skeptical of climate change and the progressive politics it’s associated with, while her mom seems passive — “like, what can I do?” But they supported her involvement in CAPS because it’s a paying job, and recently her dad said, “I’m proud of you for doing what you like to do.”
She’s heading to California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt in the fall to study environmental science and management.
Students at Monache High School in Porterville, California, gather for one of their CAPS classes.
Climate Action Pathways for Schools
David Proctor, 17, grew up the oldest of seven. His mother didn’t believe in climate change, Proctor says, but grudgingly agreed to the CAPS program. It helps that Proctor is earning money for his work monitoring the district’s solar performance. He loves every minute.
He’s on track to graduate this coming December and be the first in his family to go on to college. He wants to combine his interest in climate change and public health.
Jocelyn Gee is the head of community growth for the Green Jobs Board, which has a reach of 96,000 people and focuses on creating equitable access to high-quality green jobs. They see a huge demand for programs like CAPS.
“We get a lot of requests from college students and high school students about what kind of roles are there for them,” Gee said. “This field hasn’t existed for that long. There are very few people. So you need to invest in training the next generation now so a few years on you will have the brightest in the climate movement.”
They said the strength of a program like CAPS is that it’s making life better for Porterville residents right now. “I really think that hyperlocal solutions are the way to go,” Gee said. “It’s great when green jobs involve the frontline communities in solutions.”
One factor that distinguishes CAPS from other green CTE programs is that it’s also designed to address the opportunity for public schools themselves to decarbonize. Schools collectively have 100,000 publicly owned buildings, and energy costs are typically the second largest line item in budgets after salaries. The Inflation Reduction Act, along with Biden’s infrastructure bill, contains billions of dollars intended specifically to address school decarbonization, but many districts lack the grant-writing and other expertise required to chip the money loose.
In partnership with CAPS, the Porterville Unified School District, or PUSD, recently learned they’ll be bringing in $5.8 million over three years from the federal Renew America’s Schools grant program. The money will fund lighting, HVAC, and building automation upgrades — all needs identified by the students’ energy audits — as well as an expansion of the internship program itself. Only 24 grants were awarded nationwide out of more than 1,000 applications, and the education component made Porterville’s stand out. PUSD and CAPS have also scored a $3.6 million grant from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) for a green schoolyards program.
The district is also applying for an Environmental Protection Agency grant that would allow them to go from six electric school buses to 41, nearly the entire fleet. The vision is to train students to maintain and repair these as well. CAPS students have already started analyzing and planning more energy-efficient routes that allow for charging.
“The issues we’re trying to address are common, and we’re delivering real benefits: environmentally, in terms of student outcomes, in terms of cost savings,” said Kirk Anne Taylor, CAPS‘ executive director. CAPS is expanding to three other districts in California, with more in the works, and the program in Porterville has drawn visitors from Oregon, New Mexico, and as far away as Missouri.
For Elijah Garcia, a graduating senior headed to the University of California, San Diego to study chemical engineering, the work has given him a newfound commitment to pursuing a sustainable career. It’s also given him hope for the future.
“We’re trying to change something — climate change — that when you look at it in a vacuum it’s, like, insurmountable. But this is boots on the ground. It’s a bit more tangible. I can’t do everything, but I can do this little bit.”
The Biden Administration took steps to set aside millions of acres of undeveloped land and vital habitat for migratory birds, grizzly and polar bears, and caribou in the Arctic on Wednesday, announcing plans to prevent drilling in some areas and cancel all remaining oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — a vast, federally protected area in northeastern Alaska that has long been at the center of fierce debate over fossil fuel development.
The Interior Department also said that it would limit drilling in more than half of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an Indiana-sized swath of tundra west of the Arctic refuge and an important subsistence area for local Alaska Native communities that depend on a healthy ecosystem and wildlife for food but also rely on oil royalties for revenue and essential services, like schools. The department would ban drilling on nearly 11 million acres in the area and restrict it on another 2 million.
“With climate change warming the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, we must do everything within our control to meet the highest standards of care to protect this fragile ecosystem,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement accompanying the announcement.
The Biden administration also proposed a ban on drilling across almost 3 million acres offshore, in the Beaufort Sea. Conservation groups largely applauded the flurry of moves, some of which reversed Trump-era efforts to open up protected areas to drilling.
“We are pleased to see President Biden making good on his promise to implement durable protections for the irreplaceable landscapes and habitats of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska,” said Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities. “Wildlife such as caribou, grizzly and polar bears, and migratory birds all rely on these intact and undisturbed habitats which would be impossible to replace if they were disturbed and fragmented by oil and gas development.”
Still, none of the proposals would restrict ConocoPhillips’ fraught Willow oil project, a huge expansion of drilling that the administration approved in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska earlier this year to the dismay of many climate advocates.
For more than 40 years, Congress has debated whether to allow oil drilling on the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge, which encompasses the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd, about 200,000 animals that are an important cultural resource and food source for Alaska Native people, particularly Gwich’in families on the southern edge of the refuge, where the caribou migrate.
Beneath those plains lies an estimated 4 billion to 12 billion barrels of oil. In 1980, Congress established the 19-million-acre protected area but left open the possibility of oil development on 1.5 million of those acres, on Alaska’s northern coast. Since then, fossil fuel interests, Alaska’s state government, and Alaska Native corporations that own the rights to the area’s resources have been keen to unearth the oil.
For years, environmental groups, Gwich’in leaders, and Democratic politicians pushed to keep the area off-limits to drilling. But in 2017, a Republican-controlled Congress mandated the sale of oil leases as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Prior to Wednesday’s announcement, the Interior Department had already canceled and refunded two leases, at the request of companies that owned them. That left seven existing leases, encompassing 365,000 acres, and all were held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state agency that invests in industrial projects.
The Biden Administration suspended the state agency’s leases two years ago, citing “multiple legal deficiencies in the underlying record supporting the leases.” On Wednesday, Secretary Haaland officially canceled those leases.
Alaska’s oil and gas industry and state government, however, criticized the Biden administration’s moves. Governor Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, said the Arctic refuge leases were issued legally and added that the state “will be turning to the courts to correct the Biden Administration’s wrong.”
The summer of shattered heat records – hottest month, week, and day — has just shattered another record, perhaps the most fitting of them all: hottest summer.
June, July, and August were the warmest three consecutive months ever measured in the Northern Hemisphere, the World Meteorological Organization reported on Wednesday.
August wound up being the hottest one ever and the second warmest month on record, just behind July, according to data from Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The average temperature in August was 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.2 degrees Fahrenheit) — about 1.5 degrees C above the pre-industrial average. Scientists warn that if the planet stays above that threshold for years humans will have to contend with the worst consequences of climate change. The news comes as extreme heat rounds the corner into September: 80 million Americans, from Texas to Vermont, are under heat alerts, while triple-digit temperatures break records in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.
“Climate breakdown has begun,” António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, said in a statement accompanying the WMO report.
The risks of an overheated planet are hard to ignore: a hellish streak of 31 days with temperatures above 110 degrees F in Phoenix, Arizona; more than 200,000 people in Canada forced to evacuate during the country’s worst wildfire season on record; and marine heat waves struck the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the waters off the coast of Florida, where spiking sea surface temperatures, above 100 degrees F, caused mass coral bleaching.
While this summer has been historic, it can also be considered prophetic. Scientists have long warned that scorching summers — marked by deadly heat waves, freak storms, and record-hot oceans — could become the norm as humans burn fossil fuels and spew greenhouse gases into the air, trapping heat and warming the planet. Meteorologists say the El Niño weather pattern that started earlier this year has helped make summer hotter than usual, but they also note that warming from El Niño typically ratchets up in its second year. Up to this point in the year, 2023 ranks as the second hottest on record, behind 2016, the last time there was a strong El Niño.
Across the United States, nearly 5,000 weather stations set daily heat records in August, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Average global sea surface temperatures hit their highest-ever monthly mark in August — about 21 degrees C (69.8 degrees F). And in the same month, the extent of Antarctic sea ice shrunk to a record low for that time of year, at 12 percent below average, according to the WMO.
That this summer has broken so many heat records is “a clear consequence of the warming of the climate system,” according to Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Another consequence is extreme weather — drought, floods, and wildfires. Dangerously dry conditions helped spark the deadly wildfires on Maui in August, where the historic town of Lahaina burned down and 115 people died. On the other side of the planet, in Greece, hundreds of firefighters have been battling blazes, but a freak storm just dumped two feet of rain in a few hours on Tuesday, causing historic flooding. In July, torrential rains led to a biblical deluge in Vermont, which previously had a reputation as a climate refuge.
Yet the extent of damage exacted by the summer of scorching heat and severe weather still hasn’t come into full view, in part because the U.S. gravely underestimates death and illness associated with extreme heat and climate change.
The end of summer also happens to coincide with what’s often the most active part of hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean. NOAA has forecasted a more active fall than normal, with up to five major storms. One, Hurricane Idalia, a Category 3 storm that intensified as it crossed unusually warm seas, already struck Florida at the end of August, destroying homes and cutting off power as it thrashed the state’s Gulf Coast. Another, Tropical Storm Lee, is on track to become an “extremely dangerous hurricane” by Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
In Georgia, 61 environmental activists and other opponents of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, known as “Cop City,” are facing felony charges under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, a law originally designed to take down the mafia. Several defendants are also charged with money laundering or domestic terrorism.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr emphasized that the sweeping charges were meant to stop violent acts, such as the sabotage of the construction site and the assault of officers attempting to secure the property. However, the text of the indictment indicates that the majority of those charged are not actually accused of committing violence or property damage at all. In fact, more than half are accused of little more than trespassing, camping, and sitting in trees in the forest where the project would be built; distributing flyers; or being part of a loosely-defined “mob” that allegedly existed to cause property damage — an action that, according to the prosecutors, amounted to aiding and abetting acts of terrorism.
The 110-page document devotes several pages to an exposition of anarchist philosophy, and it appears to allege that the “criminal enterprise” in question began the day that George Floyd was killed by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 2020. In addition to the dozens of individuals it implicates, it specifically targets an Atlanta-area nonprofit that allegedly purchased supplies for protesters.
“This is an intimidation lawsuit designed to stop and silence opposition to the project,” said Deepa Padmanabha, deputy general counsel for Greenpeace, in an email. The nonprofit environmental organization has spent years fighting a separate civil RICO case filed by the pipeline company Energy Transfer, claiming that Greenpeace conspired with others to concoct the 2016 Standing Rock movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. “It is clear that the intended message is: watch out, or you could be next.”
Though high-profile attempts to cast environmental protest movements as criminal enterprises have proliferated in recent years, there’s little precedent in the U.S. for a state entity to criminally indict environmental activists on RICO charges.
Lauren Regan, executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, a legal aid organization that has supported Cop City opponents, said she’s aware of only one other criminal racketeering indictment of U.S. activists. The Indiana case targeted two protesters who participated in nonviolent actions opposing the expansion of Interstate 69. The racketeering charges were eventually dropped.
“If these kinds of charges and this kind of state repression is permitted in a democratic country, that is really telling for other parts of the country and other parts of the world,” Regan said.
At Tuesday’s press conference, Carr denied that the RICO case was an anti-democratic attempt to intimidate activists. Over the course of three years, he said, members of the movement known as Defend the Atlanta Forest had thrown rocks, Molotov cocktails, glass bottles, and fireworks at police, firefighters, EMTs, and contractors. They damaged safety vehicles, torched excavators and bulldozers, vandalized a church, punched a police officer, and harassed and intimidated law enforcement and contractors. They went on to trespass and destroy property in Florida, New York, Oregon, and Michigan, he claimed. “The individuals who have been charged are charged with violent acts,” Carr said emphatically.
The indictment itself tells a more complicated story. Sixteen people’s RICO charges are tied to throwing objects, damaging property, or, in two individual cases, punching an officer and approaching police with guns and knives. The indictment also charges five people with domestic terrorism for attempting to commit arson.
However, most of the allegations involve nonviolent activities. Three defendants were swept into the RICO case for distributing flyers in the neighborhood of a state trooper, calling him a “murderer” in reference to the police killing of Manuel Paez Terán, a protester who went by the chosen name Tortuguita. At least seven are accused of little more than “attempting to occupy the forest,” apparently by camping or climbing into a treehouse. The campers separately face domestic terrorism charges in a different county — again, solely for camping.
More than 20 RICO charges stem from the events of March 5, when a crowd of protesters damaged equipment at a construction site before joining a music festival organized by Cop City opponents. At the festival, police conducted a mass arrest that included a staff attorney at the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center. The racketeering indictment says the activists participated in “an organized mob” designed to overwhelm police and cause property damage. It accuses none of them of actually damaging property, but says that joining the “mob” amounted to “aiding and abetting terrorism.” Most of those defendants were also previously charged with domestic terrorism in another county.
The indictment’s biggest target is three leaders of the nonprofit Network for Strong Communities, which operates a bail fund that has supported Cop City arrestees. Police arrested the three earlier this summer for money laundering — a charge repeated in the new indictment. Prosecutors allege they misled donors by using contributions meant for other projects to pay for occupation of the forest. Fifteen counts of money laundering amount to less than $1,200 of mostly camping supplies, including $363 in food and “forest kitchen materials.”
The trio also faces RICO charges for thousands of dollars spent on camping-related purchases, including tarps, tools, tents, and kitchen and bathroom supplies. They allegedly bought “radio communication supplies” as well as a generator, and paid to host climbing training sessions. Carr said in his press conference that the organization also paid for a drone and surveillance equipment. The only alleged transaction apparently associated with violence was one defendant’s purchase of $180 in ammunition — but what kind is not specified. Regan argued that the indictment provides no evidence that the various purchases were used for illegal activity.
Additionally, Georgia prosecutors allege that the trio published dozens of blog posts on the website Scenes from the Atlanta Forest, including comuniques that take responsibility for sabotage or call on people to join events opposing Cop City. The web site is set up to allow activists to submit messages that an administrator publishes. The indictment does not cite evidence tying the board members to the posts.
Though the charges were filed in a Fulton County court — the same court that indicted former president Donald Trump in recent weeks — most of the Cop City activities took place in neighboring Dekalb County. Dekalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston announced in June that her office would withdraw from criminal cases related to Cop City, citing discomfort with the attorney general’s charging decisions. The future is unclear for more than 30 domestic terrorism charges previously filed in Dekalb County.
When asked about the Fulton County case’s timeline, Carr said he couldn’t share details about legal strategy. But he added, “Today was an important day to send a message that we’re not going to allow violence to occur in this state.”
