Tropical forests are the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems on the planet, as well as some of the biggest climate regulators. Now, a new study by an international team of researchers finds that the planet’s tropical forest canopies could be closer to crucial high-temperature thresholds than was previously believed.
For the study, the researchers used data from warming experiments conducted across Earth’s tropical forests, along with high-resolution thermal imaging data from an instrument located on the International Space Station, a press release from the UK’s University of Plymouth said.
The researchers discovered that some tropical leaves are beginning to reach, and sometimes even exceed, temperatures that stop them from functioning, and that as the climate crisis wears on, whole tree canopies could die.
“If we adopt a do-nothing response to climate change and tropical forest air temperatures increase by greater than 4C, there could be massive leaf death, possible tree mortality and species turnover across all tropical forests,” said Chris Doughty, a Northern Arizona University associate professor of ecoinformatics and the lead author of the study, as reported by The Guardian.
The research team said the findings of their study could have dire consequences since tropical forests are one of the main climate regulators and house almost all of the biodiversity on Earth, the press release said.
Data from the work of Dr. Sophie Fauset — an associate professor in terrestrial ecology at University of Plymouth and one of the authors of the study — on leaf temperatures in West Africa, Brazil, China and the UK showed that the temperatures of individual leaves could get as warm as 18 degrees Celsius above the air temperature in a montane forest in Brazil.
“Trees are a critical part of our planet’s response to climate change, and tropical forests play a key role in housing species diversity and regulating the planet’s climate. If they are damaged by increases in temperatures, we are losing a key line of defence and limiting nature’s ability to mitigate the impacts of human activity,” Fauset said. “Other research I have been involved in has looked at the sensitivity of tropical forests to climate, and shown that tree carbon stock is reduced at maximum temperatures above 32°C during the hottest part of the year. If we don’t do more to address climate change, the consequences could be severe.”
The study, “Tropical forests are approaching critical temperature thresholds,” was published in the journal Nature.
From their understanding of current leaf temperatures in tropical forests around the globe, the research team was able to model how the leaves might respond to ongoing human-caused global heating.
In order to estimate what proportion of leaves might come close to critical temperatures if air temperatures increase by two, three and four degrees Celsius, the researchers combined data on canopy top leaf warming from experiments in Puerto Rico, Brazil and Australia.
The results revealed that greater than one percent of the canopy’s leaves exceeded critical threshold temperatures — estimated to be 116.06 degrees Fahrenheit — a minimum of once each year.
“We should do all we can to avoid high-emissions scenarios. Under low-emissions scenarios, almost all tropical forest tree leaves can avoid death from overheating and the trees will survive,” said Simon Lewis, a global change science professor at University College London, as The Guardian reported.
The researchers also simulated how tropical forests would fare under future planetary warming scenarios and explored the impact of hotter temperatures and more frequent droughts.
The results showed that the plants’ ability to cool themselves with evaporation would be reduced, and that the hotter, drier temperatures would speed up leaf temperature increases and potential tree mortality.
“Given that tropical forests’ key role in housing species diversity and regulating the planet’s climate, insights into their future can build an understanding of the trajectory of the planet. But our model is not fate. It suggests that with some basic climate mitigation, we can address this issue, and helps pinpoint a few key areas that need further research,” Doughty said in the press release. “It also shows that by avoiding high-emissions pathways and deforestation, we can protect the fate of these critical realms of carbon, water, and biodiversity.”
After years spent fighting independent repair, Apple appears to be throwing in the towel.
On Tuesday, the most valuable company in the world delivered a letter to California Senator Susan Eggman expressing its support for SB 244, a “right-to-repair” bill that would make it easier for the public to access the spare parts, tools, and repair documentation needed to fix devices.
“Today, Apple writes in support of SB 244, and urges members of the California legislature to pass the bill as currently drafted,” D. Michael Foulkes, Apple’s director of state and local government affairs, wrote in the letter.
It was a dramatic turnaround for a company that has played a key role in quashing right-to-repair bills in statehouses around the country, including California. As recently as 2022, Apple asked New York Governor Kathy Hochul to veto a right-to-repair bill. (Hochul wound up signing that bill into law, but not before revising the text to make it more corporate friendly.) But advocates say that Apple recognized it was on the losing side of the fight over repair access. Its decision to support a right-to-repair bill in its home state reflects the growing pressure Apple faces from shareholders, lawmakers, federal regulators, and the public to end monopolistic restrictions that limit consumers’ ability to fix their devices.
“Right to repair is here to stay, and they know it,” Nathan Proctor, who heads the U.S. Public Research Interest Group’s right-to-repair campaign, told Grist.
That wasn’t always the case. For years, Apple’s position was that making parts and repair tools available to the public is a bad idea. Over the years, the company has repeatedly claimed that right-to-repair laws create safety and cybersecurity risks and could force manufacturers to divulge trade secrets. Despite the U.S. Federal Trade Commission concluding in 2021 that there was “scant evidence” to support these claims, Apple, along with trade associations it’s a member of, continued making them. In a letter to Hochul last August, the company wrote that New York’s electronics right-to-repair bill, which had recently passed the state legislature, would “harm consumer security, privacy, safety and transparency … and do nothing to advance New York’s environmental goals.”
IPhones are displayed at an Apple Store in Yichang, China. CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images
Repair advocates counter these arguments by pointing out that it is in Apple’s financial interest to ensure its customers only get their devices fixed on the company’s terms. When consumers have limited ways to repair damaged or malfunctioning gadgets, they often choose to replace them, ensuring a steady stream of sales for manufacturers like Apple. Greater access to independent repair, advocates say, benefits consumers, who often are able to fix things more conveniently and more affordably at home or via an independent shop. According to both advocates and tech industry-backed research, it also benefits the planet: With more repair options, consumers are able to keep their current devices in use for longer, reducing electronic waste and the carbon emissions tied to manufacturing new ones.
Apparently, Apple now agrees with repair advocates. “In recent years, Apple has taken significant steps to expand options for consumers to repair their devices which we know is good for consumers’ budgets and good for the environment,” Foulkes wrote in the letter.
Apple’s about-face didn’t come out of nowhere. As Foulkes’ letter points out, the company began shifting its public position on independent repair a few years back, as the right-to-repair movement was garnering national media attention and high-level support.
In 2019, Apple launched its “Independent Repair Provider” program, granting independent shops access to the repair documentation and original parts that were previously only available to Apple “authorized” repair partners. In 2022, it announced “Self Service Repair,” a program that allows customers to purchase genuine Apple parts and tools to make common repairs on newer iPhones and Macs. Both programs have their flaws — the Independent Repair Provider program required independent shops to sign an onerous contract, while Self Service Repair, by many accounts, is an expensive and clunky way to fix a device. But advocates also hailed both as symbolic victories, considering Apple’s influence on the broader consumer tech industry.
Voicing support for a right-to-repair bill in California, the largest economy in the country and the central nervous system of Big Tech, may be Apple’s biggest symbolic concession yet. Unlike in the past, when Apple has simply asked lawmakers to shoot down right-to-repair bills, Proctor said that this time the company came to the negotiating table. Working with the office of bill author Eggman, Apple pushed for some changes to the text. Ultimately, the bill reached a place where the company was comfortable supporting it.
The bill requires that manufacturers of electronics and appliances make parts, repair tools, and documentation available to the general public, for devices first sold on or after July 1, 2021. For devices costing between $50 and $99.99, manufacturers must provide repair access for at least three years after the product is no longer manufactured; for those costing more than $100, that number rises to seven years. In its letter, Apple lists a few bill provisions that were crucial for the company’s support, including language that clearly states manufacturers only have to offer the public the same parts, tools, and manuals available to authorized repair partners, and the bill’s exclusive focus on newer devices.
A repair technician takes apart an iPhone to fix a cracked screen in May 2016. Liz Hafalia / The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
“Apple’s support for California’s Right to Repair Act demonstrates the power of the movement that has been building for years and the ability for industries to partner with us to make good policy to benefit the people of California,” Eggman told Grist in an emailed statement. “I’m grateful for their engagement on this issue and for leading among their peers when it comes to supporting access to repair.”
By choosing to work with lawmakers on SB 244, Apple is following in the footsteps of Microsoft, which negotiated the details of a recent Washington state right-to-repair bill before supporting it publicly. (Ironically, that bill stalled out in the state Senate after failing to gain the support of a key Democrat who is a former Apple executive.) While it’s unclear whether Microsoft’s cooperative approach on right to repair in Washington directly influenced the iPhone maker’s strategy in California, advocates previously told Grist that Microsoft’s leadership helped bring the entire tech industry to the negotiating table. Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The California Senate passed SB 244 by a vote of 38-0 in May. The state Assembly’s appropriations committee is expected to vote on the bill next week, after which it could go to the Assembly floor for a vote.
California appears to have a good shot at becoming the fourth state to sign a right-to-repair bill into law over the past year, following New York, Colorado, and Minnesota. A strong right-to-repair law in California has the potential to become the de facto standard, potentially leading to a national agreement between Big Tech and the repair community similar to what happened in the auto industry after Massachusetts passed a right-to-repair law for cars.
But regardless of this bill’s fate, advocates are taking a moment to celebrate their latest victory.
“It’s a huge win for the whole coalition that were dogged in their pursuit of legislation, and a proud moment for all of us watching the big guns fall,” Repair.org executive director Gay Gordon-Byrne said in a statement.
Danity Laukon was sitting in her bedroom in her two-bedroom flat in Suva, Fiji when she got the call. It was November 2021, and her dad, more than 1,800 miles away at her home in Majuro in the Marshall Islands, had died after a battle with diabetes.
He was 50 years old.
Diabetes is not an illness that is directly caused by radiation. But Laukon believes that American nuclear testing in the Pacific played a role in his early death.
After years of nuclear bomb detonations in the Marshall Islands, fallout and forced relocations of communities began a ripple effect: many Indigenous Marshallese people who had relied on subsistence farming and fishing for 4,000 years suddenly couldn’t trust the safety of their food, becoming reliant on imported products, and unhealthy, non-native processed foods.
And those were the lucky ones. On Utrik atoll, where Laukon’s maternal family is from, many residents fell ill from acute radiation sickness.
Now she’s worried her community will face even more health risks. On Thursday, the government of Japan began releasing wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean, and plans to continue to do so gradually for the next 30 years.
An observatory room at Tokyo Electric Power Company Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant shows (from left) unit 1 to unit 4 reactor buildings and storage tanks for contaminated water.
BEHROUZ MEHRI / AFP via Getty Images
Japan is treating the water before it is poured into the sea, but the water will still contain low levels of radioactive contaminants that can’t be removed. Japan promises that the levels of contaminants present will be significantly lower than international health standards, and has gained the support of a key United Nations agency. But some scientists remain concerned about how little is known about potential long-term effects of the wastewater.
Japanese officials declined to speak on the record about their plans but have publicly outlined an argument that the country is running out of room to store contaminated water from the nuclear power plant and that another earthquake – similar to the quake that damaged the plant – could release the stored water before being treated. The plan now is to treat contaminated water, then dilute it into the Pacific Ocean over the course of three decades in order to more quickly decommission the nuclear facility.
In 2011, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake struck Japan causing a tsunami that killed more than 19,000 people and knocked out emergency generators to the Fukushima nuclear plant. In the hours after, three nuclear reactors melted down, forcing the evacuation of more than 100,000 people. Radioactive water spilled into the Pacific and was carried east by currents toward the United States. Two and a half years later, radiation from the plant was detected in waters off California, but at levels considered harmless.
A photo from April 2011 shows the “ghost town” of Minamisōma, a city located in Fukushima Prefecture. All residents were evacuated after an earthquake damaged the nearby Fukushima nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011.
Noboru Hashimoto / Corbis via Getty Images
In the decade since, Japan has erected more than 1,000 tanks to store more than a million tons of water from Fukushima: rainwater, groundwater, and water pumped into the facility to cool the damaged reactors. Once treated, that water will be poured into the Pacific for the next three decades.
Japanese officials have promised that the levels of contaminants present in the wastewater will be significantly lower than international health standards, and last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations agency that oversees nuclear energy, greenlit the plan when it released a report describing the wastewater as having a “negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.”
However, some scientists remain concerned about how little is known about potential long-term effects of that wastewater, while many Indigenous peoples in the Pacific, like Laukon, worry that the move will add an additional burden to the health disparities communities already face. For Laukon, Japan’s decision is an extension of a long-running history of using the Pacific as a dumping ground for nuclear waste.
“It’s giving us more to deal with,” she said. “It feels helpless.”
During the Cold War, Britain, France and the U.S. tested more than 300 nuclear bombs across the Pacific regions of Polynesia and Micronesia as well as in the deserts of Australia. After a detonation in the Marshall Islands, children on Rongelap atoll ate “snow” that fell from the sky that later turned out to be calcium debris from the fallout. Radioactive debris clung to the coconut oil of women’s hair.
Five Pacific islanders, left to right, Jonita Jalme, 15, Jemloch Kebinli, 14, Lisa Paul, 42, Mary Kebinli, 20, and Mina Boaz, 13, exposed to heavy radio-active fallout in 1954, pose before leaving New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston on June 11, 1966, where they recovered from surgery for removal of growths from their thyroid glands. The group were among the 64 residents of Rongelap atoll in the Marshall Islands who were showered with particles from an H-bomb test at Bikini on March 1, 1954.
FCC / AP Photo
At Fukushima, one concern about the discharge is around tritium, a radioactive isotope produced in nuclear reactors that can’t be removed through Japan’s treatment process. Japanese officials say that once the wastewater mixes into the ocean one kilometer off of Japan’s shores, the amount of tritium present is expected to be well below the World Health Organization’s standards for drinking water quality –1,500 becquerels per liter compared with the WHO limit of 10,000 becquerels per liter; levels comparable to those in water released from normally-operating nuclear power plants in China, the United Kingdom and Canada.
Japan says the discharge is safe, but Timothy Mousseau isn’t so sure. The biologist and professor at the University of South Carolina and author of an exhaustive review of existing studies on tritium currently awaiting publication.
“The bottom line from my perspective is that (tritium) has been insufficiently studied to be making hard promises about the long-term safety of this kind of release,” Mousseau said. “We don’t actually really understand what the potential ramifications of a massive point source of tritium will be on the natural environment.”
While exposure to tritium through swimming or drinking water isn’t a risk, the radioactive isotope can bioaccumulate through the food chain. Studies of mice and rats suggest that ingesting tritium could lead to cancer and fertility problems, Mousseau said, but whether that would happen in humans isn’t clear because the radioactive isotope hasn’t been studied enough.
“We really don’t know whether there will be a significant hazard to humans at the end of the food chain,” said Mousseau.
That potential to impact the food chain is a big concern to Robert Richmond, director of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory at the University of Hawaiʻi and a professor who specializes in marine conservation biology and coral reefs.
Richmond is part of a panel of experts advising the Pacific Islands Forum, the chief diplomatic body representing Pacific island nations, on Japan’s plan. In February, he visited Japan to meet with the country’s scientists about the release. He left unimpressed by the lack of data they provided regarding the contents of their water tanks and the effectiveness of their treatment system.
“When they say the science is impeccable — no, anything but,” he said.
Richmond and his fellow scientists saw red flags in what data did exist including inconsistencies and poorly designed sampling protocols. One of Richmond’s colleagues, Kenneth Buesseler, is a marine radiochemist and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Buesseler says the water flowing through the plant is exposed to more radiation than cooling water in normally functioning nuclear reactors because it’s in direct contact with molten coil. That means the water will need to be treated multiple times to reach the health standards that Japan has promised. He doesn’t believe Japan has effectively demonstrated that its treatment system can consistently remove the high levels of dangerous compounds present in the wastewater.
He also doubts that there’s an urgent need to get rid of the water and says Japan should consider other viable alternatives. The rush to discharge the water, Richmond said, suggests Japan is choosing the cheapest, most politically expedient method to get rid of the nuclear waste rather than doing what’s best for its neighbors and the ocean, which is already stressed from the effects of climate change, plastic pollution and ocean acidification.
“Once you’ve made a mistake, there’s no turning back, and all the monitoring in the world does nothing to protect ecosystems or the people who depend on them,” he said. “It simply tells you when you’re screwed and that doesn’t really do anything.”
People gather on August 24, 2023, in front of Tokyo Electric Power Company to protest the release of stored nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
David Mareuil / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Pacific opposition to the plan was initially strong, but after Japanese officials carried out a multi-million dollar advertising campaign to sway public opinion including meeting with Pacific leaders, several expressed support, most recently Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka.
On Twitter on Tuesday, Rabuka called the comparison of Japan’s controlled wastewater discharge to historic nuclear testing in the Pacific “fear mongering.”
“It’s impossible to compare those nuclear tests with the careful discharge of treated wastewater from Fukushima over a period of approximately 30 years,” he wrote.
But other leaders, like Vanuatu’s foreign minister, remain unconvinced. Sheila Babauta, a former legislator from the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, abbreviated as CNMI, authored a resolution that condemned Japan’s plan in 2021. Today, she remains resolute in her opposition.
“I’m deeply concerned for the people of the CNMI and how decisions by major world powers are being made without our knowledge and how that’s going to impact our lives today and for future generations,” she said.
On Tuesday, Laukon was visiting Honolulu, and woke up to Facebook messages from friends asking her about Japan’s plan to release the wastewater that week. What could they do? Could they put out a statement criticizing the plans? Would it make a difference?
It took her a while for the reality to sink in — the fact that what she and others had been campaigning against was actually happening.
“To be honest, it feels helpless to really voice what you want to say because does it matter? Are they listening?” she said. “But it does matter. Whatever we do now will still affect later generations. And that’s why I’m worried.”
It was hard to put how she felt into words. What could she say that could capture the feeling she had about what she feared, what this big decision that was so far out of her control meant for her people?
She finished composing a poem she had started writing last week in Fiji. It was about a turtle who lays eggs under the full moon, only to realize they won’t hatch.
“Under a full moon / I see raindrops / blue water / an island is grieving / in silence,” she wrote.
Looking to reduce your food waste? Or eat more veggies? If so, maybe it’s time to start a home garden. According to new research from the University of Sheffield, people who grow produce at home tend to consume more fruits and vegetables, and have much lower amounts of food waste compared to households without gardens.
The study, published in Plants, People, Planet, found that people who grew about 50% of their annual vegetable supply and 20% of their annual fruit supply ended up consuming 70% more produce than the national average in the UK.
Further, people growing their own food at home were creating about 95% less food waste compared to the average UK household, according to the researchers.
As reported by Divert, which was not involved in the study, the average UK household throws out nearly 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of food per day, totaling 9.5 billion metric tons of food waste each year.
According to the authors, the findings are promising, showing that growing produce at home can improve food security, self-sufficiency, nutrition and conservation. The study authors wrote that growing food at home could also contribute to several Sustainable Development Goals.
“Global food security is one of the biggest challenges we will face in the future, therefore it’s crucial that we find new ways to increase the resilience of the UK food system,” Jill Edmondson, an author of the study from the University of Sheffield’s School of Biosciences, said in a statement. “This study provides the first long-term evidence that household food production could play [a role] in promoting healthier diets through self-sufficiency and adds important support to any policy making that seeks to expand household level fruit and vegetable production.”
However, the authors noted that obstacles prevent access to gardening for some people, including space, suitable land for crop-growing (particularly in urban areas), and access to skill-building in gardening and food preservation. Although low-income households could benefit greatly from growing food, these families also tend to have limited access to space to establish a garden, the study highlighted.
“We need to find ways to overcome socio-economic challenges to upscaling household food production, especially among those most affected by low fruit and vegetable intakes, like low-income families,” said Zilla Gulyas, an author of the study, also with the University of Sheffield’s School of Biosciences. “Increasing the amount of space available to UK households to produce their own food is essential to this, especially given the steady decline in allotment land nationally.”
This story was co-published with Rappler, a Philippines-based online news publication.
Tina Batalla had owned a bicycle for many years. But it wasn’t until the pandemic that the then-21-year-old university student really started using it to get around Metro Manila after a friend invited her out on a rainy day ride in June 2020.
“There were no cars, and it felt safe,” she said. Riding on streets free of the car traffic that has earned Metro Manila a reputation as one of the most congested urban areas in the world built Batalla’s confidence that she could get around by bike despite not being a “hard-core cyclist.”
“Re-experiencing the city I grew up in clicked a switch in me, and I felt like this is something I want to continue doing,” she said.
Batalla is one of many Filipinos — and people around the world — who embraced biking in a new way during the pandemic. But now, the country’s climate-friendliest mode of transportation besides walking is at risk, as national lawmakers slash the budget for bike lanes — and Filipino cyclists are organizing to ensure that the silver lining of the pandemic leads to lasting improvements in bicycle infrastructure.
Keeping the gains
COVID-19 pushed Metro Manila’s already-struggling public transit system into crisis: The government shut down mass transportation in the city for two and half months in an effort to contain the virus, and after the shutdown lifted, capacity limits forced commuters to wait for up to three hours just to board the Metro Rail Transit, or MRT. Similar wait times plagued buses and jeepneys, iconically Filipino public transit vehicles.
Bike owners outnumber car owners 5 to 1 in Metro Manila, a metropolitan area made up of 16 interconnected cities. The long lines at transit stations left cycling as the most viable alternative for many. Hospitals began setting up bike parking to accommodate the droves of doctors and nurses cycling to work. Local city governments used traffic cones or simple stripes of paint to outline pop-up bike lanes, and the national government’s Department of Transportation, or DOTr, created a new office to focus explicitly on active transport (which includes biking, walking, scooters, and the like). By June 2021, 313 kilometers (194 miles) of new bike lanes had been added to streets within Metro Manila through the combined efforts of local and national governments.
People ride their bicycles along a newly installed bike lane in Manila, Philippines, in June 2020. Rouelle Umali / Xinhua via Getty
“The pandemic was a huge factor in pushing the Philippine government to prioritize and promote active mobility,” said Eldon Joshua Dionisio, the program manager of DOTr’s active transport office, which has grown to include 14 employees.
Metro Manila’s pandemic cycling boom mirrors a phenomenon experienced in cities all over the world. In the U.S., people began cycling at “unprecedented levels” and bike sales surged. In Europe, more than $1.1 billion dollars worth of biking infrastructure was built between March and October 2020, with cities like Paris and Brussels leading the way. And in South America, cities like Lima and Bogotá began building out bike lanes along routes that had been identified years beforehand but never installed until the pandemic drove more cyclists onto the streets.
All that pedal-pushing has come with a host of benefits. Elijah Go Tian, a lead on the Low Carbon Transport Project at the United Nations Development Programme in the Philippines, noted that switching from cars to bikes drastically lowers climate change-causing emissions. The daily travel emissions of people who cycle are 84 percent lower than those of non-cyclists, according to one Oxford study. More bike trips and fewer car trips also makes for less air pollution, which costs the Philippines approximately $87 billion annually in healthcare costs and productivity loss, according to a 2021 study. Bikes can also reduce car traffic and noise pollution, help riders stay healthier and more active, and provide greater agency over one’s own mobility.
Despite this multitude of benefits, the gains of the last three years are not guaranteed to persist in the Philippines. Though the national government earmarked 4 billion pesos (around $71 million) for active transport from 2020 to 2023, the budget has been cut each year, down to 500 million pesos for 2024 from a high of 2 billion pesos in 2022.
“We have decision-makers who are still car-centric,” Dionisio said.
That drop in funding for the office that oversees safe biking infrastructure could slow progress considerably: A recent survey found that 4 out of 5 household heads in the Philippines agree that more people would use bikes as transportation if the roads were safer.
“The momentum has been slowing down a bit,” said Tian.
Decision-makers in business and politics come primarily from the car-owning class, which can exacerbate inequality, said Earl Decena, a sustainable transportation officer at the business association Makati Business Club. Though only 6 percent of Filipinos own cars, biking has been associated with poverty in the past, and sometimes discriminated against in both the public and private sector.
“The norm, especially pre-pandemic, has been that if you’re on a bicycle, you’re not treated the same way you would be treated if you came in a vehicle,” he said. “There’s an undertone of, ‘If you’re in a car, you can probably pay more.’”
When that attitude gets scaled up to the level of policy, it can enshrine preferential treatment for car owners — rather than the 94 percent of Filipinos who don’t own cars — into law.
A person cycles past a mural depicting frontline health workers wearing masks in Manila in November 2021. Ted ALJIBE / AFP via Getty Images
Maintaining momentum
Fractured and uneven oversight of biking infrastructure also causes problems for bikers, explained Ramir Angeles. Angeles is a transportation engineer for the government of Quezon City, one of the cities that makes up Metro Manila. Since local government units oversee local roads, while the national government oversees national roads, maintenance of bike lanes can be uneven.
“Bike lanes have now become a much more hostile environment than they were” during the height of the pandemic, said Angeles, adding that the return to pre-pandemic levels of car traffic has escalated the sense of danger for many bikers. And in some parts of Metro Manila, bike infrastructure is actively “being removed or downgraded,” he added.
Batalla has experienced the latter firsthand. When she learned in February that the bike lanes along Ayala Avenue, a major thoroughfare in one of Metro Manila’s busiest business districts, were going to be converted into dreaded “sharrows,” which would force bikers to share a lane with public transit vehicles like buses and jeepneys while leaving private vehicle lanes untouched, she was outraged.
“These bike lanes were so important for the safety of our essential workers … What happens if we have cities that keep on making them work but don’t actually care about their safety?” she asked. “It really hit me that if we did not get on the streets, speak up and organize, those lanes would basically be lost forever.”
Batalla’s response to that frustration was to organize. What started as a one-off group ride in protest of the Ayala Avenue plan eventually grew into the #MakeItSafer campaign, part of a larger transportation advocacy group called the Move As One Coalition. The campaign convinced Ayala Land, the decision-making entity behind the bike lane conversion, to enter into a dialogue with advocates to work towards a different solution. And when Ayala Land “rejected the community’s proposed safety interventions,” Move As One staged another protest ride in July, this time to pressure the decision-makers to fix bike lanes and strengthen enforcement to keep motorcycles out of bike lanes.
Batalla’s experience points to a factor that could help maintain Metro Manila’s momentum: the vibrant community of bikers that has been expanding rapidly since 2020. Cycling clubs started by those riders have been popping up all over the metro area, facilitating group rides, pop-up events, and protests. The result is a network of people across the city who are primed to mobilize to protect bikers’ interests.
And even if cycling isn’t accelerating as quickly as it did in 2020, the numbers of bikers on the roads remain high. A bike count in June 2022 found about 54,000 cyclists on main roads over four hours. Even that number, which Angeles said is an undercount and which was only conducted in four of the 16 cities that make up Metro Manila, makes clear that cyclists remain a sizable demographic.
A person wearing a face mask rides a bike on World Bicycle Day in Manila, Philippines, in June 2022. DANTE DIOSINA JR / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
“Because of the community that was built, because of the people who were awakened, there is a stronger pushback,” said Aneka Crisostomo, a sustainable transport advocate and community manager at Tambay Cycling Hub, a bike shop and gathering spot in Pasig, another city in Metro Manila.
“There are people who are now more vigilant about the road space we deserve, because a lot of us saw that it actually can be done.”
Many businesses are starting to see the value in catering to that growing community, said Makati Business Club’s Decena. Restaurants that earn a reputation for being “bike friendly” by treating bikers as valued customers rather than second-class citizens attract valuable word-of-mouth marketing among the cycling community. He also pointed to larger companies like McDonald’s and Robinsons, a mall chain, that have prioritized safe bike parking.
“The majority of our population, and therefore the majority of our market, is a cycling market,” he said. “If you’re a business, you stand to make more if you cater to the cyclists and pedestrians.”
Ultimately, Decena thinks it’s no big mystery what Metro Manila needs to do to maintain its cycling momentum and deliver a host of climate and health benefits to its citizens.
It doesn’t need to become Amsterdam, Paris, or even Bogotá, which Decena thinks is a more useful comparison than wealthy cities in the Global North. The city just needs its leaders to stick with the initiatives they started during the pandemic — to build out and maintain safe bike infrastructure rather than prioritizing cars at every turn.
“If you plan for transport based on your past patterns, you are always running the risk of replicating whatever patterns have held in the past,” he said. “So there has to come a point where you say, ‘We want to change what that looks like moving forward.’”
Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation recently released a 920-page blueprint to drastically eliminate, or outright reverse, many of the climate change policies and laws put in place by the Biden administration, if a Republican wins the White House in 2024.
Titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, the document is a sprawling, aggressive work that sets the tone all across the government to deconstruct and remake the federal government, starting with the White House and spreading to all executive departments. While radical policy shifts like these have been common in history, what makes this one different is that, coming out so far ahead of the 2024 election, its goal is for a new Republican administration to hit the ground running from day one.
And when it comes to climate and energy, the proposals are alarming. In essence, the document – spearheaded by Paul Dans and Spencer Chretien, both veterans of the Trump administration – wraps the reversal of many of the current climate agenda goals of the Biden administration (and further back, to the remnants of policy from the Obama administration) in a cloak of energy security, resiliency, and fear.
“Ideologically driven government policies have thrust the United States into a new energy crisis” says the introduction to the section on the Department of Energy and Commissions. This chapter was written by Bernard L. McNamee, once the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) during the Trump administration. One of McNamee’s most notable controversies was being caught on video stating that there was an “organized propaganda war” being waged by leftists against fossil fuels, and prior to that, backing efforts to bail out the coal and nuclear industries when he was with the Department of Energy, an effort that failed.
“The new energy crisis is caused not by a lack of resources, but by extreme ‘green’ policies,” he writes, citing that taxpayer dollars are going towards “favored interests” like an electric grid, saying that, in a play straight out of Fear Politics, “government control of energy is control of people and the economy.”
As just one example, Project 2025 proposes to eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, stating that “taxpayer dollars should not be used to subsidize preferred businesses and energy resources, thereby distorting the market and undermining energy reliability.” If this office cannot be eliminated, then the blueprint suggests reorienting it to focus on things like “fundamental energy research, consistent with law” and further goes on to say that, for example, when it comes to energy efficiency standards for appliances, government should “limit regulatory overreach and protect against excessively stringent standards.”
Another example has to do with the grid, where the proposal states that renewables should not be expanded for the grid and improving the grid nationwide should focus on reliability and expansion. As for clean energy and the Office of Clean Energy Demonstration, which is an office dedicated to transitioning to a decarbonized energy system, the writers propose that “The next Administration should work with Congress to eliminate all DOE energy demonstration programs, including those in OCED. Taxpayer dollars should not be used to subsidize preferred businesses and energy resources, thereby distorting the market and undermining energy reliability.”
And what about the Inflation Reduction Act? Gut it, says Project 2025. Despite estimates from Climate Power, an environmental advocacy group, that more than 170,000 jobs have been created directly as a result of the IRA, Project 2025 says the only solution is to “support repeal” of the IRA, as well as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, laws passed that, according to McNamee, “are providing hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to renewable energy developers, their investors, and special interests.” He also calls for the end of government interference in “energy decisions,” ending the “war on oil and natural gas,” and to refocus FERC, where he was once director, to “ensuring that customers have affordable and reliable electricity, natural gas, and oil, and no longer allow it to favor special interests and progressive causes.”
Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise concludes with a piece written by Edwin J. Feulner, once the president of The Heritage Foundation, and one of the leaders of conservative thought in the U.S. Feulner writes that after Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, “the Administration had implemented 64 percent of its policy recommendations” which had been spelled out in its Mandate for Leadership that was developed before that election. These included tax cuts and cutting regulations, among other things. If a Republican wins the presidency in 2024 and begins to implement the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, one of its first acts would be to “rein in the Environmental Protection Agency.”
Workers at the shipping company UPS have just ratified a union contract that secures wage increases and extreme heat protections for more than 340,000 employees across the country. The deal marks a major win for what organizers have dubbed “hot labor summer,” in which labor fights led by groups ranging from auto workers to Hollywood actors have made headlines in recent months. UPS workers called attention in particular to the dangers posed by soaring temperatures and unsafe working conditions — a key issue in contract negotiations.
The five-year deal bumps up hourly wages for all employees, ends a two-tier wage system that allowed UPS to pay new drivers less, and eliminates mandatory overtime on drivers’ days off. UPS has also agreed to equip vehicles purchased after January 2024 with air conditioning and to retrofit existing cars with fans, vents, and exhaust heat shields. Leaders at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the union representing UPS workers, have called the contract “the most lucrative agreement the Teamsters have ever negotiated at UPS.”
“This contract will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers,” said Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters union. “This is the template for how workers should be paid and protected nationwide, and nonunion companies like Amazon better pay attention.”
The deal was approved by 86.3 percent of unionized workers at UPS. Teamsters said that it received the highest number of votes ever seen for a Teamsters contract at UPS.
The new agreement highlights how extreme heat has raised the stakes for labor organizing this summer. Relentless heat and humidity in the South, a heat dome stifling the central U.S., and the hottest June and July recorded in world history have created especially dangerous conditions for workers. Heat-related health risks heighten exponentially for people who have to work outdoors or without air conditioning. In the past few months, workers from Greece to Texas have responded by staging walkouts, going on strike, and demanding greater heat protections for workers.
UPS drivers and warehouse workers say that record-breaking heat waves have rendered the company’s 12-hour workdays and unrealistic productivity benchmarks downright deadly. UPS previously refused to install air conditioning in delivery trucks, claiming that it wouldn’t be feasible due to their frequent stops. “When you open the bulkhead door to go to the back to look for packages, it’s like running into a brick wall — it’s so hot,” said Rick Johnson, a driver who has worked at UPS for 28 years, in a Teamsters video. “You can’t stay back there with the doors closed or you’ll pass out.”
UPS Teamsters and workers hold a rally in downtown Los Angeles on July 19, 2023.
AP Photo / Damian Dovarganes
Union workers praised the contract for finally including vital protections for drivers working in sweltering conditions. “The A/C in the trucks is something I never thought I would see,” said Keith Short, a UPS worker who participated in the Teamsters strike at UPS in 1997, in a Teamsters video.
A tentative agreement reached between UPS and the Teamsters union last month averted what would have been the largest single-employer strike in U.S. history. UPS workers transport about $3.8 billion worth of goods each day, equal to about 5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
In addition to protecting workers from heat, the contract immediately bumps up all wages by $2.75 per hour, with total wage increases adding up to an additional $7.50 per hour over the next five years. All existing and new part-time employees will receive minimum wages of $21 per hour. The deal also guarantees union members will receive Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a full holiday for the first time, and creates thousands of new jobs during the length of the contract.
UPS called the contract a “win-win-win agreement” when the Teamsters first announced the tentative agreement last month. “This agreement continues to reward UPS’s full- and part-time employees with industry-leading pay and benefits while retaining the flexibility we need to stay competitive, serve our customers and keep our business strong,” the company said in a statement at the time.
The contract will go into effect as soon as one outstanding supplemental agreement for a local Teamsters chapter in Florida is renegotiated and ratified.
