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Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
"Climate change is expected to exacerbate natural hazards—including heat, drought, wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, and sea level rise," the report reads.
The nation's nuclear reactors may be at risk due to the climate emergency, according to a report released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office on Tuesday.
The report claims the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) needs to consider these risks as it regulates nuclear power plants going forward. There are currently 94 nuclear reactors in the United States that could be affected.
"Climate change is expected to exacerbate natural hazards—including heat, drought, wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, and sea-level rise. In addition, climate change may affect extreme cold weather events," the report reads. "Risks to nuclear power plants from these hazards include loss of offsite power, damage to systems and equipment, and diminished cooling capacity, potentially resulting in reduced operations or plant shutdowns."
Extreme weather event like floods can pose safety risks to #NuclearPower plants. #ClimateChange is likely to make these natural hazards more severe.
Our new report looks at how @NRCgov could better address climate risks to nuclear power plants: https://t.co/lZhGAjtNkF pic.twitter.com/MOjambENtG
— U.S. GAO (@USGAO) April 2, 2024
The report notes that many new reactors are currently being developed, which increases the need for the NRC to properly regulate those reactors.
It says that the NRC has mostly used historical data to "identify and assess safety risks," which would not account for the climate risks that are likely to threaten reactors in the future. The report claims most reactors could be negatively impacted by future climate risks.
Beyond Nuclear, which advocates against nuclear power and weapons, said in a statement that that GAO's findings and recommendations confirm what the group has been litigating with the NRC—that "the agency cannot continue to ignore the safety impacts on nuclear power plants from the worsening climate crisis."
"These risks include a worsening of natural hazards and encompass heat and cold, drought, wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, and sea-level rise, according to the GAO, all of which could seriously jeopardize the safe operation of the nation's current fleet that is going through extreme license renewals—and any future new... nuclear reactors if not properly safeguarded," the group said.
Plans to triple the amount of nuclear power in 22 countries by 2050 that were announced at the most recent United Nations climate summit have been denounced as "dangerous" and not a realistic solution to address the climate emergency.
"This racist political stunt has been an ineffective waste of billions of American taxpayers' dollars—and now we know it has caused immeasurable, irreparable harm," said Congressman Raúl Grijalva.
A U.S. government watchdog agency on Thursday released a report exposing how former President Donald Trump's wall construction along the nation's border with Mexico negatively affected cultural and natural resources, as critics have long argued.
"The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Defense (DOD) installed about 458 miles of border barrier panels across the southwest border from January 2017 through January 2021," according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. "Most (81%) of the miles of panels replaced existing barriers."
"The agencies installed over 62% of barrier miles on federal lands, including on those managed by the Department of the Interior," the report continues. "Interior and CBP officials, as well as federally recognized tribes and stakeholders, noted that the barriers led to various impacts, including to cultural resources, water sources, and endangered species, and from erosion."
The GAO document details how the border wall work caused severe erosion; disrupted natural water flows; damaged native plants while spreading invasive species; disturbed wildlife habitats and migration patterns, including for threatened and endangered species; and destroyed Indigenous burial grounds and sacred sites.
"From the start, President Trump's border wall was nothing more than a symbolic message of hate, aimed at vilifying migrants and bolstering extreme MAGA rhetoric," said U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who requested the report in May 2021. "This racist political stunt has been an ineffective waste of billions of American taxpayers' dollars—and now we know it has caused immeasurable, irreparable harm to our environment and cultural heritage as well."
"So much damage has been done, but we still have the opportunity to keep it from getting worse," he stressed. "Environmental restoration and mitigation work must be led by science and input from the right stakeholders, including tribes and communities along the border. So many corners were cut in building the wall—let's not repeat history by cutting corners in repairing the damage it caused."
"The report also makes clear that federal land management agencies, like the Interior Department and U.S. Forest Service, must be involved in environmental restoration and mitigation. These agencies have the utmost expertise and scientific knowledge of the borderlands," he added, calling on Congress to include funds for Interior and the Forest Service in the fiscal year 2024 budget "to make sure they have a strong leadership role going forward."
The GAO's report broadly recommends that the CBP commissioner and Interior secretary jointly document "a strategy to mitigate cultural and natural resource impacts from border barrier construction that defines agency roles and responsibilities for undertaking specific mitigation actions; identifies the costs, associated funding sources, and time frames necessary to implement them; and specifies when agencies are to consult with tribes."
The document adds that "the commissioner of CBP, with input from Interior, DOD, tribes, and stakeholders, should evaluate lessons learned from its prior assessments of potential impacts." The agencies have agreed to implement the recommendations, according to the GAO.
Building the border wall—which also increased rates of serious injuries and deaths among migrants—was a prominent pledge in Trump's 2016 campaign messaging. It was part of a broader anti-migrant platform that continued into his presidency, which also featured the notorious family separation policy.
When Democratic President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he delivered on a campaign promise to suspend work on the wall. The following month, he ended Trump's related emergency declaration and halted funding toward wall construction. That April, DOD announced that it was canceling all border barrier projects paid for with funds originally intended for other military uses.
While Biden was widely praised for those moves, the GAO report points out that "pausing construction and canceling contracts exacerbated some of the negative impacts because contractors left project sites in an incomplete or unrestored state as of the January 2021 pause, and the sites remained that way, at times, for more than a year."
Biden—who has faced criticism from rights groups for some of his immigration policies—is seeking reelection in 2024. He is expected to face the Republican nominee. Trump is currently the GOP front-runner, despite his various legal problems and arguments that he is constitutionally barred from holding office again after inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
The GAO report was released the same day as a United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) alert that the number of kids traveling major migration routes in Latin America and the Caribbean hit a new record, due to gang violence, instability, poverty, and the climate emergency. As Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, CBP has recorded more than 83,000 children entering the United States in the first eight months of this year.
"It is unacceptable that taxpayers are forced to spend billions of dollars subsidizing the retirement accounts of the wealthiest people in America," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
A report published Thursday by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office shows that the median retirement account balance of high-income U.S. households nearly doubled between 2007 and 2019 while those in the middle class saw their retirement savings stagnate—if they had savings at all.
The GAO report was commissioned by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who both pointed to the massive subsidies the federal government provides to tax-advantaged retirement accounts such as 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts (IRAs).
Citing Treasury Department data, the GAO's new report notes that "the estimated federal tax expenditure, or annual net revenue forgone, for tax-preferred retirement accounts was over $195 billion in 2022."
Those tax benefits flow disproportionately to high-income households. Daniel Hemel, a professor at New York University School of Law, wrote last year that "as of 2019, nearly 29,000 taxpayers had amassed 'mega-IRAs'—individual retirement accounts with balances of $5 million or more—while half of American households had no retirement accounts at all."
"Overall," Hemel added, "according to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 10th of households reap a larger share of the income tax subsidy for retirement savings than the bottom 80%."
In a statement on Friday, Sanders said that "at a time when half of older Americans have no retirement savings at all, it is unacceptable that taxpayers are forced to spend billions of dollars subsidizing the retirement accounts of the wealthiest people in America."
"The same Republican politicians who support cutting Social Security have no problem providing massive tax breaks to subsidize the retirement accounts of the top 1%," Sanders continued. "In America today, 55% of seniors are trying to survive on less than $25,000 a year. Given that reality, our job is to make sure that the working class in our country are able to retire with the dignity and the respect that they deserve, not to provide more tax breaks to the billionaire class."
"Our rigged tax code is subsidizing the retirement of billionaires and leaving everyone else to foot the bill."
The GAO found that the median retirement account balance for high-income households was about $605,000 in 2019, roughly nine times the balance of middle-income households—$64,300.
"In 2007, the median for high-income households was about four times that of middle-income households (about $333,000 and $86,800, respectively)," the GAO report states.
The report observes that high-income individuals benefit disproportionately from tax-advantaged retirement accounts for several reasons, including because they're far more likely to work for organizations that "offer pensions plans and contribute to retirement savings accounts." Lower-income households rely more heavily on Social Security, which GOP lawmakers continue to attack.
Additionally, the report notes, "the generosity of retirement plans often increases with income, up to a certain income threshold."
As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains, "the primary retirement tax subsidies allow people to contribute to accounts such as a traditional 401(k) or IRA plan on a pre-tax basis. That is, taxpayers can defer all taxes on retirement contributions and earnings until they withdraw the money in retirement, at which point it is taxed as ordinary income."
Whitehouse, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said Friday that "our rigged tax code is subsidizing the retirement of billionaires and leaving everyone else to foot the bill."
"As a result, wealthy households have nine times more saved than the average middle-class household, and just 10% of the lowest-income families have anything saved at all," the senator added. "Auto-enrollment in workplace retirement accounts would reduce the access gap and make it easier to save, but we must also protect Social Security for all and ensure the wealthy pay their fair share so that all can retire with financial security."
The GAO report comes months after a separate analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Jobs With Justice highlighted the special treatment that corporate CEOs receive in the skewed U.S. tax code.
"Employees with 401(k) plans face hard caps on the amounts they can set aside in these accounts every year," the groups wrote. "By contrast, Section 409A of the tax code allows top corporate executives to place unlimited amounts in special 'nonqualified tax-deferred compensation' accounts."
At the end of 2021, IPS and Jobs With Justice found, leading U.S. CEOs had around $9 billion in special retirement accounts that aren't available to their employees.
Last year, Congress passed bipartisan legislation that expanded federal subsidies for retirement accounts, a move that critics said would likely worsen inequality.
As Hemel wrote after the House passed the bill, which was ultimately folded into the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, "Bipartisan support for SECURE 2.0 is part of a decadeslong pattern: While loudly and proudly proclaiming that their goal is to nurture nest eggs for the working class, lawmakers have constructed a complex of tax shelters for the well-to-do."
"It's working out just fine for the financial institutions that manage assets in IRAs and 401(k)s," Hemel added. "The combined amount in those vehicles reached $21.6 trillion at the end of 2021—up fivefold since 2000—and the more money that pours in, the more that managers collect in fees."