The ant scurries along on six nimble legs. It catches up to its peers, a line of antennaed bugs roaming the winding surface of a tree, perpetually hunting for food. While doing so, each unknowingly leaves antibiotic microorganisms secreted from its feet. 

That trail of tiny footprints, indiscernible to the naked eye, is remarkably effective at protecting the tree from pathogens and pests. That makes ants, in the eyes of Ida Cecilie Jensen, a legion of unlikely warriors — one humans should consider enlisting in the fight to grow food in a warming world. “Ants are a Swiss army knife,” said Jensen, a biologist who studies the symbiotic relationship between ants and agriculture at Aarhus University in Denmark. “Kind of like a multi-tool for farmers.” 

With an estimated 20 quadrillion ants on Earth at any given time, the bugs are found just about everywhere on the planet. They are also among the species humans, which they outnumber at least 2.5 million to one, have most in common with. Ants have extraordinary collective intelligence, their colonies’ weaving robust community networks and dividing labor. The social insects even wage war with one another, and build complex agricultural systems. 

Ants also have “so many of the same problems and challenges that we have,” Jensen said. “Luckily for us, they already found a lot of great solutions.” One such challenge is how to grow food while confronting climate-wrought consequences — such as an influx of spreading plant pathogens caused by warming. 

Plant diseases cost the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year, with between 20 to 40 percent of global crop production lost to crop diseases and pests. Climate change is ramping up outbreak risks by morphing how pathogens evolve, facilitating the emergence of new strains, and making crops more susceptible to infection. Most farmers and growers increasingly rely on chemical pesticides to combat these emerging issues, but the widespread use of such substances has created problems of its own. Synthetic pesticides can be harmful to humans and animals, and lose their efficacy as pathogens build up resistance to them. The production and use of synthetic pesticides also contribute to climate change, as some are derived from planet-warming fossil fuels. 

Instead of chemicals, an army of ants may march right in. Though most people view the small insects as little more than a nuisance, colonies of them are being deployed in orchards across a handful of countries to stave off the spread of crippling infestation and disease. 

In a body of recently published and forthcoming research, Jensen examined the antimicrobial effects of wood ants, a European field ant known for building dome-shaped nests in fields and open woodlands, and weaver ants, which live in ball-shaped nests within tropical tree canopies across Asia, Africa, and Australia. Her team looked at how the microbes influenced apple brown rot and apple scab in two orchards in Denmark — one commercial and one experimental — and found that wood ants effectively reduce apple scab, which can cause serious yield losses, by an average of 61 percent. The scientists also found that the number of disease-free apples more than doubled compared to when ants weren’t wielded as an alternative biological pesticide. For another experiment in Senegal, they collected weaver ants from mango orchards to investigate the bacterial communities associated with ants, discovering that they also leave microbial footprints that may inhibit fungal diseases such as mango anthracnose, which can lead to extensive yield losses. 

Past studies have found that for crops from cocoa to citrus, ants could replace insecticides in a multitude of climates and locations, reducing incidences of pear scab in pear trees, coffee leaf rust in coffee shrubs, and leaf fungal attacks in oak seedlings. Weaver ant nests used as an alternative pesticide in mango, cashew, and citrus trees have all been shown to lower pest damage and produce yields on par with several chemical pesticide treatments. For more than a millennia, the species was embraced as a natural insecticide in countries like China but never quite made its way into the agricultural mainstream in North America or Europe. The method would eventually be replaced by the dawn of synthetic solutions. Still, despite that legacy, exactly how ants take on disease has remained a scientific mystery. 

The answer, Jensen said, lies in how ants function. All species of the arthropod possess a body that is essentially hostile for bacteria because they produce formic acid, which they use to constantly disinfect themselves. Ants are also perpetually hungry little things that will feast on the spores of plant pathogens, among other things, and their secretion of formic acid and highly territorial nature tends to deter a medley of other insects that could be transmitting diseases or making lunch of some farmers’ crops. Ultimately, their greatest trick is what Jensen’s newest research reveals: Ants also inherently have antimicrobial bacteria and fungi on their bodies and feet, which can reduce plant diseases in afflicted crops, with these microorganisms deposited as the critters walk. When the bugs are cultivated in fruit orchards, they march all over trees, their feet coating the plants in microbial organisms that can curb emerging pathogens. 

Understanding why they have this effect makes it easier to promote and implement native species of ants as biological agents in fields and farms, which Jensen advocates for. She’s not only researching how to do this as a doctoral candidate, but also founded AgroAnt in 2022, a company that leases colonies to cull plant pathogens and pests to farmers in Denmark — much like beekeepers lease hives. Her research team is now looking into boosting populations of existing ant colonies already living in orchards, rather than introducing new ones. Building rope bridges between trees to help ants better get around, and increasing the number of sugary extracts left in strategic locations to feed them, can create ant population booms, which Jensen sees as a simple and inexpensive way for farmers to ward off costly bouts of crop disease. 

Others are not convinced this would be any more useful or cost-effective than existing biopesticides like canola oil and baking soda, or pest management chemicals derived from natural sources.

Kerik Cox, who researches plant pathology at Cornell University, said that many of the microbes derived from the ants in the study have already been studied, and optimized for formulation and efficacy in agricultural systems. “Many are highly effective and there are numerous commercial products available for farmers to use,” said Cox, adding that he doesn’t see “anything in this study that would be better than the existing biopesticide tools, which are registered by the [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency].” 

Jensen acknowledges there is always a risk when introducing any species — ants new to an area could push out other beneficial species, for example, or attract aphids, those small green plant-damaging insects that ants share a symbiotic relationship with. Still, she is adamant that as long as the species is native to the area and agricultural system they’re being introduced to and then properly managed, the possible benefits outweigh the pitfalls. 

On a practical note, the money-saving argument of ants pitted against synthetic products also carries a big draw; particularly given that conventional pesticides, in addition to their organic, chemical-free counterparts, have become more expensive in recent years across Europe and the U.S. Those product prices tend to climb when extreme weather shocks disrupt production, a likelihood as climate change makes disasters more frequent and severe. 

Conversely, Jensen said farmers can simply leave sugar-water solutions, cat food or chicken bones, among any number of kitchen scraps, in fruit orchards where beneficial, pathogen-combating ants are typically already present — such as weaver ants in mango orchards. If the species already dwell there, this could increase their numbers and efficiency. The technique, however, should be approached with caution depending on location, to minimize the risk of attracting potentially harmful members of the ant family. 

“I don’t believe in one solution that could fit everything, but I definitely think that ants and other biological control agents are going to be a huge part of the [climate] puzzle in the future,” she said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A secret weapon in agriculture’s climate fight: Ants on Jan 13, 2025.

In the wake of the 2024 election, Barn Raiser talks to prominent Native leaders and mentors, who tell us in edited interviews how and why their communities have long endured, even in divisive and unsettled times.

Right now, all of us who live together on this earth face not just political instability but the “dual crises of climate change and social injustice,” according to Fawn Sharp, citizen of the Quinalt Indian Nation, in Taholah, Washington, and former president of the National Congress of American Indians.

“Now, more than ever,” Sharp says, “the world needs the wisdom, resilience and stewardship that Indigenous leaders uniquely bring. Our survival in this rapidly changing world may well depend on it.”

The views of each of those who spoke to Barn Raiser are deeply personal and rooted in their own unique cultures.

The Long View

For the past 16 years, the Zuni Youth Enrichment Project, at Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, has hosted numerous programs in the arts, gardening, cooking, sports and more. The activities are designed to prepare Zuni youth to be healthy adults who can continue Zuni cultural traditions. Of Zuni’s 10,000 residents, almost a third are under the age of 18. Kiara Zunie, a Zuni tribal citizen and ZYEP’s Youth Development Coordinator, and ZYEP Operations Manager Josh Kudrna describe accompanying tribal youth on a recent visit to their people’s emergence place in what is now called the Grand Canyon. Zunie and Kudrna are joined in this interview by ZYEP Executive Director Tahlia Natachu-Eriacho, a tribal citizen.

Kiara Zunie: Backpacking down the Grand Canyon was a beautiful and humbling experience for everyone. We shared moments of aching legs, tingling fingers and shallow breathing from the weight of our packs. The journey reminded us that resilience isn’t just about physical strength, it’s about mental toughness, too. We took care of each another through consistent check-ins, positive encouragement and song lyrics. Each rugged step we took was also a reminder of our ancestors’ enduring strength and their prayers coming to fruition through a group like us.

Tahlia Natachu-Eriacho: This program is important for us because it acknowledges Zuni’s migration story. We Zuni people emerged from there and made our way to where we are now in Zuni Pueblo. The fact that we still live on the lands our ancestors intended us to be on is so powerful. And a privilege. Our reservation is where we are supposed to be.

We have been intentional about calling the trips to the Grand Canyon ‘visits.’ They’re not adventures or expeditions and other ideas that come from the goals of colonization. We are going to visit our relatives, to where our ancestors were, to places that have meaning for our culture and our identity and who we are today.

Josh Kudrna: During the three-day visit, we hiked 17 miles. That may not sound like a lot to people who run marathons, but it’s down about 7,000 feet to get to the water at the base of the canyon, then back up 7,000 feet. It’s very steep climbing, and all of our participants were carrying everything they needed—about 30 to 40 pounds—on their backs.

Ahead of time, I try to prep them for what’s about to happen, but it’s hard to conceptualize that after about three miles your legs will be quaking with every step. It’s very hard work, and they connect to the ancestors, who didn’t have fancy boots, who didn’t have internal-frame backpacks, but were still carrying their children and everything they needed on their backs as they continually went up and down the canyon.

Zunie: The day we hiked out of the Grand Canyon happened to fall on Indigenous People’s Day. We were nearing the top when we heard the echo of a drumbeat. The National Park Service had organized traditional dances to celebrate Indigenous culture. As we listened to the drums, I looked at the group, reminding myself of the journey we had just endured. Remembering the aches and pains and the moments of laughter and camaraderie, I started to cry.

A Place to Call Home

Good news is imminent at the Native American Community of Central Ohio (NAICCO), in Columbus. Executive Director Masami Smith and Project Director Ty Smith lead the urban-Indian organization and its activities on behalf of the cultural, community and economic development of the area’s Native people. Both Masami and Ty are enrolled citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, in Oregon. A major project nearing fruition is LandBack NAICCO, with nearly $400,000 in donations and earned income that will allow the group to acquire land. The group is currently looking at land in Central Ohio and the broader Ohio area. According to the major Indigenous news source Native News Online, many Native communities  are finding ways to reconstitute portions of homelands and reservations lost in the process of European settlement. Ty tells us about NAICCO and its plans.

Ty Smith: The urban setting is different in many ways from Indigenous homelands on the reservations. You’re navigating two worlds simultaneously while trying to maintain balance and harmony in your life. The sense of home is strong for our Native people. But where do you find that in Ohio, which has no infrastructure for us—no tribes, which were expelled in the 1800s, no reservations, no Indian Health Service, no Bureau of Indian Affairs, no Bureau of Indian Education?

Because Ohio doesn’t include the tribes that were originally here, there are holes in the story. The dots don’t connect. Native people who have come to live here in recent years—for higher education, work and more—lean on each other. They come into NAICCO and start to make it home and make relations.

As an intertribal community, we bond in ways we never thought possible. A sense of togetherness and belonging has become the heart and soul of NAICCO. We all agree that we want a better tomorrow for our children. When you have that commonality, it speaks truth. It’s our foundation. The group becomes family, not by blood but by shared experience in the newfound Ohio home.

Since Masami and I came here in 2011, people have asked, “What if we could have our own place?’ While doing other programs, we never lost track of that: a piece of land in addition to our agency building on the south side of Columbus, a place we could call home, where we could connect with Nature.

We launched LandBack NAICCO in 2019, right before Covid struck. It didn’t get a lot of traction because of the pandemic. So we re-launched it in 2022. To our surprise, wow, in 2024 we have almost $400,000 to buy land that is not just ours, but where we can reawaken the Native within. Land that we don’t just walk upon, but where we engage in foraging, tending, stewarding, rewilding and conservation, where we can create a relationship with Mother Nature. How does Nature teach us, how do we take care of her? This is essential to who we are.

Native people have advocated for this idea, of course. It’s exciting, surprising and humbling that non-Native relatives, supporters, friends and allies have also rallied behind us and lifted us. Non-Native subject-matter experts, including conservationists and environmentalists, have told us that once we have the land, let them know. They’re there to offer resources, services, insight, wisdom. Very cool. Multiple organizations and private parties have come forward to participate as well. We don’t know how this will end. It’s hard to talk about because it’s happening right now, in real time.

We never imagined this in our wildest dreams. In these turbulent times, it gives you hope that there’s something good at hand. It points to a good life, not just for the individual but for the community. There’s hope here and a dream. LandBack NAICCO is about planting seeds for a better tomorrow.

Strengthening Connections

Anahkwet (Guy Reiter) is a citizen of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and executive director of the grassroots nonprofit Menikanaehkem Community Rebuilders. The group has a range of supportive programming, including building solar-powered “tiny homes” for those who need shelter during life transitions, setting up women’s leadership and empowerment projects, including midwifery and traditional birthing practices, developing forest- and garden-based food sovereignty and advocating against proposals for dangerous open-pit mines and pipelines. Anahkwet talks about how his tribe understands the connections that strengthen individuals and communities.

Anahkwet: With the results of the recent election, hopefully people will now understand what this country has always been about since 1492. This moment is like many other moments in our Indigenous history with the dominant society. We at Menominee have been here before, unfortunately sometimes in more dire circumstances.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, our greatest enemy is the European mind, which comes in many shapes, forms, colors and creeds. It’s such a dangerous outlook because it’s based in fear. Through its languages, it perceives problems, defines them and builds things around them in ways that isolate a person—on a planet with 8 billion people. Anything built on fear and distrust never ends well. It’s a shaky foundation to build anything on.

Our Menominee language isn’t like that. It’s built on relationships, love and a connection to all things. The more we move in that direction, the stronger we will get. Indigenous leadership in this regard is already there throughout the world. It’s a question of others waking up to it and realizing it. Indigenous leaders have been present this whole time, but others haven’t seen them, haven’t taken the time to listen to them.

Our people are amazing at—and have mastered—resilience. Their deep connections to our culture and our language have kept them deeply grounded and able to withstand much struggle and oppression. Without those connections, you can see that a person might feel hopeless, lost, confused.

For us, struggle strengthens our connections. It alerts us to the importance of remembering who we are—our languages, our culture, our ceremonies. It’s a reminder to continue them. Our young people can see the sacrifices of their ancestors. They see the reason we’re still here, through all the things that happened to us. They see that our language, our culture and our way of life have held us together—have given us all we need in terms of hope, understanding and direction.

One of our greatest teachers is the Earth. If you slow down and listen, she’ll show you exactly what you need to know. If you want to build an organization, look to a forest. How does a forest have that much diversity, yet life thrives? What characteristics of a healthy forest do you see? In our teachings, in our culture, we talk about representation from grandma and grandpa trees, adult trees, teen trees, baby trees. They all need to exist within that ecosystem for it to be healthy. It doesn’t take long to understand the simplicity of it all. If you’re able to slow down and connect with the Earth, the answers are there.

When we went ricing this year, we took our young people along. [While ricing, one person poles a canoe through the shallow water of a wild-rice paddy, while the other uses sticks to tap the ripe wild-rice grains into the canoe.] It’s more than getting in a canoe, getting in the water and paddling, which is amazing in itself. Understanding the relationship the canoe has to the water and we have to the canoe, the connection to the trees, the land, the fish—all those things come into play. Before we go ricing, we pray. We ask for good days. We make sure everyone is safe.

The canoe in the water can teach you a lot of things about yourself. It can show you how you relate to another person. If it’s a windy day, you understand quickly how much teamwork ricing takes. When the wind is blowing hard in your face, the two of you are not going to make it across the lake if you don’t take the time to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, to work together. You’re also not fearful. You don’t make quick reactions. In this world, everyone wants quick this, quick that, but it’s not like that in the natural world.

Our people have stressed we must have good thoughts as we harvest this rice that has nourished our people for thousands of years. We harvest with a good heart and a good mind. We do it to feed our families, as well as other families, so they won’t go hungry. We think of all those who came before us, who treated the rice as we do, so it would continue to thrive. It will continue to take care of us if we take care of it.

All people around the world have gone through times like these at various points in their histories. In those times, they found strategies, ways to move forward. Today, there are good people and amazing things happening. Someone once told me in reference to a hurricane in Florida that all over the news you see what a tragedy it is. News shows show the destruction and the horrors.

But, this person said, remember to look for the helpers—helping, doing their work. The same is true now. Look for the helpers. They’re doing their work.

The post Hope in Turbulent Times: Native Leaders Take the Long View appeared first on Barn Raiser.

Every morning, for years, Josana Pinto da Costa would venture out onto the waterways lining Óbidos, Brazil, in a small fishing boat. She would glide over the murky, churning currents of the Amazon River Basin, her flat nets bringing in writhing hauls as the sun ascended into the cerulean skies above.

Scorching temperatures in the Brazilian state of Pará have now made that routine unsafe. The heat has “been really intense” this year, said Pinto da Costa in Portuguese. It feels as if the “sun has gotten stronger,” so much so that it’s led her to shift her working hours from daytime to the dead of night.

Abandoning the practice that defined most of her days, she now sets off to the river in the pitch dark to chase what fish are also awake before dawn. It’s taken a toll on her catch, and her life. But it’s the only way she can continue her work in the face of increasingly dangerous temperatures.

“A lot of our fishing communities have shifted to fishing in the nighttime,” said Pinto da Costa, who advocates nationally for fisherfolk communities like hers through the Movimento de Pescadores e Pescadoras Artesanais do Brasil, or the Movement of Artisanal Fishermen and Fisherwomen of Brazil.

Moving from daytime to overnight work is often presented as the most practical solution for agricultural laborers struggling with rising temperatures as a result of climate change. But it is no longer simply a proposal: This shift is already underway among many of the communities that catch, grow, and harvest the world’s food supply, from Brazil to India to the United States. Studies show the most common means of adapting to rising temperatures in most crop-growing regions has been to start working when it’s still dark out, or even to shift to a fully overnight schedule.

“The obvious piece of advice that you’ll see given is, ‘Work at night. Give workers head torches,’ and so on,” said Zia Mehrabi, a food security and climate researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “But the reality is, that can lead to other rights violations, other negative impacts.”

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That’s been the case for Pinto da Costa and her fishing community in Brazil. Nighttime work has been an additional hardship for a community already struggling with the impacts of climate change. The region has experienced decades of severe drought conditions, causing fish to die off and physically isolating people as waterways dried up.

Research shows that regularly working during the night is physically and mentally disruptive and can lead to long-term health complications. Nighttime fishing is also threatening social and communal routines among the fisherfolk. A daytime sleep schedule can curb quality time spent with loved ones, as well as limit when wares can be sold or traded in local markets.

It’s also impacting their ability to support themselves and their families through a generations-old trade. “We’ve actually been working more hours with less food, with less production,” said Pinto da Costa, noting that working at night has made their work less efficient and led them to find less fish. “This is across all regions of Brazil,” she added.

The impact of a shift to nighttime hours is an understudied piece of the puzzle of how climate change and rising temperatures threaten the world’s food supply and its workforce. But for many experts, and those on the front lines, one thing is clear: Overnight work is far from a straightforward solution.

“It’s a very scary time for us,” said Pinto da Costa.

Outdoor workers, with their typical midday hours and limited access to shade, face some of the most perilous health risks during periods of extreme heat. A forthcoming analysis — previewed exclusively by Grist — found that, on average, the amount of time considered unsafe to work outside during a typical 9-to-5 workday will increase 8 percent by 2050, assuming greenhouse gas emissions stay on their current trajectory.

Led by Naia Ormaza Zulueta, a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Mehrabi, the analysis measures the number of extreme heat days by geographic region, and then breaks down daily and hourly temperatures by the estimated amount of population exposed. The research reveals that an estimated 21 percent of the global population already faces dangerous levels of heat stress during typical workday hours for more than a third of the year. By 2050, without cuts to planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions (known as the “business-as-usual” scenario), that portion will jump to 39 percent.

“The number of days that people will experience a violation of their rights to a safe climate is going to substantially increase, but then also the number of possible working hours in a season, and productivity, is going to be substantially reduced,” said Mehrabi. “It’s a massive lose-lose situation.”

Their analysis finds that outdoor agricultural workers will encounter the largest health-related risks, with laborers in some areas being hit harder than others.

India, in particular, is projected to be one of the countries whose workforce will be most exposed to heat stress under the business-as-usual climate scenario. There are roughly 260 million agricultural workers in India. By 2050, 94 percent of the country’s population could face more than 100 days in a year when at least one daytime working hour exceeds a wet-bulb temperature of 28 degrees Celsius, or 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit — a conservative threshold of what is considered safe for acclimatized workers experiencing moderate rates of work. (Unacclimatized workers, or those unaccustomed to working in such environments, will face greater levels of heat risk at the same temperature and amount of work.)

In Brazil, another of the world’s top agricultural suppliers, heat risk is not as dire, but still poses a substantial risk for outdoor workers, including Pinto da Costa’s community of fisherfolk. By 2050, roughly 41 percent of the country’s population could experience more than 100 days a year when wet-bulb temperatures exceed the recommended threshold for at least one hour a day, according to the Boulder team’s analysis.

Mary Jo Dudley, the director of Cornell University’s Farmworker Program and the chair of the U.S. National Advisory Council of Migrant Health, said that the analysis is significant for what it reveals about the human health consequences of extreme heat, particularly as it relates to the world’s agricultural laborers. She’s seeing more and more outdoor agricultural workers in the U.S. adopt overnight schedules, which is only adding to the burdens and inequities the wider workforce already suffers from. This is poised to get worse. Zulueta and Mehrabi found that 35 percent of the total U.S. population will experience more than 100 days of wet-bulb temperatures exceeding 28 degrees C, or 82.4 degrees F, for at least one hour a day every year by 2050.

“This transition to a nighttime schedule pushes an extremely vulnerable population into more difficult work conditions that have significant mental and physical health impacts,” said Dudley.

Rebuking the human body’s circadian rhythms — that 24-hour internal clock that regulates when you sleep and wake — ramps up a person’s risk of health complications, such as cardiovascular disease and types of cancer, and diminishes their body’s ability to handle injury and stress. Working untraditional hours also can reduce a person’s ability to socialize or participate in cultural, communal activities, which are associated with positive impacts on brain and body health.

Women are particularly vulnerable to the social and economic impacts of transitioning to nighttime schedules. Despite making up nearly 45 percent of artisanal fishers in Brazil, women receive lower pay than their male counterparts. That means that when harvests decline with nighttime fishing, their margins are even smaller.

In the Brazilian state of Bahia, tens of thousands of women fishers work to collect shellfish en masse, while in Maranhão, women fisherfolk herd shrimp to the shore using small nets. Clam harvesting in Brazil’s northeast is also dominated by women. Because these jobs traditionally happened during the day and close to home, they allowed women to balance cultural or gendered family roles, including managing the household and being the caregiver to children. Shifting to evening hours to avoid extreme heat “poses a fundamental challenge,” said Mehrabi. “When you talk about changing working hours, you talk about disrupting families.”

Overnight work comes with other risks too. In many areas of Brazil, nighttime work is “either impossible” or “very complicated” because there are procedures and regulations as to when fisherfolk in different regions can fish, said Pinto da Costa. Nighttime fishing is regulated in some parts of Brazil — measures that have been shown to disproportionately impact artisanal fishers.

Even so, says Pinto da Costa, many are braving the risks “just to reduce the amount of exposure to the sun.”

“Honestly, when I saw that this was accepted in the literature, that people were giving this advice of changing their working shifts to the night, I was shocked,” said Zulueta, the author of the Boulder study, citing a paper published earlier this year where overnight work is recommended as an adaptation tool to reduce agricultural productivity losses to heat exposure. Under a policy of “avoiding unsafe working hours,” shifting those hours to the nighttime “is not a universally applicable solution,” she said.

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Growing up a pastoralist in Ahmedabad, India, Bhavana Rabari has spent much of her life helping tend to her family’s herd of buffalo. Although she now spends her days advocating for pastoralists across the Indian state of Gujarat, the routine of her childhood is still ingrained in her: Wake up, feed and milk the herd, and then tend to the fields that surround their home.

But extreme heat threatens to change that, as well as the preservation of her community. When temperatures soar past 90 degrees F in Ahmedabad — now a regular occurrence — Rabari worries about her mom, who hand-collects feed for their buffalo to graze on. Other pastoralists are nomadic, walking at least 10 miles a day herding cattle from region to region in the hunt for pastureland.

“If we lose our livestock, we lose our culture, our dignity,” said Rabari. “If we continue our occupations, then we are dignified. We live with the dignity of our work.”

But rapidly rising temperatures are making it hard to hold on to that dignity of work. “The heat affects every life, every thing,” said Rabari.

Working overnight is a tactic Rabari has heard of other agricultural workers trying. But the idea of tending to the herd in the dark isn’t something she sees as safe or accessible for either her family or other pastoralists in her community. It’s less efficient and more dangerous to work outdoors with animals in the dark, and it would require them to overhaul daily lives and traditions.

“We are not working at night,” said Rabari. But what the family is already doing is waking up at 5 a.m. to beat the heat, collecting milk from their buffalo and preparing products to sell in the market during the dusky hours of the morning.

Rabari’s family and other pastoralists across Gujarat are increasingly in an untenable position. Hotter temperatures have already caused pastureland to wither, meaning animals are grazing less and producing less milk. More unsafe working hours means lost work time on top of that, which, in turn, changes how much income pastoralist families are able to take home.

The result has been not adaptation, but an exodus. Most pastoralists Rabari knows, particularly younger generations, are leaving the trade, seeking employment instead as drivers or cleaners in Ahmedabad. Rabari, who organizes for women pastoralists through the Maldhari Mahila Sangathan, or the Pastoral Women Alliance, says women are most often the ones left behind to tend to the herds.

They “have to take care of their children, they have to take care of the food, and they have to take care of the water,” she said. “They face the heat, they face the floods, or the excess rain.”

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Halfway across the world, April Hemmes is facing off against unrelenting bouts of heat amid verdant fields of soybeans and corn in Hampton, north-central Iowa. A fourth-generation small Midwestern farmer, Hemmes works more than 900 acres entirely on her own — year in and year out.

The Midwest is the largest agricultural area in the United States, as well as one of the leading agricultural producers in the world. It’s also an area that has been battered by human-caused climate change. In fact, scientists just recently declared an end to the drought that had devastated the region for a whopping 203 weeks. The conditions impacted crop yields, livestock, the transportation of goods, and the larger supply chain.

Hemmes has the luxury of not having to face the same degree of heat stress that Rabari and Pinto da Costa are confronting elsewhere in the world, per the Boulder analysis. When compared to India and Brazil, the U.S. is on the lowest end of the worker health impact scale for extreme heat. And yet, heat is also already the deadliest extreme weather event in the U.S., responsible for more deaths every year than hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes combined.

A few years back, while building a fence on her farmland, Hemmes suffered her first bout of on-the-job heat exhaustion. Suddenly, her heart started to race and her body felt as if it began to boil from within, forcing her to abandon her task and head indoors, away from the menacing heat. It was a wake-up call: Ever since, she’s been hyper-cautious with how she feels when tending to her fields.

This past summer, the heat index repeatedly soared past 100 degrees in Hemmes’ corner of Iowa. She found herself needing to be extra careful, not only pacing herself while working and taking more frequent breaks, but also making sure to get the bulk of the day’s work done in the morning. She even began starting her day in the fields an hour or so earlier to avoid searing temperatures compounding with brutal humidity throughout the afternoon.

“This [farm] has been in my family for over 125 years,” she said. “I do everything from banking to planting to spraying, everything. So it’s all on me, and it’s my family farm. I’m very proud of that.” In 1993, her dad and grandfather both retired, and she took over operations. She’s been more or less “a one-woman show” since. Keeping her farm well-managed is a responsibility she doesn’t take lightly. “You do what’s best for the soil. Because that’s the inheritance of future generations,” she said.

When Hemmes looks at how to prepare for a future with hotter working conditions, she knows one thing: Nighttime work is out of the question.

Not only are summertime mosquitoes in Iowa “terrible after dark,” but Hemmes says some of the chemicals she uses are regulated, restricting her from spraying them during the nighttime. In addition, she would need to get lights installed throughout the fields to alleviate the risk of injury when she uses equipment, and she would be even more fearful of that equipment breaking down.

“It would take more energy to work at night,” said Hemmes. “I think it would be far more dangerous … to work after the daylight was gone.”

Like Pinto da Costa and Rabari, Hemmes is involved in advocacy for her community. With the United Soybean Board, Hemmes advocates for women in agriculture. With more resources at her disposal than Pinto da Costa and Rabari, Hemmes is focused on how to ensure solo-farming operations like hers have access to the technology they need to overcome heat spells — and never have to seriously consider an overnight harvest schedule.

On her own farm, she’s invested in “expensive” autonomous agriculture technology that allows her to take breaks when she needs to from the blistering sun. And she would like to see more precision technology and autonomous agriculture tools readily applied and accessible for farmers. She currently uses a tractor with an automatic steering system that improves planting and plowing efficiency and requires much less work, which she credits as one of the pivotal reasons she’s able to successfully manage her hundreds of acres of fields on her own.

She also hopes to see farmers tapping into their inherent flexibility. “What farmers are is adaptable,” she said. “I don’t have an orchard on my farm, but if I did, and I saw this thing [climate change] coming, you know, maybe you look at tearing the trees out and starting to plant what I can in those fields. Maybe the Corn Belt will move up to North Dakota. Who knows, if this keeps progressing?”

In Gujarat, Rabari and the Maldhari Mahila Sangathan are working to secure better representation for pastoralists in policymakers’ decisions about land use. The hope is for these communities to inform policies that would allow pastoralists job security and financial safety nets as climbing temperatures make it difficult to work and turn a profit.

Women pastoralists in particular are entirely left out of these policy spaces, said Rabari, which isn’t just an issue of exclusion but means their unique ecological knowledge is lost, too. “We have a traditional knowledge of which grass is good for our animals, which grass they need to eat so we get the most meals, how [they] can be used for medical treatment,” she said.

Pinto da Costa and the Movimento de Pescadores e Pescadoras Artesanais do Brasil are also advocating for monetary relief from the Brazilian government to offset the losses her fisherfolk community has faced from climate change and shifting work hours. In addition, she is looking for technical support to improve fisherfolk’s resources and equipment.

“I have maintained my energy and motivation to continue to fight for our rights,” said Pinto da Costa.

For all, it’s a race against time. Eventually, even working at night may not be enough to keep outdoor agricultural work viable. The Boulder researchers found that an overnight working schedule will not significantly alleviate dangerous heat stress exposure risk in key agricultural regions of the world — particularly across India. After all, heat waves don’t only happen during the day, but also take place at night, with overnight minimum temperatures rising even more rapidly than daytime highs.

Zachary Zobel, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center who has separately researched the impact of overnight work adaptations on global agricultural productivity levels, said the Boulder team’s analysis has a “novel” result, and lines up with what his team has found.

“Warming past 2 degrees C, which we will experience over the next 30 years, would mean that even overnight shifts wouldn’t recover productivity,” said Zobel.

“How do you solve a problem like that?” Mehrabi said. “The reality is that the workers most at risk are the people contributing least to the climate change problem. That’s not to say that we can’t have better policies around hydration, shading, health. But it’s just kind of trying to put a BandAid on a problem. It doesn’t actually deal with the problem at its root cause, which comes down to this trajectory of fossil fuel consumption and emissions.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Extreme heat is forcing farmers to work overnight, an adaptation that comes with a cost on Dec 11, 2024.

The most exciting part of the day at Spruce Pine Montessori School is when the truck arrives to empty the porta-johns. At that point in the afternoon, the kids abandon their toy dinosaurs and monkey bars, throw up their hands, and yell in excitement as they run to watch the truck do its work. It’s lucky that they find something to be so joyful about, Principal Jennifer Rambo said on a recent sunny afternoon, because things have been a mess for the past seven weeks.

The flooding that devastated western North Carolina during Hurricane Helene laid waste to communities all around the region, spitting up great torrents of mud and washing away homes, cars, and people. The landscape along the creeks and mountainsides has been forever changed.

Beyond the fallen trees, sliding hillsides, and damaged buildings, Helene took out critical infrastructure, like internet and electricity, water, and sewer. Everyone would have liked more time to get things in order, but working families were desperate for childcare and the desire to resume classes was too great. “We had to get open,” Rambo said. “The kids needed some routine and structure and consistency, and families needed to go back to work.”

Although folks in Spruce Pine were told Thursday they could finally stop boiling water before using it, the school still can’t flush its toilets because the sewers remain a mess. In addition to two portable toilets (and special seats so the smaller children wouldn’t fall in), it has had to buy water by the barrel and spend $600 to install portable hand-washing sinks. The bills continue adding up: $360 per week for the johns and $350 every time they need emptying. Everyone has had to adjust to these changes and more, even as they’ve dealt with similar problems at home.

It’s been that way everywhere. The storm killed 103 people throughout western North Carolina and surrounding areas. Many more were injured. All told, the wind and the water damaged as many as 126,000 homes, and dozens of roads and bridges simply washed away.

Helene also decimated more than two dozen water utilities. For weeks after the storm, people had to boil anything that wasn’t poured from a bottle, and many of them drew from creeks and ponds just to flush their toilets. Folks in Asheville, where taps ran dry for three weeks, were told just this week that their water is safe to drink without boiling it first, but thousands of people served by 16 utilities still deal with sketchy water, low pressure, and other frustrations. In an effort to make their lives a little easier, officials dipped into a $273 million relief package to dot this end of North Carolina with 650 portable toilets and 15 “community care stations” with showers and washing machines.

Asheville was lucky enough to have upgraded its reservoir last year, something that prevented even worse flooding and allowed the region’s largest city and the communities that rely upon it for water to recover sooner than they otherwise might have. But for towns like Spruce Pine, the financial and engineering challenges of repairing their water systems are as formidable as the hurricane that broke them.

The water that flows into the North Fork Reservoir, which serves Asheville and the towns of Black Mountain and Swannanoa, always ran clear and clean from its headwaters high in Pisgah National Forest. But mud and debris have turned it murky brown and damaged much of the equipment needed to pump it. Crews have worked around the clock to set things right, reconnecting pipelines in record time and drawing muck from the lake.

Repairing municipal water systems leveled by a storm that washed away distribution lines, overwhelmed intakes, and inundated treatment plants is no easy feat. The challenge is acute in mountain communities, where geography is a hassle. Much of the infrastructure required to draw, treat, and distribute water often sits alongside reservoirs, placing them squarely in a floodplain when the torrent arrives and increasing the likelihood of damage. Reaching anything needing attention can take days or even weeks because the lines that carry water to customers meander through valleys, over ridgelines, and along roadways, many of which remain impassable. Spruce Pine Water & Sewer has restored service to 90 percent of its 2,000 or so customers, but can’t do much for the rest of them until the roads are fixed.

The sewer system remains a mess too. Town manager Darlene Butler has asked residents to conserve water as she works with county officials and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to erect a temporary treatment facility. The equipment is only now arriving and will, at best, be a Band-Aid for a multi-year fix. “We had a lot of damage there, so we’re trying to encourage people not to use a lot of water and put it into our sewer system,” she said.

A lot of these utilities struggled even before Helene. In many Appalachian towns, the companies that once paid to maintain water and sewer systems have shut down or moved on, and shrinking populations generate less revenue to keep things shiny and new. This is endemic throughout Appalachia. Residents in McDowell County, West Virginia — where one-third of families live in poverty — have for example given up on the often discolored water that flows from their taps and buy it by the case instead. Pipes in Martin County, Kentucky lose about 64 percent of what flows through them, a problem that started 24 years ago when a toxic coal slurry spill damaged them. The burden of these failures falls on customers who must adapt to the situation even as their rates climb. (Rates in Martin County, North Carolina, to offer one example, are among the nation’s highest.)

Yet other systems, particularly those in tourist towns, struggle to keep up with rapidly growing populations. The challenges are compounded by the difficulty of running new lines in the mountains and maintaining the complex pumps needed to maintain pressure over ridgelines. “This is a really, really great place to live,” said Clay Chandler, Asheville’s water resources information officer. “It’s beautiful. The people are amazing. But, man, it makes it hard to operate a water system.”

Spruce Pine’s system is so old that Butler has no idea when its pipes were laid, though she guesses it was 60 years ago. The pump station, recently upgraded with money from the American Rescue Plan, was built in 1967. It has seen overhauls as things broke, but rural utilities rarely make wholesale improvements because they are expensive and disruptive. “I think, like most small towns, we’ve struggled for the funds to be proactive instead of reactive,” Butler said.

Even as communities deal with the aftermath of so much deferred maintenance, others are facing the inescapable fact that rebuilding on a floodplain may no longer make sense. Spruce Pine is banking on hazard mitigation funding from FEMA and help from federal officials to move its wastewater treatment plant to higher ground.

The work needed to fully, and permanently, restore water and sewer service in these communities will by most estimates take two to four years and cost many millions of dollars. Meanwhile, crews continue playing whack-a-mole as aging lines break. Another one gave way in rural Yancey County last week, sending a geyser dozens of feet into the air.

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About 2,000 people live in Spruce Pine, a busy place with water-intensive businesses that have been impacted by the disruption. There’s the mine that produces some of the purest quartz in the world and sent heavy equipment to help restore service. There are the restaurants and kitschy attractions that drive a burgeoning tourism industry. And then there are the two state prisons, each of which holds about 800 people (who were relocated after spending a week in flooded cells) and, like prisons everywhere, burden the local water and sewer systems.

The ongoing crisis also has made providing basic services a challenge. Blue Ridge Regional Hospital, which serves three counties, has long had a standby power supply but scrambled to cope with losing water. Trucks haul in what’s needed, and enormous bladders collect what’s been used. “We had backup generators to supply the hospital in case of an emergency,” said Alex Glover, chair of the hospital’s board of directors. “But we never dreamed we would lose water and sewage capabilities, and we lost them all at once.”

With water in short supply, the volunteer fire department banned burning the yard waste, brush, and other debris people have been clearing for weeks. “If we had a big fire and we needed to take several thousand gallons or more out of the system, we don’t really know for sure how long that supply would hold up,” said firefighter Chris Westveer.

The department has experienced some close calls. Westveer recalled one frightening night when wiring in a damaged home sparked a fire. The road had been washed away, forcing crews to approach on an all-terrain vehicle. With no water on tap, they drew what they needed from a river and hoped the wind wouldn’t spread the flames beyond their ability to fight them.

Such strains on public services, already scarce throughout mountain communities, compound the stress felt by those who have gone nearly two months without reliable water. People in Banner Elk, a community of 1,000 or so that had to rebuild a road before it could repair water and sewer lines, couldn’t flush their toilets for a month. County officials worried that the raw sewage would flow into the Elk River. Meredith Olan, director of the Banner House history museum, has been hauling water from the creek and boiling it just to do the dishes. “I’m very adept at carrying buckets now,” she said ruefully. Anyone wanting to take a shower had to rely upon the goodwill of friends with wells to draw from. But even that was no guarantee. Some were inundated with floodwaters and might have been contaminated with E. coli and other pathogens, and the electric pumps that pull water from the depths aren’t any good when the power is out.

Even as these communities work nonstop to restore service, local and state officials are looking ahead to the next big storm. Members of the state Water Infrastructure Authority, a body tasked with financial planning for the state’s water and sewer utilities, gathered last month to ponder updates to North Carolina’s water infrastructure master plan. The document, created in 2017, explored ways of ensuring the financial stability of water utilities. Members of the panel, which includes several utility directors, a water engineer, and the head of the state Division of Water Infrastructure, acknowledged that local officials often have little idea how water and wastewater work and need help navigating the aftermath of a disaster and applying for grants to recover from it.

Experts on the subject said consolidating the region’s patchwork of small systems may be the key to rebuilding and maintaining them. Some are doing just that. Four counties in southwestern Virginia are working together to install dozens of miles of water lines. Such efforts are easier among towns that are close together, like Mars Hill and Weaverville. These small towns, which are rapidly becoming suburbs of Asheville, have linked their water systems so they can ensure there’s enough to supply new housing. That connection allowed Weaverville to quickly buy and move water when the flood knocked out its municipal system. A similar arrangement proposed for nearby Marshall would cost about $15 million.

Teamwork can provide a backup supply of water, reduce maintenance costs, and allow small utilities to share these essential resources and collaborate on, rather than compete for, grant applications. Such efforts will grow increasingly important as development and a warming world further burden these systems. “I think the fiefdom of water supply has to change for everyone to thrive in an era of climate catastrophe,” said Will Harlan, the Southeast director of the Center for Biological Diversity and a resident of Barnardsville, another community not far from Asheville.

Even if a physical collaboration isn’t possible, an organizational one might be. “If you’ve got three tiny towns and nobody can afford to hire a public works or public utilities director, the three of y’all go in together and hire a qualified utilities director,” one member of the master plan committee said during a public conference call.

Barring any changes, the region is at risk of simply rebuilding what it has, only to watch it all wash away in the next big flood, said Francis de los Reyes. He is an engineering professor at North Carolina State University who focuses on sanitation systems. He’d like to see communities move their water infrastructure to higher ground, as Spruce Pine is doing, and relocate flood-prone neighborhoods, as is happening in eastern Kentucky. “Your choices are mitigation, adaptation, or staying in fight-or-flight,” de los Reyes said.

But it takes more than a collaborative spirit and skilled leadership to repair a water system and harden it against future disasters. It requires communities to pool resources or seek federal support because they do not have the millions of dollars that work requires. Even before Helene struck, the bipartisan infrastructure law set aside $603 million to help North Carolina replace old pipes and other hardware. The fate of that money remains in question, however, because President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to undo much of the Biden administration’s climate work.

Back at Spruce Pine Montessori School, Jennifer Rambo is trying not to let uncertainty about the future get to her. It’s hard enough dealing with the present. Beyond the weeks without potable water, she is grappling with spotty internet access and electricity, and an inescapable sense of loss. In the days after Helene, she spent much of her time trying to determine if people were still alive. Her voice wavered as she said more or less the same words that so many in her community, and others like it, have echoed over the past two months: “Nobody was prepared.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Rural water utilities in North Carolina are still reeling from Helene on Nov 22, 2024.

Donald J. Trump will once again be president of the United States. 

The Associated Press called the race for Trump early Wednesday morning, ending one of the costliest and most turbulent campaign cycles in the nation’s history. The results promise to upend U.S. climate policy: In addition to returning a climate denier to the White House, voters also gave Republicans control of the Senate, laying the groundwork for attacks on everything from electric vehicles to clean energy funding and bolstering support for the fossil fuel industry.

“We have more liquid gold than any country in the world,” Trump said during his victory speech, referring to domestic oil and gas potential. The CEO of the American Petroleum Institute issued a statement saying that “energy was on the ballot, and voters sent a clear signal that they want choices, not mandates.”

The election results rattled climate policy experts and environmental advocates. The president-elect has called climate change “a hoax” and during his most recent campaign vowed to expand fossil fuel production, roll back environmental regulations, and eliminate federal support for clean energy. He has also said he would scuttle the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which is the largest investment in climate action in U.S. history and a landmark legislative win for the Biden administration. Such steps would add billions of tons of additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and hasten the looming impacts of climate change.

“This is a dark day,” Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “Donald Trump was a disaster for climate progress during his first term, and everything he’s said and done since suggests he’s eager to do even more damage this time.”

During his first stint in office, Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, the 2016 international climate accord that guides the actions of more than 195 countries, rolled back 100-plus environmental rules, and opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. While President Joe Biden reversed many of those actions and made fighting climate change a centerpiece of his presidency, Trump has pledged to undo those efforts during his second term with potentially enormous implications — climate analysts at Carbon Brief predicted that another four years of Trump would lead to the nation emitting an additional 4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide than it would under his opponent. That’s on par with the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan. 

One of president-elect Trump’s primary targets will be rolling back the IRA, which is poised to direct more than a trillion dollars into climate-friendly initiatives. Two years into that decade-long effort, money is flowing into myriad initiatives, ranging from building out the nation’s electric vehicle charging network to helping people go solar and weatherize their homes. In 2023 alone, some 3.4 million Americans claimed more $8 billion in tax credits the law provides for home energy improvements. But Trump could stymie, freeze, or even eliminate much of the law. 

“We will rescind all unspent funds,” Trump assured the audience in a September speech at the Economic Club of New York. Last month, he said it would be “an honor” to “immediately terminate” a law he called the “Green New Scam.” 

Such a move would, however, require congressional support. While many House races remain too close to call, Republicans have taken control of the Senate. That said, any attempt to roll back the IRA may prove unpopular, however, because as much as $165 billion in the funding it provides is flowing to Republican districts. 

Still, Trump can take unilateral steps to slow spending, and use federal regulatory powers to further hamper the rollout process. As Axios noted, “If Trump wants to shut off the IRA spigot, he’ll likely find ways to do it.” Looking beyond that seminal climate law, Trump has plenty of other levers he can also pull that will adversely affect the environment  — efforts that will be easier with a conservative Supreme Court that has already undermined federal climate action. 

Trump has also thrown his support behind expanded fossil fuel production. He has long pushed for the country to “drill, baby, drill” and, in April, offered industry executives tax and regulatory favors in exchange for $1 billion in campaign support. Though that astronomical sum never materialized, The New York Times found that oil and gas interests donated an estimated $75 million to Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee, and affiliated committees. Fossil fuels were already booming under Biden, with domestic oil production higher than ever before, and Vice President Kamala Harris said she would continue producing them if she won. But Trump could give the industry a considerable boost by, for instance, re-opening more of the Arctic to drilling. 

Any climate chaos that Trump sows is sure to extend beyond the United States. The president-elect could attempt to once again abandon the Paris Agreement, undermining global efforts to address the crisis. His threat to use tariffs to protect U.S. companies and restore American manufacturing could upend energy markets. The vast majority of solar panels and electric vehicle batteries, for example, are made overseas and the prices of those imports, as well as other clean-energy technology, could soar. U.S. liquified natural gas producers worry that retaliatory tariffs could hamper their business. 

The Trump administration could also take quieter steps to shape climate policy, from further divorcing federal research functions from their rulemaking capacities to guiding how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studies and responds to health concerns. 

Trump is all but sure to wreak havoc on federal agencies central to understanding, and combatting, climate change. During his first term, his administration gutted funding for research, appointed climate skeptics and industry insiders, and eliminated several scientific advisory committees. It also censored scientific data on government websites and tried to undermine the findings of the National Climate Assessment, the government’s scientific report on the risks and impacts of climate change to the country. Project 2025, the sweeping blueprint developed by conservative groups and former Trump administration officials, advances a similar strategy, deprioritizing climate science and perhaps restructuring or eliminating federal agencies that advance it.

“The nation and world can expect the incoming Trump administration to take a wrecking ball to global climate diplomacy,” Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union for Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. “The science on climate change is unforgiving, with every year of delay locking in more costs and more irreversible changes, and everyday people paying the steepest price.”

The president-elect’s supporters seem eager to begin their work. 

Mandy Gunasekara, a former chief of staff of the Environmental Protection Agency during Trump’s first term, told CNN before the election that this second administration would be far more prepared to enact its agenda, and would act quickly. One likely early target will be Biden-era tailpipe emissions rules that Trump has derided as an electric vehicle “mandate.”  

During his first term, Trump similarly tried to weaken Obama-era emissions regulations. But the auto industry made the point moot when it sidestepped the federal government and made a deal with states directly, a move that’s indicative of the approach that environmentalists might take during his second term. Even before the election, climate advocates had begun preparing for the possibility of a second Trump presidency and the nation’s abandoning the global diplomatic stage on this issue. Bloomberg reported that officials and former diplomats have been convening secret conversations, crisis simulations, and “political wargaming” aimed at maximizing climate progress under Trump — an effort that will surely start when COP29 kicks off next week in Baku, Azerbaijan.

“The result from this election will be seen as a major blow to global climate action,” Christiana Figueres, the United Nations climate chief from 2010 to 2016, in a statement. “[But] there is an antidote to doom and despair. It’s action on the ground, and it’s happening in all corners of the Earth“

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The massive consequences Trump’s re-election could have on climate change on Nov 6, 2024.

Where some see a “rural neighborhood watch” that saves money, others worry about liability and…

The post In a rural stretch of Washington, a ‘constitutional sheriff’ and his growing volunteer posse provoke controversy first appeared on InvestigateWest.

The post In a rural stretch of Washington, a ‘constitutional sheriff’ and his growing volunteer posse provoke controversy appeared first on InvestigateWest.

There are battleground states, and then there’s North Carolina. Former President Donald Trump won the state by 1.3 percent in 2020, his lowest margin of victory in any state, and polls now show Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris within just 2 percentage points of each other there. It also has more electoral votes than several of the other swing states that will decide the November election, including Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

“Kamala Harris wins North Carolina, she is the next president of the United States,” Roy Cooper, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, said at an event in New York City last week. 

Then Hurricane Helene etched a 500-mile path of destruction through the southeastern United States, killing at least 139 people in six states and causing more than $100 billion in damages, according to preliminary estimates. 

In western North Carolina, moisture-laden Helene collided with a cold front that was already dropping  rain on the Appalachian Mountains. Hundreds of roads in the region are now impassable or have been wiped off the map by flooding and landslides, communication systems are down, and hundreds of people are still missing. As the North Carolina Department of Transportation put it, “All roads in Western North Carolina should be considered closed.” With just weeks until November 5, thousands of people displaced, mail service shut down or restricted in many ZIP codes, and many roadways shuttered, officials are now rushing to figure out how to handle voting in the midst of disaster.

“This storm is like nothing we’ve seen in our lifetimes in western North Carolina,” Karen Brinson Bell, one of North Carolina’s top election officials, told reporters on Tuesday. “The destruction is unprecedented and this level of uncertainty this close to Election Day is daunting.” 

Delivery of absentee ballots in North Carolina had already been delayed by three weeks by former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s last-minute lawsuit to take his name off of millions of already-printed ballots. The state’s election process is already in full swing: the deadline for voter registration in North Carolina is October 11, the early voting period in the state begins on October 17, and early voting ends on November 2. “We will take the measures necessary to ensure there is voting,” Brinson Bell said. But there are innumerable issues to solve first, and state officials still don’t have a full assessment of the damage Helene caused.

“There’s a cascading series of problems,” said Gerry Cohen, a member of the elections board for Wake County, the state’s most populous county, which includes Raleigh. 

At the moment, the central logistical problem is that the U.S. Postal Service has suspended service across much of western North Carolina. Even before the storm, more than 190,000 North Carolinians had requested mail-in ballots this election. The agency does not yet have an estimate of when mail will be restored — damage is so severe in some ZIP codes that it may be weeks or even months before local roads are passable. The issue is compounded by the fact that in rural areas, some postal workers use their own vehicles to deliver mail. Neither the state nor the Postal Service knows how many of those cars were destroyed by the storm. 

“At this time, we are still assessing damage and impacts,” a spokesperson for the Postal Service told Grist. “As we continue our work on this, we will continue to communicate with local boards of election in impacted areas to ensure the ongoing transport and delivery of election mail as soon as it is safe to do so.”

Under state law, it is up to each voter to request a new ballot to the temporary address where they are staying. Voters must mail these ballots back in time for them to reach election offices by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day. The state used to have a three-day grace period for late-arriving ballots, but it ended that policy last year. The Elections Board is currently assessing whether it will ask the state to reinstate it. There’s also no way of tracking where the absentee ballots that counties already sent out ended up, or whether the delivery of those ballots was affected by the storm. “Who knows where they are,” Cohen said.

And then there’s the matter of in-person voting, which faces further logistical hurdles. Brinson Bell said that while there have been no reports of voting equipment or ballots destroyed by Helene, 12 county election offices in western North Carolina are currently closed due to flooding and other storm-related impacts. “There may be polling places affected by mudslides, there may be polling places inaccessible because of damaged roads, there may be polling places with trees that have fallen on them,” Brinson Bell said. There’s no saying, yet, how many of the people who will staff these polling places have been displaced, hurt, or killed by the storm.

Every county in North Carolina must offer at least 13 days of in-person early voting, and right now the state requires counties to open this process on October 17. Cohen said that many counties will struggle to meet that deadline, in particular smaller ones.

“The smaller counties just had one early voting location, and it’s normally at the board of elections office, which is usually downtown,” he said. “Because of the way these mountain towns were laid out in the 1700s or 1800s, they’re near rivers and creeks, so they’re prone to flooding.”

Cohen said he’s heard that the North Carolina legislature, which will convene next week, is considering some flexibility for early voting in affected counties, as well as resources to help these counties establish new voting sites and train up replacement poll workers. He believes the state can still manage a robust election if it provides proper support for local election boards — in other words, he said, “appropriate money.”

But the challenge that eclipses all other voting accessibility issues is the simple fact that people who have been affected by a historic and deadly flood event typically aren’t thinking about where they will cast their ballots — they’re focusing on locating their loved ones, mucking out their houses, finding new housing, filing insurance claims, and dozens of other priorities that trump voting. 

The State Board of Elections in North Carolina has a website where residents can check their voter registration status, register a new permanent or temporary address, and monitor the progress of their mail-in ballot. But even if people wanted to find out where or how to vote, hundreds of thousands of customers in the state are currently without power, WiFi, and cell service. 

For years, political scientists who study the effects of climate change on political turnout have warned about the inevitability of an event like Helene subverting a national election. “Hurricane season in the U.S. — between June and November every year — usually coincides with election season,” a recent report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, or IDEA, said. “The chances of hurricanes disrupting U.S. elections are ever-present and will increase as hurricanes become more common and intense due to climate change.” 

Prior to Helene, four elections were significantly disrupted by hurricanes in the 21st century: Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Hurricane Michael in 2018, and Hurricane Ian in 2022. The report by IDEA found that voter turnout can dip precipitously during these events.

“The biggest challenge that we see is not just technology failure, but a decrease in public confidence,” Vasu Mohan, a senior advisor at IDEA who has analyzed how disasters affect elections in dozens of countries, told Grist. “If you’re not prepared, then making last minute accommodations is extremely difficult.” However, Mohan’s research shows that it’s possible to conduct elections fairly after displacement events if communities are given the resources they need. 

“I am very, very worried about how [the storm] will affect voting,” said Abby Werner, a pediatrician who lives in Charlotte, which did not sustain severe damage from the storm. Werner and her partner are Democrats, and make a point of voting in person. She fears the storm will suppress voter turnout. “In a series of worries it is an additional wave,” she said. 

Brinson Bell’s office will likely face a flurry of lawsuits due to its handling of post-storm voting — it is already navigating a lawsuit, filed by Republican groups prior to the storm, over its handling of hundreds of thousands of voter registrations. But she said the COVID-19 pandemic and prior storms prepared the state for worst-case scenarios. “We held an incredibly successful election with record turnout during the COVID pandemic,” she said. “We’ve battled through hurricanes and tropical storms and still held safe and secure elections. And we will do everything in our power to do so again.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Flood-ravaged North Carolina races to restore voting access after Helene on Oct 2, 2024.