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Cello-playing climate activist arrested at New York Citibank protest as crackdown escalates

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Thursday, August 8, 2024

A 63-year-old climate activist and professional cellist faces up to seven years in prison after being arrested on Thursday while performing a Bach solo outside the headquarters of one of the world’s largest fossil fuel financier Citibank in downtown New York.John Mark Rozendaal, a former Princeton professor, and Alec Connon, director of the climate nonprofit group Stop the Money Pipeline, were arrested for criminal contempt in the public park at the bank’s global headquarters as the crackdown against nonviolent climate protesters escalates.Rozendaal was handcuffed and led away to the police vehicle singing “we are not afraid, we are not afraid, we will sing for liberation because we know why we were made”. The crowd of protesters chanted “let him play” and “ shame on you Citibank”.Thirteen other climate activists, who had linked arms in a circle around Rozendaal to protect him as he played Bach’s suites for cello, were detained for alleged obstruction of governmental administration, a misdemeanor criminal charge. “People are dying … today is my birthday,” said Mike Bucci, 77, teary eyed as the police in riot gear broke-up the protest.Since 10 June, climate activists have been peacefully protesting against Citibank’s record financial support for new fossil fuel projects as part of the Summer of Heat on Wall Street campaign. At least 3,700 people have participated in the nonviolent civil disobedience, repeatedly blockading the entrance to its global headquarters. More than 475 people including faith leaders, scientists, and elders have been arrested while calling on Citi to stop bankrolling new coal, oil, and gas.Citi is the second largest financier of fossil fuels and the largest financier of fossil fuel expansion since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, according to the latest Banking on Climate Chaos report.The latest arrests come as climate advocates accuse Citibank and the NYPD of coordinated and escalating efforts to suppress nonviolent protests in retaliation for drawing attention to the banking giant’s key role in funding fossil projects globally. (Citi declined to comment on the allegation. The NYPD told Inside Climate News that there was no escalation in law enforcement’s response and individuals had not been targeted.)John Mark Rozendaal plays a cello in front of Citibank headquarters on Thursday in New York City before being arrested. Photograph: Stephanie Keith 100584/Getty ImagesOver the course of five days in July, four high-profile “summer of heat” organizers and activists were arrested on what they say are bogus charges targeting campaign leaders – an escalation condemned by hundreds of celebrities, scientists, lawmakers, students, nonprofits and climate activists.“The window to avert the worst impacts of climate change is rapidly closing … efforts by the fossil fuel industry and its allies to criminalize and suppress protests imperil democratic freedoms and obstruct meaningful climate action,” said Kathy Mulvey from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).In 2021, the International Energy Agency warned that the world must immediately halt investment in new upstream oil and gas development, in order to have any hope of complying with the Paris climate accords and curtailing global heating to 1.5C. Since then, Citibank has provided $60bn to the companies expanding oil, gas, and coal operations.Among the leaders facing criminal proceedings are Rozendaal and Connon, who were first arrested on 18 July and charged with assault, they say falsely, against a man, James Flynn, who is working with Citi’s private security team. Flynn was granted temporary restraining orders, reviewed by the Guardian, against Rozendaal and Connon which prohibits the activists from communicating with him or going near his person, home, business or workplace for six months, but does not specify any of these locations.Flynn appears to have previously worked as a NYPD detective, according to publicly available databases, information from his social media and his own comments to protesters.Citi declined to comment on Flynn’s role. The NYPD did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.On Thursday, Rozendaal and Connon returned to the Citibank HQ in violation of the restraining order, which they believe is unconstitutional, and were arrested for criminal contempt, a charge that carries a maximum seven-year sentence.As the detainees were driven away for arraignment, one participant, Felipe, 86, a retired realtor originally from Cuba, said: “This is a moral cause. The police are doing the wrong thing.”Graham Bier, 41, a singer who has performed with Rozendaal, and who traveled from Philadelphia to attend the protest with his four year-old son, said: “We’ve had warnings since the sixties and seventies and I don’t know what it’s gonna take to shift such a massive habit, but it’s it’s getting so desperate.”In a separate incident on 21 July, videographer and summer of heat organizer Teddy Ogborn was arrested and held in a cell for more than eight hours, days after he filmed an alleged Citi employee apparently inciting violence against climate protesters blocking the entrance.“Just punch him in the f–king head! Punch him in the f–king head,” shouted the woman, identified by protesters as the executive assistant to Citi’s co-head of Global Financial Strategy, which Ogborn caught on camera. “Get a machine gun and f–cking kill them all,” she added.“These comments are unacceptable,” a Citi spokesperson said. “We are looking into the matter and it will be addressed appropriately.”At an earlier protest, Ogborn also captured Citi’s general counsel apparently shoving a female protester who was among a group blocking the entrance. A Citi spokesperson said the protesters’ claims were false and that an employee was initially hit by a barricade before pushing it out of his way.Ogborn was charged with obstruction of governmental administration, a misdemeanor, for allegedly having placed a hand on a barricade that was being moved by activists a week earlier. The charge was dropped two weeks later.“We have made the bank synonymous with environmental destruction, violence, and fossil fuels, and I have been capturing moments that are damaging for Citi,” said Ogborn, cofounder of Planet over Profits. “The escalation against organizers is targeted, and attempts to use bogus charges to harass and intimidate protesters.”Last year, Citibank financed almost twice as much fossil fuel energy as clean energy, less than its competitors JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. In order to meet global climate goals, banks must finance four times as much clean energy as fossil fuel energy, according to research by BloombergNEF.The methodology used to calculate fossil fuel financing has been previously disputed by some banks.A spokesperson for Citi said the bank is “transparent” about its “climate-related activities” and its approach reflects the need to transition and meet global energy needs. “We are supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy through our net zero commitments and our $1tn sustainable finance goal.”“The Summer of Heat campaign has mobilized thousands of everyday people and brought financial executives face-to-face with the very communities they are harming through the billions they bankroll in fossil fuels,” said New York City council member Alexa Avilés.“Rather than engage on the merits of their arguments and acknowledge the role they play, Citibank has chosen to unleash a brutal police crackdown on organizers … You cannot incarcerate your way to a livable planet.”

Second activist also arrested during ‘summer of heat’ protest against second largest financier of fossil fuelsA 63-year-old climate activist and professional cellist faces up to seven years in prison after being arrested on Thursday while performing a Bach solo outside the headquarters of one of the world’s largest fossil fuel financier Citibank in downtown New York.John Mark Rozendaal, a former Princeton professor, and Alec Connon, director of the climate nonprofit group Stop the Money Pipeline, were arrested for criminal contempt in the public park at the bank’s global headquarters as the crackdown against nonviolent climate protesters escalates. Continue reading...

A 63-year-old climate activist and professional cellist faces up to seven years in prison after being arrested on Thursday while performing a Bach solo outside the headquarters of one of the world’s largest fossil fuel financier Citibank in downtown New York.

John Mark Rozendaal, a former Princeton professor, and Alec Connon, director of the climate nonprofit group Stop the Money Pipeline, were arrested for criminal contempt in the public park at the bank’s global headquarters as the crackdown against nonviolent climate protesters escalates.

Rozendaal was handcuffed and led away to the police vehicle singing “we are not afraid, we are not afraid, we will sing for liberation because we know why we were made”. The crowd of protesters chanted “let him play” and “ shame on you Citibank”.

Thirteen other climate activists, who had linked arms in a circle around Rozendaal to protect him as he played Bach’s suites for cello, were detained for alleged obstruction of governmental administration, a misdemeanor criminal charge. “People are dying … today is my birthday,” said Mike Bucci, 77, teary eyed as the police in riot gear broke-up the protest.

Since 10 June, climate activists have been peacefully protesting against Citibank’s record financial support for new fossil fuel projects as part of the Summer of Heat on Wall Street campaign. At least 3,700 people have participated in the nonviolent civil disobedience, repeatedly blockading the entrance to its global headquarters. More than 475 people including faith leaders, scientists, and elders have been arrested while calling on Citi to stop bankrolling new coal, oil, and gas.

Citi is the second largest financier of fossil fuels and the largest financier of fossil fuel expansion since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, according to the latest Banking on Climate Chaos report.

The latest arrests come as climate advocates accuse Citibank and the NYPD of coordinated and escalating efforts to suppress nonviolent protests in retaliation for drawing attention to the banking giant’s key role in funding fossil projects globally. (Citi declined to comment on the allegation. The NYPD told Inside Climate News that there was no escalation in law enforcement’s response and individuals had not been targeted.)

John Mark Rozendaal plays a cello in front of Citibank headquarters on Thursday in New York City before being arrested. Photograph: Stephanie Keith 100584/Getty Images

Over the course of five days in July, four high-profile “summer of heat” organizers and activists were arrested on what they say are bogus charges targeting campaign leaders – an escalation condemned by hundreds of celebrities, scientists, lawmakers, students, nonprofits and climate activists.

“The window to avert the worst impacts of climate change is rapidly closing … efforts by the fossil fuel industry and its allies to criminalize and suppress protests imperil democratic freedoms and obstruct meaningful climate action,” said Kathy Mulvey from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

In 2021, the International Energy Agency warned that the world must immediately halt investment in new upstream oil and gas development, in order to have any hope of complying with the Paris climate accords and curtailing global heating to 1.5C. Since then, Citibank has provided $60bn to the companies expanding oil, gas, and coal operations.

Among the leaders facing criminal proceedings are Rozendaal and Connon, who were first arrested on 18 July and charged with assault, they say falsely, against a man, James Flynn, who is working with Citi’s private security team. Flynn was granted temporary restraining orders, reviewed by the Guardian, against Rozendaal and Connon which prohibits the activists from communicating with him or going near his person, home, business or workplace for six months, but does not specify any of these locations.

Flynn appears to have previously worked as a NYPD detective, according to publicly available databases, information from his social media and his own comments to protesters.

Citi declined to comment on Flynn’s role. The NYPD did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.

On Thursday, Rozendaal and Connon returned to the Citibank HQ in violation of the restraining order, which they believe is unconstitutional, and were arrested for criminal contempt, a charge that carries a maximum seven-year sentence.

As the detainees were driven away for arraignment, one participant, Felipe, 86, a retired realtor originally from Cuba, said: “This is a moral cause. The police are doing the wrong thing.”

Graham Bier, 41, a singer who has performed with Rozendaal, and who traveled from Philadelphia to attend the protest with his four year-old son, said: “We’ve had warnings since the sixties and seventies and I don’t know what it’s gonna take to shift such a massive habit, but it’s it’s getting so desperate.”

In a separate incident on 21 July, videographer and summer of heat organizer Teddy Ogborn was arrested and held in a cell for more than eight hours, days after he filmed an alleged Citi employee apparently inciting violence against climate protesters blocking the entrance.

“Just punch him in the f–king head! Punch him in the f–king head,” shouted the woman, identified by protesters as the executive assistant to Citi’s co-head of Global Financial Strategy, which Ogborn caught on camera. “Get a machine gun and f–cking kill them all,” she added.

“These comments are unacceptable,” a Citi spokesperson said. “We are looking into the matter and it will be addressed appropriately.”

At an earlier protest, Ogborn also captured Citi’s general counsel apparently shoving a female protester who was among a group blocking the entrance. A Citi spokesperson said the protesters’ claims were false and that an employee was initially hit by a barricade before pushing it out of his way.

Ogborn was charged with obstruction of governmental administration, a misdemeanor, for allegedly having placed a hand on a barricade that was being moved by activists a week earlier. The charge was dropped two weeks later.

“We have made the bank synonymous with environmental destruction, violence, and fossil fuels, and I have been capturing moments that are damaging for Citi,” said Ogborn, cofounder of Planet over Profits. “The escalation against organizers is targeted, and attempts to use bogus charges to harass and intimidate protesters.”

Last year, Citibank financed almost twice as much fossil fuel energy as clean energy, less than its competitors JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. In order to meet global climate goals, banks must finance four times as much clean energy as fossil fuel energy, according to research by BloombergNEF.

The methodology used to calculate fossil fuel financing has been previously disputed by some banks.

A spokesperson for Citi said the bank is “transparent” about its “climate-related activities” and its approach reflects the need to transition and meet global energy needs. “We are supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy through our net zero commitments and our $1tn sustainable finance goal.”

“The Summer of Heat campaign has mobilized thousands of everyday people and brought financial executives face-to-face with the very communities they are harming through the billions they bankroll in fossil fuels,” said New York City council member Alexa Avilés.

“Rather than engage on the merits of their arguments and acknowledge the role they play, Citibank has chosen to unleash a brutal police crackdown on organizers … You cannot incarcerate your way to a livable planet.”

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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More Americans Are Going to Fall Into Toxic Traps

Environmental justice was patching over gaps in federal law that allowed for zones of concentrated harms.

Tracking the Trump administration’s rollback of climate and environmental policies can seem like being forced through a wormhole back in time. The administration tried to freeze funding that Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act directed to clean energy, turning that particular clock back to 2022. The Environmental Protection Agency could scrap the finding that greenhouse-gas emissions pose threats to human health and the environment, which has underpinned federal climate efforts since 2009. The Trump administration has also barred scientists from working on the UN’s benchmark international climate report, a continuous collaboration since 1990. And it has demolished federal work on environmental justice, which dates back to the George H. W. Bush administration. As part of its purge of so-called DEI initiatives, the administration put 160 EPA employees who work on environmental justice on leave, rescinded Biden’s executive orders prioritizing this work, and pushed to terminate, “to the maximum extent allowed by law,” all environmental-justice offices and positions by March 21.The concept of environmental justice is grounded in activists’ attempt in the early ’80s to block a dump for polychlorinated biphenyls, once widely used toxic chemicals, from being installed in Warren Country, North Carolina, a predominantly Black community. Evidence quickly mounted that Americans who were nonwhite or poor, and particularly those who were both, were more likely to live near hazardous-waste sites and other sources of pollution. Advocates for addressing these ills called unequal toxic exposures “environmental racism,” and the efforts to address them “environmental justice.” In the early ’90s, the first President Bush established the Office of Environmental Equity, eventually known as the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, and President Bill Clinton mandated that federal agencies incorporate environmental justice into their work.Biden, though, was the first president to direct real money toward communities disproportionately affected by pollution—places where, say, multiple factories, refineries, truck yards, and garbage incinerators all operated in a condensed area. As with so many targets of Trump’s crusade against DEI, the damage will be felt by poor people across the country. This choice will certainly harm communities of color, but it will also touch everyone, including many of Trump’s supporters, living in a place burdened by multiple forms of environmental stress. Under Trump’s deregulatory policies, that category will only keep expanding.“There are still these places where life expectancy is 10 to 15 years less than other parts of the country,” Adam Ortiz, the former administrator for EPA Region 3, which covers the mid-Atlantic, told me. Cancer rates are sky high in many of these areas too. Some of these communities are predominantly Black, such as Ivy City, in Washington, D.C., a historically redlined, segregated, working-class community where the air is fouled by a rail switchyard, a highway, and dozens of industrial sites located in a small area. But plenty of the small rural areas that have benefited from environmental-justice money look like Richwood, West Virginia, where catastrophic flooding—a growing climate hazard in the region—knocked out the local water-treatment plant. Residents there are poor, white, and generally politically conservative. In many cases, these communities had gotten little federal attention for generations, Ortiz said.Untangling the knot of pollution in these places is slow work, in part because federal laws don’t adequately address overlapping environmental ills: The Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act regulate only one form and one source of pollution at a time. A population exposed to many pollution sources simultaneously, or to a cocktail of toxins, has little redress. Each business regulated by these laws may follow them and still end up creating places that, like Ivy City, have dangerously bad air quality. Cumulative impact is a gaping regulatory chasm into which millions of Americans fall each year. Federal environmental-justice efforts aimed to fill it.The Trump administration has now halted projects such as the ones Ortiz worked on. People who had spent years gaining trust with local communities, and who had worked with local companies to help them alter things such as how they vented pollution, were dismissed or reassigned. By then, in Ivy City, the EPA had managed to address a “handful” of the 40 or 50 pollution sources plaguing the area, Ortiz said.But some work did get done, and its benefit will likely persist despite the Trump administration’s attempt to make environmental justice disappear. Paul Mohai, a professor at the University of Michigan who served as a senior adviser to the EPA’s environmental-justice office, told me. In his view, one president can’t erase the progress made over the past decades, particularly outside the federal government.Because he was there at the beginning, Mohai knows what these knotty pollution problems looked like when few in government were paying attention. When he co-wrote a review of the literature on environmental justice in the early 1990s, he struggled to find more than a dozen papers on the topic. Now, he said, more publications are coming out and more nonprofit groups have formed to tackle these issues than he can keep track of.Surely some of them will be affected by the president’s restrictions on grant making for scientific research. But the facts accrued through existing research cannot be erased: People of color in the U.S. are exposed to a 38 percent higher level of the respiratory irritant nitrogen dioxide, on average, than white people. Low-income communities are disproportionately targeted for hazardous-waste sites. Poor people and people of color suffer the most from climate impacts such as flooding and extreme heat. Several states have also put environmental-justice considerations into their laws; one in New Jersey restricts certain new industrial permits in places that are already overburdened, for instance. The decisions of a single administration can’t undo all that.But millions of disadvantaged Americans live in states that are not interested in passing these kinds of laws. And layoffs at the EPA will dilute what protections federal clean-air and water legislation do afford, by making enforcement less possible. As the climate crisis deepens—growing the threats of extreme heat, sea-level rise, and catastrophic rainfall, each a hazard that can rob people of safety—more places could succumb to the gaps in these laws as well. Many climate dangers are akin to those of pollution because they create zones of harm where residents bear the costs of the country’s environmental compromises and have little to help them through it. 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Analysis-Germany's Climate Activists on Edge as Parties Shape Coalition Agenda

By Riham AlkousaaBERLIN (Reuters) - Climate activists fear the worst when Germany's conservatives and Social Democrats begin to thrash out a joint...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Climate activists fear the worst when Germany's conservatives and Social Democrats begin to thrash out a joint climate policy for their future coalition government. A country once seen as a beacon of progressive climate policy is poised for a significant reset, with the conservatives - having in part blamed Germany's ambitious green goals for chronic economic weakness - keen to roll back targets and policies amid rising voter apathy on climate.As Europe's largest emitter of CO2 but also Europe's biggest generator of renewable energy, Germany's future stance on climate issues will be even more critical after the United States' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and with the European Union under pressure from some members to ease regulations and goals."If there was ever a time to panic about climate and politics, now would be it," Luisa Neubauer, a prominent German climate activist with Fridays for Future, told Reuters.Since winning February's election, the CDU has affirmed its commitment to Germany's overarching 2045 target of being climate neutral but emphasizes a "pragmatic approach that supports the economy, industry, and public acceptance", according to Andreas Jung, the conservatives' climate policy spokesperson.The party wants to abolish a future ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, end restrictions on the use of cars, reverse a law phasing out fossil fuel heating, and reintroduce diesel subsidies in agriculture. How strongly the SPD will defend its green election pledges - to stick to national and EU targets, invest in green infrastructure and renewables, and focus on affordable climate protection - in coalition talks is key, climate activists say. Nina Scheer, an SPD climate spokeswoman, told Reuters it would be important to develop a common understanding with the conservatives on an accelerated and systematic transition to renewable energies. But that could be tricky. The SPD has been significantly weakened and came in third place in the election, with just 16.4% of the vote, its worst ever result."The SPD is not a traditional climate policy party like the Greens, so we shouldn’t expect them to push this issue as strongly," said Stefan Marschall, political scientist at the University of Duesseldorf.Greenhouse gas emissions in Germany fell by 12.5% under the three-party "traffic light" coalition of the SPD, Greens, and Free Democrats, thanks to a renewable energy push and a drop in industrial production.But emissions cuts in sectors such as transport and building - 38% of Germany's 2024 total emissions- have stalled.Expanding net-zero policies to these sectors has faced growing resistance in Germany and Europe, amid a cost-of-living crisis that has shifted climate protection lower on German voters' priorities in the February election.Only 12.8% of Germans saw climate protection as the most important issue in this election, down from 24.4% in 2021, a study by IW Koeln economic institute showed.Environmental and expert groups say Germany is not expected to meet the 2045 target as things stand. The Green Party, heading for opposition, still wields some influence, after threatening to tie its support for a new conservative-SPD financial package to the inclusion of some climate investment commitments within that plan.    Germany cannot unilaterally reverse EU laws, but its influence is strong. 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A closely watched civil trial that began in North Dakota last week could bankrupt Greenpeace and chill environmental activism as the climate crisis continues to deepen. The multimillion-dollar lawsuit by Energy Transfer, the oil corporation behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, claims Greenpeace organized the mass protests and encampment at Standing Rock between 2016 and 2017 aimed at stopping construction of the project. Although the uprising at Standing Rock was led by Indigenous water defenders, Energy Transfer is instead going after Greenpeace for $300 million in damages — an amount that could effectively shutter the group’s U.S. operations. “This case is not just an obvious and blatant erasure of Indigenous leadership, of Indigenous resistance,” says Deepa Padmanabha, a senior legal adviser for Greenpeace USA. “It is an attack on the broader movement and all of our First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful protest.”

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Why detecting methane is difficult but crucial workChristine RoTechnology ReporterHelen GebregiorgisHandheld devices can detect methane and other gasesIn and around Washington DC, volunteers and activists have been walking through streets and homes to see how healthy the air is.They're armed with industry-grade monitors that detect the presence of several gases. The devices look a bit like walkie-talkies.But they are equipped with sensors that reveal the extent of methane, turning this invisible gas into concrete numbers on a screen.Those numbers can be worrying. In a 25-hour period, neighbourhood researchers found 13 outdoor methane leaks at concentrations exceeding the lower explosive limit. They have also found methane leaks within homes.A key concern has been health. Methane and other gases, notably nitrogen oxide from gas stoves, are linked to higher risks of asthma.Djamila Bah, a healthcare worker as well as a tenant leader for the community organisation Action in Montgomery, reports that one out of three children have asthma in the homes tested by the organisation."It's very heartbreaking and alarming when you're doing the testing and then you find out that some people are living in that condition that they can't change for now," Ms Bah says.Methane might be a hazard to human health, but it is also powerful greenhouse gas.While it has a much shorter lifespan in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2), methane is much better at trapping heat and it accounts for about one-quarter of the rise in global temperature since industrialisation.Methane emissions come from a diverse array of sectors. Chief among these are fossil fuels, waste and agriculture.But methane is not always easy to notice.It can be detected using handheld gas sensors like the ones used by the community researchers. It can also be visualised using infrared cameras, as methane absorbs infrared light.Monitoring can be ground-based, including vehicle-mounted devices, or aerial, including drone-based measurement. Combining technologies is especially helpful."There is no perfect solution," says Andreea Calcan, a programme management officer at the International Methane Emissions Observatory, a UN initiative.There are trade-offs between the cost of technologies and the scale of analysis, which could extend to thousands of facilities.Thankfully, she has seen an expansion of affordable methane sensors in the past decade. So there is no reason to wait on monitoring methane, at any scale. And the world needs to tackle both the small leakages and the high-emitting events, she says.Carbon MapperThe Tanager-1 satellite is designed to spot large methane emissionsAt a larger scale, satellites are often good at pinpointing super-emitters: less frequent but massively emitting events, such as huge oil and gas leaks. Or they can detect the smaller and more spread-out emitters that are much more common, such as cattle farms.Current satellites are typically designed to monitor one scale of emitter, says Riley Duren, the CEO of the Carbon Mapper, a not-for-profit organisation that tracks emissions.He likens this to film cameras. A telephoto lens offers higher resolution, while a wide-angle lens allows a larger field of view.With a new satellite, Carbon Mapper is focusing on high resolution, high sensitivity and rapid detection, to more precisely detect emissions from super-emitters. In August 2024 Carbon Mapper launched the Tanager-1 satellite, together with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Earth imaging company Planet Labs.Carbon MapperA methane plume from a Texan oilfield spotted in September 2024 by Tanager-1Satellites have struggled to spot methane emissions in certain environments, such as poorly maintained oil wells in snowy areas with lots of vegetation. Low light, high latitudes, mountains and offshore areas also present challenges.Mr Duren says that the high-resolution Tanager-1 can respond to some of these challenges, for instance by essentially sneaking peeks through gaps in cloud cover or forest cover."In an oil and gas field, high resolution could be the difference between isolating the methane emissions from an oil well head from an adjacent pipeline," he says. This could help determine exactly who is responsible.Carbon Mapper began releasing emissions data, drawing on Tanager-1 observations, in November.It will take several years to build out the full constellation of satellites, which will depend on funding.Tanager-1 isn't the only new satellite with a focus on delivering methane data. MethaneSAT, a project of the Environmental Defense Fund and private and public partners, also launched in 2024.With the increasing sophistication of all these satellite technologies, "What was previously unseeable is now visible," Mr Duren says. "As a society we're still learning about our true methane footprint."It's clear that better information is needed about methane emissions. Some energy companies have sought to evade methane detection by using "enclosed combustors" to obscure gas flaring.Translating knowledge into action isn't always straightforward. Methane levels continue to rise, even as the information available does as well.For instance, the Methane Alert and Response System (MARS) uses satellite data to detect methane emissions notify companies and governments. The MARS team gathered a large quantity of methane plume images, verified by humans, to train a machine learning model to recognise such plumes.In all the locations that MARS constantly monitors, based on their history of emissions, the model checks for a methane plume every day. Analysts then scrutinise any alerts.Because there are so many locations to be monitored, "this saves us a lot of time," says Itziar Irakulis Loitxate, the remote sensing lead for the International Methane Emissions Observatory, which is responsible for MARS.In the two years since its launch, MARS has sent out over 1,200 alerts for major methane leaks. Only 1% of those have led to responses.However, Ms Irakulis remains optimistic. Some of those alerts led to direct action such as repairs, including cases where emissions ceased even though the oil and gas operator didn't officially provide feedback.And communications are improving all the time, Ms Irakulis says. "I have hope that this 1%, we will see it grow a lot in the next year."At the community level, it's been powerful for residents, such as those in the Washington DC area, to take the air pollution readings themselves and use these to counter misinformation. "Now that we know better, we can do better," says Joelle Novey of Interfaith Power and Light.More Technology of Business

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Lawsuit Accuses Atlanta Police of Illegally Targeting 'Stop Cop City' Protesters

A federal lawsuit accuses Atlanta police of systemically targeting critics of a police and firefighter training center

ATLANTA (AP) — Atlanta police have for years illegally targeted critics of a police and firefighter training center, according to a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of a protester who is one of dozens of “Stop Cop City” activists facing domestic terrorism and racketeering charges.The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Jamie Marsicano, alleges that authorities view any critic of the training center as a would-be criminal and have repeatedly made arrests without cause, depriving protesters of their First Amendment rights and their civil rights protections against false arrest and malicious prosecution. The long-brewing controversy over the training center erupted in January 2023 after state troopers who were part of a sweep of the South River Forest killed an activist who authorities said had fired at them. Numerous protests ensued, with masked vandals sometimes attacking police vehicles and construction equipment to stall the project and intimidate contractors into backing out. Though the training center is nearly complete, dozens of defendants, including Marsicano, are facing a state racketeering charge that critics have decried as heavy-handed attempts to silence the movement, which emerged in the wake of the 2020 racial justice protests. Environmental activists and anti-police demonstrators argued that uprooting acres of trees for the facility would exacerbate environmental damage in a flood-prone, majority-Black area while serving as an expensive staging ground for militarized officers to be trained in quelling social movements.Marsicano, 31, was among 23 people arrested near a music festival in DeKalb County in March 2023, hours after a group of more than 150 masked festivalgoers trekked about three-quarters of a mile (1.2 kilometers) through the South River Forest and stormed the training center's construction site, with some lighting equipment on fire as others threw objects at retreating officers. The group then returned to the festival to blend in with the crowd. According to an arrest warrant, authorities said Marsicano, who uses they/them pronouns, was taken into custody because they had on “muddy clothing” from crossing through the woods and possessed a shield, assertions that Marsicano's attorneys say are false. Marsicano's attorneys say their client was not among the group that attacked the construction site and never left the festival grounds until they were arrested while walking back to their vehicle after police ordered everyone to disperse. Marsicano was caught up in an “indiscriminate mass arrest of legitimate festival attendees” that was part of a pattern spearheaded by Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum of authorities targeting the “Stop Cop City” movement, according to the lawsuit, which was filed Feb. 24.Marsicano was subsequently charged with domestic terrorism and, months later, was one of 61 charged with violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO.Marsicano was banned from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus after their arrest and completed their law degree remotely but has had difficulty finding a job and securing housing because of the charges, according to the lawsuit.Marsicano was “publicly broadcast to the world as a ‘domestic terrorist’ and ‘RICO co-conspirator,’ forever tarnishing Plaintiff’s personal and professional life,” the lawsuit said. The lawsuit lists more than a dozen instances in which authorities “pretextually charged individuals deemed to be at or around Stop Cop City,” including after a May 2022 protest where three people “walking home were selectively stopped for carrying Stop Cop City signs,” and taken into custody. Those arrests, as well as others, have led to civil lawsuits that are pending. Marsicano's lawsuit names various law enforcement officials as well as the city of Atlanta, which it accuses of having made a “custom and practice” of targeting critics of the training center.Neither the Atlanta Police Department nor a spokesperson for the city immediately responded to a request for comment. City officials say the $115 million, 85-acre (34-hectare) campus will replace outdated, far-flung facilities and boost police morale amid hiring and retention struggles. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens has also said that the facility will teach the “most progressive training and curriculum in the country” and that officials have repeatedly revised their plans to address environmental concerns.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

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