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First: Another list on another google doc and just looking at it https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1UTQvW_OytC37IatMNR5qJK7qKfSylNpI2fT3pdteVZA/mobilebasic gets me started: we're all barely keeping up and just trying to direct the firehose into some readily available container like a google doc because we can't drink any more and it's the easiest thing to hand.  I'm happy with the dangerous "we": all we humanists and all them scientists are trying to do kaelidoscopics at speed, saving the excess for future analysis while trying to do the analysis right now and get something in print right now which is aleready too late.  "They" have better containers (infrastructure) and that matters, but I think it's important to note the shared space of urgency and excess and ask about the effects these have on analysis, ours and theirs and: ours.

It has to be hurried, the only take worth anything these days is the hot take, for scientists, science journalists, science analysts. An exaggeration, but I'm rushed. We know that air pollution (two words harboring such complexity and excess on its own: PM2.5, ozone, NOX, etc.etc.) impacts health in numerous ways, in and beyond our repiratory system; we know that those physiological logics are compounded by cultural logics, in their complexity and excess: race poverty geolocation healthcare access nutritional needs etc. etc. A kaleidoscopic intersectional analysis that, to get good reliable outcomes, takes time.

A need for generosity.

So as I make my way down the list in the google doc and read that some group or some lab shows the COVID-19 intersects with air pollution and makes for worse outcomes for African Americans I'm predisposed toward belief, for many good reasons, compounded by the rush. And the data and the correlations between, say, increased mortality in areas of northern Italy where there are higher levels of airpollution is certainly believable, compelling -- for NO2 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720321215?via%3Dihub

and air pollution generally

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749120320601

That kind of crunching of large data sets seems believable -- and has been stamped as peer reviewed. So what do we do with this article in The Conversation

https://theconversation.com/air-pollution-covid-19-and-death-the-perils-of-bypassing-peer-review-136376

critical of a Harvard School of Public Health study available as a preprint on medrxiv --

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.05.20054502v2

-- that concludes that "an increase of only 1 μg/m3 in PM2.5 is associated with an 8% increase in the COVID-19 death rate (95% confidence interval [CI]: 2%, 15%)"?  The Canadian researchers in The Conversation are not convinced:

"It is almost impossible to try to adjust for the influence of all these factors, as this study tried to do, because the interactions between these variable are so complex. Accounting for these factors could only be done in studies using information from individual-level information."

"Proper peer review must not be bypassed — and the onus for respecting its role falls not just on journalists but also on scientists to communicate the correct information accurately."

I'm suspicious -- and if I had more time I would be more suspicious of my suspicions -- for two reasons: one, a lot of those studies on the google docs list are preprints.  But more importantly, the call for "individual-level information."  What does this mean? I don;t think anyone is working with "individual level information" in all of these studies, so why does this one become a target?

1. Because it's Harvard PH, of Six Cities study fame, first linking air pollution to increased mortality and the key reference point for US air pollution regulation. There's a long history of the oil industry and their scientists just trying to pick holes and cast doubt on these studies out of Harvard.

2. The criticism smacks of the most recent devious strategy of the air regulation opponents, which is to call for individiual level data in epidemiological to be released in the name of "transparency." Which can't be done.

So who are these Canadian guys and are they up to something more than "just raising questions and being good scientific skeptics"?

UPDATE 1 HOUR LATER:

So I looked them up: Mark Goldberg was a member of the Reanalysis Team of the Health Effects Institute that validated the Six Cities Study: 

https://theasthmafiles.org/content/hei-validation-six-cities-study

Unlikely, then, that he is some undustry beard...

The COVID moment makes me think, among other things, of Gramsci’s critique of Rosa Luxemburg’s theory of the general strike. Gramsci argued, convincingly, that the general strike is no longer an effective means of disruption because of the level of development of the capitalist nation-state and world market. Well, COVID has disrupted everything more than any sort of social mobilization ever could. Except, perhaps, mobilizing for a war between nation-states, but even that is debatable. We all know that war is good for business and also the status quo.

I am wondering how the COVID crisis might be destabilizing formerly entrenched power relations, or at least rendering them more tenuous and ambiguous? On the one hand, it has certainly intensified certain forms of structural violence, such as the many LMI communities and people of color who are more susceptible to COVID complications because they have already endured years to decades of deadly levels of air pollution. On the other hand, the crisis also appears to be leveling out some of the more extreme asymmetrical power relations, like those between environmentalists and the oil and gas industry. For instance, the working conditions of both oil rigs and coal mines are uniquely susceptible to COVID outbreaks, which is prompting politicians to consider all their options as far as shutting down or reducing personnel and operations. There was also Virginia’s House Bill 528 that passed both the Senate and the House of Representatives and is currently awaiting the governor’s signature. Amid the COVID crisis and without much attention, a junior legislator pushed the bill through quietly, allowing greater state regulation of Dominion Energy’s monopoly over the region’s utilities. This victory is being interpreted as “a good start,” inspiring progressives in the state to act towards a more comprehensive set actions with “the imminent passage of the overarching Virginia Clean Economy Act.”

On another front, the COVID crisis is intersecting with Vladimir Putin’s price war, causing his plan to backfire to the degree that he and the leaders of other oil producing states are presented with very little means or options for raising the price of oil back to the pre-price war levels. The economic slow-down from quarantine mandates (along with the oil price war between Russia-Saudi Arabia) is also opening a new space for organizers along the gulf coast to fight against pipeline and refinery projects. Renewables, by contrast, are surviving COVID much better than fossil fuels and are on track to continue to outpace oil and gas development after the quarantines subside.

That being said, this depreciation of oil and gas prices isn’t necessarily a bloodless victory for environmentalists. Rates of natural gas flaring have increased significantly in 2020 and environmental watchdogs expect even more in response to the low prices of oil and natural gas. Furthermore, due to COVID-related labor shortages, many operators are having a hard time keeping these flares lit and yet continue to emit pure methane into the atmosphere, taking a far heavier toll on public health and the environment.

The cumulative impact of these developments has me questioning how the COVID crisis might be shaking the foundations of neoliberal hegemony. I am currently researching efforts to transition to renewable energy in Austin, Texas. Texas is unique in the energy world in many respects, none moreso than the state's level of committment to deregulation. However, this article in the Houston Chronicle discusses how Texas' deregulated electricity market complicates efforts to secure people’s access to electricity in a dramatic economic downturn (like COVID). In these situations, electric cooperatives and municipally owned utilities can simply run at a loss to ease the financial burden of electricity on their customers. They can then recover these losses by appealing to their regulators during their next rate case. The same does not go for retail energy providers, who have no mechanism to recover such losses. Thus, if left to their own devices, Texas’ recent state-wide moratorium on disconnecting people from the grid (due to job/income loss from COVID sanctions) would likely force small retail electricity providers out of business. This could then force other consumers to make the switch to more expensive providers that they may not be able to afford, causing a chain reaction of default and bankruptcy.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) was therein forced to come up with a new solution for electricity customers in the state's deregulated areas, which includes the majority of Texans (70%). What the PUCT decided upon is reminiscent of what authors Wainwright and Mann describe in their Climate Leviathan scenario (2018). The PUCT declared a state of emergency to establish its sovereignty and determine who shall pay for electricity, how much, and for how long, all in the name of keeping Texas’ the “deregulated” market alive.

To be more precise, the PUCT came up with an emergency fund that charges all ratepayers an extra .033 cents/kilowatt hour that will be used to compensate retail energy providers. Qualified rate payers would receive a 4cent/kilowatt hour credit on their bills that will go to the retail provider and keep them afloat. Most customers, however, pay more than that rate (almost double). These customers will be set up on payment deferment plans and will be prohibited from switching energy providers until this debt is paid in full. This effectively nullifies lower-to-moderate income families’ ability to switch providers to keep their cost of electricity as low as possible. Ironically, this feature was part of the fundamental rhetoric behind the deregulation of the Texas energy market back in the 1990s, a rhetoric that is embedded in the PUCT’s often praised Power To Choose tool.

Admittedly, this particular example is not one of revolutionary change, but one of containment and eventual re-integration into the status quo. It does, however, also show that the contemporary hegemony of neoliberalism is at least under stress. To the contrary of the expectations embedded in nearly every strategy of resistance, the political economic effect of quarantine is such that it is almost as if "the general strike" has been imposed upon us by the state in response to the threat of COVID-19. And as a result, free market ideologies are being challenged like never before. I am left wondering if and how different environmental/social justice groups are thinking about this disruption of traditional modes of production, distribution, and finance and rethinking their political strategies accordingly. Progressive movements springing up like The People’s Bail Out (PBO) suggest that many are aware of this moment of simultaneous need and opportunity.

Here is a quote for the PBO website:

“Policymakers and the administration have put forward plans that attempt to return the economy back to a status quo where safety and security are promised only to corporations and the wealthy few. Gambling trillions of tax dollars on stimulating the stock market can't fix the shortage of hospital beds, or the pollution in our skies. Only workers can. 

In this moment of crisis, we need to change the rules. Let’s pull together, as we've done in times past, to demand our government provides money and care to those who are hardest hit by this crisis.”