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France and Germany lockdowns

France and Germany are turning back the clock to spring, reintroducing some form of national lockdown as COVID-19 cases surge across Europe.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced that new lockdown measures would take effect on Friday and last through at least the end of November. People in France will only be allowed to leave their homes for essential work or medical reasons, and non-essential businesses like restaurants and bars will close. Night curfews are also in place in select regions of France, affecting around two-thirds of the country — 46 million people.

“The virus is circulating at a speed that not even the most pessimistic forecasts had anticipated,” said Macron. “Like in the spring, you will be able to leave your house only to work, for a medical appointment, to provide assistance to a relative, to shop for essential goods or to go for a walk near your house.”

Schools, factories, and public services will remain open during this time. Visits to care homes — which had been banned during the last lockdown — will be permitted. The measures will be reassessed every two weeks after December 1, in hopes that these strict measures will curb the virus’ spread.

Germany is enacting similar but softer restrictions. A four-week partial lockdown will take effect on November 2, with social contact limited to two households and a maximum of 10 people, and the closure of movie theaters, bars, leisure facilities, and indoor restaurant dining. To ease the blow, smaller companies affected by the lockdown will be reimbursed with up to 75 percent of their November 2019 earnings.

“Our health system can cope with the challenge today,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel, “But if the pace of infections continues like this, then we’ll reach the limits of what the health system can manage within weeks.”

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Populist leaders and sustainability

Last week at a rally, President Donald Trump boasted that if he needed more funds for his campaign contributions, he could phone Exxon and ask for a contribution in return for permits. Since doing so would be bribery, ExxonMobil, the country’s largest fossil fuels company, felt compelled to tweet that such a request never took place.

Even if that phone call didn’t take place, the rewards that the Trump Administration has given the fossil fuel industry and other extractive industries are well documented. From engaging in the biggest reversal of national monument protections in history to opening the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, Trump has made a mockery of environmental protection at every available turn, to the benefit of industry.

Unfortunately, he’s not an outlier.

The world has looked on in horror as the pace of the Amazon’s destruction has accelerated, even as we know that we need its trees to combat climate change and as scientists warn that the Amazon may soon cease to be a rainforest at all. Yet Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro — whom we have called a threat to the planet — appears unmoved by any scientific arguments at all. By taking an anti-environmental stance, Bolsonaro has assured the loyalty and financial backing of powerful economic actors who stand to benefit enormously and who know their harmful activities would be impossible under a different, green-thinking president.

“Bolsonaro embraces the interests of agro-business, the most predatory agro-business that exists,” says Roberto Goulart Menezes, the associate professor of the Institute of International Relations at the University of Brasilia. “He wants to reduce environmental protections in Brazil.”

The reason for that, explains Menezes, is that Bolsonaro “doesn’t have a national agenda because he never had a national agenda.” Menezes says that during 27 years as a Congressman, Bolsonora failed to pass any significant legislation. In fact, only two pieces of legislation were enacted. Rather, Bolsonaro used the position and the 25 paid aide positions that come with it to employ and enrich his family members, says Menezes.

Using the environment to sow division

Photo: Photocarioca/Shutterstock

While Bolsonaro once had no serious national agenda, he has found that sowing division is a handy way to hold onto power. As we noted during the Black Lives Matter protests, national leaders with authoritarian leanings foment distrust within their own country to justify their own strong-arm tactics. In Bolsonaro’s case, he pits white Brazilians against the Indigenous people whom he has called smelly and uneducated.

“Bolsonaro said, ‘In my government there won’t be one centimeter of land for the indigenous,’” says Menezes. More menacingly, Menezes notes, Bolsonaro supports the gun-owning culture he sees in the United States. “In the countryside, Bolsonaro advocates arming landowners at all costs, especially large landowners and land grabbers, as in the Amazon.”

The ultimate reason behind this is not only to set Brazilians against each other but to secure a loyal base of financial and political support. He promotes “the interests of the most predatory agro-business there is and mining in indigenous lands,” says Menezes. At the same time, Bolsonaro is dismantling those aspects of the civil service that would constrain those entities, like CONAMA, the National Council for the Environment, which is essentially Brazil’s Environmental Protection Agency.

How anti-environmental acts help an authoritarian leader

Photo: Marcelo Chello/Shutterstock

While much of the world is demanding that exploitation of the Amazon cease immediately, Bolsonaro defends the ambitions of mining companies that have submitted hundreds of applications to extract copper, gold, and other metals from within protected areas. Illegal cattle ranching, the main driver of deforestation, goes unpunished in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. That’s a plus for ranchers and big farmers whose hefty donations were key to Bolsonaro’s 2018 election victory.

If you wonder why some politicians seem so prepared to destroy the national patrimony they’ve been sworn to uphold, ask yourself whether those politicians are really trying to unify the country and exercise power democratically. If not, then their power relies on something else. Often that’s the financial and even tactical support of vested interests like, say, mining conglomerates. A few trees, or an Indigenous village, are a small sacrifice in return for political patronage from those interests.

More significantly, those same entities know that another leader might have a greener environmental approach, one which would constrict or even threaten their commercial aspirations. So they’ll stick with their guy, despite policy disagreements — like the fossil-fuel tycoon Koch brothers did with Trump.

A global strongman tactic

In Turkey, President Recept Erdogan has been tightening his grip on power in recent years, so much so that neither professors nor journalists were willing to speak to me on record. (Considering that Turkey froze the assets of an exiled opposition journalist earlier this month, that is understandable.) But the Turkish citizens I spoke with all agreed the Erdogan regime’s environmental disregard had reached crisis levels.

Last year, we reported on Turkey’s plans to flood the world’s oldest continuously inhabited human settlement in order to build a dam. Despite the world’s horror, bulldozers arrived, displacing 70,000 people and flooding a picturesque, ancient valley. In northern Turkey, activists have been protesting mining plans of the Canadian company Alamos Gold, which they say will poison waterways with cyanide.

Photo: Markus Mainka/Shutterstock

The new Istanbul Airport inspires awe and dismay with its gratuitous, energy-sapping immensity. Worse than being inside the behemoth is looking at it from above, seeing a massive slab of Istanbul’s only remaining forest simply gone. As of last year, 1.5 million trees were lost in a plan to make an airport that will eventually cover 30 square miles, six times the size of Heathrow. Environmentalists say destroying this threatens Istanbul’s supply of clean air and water.

Even more audacious is a plan to build Canal Istanbul, a 28-mile-long artificial Bosphorus to the west of the actual Bosphorus. The multi-billion-dollar channel dream will cause irreparable environmental harm but will enrich the well-connected families that have snapped up land in an area called Sazlibosna, near the proposed canal. Each of these “crazy projects,” as Erdogan himself has called them, has all served as a “key political tool” of the government, enriching a newly wealthy class of supporters.

Ecological pillaging in exchange for political patronage appears, sadly, to be a classic tool of populist leaders more concerned with maintaining and rewarding a loyal base of wealthy supporters than concerning themselves with environmental sustainability.

In India, the government of Narendra Modi has made it easier for developers to shirk their green responsibilities and is trying to reduce environmental oversight of businesses operating in the country. And in the Philippines, the strongman Rodrigo Duterte has overseen the killing of more environmental and land activists than any other world leader.

Populist exceptions

Fortunately, there are exceptions. In Hungary, which is an EU-member state and dependent on tourism, President Viktor Orbán has sought to pursue a more environmentally driven agenda.

“Orbán is the odd autocrat out on this one, at least when it comes to rhetoric,” says Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, via email, noting that Orbán took a stand against GMO crops and Monsanto. “In fact, he’s made much of his green credentials.”

Orbán, Scheppele points out, has funded environmental science in Hungarian universities.

“So unlike Trump and Bolsonaro, Orbán pretends to be an environmentalist,” Scheppele says. Despite Orbán’s “Green Hungary” agenda, though, Scheppele says there’s some evidence Orbán’s approach may be “all for show.”

“He uses every chance he gets to support Green initiatives — for example, Hungary was one of the first to sign the Paris agreement,” she says. “But on the ground, the Green program only goes so far.”

Nonetheless, a stated commitment to the environment and support for real science is a welcome departure from what other populist leaders are espousing. Given that neither the planet nor the local communities impacted by massive giga-projects can take much more of this eco-madness, Hungary’s “greenwashing” is at least better than blatant ecological disdain.

And it tells us that, when populations and other interested parties make their voices heard, leaders will at least have to listen. EU pressure on Hungary matters. And while the EU has put pressure on Brazil, as well, Brazil’s largest trading partners, including the US, have not.

So while those of us who vote in the US can’t vote out Bolsonaro — or Erdogan or Modi — we can vote for a leader in our country who won’t be beholden to Earth-trashing megacorps. And who will, like France’s President Emmanuel Macron, demand an end to Amazon fires, many deliberately set, and, perhaps, a halt in the construction of a massive, artificial channel when a beautiful, natural one already exists.

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Naming the northern lights

For years people have been naming stars on the internet, and then probably struggling to ever ever spot that star in person. Thankfully, the northern lights don’t quite have that problem, and you can now name one of the most brilliant celestial spectacles. Visit Arctic Europe is launching a new initiative inviting people to submit name ideas for the storms causing the aurora borealis.

Rauno Posio, the program director of Visit Arctic Europe, said, “There are so many northern lights visible in Arctic Europe from autumn to early spring that we started giving them names the same way other storms are named. This way, they get their own identities and it’s easier to communicate about them.”

The lights are caused by solar winds, which send charged solar particles into Earth’s atmosphere. The result is what we call the “northern lights” — flashes of colored lights streaking across the sky. The program will be focused on naming the brightest, most visible auroras, which the Space Weather Prediction Centre can identify in advance.

The initiative is designed to allow people from all over the world to connect with the lights in a new way. They have a set pool of names related to Nordic history, but they encourage people to submit their own Nordic-inspired, or non-Nordic, names.

You can submit your suggestions via the Naming Auroras website, with a description of why you think your name should be chosen. Selected names will appear on the website and on This is Arctic’s Instagram page.

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Booking.com’s cultural experiences

International travel is off the table for many Americans right now, making it difficult to truly experience other cultures. Of course, there are still limitless options for domestic travel. The US has some of the vastest and most diverse geography of any country on the planet, and you could easily spend a lifetime trying to see it all. The fact remains, however, that most domestic trips can’t replicate the sense of cultural discovery you get when traveling abroad. Booking.com recognized this problem and is trying to do something about it.

The hotel booking platform just launched a new campaign, called #AmericaIsForEveryone, designed to expose US citizens to global cultures without actually requiring them to go overseas.

“To kickstart your journey,” Booking.com said, “we’ve found 10 eclectic accommodations across the US that celebrate a selection of the countless cultures and communities that have shaped the nation we live in today. For two-night stays on November 20-21, 2020, each accommodation will provide a custom-designed and safety-first itinerary, so you can enjoy authentic meals, historical tours and more unforgettable experiences.”

The 10 experiences are:

Vietnamese culture in New Orleans, Louisiana
Ethiopian culture in Silver Spring, Maryland
Greek culture in Tarpon Springs, Florida
German culture in Frankenmuth, Michigan
Dutch culture in Oak Harbor, Washington
Haitian culture in Miami, Florida
Indian culture in Jersey City, New Jersey
Mexican culture in Denver, Colorado
Japanese culture in Honolulu, Hawaii
Danish culture in Solvang, California

Photo: Booking.com

The Factors Row luxury apartments in New Orleans, for example, are a little slice of Vietnam. They’ll put you right near the famous Vietnamese Farmers Market, and give you a taste of Vietnamese culture in the Big Easy. Tarpon Springs, FL, might not be Greece itself, but it creates a pretty convincing illusion. The large Greek community here will make you feel like you’re strolling around a local Greek village. The experience includes dinner at a popular Greek restaurant and a cultural immersion through wine tasting or a sponge diving boating tour.

Each location has its own unique cultural experience attached, with full details available on Booking.com.

The first guests to book one of the featured accommodations will get a major discount, only paying $50 for a full weekend. The offer starts on November 16 at noon EST.

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Harvard report on flying amid COVID

The assertion that flying is safer than grocery shopping or eating at a restaurant might sound like the desperate attempt of frequent travelers to validate their lifestyle. In fact, it’s actually true. According to a new report from scientists at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, flying is safer than some everyday activities. The report was part of the Aviation Public Health Initiative (APHI) which studies the impact of airline and airport practices on public health during the pandemic.

Phase One of the report focuses on the gate-to-gate experience, from when passengers board the plane to when they exit their gate. It found that the measures airlines are taking to reduce transmission risk have been effective. These layers include ventilation systems (HEPA filters), mask mandates, new disinfection procedures, health screenings, and better education and passenger awareness about identifying symptoms before they can spread.

According to the report, “This layered approach, with ventilation gate-to-gate, reduces the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission onboard aircraft below that of other routine activities during the pandemic, such as grocery shopping or eating out.”

That doesn’t mean flying is 100 percent safe, however.

“Until there has been widespread vaccination,” the report’s authors warn, “there remains the risk of infection in all walks of public life.”

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Disney World cuts entertainers

Disney World might usually be the happiest place on Earth, but that’s definitely not true at the moment. On Tuesday night, the park laid off a ton of entertainers from some of its most popular shows, including Festival of the Lion King, Finding Nemo: The Musical, and the Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue dinner show. The shows have been dark since the park first shuttered in the spring due to COVID-19, and the lay-offs show there are no immediate plans to revive them.

Nicolette Quintero, one of the laid-off performers in Hoop-Dee-Doo, which has run since 1974, wrote in an emotional Facebook post, “Claire DeLune, you were a dream come true. My dream role at my dream company on one of my favorite stages. Today is a very hard day.”

Also cut were performers who interacted with guests on Main Street USA, the Citizens of Hollywood at Hollywood Studios, and the entire cast and crew of attractions like “Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor,” “Beauty and the Beast — Live on Stage,” “Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular,” “Jedi Training Academy,” and more.

Disney has now laid off around 20 percent of its Orlando workforce, many of whom have been working at the park for decades. This “Tuesday Night Massacre” was just a small part of the 28,000 company wide layoffs Disney has been making since September.

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Texas barbecue Thanksgiving dishes

The most legendary, most iconic food in Texas is probably barbecue, so it should surprise absolutely no one that Texans have brought their beloved slow-roasted and smoked meats to the Thanksgiving dinner table.

The average Texan isn’t a pitmaster so this is one Thanksgiving tradition that’s harder to prepare at home. But in the lead up to Thanksgiving, barbecue joints across the state step up to offer a bevy of dishes for the reluctant cook and barbecue enthusiast alike.

Turkey can be one of the most time-consuming — but arguably the most necessary — Thanksgiving dishes to prepare. Going the barbecue route takes the stress out cooking the perfect turkey. One of the most famous barbecue spots in Houston, Killen’s Barbecue, offers 17-pound smoked turkeys, which Houstonia writes exudes aromas of “hickory, mesquite, oak, and pecan.” Miller’s Smokehouse in Belton pit smokes whole turkeys for Thanksgiving.

According to Texas Monthly, the smoked turkey craze might have begun in Fort Worth in 1936, when a woman known only as Mrs. Potisham advertised her recipe in a local newspaper. By 1946, barbecue restaurants began adopting it onto their menus. Since then, smoked turkey has become a staple alongside pulled pork, brisket, and beef ribs.

Every year, list after list of Texas barbecue restaurants appear online detailing the numerous barbecue dishes that Texans can add to the dinner table: smoked sausage, turkey legs, smoked ham, pork shoulder, pork ribs, and turkey breasts. If you want to simplify Thanksgiving by letting the masters cook it for you, there very likely is a barbecue restaurant in Texas that has your back. The only work that is required is the pickup.

But there are also plenty of Texans who find ways to bring barbecue to the table through their own handiwork: Mexican flavors and ingredients permeate all aspects of Texas cuisine, and around Thanksgiving, you’ll find families of all backgrounds get together to make tamales by hand, in a gathering called a tamalada. Slow cooked brisket tamales are a particular favorite, another nod to the fact that Texas is famous for its barbecue brisket.

Brisket might be the classic option, but around this time of year, tamales filled with shredded pork, chicken, sweet corn, black mole, black beans and cheese, red chilies, or fish are all popular varieties. As Eater puts it: “Tamales are really Texas’s best holiday dish.” Tamales are so popular in places like Houston on Thanksgiving and Christmas that some restaurants have to prepare for the so-called “tamale rush.”

Today, it’s surprisingly easy to add a little bit of that Texas smoke to your turkey no matter where you live: In an interview with The Manual, John Lewis, of Lewis Barbecue fame, says that barbecue obsessed homecooks can smoke their turkey on a grill, or add liquid smoke to the turkey brine. Pitmaster Matt Dallmann, of 18th and Vine BBQ in Dallas, takes a slightly different approach: He first smokes his Thanksgiving turkey for several hours before frying it, in order to “seal in the juices.” A Texas style smoked turkey might also be seasoned with a barbecue rub consisting of chili powder, black pepper, cumin, and paprika, or a similar combination of spices.

When it comes to sides, there are other, barbecue adjacent, ways that Texans add verve to Thanksgiving dinner: A classic Thanksgiving dish, brown sugar glazed sweet potatoes, gets a Texas twist with the addition of bacon. Cornbread (a classic barbecue and Thanksgiving side) sometimes gets a kick from sliced jalapeños, while spicy chorizo — of which Texans are especially fond — tossed with cornbread and herbs is a popular variation on classic stuffing. And the signature ingredient in Texas-style mac and cheese is roasted poblano or green chilies. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be a Texas Thanksgiving dinner without a spicy kick somewhere on the table.

Even dessert can’t escape the reach of Texas barbecue’s influence: The smoky flavors of barbecued meats find the perfect pairing in bourbon infused pecan pie.

In Texas, barbecue is a way of life, not just a Thanksgiving tradition. But if you want to embody the spirit of Texas barbecue during the holiday season, it’s clearly easy enough. Whether you prefer the traditional turkey infused with barbecue spices or you adapt a slow-cooked brisket recipe for tamales, a Texas Thanksgiving is within your grasp, no matter where you live.

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Saudi Arabia’s new cave hotel

Saudi Arabia’s newest hotel won’t be an urban highrise like you might expect but a subterranean hotel carved into a sandstone hill in the AlUla desert, which is located about 220 miles north of the city of Medina.

Designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, the hotel will be built into the sandstone and was inspired by the nearby Madâin Sâlih UNESCO World Heritage site, where the remains of a Nabatean city can be found. The Nabatean people lived in the desert between the second and fourth century BC and carved cities into the area’s sandstone rock — Petra being the most famous example.

Photo: Jean Nouvel

Photo: Jean Nouvel

According to Nouvel, “AlUla is a museum,” said Nouvel. “Every wadi and escarpment, every stretch of sand and rocky outline, every geological and archaeological site deserves the greatest consideration. It’s vital we keep all its distinctiveness and conserve its attractiveness, which largely rests on its remote and occasionally archaic character. We have to safeguard a little mystery as well as the promise of discoveries to come.”

Photo: Jean Nouvel

Photo: Jean Nouvel

The hotel will be called “Sharaan” and contain 40 cliff face rooms and three resort villas, each with a balcony looking across the desert. A circular courtyard will be carved into the hillside, in which a series of rooms will be arranged around a central elevator shaft.

“Our project is celebrating the Nabateans spirit without caricaturing it,” said Nouvel. “This creation genuinely becomes a cultural act.”

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Jamaica to require $40 insurance

Rules for visiting other countries are changing constantly due to COVID-19. As of next month, to enter Jamaica — in addition to a negative COVID-19 test, temperature checks, and filling out a Travel Authorization form — you should also expect to pay a $40 health insurance fee.

Part of the island’s Jamaica Cares program, the fee is designed to cover emergency medical services you may need while on the island. It will protect travelers against any illnesses, including COVID-19, as well as natural disasters. It also covers the cost of case management, transportation logistics, field rescue, evacuation, and repatriation for medical emergencies up to $50,000 while on the island — should such a scenario arise.

Given how extensive the coverage is, it’s a relatively small price to pay for peace of mind. Edmund Bartlett, co-chairman of Global Tourism Resilience at the Crisis Management Center, said in a statement, “The traveler knows they’re protected, and they know other travelers are, too. That’s what’s needed to give confidence to travelers when they are ready to travel.”

Only part of Jamaica is currently open to tourism, and it’s known as the “Resilient Corridor.” This region includes the island’s most popular vacation spots, like Negril, Ocho Rios, and Montego Bay. To travel beyond the corridor you must quarantine for 14 days after arriving on the island.

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Delta no-fly list

No-fly lists now include people who don’t wear masks on planes. Back in April, Delta implemented a mandatory mask policy and has already added 460 people to its no-fly list for refusing to wear masks. In September alone, the airline banned 350 passengers for refusing to follow mask protocols.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a letter to staff, “Wearing a mask is among the simplest and most effective actions we can take to reduce transmission, which is why Delta has long required them for our customers and our people.”

As COVID-19 cases continue to spike around the United States, masks are necessary to prevent the virus’ spread. While research has shown that flying during the pandemic is safer than we think, it becomes significantly less so if people don’t wear masks.

“With the cold-weather months approaching,” Bastian continued, “stopping the spread will be crucial to our recovery from the pandemic and Delta’s return to growth and leadership within our industry.”

The aviation industry is hurting tremendously due to the recent decline in travel demand, but the return of travel, however, correlates directly with the decline of the pandemic, which experts agree will be expedited by diligent mask-wearing. Wearing a mask sure beats finding yourself on a no-fly list.

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