2847. How New York City Won Divestment from Fossil Fuels

By Nancy Romer, Portside, March 2, 2018

After five years of tireless organizing, the movement to divest NYC public worker pension funds from fossil fuels scored a win.  On January 10, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City will divest the $5 billion of its pension funds presently invested in fossil fuel stocks. It will also sue the top five fossil fuel corporations—ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips—charging that because they hid the evidence that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, they are responsible for the billions of dollars the city has spent on climate remediation.  

The divestment campaign provides an excellent example of how dedicated organizing, clear demands and strategies, creative tactics, strong coalitions and good luck can come together for a win.  

Divestment Launch

The US Divestment movement was popularized in 2012 through the national “Do The Math” tour, led by 350.org’s Bill McKibben and author Naomi Klein.  Borrowing a page from the successful anti-apartheid divestment campaign directed at South Africa in the 1980’s, 350’s focus was fossil fuel divestment in colleges, universities, foundations and non-profits. While pension funds were on the list, little attention was initially paid to them.

In New York City and New York State, Divest NY became the campaign’s lead coalition, headed by local 350NYC from the beginning and supported by national 350.org throughout.  It was joined by DivestInvest Network,  NY Communities for Change, Peoples Climate Movement-NY, NYC-Democratic Socialists of American Climate Justice Working Group, Professional Staff Congress-CUNY (AFT), NY State Nurses Association, NY State Green Party and many individuals.  

In 2012, Divest NY started lobbying, building alliances, and creating the groundwork for a broader movement. Public pension member unions began to support:  United Federation of Teachers (UFT) passed a resolution calling for a feasibility study on divestment from fossil fuels and for total divestment from coal; PSC-CUNY passed resolutions supporting immediate fossil fuel divestment on city and state levels, as did the NY State Nurses Association; and AFSCME DC 37 rallied members and leaders to consider divestment.

Gaining Support for Divestment

After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, New York’s mainstream media was largely reluctant to expose climate change’s threat to coastal NYC, due in part, as author Ashley Dawson explains, to the powerful interests of NYC’s real estate industry.

In 2015, defying this silence, New York’s Public Advocate Letitia James came out in support of full fossil fuel divestment—coal, oil, and gas-- and publicly spoke about climate change and became the primary climate advocate in the political class. In 2016, the intense anti-pipeline confrontation lead by indigenous people at Standing Rock activated and inspired people around indigenous rights and the dangers of fossil fuels. After the Standing Rock encampment was raided, many of the younger leaders pushed supporters to take their money out of banks that supported the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Divestment became a form of direct action.

Trump’s election helped to clarify the politics of the fossil fuel industry. As exemplified by the Koch brothers, the fossil fuel industry was exposed for buying political influence through campaign contributions and distributing misleading information denying climate change. Trump accommodated by stacking his administration with industry leaders and lobbyists, including former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson and industry apologist Scott Pruitt, while removing decades-worth of environmental protections and regulations, and scrubbing the Environmental Protection Agency’s website of any reference to climate change.

By early 2017, the tide was turning (and rising) about climate change.  Trump’s election spurred new resistance, giving the climate movement a remarkable burst of human energy.  NYC-based “Climate Works 4 All” and NY State-based “NY Renews”, two broad-based policy coalitions that came out of the massive 2014 NYC Peoples Climate March, both with deep union, environmental justice, and community participation welcomed dozens of grassroots groups and union locals into the world of climate politics.

When Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Accords in June 2017, the climate movement determined that it would be most productive to work at the city and state levels to counteract federal policies.   Next came the climate catastrophes of late summer and autumn 2017—Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, wildfires raging in northern and southern California,earthquakes in Mexico—put everyone on alert.  Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico struck a particularly hard blow for New Yorkers. That our “6th borough” was wiped out and tens of thousands of our relatives were streaming to the mainland for shelter, became an acute source of pain.

It was in this fertile soil that Divest NY sank its roots deeper and grew a broader, more effective movement through forums and rallies, extensive lobbying with City elected officials and their pension fund advisors, demonstrations at pension board meetings, birddogging NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, who was initially the main city opponent. Divestment’s popular support made it one of the central demands in the mass march commemorating the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Sandy in October 2017. All this activity gave the divestment movement a voice, dynamism, and trajectory that couldn’t be ignored when the political climate shifted.  

In November, 2017, Divest NY worked closely with NYC Public Advocate Letitia (Tish) James to organize a large public hearing that was attended by over 300 people. This hearing fortified the climate movement as a broad-based, multi-faceted effort that advanced a “just transition” to a renewable energy economy that included jobs for those most negatively affected by climate change—poor and working-class people and people of color.  The climate crisis was cast as an opportunity to address the inequalities in our society, with divestment as the most repeated mantra of the day: drop support for the deadly fossil fuel economy and use those funds to create a sustainable and just world.

Mayor de Blasio handily won re-election for his last term in November 2017. Despite his minimal campaign on climate policies, the big win gave him lots of political space.

Divestment Strategy Contested

For several years, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer and NY State Comptroller di Napoli shared a “shareholder activism” perspective that contended that retaining fossil fuel stocks allows the big pension funds to influence the industry through shareholder power.  Despite what the Washington Post called a “shareholders rebellion”, this approach has failed to prod the giant fossil fuel corporations into a different business model.  While Stringer ultimately abandoned this “shareholder activism” position once Cuomo and de Blasio came out for divestment, di Napoli continues to cling to this approach.

While pension funds are the largest and potentially most powerful investors in the stock market, larger than banks and investment houses, rules governing pension funds make shifts in investments complicated.  The financial health of a pension fund is the primary concern; “moral” decisions are peripheral. Tom Sanzillo, first deputy comptroller of New York State, was one of the earliest public investment experts to suggest that fossil fuel stocks are in jeopardy of a quick nosedive that could harm pension fund members significantly. He argues that fossil fuel stocks are over-valued due to oversupply and that capital spending in the sector has dropped indicating that oil companies themselves see a limited future. Indeed, fossil fuel stock values have declined over the past five years compared with the general stock indices, making them a bad investment.

If the remaining oil and gas continues to be burned at the current rate, the planet will warm beyond the point in which human life will be possible so we must leave them in the ground. This turns fossil fuel assets into “stranded assets,” which bodes poorly for the health of their stocks and puts fiduciary responsibility to divest from fossil fuels into play. Once the financial argument could be made, the moral and political claim had a clearer path forward.  

Labor Weighs In

One of Divest NY’s limitations was a lack of active participation of public sector unions invested in the pension funds.  NYC has five separate pension funds - for teachers (United Federation of Teachers and Professional Staff Congress - CUNY), public workers (mostly AFSCME District Council 37, Transport Workers Union, Teamsters 271), Firefighters, Police, and Educational Management.  Each pension board has a mix of trustees appointed by the unions, the mayor, comptroller, public advocate, and/or borough presidents.  Divest NY continued to push those trustees over the course of the campaign. There were union resolutions and rank and file support from three of the city unions—PSC-CUNY, UFT and AFSCME DC 37—but without much traction with the trustees.

The political dam broke on Dec. 19, 2017, when New York State Governor Cuomo announced his support for fossil fuel divestment of the state Common Pension Fund, which controls more capital than the five funds of NYC put together. Within hours, NYC Comptroller Stringer announced his support.  Three weeks later, NYC Mayor de Blasio joined in. Divest NY was brought into the planning and announcement of the news release and was given full credit for its organizing work.  de Blasio’s progressive credentials were further burnished.  

Where Does Divestment Go From Here?

The divestment movement is delighted with the dramatic results of our efforts.  While there are declared allies inside government, our movement needs to be vigilant that these elected officials follow through on their commitment to divest in a timely manner. Already there is push back from the NYC Teachers, Police, Firefighters fund trustees, either rejecting outright the calls for divestment from the mayor or asking for further studies, delaying the process.

The turn-around time to fully divest NYC pension funds from fossil fuel stocks is expected to be four to five years during which time as a movement, we need to start conversations with unions and environmental justice frontline community leaders about how to re-invest those billions of dollars of pension funds.

The organizing operation must expand to the state level to ensure that the larger-yet NY State public pension fund divests as well, potentially another $6 billion divested from fossil fuel holdings.  And beyond, NY State, the divestment movement has additional targets, particularly in big cities and states with progressive populations and leadership.  Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS), a national labor and climate advocacy organization, is working with 350.org and the Climate Justice Alliance to target public pension funds in other cities and states to advance divestment and re-investment efforts toward a “just transition”.  LNS just launched a “Guide to Divestment” that helps union members decide and act on divestment campaigns across the nation.

Both the value of divestment as a climate demand and the ways in which it might link to frontline communities will be addressed by this author in other articles.  Right now divestment campaigns advance awareness of the role of fossil fuels in creating climate change; they create a platform to view the fossil fuel industry as a pariah.  Loosening up those billions of dollars presently invested in fossil fuel stocks-- $5 billion in NYC public pension funds and $6 billion in NY State funds alone—creates an opening for conversations with the climate justice and labor movements as to where we do want to invest to create a just transition to renewable energy.  Support for publicly owned renewable energy, pubic transit and public housing could be invested in through publicly-traded bonds with guaranteed returns.  Public banks could be backed as they choose more locally defined, perhaps smaller-scale, sustainable community projects.

The divestment movement must learn a great deal about pension fund investments and how to safely and legally make these shifts.  Community engagement, especially of frontline communities most affected by climate change, will be needed as well.  Unions, climate organizations and the environmental justice community working together could be a game changer in all of these movements. The potential of using those billions of dollars presently being used to destroy our planet to provide the capital to contribute to a just transition is powerful indeed.

Nancy Romer is a labor and environmental activist.  She served on the Executive Council of Professional Staff Congress of CUNY (AFT #2334) for nine years. She is an active member of the PSC’s Environmental Justice Working Group and has served on the steering committees of Peoples Climate Movement-NY, Divest NY. She is on the National Working Group on Climate Justice for Democratic Socialists of America, and works with Labor Network for Sustainability. She is Professor Emerita Brooklyn College, CUNY.

Thank you to Linda Farthing, Jeremy Brecher, Jim Shultz, Nancy Holmstrom, Christine Pries, Charlie Heller, and Fred Murphy for ideas and edits.

For a petition to advance divestment of pension and other funds from fossil fuel holdings, please see  https://www.thepetitionsite.com/403/755/000/join-the-1000-cities-campaign-reject-fossil-fuels-amp-commit-to-100-renewable-energy/

===Editor's note: Brain Tokar shared the following additional information that is missing from Nancy Romer's essay.

Nancy Romer neglects [sic] to mention the protean efforts of CUNY students in helping to get fossil fuel divestment resolutions passed in most of the university student governments including tree resolutions passed by the University Student Senate (USS). In 2015, CUNY Divest received USS's 2015 award at its 2015 banquet for the best new CUNY club.

CUNY DIVEST HISTORY

March 2013

CUNY Divest held first campaign meeting.

June 24, 2013

CUNY Divest attended CUNY Board of Trustees Public Hearing at CUNY-Hostos Community College.

August 13, 2013

CUNY Divest attended meeting with CUNY Administration: CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza; CUNY Chief Investment Officer, Janet Krone; and CUNY University Controller, Leonard Zinnanti to discuss fossil fuel divestment.

October 1, 2013

CUNY Divest had a follow-up call with CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, where campaign was told, “It did not make sense to divest from fossil fuels at this time†.

October 20, 2013

CUNY University Student Senate passed Fossil Fuel Divestment & Reinvestment Resolution.

Week of October 20, 2013

CUNY Graduate Center Doctoral Students Council and CUNY-New York City College of Technology’s Student Government Association passed Fossil Fuel Divestment & Reinvestment Resolution.

October 28, 2013

CUNY Divest, NYU Divest, Barnard Columbia Divest and others attended “Turn the Tide Rally†at City Hall where event called attention to the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy and climate change.

November 1, 2013

CUNY Divest held “A Night of Film, Performance and Climate Justice†event at CUNY-Hunter College’s West Lobby, where Tony Gronowicz, Green Party Candidate for Mayor of NYC.

Week of November 18, 2013

CUNY Divest participated in fast in solidarity with Philippines Climate Commissioner, Yeb Sano, in light of Typhoon Haiyan and climate negotiations in Warsaw, Poland.

December 11, 2013

CUNY Divest delivered holiday package to the office of CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, which included letter and collection of photo petitions from CUNY students.

January 21, 2014

CUNY Divest held a mass call-in day action to the office of CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, to urge administration to schedule a meeting with CUNY’s financial advisor, Cambridge Associates.

February 13

Matthew Sapienza’s secretary, Monica Baldon, sends email stating further postponement of Cambridge Associates meeting.

February 19

Originally was first tentative date for Cambridge Associates meeting disclosed by Matthew Sapienza’s secretary, Monica Baldon (postponed on February 13)

March 12, 2014

CUNY-Borough Of Manhattan Community College’s Student Government Association passed Fossil Fuel Divestment and Reinvestment Resolution.

March 13, 2014

CUNY-Professional Staff Congress (CUNY’s faculty union) passed Fossil Fuel Divestment and Reinvestment Resolution.

March 20, 2014

CUNY-City College of New York’s Undergraduate Student Government passed Fossil Fuel Divestment and Reinvestment Resolution.

March 26, 2014

CUNY-Hunter College’s Undergraduate Student Government passed Divestment and Reinvestment Resolution.

April 4-6, 2014

CUNY Divest connected with fossil fuel divestment network at Divestment Convergence in San Francisco, California.

April 8, 2014

CUNY-Baruch College’s Undergraduate Student Government passed Fossil Fuel Divestment and Reinvestment Resolution.

April 11, 2014

CUNY-Medgar Evers College’s Student Government Association and Bronx Community College’s Student Government Association passed Fossil Fuel Divestment and Reinvestment Resolution.

May 8, 2014

CUNY-College of Staten Island’s student government passed Fossil Fuel Divestment and Reinvestment Resolution.

May 16, 2014

CUNY Divest briefly met with CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, during the City Council Budget Hearing and discussed a meeting on June 6th (target date) at the Counsel.

June 2, 2014

CUNY Divest met with CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, and Board of Trustees members, Wellington Chen, Kay Conroy, Joe Lhota, and Phil Berry during Board of Trustees Finance Committee meeting.

CUNY Divest emailed Fiscal Affairs Committee (including CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza; CUNY Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Operating Officer, Allan Dobrin; and CUNY Vice Chancellor, Iris Weinshall) asking to meet to discuss fossil fuel divestment (with supporting reports attached).

June 3, 2014

CUNY Divest emailed CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza on presenting case on fossil fuel divestment to the CUNY Board of Trustees.

June 4-6, 2014

CUNY Divest attended United Nations Sustainable Energy for All Forum.

June 6, 2014

CUNY Divest attended New York City Council Budget Hearing.

June 9, 2014

CUNY Divest called the office of CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, to follow-up with CUNY Divest via email; Sapienza’s secretary, Monica Baldon, responded by saying he may be able to respond Thursday, June 12, but will remind him to follow-up. Throughout the week, CUNY Divest called Sapienza's office.

June 12, 2014

CUNY Divest emailed NYC Council Committee on Finance with supporting reports; CUNY Divest met CUNY Vice Chancellor for Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza at NYC Counsel where he claimed that he received the emails that were sent and was “trying to coordinate with the Board†.

June 23, 2014

CUNY Divest attended CUNY Board of Trustees Public Hearing at Hostos Community College - CUNY students, faculty, and alums joined by supporters from NYU Divest, Mt. Holyoke, and REC. After hearing, campaign was approached by Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Operating Officer, Allan Dobrin whom acknowledged the sound logic behind the arguments presented by the campaign for divestment .

June 27, 2014

Hostos Community College’s Student Government Association passed Fossil Fuel Divestment & Reinvestment Resolution.

June 30, 2014

CUNY Divest attended Board of Trustees Meeting at Baruch College and met with CUNY Board of Trustee, Benno Schmidt; CUNY Executive Vice Chancellor & Chief Operating Officer, Allan Dobrin; CUNY Chancellor, James B. Milliken; and other CUNY Board of Trustee members, and brought up issue of fossil fuel divestment.

July 7, 2014

CUNY Divest sent email to CUNY Chancellor, James B. Milliken; CUNY Executive Vice Chancellor & Chief Operating Officer; Allan Dobrin, & CUNY Vice Chancellor for Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, requesting meeting between Finance Committee before start of Fall ‘14 (attached reports).

July 17, 2014

CUNY Divest sent email to CUNY Executive Vice Chancellor & Chief Operating Officer, Allan Dobrin; CUNY Chancellor, James Milliken; and CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, listing collected research on fossil fuel divestment.

Sept. 2, 2014

CUNY Divest received reply email from CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, about collected research and announced the CUNY Board of Trustees Subcommittee on Investments will be talking about fossil fuel investments at the Subcommittee of Investment meeting on September 8, 2014.

Sept. 8, 2014

CUNY attended CUNY Board of Trustees Subcommittee on Investments meeting where Managing Director Mark Fowler and Managing Director Thomas Smitt-Jeppesen of Cambridge Associates attend.

Sept. 21, 2014

CUNY Divest attended People’s Climate March; USS unanimously passed another fossil fuel divestment resolution

Sept. 22, 2014

CUNY Divest attended CUNY Board of Trustees Public Hearing at Baruch College and spoke on concerns addressed during CUNY Board of Trustees Subcommittee on Investments meeting

October 27, 2014

CUNY Divest emailed CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza following up on Investments meeting asking for Board’s stance on divestment and received reply from Sapienza claiming “the Subcommittee on Investment is taking these reports under advisement and for consideration, including all of the materials that were received from CUNY Divest and the University.†

Nov. 16, 2014

Wall Street Journal published an article on CUNY Divest.

Nov. 17, 2014

CUNY Divest followed up with CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, regarding developments on fossil fuel divestment discussion during the November 3 Fiscal Affairs Committee where CUNY’s fossil fuel investments were discussed (also featured WSJ article); Sapienza responded: “The divestment issue was not discussed at the 11/3 Board of Trustees Fiscal Committee Meeting. If you need any additional information, please let me know.†

Nov. 20, 2014

After following up once more with CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, regarding the CUNY Board of Trustee’s stance on fossil divestment, Sapienza responded claiming “the Board of Trustees’ Subcommittee on Investments is reviewing the materials that were provided and taking this issue under consideration. I will keep you posted as to any new developments.† 

Nov. 24, 2014

CUNY Divest attended CUNY Board of Trustees public hearing at Baruch College.

Dec. 9, 2014

CUNY-Brooklyn College’s Student Government passed Fossil Fuel Divestment & Reinvestment Resolution.

Dec. 21, 2014

CUNY Divest connected with CUNY University Student Senate at the U.S.S. Plenary Meeting.

January 20, 2015

CUNY Divest attended CUNY Board of Trustees public hearing at Baruch College.

January 29, 2015

CUNY Divest emailed CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, to demand fossil fuel divestment be added to the Board of Trustees calendar for their meeting on Tuesday, February 24.

February 17, 2015

CUNY Divest attended Brooklyn Borough hearing at Brooklyn Borough Hall with support from NYU Divest.

April 15, 2015

CUNY Divest visited the Office of the Chancellor and delivered Earth Day press conference invitation addressed to CUNY Chancellor, James B. Milliken.

April 16, 2015

CUNY Divest invited CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken; Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza; and Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Operating Officer, Allan Dobrin, to Earth Day press conference via email; campaign received response from Scheduling Coordinator stating Milliken “is already committed to two other events that afternoon.†

April 20, 2015

CUNY Divest attended Queens Borough Hearing at Queens Borough Hall and delivered the Earth Day press conference invitations as well as verbally inviting CUNY Chancellor, James B. Milliken, and the CUNY Board of Trustees. Milliken responded and promised that he'll try to send someone to attend the press conference.

April 22, 2015

CUNY Divest held Earth Day press conference on Icarus Plaza of CUNY-Borough of Manhattan Community College campus where Council Member Stephen Levin, Chris Fici of GreenFaith and Professor of Finance Charles Allison (both representing two recently divested institutions: the Union Theological Seminary and the New School, respectively) spoke in support of fossil fuel divestment within CUNY.

April 30, 2015

CUNY Divest met with Council Member Donovan Richards to discuss fossil fuel divestment.

May 1, 2015

CUNY Divest followed up with CUNY Chancellor, James B. Milliken, regarding the success of the Earth Day press conference.

May 3, 2015

CUNY University Student Senate passed third fossil fuel divestment and reinvestment resolution.

June 8, 2015

CUNY Divest called Office of the Secretary to request to have Fossil Fuel Divestment placed as a calendar item for the Committee of Fiscal Affairs meeting in September 2015. The secretary said she would forward the request to Frederick Shaffer, General Counsel and Senior Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs; and Jay Hershenson, Senior Vice Chancellor for University Relations and Secretary of the Board of Trustees.

June 11, 2015

Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza followed up on the call/email that requested to have divestment as a calendar item for the Committee on Fiscal Affairs meeting in September. He informed the campaign of the process in doing so, and to follow-up mid-August.

June 22, 2015

CUNY Divest attended Bronx Borough Hearing at Hostos Community College and raised awareness to the CUNY Board of Trustees the recent dialogue that happened between the campaign and CUNY Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance, Matthew Sapienza, and delivered a testimony requesting the CUNY Board of Trustees add fossil fuel divestment as a calendar item for the Committee on Fiscal Affairs meeting on September 9, 2015 to ultimately have it discussed during the Board of Trustees meeting on October 1, 2015.

2846. U.S. Advances Military Plans for North Korea

By Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt, The New York Times, February 28, 2018

Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., middle left, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Mark A. Milley, middle right, the Army’s chief of staff, at the Capitol in January. General Milley helped run a planning exercise for a war with North Korea last week, and General Dunford has argued forcefully for using diplomacy to address Pyongyang’s nuclear program. Photo: Win McNamee. 

WASHINGTON — A classified military exercise last week examined how American troops would mobilize and strike if ordered into a potential war on the Korean Peninsula, even as diplomatic overtures between the North and the Trump administration continue.

The war planning, known as a “tabletop exercise,” was held over several days in Hawaii. It included Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Army’s chief of staff, and Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of Special Operations Command.

They looked at a number of pitfalls that could hamper an American assault on North Korea’s well-entrenched military. Among them was the Pentagon’s limited ability to evacuate injured troops from the Korean Peninsula daily — a problem more acute if the North retaliated with chemical weapons, according to more than a half-dozen military and Defense Department officials familiar with the exercise.

Large numbers of surveillance aircraft would have to be moved from the Middle East and Africa to the Pacific to support ground troops. Planners also looked at how American forces stationed in South Korea and Japan would be involved.

Pentagon officials cautioned that the planning does not mean that a decision has been made to go to war over President Trump’s demands that North Korea rein in its nuclear ambitions.

A war with North Korea, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said, would be “catastrophic.” He and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have argued forcefully for using diplomacy to address Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

Commanders who attended the exercise in Hawaii were told that roughly 10,000 Americans could be wounded in combat in the opening days alone. And the number of civilian casualties, the generals were told, would likely be in the thousands or even hundreds of thousands.

The potential human costs of a war were so high that, at one point during the exercise, General Milley remarked that “the brutality of this will be beyond the experience of any living soldier,” according to officials who were involved.

So, too, would be the sheer logistical enterprise of moving thousands of American soldiers and equipment to the Korean Peninsula. Moreover, senior military officials worry that after 17 years in Afghanistan and Iraq, American troops have become far more used to counterinsurgency fighting than a land war against a state, as an attack on North Korea would likely bring.

But Mr. Mattis also has ordered top Pentagon leaders to be ready for any possible military action against North Korea. Already, ammunition has been pre-staged in the Pacific region for ground units.

And Mr. Trump’s words — “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely,” he said in an August post on Twitter — have left senior officers and rank-and-file troops convinced that they need to accelerate their contingency planning.

A White House decision to attack is almost wholly dependent on cooperation from South Korea — not only in committing its troops or other assets to the battle but also accepting the risk of widespread bloodshed on its civilian population if the North fires back.

With a revival recently signaled on the long-dormant diplomatic track to resolve the Korean crisis, Pentagon officials said they did not want to disrupt any chance for a negotiated resolution. North Korea’s declaration at the end of the Winter Olympics that it was willing to open a dialogue with the United States offered a small amount of hope that the political pageantry of the Games would lead to more substantial results.

Mr. Trump’s response that the United States, too, was interested in talking compounded that hope. “We want to talk also,” Mr. Trump said earlier this week, but “only under the right conditions.

But Trump administration officials still insist that the United States will not sit with North Korea unless Pyongyang agrees to open negotiations on its nuclear program, a condition the North has rejected.

And so the planning continues.

Mr. Mattis and other senior military leaders fear that a stray incident could spark a sudden conflict with the North. Of particular concern is the “ladder of escalation” — a chain of actions prompted by the shooting down of a North Korean or American jet, or sinking of a ship of which Mr. Mattis and other Pentagon leaders could quickly lose control.

Harsh new sanctions that the Trump administration announced last week are a prime example.

The economic penalties target 28 ships that are registered in China and seven other countries, and intend to further cut off North Korea’s imports of oil and exports of coal. But by going after the shipments, the United States is edging closer to the imposition of an economic blockade on the North.

While Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin stopped short of saying the United States Navy would forcibly board ships on the high seas, administration officials privately have said that sailors may yet be called upon to do so, if hostile foreign vessels are suspected of transporting certain material to North Korea.

That, Defense Department officials say, could easily spark an incident that could escalate.

Mr. Trump recently referred to another type of incident that American officials fear could spark a war.

During a speech in Seoul last year, he brought up North Korea’s 1969 downing an American spy plane that had been flying over the Sea of Japan. All 31 Americans aboard were killed in the attack by two North Korean MiGs.

The Hawaii planning exercise looked at a wide range of military capabilities and missions. They included:

■ How many conventional and Special Operations forces could be deployed, in phases, to target North Korean nuclear sites.

■ Whether the Army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions could be charged with fighting in tunnels.

■ Exhaustive plans to take down North Korea’s integrated air defenses, allowing American manned and unmanned aircraft into the reclusive country.

■ Plans for the morbid but necessary details of personnel recovery plans, such as if pilots are shot down, and the evacuation of the dead and wounded.

In a meeting on Monday in “the Tank” — a secured space in the Pentagon where the Joint Chiefs of Staff discuss top-secret issues — General Milley told senior military leaders about the exercise but did not outline details of the war plans, officials said. The Army holds around eight tabletop exercises every year for different countries and scenarios.

In April, a larger meeting is being planned between Mr. Mattis and the global combatant commanders. It is one of the periodic meetings that Mr. Mattis has with the top military brass, but is expected to heavily focus on North Korea.

Special Operations forces have been briefed on some details of a plan that is separate but related to a potential strike on North Korea, officials said. However, Special Operations forces have yet to change course from their current operations.

Although the planning is continuing apace, a military operation against North Korea has yet to be given a formal name. Special Operations units, however, have already been assigned to specific task forces with names such as Trident and Falcon.

2845. ‘Virtual Fossil’ Reveals Last Common Ancestor of Humans and Neanderthals

By Cambridge University, December 18, 201

New digital techniques have allowed researchers to predict structural evolution of the skull in the lineage of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, in an effort to fill in blanks in the fossil record and provide the first 3D rendering of their last common ancestor. The study suggests populations that led to the lineage split were older than previously thought.

We know we share a common ancestor with Neanderthals, the extinct species that were our closest prehistoric relatives. But what this ancient ancestral population looked like remains a mystery, as fossils from the Middle Pleistocene period, during which the lineage split, are extremely scarce and fragmentary. 

Now, researchers have applied digital “morphometrics” and statistical algorithms to cranial fossils from across the evolutionary story of both species, and recreated in 3D the skull of the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals for the first time.  

The “virtual fossil” has been simulated by plotting a total of 797 “landmarks” on the cranium of fossilised skulls stretching over almost two million years of Homo history – including a 1.6 million-year-old Homo erectus fossil, Neanderthal crania found in Europe and even 19th century skulls from the Duckworth collection in Cambridge.

The landmarks on these samples provided an evolutionary framework from which researchers could predict a timeline for the skull structure, or ‘morphology’, of our ancient ancestors. They then fed a digitally-scanned modern skull into the timeline, warping the skull to fit the landmarks as they shifted through history.

This allowed researchers to work out how the morphology of both species may have converged in the last common ancestor’s skull during the Middle Pleistocene – an era dating from approximately 800,000 to 100,000 years ago.

The team generated three possible ancestral skull shapes that corresponded to three different predicted split times between the two lineages. They digitally rendered complete skulls and then compared them to the few original fossils and bone fragments of the Pleistocene age.

This enabled the researchers to narrow down which virtual skull was the best fit for the ancestor we share with Neanderthals, and which timeframe was most likely for that last common ancestor to have existed.       

Previous estimates based on ancient DNA have predicted the last common ancestor lived around 400,000 years ago. However, results from the ‘virtual fossil’ show the ancestral skull morphology closest to fossil fragments from the Middle Pleistocene suggests a lineage split of around 700,000 years ago, and that – while this ancestral population was also present across Eurasia – the last common ancestor most likely originated in Africa.

The results of the study are published in the Journal of Human Evolution.    

“We know we share a common ancestor with Neanderthals, but what did it look like? And how do we know the rare fragments of fossil we find are truly from this past ancestral population? Many controversies in human evolution arise from these uncertainties,” said the study’s lead author Dr Aurélien Mounier, a researcher at Cambridge University’s Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES). 

“We wanted to try an innovative solution to deal with the imperfections of the fossil record: a combination of 3D digital methods and statistical estimation techniques. This allowed us to predict mathematically and then recreate virtually skull fossils of the last common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals, using a simple and consensual ‘tree of life’ for the genus Homo,” he said.  

The virtual 3D ancestral skull bears early hallmarks of both species. For example, it shows the initial budding of what in Neanderthals would become the ‘occipital bun’: the prominent bulge at the back of the skull that contributed to elongated shape of a Neanderthal head.

However, the face of the virtual ancestor shows hints of the strong indention that modern humans have under the cheekbones, contributing to our more delicate facial features. In Neanderthals, this area – the maxillia – is ‘pneumatized’, meaning it was thicker bone due to more air pockets, so that the face of a Neanderthal would have protruded.

Research from New York University published last week showed that bone deposits continued to build on the faces of Neanderthal children during the first years of their life.

The heavy, thickset brow of the virtual ancestor is characteristic of the hominin lineage, very similar to early Homo as well as Neanderthal, but lost in modern humans. Mounier says the virtual fossil is more reminiscent of Neanderthals overall, but that this is unsurprising as taking the timeline as a whole it is Homo sapiens who deviate from the ancestral trajectory in terms of skull structure.

“The possibility of a higher rate of morphological change in the modern human lineage suggested by our results would be consistent with periods of major demographic change and genetic drift, which is part of the history of a species that went from being a small population in Africa to more than seven billion people today,” said co-author Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr, also from Cambridge’s LCHES. 

The population of last common ancestors was probably part of the species Homo heidelbergensis in its broadest sense, says Mounier. This was a species of Homo that lived in Africa, Europe and western Asia between 700,000 and 300,000 years ago.  

For their next project, Mounier and colleagues have started working on a model of the last common ancestor of Homo and chimpanzees. “Our models are not the exact truth, but in the absence of fossils these new methods can be used to test hypotheses for any palaeontological question, whether it is horses or dinosaurs,” he said. 

2844. Neanderthals, the World’s First Misunderstood Artists

By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times, February 22, 2018

A reconstruction of a Neanderthal male based on a skull discovered in Iraq.CreditSebastien Plailly & Elisabeth Daynes/Science Source

It’s long been an insult to be called a Neanderthal. But the more these elusive, vanished people have been studied, the more respect they’ve gained among scientists.

On Thursday, a team of researchers offered compelling evidence that Neanderthals bore one of the chief hallmarks of mental sophistication: they could paint cave art. That talent suggests that Neanderthals could think in symbols and may have achieved other milestones not preserved in the fossil record.

“When you have symbols, then you have language,” said João Zilhão, an archaeologist at the University of Barcelona and co-author of the new study.

When Neanderthal fossils first came to light in the mid-1800s, researchers were struck by the low, thick brow ridge on their skulls. Later discoveries showed Neanderthals to have brains as big as our own, but bodies that were shorter and stockier.

By the early 1900s, scientists were describing Neanderthals as gorilla-like beasts, an extinct branch of humanity that could not compete with slender, brilliant humans.

Yet evidence from both fossils and DNA indicates that Neanderthals and living humans descend from a common ancestor who lived about 600,000 years ago. Our own branch probably lived mostly in Africa.

For a few hundred thousand years after the split, the ancestors of living humans left behind such basic tools as stone axes for butchering carcasses and spear blades for hunting.

But about 70,000 years ago, humans in Africa began showing signs of more abstract thinking. They colored and pierced seashells, for example, possibly to wear as jewelry.

Modern humans began expanding from Africa, arriving in Europe roughly 45,000 years ago. By then, they had become capable of even more impressive symbolic creations, including ivory carvings and extravagant paintings on cave walls.

Neanderthals disappeared abruptly afterward, about 40,000 years ago, leaving behind a fossil record of their own from Spain to Siberia.

Stockier than their African cousins, they appear to have evolved physical adaptations to harsh climates. They made stone tools of their own, which they used to hunt for game, including rhinos and other big mammals.

At first, researchers found no clear evidence of symbolic thought in Neanderthals. But in recent years, that picture has begun to change.

Neanderthals could use feathers and bird claws as ornaments, archaeologists found. But some scientists were skeptical about what these findings meant.

Neanderthals might have lived near modern humans, after all, and spotted them making things. Neanderthals were smart enough to copy the ornaments, the thinking went — but not enough to invent them.

This debate was fueled in part by technological uncertainty: It can be very difficult to pin down a firm date for human fossils and artifacts.

To determine the age of cave paintings, for example, researchers have traditionally relied on radiocarbon dating. But that method only works if the paint contains carbon-bearing ingredients, such as charcoal. Red ocher, by contrast, can’t be dated this way.

Making matters worse, radiocarbon dating becomes increasingly unreliable beyond about 40,000 years.

Dr. Zilhão joined with archaeologists Alistair G.W. Pike of the University of Southampton and Dirk L. Hoffmann, now at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, to see if the prehistory of European art could be brought into sharper focus.

Instead of studying radiocarbon, they would use a different clock to tell time.

As water seeps into caves, it may deposit milky crusts of minerals on the walls known as flowstones. Flowstones contain tiny amounts of uranium, which slowly breaks down into thorium. The older a flowstone gets, the more thorium builds up inside it.

A flowstone covering a piece of cave art might give Dr. Zilhão and his colleagues a minimum age for its creation. The problem was that scientists usually needed big chunks to find enough uranium and thorium to measure. The flowstones on cave art were typically very small.

But Dr. Hoffman had been working on ways to drastically increase the sensitivity of the technology so that he could work with much smaller samples.

The researchers returned to caves in Spain where ancient paintings had been discovered over the past century. The artists had drawn abstract images on the cave walls, including long lines, patterns of dots, and the outline of a human hand.

The team found flowstones covering parts of the artworks and scraped away samples for dating. In three caves, it turned out, some of the art was over 64,000 years

“They must have been made by Neanderthals,” said Dr. Pike.

Wil Roebroeks, an archaeologist at Leiden University who was not involved in the new study, said the evidence was conclusive. “This constitutes a major breakthrough in the field of human evolution studies,” he said. “Neanderthal authorship of some cave art is a fact.”

Dating flowstones is a big advance on previous techniques for determining the age of cave art, but the technology has one major limitation: it can only assign a minimum age to cave paintings. Flowstones may have begun forming the day after a painting was finished — or 10,000 years afterward.

But a second study, which Dr. Zilhão and his colleagues published Thursday in the journal Science Advances, hints that Neanderthals might well have been painting long before 64,000 years ago.

The scientists traveled to a cave on the coast of Spain where Dr. Zilhão had earlier discovered shells that had been drilled with holes and painted with ocher.

In 2010, he and his colleagues had used radiocarbon dating to estimate the age of other shells in the same layer of rock at 45,000 to 50,000 years old.

That result did not tell the team who made the ornaments. Neanderthals might be responsible, but it was also possible that the earliest modern humans in Europe made them.

And the uncertainties of radiocarbon dating also had left open the possibility that the shells were, in fact, far older.

Dr. Zilhão returned to the cave in order to try uranium dating. He and his colleagues discovered a layer of flowstone sitting atop the rock where they had found the shell jewelry. That flowstone turned out to be about 115,000 years old.

The colored, pierced shells themselves are probably not much older than that. Up until about 118,000 years ago, the cave was flooded, thanks to higher sea levels.

That finding provides strong evidence that the shells were made by Neanderthals. They were definitely living in Spain 115,000 years ago, while modern humans would not arrive in Europe for another 70,000 years.

The two new studies don’t just indicate that Neanderthals could make cave art and jewelry. They also establish that Neanderthals were making these things long before modern humans — a blow to the idea that they simply copied their cousins.

The earliest known cave paintings made by modern humans are only about 40,000 years old, while Neanderthal cave art is at least 24,000 years older. The oldest known shell jewelry made by modern humans is about 70,000 years old, but Neanderthals were making it 45,000 years before then.

“These results imply that Neanderthals were not apart from these developments,” said Dr. Zilhão. “For all practical purposes, they were modern humans, too.”

The new studies raise another intriguing possibility, said Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum: that the capacity for symbolic thought was already present 600,000 years ago in the ancestors of both Neanderthals and modern humans.

He agreed with Dr. Zilhão that the new study supports the idea that Neanderthals used language. In addition to the evidence of symbolic thought, researchers have also found that the inner ears of Neanderthals were tuned to the frequencies of speech, much like our own.

“We don’t know how they spoke or what they said,” said Dr. Finlayson. “But they had the ability of speech.”

The cave paintings that Dr. Pike and his colleagues have dated are generally abstract. There’s no evidence so far that Neanderthals painted images of lions and other animals, as modern humans did thousands of years later.

But Dr. Pike doesn’t think a lack of animal imagery marks a mental deficiency in Neanderthals. It could simply reflect a cultural preference.

“It could just be that they had a different belief system and didn’t think animals were important to depict in deep caves,” he said. “If you have to prepare your pigment and get to a place in the pitch dark to paint a red line, that’s as meaningful as someone painting a bison.”

In the past, many researchers have claimed that mental differences between modern humans and Neanderthals were the reason we are alive today and Neanderthal populations have vanished. Our own ancestors, it’s been argued, were able to come up with creative solutions for survival.

The accumulating evidence puts Neanderthals on a more equal footing. They evolved physical differences after the split from modern humans, possibly as they adapted to the harsh northern climates where they settled.

But their culture developed in parallel with that of modern humans in Africa. And their disappearance is not evidence of inferiority, only of the inexorable mechanics of evolution.

“Neanderthals have disappeared. So have Fuegian Indians. So have Greenland Vikings,” said Dr. Zilhão. “Population extinction has been a part of human history forever.”