Make Sunsets, a company behind a recent controversial effort to cool the earth by releasing particles of sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the upper atmosphere to reflect incoming heat, is canceling its upcoming experiments in Mexico, following a rebuke from the Mexican government.

“We have decided not to do launches in Mexico until we come up with a way to collaborate with the Mexican government,” Luke Iseman, the company’s founder, tells TIME in reaction to Mexico announcing on Jan. 13 plans to ban geoengineering. “We want to be working hard with government partners to buy us time for others to solve the shared challenges that we have to prevent catastrophic warming.”

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The two-person company made news in the climate world last month when the MIT Technology Review reported that they had launched weather balloons containing helium and SO2 in the Mexican state of Baja California last spring—the first recorded attempt to alter the stratosphere in the name of climate action.

The intent was that the balloons would burst when they reached the upper atmosphere and release the SO2, which would theoretically reflect solar radiation back into space. Such methods, known as stratospheric solar geoengineering, are one of the most controversial areas of study in the climate world, due to the possibility of large-scale SO2 releases affecting global weather and agriculture in unpredictable ways. Many environmental activists are also opposed to the possibility, arguing that geoengineering constitutes a moral hazard, since polluters could conceivably argue that it gives them license to continue emitting planet-warming greenhouse gasses.

Following news of the Make Sunsets launch, the Mexican government issued a press release saying that it would “prohibit and, where appropriate, stop experimentation practices with solar geoengineering,” citing a lack of international agreements and a 2010 UN moratorium on the practice. The announcement also noted that the startup had not consulted authorities before it carried out the experiments.

“It was surprising that people feel like we’re trying to sneak around some law when that is not the intent,” Iseman says. “There doesn’t appear to be some permit that I should have filed for and did not.”

Experts say that Make Sunsets’ SO2 release was small enough not to constitute an environmental danger, but many have criticized the company for attempting to profit off largely untested science. Make Sunsets sells $10 “Cooling Credits” on its website in exchange for releasing a gram of SO2 into the stratosphere, which it claims will correspond to eliminating the warming effect on one ton of carbon dioxide emissions for one year.

One of the concerns about geoengineering is the possibility that individual countries or even lone actors might take up the practice of their own accord, attempting to alter the climate without global buy-in or robust scientific support, a possibility that Make Sunsets might seem to illustrate.

Iseman, for his part, argues that there is no time to wait to pursue last-ditch climate efforts. He is hopeful that he can find another country more supportive of his work. “If someone, somewhere in the world wants to launch a balloon with us, I hope they reach out,” he says. “And if they are a government, I will bend over backward to be on the next plane to visit them.”

Welcome to the California Briefing, the weekly dispatch of California Jewish news from the Forward’s Louis Keene. In this edition: Jewish-made zombies, giant zippers, a letter from Streisand and more “Dave.”

To get the latest on pop culture, politics and Jewish life in the Golden State in your inbox every Thursday, subscribe here: forward.com/california.

This fake LeBron James tweet isn’t real. I wish it was.

As I was scrolling Instagram late on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a suggested account, @thesportsmemery, showed me what appeared to be a screenshot of a LeBron James tweet. In the apparent tweet, LeBron had written “Nvr 4get @Kaepernick7 lost everything for telling the truth. #KaepWasRight.”

It’s a fake tweet, but it looks legit! Courtesy of @sportsmemery

But instead of the accompanying photo being of Colin Kaepernick — the Black San Francisco 49ers quarterback who was effectively banished from the NFL for kneeling during the national anthem — it depicted Jew-fro sporting rapper Lil Dicky, wearing a 49ers jacket. (Kaepernick and Dicky are similarly hirsute, but to say they look alike would be a risible stretch.)

The same image also shows Kaepernick’s apparent reply to the James tweet: “Thank u brotha ✊🏾 I think that’s a photo of Lil Dicky, but still…Much love ✊🏾”

“Honest mistake 👑,” @thesportsmemery’s Instagram caption reads, seemingly taking the high road on what would have to be the most embarrassing faux pas in James’ two decades in the public eye.

Deep down, I knew it couldn’t be real. And it wasn’t. But I’m not letting the fantasy go. Instead, I have simply decided to exist in the world where the LeBron James/Lil Dicky/Colin Kaepernick tweet was real.

James mistaking a Jewish humorist for racial justice touchstone Colin Kaepernick would hardly make up for his disappointingly late, and weak, response to the swirl of antisemitic hate kicked up by his former teammate Kyrie Irving. But it might give us a grim feeling of cosmic justice, or at the very least, a bitter laugh.

(The third season of Dicky’s hilarious show, Dave, premieres April 5 on FX.)

What we’re watching and not watching

🧟  Critics (including me) are hyping The Last of Us, a new horror series on HBO Max from Israeli American creator Neil Druckmann, that premiered Sunday (trailer above), as the rare video game adaptation worth its budget — which exceeded that of each of the first five seasons of Game of Thrones — and your time. This profile of Druckmann and co-producer Craig Mazin in The New Yorker will convince you it’s deeper than a zombie show. But there are definitely zombies!

💌  With a casting controversy and a buccal fat tabloid circus (mostly) behind her, Funny Girl’s Lea Michele went on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to spill her superstitions — which involve a letter from Barbra Streisand.

🥺 Last week I demanded you watch Ke Huy Quan’s touching tribute to Steven Spielberg at the Golden Globes. Here’s Spielberg’s response.

𑁍  The White Lotus star Aubrey Plaza will host this week’s Saturday Night Live, and she dropped a racy teaser with SNL cast member (and noted impressionist) Chloe Fineman to promote it.

(L-R) Danielle Haim, Alana Haim, and Este Haim attend Louis Vuitton and W Magazine’s awards season dinner on Jan. 6. Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for W Magazine

What we’re reading

🤐  “We need to talk about Haim’s giant zippers.” The zippers on the Jewish girl band’s haute-fits are indeed giant.

😆 Variety profiled Modi (real name Mordechi Rosenfeld), a Laugh Factory staple who keeps showing up in my Instagram Reels cracking wise about Ashkenazi vs. Sephardic Jews. Modi’s gay, Orthodox, and a Yeshiva University graduate. He’s proud of being all three.

🤓 The San Francisco Chronicle is launching an event series at Manny’s, a cafe and lefty hotspot in the Mission run by Bay Area macher Manny Yekutiel. The series kicks off Tuesday with “Data Trivia Night,” with questions by the paper’s culture critic and data editor. Only $5 to play!

😱  Celebrity painter Jonas Wood won a bidding war for an extremely cool looking Art Nouveau hilltop mansion in the Los Feliz neighborhood of LA. I still can’t believe my $10.1 million offer was beaten.

🥰  Supermodel and bestselling author Emily Ratajkowski has now been seen on outings with comedians Eric Andre and Pete Davidson and Seagram heir Eli Bronfman in short succession, the latter two at Knicks games. Is it safe to say she has a (bold-face) type? And should I move to New York?

😇  Boy Meets World actor Ben Savage, who ran last year for West Hollywood City Council and lost, announced a run for Adam Schiff‘s soon-to-be old congressional seat.

That’s not me — that’s Dylan Cease. Photo by Ron Vesely/Getty Images

Your humble correspondents

🔎  After it was reported that White Sox ace and Cy Young runner-up Dylan Cease was on the early roster for Team Israel, I asked a genealogist to help me trace his Jewish ancestry. We found burial records, marriage licenses, and … the tombstone of his apparent great-great-grandfather, Koppel Hirsh Cease. This is the most fun I’ve had writing a story in some time.

Finally, in the we-are-so-lucky-to-live-in-California-department…

Ryan Turell‘s Motor City Cruise came to the Los Angeles area for three games this week, and I’ll be at the third tonight in El Segundo, where they’ll be playing the South Bay Lakers. If you’ll be there too, come say hello! I’m the one who looks kinda like Dylan Cease.

The post California Briefing: This fake LeBron tweet isn’t real. I wish it was. appeared first on The Forward.

דער הײַנטיקער קאַרטון, געשאַפֿן פֿון ראַבינערטע ר. ווײַס, שפּיגלט אָפּ אַן ענין וואָס ווערט אָפֿט באַהאַנדלט אין די נײַעס די טעג.

The post CARTOON: This dove has a problem appeared first on The Forward.

With all the bad things going on in our world, Republicans are determined to focus on classified document related to President Biden. James Comer (R-KY), who is now chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, has opened an investigation into classified documents-on Biden, not Trump. According to the Hill, he has asked for visitor logs, security information, and donations to China. Keep in mind that this is one of the same men who downplayed Donald Trump’s taking of hundreds of classified documents. By most accounts, approximately two dozen documents have been found in President Biden’s think tank office and his home. Richard Sauber, who is special counsel to President Biden, told CNBC: “The documents were discovered when the President’s personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space….” President Biden used the office “periodically” from 2017 until he announced his run for president in 2020. The documents were obviously there-they were found there-but they were also obviously not being used by the president for any reason.

Alternatively, Donald Trump left the White House with over 100 classified documents and tried to prevent the DOJ from confiscating them. Unlike Biden, he obviously had some use for them in mind, and they were mixed in with his personal belongings as if he needed to refer to them periodically. The holding of classified documents is not a good thing, no matter who is holding them, but trying to compare President Biden’s documents issue to Trump is like comparing apples to grapefruit. They are not at all similar. Republicans such as Comer and Jim Jordan, however, are taking this opportunity to try to paint President Biden in a bad light, even as they continue to ignore what Donald Trump did. Republicans are on a crash course of trying to destroy what’s left of this country. While they focus on something that is already being investigated, they have put conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Green on the Homeland Security Committee of all places. Adding insult to that injury, George Santos is going to the Small Business and Science committees. Perhaps he can teach small businesses how to make money by lying and cheating. The very nature of these appointments is beyond ironic.

Meanwhile, Republicans are determined to fight any proposals lifting the debt ceiling, which will be disastrous for the U.S. Many believe that Republicans are eyeing social security and Medicare as bargaining tools-programs depended on and paid into by retired and almost-retired Americans. The Hill reported that experts believe the failure to reach a deal on the debt ceiling “could plunge the world into recession and a financial crisis.” We can’t afford for that to happen, regardless of what Republicans think about social security and Medicare. If they want to steal money from hardworking people who were forced into a retirement plan not of their choosing, let them go for it. They had better think long and hard before they start trying to take money from people who never asked to be part of the system.

The post Shameless and useless appeared first on Palmer Report.

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday he is looking forward to getting the investigation into classified documents found at his home and former office resolved and said he has no regrets.

Attorney General Merrick Garland last week named a special counsel to investigate the matter after classified documents were found at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home and a Washington, D.C., office he used before becoming president.

“We’re fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly,” Biden said in remarks after touring flood damage in Northern California.

Biden said he has been doing as instructed by his lawyers after “a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place.” He said the documents were immediately turned over to the National Archives after they were found.

“I think you’re gonna find there’s nothing there. I have no regrets,” Biden said.

The White House has largely been on the defensive since the initial revelations on Jan. 9 that the documents had been discovered.

David Crosby, one of the most influential rock singers of the 1960s and ’70s with the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) has died at the age of 81, Variety reported on Thursday, citing a statement from Crosby’s wife.

“It is with great sadness after a long illness, that our beloved David (Croz) Crosby has passed away” Variety quoted his wife, Jan Dance, as saying in the statement.

Crosby’s UK-based representatives could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters.

Crosby was a founding member of two revered rock bands: the country and folk influenced Byrds, for whom he cowrote the hit “Eight Miles High,” and CSNY, who defined the smooth side of the Woodstock generation’s music. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of both groups.

Musically, Crosby stood out for his intricate vocal harmonies, unorthodox open tunings on guitar and incisive songwriting. His work with both the Byrds and CSN/CSNY blended rock and folk in new ways and their music became a part of the soundtrack for the hippie era.

“I don’t know what to say other than I’m heartbroken to hear about David Crosby. David was an unbelievable talent – such a great singer and songwriter. And a wonderful person,” Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson said on Twitter.

Personally, Crosby was the embodiment of the credo “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll,” and a 2014 Rolling Stone magazine article tagged him “rock’s unlikeliest survivor.”

In addition to drug addictions that ultimately led to a transplant to replace a liver worn out by decades of excess, his tumultuous life included a serious motorcycle accident, the death of a girlfriend, and battles against hepatitis C and diabetes.

“I’m concerned that the time I’ve got here is so short, and I’m pissed at myself, deeply, for the 10 years — at least — of time that I wasted just getting smashed,” Crosby told the Los Angeles Times in July 2019. “I’m ashamed of that.”

He fell “as low as a human being can go,” Crosby told the Times.

He also managed to alienate many of his famous former bandmates for which he often expressed remorse in recent years.

His drug habits and often abrasive personality contributed to the demise of CSNY and the members eventually quit speaking to each other. In the 2019 documentary “David Crosby: Remember My Name,” he made clear he hoped they could work together again but conceded the others “really dislike me, strongly.”

Crosby fathered six children – two as a sperm donor to rocker Melissa Etheridge’s partner and another who was placed for adoption at birth and did not meet Crosby until he was in his 30s. That son, James Raymond, would eventually become his musical collaborator.

“Thank you @thedavidcrosby I will miss you my friend,” Etheridge said on Twitter alongside a photo of the two of them.

Looking back at the turbulent 1960s and his life, Crosby told Time magazine in 2006: “We were right about civil rights; we were right about human rights; we were right about peace being better than war … But I think we didn’t know our butt from a hole in the ground about drugs and that bit us pretty hard.”

Crosby was born on Aug. 14, 1941, in Los Angeles. His father was a cinematographer who won a Golden Globe for “High Noon” in 1952 and his mother exposed him to the folk group the Weavers and to classical music.

As a teenager, Crosby found that one of his passions aided him in the pursuit of another. “It (playing music) was absolutely joyous to me,” he wrote. “I always loved it. I always will love it. And I did get laid.”

After a stay in New York’s Greenwich Village music scene, Crosby was back in California in 1963 and helped Roger McGuinn start the Byrds, whose first hit, a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” came in 1965, followed by “Turn! Turn! Turn!”

Crosby was kicked out of the Byrds because the band did not want to play his songs with the flashpoint being “Triad,” about a menage a trois, and disputes over on-stage political rants.

Crosby and Stephen Stills, whose band with Neil Young Buffalo Springfield had fallen apart, then began playing together. Graham Nash of the Hollies, who met Crosby in 1966 and went on to become his closest collaborator and a closer friend, joined them. Their first album, “Crosby, Stills and Nash,” was a big seller in 1969 with such songs as “Marrakesh Express,” “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” and “Guinnevere.”

Guitarist and singer/songwriter Young fell in with them that year and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young came to be considered one of the greatest amalgams of talent in rock history.

Their second performance together was the landmark Woodstock music festival in 1969 and their 1970 album, “Deja Vu” contained hits “Teach Your Children,” and “Woodstock,” and one of Crosby’s signature songs, “Almost Cut My Hair.”

As CSNY was taking off, Crosby was in a drug-fueled downward spiral caused by the 1969 death of girlfriend Christine Hinton in a car accident.

“I had no way to deal with that, nothing in my life had prepared me for that,” wrote Crosby, who had added cocaine and heroin to his drug repertoire.

The next decade was a blur of drug arrests, album releases and women. “I was not into being monogamous – I made that plain to everybody concerned. I was a complete and utter pleasure-seeking sybarite,” he wrote in his autobiography.

Crosby had a daughter with a girlfriend but soon left her for Jan Dance, who moved in with him in 1978. That relationship lasted and they had a son, Django, in 1995.

Crosby introduced Dance to heroin and the free-basing method of smoking cocaine. “We went down the tubes together but we did it with our hearts intertwined,” he wrote.

There were several failed attempts at rehab and Crosby developed a reputation as a bloated, hapless addict. In 1985, Nash told Rolling Stone: “I’ve tried everything – extreme anger, extreme compassion. I’ve gotten 20 of his best friends in the same room with him. I’ve tried hanging out with him. I’ve tried not hanging out with him.”

Crosby beat a series of drug charges but lost in Texas after being arrested with a drug pipe and gun at a club in Dallas and went to prison in 1985. The prison system required him to shave his trademark bushy mustache, but he found solace in playing in the prison band during his year of incarceration.

“Playing and singing straight was an unfamiliar feeling,” he wrote. “I hadn’t been onstage with a drug-free system in more than 25 years.”

After his release, Crosby told People magazine he had beaten his addictions.

“Most people who go as far as I did with drugs are dead,” he said. “Hard drugs will hook anyone. I don’t care who you are … I have a Ph.D. in drugs.”

He was also arrested on gun and marijuana charges in New York in 2004.

In 2014 he released “Croz,” his first solo album since 1993, but his tour to promote the record was interrupted in February by heart surgery.

He continued recording and was an active, presence on Twitter, in addition to writing an advice column in Rolling Stone.

In March 2021, the Guardian reported that Crosby sold the recorded music and publishing rights to his entire music catalog to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group for an undisclosed sum. He was quoted as saying that the COVID-19 pandemic prevented him from playing concerts and that the widespread use of music streaming “stole my money.”

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CIA Director William Burns recently traveled in secret to Ukraine’s capital to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a U.S. official told Reuters on Thursday.

“Director Burns traveled to Kyiv, where he met with Ukrainian intelligence counterparts as well as President Zelenskiy and reinforced our continued support for Ukraine and its defense against Russian aggression,” the U.S. official, who declined to be identified, said.

The official declined to say when the visit took place. The Washington Post, which first reported the visit, said it took place at the end of last week.

Burns briefed Zelenskiy on his expectations on Russia’s upcoming military plans, the newspaper said, adding he also acknowledged that at some point U.S. assistance would be harder to come by.

Zelensky and his senior intelligence officials discussed how long Ukraine could expect U.S. and Western assistance to continue after Republicans won a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the midterm elections, the Washington Post reported, citing sources.

Zelenskiy and his aides came away from last week’s meeting with the impression that U.S. support for Kyiv remained strong, the newspaper said.

Western allies have pledged billions of dollars in weapons for Ukraine. Fearing winter will give Russian forces time to regroup and unleash a major attack, Ukraine is pushing for more assistance to combat Moscow’s invasion which began in February last year.

In his trip to Washington in December, Zelenskiy told the U.S. Congress that aid to Ukraine is an investment in democracy, and not charity, while pressing for continued American support.

The United States on Thursday announced a new package of military assistance for Ukraine it valued at up to $2.5 billion, including hundreds of armored vehicles and support for Ukraine’s air defense.

APTOS, Calif. (AP) — A frustrated President Joe Biden said Thursday there is “no there there” when persistently questioned about the discovery of classified documents and official records at his home and former office,

“We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place,” Biden said to reporters who questioned him during a tour of the damage from storms in California. “We immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department.”

Biden said he was “fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.

“I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there,” he said. “There’s no there there.”

The White House has disclosed that Biden attorneys found classified documents and official records on four separate occasions — on Nov. 2 at the offices of the Penn Biden Center in Washington, on Dec. 20 in the garage of the president’s Wilmington, Delaware, home, and on Nov. 11 and 12 in the president’s home library.

Discovery of the documents in Biden’s possession complicates a federal probe into former President Donald Trump, who the Justice Department says took hundreds of records marked classified with him upon leaving the White House in early 2021 and resisted months of requests to return them to the government.

The two cases are different — Biden for example, willingly turned over the documents once found. But the issue is wearing on the president and his aides and allies, who have repeatedly said they acted swiftly and appropriately when the documents were discovered. They have sought to focus the media’s attention back onto his agenda.

Biden expressed frustration that the documents matter was coming up as he surveyed coastal storm damage, telling reporters that it “bugs me” that he was being asked about the handling of the classified material even as “we have a serious problem here” in California.

“Why you don’t ask me questions about that?” he pressed.

Attorney General Merrick Garland last week appointed Robert Hur, a former Maryland U.S. attorney, to serve as special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s inquiry into the documents.

(NewsNation) — The Monday killing of six people at a home in central California remains unsolved, but what happened may be linked to a far bigger and growing issue — Mexican cartel revenge killings on American soil.

The victims of the shooting in Goshen, California, ranged in age from just 10 months to 72 years old and were killed in less than an hour.

Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said the home was known for drug activity, and one of the victims had gang affiliations.

“This was a family that was massacred on purpose, and they were targeted specifically,” Boudreaux told NewsNation. “This was a message that was being sent from someone to someone.”

Law enforcement had been at the house just two weeks earlier in a raid that netted guns, marijuana and methamphetamine. 

“This is not something that is characteristic of gangs. Women and children are to be left alone, unless there is something so egregious that it involves the cartel to get involved,” Boudreaux said.

The sheriff said Thursday he’s confident investigators will find the perpetrator. Earlier in the week, Boudreaux did not definitely say the shooting was committed by cartel members, but he said his department isn’t ruling out the possibility.

Consistent drug demand in the U.S. is driving increased cartel activity everywhere. Goshen is a remote farming town in Tulare County, between Bakersfield and Fresno. Authorities have yet to confirm which cartel may be responsible.

The Drug Enforcement Agency has been tracking the two biggest players for decades and offering big rewards — $15 million for Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael Zambada Garcia, known as “El Mayo,” and $10 million for Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera-Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.”

There have been scores of killings in America linked to cartels.

In 2021, a North Carolina high school teacher died in a shootout after he tried to steal drugs and money from a cartel stash house.

“As sheriff, I’m still worried about some retaliation because the Mexican cartels, they don’t forget,” Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson said at the time. “They’re going to pay somebody back.”

According to U.S. officials, Mexican cartels supply the bulk of illegal drugs — mainly cocaine, heroin, meth and fentanyl. The dealing and deadly revenge are rampant.

“Fentanyl (is) coming across our border, methamphetamine (is) coming across our border, and the cartels (are) freely coming in across our border, using the state of California, in the United States, as if it was their own property,” Boudreaux said.

In the case of the Goshen shooting, authorities are searching for at least two suspects. A number of relatives did not respond to requests for comment.

Neighbors have also declined to speak with the media, with some telling NewsNation affiliate KSEE they are fearful of stepping outside their homes.

On Thursday in Paris, trains were at a standstill. Schools were empty. The Eiffel Tower was closed to visitors.

But at the Place de Republique, over 80,000 protesters filled the streets holding signs with messages like “don’t touch my retirement!”

The “Black Thursday” strikes were organized by several prominent trade unions in France in opposition to President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to overhaul the pension program. Railways, schools, and refineries were amongst the industries that saw workers walk out in protest, calling the decision a “historic regression.”

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Pushing the Retirement Age

Macron introduced his plan to overhaul the pension system last week, which included a measure to raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64. The proposal is nothing novel—Macron first proposed changing the pension system back when he was elected in 2017, as France’s retirement age is among the lowest in the world.

As populations age and birth rates decline across the world, many countries have been forced to raise their retirement ages to meet the growing number of those seeking pension. Spain’s minimum retirement age is 65, and the U.K’s is 67, with an increase to 68 planned in 2044. Germany’s retirement age is currently 67, but the country is considering raising their retirement age to 70 as they face a dip in pension funds.

“In France, those who are currently working pay into the fund that those in retirement are paid from,” explains Andreas Bieler, a Professor of Political Economy at University of Nottingham who focuses on labor movements. ”Because there is a change in population [and] there are more older people in retirement and fewer younger workers who actually pay, there are concerns about sustainability.”

Kiran Ridley—Getty ImagesA passenger boards a suburban train at Gare de l’Est Railway Station in Paris as France is hit by widespread traffic disruption with limited services running as transport workers join a nationwide strike on Jan. 19.

Then and now, changes to the program were not met warmly. In 2019, when the government presented a points-based system that would allow a person to retire once they had gained a certain number of points, thousands of protesters took the streets across France in what was one of the longest demonstrations in France’s history. The government was forced to drop the measures amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The new plan is more straightforward, increasing funds by making the French work longer. A recent public opinion poll found that over 60% of French people oppose the plans, which has united France’s left and far-right groups in their opposition.

The planned reforms would yield an additional 17.7 billion euros ($19.1 billion) in annual pension contributions, allowing the system to break even by 2027, according to Labour Ministry estimates. The unions have called for other ways to increase funds, like taxing the ultra-rich or increasing employer payroll contributions, Reuters reported.

“When there’s a strike, they better focus on what the citizens taking action have to say,” said Phillippe Martinez, the Secretary General of the CNT trade union. “It’s rare in France to see all the trade unions agreeing on something, so it demonstrates the seriousness of the problem to those leading the country.”

Widespread Strikes

The protests drew out a million people and extended across major French cities, including Marseille, Toulouse, Nantes and Nice and come as a cost of living crisis continues to squeeze out workers worldwide.

Bart Biesemans—ReutersA general view of Place de la Republique as protesters attend a day of national strike and protests in Paris, Jan. 19.

Last year, workers across France demonstrated to protest rising inflation and demand salary increases. The U.K. has seen a number of strikes across the NHS, rail services, and universities, with the country’s rail minister, Huw Merriman, confirming that the government lost more money due to the impact of rail strikes than it would have cost to settle the disputes months ago.

With the war in Ukraine continuing to impact energy prices and inflation on the rise worldwide, Bieler says that these movements are more likely to pick up steam. “All of this is happening against the background of a cost of living crisis,” says Bieler. “We have increasing levels of inflation, we haven’t seen since the 70s and of course, we’ve just come out of a pandemic which has already put downward pressure on wages and people’s income and savings.”

“Workers are being squeezed.” says Bieler, who notes that wage increases are not matching the ballooning inflation. “A lot of people are in really emergency situations.”

What Comes Next?

Macron plans to proceed with the changes despite protests. AP reported that, during a news conference at a French-Spanish summit in Barcelona, Spain, Macron said that “we must do that reform” to “save” the pension system.

“We will do it with respect, in a spirit of dialogue but also determination and responsibility,” he added. The change is expected to be debated in Parliament next month, where Macron no longer has an absolute majority.

Bieler notes that protests haven’t always been enough to move the needle against pension reforms in the past. Millions took the street in protest when Conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy moved the retirement age to 62 from 60 in 2010, but the action did not prevent the reform from going through.

“In the end, I think there always have to be compromises and some reform is going to take place,” says Bieler.

But the French unions aren’t backing down yet, calling for another strike on Jan. 31st.

“The government must give up,” the unions said in a statement, according to Bloomberg News. “This reform is unacceptable and goes against the interests of the population. Workers want to retire in good health.”