Disney World’s literal nuclear option, explained
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This casino’s microgrid might be the future of energy
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
As the Fukushima disaster unfolded in Japan, the Blue Lake Rancheria, in Northern California, was dealing with its own crisis. Several miles inland and uphill from the Pacific Ocean, the 100 acres of tribal land had turned into a haven for roughly 3,000 coastal dwellers who were fleeing a feared tsunami from that same earthquake. A huge line of cars assembled at the Rancheria’s gas station; one young woman ran in circles, holding her baby and weeping.
Local inundation ended up being relatively minor. But the Blue Lake Rancheria was shaken. “That was an eye-opener,” says Jana Ganion, sustainability and government affairs director at the Rancheria. “We need to prepare for the disasters that are reasonably foreseeable here.”
Tsunamis for one. But also the massive earthquake that’s going to devastate the Northwest. And California’s annual wildfires, made ever more vicious by climate change. These disasters all have one thing in common: They threaten to cut the Blue Lake Rancheria off from the grid for days, maybe weeks. Tucked behind the state’s “Redwood Curtain,” the Rancheria’s rural placement affords it few access points, and roads may be inaccessible in the aftermath of a disaster.
The answer was to help pioneer what could be the future of energy in California and beyond. Working with scientists at the Schatz Energy Research Center at nearby Humboldt State University, and the local utility PG&E, the Rancheria developed its own solar-powered microgrid, allowing it to disconnect from the main grid and run off Tesla battery power. The setup powers six buildings, including a 55,000-square-foot casino and 102 hotel rooms — over 140,000 square feet of total building space.
The tribe — which tallies just 49 members — is under constant threat from wildfire, along with many other communities in California. In autumn, seasonal winds rustle electric equipment, showering sparks onto dry brush below. State officials have blamed PG&E for starting 17 of California’s 21 major fires in 2017 alone, as well as for last year’s devastating Camp Fire, which virtually destroyed the town of Paradise, leveling almost 20,000 buildings and killing 85. If the utility had cut power when winds near Paradise became particularly intense, that deadly blaze might never have ignited. But concerns about local hospitals and other emergency facilities tend to prevent utilities from taking such preemptive actions. Switching to microgrids during especially dangerous wind storms could keep the state’s mountain towns much safer.
But take it from the Blue Lake Rancheria: Building a microgrid isn’t so easy as throwing up a bunch of solar panels, bolting batteries to the ground, and saying au revoir to the grid at large. It takes a whole lot of time and expertise and money, about $6.3 million for the Rancheria so far — $5 million in R&D money granted by the California Energy Commission in 2015, and the rest coming from the Rancheria itself. But that research money is an investment that communities throughout California could soon benefit from.
Construction of the Rancheria’s microgrid began in May 2016, and a little over a year later, PG&E gave its blessing to begin operation. In an ideal world where the sun always shines, the Rancheria could power itself indefinitely, recharging its batteries using more than 1,500 solar panels during the day and depleting them in the evening. But on a gloomy day, such as the one on which I toured the grounds, the panels struggle to collect photons—they’re generating 120 kilowatts, compared to 420 kilowatts when the sun is cranking full-blast. On a typical day the Rancheria still draws a small amount of power from PG&E’s grid to stabilize the system. But if they lose that connection for whatever reason, those six core buildings could theoretically last for months on solar power, with backup generators kicking in at night or during periods of cloudiness.
At the entrance to the Rancheria’s offices, Dave Carter, managing research engineer at Schatz Energy Research Center, shows me a pair of flat screens. One displays a family-tree-looking diagram, with lines connecting the utility and microgrid to buildings like the hotel and casino and offices. The other screen displays a graph of energy pricing throughout the day. Noon to 6 p.m. is when electricity costs the most, so the system charges the batteries in the morning, so it can be discharged in the afternoon when the utility has its peak pricing.
The Rancheria is building out its system even further. It just added 167 panels above the pumps at its gas station, which it will switch on this summer. Behind the station, electricians are installing another Tesla battery pack to store that extra energy. And so long as they have the money, the tribe can add still more panels and batteries to boost its capacity and hedge against cloudy days.
Building out a microgrid, however, is no easy task for any community. “All of those buildings are going to be in various states of repair, they’re going to have various vintages of electrical systems and diesel backup generators,” says Ganion, who oversaw the project for the Rancheria. “So what we learned very quickly is that the controller on the diesel generator wasn’t smart enough to talk to the microgrid system. We had to do a bunch of work in the middle.”
Ganion hopes to turn the Rancheria’s hard-fought lessons into “a one-stop shop for communities who want to develop microgrids.” Think of it like the evolution of the personal computer: The Rancheria is basically operating as if it’s the 1980s, having to assemble a PC on its own, while one day other communities may be able to buy a microgrid that works more or less right out of the box, like a sleek modern laptop.
That might sound like something that utilities like PG&E would try to prevent. (PG&E declined to comment for this story.) Their business, after all, is in keeping customers dependent on their services. But as the world slowly moves away from fossil fuel energy plants, the utilities of the future will start to look less like energy producers and distributors, and more like just distributors. “It’s the future of the grid in California,” says Peter Lehman, founding director of the Schatz Energy Research Center.
Utilities won’t just operate power lines and other infrastructure for ferrying around electricity. Helping to develop microgrids could become part of their core business. The Rancheria’s microgrid is still in constant communication with the grid at large. “You have to work really closely with the utility on that,” says Carter, of Schatz Energy Research Center.
That interdependence means that utilities have a natural role to play in a microgrid world. The alternative is business as usual: a labyrinthine statewide network of power lines that utilities are loath to disconnect, even during high-wind events that cause and fuel wildfires, because of the liability involved in losing power to critical services.
The challenge for small, isolated communities, though, is the cost — Tesla recommends installing two of its Powerwall batteries to ensure even a small home can go a week off the grid, a system that will set you back $14,500 just in equipment costs. “What would it cost to do this, and who should be paying for it?” asks Richard Tabors, president of Tabors Caramanis Rudkevich, an energy consulting firm. “Initially, to be absolutely honest, the state of California should be paying for it.” The state is, after all, suffering an unprecedented wildfire crisis. It’s a matter of saving lives, but also of smart investing: Last November’s Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive in state history, caused over $16 billion in damages.
The Rancheria describes its experience with PG&E in positive terms, but others hoping to install home solar have not been so fortunate, says Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association. “The sad thing is the utilities just have a stranglehold on policymaking and regulation making,” she says. “They absolutely are giant barriers to people being able to even just do the simple self-generation.”
Yet as California moves toward powering itself with 100 percent clean energy by 2045, making solar installations easier will become paramount. The challenge will be largely one of management, such as determining who’s responsible for maintaining different parts of the grid. Because maintenance comes with liability — you don’t want to be the one whose mismanaged equipment sparks the next deadly wildfire.
Meanwhile, the Schatz Energy Research Center is helping design a microgrid for Humboldt County’s regional airport down the road from the Blue Lake Rancheria, which will include a nine-acre solar array. And the Rancheria will keep iterating on its own microgrid, adding capacity and streamlining the overall process.
Ganion walks me through the parking lot and says the Rancheria is planning to add car shelters with solar panels. Behind the hotel and casino we find the two-acre solar farm — panel after panel soaking up photons through the cloud cover. In its next experiment with the future of energy, she says the Rancheria might start toying with a simple form of carbon sequestration, encouraging the growth of plants underneath the panels to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
“When you come back, we might have an herb garden growing under there,” says Ganion. “It would beat the weeds, for sure.”
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The Sunrise Movement has a plan to force presidential candidates to address climate change
The Sunrise Movement has had a big year: The climate activist group staged a protest in Nancy Pelosi’s office, helped spur a standoff between kids and California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, and had a meeting with Beto O’Rourke that resulted in the candidate taking a pledge to eschew fossil fuel donations. Sunrise activists are known for coming in real hot and pushing the Green New Deal like their lives depend on it. The next piece of their climate plan is no different.
On Monday night, the group hosted a rally in Washington, D.C., featuring two of the patron saints of the current climate movement: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders. At that rally, between jabs at Joe Biden’s alleged “middle of the road” climate approach and stabs at the fossil fuel industry, Sunrise unveiled the next rung of a ladder that the group hopes will lead all the way to the White House.
Here’s how the group aims to center the 2020 presidential race around climate change, even though the main Republican contender has one of the most severe allergies to climate action doctors have ever seen.
Sunrise hopes to get Democratic candidates to accept their three key demands: Candidates must sign the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge, make the Green New Deal a priority on day one in office, and call on the Democratic National Committee to host a climate debate. The group says it is in the process of mobilizing its network of thousands of volunteers across the nation to put pressure on the candidates to meet its demands.
Sunrise is also organizing a demonstration at the presidential debate in Detroit beginning on July 30, the deadline for candidates to accept the aforementioned three demands. The group says it will host a parallel event featuring speakers and stories from folks on the frontlines of the climate struggle.
Will 2020 candidates buckle under pressure? We’ll see. But it’s clear from the rapid-fire way Beto took the no fossil fuel money pledge that Sunrise’s tactics have left a serious impression on the presidential hopefuls: No one wants that awkward Feinstein moment.
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The Sunrise Movement has a plan to force presidential candidates to address climate change
Forget the hype. Here’s the state of clean energy in 6 charts.
The world isn’t putting its money where its mouth is to fight climate change.
That’s the depressing takeaway from an annual report the International Energy Agency released on Tuesday. Worldwide investment in renewable energy fell slightly last year, and the proportion of money budgeted to low-carbon energy has stagnated at 35 percent. The report shows that, despite all the rousing pledges to embrace clean power, governments around the world are still spending most of their investment money on new ways to burn fossil fuels.
“[I]nvestment activity in low-carbon supply and demand is stalling, in part due to insufficient policy focus to address persistent risks,” wrote EIA Executive Director Faith Birol, in the preface of the organization’s World Energy Investment report.
The following five charts from the EIA provide a sense of what is happening.
Here’s the big picture: Since 2105, the world had been pouring smaller amounts of money into all kinds of energy investments — coal, natural gas, and renewables. In 2018, instead of dwindling further, energy investments levelled off. Why? Because the money going into coal mining and oil drilling offset decreases for other projects. Investment in coal supply crept up 2 percent, the first rise since 2012.
There is some good news if you dig down far enough. For instance, the number of electric cars and buses on the roads is shooting up. And they’re displacing vehicles running on oil: “Globally, electric cars and buses sold in 2018 are expected to offset 0.1 million barrels per day of transport oil demand growth,” the report’s authors wrote.
But that’s just a drop in the oil barrel: The report also notes that fracking in the United States alone produces 6 million barrels of oil a day.
We’d need to really goose investment in low-carbon energy to keep the goals of the Paris Agreement in sight, according to this report. In 2018 spending on energy efficiency and nuclear power stayed flat from the previous year, while money for renewable power dropped. Money for batteries grew by almost half, but that’s not as significant as it sounds because we’ve never spent much on batteries.
You know what hasn’t stagnated? Demand for energy. More people around the world are installing air conditioners and gaining access to basic creature comforts like thermostats.
And we’re not building enough low-carbon electric plants to keep up.
“Energy investment is misaligned with where the world appears to be heading, and also far out of step with where it needs to go,” the authors of the report wrote. The graph below suggests that the world needs to double the amount it’s investing in low-carbon energy systems every year to have a reasonable chance of avoiding 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels.
At least the amount of government money flowing to science is increasing. And funding for energy research and development is going up.
But even that silver lining has its cloud: The money going to research isn’t keeping up with economic growth in many countries. Even though Europe’s overall economy grew last year, the European Union put a smaller percentage of its money into energy inventions.
These days politicians mostly agree that the risks of climate change are dire, but policies haven’t shifted with the rhetoric. In this snapshot, global movement toward a carbon-free energy system looks more like a tentative tiptoe than a sprint.
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Forget the hype. Here’s the state of clean energy in 6 charts.
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New map shows all the cities leading the world in climate action
Have you heard about the A list? It’s harder to clinch a spot on it than it is to score an invite to the Met Gala. And your city may be on it.
An environmental impact nonprofit called the CDP (formerly known as the carbon disclosure project) just released a list of cities that led the world in environmental performance last year. Only 43 metropolises got As in the organization’s first-ever assessment, and nearly half of them are in the United States!
Twenty-one cities in the United States made the list. And a whopping nine cities in the San Francisco Bay area got As, too — making up 21 percent of all the cities on the list. Cities all across the map — like Cape Town, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, and Paris — qualified as A-listers, as well.
So what kind of policies get you on the A list? Five of the U.S. cities are on the path to carbon neutrality by 2050 — a target that is emerging as the gold standard of decarbonization: Boston; Indianapolis; Seattle; Washington, D.C.; and West Palm Beach, Florida. Those cities may be leading the charge, but they are not alone: the Sierra Club’s Ready For 100 campaign has calculated that more than 90 U.S. cities have set or are in the process of setting 100 percent renewable energy targets.
The CDP determined the way each city scored by looking at things like climate risk and vulnerability, whether the city in question had a climate change adaptation strategy, how many emissions that city produces, and more. Of the 596 cities the nonprofit ranked, it only publicly disclosed the cities that got an A.
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New map shows all the cities leading the world in climate action
California defies Trump to ban pesticide linked to childhood brain damage
This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
California is banning a widely used pesticide that has been linked to brain damage in children, a major victory for public health advocates who have long fought to outlaw the toxic chemical in the agricultural industry.
The state ban on chlorpyrifos, a pesticide used on almonds, citrus, cotton, grapes, walnuts, and other crops, follows years of research finding the chemical causes serious health effects in children, including impaired brain and neurological development. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had moved to ban the chemical under Barack Obama, but the Trump administration reversed that effort, rejecting the scientific conclusions of its own government experts.
“Countless people have suffered as a result of this chemical,” the California EPA secretary, Jared Blumenfeld, said in an interview on Wednesday. “A lot of people live and work and go to school right next to fields that are being sprayed with chlorpyrifos … It’s an issue of environmental health and justice.”
The move in California, home to a vast agricultural sector responsible for growing a majority of the nation’s fruits and nuts, is the latest example of the state resisting Trump’s conservative agenda and policies. Environmental activists, however, have been pushing to stop chlorpyrifos use in the state for years in the wake of overwhelming evidence of harms caused by exposure.
“This is a very important and pivotal moment,” said Angel Garcia, the chair of the Coalition Advocating for Pesticide Safety, who has worked with families affected by chlorpyrifos. “It sends the message to communities that they are starting to be heard … People will now have a safer future.”
Epidemiological studies have linked chlorpyrifos to a number of health conditions. Pregnant women living near fields and farms that use the chemical have an increased risk of having a child with autism. Exposure to low to moderate levels of chlorpyrifos during pregnancy have also been associated with lower IQs and memory problems. California officials cited a recent review by a state panel on toxic air contaminants, which found the effects in children could occur at lower levels than previously understood.
“The science is definitive,” said Blumenfeld, adding that he hoped the move would spur the federal government to take action. “This job really should have been done by the U.S. EPA.”
After environmental groups sued the Trump administration for reversing the Obama-era ban, a judge ordered the federal EPA to prohibit use of chlorpyrifos last year. But the government appealed that decision, and the courts have ordered the EPA to make a final decision about chlorpyrifos by July.
Activists have accused the Trump administration of backing the interests of DowDuPont, a chlorpyrifos manufacturer whose predecessor donated to the president.
DowDuPont is now “evaluating all options to challenge” California’s ban, spokesman Gregg Schmidt said in a statement, adding that eliminating chlorpyrifos would “remove an important tool for farmers and undermines the highly effective system for regulating pesticides that has been in place at the federal level and in the state of California for decades.” He also noted that the chemical is currently approved for use in roughly 100 countries.
The U.S. banned chlorpyrifos for residential use back in 2001. An expert panel of toxicologists last year recommended a ban on all organophosphates, the class of pesticides that includes chlorpyrifos. More than 10,000 tonnes of organophosphates are sprayed in 24 European countries each year.
In California, the process of banning chlorpyrifos use across the Central Valley agricultural regions could take up to two years, officials said. In 2015, the state implemented tighter restrictions on the use of chlorpyrifos, but critics have argued that a full ban was the only way to protect the health of farming communities.
The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has also proposed $5.7 million in new funding to support the transition from chlorpyrifos to “safer, more sustainable alternatives.”
Climate change is expected to worsen pest challenges in agriculture, which means the need to find alternatives to toxic chemicals is urgent, said Blumenfeld: “It’s not just about chlorpyrifos. It’s making sure we have a more holistic and nature-based approach.”
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California defies Trump to ban pesticide linked to childhood brain damage
Under the Sea Wind – Rachel Carson
READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS
Genre: Nature
Price: $1.99
Publish Date: March 29, 2011
Publisher: Open Road Media
Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC
This New York Times bestseller by the author of the environmental classic Silent Spring beautifully details the coastal ecosystem of birds and the sea.  In her first book, preeminent nature writer Rachel Carson tells the story of the sea creatures and birds that dwell in and around the waters along North America’s eastern coast—and the delicately balanced ecosystem that sustains them. Following the life cycles of a pair of sanderlings, a mackerel, and an eel, Carson gracefully weaves scientific observation with imaginative prose to educate and inspire, creating one of the finest wildlife narratives in American literature.  This ebook features an illustrated biography of Rachel Carson including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
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Hold on to your buns, because fake burgers are going wild
The company that saw the most successful first day in U.S. IPO listings since the 2008 financial crisis? Fake meat. Last Thursday, when Beyond Meat hit the stock market, shares increased an incredible 163 percent in value to $65.75 by closing. The company’s skyrocketing success definitely made for some happy plant-based steakholders.
The company, which makes vegan beef and sausage substitutes, sold over 9.6 million shares and made $241 million on the first day alone. Although analysts expect shares to stabilize lower eventually, today, shares are still valued at around $72.
It’s a big year for meat substitutes. With celebrities like Katy Perry dressing as a vegan burger for the Met Gala, and Patriots star Tom Brady sustaining his Superbowl-winning athleticism on a mostly plant-based diet, it seems that meat is out, and fake meat is in. Although veganism and vegetarianism rates tend to stay steady, it seems more Americans are willing to put down the beef; younger generations in particular are more interested in plant-based diets.
Beyond Meat’s prices are expected to drop further in the coming months as other companies jump on board the meatless meat train. Fast food chains like Burger King and McDonald’s have already started selling veggie burgers, and Beyond Meat’s competitor Impossible Burger is selling burgers nearly faster than it can make them.
Even traditional animal-product businesses are responding to the growing plant-product protein trend. Meat giant Tyson Foods owned a 6.5 percent stake in Beyond Meat. and also backed startups Memphis Meats (read Grist’s coverage of CEO and co-founder Uma Valeti) and Future Meat Technologies Ltd. It only recently sold its Beyond Meat shares as it announced its own plans to begin production of a plant-based protein.
Cargill Protein, another longtime meat company, has sunk nearly $1 million in the past few years to developing alternative meats, including investing in Memphis Meats. Many of these “Big Meat” companies are now stepping out of the shadows and outwardly rebranding themselves and their product lines to include meat alternatives as well — McDonald’s new veggie burger is a product of Nestle NA, and Kellogg is developing imitation chicken in addition to a veggie burger it already offers.
Since the first “Gardenburgers” were served up in 1981, meat alternatives have come a long way. But they’re not the only plant-based alternative with secret animal-product suitors.
Big Dairy, while outwardly attempting to censor how plant-based milks brand themselves, is slowly expanding its reach into the non-dairy world, as recently reported in Bloomberg. Good Karma Foods Flax Milk? The majority stake is owned by dairy company Dean Foods. Silk’s line of soy and nut milks? Owned by French dairy giant, Danone. While yogurt giant Chobani claimed in comments to the FDA last September that the use of dairy terminology on non-dairy products posed “a public health risk” and should be “illegal,” they, too, have launched a line of dairy alternative yogurts — labelled as non-dairy coconut blend, of course.
Part of this jumping on the plant-milk bandwagon may be a survival tactic for the dairy industry. Milk consumption has seen a 40 percent drop in about as many years.
For now, the meat industry still seems to have a solid stronghold in American diets. Will the fake meat hype just be a bubble or could meat be heading in a similar direction?
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Air pollution in some national parks is as bad as Los Angeles
This summer, millions of families will flock to national parks like Yosemite, Joshua Tree, and Yellowstone to enjoy the great outdoors and have their kids breathe in some fresh country air.
The only problem: A whopping 96 percent of national parks in the U.S. are plagued by “significant air pollution,” according to a new study by the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). In fact, 33 of America’s most-visited national parks are as polluted as our 20 largest cities, the report said.
“The poor air quality in our national parks is both disturbing and unacceptable,” said Theresa Pierno, president and CEO for National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), in a statement. “Nearly every single one of our more than 400 national parks is plagued by air pollution. If we don’t take immediate action to combat this, the results will be devastating and irreversible.”
The culprits? Extracting and burning fossil fuels (specifically coal — surprising, we know), car exhaust, and side effects of climate change like wildfire smoke. The report notes that the large majority of polluted air doesn’t originate in the parks, but gets blown in from elsewhere.
Last year, the most popular parks — like Sequoia, Mojave, and Joshua Tree — recorded up to two months of dangerous ozone levels, mostly in the summer when the parks are always busiest. While bad air quality causes some people to stop visiting national parks, according to the NPCA’s report, there has still been an overall impact on visitors’ health: People are getting allergy and asthma attacks in the parks more often.
Air pollution is actively damaging sensitive species and habitats in 88 percent of national parks — like alpine flowers in Rocky Mountain National Park which, apart from being pretty, provide essential habitat for some of the animals there, like elk.
In 89 percent of all parks, particulate matter in the air creates a visible haze, clouding views as well as lungs. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, for example, is even smokier than its name suggests. The name is supposed to refer to the bluish mist that naturally hangs over the mountains, not the white or yellowish haze of pollution that is now often seen at the park.
What’s the solution? The NPCA urges a swift transition to clean energy sources, a reduction in air pollution for areas neighboring national parks, and for states to stay in compliance with the Clean Air Act despite the loosened federal regulations under the Trump administration. Just last week, as the Guardian pointed out, the Bureau of Land Management moved forward with a plan that would open more than 1.6 million acres of land near national parks in California to fracking.
“At a time when the climate crisis facing the planet is irrefutable, the laws that protect our climate and the air we breathe are being challenged like never before as this administration continues to prioritize polluters’ interests over the health of our people and parks,” said Stephanie Kodish, Clean Air Program Director for NPCA, in a statement.
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Air pollution in some national parks is as bad as Los Angeles
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The Arctic Council brought up climate change, and the U.S. couldn’t handle the heat
On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to sign the consensus-dependent agreement regulating the Arctic. The hiccup, according to sources? Climate change. So this year, for the first time since its founding in 1996, there was no joint declaration at the Meeting of the Arctic Council.
With record-breaking carbon emissions and temperatures, the U.N’s mass extinction prediction, and local governments constantly rolling out carbon reduction plans (like NYC, LA, Washington), it’s no surprise that climate change was one of the big issues at the meeting. The intergovernmental convention brings together leaders from the eight countries neighboring the Arctic every couple years to draft an agreement for the sustainable use of the region’s resources.
“A majority of us regarded climate change as a fundamental challenge facing the Arctic and acknowledged the urgent need to take mitigation and adaptation actions and to strengthen resilience,” Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini wrote in a 10-page statement. Only when the statement touched on climate issues, like pollution, carbon sinks, and loss of biodiversity, did he use the tell-tale “a majority.”
“I don’t want to name and blame anyone,” Soini said of the agreement’s failure to pass.
Reuters’ sources reported that Pompeo disagreed with phrasing in the document that stated climate change was a serious threat to the Arctic. He didn’t want the most recent information on climate science included in the report, diplomats present at the council told the New York Times.
His refusal to sign meant that no declaration could be passed. Instead, the council members each signed a statement committing to proceed with Arctic development sustainably, but that didn’t mention climate change.
Pompeo has a different story — he claims that he backed out because of concerns that the unbinding agreement would not hold Russia and China accountable enough moving forward.
On Sunday, the day before his refusal, he made a policy speech where he sang praises for an Arctic less swathed in ice sheets. He lauded the potential oil, gas, and metal extraction in newly uncovered regions, while simultaneously warning of the threat a squabbling Russia and China would pose. Not once did he mention climate change, nor the communities most immediately affected by retreating sea ice and warming seas. Still, acknowledging the economic potential created by the Arctic’s warming seemed at odds with his refusal to sign an agreement that assigned a name to the effect.
Funny, then, that he should tell the council that “collective goals … are rendered meaningless, even counterproductive as soon as one nation fails to comply,” in explaining why the U.S. would not sign the agreement. Exemplary performance, Mr. Pompeo.
You can see his whole speech here:
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The Arctic Council brought up climate change, and the U.S. couldn’t handle the heat
