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A bill in Congress could get to the bottom of how coronavirus links air pollution and racism

by adellbrody Posted on June 12, 2020

It’s becoming clear that black and Latino communities in the U.S. suffer disproportionately from the novel coronavirus. The COVID-19 mortality rate for black New York City residents, for example, is twice that of white residents, and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report has suggested that black Americans in general are hospitalized for COVID-19 at much higher rates. Research is also emerging showing that exposure to air pollution likely makes COVID-19 deadlier. In other words, when it comes to COVID-19 outcomes, it’s clear that race matters and that pollution matters. What is not yet clear is how, exactly, these two troubling trends are related.

In hopes of finding concrete connections between air pollution in communities of color and COVID-19 outcomes, last month Democrats in Congress introduced the Environmental Justice COVID-19 Act, which would allocate an additional $50 million to existing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant programs and prioritize that funding for projects that “investigate or address the disproportionate impacts of the COVID–19 pandemic in environmental justice communities.”

The measure was included in the HEROES Act, the $3 trillion pandemic relief legislation that passed the House of Representatives last month with mostly Democratic support. The legislation’s future in a Republican-controlled Senate is shaky, but at a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on Tuesday, lawmakers and advocates continued to push for the bill funding the study of the relationship between pollution and racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes.

“COVID-19 has exacerbated what we have known all along,” said California Representative Raul Ruiz, one of the bill’s cosponsors, during the hearing. “[At-risk communities are] disproportionately breathing polluted air and drinking dirty water due to neglect or decisions by others.”

Jacqueline Patterson, director of the NAACP’s Environmental and Climate Justice Program, discussed how black and Latino communities in the U.S. face more extensive exposure to pollutants, making them more susceptible to lower respiratory illnesses like COVID-19. More than 70 percent of black Americans “are living in counties in violation of federal air pollution standards,” she told the panel of lawmakers.

Patterson also criticized the Trump administration’s approach to environmental policy.

“Instead of strengthening regulations to reinforce protections for communities made vulnerable by poor air quality, we have an administration that has rolled back over 100 regulations in the context of COVID-19,” she said, referring to the Trump administration’s broad relaxation of environmental enforcement during the pandemic.

Patterson said that the funding provided by the Environmental Justice COVID-19 Act would help existing organizations, like local chapters of the NAACP, study the way environmental factors affect public health for communities of color. However, she isn’t sure that the $50 million allocated is enough to accomplish the bill’s aims.

“[The bill] is going to make a difference, but I think ‘enough’ is gonna be a hard bar to reach at this point because the needs are so great,” she told Grist. “Air pollution standards aren’t even stringent enough in the first place.”

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A bill in Congress could get to the bottom of how coronavirus links air pollution and racism

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Elizabeth Warren’s new climate plan can go the distance, even if her campaign can’t

by ltrdeclan642 Posted on March 1, 2020

Elizabeth Warren once again trailed her top competitors in Saturday’s South Carolina primary. Another poor showing on Super Tuesday — the day when the greatest number of Democrats can go to the polls — could spell the end of her presidential aspirations.

But regardless of what happens to the Massachusetts senator this week, her climate plans, some of the most detailed and thoughtful in the primary, could live on — much like those of Jay Inslee, the campaign’s original climate candidate, who left the race last August. (Warren, among others, adopted elements of the Washington State governor’s climate platform upon his exit.)

That’s especially true of her latest proposal, aimed at stopping Wall Street from continuing to finance the climate crisis. As far as Warren’s climate plans go, this one is as on-brand as they come. Evoking the 2008 financial crisis, she writes in the plan, posted to Medium Sunday morning: “Once again, as we face the existential threat of our time –– climate change –– Wall Street is refusing to listen, let alone take real action.” (Larry Fink over at BlackRock might disagree, nevertheless, Warren persists.)

Many other candidates, including Warren herself, have previously unveiled climate risk-disclosure plans, designed to compel corporations to reveal to stockholders and the public potential climate-related liabilities to their business — ranging from fossil fuel investments on their books to parts of their operations with exposure to, say, sea-level rise. But this plan, introduced as the stock market continues to plunge amid coronavirus fears, is different in that it is aimed directly at Wall Street banks.

Climate change, she says in the Medium post, destabilizes the American financial system in two major ways: physical property damage (think the wreckage of coastal cities in the wake of catastrophic hurricanes or Western towns post-wildfires) and so-called “transition risks.” For those of you without a degree in economics, transition risks in the context of climate change means, for instance, investments in the fossil fuel industry that could suddenly lose value as the nation switches to a green economy. Theoretically, such a shift could create conditions for a financial meltdown.

“We will not defeat the climate crisis if we have to wait for the financial industry to self-regulate or come forward with piecemeal voluntary commitments,” Warren writes. So she suggests taking aggressive steps to reign in Wall Street and avoid financial collapse by using a number of levers at a president’s disposal — some old, some new.

First, she says, if elected, she’ll use the regulatory tools in the Dodd-Frank Act — enacted in the wake of the 2008 crash — to address climate risks. Specifically, she would ask a group created by that legislation — the Financial Stability Oversight Council, comprised of heads of regulatory agencies — to assess financial institutions based on their climate risk and label them “systemically important” where appropriate.

Next, she’d require American banks to self-report how much fossil-fuel equity and debt they acquire yearly, in addition to the assets they hold in that sector. She’d also mandate insurance companies disclose premiums they derived from insuring coal, oil, and gas concerns. She’d ask the Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Labor, the two agencies in charge of regulating pensions, to identify carbon-intensive investments. Current pension systems, she writes, are “leaving all the risk of fossil fuel investments in hard working Americans’ retirement accounts.” In addition, she’d staff federal financial agencies with regulators who understand the connection between financial markets and climate change, “unlike Steven Mnuchin,” she says (seemingly unable to pass up the opportunity to drag Trump’s unpopular Treasury secretary).

Perhaps the most important piece of Warren’s plan concerns international cooperation, which echoes a theme in previous climate plans she’s introduced. She’d join other world powers in making climate change a factor in monetary policymaking, and prompt the Federal Reserve to join the Network on Greening the Financial System, a global coalition of central banks. And she’d make implementation of the Paris Agreement a prerequisite for future trade agreements with the U.S. “Addressing the financial risks of the climate crisis is an international issue,” Warren writes on Medium.

As is her calling card, Warren’s latest plan is designed to protect consumers from a potential financial bubble that could burst on the horizon. And if she’s unable to continue campaigning after this week, her competitors might be smart to heed her warning and give this plan a good look, particularly the international components. As John Donne famously wrote, no market is an island.

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Elizabeth Warren’s new climate plan can go the distance, even if her campaign can’t

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Ahead of the caucuses, Nevadans say climate change is on their minds

by xyrbrock6766 Posted on February 21, 2020

After the disastrous Iowa caucuses and far smoother New Hampshire primary, all eyes now turn to Nevada, which will hold its Democratic primary caucuses on Saturday. On Wednesday night, presidential hopefuls took to the debate stage in Las Vegas to compete for Nevadans’ affections. In between viral verbal smackdowns, the candidates took a full 16 minutes to talk about climate policy.

It was a canny choice by the moderators, which included the very first climate journalist to helm a presidential debate, to spotlight climate. That’s because Democratic caucus-goers in Nevada — and Latino caucus-goers in particular — care deeply about climate policy, according to a recent poll.

The poll, released by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) and the Nevada Conservation League, reveals that 86 percent of Nevada Democrats likely to attend the caucuses on Saturday believe that the climate crisis is either “a very important issue” or “the most important issue.” And climate change is the second most important issue to likely Democratic caucus-goers, after universal healthcare, when deciding which candidate to support.

For likely Latino caucus-goers in the state, climate change is a more important issue than health care or immigration. This makes sense because climate change is not a single issue, but one that affects every other issue — and its impacts are felt differently depending on race, income, gender, immigration status, and other factors.

“Latinx communities are hit first and hardest by climate,” Rudy Zamora, program director of Chispa Nevada — an organizing program under LCV — said in a statement. “So it’s not surprising to see that climate change is the most important issue for Nevada Latinx voters in deciding who to support for president.”

A majority of those who participated in the survey said they are much more likely to vote for a candidate with a climate plan that prioritizes communities most affected by pollution, including low-income communities of color. And 43 percent say they “strongly support” a Green New Deal.

These results line up with recent national polls showing that Democratic voters believe climate change is an important issue for presidential candidates to address this election.

But the issue has particularly hit home in Nevada, which has experienced dangerous heat waves in the last few years. Since 1970, Nevada has warmed 2.8 degrees F on average. Last August, the state broke a record for the most consecutive days with temperatures over 105 degrees F. Las Vegas is the fastest-warming city in the country. And the Colorado River has been dwindling due to an increasing loss of snow in the Nevada mountains, forcing Nevadans to cut down their water use.

Given all that, it’s no surprise that climate change will be on Nevadans’ minds when they head to the caucuses this weekend.

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Ahead of the caucuses, Nevadans say climate change is on their minds

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How to tell if a Republican is serious about climate action (or not)

by AudreyL83a Posted on February 7, 2020

Nowadays, the left’s definition of a climate hawk is clear. The progressive wing of the Democratic party has unified behind a shared litmus test: Does the person in question support the Green New Deal? Sterling environmental voting records and support for a carbon tax no longer cut the mustard. A Democrat worthy of the climate hawk label must have all those things plus enthusiasm for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey’s economy-wide proposal to wean the United States off of fossil fuels while strengthening the social safety net.

But what about Republicans?

The GOP has had an aversion to climate science for decades now. It’s grown so severe that acknowledging the reality of climate change has been politically risky for virtually any Republican public figure. Politicians who dare touch the subject have been swiftly excommunicated (pour one out for Representative Bob Inglis of South Carolina).

But the party is beginning to shift, thanks in large part to young Republicans whose opinions on climate policy now align more closely with those of Democrats than with those of older members of their own party. For proof that the GOP is starting to budge on climate change, look no further than the House and Senate. Recently, bipartisan climate action groups in both chambers have attracted several unexpected members (including Lindsey Graham). A few GOPers have started to act more aggressively to combat rising temperatures locally, particularly in the wake of catastrophic wildfires, hurricanes, and floods.

And last month, House Republicans unveiled a new set of climate proposals coordinated by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California. The plan — the GOP’s response to Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal — won’t include an emissions-reduction target, Axios reported. Instead, it focuses on capturing CO2 from the air with trees, reducing plastic pollution, and funding new clean-energy technology.

On the precipice of what could become a major party reversal on climate action from the right, how do conservatives who care about climate change discern Republican politicians who are actually serious about tackling the issue from those who are just jumping on the green bandwagon? More importantly, what are the markings of a genuine conservative climate plan versus a smokescreen plan aimed at waylaying real solutions?

To answer these questions, Grist turned to three Republicans who’ve been beating the climate drum for years.

Alex Bozmoski, the managing director of a climate group founded by Inglis and aimed at building grassroots support for conservative climate solutions, starts by looking at rhetoric. Rhetoric might seem like a useless benchmark, as words aren’t binding, but Bozmoski says a lot can be gleaned from language. “There is substance in what politicians say about what they are doing,” he said. “When a lawmaker is talking about climate change, do the risks compel action or patience and demand for further certainty? Is it a calamity, or is it framed more as a nuisance?” Freshman Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, he says, is a good example of a Republican whose rhetoric hints at a genuine commitment to action. In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Braun called climate change the country’s “next biggest issue.”

Quillan Robinson, who graduated from the University of Washington in 2018, is government affairs director at the American Conservation Coalition, an environment group that’s dedicated to engaging young conservatives on environmental issues. His standard is simple and reflects the fact that Republican climate policy is just in its nascency. Robinson asks: Has the person put his or her name on a piece of climate legislation? “We’re looking for folks who are willing to actually put pen to paper when it comes to real policy solutions which will lower global greenhouse gas emissions — that should be the litmus test for climate action,” he said.

Kiera O’Brien, a recent Harvard graduate and president of Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends, a group that galvanizes student support for a carbon tax, thinks it’s important to discern between Republicans who are climate hawks and Republicans who are just conservationists. “The reality these days is there’s a difference between conservation and issues of climate change,” she said. “Anyone who’s fundamentally serious about conservation should be serious about climate as well, but that’s not always the case, especially among elected Republicans.”

For O’Brien, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s new climate plan doesn’t make the cut. “It does not take that step into what I would call a true Republican rebuttal to the Green New Deal by offering a comprehensive plan for reducing emissions,” she said.

She added, “You can say carbon capture, you can say we’re gonna plant a million trees, but if you’re not actually fundamentally serious about putting a price on carbon or putting another economy-wide mechanism for reducing carbon emissions, you’re not actually serious about climate change.” Going forward, she wants Republicans to advocate for a revenue-neutral carbon tax, which would return the revenue generated by the tax to Americans every year.

Bozmoski reached a different conclusion about the House Republican climate plan. “You measure ambition not by dollars, not by economic reorganization, not by risk. You measure the policy of climate change by the tons,” he said. “Does the policy that they’re supporting abate, avoid, capture, or sequester greenhouse gases and how much?” That’s why he thinks McCarthy’s plan to plant a bunch of trees isn’t half-bad — it will take tons of carbon dioxide out of the air, he said. (The science behind this is actually disputed.) “I know some environmentalists scoff because they’re more interested in attacking the supply side of greenhouse gases,” he said, “but if it makes a dent, that’s how you gauge the ambition of a climate policy.”

For Robinson, McCarthy’s plan is reason for optimism that serious climate change legislation is viable under President Trump. “It’s focusing on policies we can pass today which will reduce global greenhouse emissions,” he said. In general, however, Robinson’s under no illusions about where Trump stands. “Is the president where we want him to be on the issue? Absolutely not. But we’re really encouraged by some of the things that have happened recently,” he said.

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How to tell if a Republican is serious about climate action (or not)

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New York’s ambitious climate and environmental justice laws are in effect. Here’s what’s next.

by linniegrasser31 Posted on January 6, 2020

New York state’s landmark climate legislation has finally reached the finish line after a four-year marathon through Albany. And that means it’s reached the starting line for the state’s race to net-zero emissions.

The climate law, originally called the Climate and Community Protection Act but ultimately dubbed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, struggled to make it past the Republican-controlled state senate for three years until Democrats finally won it back in 2018. Although New York Governor Andrew Cuomo altered the bill by slashing some labor and social justice provisions last summer, the CLCPA was still considered a major win for climate activists when Cuomo signed it into law in July with former Vice President Al Gore at his side.

But there was a catch: In order for the CLCPA to go into effect in 2020, Cuomo needed to sign a separate environmental justice bill by the end of 2019. As of mid-December, he hadn’t signed it, making several environmental advocates anxious as the January 1 deadline drew near. But finally, on December 23, Cuomo signed the environmental justice bill, putting the landmark climate law into effect as New Yorkers rang in the new year.

So what happens now that the environmental justice bill and the CLCPA are in effect? The CLCPA made headlines for being the most ambitious emissions-reduction legislation in the country thanks to its promises to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and 100 percent renewable electricity by 2040. But in the short term, the main outcomes of the two new laws will be … new policymaking bodies!

The CLCPA sets broad targets for emissions reductions, but the hard work of figuring out how to decarbonize New York’s economy will fall into a new group called the Climate Action Council. The Climate Action Council consists of 22 members including the heads of state agencies, the majority and minority leaders of the state senate and assembly, and various appointed experts — including at least one fuel gas executive. The Climate Action Council is required to come up with its first “scoping plan” for reducing emissions within two years, and then to revisit the plan every five years subsequently.

Meanwhile, the environmental justice bill will create a permanent environmental justice advisory group within the existing Department of Environmental Conservation, plus an interagency coordinating council that will make sure New York state agencies are treating New Yorkers fairly when it comes to the enforcement of environmental policies. Since low-income communities of color tend to bear the brunt of the fossil fuel industry’s social costs, the goal is to ensure that vulnerable or disadvantaged communities aren’t suffering negative environmental consequences from state policies.

The advisory group will consist of representatives from local environmental organizations that advocate for low-income communities of color, some business representatives, local government environmental officials, and members of either state or federal environmental organizations. The group will be tasked with developing a model environmental justice policy for state agencies by the end of 2020. Once the state adopts the group’s model policy, each agency will have six months to come up with its own environmental justice policy, but if an agency fails to come up with one, it will have to comply with the advisory group’s version.

The advisory group will also advise agencies on decisions like land-use permits for fossil fuel projects and monitor their compliance with the environmental justice policies.

New York Renews, a statewide coalition of nearly 200 advocacy groups, pushed for the environmental justice bill to be passed alongside the CLCPA, and for the CLCPA itself to include environmental justice provisions. “Protecting vulnerable populations, communities of color, and low-income communities should be a priority for all climate solutions,” said Adrien Salazar, a campaign strategist at progressive think tank Demos and a 2019 Grist 50 Fixer. “Science has shown consistently that communities of color and low-income neighborhoods are most vulnerable to climate impacts and pollution. This is why equity and justice was written into the CLCPA.”

This isn’t the first time New York has attempted to address environmental injustice. In 1999, the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation received a federal grant from the EPA to develop a comprehensive environmental justice program, and eventually created an advisory group. Though the Department of Environmental Conservation officially adopted an environmental justice policy in 2003, it failed to follow through on most of the advisory group’s recommendations.

But the CLCPA and environmental justice bill are binding — they require the state to meet its emissions reduction targets and make good on its commitments to address environmental injustice and invest in vulnerable communities. But Salazar, whose organization is part of New York Renews, warned that if agencies fail to mobilize adequate resources and put significant plans into motion, New York could very well fail to reach the goals it sets for itself.

“This will take every agency setting up programs and policies to meet the state’s goals, directing resources accordingly, and beginning to enact those plans starting now,” he said. “The state has to demonstrate how important it is to not just pass bold climate policy but to get the implementation right.”

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New York’s ambitious climate and environmental justice laws are in effect. Here’s what’s next.

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Wait — Republicans used to like the Green New Deal?

by fhernandez16671977 Posted on November 22, 2019

Most Republicans once liked the Green New Deal. And no, you’re not reading climate fiction. This was reality just a year ago.

Some 64 percent of Republican voters initially supported the package of climate and green jobs policies, according to a poll from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. This was in December of last year, when those polled weren’t familiar with the name “Green New Deal.” Some 82 percent of them hadn’t even heard the phrase, let alone any nonsense about banning hamburgers. (For the record, that’s not part of the resolution introduced in Congress.)

Bipartisan support for the policy was short-lived, thanks in large part to a TV network that rhymes with “Lox Blues.” A new study published in Nature Climate Change found that the more Republicans heard about the Green New Deal, the less they liked it. Among those who watched Fox News more than once a week, support for the GND plunged from 54 percent in early December to 22 percent by early April. In other words, the majority of Republican voters supported what was in the package then changed their minds once they heard Fox’s talking heads seize on the ambitious scope of the program and trash it. On Tucker Carlson’s show, it was rebranded as the Green New Mess, as well as an excuse to usher in socialism.

The resolution was introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York City and Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts in February, then shot down by the Senate in March. After its introduction in Congress, the Green New Deal was covered by Fox more frequently than other networks, and some of that coverage included straight-up lies. Analysis from media watchdog Media Matters found that more than half of Fox’s segments on the Green New Deal in mid-February didn’t even bring up climate change. Most of the discussion centered on political wins or losses rather than on how the resolution might work or what problems it would address.

By April, only 4 percent of Republicans who had heard a lot about the resolution backed it, compared to 96 percent of Democrats. Fast forward to now, and it’s hard to believe that the idea — and before that, the political will to take on climate change more generally — ever had bipartisan support.

The environment wasn’t always so polarizing. President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, after all. But over recent decades, Republicans and Democrats have been driven further and further apart from each other on not just political opinions but on basic facts. That’s the case with climate change along with immigration, gun laws, and other issues. The so-called “Fox News effect” is a part of that story.

The good news? Younger Republicans now sound nearly identical to Democrats when it comes to a federal carbon tax, further restrictions on methane emissions, and a national renewable energy standard, according to a recent survey from Ipsos and Newsy. (Label them as part of the Green New Deal and results may vary.) The surge of environmental concern among young conservatives could bring big changes to the GOP in the years ahead.

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Wait — Republicans used to like the Green New Deal?

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Why did Lindsey Graham join a climate group?

by ManiePrescott Posted on November 15, 2019

Congress has long been a place where climate policy goes to die. That could soon change, and not only because there’s an election coming up in less than a year.

A new bipartisan climate caucus has formed in the Senate. It’s similar to a climate caucus in the House that’s been around since 2016: There must be one Republican for every Democrat who joins, and the group aims to educate members on policy and, ideally, propose pathways to action. But the House version has run into some serious roadblocks: it lost a chunk of its right flank in the 2018 midterm election, and it’s having trouble recruiting enough Republican members for the many Democrats who wish to join.

In the few weeks since it’s been up and running, the caucus in the upper chamber has had no difficulty attracting high-profile GOP members. Senators Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, and Marco Rubio are among the Republicans who have joined the group. Surprisingly, so has South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, one of President Trump’s staunchest supporters.

“I believe climate change is real,” Graham said in a statement. “I also believe that we as Americans have the ability to come up with climate change solutions that can benefit our economy and our way of life.”

That sounds like the Lindsey Graham of yore, who was more centrist than firebrand. In 2009, Graham teamed up with Democratic Senator John Kerry to push for climate legislation in the Senate. In 2015, he garnered praise for being one of only two Republican presidential contenders who had a history of engaging with climate and environment issues. In 2017, he urged President Trump to stay in the Paris climate accord, arguing that the leader of the Republican Party should not break with the rest of the world on an issue supported by sound science.

In the two years since he disagreed with Trump on the Paris Agreement, an unearthly transformation has transpired: Graham devolved from independent lone wolf to White House lapdog so rapidly that researchers were forced to reevaluate Charles Darwin’s seminal theory. Graham’s sudden zeal for defending the actions of the Commander in Chief — a man he once called “unfit for office” — inspired him to do things like go on Trump’s favorite Fox News show to compliment the president’s golf game. “To every Republican, if you don’t stand behind this President, we’re not going to stand behind you,” he said in South Carolina in February.

Given Trump’s aversion to climate science and working with Democrats, Graham’s decision to join a bipartisan climate solutions caucus is odd. Is Graham reverting to his old centrist ways? Or is there a more cynical explanation for his presence on the caucus?

It’s possible — in the sense that almost anything is possible — that Graham genuinely wants to reach across the aisle to take action on climate change. His recent voting record on the environment is surprisingly strong, by Republican standards. So far in 2019, he has cast five pro-environment votes, according to the League of Conservation Voters, a political group that keeps track of how members of Congress vote on environmental policy. That’s a far better record than other Republican members of the caucus, like Romney and Rubio, who only cast one pro-environment vote this year each.

But there’s another potential explanation, one that’s more in line with the partisan choices Graham has made in the past couple of years of the Trump administration. Perhaps Graham joined the caucus not to work with Democrats, but to stymie them. His motivation might be to ensure that other lawmakers decide to adopt a conservative vision of climate action, instead of something like the Green New Deal.

“If the only thing out there is the Green New Deal, well, the American people will take it,” Bob Inglis, former U.S. representative from Graham’s home state of South Carolina, told Grist. “You’ve got to get out there with an alternative. That’s what Republicans are doing, they’ve figured out how to enter the competition of ideas and present an alternative.”

Whether Graham and his fellow GOP-ers use the caucus as an opportunity to push for meaningful alternatives to progressive climate change solutions remains to be seen. The American Petroleum Institute, a group that has a long history of successfully lobbying against environmental regulations, called the caucus a “promising addition to the national conversation,” something that has climate activists on edge.

But activists would do well to remember that the new Lindsey Graham is in the habit of doing whatever is politically expedient. The South Carolinian may have sensed that denial may not serve the GOP much longer.

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Why did Lindsey Graham join a climate group?

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House Democrats set to introduce first-of-its-kind climate refugee bill

by DessieE28url Posted on October 26, 2019

This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

House Democrats are set to introduce the first major piece of legislation to establish protections for migrants displaced by climate change, ramping up a push for a long-overdue framework for how the United States should respond to a crisis already unfolding on its shores.

The bill, called the Climate Displaced Persons Act, would create a federal program separate from the existing refugee program to take in a minimum of 50,000 climate migrants starting next year.

The legislation, a copy of which HuffPost obtained, directs the White House to collect data on people displaced by extreme weather, drought and sea level rise and submit an annual report to Congress. It also requires the State Department to work with other federal agencies to create a Global Climate Resilience Strategy that puts global warming at the center of U.S. foreign policy.

The bill, set to be introduced by Representative Nydia Velázquez, a New York Democrat, is a companion to legislation proposed by Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey, one of the leading advocates for a Green New Deal. Its introduction in the House of Representatives marks an escalation as Democrats start to flesh out what a sweeping federal plan to eliminate emissions and prepare the country for more climate catastrophe would look like.

The 21-page proposal looks unlikely to become law while Donald Trump, who rejects climate science and slashed the country’s refugee cap to a historic low of 18,000 last month, remains president.

But the bill lays the groundwork for how a future administration could deal with what’s already forecast to be among the greatest upheavals global warming will cause.

Since 2008, catastrophic weather has displaced an average of 24 million people per year, according to data from the Swiss-based nonprofit Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. That number could climb to anywhere from 140 million to 300 million to 1 billion by 2050. The World Bank estimated last year that climate change effects in just three regions ― sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America ― could force 143 million people to flee by the middle of the century.

Yet little to no legal infrastructure exists to classify and process climate refugees. Last December, leaders from 164 countries formally adopted the U.N. Global Compact for Migration, the first major international document to recognize the role of climate change in causing displacement. But it’s a nonbinding and voluntary accord, and the United States, Australia, and several European Union members refused to sign.

Meanwhile, the exodus is already underway. Within the United States, coastal communities in Louisiana, Florida, and Alaska are abandoning their low-lying homes in search of higher ground, albeit with limited federal support. The wave of foreign migrants seeking safety in the world’s largest economy has begun lapping on U.S. shores.

Thousands of Central American migrants making the treacherous journey to the U.S. border with Mexico are farmers escaping lands so parched by drought crops won’t grow. Last month, the Trump administration turned away at least 119 Bahamians heading to Florida to flee the destruction Hurricane Dorian, the kind of Category 5 storm scientists project to be more frequent in a hotter world, left in its wake.

“America will continue to stand tall as a safe haven for immigrants,” Velázquez said in a statement. “This legislation will not only reaffirm our nation’s longstanding role as a home to those fleeing conflict and disasters, but it will also update it to reflect changes to our world brought on by a changing climate.”

The nascent climate refugee crisis comes as the United Nations is already recording more than 65 million people displaced worldwide ― a figure that, depending on how it’s counted, amounts to the highest number of refugees ever. In Europe, the steady stream of refugees escaping war, poverty, and drought in North Africa and the Middle East has spurred a powerful new right-wing movement against immigrants, led by some of the most brazenly ethnonationalist elected officials since the 1930s.

Absent any liberal alternatives, this European right is starting to pitch its hardline immigration policies as a bulwark against climate disruption. Earlier this year, Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally, criticized “nomadic” people who “do not care about the environment” as “they have no homeland,” harkening to Nazi-era “blood and soil” rhetoric. A spokesman for her party proposed a solution: “Borders are the environment’s greatest ally.”

Climate Displaced Persons Act by Alexander Kaufman on Scribd

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House Democrats set to introduce first-of-its-kind climate refugee bill

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Can we stop stupid politics from ruining carbon farming?

by Shelby7305 Posted on September 3, 2019

It seems like every Democratic presidential candidate wants to get farmers sucking carbon out of the air and sticking it in the ground. Call it regenerative agriculture, carbon farming, soil carbon sequestration, but, boy have the candidates found an idea they love. Among the more popular names, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke, and Joe Biden, have included it in their platform. Kristen Gillibrand, Tim Ryan, and Amy Klobuchar have also said they want to pay farmers to catch carbon.

The science is straightforward enough. Planting a cover crop after harvest, when the acres might be bare and vulnerable to erosion, helps capture carbon. Farmers can keep that greenhouse gas in the ground if they stop plowing, because turning over the dirt with a plow releases soil carbon. These are relatively simple practices that many farmers have already adopted.

We’ve treated soil-science like dirt for too long, so it’s nice that it’s finally getting the chance to star in shovel-ready (sorry) national policy proposals. But there’s still reason for caution: Politics has a way of distorting science.

Look back twenty years and everyone was excited about biofuels: Presidential candidates talked about how we could grow green fuel provide new markets for farmers, while freeing ourselves from foreign fossil fuels. And the plants would suck carbon from the air. What’s not to love?

Starting in 2005, the government enshrined market mandates to help people start turning crops into fuel. Farmers cut down rainforests in Southeast Asia to grow oil palm for biofuel. Although the new market for corn and soy beans was great for Midwestern farmers, it was awful for those trying to stop erosion, preserve prairie habitat, and shrink the deadzone in the Gulf of Mexico. At this point, it’s nearly impossible to tell if biofuels are any better or worse for the climate than gasoline.

So if we want to learn from history, rather than repeat it, we’ll tamp down the hyperventilation over soil carbon, make sure we get the numbers right, and look out for unintended consequences.

Right now, the presidential candidates are talking in vague terms. Sanders’s plan, for instance, says the government will “pay farmers $160 billion for the soil health improvements they make and for the carbon they sequester.” O’Rourke’s just says he wants to “allow farmers and ranchers to profit from the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions they secure.” But as these ideas morph from Iowa stump speeches to actual legislation, keep an eye out for some potential stumbling blocks:

It’s uneven. The amount of carbon you draw out of the atmosphere with, say, your winter cover crop depends on how long your fields are frozen, how sandy your dirt is, how many worms are squirming in your soil … and that’s just for starters. So if the point is to fight climate change, proposed policies should pay farmers for results (the amount of carbon dioxide they take out of the air), rather than paying for practices (like planting a cover crop), said Jonathan Sanderman who studies soil carbon and climate change at Woods Hole Research Center.

Returns diminish. As soils “fill up” with carbon it gets harder to add more. Soil gets saturated. Navin Ramankutty, who studies global food systems at the University of British Columbia, thinks of soil like a bathtub: If there’s more water coming through the faucet then leaving through the drain, the water rises. Replace “water” with “carbon” and you get the idea. Eventually the carbon is going to start spilling over the top of the tub. “So, while carbon farming is certainly a useful measure to mitigate carbon emissions, it’s a solution with a finite lifetime,” Ramankutty said.

Keep it in the ground. Once carbon is in the ground, it doesn’t just stay there. Soil is churning with worms, fungi, bugs, and bacteria that eat up, transform, and release carbon back into the air. It really is dynamic, like Ramankutty’s bathtub. If farmers decide to plow up fields after years of sequestration, it would release a lot of the stored carbon. “How you deal with this is clearly a tricky policy problem,” Sanderman said. Perhaps, when agreeing to take money for carbon sequestration, farmers would have to accept restrictions on their land for the next decade.

It could crowd out other ideas. How much will carbon farming cost taxpayers, and are there other ideas that — for the same cost — would take even more greenhouse gases out of the air? Expanding forests, growing seaweed, or scrubbing carbon from the air might make more sense in some cases. Could we replace a coal plant with clean energy for the same amount of money and prevent more emissions in the first place? The danger of the latest sexy policy is that it tends to take precedence in every context, not just the ones in which it makes the most sense.

Candidates break hearts. Some of the candidate’s proposals use unrealistically large numbers for the carbon that farming could suck up, said Mark Bomford, director of Yale’s Sustainable Food Program. “I suspect this overstatement has less to do with misunderstanding the science, and more to do with what inevitably happens to communication of the science when it enters the arms race of political rhetoric,” Bomford said.

It just sounds better to say that an acre of farmland can suck up 25-60 tons of carbon a decade, as ex-candidate Jay Inslee did, then to say 7.4 tons per decade, which is the consistent average, Sanderman said.

All this is to say we ought to be a little wary of ambitious soil-policy solutions for climate change. Anyone who says we’ve figured out carbon farming (or whatever your buzzword of choice) deserves your skepticism. But the nice thing about about these proposals is that minimizing tillage, planting cover crops, and the other practices that store soil carbon are generally good for the environment — even if they don’t do as much to stem the climate crisis as advertised.

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Can we stop stupid politics from ruining carbon farming?

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In Detroit, Democratic candidates actually did some climate debating

by KelleeCasanova Posted on August 1, 2019

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In Detroit, Democratic candidates actually did some climate debating

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