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Traffic pollution leads to 4 million child asthma cases every year

by PeterWeinstein8 Posted on April 11, 2019

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

Four million children develop asthma every year as a result of air pollution from cars and trucks, equivalent to 11,000 new cases a day, a landmark study has found.

Most of the new cases occur in places where pollution levels are already below the World Health Organization limit, suggesting toxic air is even more harmful than thought.

Guardian Graphic / Source: Achakulwisut et al, Lancet Planetary Health

The damage to children’s health is not limited to China and India, where pollution levels are particularly high. In U.K. and U.S. cities, the researchers blame traffic pollution for a quarter of all new childhood asthma cases.

Canada has the third highest rate of new traffic-related asthma cases among the 194 nations analyzed, while Los Angeles and New York City are in the top 10 worst cities out of the 125 assessed. Children are especially vulnerable to toxic air and exposure is also known to leave them with stunted lungs.

The research, published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health, is the first global assessment of the impact of traffic fumes on childhood asthma based on high-resolution pollution data.

“Our findings suggest that millions of new cases of pediatric asthma could be prevented by reducing air pollution,” said Susan Anenberg, a professor at George Washington University. Asthma can cause deadly seizures.

The key pollutant, nitrogen dioxide, is produced largely by diesel vehicles, many of which emit far more than allowed on the road even after the Dieselgate scandal. “Improving access to cleaner forms of transport, like electrified public transport, cycling and walking, would reduce asthma, enhance physical fitness, and cut greenhouse gas emissions,” said Anenberg.

“This landmark study shows the massive global burden of asthma in children caused by traffic pollution,” said Chris Griffiths, professor at Queen Mary University of London and the co-director of the Asthma U.K. Center for Applied Research, who was not part of the research team. “Asthma is only one of the multiple adverse effects of pollution on children’s health. Governments must act now to protect children.”

Guardian Graphic / Source: Achakulwisut et al, Lancet Planetary Health

The new study combined detailed NO2 pollution data with asthma incidence rates and population numbers. Many large studies have already shown a strong link between traffic pollution and childhood asthma and that pollution causes damaging inflammation. This data on risks was used to calculate the number of new cases around the world.

“From the weight of evidence, there is likely a strong causal relationship between traffic pollution and childhood asthma incidence,” said Ploy Achakulwisut, also at George Washington University and the lead author of the new study. “So we can be confident that traffic pollution has a significant effect on childhood asthma incidence.”

The epidemiological evidence for NO2 being the key pollutant is the strongest. However, researchers cannot rule out that other pollutants also pumped out by vehicles, such as tiny particles, are also a factor as it is not possible to experiment directly on people.

“Childhood asthma has reached global epidemic proportions,” said Rajen Naidoo, professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, and not involved in the study. It indicates that 1 in 8 of all new cases is due to traffic pollution. “An important outcome from this study is the evidence that the existing WHO standards are not protective against childhood asthma.”

The country with the highest national rate of childhood asthma attributed to traffic pollution is South Korea, with almost a third of all new cases blamed on vehicles. Japan and Belgium are in the top 10, along with six Middle Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia.

Due to their high populations and pollution levels, the top three countries for the total number of new children getting asthma each year are China (760,000), India (350,000), and the U.S. (240,000). The scientists said their research may underestimate the true levels in many poorer nations where asthma often goes undiagnosed.

“While it is important for parents to try to reduce individual exposure, maybe by avoiding highly congested roads as much as possible, not everyone can do this,” said Achakulwisut. “So it is important to call for policy initiatives to tackle pollution at city, state and national levels.”

“The good news is that a transition to zero-emission vehicles is already underway,” she said. Some countries and cities are pledging to phase out internal combustion engines and policies such as London’s new ultra-low emission zone are being rolled out. “But this transition needs to become global, and it needs to happen faster. Each year of delay jeopardizes the health of millions of children worldwide.”

Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, said: “We used to think the only real danger roads posed to children was the threat of a car accident. However, now we can see there’s an equally deadly risk: breathing in air pollution. Rightly, there’s been a huge effort to reduce road accidents and we need to see an equal commitment to reducing toxic air.”

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Traffic pollution leads to 4 million child asthma cases every year

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An easy, cost-effective way to address climate change? Massive reforestation.

by Philome19D Posted on April 11, 2019

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

As the implications of climate change become starker and the world faces up to a biodiversity crisis that threatens humanity’s existence, a group of campaigners from across the world are saying there is one clear way to get us out of this mess, but that governments are ignoring it.

In an open letter published in the British newspaper, The Guardian, the group tells governments that the best and cheapest way to avert a climate catastrophe is to heal nature by restoring and replanting degraded forests and by better conserving the natural world.

“Defending the living world and defending the climate are, in many cases, one and the same. This potential has so far been largely overlooked,” say the 23 signatories to the letter.

“We call on governments to support natural climate solutions with an urgent program of research, funding, and political commitment,” they added.

Vast amounts of carbon can be removed from the air and stored by restoring ecosystems razed by palm oil plantations, cattle ranching and timber, and fish production, the letter says. The 23 signatories include the  teenage school climate strike activist Greta Thunburg, authors Margaret Atwood, Naomi Klein, and Philip Pullman, U.S. climate scientist Michael Mann, and environmental campaigner Bill McKibben.

“The world faces two existential crises, developing with terrifying speed: climate breakdown and ecological breakdown. Neither is being addressed with the urgency needed to prevent our life-support systems from spiralling into collapse,” say the signatories.

They call for the defense, restoration and reestablishment of forests, peatlands, mangroves, salt marshes, natural seabeds, and other crucial ecosystems, to remove and store large amounts of carbon from the air. The protection and restoration of these ecosystems can help minimize a sixth great extinction, they say.

The group says that nearly a third of the greenhouse gas reductions needed to hold temperatures to a 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) rise can be provided by the restoration of natural habitats. But natural solutions are calculated to have attracted just a small fraction of the funding so far committed, according to journalist and author George Monbiot, one of the signatories.

Technology alone cannot solve climate change, Monbiot wrote in The Guardian. Much of the technology proposed to capture carbon is expensive and could pose problems at scale. The cheapest and surest approach, he wrote, is to restore natural forests and allow native trees to repopulate deforested land.

Regenerating and conserving nature to address climate change is expected to be a central recommendation of next month’s landmark study of the state of the natural world, compiled by hundreds of scientists. The United Nations-backed report is expected to confirm that nature is in rapid decline in many regions, with ecosystems on the point of collapse.

Protecting and restoring natural forests is seen as vital. Trees suck carbon dioxide from the air and store it. Nearly one-quarter of all the emissions reductions pledged by countries in the 2015 Paris agreement could come from tree planting and restoration. The U.N. has challenged countries to restore 865 million acres of farm and forest land by 2030 — an area bigger than India. And countries are responding.

Initiative 20×20, an international effort, hopes to restore 49 million acres by 2020 in Latin America and the Caribbean. And the multicountry African Forest Landscape Restoration initiative intends to restore 247 million acres of degraded forests in Africa by 2030.

Pakistan has just planted 1 billion trees. China plans to create forests totaling the size of Ireland. And in Africa, Ethiopia, Niger, Mali are among countries that strongly back the reforestation of degraded land.

But there’s a snag. A new paper in the scientific journal, Nature, suggests that 45 percent of the land area that nations have so far pledged to allocate for carbon drawdown is being used to for commercial plantations.

There’s a huge difference between restoring natural forests and planting trees for commercial use, for example the large-scale monoculture of oil palms to provide us with the palm oil so ubiquitous in snacks and cosmetics. The latter are less efficient at carbon storage, and in fact release carbon emissions by replacing peatland, as well as being detrimental to wildlife.

These natural solutions also go beyond trees. They include the restoration of peatlands, salt marsh and seagrass. They also mean the protection and recovery of animals like rhinos in Africa, which act as a natural protection against devastating wildfires, and wolves in North America, which some studies suggest could protect forests by controlling populations of animals that feed on plants and trees.

Still, Monbiot cautions: “We don’t want natural climate solutions to be used as a substitute for the rapid and comprehensive decarbonization of our economies. The science tells us both are needed.”

“But,” he continues, “what this thrilling field of study shows is that protecting and rewilding the world’s living systems is not just an aesthetically pleasing thing to do. It is an essential survival strategy.”

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An easy, cost-effective way to address climate change? Massive reforestation.

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U.S. banks pledged to fund renewable energy, but they still spend way more on fossil fuels

by MistyMcDowall Posted on March 30, 2019

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

Each year since the Paris climate agreement, major world banks have increased their financing of fossil fuels, pouring $1.9 trillion into the industry from 2016 through 2018. And, it turns out, U.S. banks are the worst offenders, according to a recent report published by a group of environmental organizations.

“The sad reality is that the fossil fuel sector has only grown since Paris,” says Patrick McCully, climate and energy director for the Rainforest Action Network and one of the report’s authors. “The banks are following what the industry is doing, and the industry’s able to expand because it’s able to keep getting capital from the banks … It’s just this really alarming, really terrifying dynamic going on worldwide.”

The top four financial institutions supporting the fossil fuel industry are all American: JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, and Bank of America. Two more, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, aren’t far behind. This is despite all six of these major U.S. banks publishing a joint statement, in the months leading up to the adoption of the Paris deal, acknowledging the threat of climate change, pledging financial support for solutions, and calling for a “more sustainable, low-carbon economy.”

By far, JP Morgan Chase is the biggest funder among the 33 banks assessed, putting $196 billion into fossil fuels from 2016 through 2018. Its money represents 10 percent of the industry’s total financing. Notably, the highest spending year for Chase — and many other top banks — was 2017, the same year President Trump announced the U.S. would pull out of the Paris agreement.

In recent years, public pressure has mounted against banks financing oil, gas, and coal companies. These campaigns have been particularly coordinated and successful in Europe, and the World Bank announced in 2017 that it would no longer finance oil and gas extraction. The same year, France-based PNB Paribas committed to end support of shale and tar sands businesses, and last year, British multinational HSBC stopped financing offshore oil and gas projects in the Arctic.

“There’s new legislation and national legislation in European countries that are forcing banks to move in the right direction much, much quicker than the U.S. banks,” McCully says. “[U.S. banks] don’t feel the same sort of public pressure, and they definitely don’t feel the same sort of political pressure.”

Efforts and success in the U.S. have been more limited. The most pressure so far has come from activists, led by indigenous groups, that have targeted banks supporting the Dakota Access pipeline. Protesters have also rallied outside Chase and Wells Fargo over their fossil fuel funding in recent years. But the United States is home to several of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies, including Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, and the industry holds huge political influence, particularly since U.S. production of fossil fuels has surged over the past decade. In 2018, lobbying for oil and gas topped $124 million — more than double what it was 15 years ago — putting significant pressure on politicians to resist climate action despite dire warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the world has just over a decade to act to avert catastrophe.

“Our financial system is basically not responding to that threat at this point,” says Yossi Cadan, the senior global campaigner on divestment for 350.org. “The notion that politicians are not going to act is the current financial assumption. And if you think like that, and you say, OK, politicians are not going to regulate the extraction of fossil fuels … then we may be able to burn everything that we have and make a profit out of it.”

Still, banks have made very public commitments in recent years to finance sustainable companies and projects or to go carbon-neutral. Last year, Wells Fargo, the second biggest fossil fuel funder, committed $200 billion in financing through 2030 to projects and businesses focused on transitioning to a low-carbon economy. In 2017, the institution invested $12 billion in sustainable businesses — but it put more than four times that toward financing fossil fuels the same year.

Citi, Bank of America, and Chase have made similar pledges, all of which pale in comparison to their fossil fuel financing. In 2017, Chase announced it would be 100 percent renewable energy–reliant by 2020 and committed $200 billion in clean energy financing by 2025. But it has spent almost the same amount financing fossil fuels in just the past three years. And while Chase CEO Jamie Dimon publicly criticized President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement, the bank’s longest sitting board member is Lee Raymond, the former board chair and CEO of Exxon. Well known for his public skepticism of climate change, Raymond led Exxon during a time when it was pouring tens of millions of dollars into funding climate change denial.

The report also reveals that Chase is the top financier of three major categories of fossil fuel projects — Arctic oil and gas, ultra-deepwater drilling, and liquefied natural gas — and that it is also the top U.S. banker for two others: tar sands oil and coal mining. It is second only to Wells Fargo in financing fracking. Chase did not respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones.

The broad increase in fossil fuel funding comes as many people consider fossil fuels to be economically unsustainable. Oil and gas companies face the prospect of stranded assets if governments tighten environmental regulations, if energy demand shifts toward renewables, or if companies face litigation and increased scrutiny from concerned shareholders — all of which are currently underway. The coal industry in the U.S. is on its last legs, despite the Trump administration’s efforts to prop it up. About 75 percent of U.S. coal production is more expensive than solar or wind energy, according to a report released this week. And it’s getting harder for the industry in general to make money. Yet oil companies have continued to aggressively pursue fossil fuel development, and the world’s major banks are supporting them. Alarmingly, the new data shows that banks (again, led by Chase) put $600 billion behind the 100 companies most focused on expanding fossil fuel production, accounting for almost one-third of all fossil fuel financing.

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“Even if the bank thinks in seven years it might be a problem, they say, ‘Well, we’ll be out of here in three years,’” McCully says. “You say economically why would they do it, but even morally why would they do it? If they think they’re leaving this completely decimated world to their kids and grandkids, wouldn’t they want to do something about it? But it just seems like they’re unable to look beyond the next quarter, maybe the next year. They just don’t have long-term economic or moral vision.”

As banks become increasingly crucial to the future of fossil fuels, they could also play a particularly critical role in the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming. Without the support of banks, U.S. coal companies would be decimated since a lack of liquid assets makes them reliant on loans, Cadan points out. And while oil companies have enough assets to finance themselves for a while, it’s largely unsustainable long-term, especially because without financing, new investments are increasingly risky and costly. Banks “can determine the pace of how we combat climate change,” Cadan says. “It’s black and white. With the help of financial institutions we can easily be in a different space. If they take real action.”

“Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how many solar panels we have,” McCully adds. “If we’re still building lots more coal plants and oil fields, clean energy is not going to help.”

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Likely 2020 voters support parts of Green New Deal, despite reservations over the cost

by ReggieBisdee Posted on February 16, 2019

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

A majority of likely 2020 voters supports key aspects of a Green New Deal even when faced with potential costs and downsides, but strict regulations to decarbonize the nation’s top polluters could trigger a backlash, according to a new poll from proponents of the policy.

The survey, released by the think tank Data for Progress and shared with HuffPost, found net support for a range of policies, including improving drinking water infrastructure, reforesting land, providing job training and insurance to displaced workers, and guaranteeing clean-energy jobs.

“At the core, the Green New Deal is about a moral imperative to transform our economy and improve people’s lives for the better,” said Greg Carlock, the researcher at Data for Progress and architect of the first Green New Deal blueprint published last September. “You can’t put a price on that, but even when you do, people still support it.”

But faced with a range of possible price tags, voters’ support varied, suggesting costs could factor high into the Green New Deal’s political viability. The results showed a majority of voters would likely oppose policies with stringent mandates — rules requiring all cars be electric by 2030 and every fossil fuel power plant close by 2035.

To test the support, Data for Progress commissioned the Democratic pollster Civis Analytics to survey 3,496 likely voters between January 4 – 26 on 11 policies expected to be included a Green New Deal. The poll tested four different cost scenarios on each question, randomly alternating between zero, low, medium, and high prices to test how the cost of a policy weighed on one-quarter of respondents’ opinions.

The green jobs guarantee, considered by Green New Deal proponents to be the heart of the suite of policies, proved one of the tricker components. In a lengthy prompt, the survey asked respondents if they support or oppose a policy that Democrats promised would “guarantee an environmentally friendly job to every American adult, with the government providing jobs for people who can’t find employment in the private sector.”

The question described the job as a position that would pay “at least $15 an hour, included healthcare benefits, and collective bargaining rights.” The surveyors added that Republicans warned the policy “would increase the national debt, endanger the long term health of our economy, and this policy will end up paying people who can’t contribute in the job market to perform pointless busy work.”

Thirty-nine percent supported the green jobs guarantee, 33 percent opposed, and 27 didn’t know. Without a price, voters were 9 percentage points likelier to support than oppose the policy. At a low of $100 billion, support hit 2 percentage points. Voters were about evenly divided on policies costing $500 billion or $1 trillion.

Mandates requiring the country to generate 100 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2050 enjoyed sweeping support. The question noted that Democrats believed such a policy would “kickstart the renewable energy sector, creating jobs for many Americans and ensuring that America leads the world in green technology,” while Republicans said, “this would take away freedom from American consumers, put people out of work, and raise prices for everything from transportation to consumer goods.”

Thirty-eight percent supported the proposal, 33 percent opposed and 30 percent didn’t know. Without a price, voters backed the policy by 7 percentage points. At a low of $25 billion, that figure fell to 2 percentage points. Support held steady at 1 percentage point for both a medium cost of $37.5 billion and a high of $50 billion. Age impacted support at the unstated price level. Voters aged 18 to 34 supported the policy by 15 percentage points, while those 65 and older opposed the policy by 11 percentage points.

Policies improving drinking water infrastructure proved to be the most popular. The survey outlined a proposal to improve infrastructure “and replace lead pipes,” considering that Republicans “say that our drinking infrastructure is in good shape already, and this represents a wasteful use of resources that will burden our children with debt.”

Half of the respondents supported the proposal, 21 percent opposed, and 29 percent didn’t know. At no stated price, voters supported the proposal by 36 percentage points. Faced with a low cost of $25 billion, support sank to 27 percentage points. At a medium cost of $37.5 billion, the percentage dropped to 23. At a high of $50 billion, it fell to 22 percentage points.

The least popular policy was one “proposing requiring that all new cars sold be electric by 2030.” The question said, “Democrats say this would help stop climate change, save thousands of lives by reducing pollution, and make the U.S. the definitive leader in the electric car industry.”

Republicans say this would take away freedom from American consumers, put people making cars out of work, and make new cars unaffordable for the average American.

Just 26 percent supported the policy, with 44 percent opposed, and 33 percent unsure. Without even seeing a price, voters opposed the electric car mandate by 15 percentage points.

The second-least popular was a proposal “requiring that all fossil fuel plants (coal, natural gas, and oil) cease operating by 2035” in an effort to “help stop climate change” that Republicans say “would put many Americans out of work, and could lead to an energy crisis as energy prices soar.”

Voters opposed the measure by 3 percentage points, again without seeing a price.

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The findings come just weeks before the Senate is expected to hold a vote on the Green New Deal resolution Senator Ed Markey (a Democrat from Massachussetts) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a Democrat from New York) released last week. The measure, essentially a political statement outlining the scope of what’s needed to prepare the U.S. for a rapidly warming climate, staked out an ambitious list of policies to protect vulnerable communities already suffering from pollution.

In what Green New Deal supporters called a cynical ploy to halt their movement’s growing momentum, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (a Republican from Kentucky), a veteran climate change denier who’s taken millions from the fossil fuel industry, vowed this week to hold a vote, forcing swing-state senators to take positions on a policy Republicans are aggressively working to vilify.

The vast majority of Americans understand climate change is happening and human-caused emissions are the primary cause. In December, 81 percent of registered voters supported the goals of the Green New Deal, including 64 percent of Republicans and 57 percent of conservative Republicans, according to a poll from Yale and George Mason universities. But the pollsters warned that the overwhelming bipartisan support could erode as the Green New Deal became more closely associated with individual politicians.

The Sunrise Movement, the grassroots climate advocacy group whose thousands of volunteers helped propel the Green New Deal into the national stage in November with a series of protests against top Democrats, said Wednesday it would ramp up actions confronting both Democrats and swing-state Republicans, urging them to support the policy. Groups like Justice Democrats, the left-wing organization that helped run Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign, and Data for Progress vowed to aid efforts to primary any Democrats who oppose the Green New Deal.

“The Green New Deal won’t hurt Democrats politically,” said Sean McElwee, the co-founder of Data for Progress. “But failing to take aggressive action on climate change could demoralize the millennial base who demand immediate action on climate change.”

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School strikes over climate change continue to snowball

by reenokabeeno2005 Posted on January 26, 2019

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

The 16-year-old activist behind the fast-growing School Strikes 4 Climate Action has taken her campaign to the streets of Davos, to confront world leaders and business chiefs about the global emissions crisis.

Greta Thunberg, whose solo protest outside Sweden’s parliament has snowballed across the globe, will join a strike by Swiss school children in the ski resort on Friday — the final day of the World Economic Forum.

Thunberg traveled by train for 32 hours to reach Davos, and spent Wednesday night camped with climate scientists on the mountain slopes — where temperatures plunged to -18 degrees C (-0.4 degrees F).

Having already addressed the U.N. Climate Change COP 24 conference, Thunberg is rapidly becoming the voice for a generation who are demanding urgent action to slow the rise in global temperatures.

As she traveled down Davos’s funicular railway from the Arctic Base Camp — while more than 30,000 students were striking in Belgium — Thunberg said the rapid growth of her movement was “incredible.”

“There have been climate strikes, involving students and also adults, on every continent except Antarctica. It has involved tens of thousands of children.”

Thunberg started her protest by striking for three weeks outside the Swedish parliament, lobbying MPs to comply with the Paris Agreement. After the Swedish election, she continued to strike every Friday, where she is now joined by hundreds of people.

“This Friday I can’t be there,” she told the Guardian. “So I will have to do it here in Davos, and send a message that this is the only thing that matters.”

Students around the world have been inspired by Thunberg, with thousands skipping school in Australia in November. Last Friday there were strikes in Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland, where more than 20,000 students skipped school.

Missing gym class, geography, and religion each Friday is something of a sacrifice for Thunberg, who says she loves school and can’t pick a favorite subject.

“I like all subjects. I love learning, which people maybe don’t think about me.”

She’s also been forced to give up her hobbies, as climate change activism has taken more of her time. “I used to play theatre, sing, dance, play an instrument, ride horses, lots of things.”

She’s sanguine, though, pointing out that climate activism is much more important: “You have to see the bigger perspective.”

Thunberg said she would like more students to join her strike. “That would have a huge impact, but I’m not going to force anyone to do this.”

In the U.K., only a small number of students have so far begun strikes, including 13-year-old Holly Gillibrand in Fort William. But plans are now being made for a big strike on February 15. Thunberg predicts there will be protests in many locations.

She believes parents should be supportive if their children tell them they’re striking on Friday. “Everyone keeps saying that the young people should be more active, and they’re so lazy, but once we do something we get criticized.”

The world’s scientists warned in October that, without a dramatic ramping up of action to cut emissions, global temperatures would rise by more than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels, with severe consequences for humanity.

Thunberg believes the older generations need to acknowledge that they have failed to protect the environment.

“We need to hold the older generations accountable for the mess they have created, and expect us to live with. It is not fair that we have to pay for what they have caused,” she says.

Thunberg has also called on business leaders and politicians to commit to “real and bold climate action,” and focus on the “future living conditions of mankind” rather than economic goals and profits.

In a video address for leaders attending Davos, she says: “I ask you to stand on the right side of history. I ask you to pledge to do everything in your power to push your own business or government in line with a 1.5 C world.”

Thunberg has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, which she believes helps her see the problem of climate change clearly.

“My brain works a bit different and so I see things in black and white. Either we start a chain reaction with events beyond our control, or we don’t. Either we stop the emissions or we don’t. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.”

The school strikes last Friday were by far the biggest to date. In Germany, an estimated 30,000 students left their schools in more than 50 cities to protest, carrying banners including: “Why learn without a future?” and “Grandpa, what is a snowman?” One 17-year-old student in Kiel, Moritz, told Deutsche Welle: “We want to help shape and secure our future so that there will be another world for us to live in in 60 years.”

In Belgium, 12,500 students went on strike last Thursday and plan to strike weekly until the E.U. elections in May. Some teachers were tolerant of the truancy. Patrick Lancksweerdt, in Brussels, said: “Education has to turn youngsters into mature citizens. By their actions, they proved that they are.”

School strikes also took place in 15 cities and towns in Switzerland. In Geneva, 12-year-old Selma Joly said: “Frankly, I would rather demand climate action than go to school. Otherwise, years from now, we may no longer be here.”

Janine O’Keeffe, who helps coordinate and keep track of the school strikes from her home in Stockholm, Sweden, was surprised at the scale of last week’s actions: “I am still in shock, actually — a nice kind of shock.”

Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace, says youth activism on climate change gives her hope. “The 15-year-olds just speak truth to power.”

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Why Detroit residents pushed back against tree-planting

by GlennLance Posted on January 14, 2019

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

A landmark report conducted by University of Michigan environmental sociologist Dorceta Taylor in 2014 warned of the “arrogance” of white environmentalists when they introduce green initiatives to black and brown communities. One black environmental professional Taylor interviewed for the report, Elliot Payne, described experiences where green groups “presumed to know what’s best” for communities of color without including them in the decision-making and planning processes.

“I think a lot of the times it stems from the approach of oh we just go out and offer tree plantings or engaging in an outdoor activity, and if we just reach out to them they will come,” Payne told Taylor.

In fact, this is exactly what was happening in Detroit at the time that Taylor’s report came out. In 2014, the city was a few years deep into a campaign to reforest its streets after decades of neglecting to maintain its depleted tree canopy. A local environmental nonprofit called The Greening of Detroit was the city’s official partner for carrying out that reforesting task, which it had started doing on its own when it was founded in 1989. By 2014, TGD had received additional funding to ramp up its tree-planting services to the tune of 1,000 to 5,000 new trees per year. To meet that goal, it had to penetrate neighborhoods somewhat more aggressively than it had in the past and win more buy-in from the residents.

The tree-planters met stiff resistance: Roughly a quarter of the 7,500 residents they approached declined offers to have new trees planted in front of their homes. It was a high enough volume of rejections for such an otherwise valuable service that University of Vermont researcher Christine E. Carmichael wanted to know the reasons behind it.

She obtained data that TGD collected on the people who turned them down, and then visited Detroit to interview staff members and residents. What she found is that the rejections had more to do with how the tree-planters presented themselves and residents’ distrust of city government than it did with how residents felt about trees. Carmichael’s findings (with co-author Maureen H. McDonough) were published last week in the journal Society and Natural Resources.

The residents Carmichael surveyed understood the benefits of having trees in urban environments — they provide shade and cooling, absorb air pollution, especially from traffic, increase property values, and improve health outcomes. But the reasons Detroit folks were submitting “no tree requests” were rooted in how they have historically interpreted their lived experiences in the city, or what Carmichael calls “heritage narratives.”

These are the stories that people from all walks of Detroit life tell themselves and each other about why city conditions are the way they are. The heritage narratives that residents shared about trees in Detroit were different from the ones shared among the people in city government and TGD.

A couple of African-American women Carmichael talked to linked the tree-planting program to a painful racist moment in Detroit’s history, right after the 1967 race rebellion, when the city suddenly began cutting down elm trees in bulk in their neighborhoods. The city did this, as the women understood it, so that law enforcement and intelligence agents could better surveil their neighborhoods from helicopters and other high places after the urban uprising.

The city was chopping down trees at a faster clip at this time. And the city was flying helicopters over their homes at one point — to spray toxic DDT from above on the trees. However, the government’s stated reason for the mass tree-choppings was that the trees were dying off from the Dutch elm disease then spreading across the country. These were competing heritage narratives of the same event — the clearing away of trees in the 1960s. The two narratives are in conflict, but it was the women’s version, based on their lived experiences, that led to their decision to reject the trees today. It’s not that they didn’t trust the trees; they didn’t trust the city.

“In this case, the women felt that [after the race rebellion] the city just came in and cut down their trees, and now they want to just come in planting trees,” Carmichael said. “But they felt they should have a choice in this since they’ll be the ones caring for the trees and raking up the leaves when the planters leave. They felt that the decisions regarding whether to cut down trees or plant new ones were being made by someone else, and they were going to have to deal with the consequences.”

There was distrust not only of the city, but of the tree planters as well, particularly considering how TGD staff stepped to the people in the communities they were plotting on. The Greening of Detroit had 50,000 volunteers (during that 2011-2014 time period), most of them white and not from Detroit. The organization had just one community-outreach person on staff. And that outreach apparently did not include involving neighborhood residents in the planning of this urban-forestry program.

“City residents could request a tree planting in their neighborhood from TGD, but TGD’s green infrastructure staff decided in which neighborhoods to plant trees, as well as tree species to plant and tree maintenance protocols,” reads the paper. “TGD’s green infrastructure staff members committed to maintaining trees for three years after planting, which residents were informed of through door hangers and at community meetings, if they attended such meetings.”

Failing to meaningfully involve the residents in the decision-making is a classic environmental justice no-no. However, from reading excerpts of Carmichael’s interviews with TGD staff members, it’s clear some of the tree planters thought they were doing these communities an environmental justice solid. After all, who would turn down a free tree on their property, given all of the health and economic benefits that service affords? Perhaps these people just don’t get it. 

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As one staff member told Carmichael in the study: “You’re dealing with a generation that has not been used to having trees, the people who remember the elms are getting older and older. Now we’ve got generations of people that have grown up without trees on their street, they don’t even know what they’re missing.”

However, environmental justice is not just about the distribution of bad stuff, like pollution, or good stuff, like forestry projects across disadvantaged communities. It’s also about the distribution of power among communities that have historically only been the subjects and experiments of power structures.

In 2014, Detroit had an African-American population of 83 percent, and the highest rate of concentrated poverty among the top 25 metros in the U.S., according to the Brookings Institution. This forestry project was ramping up right as the city was in the throes of bankruptcy. These residents may have had different priorities in mind than those carried by the tree-planters who came knocking. Race and class matters in urban greening agendas, as the City of Houston once learned when it failed to survey non-white, lower-income residents for the creation of its parks master plan in 2014.

One Detroit resident whom Carmichael interviewed for her study told her: “You know what, I really appreciate you today because that shows that someone is listening and someone is trying to find out what’s really going on in our thoughts, the way we feel, and I just appreciate you guys. And maybe next time they can do a survey and ask us, if they would like to have us have the trees.”

Monica Tabares, TGD’s vice president of operations and development, said the organization always had a community-engagement process, but other factors complicated their interactions with residents, such as the city’s poor record of tree maintenance.

“Our capacity to fulfill every community partner’s needs was in hindsight a bit more difficult to achieve, and that resulted in some impressions among some individuals about not feeling the inclusion,” Tabares said. “Also, the city itself didn’t have the capacity to bring down dead trees, nor to prune trees, plus the fact that we were now replanting trees in some really decimated areas with no tree canopy. It left people questioning whether they were going to be taken care of. It just didn’t jibe right with all of our resident partners.”

Since talking with Carmichael and learning her study’s findings, Tabares says TGD has made several changes to its program, adding more material involvement of residents in the tree-planting and planning process. The organization now also has four community-engagement members on staff, all of whom live in the city of Detroit, which Tabares said has encouraged more trust from the residents.

“Having people come in and not be from the city and then dictate what goes on — not that we ever did that — but that’s the feeling. So we want people to feel comfortable with our engagement team that’s talking about the benefits of trees,” Tabares said.

The lessons learned from the study are immediately important, given that environmental organizations often partner with cities for these kinds of services. This is especially true when local governments don’t have the funding to do it (as happened in Detroit) or when the federal government shuts down (what’s happening now). Having diverse staffs that reflect the city’s neighborhoods and understand the heritage narratives that run through them matters.

“Heritage narratives are important because they guide actions that are taken,” Carmichael said. “A nonprofit might say tree-canopy decline can be used to justify their approach to educating residents, because there are people who don’t understand the value of trees. But everyone I interviewed understood those benefits, so it’s inaccurate to say that. Ultimately, the feeling was that they were being disenfranchised.”

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Why Detroit residents pushed back against tree-planting

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We need to talk about palm oil

by QDGSilviap Posted on December 31, 2018

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

We wash our hair with it, brush our teeth with it, smother our skin in it, and use it to powder our cheeks, plump our lashes, and color our lips. We clean our houses with it, fuel our cars with it, and eat it in chocolate, bread, ice cream, pizza, breakfast cereal, and candy bars.

Palm oil: You may never have walked into a supermarket with it written on your shopping list, but you’ve certainly walked out with bags full of it.

An extremely versatile ingredient that’s cheaper and more efficient to produce than other vegetable oils, palm oil is found today in half of all consumer goods including soaps and toothpaste, cosmetics and laundry detergent, and a whole array of processed food. Palm oil is also found in biodiesel used to power cars (more than 50 percent of the European Union’s palm oil consumption in 2017 reportedly went to this purpose).

Our modern lives are inextricably intertwined with the commodity, which can appear on ingredient labels under a myriad of alternative names including sodium lauryl sulphate, stearic acid, and palmitate. But activists warn that our insatiable demand for palm oil has fueled one of the most pressing environmental and humanitarian crises of our time.

The equivalent of 300 football fields of rainforest is destroyed every hour to make way for palm oil plantations, according to the Orangutan Project. This rampant deforestation — which has occurred in some of the world’s most biodiverse hot spots, mostly in Indonesia and Malaysia — has decimated the habitat of endangered species like orangutans and Sumatran tigers, displaced indigenous communities, contributed to a regional smog problem linked to tens of thousands of premature deaths, and is a significant driver of climate change.

Last month, palm oil and its impacts became the story of the hour when the U.K. banned a stirring ad about the commodity from TV broadcast. The ad, which featured an animated orphaned orangutan and was released by British grocery store Iceland, was deemed too political for television. The ban triggered a flurry of interest and outrage worldwide.

“There’s been a huge spike in awareness about palm oil because of the Iceland ad,” said conservationist and Mongabay.com founder Rhett Butler, who’s been monitoring trends in the palm oil industry for years. “It was quite astonishing actually. It seems like global interest in this issue is at an all-time high.”

But this spotlight on palm oil has revealed a troubling stagnation of the industry’s progress in tackling the environmental and human rights issues that have dogged it for years.

On the surface, significant progress appears to have been made since the early 2010s: Public awareness of the palm oil crisis has significantly increased; some of the world’s largest producers and buyers of palm oil have made very public and very lofty sustainability and human rights commitments; and governments — notably Indonesia’s — have vowed to do more to protect the people, species, and habitats exploited by the palm oil industry.

Yet, in spite of all this, “unfortunately from an environmental perspective, not a lot has changed,” Butler said.

Deforestation is still occurring at an alarming rate in Indonesia and Malaysia, which supply about 85 percent of the world’s palm oil. A September Greenpeace investigation found that more than 500 square miles of rainforest — about the size of Los Angeles — had been cleared in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the neighboring nation of Papua New Guinea for palm oil production since the end of 2015.

According to the Greenpeace report, 12 of the world’s largest brands including Nestle, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Colgate-Palmolive, PepsiCo, and Unilever continue to source palm oil from producers and growers that were found to be “actively clearing rainforests” — despite the “zero-deforestation” commitments that these companies have made in recent years.

“We’re consuming their products on a daily basis,” said Annisa Rahmawati of Greenpeace Indonesia, according to Mongabay.com. “So we’re … indirectly [participating in these] deforestation and human rights violations.”

Some companies including Unilever and Nestle responded to the Greenpeace report by reiterating their sustainability commitments. “Our ambition is that by the end of 2020 all of the palm oil that we use is responsibly sourced,” Nestle said on its website.

“Greenpeace rightfully addresses serious and systematic issues that we know are fundamentally broken in the palm oil supply chain,” Unilever noted in a statement, adding that the company is “actively driving change in both our own operations and across the industry.”

This summer, Wilmar International, the world’s largest palm oil trader, was embroiled in controversy after its billionaire co-founder Martua Sitoris was accused of running a “shadow company” with his brother that had cleared an area of rainforest twice the size of Paris since 2013 — the same year that Wilmar had promised to work toward “no deforestation” and “no exploitation” in its supply chain.

Sitoris was forced to resign in the wake of the allegations, and Wilmar — which controls almost half of the world’s trade in palm oil — vowed this month to strengthen its sustainability policy.

“Wilmar’s [scandal] makes abundantly clear that these companies cannot be trusted to police themselves,” said Tomasz Johnson, head of research at Earthsight and founder of The Gecko Project, speaking from London last week.

Emma Lierley, forest policy director at the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), echoed this sentiment. “The same problems are still happening in this industry,” she said. “Deforestation is continuing, threatened species are still being put at risk, and there’s evidence that labor abuse including child labor and forced labor are still commonplace across plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia — and all of this is happening despite corporate policy changes.”

“Corporate policy is all well and good but it has to be worth the paper it’s written on,” Lierley added. “We’re just not seeing that real change taking place.”

And the clock, she warned, is ominously ticking: The palm oil industry is causing potentially irreparable damage to the planet — and its climate — and if we don’t take prompt and comprehensive action, the outcome could be catastrophic.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is how much of an impact palm oil has on our future climate stability,” Lierley said.

Palm oil cultivation is currently conducted disproportionately in high-carbon areas like tropical forests and carbon-rich peatlands. When these areas are deforested to make way for plantations, enormous volumes of climate-warming gases are released into the atmosphere.

It’s estimated that tropical deforestation is responsible for between 15 and 20 percent of global warming emissions — more than the emissions from cars and other forms of transportation.

Indonesia’s peatlands alone now release more than 500 megatons of carbon dioxide every year — an amount greater than California’s entire annual emissions, The New York Times reported in November. And the deforestation of Borneo, an island shared by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei, has contributed to “the largest single-year global increase in carbon emissions in two millenniums,” the paper said, citing NASA research.

Palm oil plantations are the main driver of deforestation on Borneo, which has lost more than 16,000 square miles of ancient rainforest — and critical habitat for a wide variety of creatures — because of the commodity. Almost 150,000 critically endangered Bornean orangutans were killed between 1999 and 2015, partly because of palm oil.

“Scientists have warned us that we have just 12 years to avert the worst effects of climate change,” Lierley said, referring to a grim United Nations report released in October. “The stakes are incredibly high. A lot of people are trying to pass the buck in the palm oil industry, but we need to see really bold action from companies all along the supply chain, as well as government actors and other institutions.”

This is particularly pressing given the expected ballooning of demand for palm oil in the coming years. The Center for International Forestry Research estimates that world consumption of palm oil will increase by 62 percent in a “medium growth scenario” and 94 percent in a “high demand scenario.” Other countries, particularly in Africa, are expected to see a boom in palm oil production to meet this growing demand.

Johnson, who for years has been investigating corruption in the palm oil industry, warned that the same broken agri-industrial model of palm oil production in Indonesia and Malaysia is already being replicated in parts of Africa.

“The same palm oil companies that have been operating in Indonesia have announced plans in recent years to do the same” in countries like Liberia and Uganda, said Johnson. “And you could just see the disaster slowly unfolding.”

Companies like Wilmar and the Malaysian conglomerate Sime Darby have been granted enormous concessions, or cultivation areas, for palm oil in these countries — and reports have already emerged of deforestation and land-grab issues.

“Many of these countries are fragile, post-war states,” said Johnson of the African nations where the palm oil industry has been steadily encroaching. “If these [companies] aren’t even following the rules properly in Indonesia,” where President Joko Widodo has taken steps to crack down on conflict palm oil, “what’s the chance they’ll do things better in these fragile states?”

The problems with palm oil may feel complex and entrenched, but activists insist that solutions are within reach.

Though reducing consumption of palm oil could be a positive step, boycotting the commodity entirely doesn’t appear to be the answer. Producing alternative vegetable oils like soybean would have similar, or even worse, environmental impacts, Lierley noted.

“It’s not palm oil itself that’s the problem,” she said. “It’s the way it’s produced.”

And that, activists say, is what needs to change.

Consumers should push companies to be more transparent about where their palm oil is coming from, said Mongabay.com’s Butler.

“Look at the ingredient lists on the things that you are buying and figure out what products actually contain palm oil,” he said. “Then contact the company and ask them what their palm oil policy is. It doesn’t actually require that much feedback from consumers to send a strong message to a company.”

Companies, in turn, need to be more transparent about their practices, Johnson said.

“If they want to be trusted, they need to put everything on the table, they need to be as transparent as humanly possible and people need to be watching them closely. If not, we’re just going to see more ‘zero deforestation’ companies buying from dodgy suppliers,” he said.

Consumers can use their dollars to support companies that have made — and fulfilled — sustainability commitments. The “bare minimum,” said Butler, is to choose companies and brands that are certified by the RSPO, or the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.

The RSPO, which is the world’s leading certification body for sustainably sourced palm oil, has been widely criticized in the past for not setting high enough standards for its members and for inadequately enforcing its rules. Last month, however, the group significantly strengthened its criteria — a move lauded by activists.

WWF, RAN, and the Union of Concerned Scientists have palm oil scorecards that track how some of the world’s biggest companies and brands are faring when it comes to sustainable palm oil.

“Companies often say it’s a lack of resources or lack of information that make it difficult for them to fulfill their sustainability commitments. But if a small nonprofit like RAN can identify labor abuses, deforestation, and land-grab issues, there’s no reason why a huge multinational can’t do it too,” Lierley said.

“It’s not an impossible problem,” she continued. “It’s a matter of willpower.”

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We need to talk about palm oil

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Want clean air in 2019? Let’s talk climate change

by IsabellCroft Posted on December 20, 2018

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For years, air quality and climate change have been like star-crossed lovers — inextricably linked, but never quite finding their way to each other in environmental policy and dialogue. Well in 2018, the two finally got hot and heavy thanks to several landmark reports and climate calamities literally taking our breath away. People seem to see that it makes sense to tackle air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions together.

Especially on the local level, failing to take air quality into consideration has left some glaring holes in our climate action strategies. Take, for instance, California’s cap-and-trade system, a climate solution touted by some environmentalists. Although California managed to reduce its carbon emissions overall for the state, its carbon trading market ended up concentrating contaminants in the “fenceline” neighborhoods that were already facing the most pollution.

From a public health perspective, according to Lara Cushing, the lead author of a study on the environmental equity of carbon trading, getting the most good out of emissions reductions “means prioritizing emissions reductions from sources that also release a lot of health-damaging pollutants.”

The effect climate change has had on air quality hasn’t headlined much in the past. But that changed after this year’s blazing wildfires sent California’s greenhouse gas gains up in smoke. On top of that, record-breaking heat waves have sped up the production of ozone pollution — a trend that will likely continue thanks to global warming predictions. The behemoth 4th National Climate Assessment dedicated 27 of its more than 1,500 pages to air quality.

“Early on when we were talking about climate, the old iconic polar bear disappearing became sort of the focus,” says Janice Nolan, assistant vice president of national policy at the American Lung Association. What’s changing now, she says, is that “people are seeing that this is a human health impact.”

Even the World Health Organization got in on the air quality action in 2018, releasing a child environmental health report this October with an entire section dedicated to the benefits of cleaner air for health and the climate. “Actions to reduce air pollution will benefit child health, not only by avoiding direct effects but also by reducing emissions of certain greenhouse gases and thus mitigating climate change and its effects on health,” it read.

And last but certainly not least on the big, scary study list, the U.N.’s special climate report released this year spelled out the case for finding solutions that target both climate change and air pollution: “Focusing on pathways and policies which both improve air quality and reduce impacts of climate change can provide multiple co-benefits.”

These reports sound like a lot of sad news, but the great thing about this newfound attention to the pairing between climate action and clean air policies is that it’s super efficient, since carbon and the crap that makes it harder to breathe are often released at the same time.

The two solutions actually make each other better when they’re together. Awwww.

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Trump administration’s climate report raises new questions about nuclear energy’s future

by LGYJaymeknbiym Posted on November 30, 2018

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

Call it the nuclear power industry’s thirst trap.

The United States’ aging fleet of nuclear reactors ― responsible for one-fifth of the country’s electricity and most of its low-carbon power ― has never been more necessary as policymakers scramble to shrink planet-warming emissions. Yet the plants are struggling to stay afloat, with six stations shut down in the last five years and an additional 16 reactors scheduled to close over the next decade. So far, new coal- and gas-burning facilities are replacing them.

The nuclear industry blames high maintenance costs, competition from cheaper alternatives and hostile regulators concerned about radiation disasters like the 2012 Fukushima meltdown in Japan. But the country’s most water-intensive source of electricity faces what could be an even bigger problem as climate change increases the risk of drought and taxes already crumbling water infrastructure.

That finding, highlighted in the landmark climate change report that the Trump administration released with apparent reluctance last Friday, illustrates the complex and at times paradoxical realities of anthropogenic, or human-caused, warming. It also stokes an already hot debate over the role nuclear energy should play in fighting global warming, a month after United Nations scientists warned that carbon dioxide emissions must be halved in the next 12 years to avoid cataclysmic climate change leading to at least $54 trillion in damage.

The report ― the second installment of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated update on the causes and effects of anthropogenic warming from 13 federal agencies ― devoted its entire third chapter to water contamination and depletion. Aging, deteriorating infrastructure means “water systems face considerable risk even without anticipated future climate changes,” the report states. But warming-linked droughts and drastic changes in seasonal precipitation “will add to the stress on water supplies and adversely impact water supply.”

Nearly every sector of the economy is susceptible to water system changes. And utilities are particularly at risk. In the fourth chapter, the report’s roughly 300 authors conclude, “Most U.S. power plants … rely on a steady supply of water for cooling, and operations are expected to be affected by changes in water availability and temperature increases.”

For nuclear plants, that warning is particularly grave. Reactors require 720 gallons of water per megawatt-hour of electricity they produce, according to data from the National Energy Technology Laboratory in West Virginia cited in 2012 by the magazine New Scientist. That compares with the roughly 500 gallons coal requires and 190 gallons natural gas needs to produce the same amount of electricity. Solar plants, by contrast, use approximately 20 gallons per megawatt-hour, mostly for cleaning equipment, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group.

Nuclear plants are already vulnerable to drought. Federal regulations require plants to shut down if water in the river or lake that feeds its cooling drops below a certain level. By the end of the 2012 North American heat wave, nuclear generation fell to its lowest point in a decade, with plants operating at only 93 percent of capacity.

The availability of water is one problem, particularly for the majority of U.S. nuclear plants located far from the coasts and dependent on freshwater. Another is the temperature of the water that’s available.

Nearly half the nuclear plants in the U.S. use once-through cooling systems, meaning they draw water from a local source, cool their reactors, then discharge the warmed water into another part of the river, lake, aquifer, or ocean. Environmental regulations bar plants from releasing used water back into nature above certain temperatures. In recent years, regulators in states like New York and California rejected plant operators’ requests to pull more water from local rivers, essentially mandating the installation of costly closed-loop systems that cool and reuse cooling water.

In 2012, Connecticut’s lone nuclear power plant shut down one of its two units because the seawater used to cool the plant was too warm. The heat wave that struck Europe this summer forced utilities to scale back electricity production at nuclear plants in Finland, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. In France, the utility EDF shut down four reactors in one day.

“Already they’re having trouble competing against natural gas and renewable energy,” said John Rogers, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Add onto that high water temperatures, high air temperatures and drought. It’s just another challenge.”

But water has yet to pose an existential crisis. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that it considers climate change when reviewing applications for nuclear plants’ construction or operation permits and that it has never rejected one over concerns about dwindling cooling water resources.

“For plants on lakes and rivers, the basic consideration will continue to be whether or not the water level in that body is high enough to meet the conditions of the license,” said Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “To this point, there have been no indications in the NRC’s analyses to suggest that plants would have to deal with the potential for the water bodies to no longer be able to fulfill their function.”

If or when that situation arises, a plant would have to propose a plan to maintain the requirements of the license, likely by reducing water intake and cutting electricity production, he said.

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There are ways to make nuclear plants more efficient with water. Closed-loop systems already cool 40 percent of the country’s reactors. For more than a decade, regulators and industry players have been discussing the feasibility of air-cooled condensers, which use electricity generated by the plant to power air conditioners that cool reactors without water. But the technology siphons roughly 7 percent of the power produced by the plant and has yet to be installed at any U.S. nuclear station, according to the industry-funded Nuclear Energy Institute.

Another approach is to use recycled water. To cool its three reactors, the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona sources most of the 20,000 gallons it uses per minute from reclaimed sewage from a treatment plant near Phoenix — a technique hailed in 2016 as “a feat of engineering” amid a drought.

Breakthroughs like that could make nuclear an attractive option for powering solutions to water scarcity in the years to come, such as desalinating brackish or saltwater and moving it to drought-parched regions.

“That’s energy intensive,” said Matt Wald, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute. “If you want to do that without adding carbon emissions, you’re likely to look at nuclear power as a way to do that.”

That, however, gets to the heart of the biggest question looming over the nuclear industry: Is it, given the radioactive waste it produces, clean energy?

For the growing number of states and municipalities pledging to use 100 percent renewable energy by the middle of the century, the answer is maybe.

Hawaii became the first state to adopt a 100 percent renewable electricity rule in 2015, pledging to quit gas and coal by 2045. The law makes no mention of nuclear, probably because the archipelago state has no reactors and requires a minimum two-thirds vote from both houses of the legislature to approve the construction of a nuclear plant or radioactive waste site.

The 100 percent clean electricity bill that California passed in August mandates that the state generate 60 percent of its electricity from renewables like wind and solar by 2030. But it gives regulators another 15 years after that to complete the overhaul with energy sources considered nonrenewable, including nuclear power, large hydropower dams, and gas-fired power plants that capture and store emissions.

A statute that Atlanta passed in June to get the city to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035 is vague, listing nuclear as a source of clean energy but vowing to get all its power from renewables.

For the Sierra Club, the environmental giant making a huge push to get cities and states to go all renewable, nuclear power is “a uniquely dangerous energy technology for humanity” and “no solution to climate change.”

“There’s no reason to keep throwing good money after bad on nuclear energy,” Lauren Lantry, a Sierra Club spokeswoman, said by email. “It’s clear that every dollar spent on nuclear is one less dollar spent on truly safe, affordable, and renewable energy sources like wind, solar, energy efficiency, battery storage, and smart grid technology.”

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As Trump questions warming, climate report warns of dire risks to U.S.

by JeseniaDelaney Posted on November 24, 2018

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

The United States already warmed on average 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century and will warm at least 3 more degrees by 2100 unless fossil fuel use is dramatically curtailed, scientists from more than a dozen federal agencies concluded in their latest in-depth assessment.

The 13-agency consensus, authored by more than 300 researchers, found in the second volume of the Fourth National Climate Assessment makes it clear the world is barreling toward catastrophic — perhaps irreversible — climate change. The report concluded that warming “could increase by 9°F (5°C) or more by the end of this century” without significant emissions reductions.

“Observations of global average temperature provide clear and compelling evidence the global average temperature is much higher and is rising more rapidly than anything modern civilization has experienced,” said David Easterling, chief of the scientific services division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. “This warming trend can only be explained by human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”

It’s the sort of staggering reality the Trump administration seems eager to minimize. Ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump antagonized climate scientists by tweeting, once again, that he believes cold weather disproves long-term trends of a warming climate.

“Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS – Whatever happened to Global Warming?” he posted Wednesday on Twitter.

That the White House opted to release the long-awaited update on climate change ― which Congress mandates the administration provide every four years — on Black Friday, a popular shopping holiday the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, indicates it wanted fewer people to see the news about the findings. Monica Allen, a spokeswoman for NOAA, repeatedly pushed back against questions about when the White House decided to move up the release of the report.

“The decision was made in the last week or so,” she said. “Please, I ask you to focus on the content of the report. The substance.”

The report adds to an ever-growing, all-but-irrefutable body of scientific research that shows climate change is real and driven by human carbon emissions ― a reality that President Donald Trump and his team refuse to accept as they pursue a fossil fuel-focused, “energy dominance” agenda.

Last year, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released a special report ― the first volume of the Fourth National Climate Assessment ― that found Earth has entered the warmest period “in the history of modern civilization,” with global average air temperatures having increased by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 115 years. And in October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading United Nations consortium of researchers studying human-caused climate change, issued a report warning world governments must cut global emissions in half over the next 12 years to avoid warming of 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, beyond which climate change is forecast to cause a cataclysmic $54 trillion in damages.

A series of devastating natural disasters, worsened by rising temperatures, made those findings tangible. In October, Typhoon Yutu, the most powerful storm all year, struck the Northern Mariana Islands, plunging the U.S. territory into chaos just a year after Hurricane Maria left thousands dead in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. California, meanwhile, is suffering its deadliest and most destructive wildfire on record during what was once the state’s rainy season.

Last year was the United States’ second-hottest in history, and the costliest in terms of climate-related disasters, with a record $306 billion in damages. Sixteen of the last 17 years have been the warmest on record globally.

In January, the Trump administration unveiled a proposal to open nearly all U.S. waters to oil and gas development. It has since worked to roll back safeguards adopted after the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In October, the Department of the Interior approved the development of the first oil production facility in Arctic waters off Alaska, but the company behind the project has since had to extend its construction timeline due to dwindling sea ice brought on by Arctic warming, as NPR reported.

The latest findings are likely to bolster the growing protests and legal battles over climate change. Over the past two weeks, activists in the United States and United Kingdom staged major demonstrations. In Washington, youth activists with the climate justice group Sunrise Movement stormed Democratic leaders’ offices demanding support for the so-called Green New Deal, the only policy to emerge in the American political mainstream that comes close to the scale of economic change needed to make a serious dent in national emissions. British activists stopped traffic this week as part of the so-called Extinction Rebellion.

The assessment could have weight in some critical court cases. The Supreme Court is considering a landmark suit brought by 21 plaintiffs between the ages of 11 and 22, who accuse the federal government of violating their civil rights to a safe climate by pursuing fossil fuel-focused energy policies. And various states and cities are suing big oil companies over climate damages, a number that could grow since Democrats scored victories in a number of attorney general seats in the midterm elections.

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As Trump questions warming, climate report warns of dire risks to U.S.

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