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Andrew Wheeler confirmed as the nation’s 15th EPA administrator

by Perry08Cdrnx Posted on February 28, 2019

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

Andrew Wheeler has been confirmed as the nation’s 15th administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Senate voted 52-47 to confirm the former coal lobbyist, who has served as acting EPA chief since former Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned amid ethics scandals last July.

In a statement posted to Twitter, Wheeler said he was “deeply honored” and looking forward to carrying out President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, voted against Wheeler after having supported his nomination as deputy administrator last year. Senator Susan Collins of Maine was the lone Republican to vote against the nomination. She opposed Pruitt’s nomination but, like Manchin, previously voted to confirm Wheeler as the agency’s No. 2 official.

In a statement Wednesday announcing her decision, Collins said Wheeler is “certainly qualified” but that she has “too many concerns with the actions during his tenure as acting administrator to be able to support his promotion.”

“The policies he has supported as acting administrator are not in the best interest of our environment and public health, particularly given the threat of climate change to our nation,” she said.

His confirmation adds yet another member to President Donald Trump’s Cabinet who as recently as 2017 was on the payroll of the industries he now regulates.

In 2017, the Senate confirmed Alex Azar, a former executive at the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. In January, former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan took over as acting secretary of defense after James Mattis’ abrupt departure. The next day, David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist and No. 2 at the Department of the Interior, became acting secretary when Ryan Zinke resigned amid mounting ethics investigations.

A week later, Trump nominated Wheeler, who in December became the longest-serving acting administrator in the EPA’s history, to take on the role permanently.

Thursday’s confirmation comes a day after the Senate voted 52-46 to end debate on the nomination. In a speech on the Senate floor following that vote, Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, said that in some cases Wheeler has “accelerated the environmental damage and regulatory zeal” that Pruitt began.

“Time and time again Mr. Wheeler has proven that his environmental policies are almost as destructive and extreme has his predecessors’,” he said.

Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said Wednesday that Trump picked the right man for the job. Regulatory proposals to replace the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era rule to cut carbon pollution from power plants, and to revise the 2015 Waters of the U.S. rule, which sought to safeguard drinking water for millions of Americans, shows that Wheeler “is serious about clear air and clear water while also understanding there’s an important role for states and local communities to play,” Barrasso said.

Wheeler’s record-breaking reign as acting administrator was marked by an unprecedented assault on greenhouse gas regulations amid historic wildfires and hurricanes that scientists say offer a preview of the rapidly warming world to come.

In August, Wheeler unveiled a proposal weakening fuel economy standards for new vehicles in a move seen as a “giant giveaway” to oil companies even as electric automobile technology made huge leaps forward. Weeks later, he proposed gutting a landmark Obama-era power plant regulation, allowing, by the EPA’s own calculus, enough pollution to cause an additional 1,400 premature deaths per year.

The planet has already warmed more than 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels. As a result, many Americans born after the mid-1970s have never experienced average temperatures unaffected by human-caused emissions. But in October, the United Nations released a landmark report predicting catastrophic effects of warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees F) — a fate that’s all but certain unless world governments halve emissions by 2030. A month later, federal scientists from 13 agencies, including the EPA, confirmed the findings in a National Climate Assessment that forecast U.S. average temperatures surging “9 degrees F (5 degrees C) or more by the end of this century.”

In response, Wheeler, despite admitting he hadn’t read the multiagency report, dismissed its findings and threatened to intervene in the drafting of the next National Climate Assessment.

In December, Wheeler delivered another two victories to the coal industry that, until mid-2017, had paid him to lobby the government. He proposed loosening requirements that coal-fired power plants reduce carbon dioxide emissions. He capped off the month by announcing plans to relax a rule restricting how much mercury and other dangerous pollutants coal-fired plants can release into the air.

In February, Wheeler announced that the EPA would consider regulating toxic, cancer-causing “forever chemicals” contaminating drinking water across the country — a move critics said amounted to a delay that could sicken millions. Last week, he broke off negotiations with California over a national vehicle fuel economy standard, setting the administration up for a lengthy legal fight with the Golden State, which is allowed under the Clean Air Act to set its own pollution limits.

Environmental groups reacted to Thursday’s confirmation much as they did when Wheeler took the reins as deputy administrator.

“Wheeler wants to turn the EPA into a wish-granting service for polluters, no matter the cost to public health or wildlife,” Emily Knobbe, EPA policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “But it’s only a matter of time before his dirty dealings land him in the same trash heap as his predecessor.”

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Andrew Wheeler confirmed as the nation’s 15th EPA administrator

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Bernie Sanders, the godfather of the Green New Deal, announces presidential run

by curseuroonline Posted on February 19, 2019

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Bernie Sanders announced he’s running for president on Tuesday, confirming rumors that have been swirling since pretty much the moment it became clear Donald Trump had won the White House in 2016. By now, you know the Vermont senator is an outspoken proponent of swift action against climate change. He’s quick to call the issue, in his trademark Brooklyn accent, “the single greatest threat facing our planet.”

So where does he stand on the Green New Deal?

A mere three years ago, the flashiest part of Sanders’ climate agenda was a carbon tax — a market-based emissions-reducing mechanism that was once the holy grail of climate legislation. Now, Sanders’ aides say a Green New Deal will be the centerpiece of his 2020 platform. But the 77-year-old isn’t just another Green New Deal bandwagoner.

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His 2016 climate platform included many of the elements of the Green New Deal now being championed by politicians like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and climate organizations like the Sunrise Movement, which was actually founded by a bunch of young Bernie activists.

For example, in 2016, Sanders called for:

Reducing subsidies for fossil fuels and banning fossil fuel lobbyists from working in the White House
A pricey carbon tax, banning new fossil fuel leases on public lands and ending exports of natural gas and crude oil.
No more offshore drilling, fracking, coal mining, drilling in the Arctic, and nuclear power.
Establishing a nation-wide environment and justice plan (ring any bells??)
Investing in renewables, energy efficiency, upgrading buildings and infrastructure, and more.

Almost all of those components are mentioned in Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey’s Green New Deal resolution introduced in the House a couple of weeks ago. In some cases, Sanders’ 2016 platform is even more ambitious than the Green New Deal outline. For example, the resolution does not call for a moratorium on nuclear power in an effort to keep more emissions-decreasing options on the table.

The Green New Deal tackles the twin problems of inequality and climate change at the same time, pairing renewable energy targets with ideas like universal healthcare and a federal jobs guarantee. Considering that both of those issues are squarely within Bernie’s wheelhouse, it’s a safe bet that his 2020 climate platform will put actual policy proposals to the Green New Deal targets we’ve just learned about. The question: Will a carbon tax — which has fallen out of favor with progressives — be a part of Bernie’s climate action plan this time around?

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Bernie Sanders, the godfather of the Green New Deal, announces presidential run

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Scientist who resisted censorship of climate report lost her job

by meciurilivetenis Posted on February 17, 2019

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

For several years, climate change scientist Maria Caffrey led a trailblazing study outlining the risks of rising seas at national parks. After Friday, she’ll be out of a job.

Caffrey, who worked under a contract with the National Park Service, resisted efforts by federal officials to remove all references to human causes of climate change in her scientific report. After Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting reported the attempts at censorship, Democratic members of Congress called for an investigation, and last May, the park service released the report with all the references reinstated.

Caffrey’s contract expires on Friday. Park service officials told her last year that they would hire her for a new project. But they notified her today that no funding is available for the work.

Caffrey said she asked her supervisor at the park service, “Is this because of the climate change stuff?” She said he told her, “I don’t want to answer that.” Park service officials did not respond to questions from Reveal about why Caffrey wasn’t rehired. But spokesperson Jeremy Barnum said it was not because she spoke out against the editing of the climate report.

Caffrey’s career boom and bust exemplifies the difficult situation many scientists face as President Donald Trump’s administration tries to suppress research on topics that he doesn’t consider a priority. Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law has reported 194 examples of the federal government censoring, hindering or sidelining climate change science since Trump was elected.

All federal scientists are vulnerable, but scientists like Caffrey who work under federal contracts face particular risk because they can be fired easily and their funding can be pulled, said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents federal and state scientists in complaints against agencies.

In a January episode of Reveal, Caffrey spoke about the pressure she experienced during the editing of the parks report. She said supervisors at the park service yelled at her and threatened to kill the report or remove her name if she would not agree to the changes. Some told her they could lose their jobs or be transferred if she didn’t capitulate.

“It’s different kinds of bullying and pressure from different people,” Caffrey said. “If one person says one thing and then another person says another thing, after awhile it really starts to build up and it becomes an absolute mountain.”

The report projects the effects of sea level rise at 118 coastal parks in 2030, 2050 and 2100. It includes four scenarios of global greenhouse gases — which come mostly from the burning of fossil fuels — based on whether and how much people reduce greenhouse gases.

The research started under President Barack Obama’s administration, but then was held up for more than a year after Trump took office.

Reveal obtained 18 drafts of the report. In one draft, a park service official crossed out five uses of the word “anthropogenic,” the term for people’s impact on nature, along with three references to “human activities” causing climate change. Trump questions that humans are causing climate change, but climate scientists around the globe have concluded that greenhouse gases from human activities are causing the planet to warm.

As part of her research, Caffrey developed an idea for an interactive website to enable the public and park staff to visualize the threat rising seas pose to individual parks. She led the website project, but was removed from it in May, before it was completed and published in December.

“Essentially, I feel I’ve been shut out from my project. It certainly feels like there could be some retribution playing a role in this,” Caffrey said at the time.

Last spring, Caffrey accepted a temporary contract at the park service that was unrelated to climate change. She was paid $25,000 a year, about a third of the salary that she had earned for several years. Her supervisors at the park service’s water resources division tried to secure funding for a better position, paying $76,000 a year, to assess wetlands at national parks, according to Caffrey and park service emails. But they emailed her on Thursday that the funding isn’t available.

After the report was published, the Interior Department’s Inspector General and the park service’s scientific integrity officer closed their investigations into whether the agency violated its scientific integrity policies.

Congressional Democrats requested a broader investigation. Nancy DiPaolo, spokesperson for Interior’s Office of Inspector General, told Reveal that it has launched no new investigation.

Ruch said federal agencies’ scientific integrity policies have little teeth, and, while scientists’ careers often suffer when they stand up for research that doesn’t fit agencies’ priorities, the career staff that sideline it often thrive.

Caffrey, 37, doesn’t regret her decision to stand up for her science.

“I wouldn’t do anything different, but Jesus, this is stressful,” she said. She’s pulling her toddler out of day care and has set a goal of applying for a new job every day.

Caffrey’s career may have taken a hit, but her science is publicly available to show how much climate change threatens parks with permanent flooding and storm damage, and how reducing greenhouse gas emissions could reduce the damage.

“Maria is a smart, dedicated, and accomplished scientist. If these were normal times, she would continue to make valuable contributions within the park service and for the future of our globe,” said William Manley, a University of Colorado research scientist who worked with Caffrey on her sea level research for the park service. “We should all be grateful for her efforts.”

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Scientist who resisted censorship of climate report lost her job

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The EPA made two big announcements this week that could affect your water

by PVGAveryopduno Posted on February 15, 2019

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The Environmental Protection Agency has been busy this week, moving on two major water-related issues. Whether either action will result in cleaner water, though, is still up for debate.

The EPA proposes replacement to Clean Water Rule

The EPA, along with the he U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, proposed a replacement to the Obama-era Clean Water Rule, which defined which bodies are protected by the longstanding Clean Water Act, extending protections to some contested waterways. That didn’t sit well with some farmers and ranchers, who felt the law was an overreach and too burdensome on their operations.

With its new rule, the EPA seeks to redefine “waters of the United States” so it applies to fewer bodies of water. Critics of the move — including Sierra Club and the Cincinnati NAACP — have dubbed the new proposal the “#DirtyWaterRule.”

President Trump has denounced Obama’s Clean Water Rule since he was on the campaign trail, eventually signing an executive order asking the EPA to review the rule. The Agency suspended the rule in January 2018 until a federal judge reinstituted it in 26 states later that year.

When the EPA released a statement last December saying it planned to propose a new definition of the nation’s waters, acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler said, “Our simpler and clearer definition would help landowners understand whether a project on their property will require a federal permit or not without spending thousands of dollars on engineering and legal professionals.”

Now the public will have 60 days (until April 15) to comment on the proposed change.

The EPA moves (but not too fast) to limit toxic “forever chemicals”

The EPA released an action plan on a class of widely-used, man-made water and oil-repelling chemicals known as Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. The so-called “forever chemicals,” named for how long they persist in your body and the environment, are found in everything from food packaging to non-stick pans and dental floss. They’ve also been found in around 6 million Americans’ drinking water. A growing body of research suggests that PFAS could have negative effects on fertility, hormones, immune systems, and place people at a higher risk of certain cancers.

Last spring, the EPA said it would evaluate whether it should set a cap on PFAS levels in drinking water. The plan released Thursday disappointed lawmakers and advocacy groups because the agency signaled that it may take until the end of the year to determine whether it will set a maximum contaminant level for the substance.

“This is a non-action plan,” Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter said in a statement Thursday. “The big winners today are polluting corporations, not the people affected by this industrial waste in their drinking water supplies.”

Critics say there is already ample evidence of the chemicals’ harmfulness and that the administration should act more quickly. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who is a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement: “After a year of hemming and hawing, Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler’s EPA is punting on action to tackle a serious public health risk lurking in Americans’ drinking water … I hope this episode makes my Republican colleagues think twice before confirming Andrew Wheeler as EPA Administrator.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have supported taking action on PFAS; Politico reported last month that the EPA’s decisions on the chemical now could affect the acting administrator’s confirmation to the post.

In a statement, Wheeler lauded the EPA’s PFAS plan: “For the first time in Agency history, we utilized all of our program offices to construct an all-encompassing plan to help states and local communities address PFAS and protect our nation’s drinking water. We are moving forward with several important actions, including the maximum contaminant level process, that will help affected communities better monitor, detect, and address PFAS.”

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We’re getting close to a bill for the Green New Deal. Here’s what we (kinda) know.

by MagaretGWDY Posted on February 6, 2019

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The Green New Deal, that bold proposal to avoid catastrophic climate change, has been heralded as exactly the sort of large-scale action such an existential threat demands. But what’s in it? As New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey prepare to unveil their bill in the coming days, details about what’s actually in the plan are, well, fuzzy.

The draft framework for the bill, championed by Ocasio-Cortez and an activist group called the Sunrise Movement, and originally posted on AOC’s website, promised a bounty of liberal delights: universal healthcare, a federal green jobs guarantee, a transition to local-scale agriculture, carbon-neutral by 2045, and more. But a lot can change in a month. An ambitious Green New Deal strode into Washington, D.C., at the start of the new Congress last month; a different version could soon emerge.

Most of the negotiation around what is and isn’t in the soon-to-be-released bill is being hammered out behind closed doors, between the two representatives presenting the draft and various justice and environment groups. Some of that haggling has wound up on Twitter.

Here’s a snapshot of where things stand so far: First, a Politico reporter noted that two of the most ambitious tenets of the bill, a federal jobs guarantee and universal healthcare, were on the chopping block. AOC’s Chief of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, immediately responded to the rumors, saying those elements are still in play.

Then, bans on nuclear power and carbon capture, and the call for an end to oil, gas, and coal development (a distressing development for some activists) were reportedly axed as well. At a Sunrise Movement watch party on Tuesday night in New York City, representatives of the organization said those bans are still part of the proposal. Bloomberg, on the other hand, is still reporting that the early version of the plan “doesn’t explicitly include the ban on fossil fuels.”

Clarity should come next week, when twin resolutions from AOC and Markey are expected to be introduced, according to representatives from Sunrise. But it’s no surprise that AOC and Markey’s legislation has changed during its gestation in D.C.; it will likely continue to evolve as it moves through the Washington meat grinder.

Democratic candidates for president have been proclaiming their support for the “idea” or the “concept” of a Green New Deal. Why the vague language? It might have something to do with the risk involved in backing a proposal that could require $7 trillion, and a commitment to universal healthcare and a ban on fossil fuels. So, if the bill does drop the more ambitious elements of the original draft, it could encourage more candidates to dream up their own versions that could still garner stamps of approval from progressive politicians.

The hard truth is that any Green New Deal bill, even with a number of concessions, has a zero percent chance of making it through the Senate. And, if by some miracle Congress managed to pass the bill, it would surely perish upon reaching Trump’s desk. But the effort could answer an important question: Is 2019 the year the House rallies behind climate legislation?

Grist staff writer Justine Calma contributed reporting to this article from New York City.

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We’re getting close to a bill for the Green New Deal. Here’s what we (kinda) know.

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Sorry, but you’ve got a gas emissions problem

by milesrestrepo4 Posted on January 29, 2019

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The burgeoning love affair between Americans and renewable energy is turning into a love triangle with natural gas.

That’s one of the findings from the U.S. Energy Information Administration recently released annual forecast. The projections, widely used by bureaucrats and business people, show renewables and gas becoming the main source of our electricity and sales of gasoline-burning cars declining. But greenhouse gas emissions aren’t expected to fall much. What gives?

One reason: Even though coal emissions are falling, emissions from natural gas are making up the difference. And the country keeps using more energy. Last year for instance, according to another recent EIA report, U.S. emissions ticked up as more Americans turned up their air conditioners and heaters to stay comfortable in extreme weather.

EIA

It’s an open question whether things will play out this way, of course. The EIA’s predictions have consistently underestimated the growth of renewable energy (more on the caveats below). In 2009, for instance, the EIA expected wind and solar to take 20 years to reach 56 gigawatts of capacity. Instead, thanks to a suite of new policies from President Barack Obama’s administration, the U.S. built 89 GW in just six years. As Mike Grunwald from Politico put it, “Oops.”

Still, this particular crystal ball provides a solid estimate of the country’s current trajectory, because its forecasts are built on recent trends. A quick perusal of the following charts will give you a sense of how much climate progress the country is making.

First, the good news. Renewable energy is poised to grow so robustly that it would easily exceeds states’ carbon-cutting goals.

For the foreseeable future, the United States will be turning to solar panels, wind turbines, and gas plants to generate electricity, according to the forecast, while shuttering nuclear, oil, and coal plants.

All this points to renewables and natural gas pairing up to provide most of our electricity. That makes some sense, because renewables play well with gas. Gas plants are easy to control — they can ramp up and down cheaply. And renewables depend on nature (the rising sun and the gusting wind) so need a partner to fill in the gaps.

Electricity is just one slice of our oh-so-yummy energy pie. But that slice should grow as more people begin to buy electric cars. The EIA projects that cars with internal combustion engines will lose market share in the coming years. But it expects that decline to level off shortly after 2020.

EIA

When you look at the other sources of energy demand, like industry and buildings, the EIA sees something similar happening: Emissions are flat, or slowly falling.

Add it all up and you get per-person emissions declining, but declining pretty darn slowly. Even if oil prices spike, the EIA expects just a 25 percent decline in per-capita emissions by 2050.

There are caveats here. The energy analyst Alex Gilbert, co-founder of the energy-research company SparkLibrary, thinks it’s also unrealistic to expect coal to pull out of its death spiral (the EIA sees that plunge mellowing into a glide), and points out that EIA is predicting that folks will pretty much stop building wind turbines, which seems… unlikely.

What’s more, the EIA’s expectations for a shift away from gas-powered cars lag far behind estimates by others. The EIA has also consistently underestimated the growth of renewable energy, and it may do the same with the growth of electric vehicles.

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Sorry, but you’ve got a gas emissions problem

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Google, Facebook, and Microsoft sponsored a conference that promoted climate change denial

by jayklug95681337 Posted on January 25, 2019

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

Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have publicly acknowledged the dangers of global warming, but last week they all sponsored a conference that promoted climate change denial to young libertarians.

All three tech companies were sponsors of LibertyCon, the annual convention of the libertarian group Students for Liberty, which took place in Washington, D.C. Google was a platinum sponsor, ponying up $25,000, and Facebook and Microsoft each contributed $10,000 as gold sponsors. The donations put the tech companies in the top tier of the event’s backers. But the donations also put the firms in company with some of the event’s other sponsors, which included three groups known for their work attacking climate change science and trying to undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Among the most notable was the CO2 Coalition, a group founded in 2015 to spread the “good news” about a greenhouse gas whose increase in the atmosphere is linked to potentially catastrophic climate change. The coalition is funded by conservative foundations that have backed other climate change denial efforts. These include the Mercer Family Foundation, which in recent years has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to right-wing think tanks engaged in climate change denialism, and the Charles Koch Institute, the charitable arm of one of the brothers behind Koch Industries, the oil and gas behemoth.

In the LibertyCon exhibit hall, the CO2 Coalition handed out brochures that said its goal is to “explain how our lives and our planet Earth will be improved by additional atmospheric carbon dioxide.” One brochure claimed that “more carbon dioxide will help everyone, including future generations of our families” and that the “recent increase in CO2 levels has had a measurable, positive effect on plant life,” apparently because the greenhouse gas will make plants grow faster.

In a Saturday presentation, Caleb Rossiter, a retired statistics professor and a member of the coalition, gave a presentation titled “Let’s Talk About Not Talking: Should There Be ‘No Debate’ that Industrial Carbon Dioxide is Causing Climate Catastrophe?” In his presentation, Rossiter told the assembled students that the impact of climate change on weather patterns has been vastly exaggerated. “There has been no increase in storms, in intensity or frequency,” he said. “The data don’t show a worrisome trend.”

He insisted that when he hears the news that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, “I’m cheering!” That’s because, he said, carbon dioxide “is a fertilizer” that has made Africa greener and increased food production there, reducing human misery.

Rossiter also claimed that carbon dioxide emissions correlate with wealth and that the greenhouse gas “improves life expectancy” because poor countries that start burning fossil fuels have a more consistent power supply and can then clean up their water. “I’m happy when carbon dioxide is up, because it means poverty is down,” he declared.

“I come not to bury your carbon but to praise it,” he concluded.

Rossiter’s presentation puts him on the far fringes of the climate denial world. Not even Exxon is trying to make such arguments anymore. And it’s a long way from what Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have said about the dangers of carbon dioxide; all three companies have committed to reducing their own carbon footprints. Microsoft has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030. Google claims to be committed to a “zero carbon” future and is aggressively pursuing renewable energy sources for its operations to reduce its carbon footprint and help combat climate change. And Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg criticized President Donald Trump after he announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, writing: “Stopping climate change is something we can only do as a global community, and we have to act together before it’s too late.”

The presence of the tech sponsors at a libertarian conference is not itself unusual, as governments around the globe move to try to regulate social media and online privacy. Tech companies see libertarians as natural allies in the fight against regulation. Indeed, Google sponsored two different sessions at the conference, one on why “permissionless innovation” needs to be defended and another on whether the government will “continue to let the Internet be awesome.” But the companies’ underwriting of a conference with a climate denier on the schedule shows the hazards of trying to advance a policy agenda through interest groups without also supporting their fringe elements.

The CO2 Coalition wasn’t the only group sponsoring LibertyCon that is known for its work undermining efforts to combat climate change. Along with Facebook and Microsoft, the Heartland Institute was also a gold sponsor of the event. Heartland is a longtime player in industry-funded efforts to undermine climate science and fend off efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The conservative Heritage Foundation, which pushed the Trump administration to withdraw from the Paris climate accords and has long featured experts who argue that global warming is a myth, was also a sponsor.

A Facebook spokesperson responded to questions about its sponsorship of LibertyCon by sending a link to its political engagement page, which says: “Sometimes we support events that highlight Internet and social media issues,” and features a long list of third-party groups it has worked with in the past. He noted that LibertyCon met its criteria for support and cited the number of sessions unrelated to climate change.

A spokesperson from Google defended the company’s LibertyCon sponsorship, saying: “Every year, we sponsor organizations from across the political spectrum to promote strong technology laws. As we make clear in our public policy transparency report, Google’s sponsorship or collaboration with a third party organization doesn’t mean that we endorse the organization’s entire agenda or agree with other speakers or sponsors.”

On Wednesday, Microsoft said in a statement: “Our commitment to sustainability is not altered or affected by our membership or sponsorship of an organization. We work with many groups on technology policy issues and do not expect or anticipate that any organization’s agenda will align to ours in all policy areas.”

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Google, Facebook, and Microsoft sponsored a conference that promoted climate change denial

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The Pentagon’s new climate change report is missing some important details

by PeterOcutw Posted on January 19, 2019

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

Less than two months after President Donald Trump said he did not believe a federal report outlining the existential threat of human-made climate change, the Defense Department has released its own report on how to manage the “effects of a changing climate.”

As part of the defense spending bill for fiscal year 2018, the Pentagon was asked to create “a list of the ten most vulnerable military installations within each service” in addition to “combatant commander requirements resulting from climate change over the next 20 years.” The 22-page report begins with 11 words that contradict the commander in chief’s description of climate change as a “very expensive” hoax. It states: “The effects of a changing climate are a national security issue.” Those lines comprise “the strongest part of the report,” retired naval officer David Titley, who once headed the Navy’s Task Force on Climate Change, tells Mother Jones in an email. But the rest, he says,“is disappointing, primarily because it does not answer the key questions Congress raised.”

For example, Marine Corps bases are not listed at all, even though Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, the Marines’ largest base on the East Coast, was devastated in September by Hurricane Florence to the tune of roughly $3.6 billion in damage. Ninety-five percent of the buildings on Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida were damaged by Hurricane Michael, yet in the appendix to the Pentagon’s report, Tyndall is not even mentioned as one of the Air Force’s most vulnerable bases.

Other aspects of the report just seem crudely out of date, even though it was submitted a month later than Congress had requested. In November, Naval Base Ventura County in California had to be evacuated due to approaching wildfires, yet in the report, the Navy does not list NBVC or, for that matter, identify a single installation where wildfires pose a “current” threat. Titley thinks the problem is the lack of an “apparent DOD standard for assessing the near- or mid-term climate future and impacts.” One reason for this might be because, according to the report, each military service was “free to select information sources they deemed relevant.”

Without a unifying standard, the report simply provides a “number of anecdotes to daily base and humanitarian operations, most of which are driven by routine weather events or tsunamis and earthquakes that have no connection to climate change,” he says. “Congress will likely not be amused by this report.”

They weren’t. House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith (a Democrat from Washington state) blasted the report Friday morning as “half-baked” and “inadequate.”

“The Department of Defense presented no specifics on what is required to ensure operational viability and mission resiliency, and failed to estimate the future costs associated with ensuring these installations remain viable,” Smith said. “That information was required by law. The Department of Defense must develop concrete, executable plans to address the national security threats presented by climate change. As drafted, this report fails to do that.”

Representative Jim Langevin (a Democrat from Rhode Island), whose amendment to the 2018 spending bill mandated the creation of the report, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the report. “It is unacceptable that the Department has ignored the clear instructions provided by law, and it is unacceptable that our service members and readiness will suffer as a result.” Senator Jack Reed (also a Democrat from Rhode Island), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services panel, said: “The report reads like a introductory primer and carries about as much value as a phonebook.”

The Pentagon has long been in an ambiguous position when it comes to acknowledging and preparing for climate change. More than other federal agencies in the Trump administration, DOD has been less likely to skirt past the impact of global warming, given the persistent impacts of drought, wildfires, and flooding on military installations in the United States and abroad. But as an institution that treasures its reputation for transcending partisan politics, DOD has strayed away from emphasizing climate change in its internal documents.

One year ago, the Pentagon released another congressionally mandated report about climate change — that time, a survey of the ways climate change had affected thousands of global installations. Shortly after the release of the report, the Washington Post found out that staffers had removed nearly two dozen references to climate change from an earlier version. “Those and other edits suggest the Pentagon has adapted its approach to public discussion of climate change under President Trump,” the Post reported.

Even as Defense officials have become more careful with their rhetoric, they have actually increased their efforts to account for the effect of climate change in certain crucial ways. A warming Arctic has created new opportunities for conflict with Russia and China, something the Navy has become more conscious of in internal strategic guidance. In a recent piece about the Pentagon’s slow efforts to prepare for climate change, Jonathan White, who succeeded Titley as task force director, told Mother Jones: “Tying things to climate change could invite a scrutiny that was undesired.”

If anything, the Pentagon’s reluctance to deal in specifics may lead to more work for the department down the line. Representative Langevin noted: “I expect the Department to reissue a report that meets its statutory mandate and rigorously confronts the realities of our warming planet.”

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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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Sportsmen flex their political muscles

by MonteCarreno Posted on January 13, 2019

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

On December 2, 2017, onstage in a cavernous auditorium at Boise State University, two of the three Republican hopefuls for Idaho governor, Lieutenant Governor Brad Little and businessman Tommy Ahlquist, discussed their views on public lands in front of a crowd of hunters and anglers. The forum, sponsored by the Idaho Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited, and 16 other sportsmen’s groups, was a pivotal one in a state where public lands are a defining issue. The third candidate was conspicuously absent: Representative Raúl Labrador, whose voting record in the House already proved him a staunch public-lands critic.

In a political climate marked by public-land threats, Labrador’s absence spoke volumes, and he lost the primary to Little by five points. “In not coming to a sportsmen’s forum, you allow everyone to fill in the blanks,” said Michael Gibson, Idaho field coordinator for Trout Unlimited. “Governor-Elect Little was willing to come in front of hunters and anglers and say he supports public lands.” In a state where only 12 percent of voters are registered Democrats, that primary victory all but handed Little the governorship.

Republicans were once instrumental in passing laws like the 1964 Wilderness Act and the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. In recent decades, however, the party has developed a reputation as the enemy of public lands, a stance further solidified by the Trump administration’s rapid rollback of protections. But in Idaho and Wyoming, two of the West’s most conservative states, hunters and anglers threw down the gauntlet, demanding state policies that protect access and voting down gubernatorial candidates who threaten public lands. As state legislatures shift in 2019, sportsmen’s groups are positioning themselves to fight the administration’s erosion of public-land protections.

In the early 20th century, conservation became a political issue in America, fueled largely by Theodore Roosevelt’s desire to protect rich hunting and fishing grounds. Republicans carried on that legacy until the early 1990s, when the GOP began opposing environmental initiatives. Once President Donald Trump took office in 2016, his administration slashed national monuments and put increasing amounts of public land up for resource extraction. In Congress, Republicans refused to renew the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a popular program that safeguards natural areas.

In the West, the Utah, Montana, and Nevada state legislatures have introduced resolutions urging the transfer of federal lands to state ownership. Sportsmen’s groups generally oppose such transfers, as they would likely limit public access. In Wyoming, for example, state parks ban camping, preventing multi-day backcountry hunting and fishing trips. In addition, state land is managed to fund schools, which means potentially cutting off public access in favor of gravel pits, increased logging, and land sales.

More than half of Idaho is federal public land, including the Frank Church-River of No Return, the biggest contiguous wilderness in the Lower 48, and 891 miles of wild and scenic rivers, including the Salmon, Owyhee, and Snake. But the state has no national parks. That’s partly because Idaho is a sportsmen’s state, and hunting is not allowed in national parks. In 1972, for example, state leaders from both parties ended a decades-long fight over making the Sawtooths a national park by designating the region a national recreation area, thereby protecting its status as popular hunting grounds.

In 2016, tensions boiled over when Texas billionaire brothers Dan and Farris Wilks purchased vast chunks of old timber company land that recreationists had long used to access adjacent public lands. Gates appeared on roads, cutting off hunters, anglers, and off-road vehicles. As the Wilkses bought increasing tracts, people’s frustrations grew, marked by enraged comments on news articles and letters to the editor.

A confrontation at a property line between an armed security guard and a recreationist helped push Idaho lawmakers to update trespassing law, which sowed further unrest. “Critics sought the entire session to pin the bill on Dan and Farris Wilks, the Texas billionaires who have angered hunters, ATV riders, campers and local officials in central Idaho after they closed off 172,000 acres of forest they bought in 2016,” the Idaho Statesman reported.

Voters like Jerry and Terry Myers, who manage a ranch and run guided fishing trips on the Salmon River, made public lands protections a central issue in the Republican gubernatorial primary. “We live here because we love this lifestyle, and we’re always continually working to keep that lifestyle as part of Idaho,” said Terry Myers, who is also president of the local chapter of Trout Unlimited. “Even if leadership isn’t coming from the top down, it’s coming from the bottom up, with the idea that those things built locally will build into the political arena.”

Labrador’s lackluster reputation on public lands galvanized the Myerses and other sportsmen. Opinion pieces in local media like Idaho County Free Press, Idaho State Journal, and Idaho Press denounced the representative as a public-lands-transfer activist, while groups like Idaho Wildlife Federation and League of Conservation Voters highlighted his voting record on public lands. His subsequent refusal to attend the candidate forum at Boise State confirmed voters’ suspicions. Little — the establishment candidate, who was seen as likely to continue outgoing Governor Butch Otter’s opposition to the land-transfer movement — prevailed.

In Wyoming, public lands proved one of the defining issues in the race for governor. As in Idaho, sportsmen are a powerful force: 30 percent of the state’s 600,000 residents applied for a hunting permit in the last five years, and 18 percent bought fishing licenses. “If you look at the voting public, which is 50 percent, I’m going to bet every one of those guys who hunt, vote,” said Dwayne Meadows, executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation. “And if you look at the fact that roughly two-thirds of the state are registered Republicans, that’s a lot of voting Republicans who are hunters.”

In August 2018, at a candidate forum hosted by the Wildlife Federation in the crowded Republican primary, three candidates, Harriet Hageman, Taylor Haynes, and Rex Rammell, expressed support for public-lands transfer, with Hageman going so far as to suggest a 1-million-acre pilot program of land transfer to the state.

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Hunting groups picked up on the issue immediately. Right to Roam, the most listened-to hunting podcast in the state, made it the focus of an episode on the candidates. The Wyoming Hunters and Anglers Alliance endorsed Mark Gordon — a multiple-use public lands advocate who frequently hunts on Wyoming’s public lands — because of the forum, citing his stance on issues related to hunting, and his opponents’ stances on land transfer (Full disclosure: Both Gordon and Little formerly served on the board of High Country News.) Gordon won the primary with 33 percent of the vote, while Foster Friess, who received Trump’s endorsement but “provided a mix of positive, negative, and neutral stances on sportsmen’s issues,” according to the alliance, got 26 percent. Hageman, who had been polling well before the forum, came in with only 21 percent.

“I think all the public-lands transfer conversation has done is galvanize the sportsmen,” Meadows said. “You can see it in the growth of organizations like mine over the last few years, and it’s powerful.”

Public-land issues also had an impact in other Western states. In the New Mexico race for governor, Republican Representative Steve Pearce went on the record as supporting the Land and Water Conservation Fund despite previously voting against it in Congress. Pearce lost the race to Democratic Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham, who supported public-land protections and is also an avid fly-fisher. “Our community is a staunch supporter of public lands,” said Kerrie Romero, executive director of the New Mexico Guides and Outfitters Association.

“Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona are all moving more toward the Democrats, and that’s in part because of the GOP being tone-deaf as to why people of all political stripes value public lands,” said David Jenkins, executive director of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship. “I’ve always said that if you’re trying to change the political right on environment, you have to show how that aligns with their values — and in the West, people’s affinity for public lands is part of who they are.”

In 2019, sportsmen’s groups plan to continue the advocacy that helped Little and Gordon win their governorships. In rural states like Idaho and Wyoming, it can be hard to track what the legislature is voting on day to day. Even if citizens have a subscription to a Cheyenne or Casper newspaper, those papers won’t always list individual legislators’ decisions.

That is one reason the Wyoming Wildlife Federation is launching bill tracking with real-time alerts to follow specific legislators, so that citizens can let their elected representatives know how to vote. The group is also stepping up recruitment of local ambassadors in rural communities, to help explain how public-lands transfer and the administration’s removal of protections could limit public access.

Groups like Trout Unlimited and Artemis, a new sportswomen’s advocacy organization, plan to ramp up trainings that teach people how to testify in hearings, call their elected officials and generally engage in local politics, all tactics intended to remind state politicians of the groundswell of local support that helped put public-land proponents in office.

Sportsmen’s groups are already taking action in the federal arena as well: On the first day of the 116th Congress, House lawmakers reversed a 2017 measure that made it easier to sell off or transfer public lands — a measure that had been widely criticized by hunters and anglers.

“The overarching thing that every sportsman can agree on is public-lands defense,” said Gibson. “Over beers or at meetings, we might argue about regulations or season length. But whether the season is a week or a month, or you keep two fish or four fish, you have to have access to them.”

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Sportsmen flex their political muscles

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