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Harvey’s record rains triggered Houston dams to overflow

by WilmaOverby Posted on August 29, 2017

In 1935, a storm swept through Houston, turning parts of the city into a lake. It was a wake-up call to city officials; they needed to get serious about flood control. About a decade later, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished building two massive reservoirs west and upstream of the city. For the better part of a century, the Addicks and Barker dams have held back water that would have otherwise surged through Buffalo Bayou, the flood-prone waterway that snakes through downtown Houston before dumping into the Ship Channel.

This week, for the second time in as many years, a storm has pushed the Addicks and Barker dams to their limit. Early Monday morning, as Tropical Storm Harvey lingered over Houston and drowned whole swaths of the city, the Army Corps of Engineers began controlled releases from the dams, the first time they’ve done so during a major storm. By Monday afternoon, several neighborhoods near the reservoirs were under voluntary or mandatory evacuation as officials announced that releases from Addicks and Barker would continue for the foreseeable future. By early Tuesday morning, Addicks had topped the dam’s 108-foot spillway, leading to what officials call “uncontrolled releases” from the reservoir. Some homes could be inundated for a month.

Harris County Flood Control District meteorologist Jeff Linder called the releases the least-worst decision officials could make in light of floodwaters that continue to fill the reservoirs faster than they can safely drain. “If you are upstream of the reservoir, the worst is not over,” Linder said at a Monday afternoon press conference, warning that “water is going to be inundating areas that have currently not been inundated.” When someone asked him, via Twitter, whether the dams could break and trigger a Katrina-like disaster, Linder offered a one-word response: “No.”

That assurance comes despite the Corps of Engineers labeling the dams an “extremely high risk of catastrophic failure” after a 2009 storm that saw only a fraction of the rain Harvey poured on Houston this week. Officials insist that the hair-raising label has more to do with the breathtaking consequences of any major dam failure upstream of the country’s fourth-largest city than the actual likelihood of such a breach. In 2012, they detailed how a dam failure during a major storm would cause a multi-billion dollar disaster that turns the city into Waterworld.

Still, the Corps in recent years has implemented only piecemeal fixes to the earthen dams, including a $75 million upgrade that was underway before Harvey hit this weekend. Officials are barely even discussing how to fund a third reservoir that some experts say the region desperately needs.

This is the second year in a row that severe floodwaters have tested Addicks and Barker. Just last year, during 2016’s so-called Tax Day Flood, for the first time, the reservoirs hit and surpassed the level of a 100-year flood. That happened again this weekend, meaning the dams have seen two extremely rare flood events (at least one-in-a-100-year events) in just as many years. Last year was also the first time the National Weather Service ever issued a flood warning for the Addicks and Barker watersheds.

The dams are in some ways emblematic of how flood planning in the Bayou City hasn’t kept up with the region’s booming population and development, even as experts predict that climate change will dump increasingly severe storms on Houston’s doorstep with greater frequency. They were built in a region of water-absorbing prairie grasses that have in recent years been paved over by water-impermeable parking lots, driveways and suburban streets. The Sierra Club even sued the Corps in a failed attempt to stop construction on a nearby stretch of the Grand Parkway, a major toll road project that some opposed fearing it would coax development in an area that’s critical to the region’s flood control efforts.

Still, as the Texas Tribune and ProPublica pointed out in this 2016 investigation, Houston-area flood officials refuse to connect the region’s flooding problems to poorly planned development. As a result, every year people will keep building hundreds, if not thousands, of additional structures in Harris County’s 100-year floodplains, even as those “rare” storms start to hit year after year.

In a Monday press conference, Edmond Russo, an engineer with the Corps’ Galveston district, said officials wanted to keep high water from building up and going over the Addicks and Barker spillways, “because in that case, we do not have control over the water.” He’d hoped releases would stay low enough so that the already overtaxed Buffalo Bayou stays at the same level in the short term. In the long term, officials say it could take one to three months to totally drain the reservoirs.

Of course, that all depends on what happens in the coming days. Updating reporters on the reservoirs’ status Monday evening, Linder said more heavy rainfall or levee breaches upstream could change how fast the dams must release water downstream.

“Our infrastructure is certainly being tested to its limits,” Linder said.

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Harvey’s record rains triggered Houston dams to overflow

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California’s carbon market roars back to life.

by BeauNicxupin Posted on August 23, 2017

And pretty much nobody is happy about it, except maybe Nestlé.

Since 2011, 23 national parks had ended the sale of plastic water bottles to cut down on trash and litter. Before the ban took effect at the Grand Canyon, for example, water bottles made up 20 percent of the park’s total waste. But on Aug. 16, the Trump administration ended the six-year-old policy that enabled the ban, welcoming plastic bottles back to the Grand Canyon, Zion, and other national parks.

Bottled water companies had lobbied against the Obama-era policy for years. Coincidentally, the National Park Service’s statement on the reversal echoes the industry’s arguments: “It should be up to our visitors to decide how best to keep themselves and their families hydrated during a visit to a national park.”

Lauren Derusha Florez, Corporate Accountability International* campaign director, is calling for park superintendents to resist. “We know that many of our parks want to do away with bottled water,” she wrote in a blog post. “Let’s make sure they know that we support them in that move, even if the current administration doesn’t.”

*Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Florez as the campaign director at the Sierra Club.

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California’s carbon market roars back to life.

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Why Remembering Japanese-American Internment Really Matters This Year

by MargaretteFAOC Posted on May 1, 2017

Mother Jones

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Flowers were distributed prior to the interfaith service at the end of the ceremony. Matt Tinoco

As the long line of cars, trucks, and more than two dozen charter buses pulled into dusty, makeshift parking lots in the high desert below California’s snowcapped Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains on Saturday morning, they were greeted by a National Park Service ranger. “Welcome to Manzanar,” she said. “It is very dry. Drink a lot of water.”

They’d descended on the remote Owens Valley, four hours north of Los Angeles, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066—President Franklin Roosevelt’s February 1942 decision to forcibly detain 120,000 Japanese Americans until the end of World War II. Manzanar War Relocation Center, as the facility was formally called, was one of 10 internment camps nationwide; at its peak, the 5,415-acre site held more than 10,000 people in army-style barracks behind barbed wire.

In the language of the Roosevelt’s order, these actions were taken to establish “every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense.” Approximately two-thirds of those incarcerated without due process were fully enfranchised American citizens by birth. The remainder were lawful permanent residents.

President Donald Trump’s harsh rhetoric about Muslims, Mexicans, and other immigrants has reignited scrutiny of this dark period in American history. Internment even made headlines in November when Carl Higbie—the former spokesman of the pro-Trump Great America PAC—cited American treatment of Japanese residents in WWII as an example of appropriate action to protect national security.

Banners signifying the 10 camps erected by the US government Matt Tinoco

So perhaps it was no surprise that the 2,500 people who showed up as part of the 48th-annual Manzanar Pilgrimage on Saturday were a record for the event, according to the Park Service. The blowing dust, the whipping wind, and the beating sun all set an elemental tone for the day’s program—a not-so-subtle reminder how, as Manzanar Committee co-chair Bruce Embrey later would tell me, “there was a vicious, just despicable drive to make sure that these camps were sites of suffering. That the people here were going to be isolated psychologically and physically, far from civilian populations, in desolate areas intended to make people suffer.”

Though the camp was almost entirely disassembled after World War II—concrete slabs and the occasional piece of rusted metal are all that remain of the camp’s former living areas—the pilgrims visiting Manzanar walked past full-size reconstructions of the camp’s latrines, its mess halls, and its tar-paper barracks on their way to the day’s ceremony. Wooden Park Service signs marking the locations of long-disappeared structures—a recreation hall, an outdoor theatre, a pet cemetery, an elementary school—dotted the path.

Matt Tinoco

Several people in the crowd wore shirts from various California-based Muslim organizations. Among them was Syed Hussaini, an organizer with CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter. Hussaini explained that, for the past few years, CAIR-LA has participated in the Manzanar Pilgrimage in order to keep alive the memory of internment—it is only briefly mentioned, if at all, in most schools—in the Muslim community.

“We have to stand very vigilantly, and make sure that we are upholding the tenants of democracy. If good people don’t do anything, this is what could happen again,” said Hussaini, who came to Manzanar on one of the three buses CAIR-LA chartered this year.

“When the executive order was signed back in the ’40s, only the Quaker community openly voiced dissent,” said Hussaini, echoing a point made a few minutes earlier by one of the event’s speakers. “But we have seen an outpouring of support from many other faith communities and many other civil rights organizations coming out to say that Trump’s words are not in keeping with American values, and will not stand.”

Preserving the memory of internment is the guiding mission of those who organized Saturday’s pilgrimage, as well as those who work to maintain and expand the facilities at Manzanar National Historic Site. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the generation of Japanese Americans born after internment began pushing for recognition and reparations. The Manzanar Pilgrimage, for example, began in 1969, kicking off decades of work to establish Manzanar as an officially recognized National Historic Site, which finally happened in 1992.

Matt Tinoco

The theme for this year’s pilgrimage was “Never Again, to Anyone, Anywhere,” emblazoned in red text on black banners and T-shirts scattered throughout the event. That message, it seems, is resonating more than ever: In 2016, more than 105,000 people visited Manzanar, a record attendance year. A few employees noted that, since Trump’s election, there have been better, deeper conversations between Manzanar’s guests and those who work at the site.

A couple of hours after the ceremony concluded, several hundred people made their way to Lone Pine High School, about 10 miles south, for Manzanar at Dusk. In the school gymnasium, the Nikkei Student Unions at several LA-area colleges put on a three-hour program that spawn intergenerational conversations about their daytime experiences at the Manzanar Pilgrimage, and to spread the oral tradition of those who spent years confined in the camp.

After a spoken word performance that wove together FDR’s E.O. 9066 with Trump’s E.O. 13769, a.k.a. the travel ban, the 300 attendees broke into two-dozen randomly sorted small groups for an informal, hourlong conversation. Sprawled out on high school’s front lawn in the twilight shadows of the Sierra’s highest peaks, the small group I joined consisted of 10 people, the youngest in high school, the oldest in his 70s.

We listened to the grandson of a woman who lived at Manzanar relay one of her stories about the dust, and how she remembered seeing the outline of her sleeping body sketched out in her bedsheets when she got up each morning. We discussed why people remained quiet about their time in camps for years following their internment. And, by the end of our hour, we were sharing the history of our own personal names, comparing notes about whether our parents gave us a name from the old country or one considered more traditionally “American.”

“History is always relevant. But there are times when what’s happening in the world magnifies that relevancy,” said Alisa Lynch, the chief of interpretation at Manzanar National Historic Site, said to me after Manzanar at Dusk had concluded. “Our job is to share history, not to please whoever’s in office. We’re here to help people learn about the history, and if they want to make parallel connections, they’re free to. People see them. We don’t have to point them out.”

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Why Remembering Japanese-American Internment Really Matters This Year

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One Thing Environmentalists and Trump Actually Agree On

by CindaMoreau Posted on March 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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Environmental groups cheered when President Donald Trump pounded the last nail into the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s coffin, finalizing the United States’ anticipated withdrawal from the controversial trade deal. But the global trade and environment debate isn’t over by a long shot. Since the TPP’s demise, environmental groups like the Sierra Club have quickly refocused their efforts around NAFTA—the 1994 trade deal brokered by the Bush and Clinton administrations between the United States, Canada, and Mexico—which Trump repeatedly criticized during his campaign and has indicated he wants to renegotiate quickly.

The original trade deal that set a precedent for many of the TPP’s provisions, NAFTA has never scored well with environmentalists, despite being lauded by supporters (PDF) as the first international trade deal ever to incorporate environmental and labor side agreements. Though its renegotiations could theoretically provide an opportunity to address the deal’s criticisms, some groups fear that Trump will use the opportunity to further expand corporate interests and intensify environmental risks.

Here’s a pocket guide for understanding the implications.

What’s up with environmentalists hating NAFTA so much?

They don’t hate everything about it—at least not in theory. Environmental groups have argued in the past that effective trade deals can be used as a positive reinforcement mechanism for advancing international climate and human rights goals. NAFTA, however, “included unenforceable labor and environmental commitments and side agreements that were not part of the core text and that had no teeth to them,” says Ilana Solomon, director of the Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Program.

But environmentalists’ main objection to NAFTA has to do with a section called Chapter 11, which outlines a mechanism called the investor-state dispute settlement system (ISDS).

The ISDS process states that whenever a federal government introduces a new regulation that negatively affects the value of a foreign investment, the investor has the right to sue the government in private trade tribunals. If the investor wins, the settlement amount, undisclosed to the public, is footed by taxpayer money. In other words, the ISDS process “essentially gives private corporations the status of nations under international law and the incredibly powerful and very secretive tribunal,” says Martin Wagner, the managing attorney of Earthjustice’s International Program.

Though this may not seem like it’s directly related to the environment, the majority of investor-state cases brought up under NAFTA have had nothing to do with traditional trade issues. Instead, they have attacked environmental, energy, public health, and land use policies, to name a few. Some of the most controversial cases have included a challenge to Quebec’s temporary fracking ban (still pending), a challenge to California’s phase-out of toxic chemical fuel additives (dismissed after six years), and most recently, a challenge to Barack Obama’s decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline, in which TransCanada sued the US government for $15 billion. (The case is still pending.)

As of October 2016, pending NAFTA claims totaled over $50 billion, according to an analysis performed by Public Citizen.

Then why don’t we just get rid of the investments part?

Good question. Supporters argue that it’s an important tool for foreign investors to protect their rights against governments and thereby encourages more foreign direct investment. But environmentalists aren’t the only ones who find fault with Chapter 11.

Simon Lester, a trade policy analyst at the libertarian CATO Institute, says he believes the proponents’ arguments are outdated. “I just don’t see any evidence that Chapter 11 does anything for trade liberalization or investment liberalization or the economy,” he says, or that “domestic courts couldn’t do a good job” in the international tribunals’ place. “So I say delete it and be done with it. But there’s a lot of pushback” from business groups, like the US Chamber of Commerce, and the State Department. “The people who wanted it in there want to keep it in there,” he says.

“Really what proponents are left with…is that corporations want it,” echoes Matt Porterfield, a Georgetown Law adjunct professor who studies the interplay between international trade, investment rules, and environmental policy. Precedent for the elimination and restriction of ISDS also already exists. India recently came out with a new investment treaty model that imposes limits on the investor-state model, for example. During negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) between the United States and the European Union, widespread opposition to investor-state also prompted the European Union to propose a replacement system.

How likely is Trump to ditch Chapter 11?

It’s difficult to predict what will happen during renegotiations, given that Trump has made little indication of what he’s looking for.

But Earthjustice’s Wagner doesn’t have high hopes. “We see that the administration is full of corporate representatives who absolutely show no interest in promoting the public good—real interests of human beings and the environment—in any way, much less in the place where the corporate interest has the opposite desire.”

There is a small possibility that the administration will update NAFTA’s Chapter 11 to the most recent investment treaty model, says Porterfield; the United States put together this model in 2012 with the intention to “clarify the government’s ability to defend itself,” says Porterfield’s colleague Robert Stumberg, director of the Harrison Institute for Public Law. He adds that there really is “no assurance” that Trump will keep the pro-government edits, given his pro-investor record.

Can Trump screw over the environment even more during the renegotiation process?

Aside from expanding existing investors’ rights, a renegotiated NAFTA could also dramatically increase the number of investors who are granted those rights.

Currently, Mexico’s energy industry is excluded from NAFTA’s ISDS provisions because the industry was controlled by Pemex, a state-owned enterprise, when the deal was first negotiated. But in the last few years, Mexico has reprivatized its oil and gas under President Enrique Peña Nieto to stimulate foreign direct investment.

“It’s very easy to see how the US oil and gas industry, how the Mexican oil and gas industry, how the Canadian industry could easily pressure the Mexican government into coming in line with the other NAFTA parties and allowing those suits,” says Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law. He fears that such a move—which has been recommended by the Heritage Foundation, a far-right policy think tank—will leave very few legal protections left for halting damaging fossil fuel infrastructure projects.

What are environmentalists planning to do next?

Unless Trump only renegotiates NAFTA’s tariffs, any newly drafted trade deal will need to get Congress’ approval. Solomon says the Sierra Club plans to mobilize an opposition campaign to stop the deal in Congress, and she encourages people to take advantage of their representatives’ town halls.

NAFTA’s provisions, once settled, can’t be challenged in court like most other policies, says Wagner, emphasizing the consequences of waiting until after the renegotiations to speak out. “That’s one of the things about these trade agreements that is really nefarious—they establish law that applies domestically that doesn’t go through the democratic lawmaking process.” On top of that, he points out, “it’s really hard to reopen a trade agreement.”

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One Thing Environmentalists and Trump Actually Agree On

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About 700 species are already being hurt by climate change.

by BridgetBaccarini Posted on February 14, 2017

On Sunday, officials ordered the evacuation of nearly 200,000 Northern California residents with assurances that “this is NOT a drill.” Their communities are at risk of being flooded by water from overflowing Lake Oroville, the state’s second largest reservoir.

After years of drought, California has recently been pummeled by rain and snow. That’s caused the lake’s water level to rise so much that water has flowed out not just via the main concrete spillway, but via the emergency earthen spillway, too. In early February, a gaping hole appeared in the main spillway, and it’s since grown. Authorities have determined that the second spillway is also at risk of failing.

The Sierra Club and two other environmental organizations warned about potential problems with the emergency spillway 12 years ago, but federal and state officials rejected concerns and said the spillway met guidelines, the Mercury News reports.

Situations like the one at Oroville Dam could crop up more often in coming years as climate change intensifies California’s cycles of drought and heavy precipitation. The state inspects its dams more than many others (although that’s not saying much), but extreme future storms can be expected to put enormous stress on the state’s essential water infrastructure.

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About 700 species are already being hurt by climate change.

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California Got Soaked—But Don’t Start Your Endless Showers Just Yet

by MaricruzLeatherm Posted on January 15, 2017

Mother Jones

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It’s been pouring in rain-starved California for the past few weeks, so is the Golden State’s drought finally over?

The downer answer: Asking if California’s water woes are behind us because it rained is a bit like asking if climate change is over because it’s cold outside—short-term gains don’t mean the long-term problem has gone away.

The slightly more optimistic answer: While we’re not in the clear, the rain has made a huge dent in the short-term.

After years in the red, California’s reservoirs now have 14 percent more water than their historical averages. That’s key, as they transport water from the Sierra Nevada to California farms and cities, from San Francisco to San Diego. Snowpack in the Sierras is also above average, which—in addition to making the mountains into a veritable winter wonderland—will help feed reservoirs and recharge groundwater supply as it melts throughout the year.

As this Los Angeles Times graphic shows, nearly half of the state is no longer in a state of drought, as defined by the US Drought Monitor.

But that’s not to say that the drought is over—or will be any time soon. Groundwater, the supply of water in underground aquifers that serves as a savings account of sorts during dry years, is still low and getting lower due to overpumping, says Peter Gleick, water researcher and president of the Pacific Institute. Because the rain has been concentrated in the northern half of the state, much of the Central Valley, the farmland that dominates the geographical center of California, is still in the midst of extreme drought. About 1500 wells are still dry in the Valley’s Tulare County, home to produce pickers and packers. And because of the warm weather, snow is melting more quickly than usual, leading it to run off into storm drains rather than seep, slowly and steadily, into the groundwater tables.

Perhaps most concerning, though, is that water system improvements that were gaining momentum during the drought will slow down, Gleick says.

During the drought of the past five years, state lawmakers began to put groundwater management policy in place. Cities encouraged homeowners to get rid of their lawns, which often use more water than the homes themselves. Residents started replacing inefficient toilets and shower fixtures. Farmers implemented more efficient irrigation systems. The state’s Water Resources Control Board recently released report on the feasibility of recycling water, which many environmental groups champion as a more efficient use of taxpayer dollars and energy sources than building desalinization plants, which distil seawater to produce more freshwater.

“Those were all steps in the right direction, but there’s a lot more that needs to be done. There just isn’t enough water for everyone anymore, even in a wet year,” says Gleick. “A couple wet years and the pressure disappears for a while.”

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California Got Soaked—But Don’t Start Your Endless Showers Just Yet

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New Documentary Gives the Facts About Climate Change but Few Solutions

by BonitaDeloach Posted on July 10, 2016

Is it too late to stopclimate change? Almost.

Polar ice caps are melting. The Amazon is being clear cut. Wildlifefrom orangutans to migrating birds are losing their habitat and suffering under the ability to evolve quickly enough to tolerate the hothouse their world has become.

“By the end of this century we could trigger runaway climate change that is … beyond our control,” says Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and the former Secretary of Energy for the Obama Administration, in the new documentary “Time to Choose.”

Why are we in this predicament? And really, are there any choices we can make at this point to save the planet?

The chief causes of this calamity, narrates actor Oscar Isaac in the film, have to do with what we use for energy, where we live and what we eat:

Burning coal, oil and natural gas emitcarbon dioxide and other pollutants, turningthe atmosphere into a greenhouse that is causing temperatures on Earth to heat up beyond what Naturecan tolerate.
Urban sprawl forces millions of people to live far away from their jobs and the infrastructure they need to go about daily lifecreating more demand for fossil fuels.
Deforestation, primarily to produce soybeans to feed to livestock, is destroying the forests that help moderate climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing sustaining oxygen back into the air.
Industrial agriculture demands land and petrochemical-based fertilizers and insecticides to produce food for the animals we raise on the land we’ve deforested. Talk about a vicious cycle.

Here’s just one of the many startling statistics the film cites to make its point, delivered by sustainable food guru Michael Pollan: “It takes up to ten times more land to feed ourselves with meat than with vegetables.”

In just one state, Mato Grosso, Brazil, over 20,000 square miles have been deforested just to grow soybeans for animal feed. In fact, soybeans are the most prominent driver of deforestation in South America, while 30 percent of Earth’s land is being used to produce livestock which by the way, belch methane gas, another potent contributor to climate change.

That loss of forests has shrunk drinking water supplies in Brazil. Forests both create rain and protect groundwater, so when forests are cut down, precipitation drops drastically and drinkingwater supplies literally evaporate. Footage in “Time to Choose” shows an expanse of cracked land as arid as a desert. The caption on the screen reveals that this wasteland is a reservoir.

Meanwhile, as the southern hemisphere’s forests are chopped downand the planet heats up, frozen water thousands of miles away in the northern hemisphere is equally affected. Greenland’s ice shield is contracting under Earth’s hotter temperatures, raising sea levels as the region’s enormous glaciers literally melt into the oceans surrounding them.

Climate scientist Dr. James Hansen predicts sea levels will rise 23 feet, threatening more than 600 million people living in San Francisco, Istanbul, Mumbai, London, Singapore, Amsterdam, Bangladesh, Miami and many other coastal communities. Meanwhile, extreme temperature shifts are triggering devastating cyclones and hurricanes. Remember SuperstormSandy? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

After persuasively presenting the evidencethatclimate change is happening and why, the film doesn’t make nearly as compelling a case for the choices we can maketo solve the problems. It highlights the need to transition to electric cars and to build more self-contained communities so that people don’t need to drive to jobs or social services, but that’s hardly enough to make a dent in the problem. And besides, how many of us can buy a Tesla?

Michael Pollan reminds viewers that they’ll be healthier as well as shrink their carbon footprint if they eat more plants and less meat. But he doesn’t suggest the best choices to make to get started. The Sierra Club’s Michael Brune, another prominent expertin this film, says that renewable technologies offer a “huge opportunity,” but how is the viewer supposed to take advantage of it?

The “Time to Choose” website could be more helpful by providing specific suggestions to enablethe public take the next step. Its “Paths to Change” section is too vague to get people to actually choose a wind-based provider for their local utility, for example, while the “Resources” section contains promotional material for the film, rather than useful resources to help viewers choose among the generic options provided.

These flaws can be easily fixed by adding links to some of the excellent “how to” information organizations, like Brune’s own Sierra Club offers or how to take a stand in your own community with online petitions, like Care2′s.

Related:
10 Simple Things You Can Do to Save Money & Energy
5 Ways to Make Your Car More Eco-Friendly
Not a Vegetarian Yet? 13 Ways to Get Started

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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New Documentary Gives the Facts About Climate Change but Few Solutions

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North America pledges to deliver 50 percent zero-carbon energy in less than a decade

by AveryGrafton Posted on June 28, 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hold a joint press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House. Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

North America pledges to deliver 50 percent zero-carbon energy in less than a decade

By on Jun 28, 2016Share

Climate change will be front and center at the North American Leaders’ Summit this week in Ottawa, the annual meeting between the prime minister of Canada and the presidents of Mexico and the U.S.

In addition to President Obama’s address on climate change, the leaders of the three nations will announce that Mexico will be joining an agreement between the United States and Canada to regulate methane leaks. They will also pledge to generate half of the continent’s electricity from clean energy sources by 2025. The target, up from 37 percent today, will require increasing include wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear energy, and carbon capture technology, according to the New York Times.

Environmentalists, however, are mixed on both nuclear energy and carbon capture technology, which doesn’t exist in any scalable way right now. There are only eight carbon-capture projects currently operating in the world, including a handful in the U.S and one massively expensive “clean coal” plant in Canada.

Still, the announcement coming Wednesday isn’t nothing. “This agreement means the United States will dramatically increase the amount of clean, renewable energy we get from sources like wind and solar within the next decade,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune.

Here’s hoping.

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North America pledges to deliver 50 percent zero-carbon energy in less than a decade

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Bay Area voters approve a whole new kind of climate tax

by KarolynTrenerry Posted on June 9, 2016

Bay Area voters approve a whole new kind of climate tax

By on Jun 9, 2016Share

Bay Area voters approved a first-of-its-kind tax to fight the effects of climate change.

Measure AA, which passed with 69 percent of the vote during California’s primary on Tuesday, will impose a new annual property tax of $12 per parcel. The funds raised — an estimated half billion dollars over the next 20 years — will be used to restore tidal marshes around the San Francisco Bay to help mitigate flooding from rising sea levels and climate-related storms. Restoring the wetlands will also provide habitat for migrating birds and other wildlife, as well as help to reduce pollution in the area.

Some opponents said the flat rate was unfair because it taxed everyone at the same level, regardless of income or resources. “Whether it is a struggling farm worker family in a very modest bungalow in Gilroy, or the Apple campus there in Silicon Valley,” the tax is the same, Jon Coupal, president a local taxpayers advocacy group, told NPR in May.

But proponents of the measure argued that a $1-a-month tax was not too onerous, and the benefits to the region would be many. Environmental groups including the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Nature Conservancy endorsed it as a way to protect the Bay Area from climate change.

About 80 percent of the Bay’s marshes have already been lost to development, KQED reports. One study estimates there is $62 billion worth of property at risk from climate change in the Bay Area, including developments like the Facebook and Google campuses and the San Francisco ferry terminal. The passage of this measure could help change that. Here’s hoping.

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Bay Area voters approve a whole new kind of climate tax

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Here’s a sign that Kentucky’s politics might finally be shifting away from coal

by JeramySchlenker Posted on May 17, 2016

Here’s a sign that Kentucky’s politics might finally be shifting away from coal

By on May 17, 2016 12:20 pmShare

“There is no red Kentucky or blue Kentucky. There is only charcoal black,” James Higdon wrote in Politico in 2014, noting the dominance of the coal industry in the state.

Two years later, we’re starting to see that change. In Kentucky’s Tuesday primary, the ballot includes a handful of politicians who are no longer railing against the “war on coal” but are trying to reckon with what happens after coal mines shut down.

This is easiest to see in the Democratic presidential primary. While campaigning in Kentucky and West Virginia, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders mostly resisted pandering to coal country. Sanders, an outspoken critic of fossil fuel production, won the West Virginia primary. Clinton said, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” and got a lot of backlash for it. She offered a qualified apology, emphasizing her $30 billion stimulus plan for mining communities, but still insisted, “we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels.”

What’s happening in a little-watched Senate primary is even more interesting than the presidential race.

There are six Democrats running to compete against Republican Sen. Rand Paul this fall. The frontrunner on Tuesday is Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, and one of his challengers is Sellus Wilder, an underfunded environmentalist.

Gray hasn’t said much publicly about climate change or controversial policies like President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, but Wilder has. He considers coal to be a problem not only because it contributes to climate change but also because it threatens public health. Instead of propping the coal industry up, he would prefer to see Kentucky work toward building a new, more sustainable economy. Most surprisingly, he says the “‘war on coal’ is kind of made up.” When confronted by miners in eastern Kentucky, Wilder says he doesn’t think these jobs are coming back – EPA or not. That’s why he’s calling for federal grants to support education in the state, build up new infrastructure, and provide economic relief.

“Until we’ve settled the fact that killing environmental regulations won’t bring coal back, we can’t move on to the next question: What we can do?” he said in an interview with Grist.

Wilder’s rare willingness to tackle these difficult topics earned him endorsements from Climate Hawks Vote, a super PAC favoring pro-climate candidates, and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a progressive statewide advocacy group.

For Kentucky, “it is a first that a serious candidate with some serious statewide credibility is calling for an end to coal,” Climate Hawks Vote founder R.L. Miller said.

Wilder thinks Kentucky voters want a conversation about clean air and water, especially after Flint’s water problems.

“I find it difficult to talk about [climate change] because it’s such a partisan issue and it seems that facts don’t really factor into the debate really well,” he said. “I find a lot more traction talking about things that affect people’s lives. I make a lot more progress talking about things like energy efficiency and the costs of air pollution and the fact that Kentucky has epidemic levels of lung cancer, heart disease, and issues that are all directly related to air quality.”

Wilder is a long shot to win the primary on Tuesday, and neither he nor Gray stand much chance against the incumbent Rand Paul.

Still, Wilder’s candidacy is a sign that political wisdom is shifting in the state. As Stephen Voss, a political scientist at the University of Kentucky, explains, a “substantial portion of the Democratic rank and file would like to see their party, and their statewide candidate, hew more closely to the national party’s environmental platform but they have enjoyed only limited success so far.”

You could see signs of this in 2014 as well. Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes ran against longtime Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, and lost. She pandered to the coal industry, and split with her party over the Clean Power Plan and on climate action. That may have hurt her more than it helped, say some Democrats like Wilder, because it didn’t win her much support among the coal community. But it did alienate progressives. On the same ballot, Rep. John Yarmuth, the only Kentucky congressman to win the Sierra Club’s endorsement, ended up earning 12,000 more votes than Grimes in the Louisville area.

Since we’re talking about Democrats here, we’re talking about a small portion of voters in Kentucky. Kentucky is not on the verge of becoming blue. And Republicans aren’t changing their approach yet. They’ll promise anything short of unicorns to coal miners this fall.

But if Democrats are starting coming around, then it may mean coal is finally losing its grip on politics, just like it lost its grip on the economy.

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Here’s a sign that Kentucky’s politics might finally be shifting away from coal

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