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Carbon offsets for urban trees are on the horizon

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

The evidence is in: Urban trees improve air and water quality, reduce energy costs, and improve human health, even as they offer the benefit of storing carbon. And in cities across the country, they are disappearing.

A recent paper by two U.S. Forest Service scientists reported that metropolitan areas in the U.S. are losing about 36 million trees each year. The paper, by David Nowak and Eric Greenfield, was an expansion of the same researchers’ 2012 study that found significant tree loss in 17 out of the 20 U.S. cities studied.

This arboreal decline is happening even in some areas that promote “million-tree” campaigns, Arbor Day plantings, and street-tree giveaways. Cash-strapped municipalities just can’t find enough green to maintain the green. Additionally, many cities are adjusting to population booms, and to temperature increases and drought due to climate change — both conditions that can be hard on trees (while increasing their value as sources of cooling and cleaner air). There’s also a growing recognition of the inequity of tree-canopy distribution in many cities, with lush cover in wealthy neighborhoods and far fewer trees in disadvantaged areas.

To find more funding for urban trees, some local governments, including Austin, Texas, and King County, Washington (where Seattle is located), are running pilot projects with a Seattle-based nonprofit called City Forest Credits (CFC). The nonprofit is developing a new approach: generating funding for city tree canopies from private companies (and individuals) that wish to offset their carbon emissions by buying credits for tree planting or preservation.

The vast majority of forest carbon credits worldwide have been issued for trees in tropical rainforests and other forests far from urban areas. A study released last year of the forest offsets in California’s cap-and-trade program found that they are effective at reducing emissions.

The new credits aim to quantify not only the carbon benefits of urban trees, but also rainfall interception, energy savings from cooling and heating effects, and air-quality benefits. CFC has no role in marketing or selling credits for specific projects, but maintains the standards (protocols) and credentialing for other organizations that sell them. A third-party firm, Ecofor, verifies compliance for tree-preservation projects. Tree-planting projects are either third-party verified, or, for smaller projects that cannot afford that, verified by CFC with peer review, using Google Earth and geocoded photos.

To be eligible for the credits, city tree projects must follow protocols created specifically for urban forests — rules governing such specifics as the location and duration of a project and how the carbon will be quantified.

The new credits “are specifically catered to the urban environment and the unique challenges and possibilities there, so they differ from traditional carbon credits,” said Ian Leahy, director of urban forestry programs at the nonprofit conservation group American Forests, and a member of the CFC protocol board.

“I think the work is innovative and potentially game-changing,” said Zach Baumer, climate program manager for the City of Austin. (Baumer also serves on the protocol board for CFC.) “To harness the market to create environmental benefits in cities is a great thing.”

Austin

The City of Austin aims to be carbon neutral in government operations by 2020. To get there, it has been reducing emissions through energy efficiency, renewable energy, alternative fuels, and hybrid and electric vehicles. But the city will still need offsets to claim neutrality.

If governments and businesses choose to purchase these credits, they could help fill that gap, and they can keep their dollars local. Austin is running two pilot projects this year with CFC: a riparian reforestation project near a creek and a tree-planting project on school-district land. The City of Austin is purchasing the credits for both projects from the nonprofit TreeFolks, via CFC.

The fact that credits can cover both stream-side plantings and trees on school property illustrates the complex task of developing a city credit — the protocols and quantification methods must work for the disparate tree species and stewardship strategies of an urban forest, in contrast to the more controlled setting of an industrial plantation.

CFC is eager to road-test the protocols in Austin, said its founder and executive director, Mark McPherson, a Seattle lawyer and businessperson who has dedicated pro bono hours throughout his career to city tree issues. “Even though you have a national drafting group that put the protocols together, that brings together lots of expertise, they’re still cooked in the lab, if you will,” he said. “They have to be tested in the real world.” The effort is being helped by McPherson’s older brother, E. Greg McPherson, a prominent scientist in the field of urban forestry who helped develop the protocols.

King County

Another piece of the puzzle is a pilot project in King County, where a new land conservation initiative (LCI) targets protection of 65,000 acres, spanning urban areas to farmland. “We really want to maintain this intact landscape — what I’d call our natural infrastructure — that is the foundation of the quality of life we have here,” said Charlie Governali, the land conservation projects manager at King County’s Department of Natural Resources & Parks.

King County has been working with CFC over the last year, piloting a carbon program to help protect about 1,500 acres of currently unprotected and threatened tree canopy in and around urban communities. The county will consider expansion to a full-blown program by the end of 2018. Governali said there are already businesses interested in buying credits.

One of the first commitments made through CFC is a planting project on a rare parcel of open space in the City of Shoreline, just north of Seattle, funded by Bank of America through American Forests.

According to a study by the nonprofit Forest Trends, in 2016, $662 million globally went toward the purchase of carbon offsets for the protection or restoration of forests and other natural landscapes. The usual model is that for-profit carbon project developers work with landowners to qualify large forests for credits. Doubters have questioned whether city trees offer enough scale to be worthwhile, McPherson noted. “Carbon developers are thinking they want to lock up 10,000 acres of forest land, so they don’t see the scale or the volume in what we’re doing.”

But Governali said that for King County, the carbon protocol offers something different — a way to protect a lot of urban green space cumulatively by selling credits over time, and for many small green spaces.

Urban credits will be expensive — many times what a commodity credit for carbon might cost. Urban land is not cheap, and urban trees are costly to plant and maintain compared to those on forest land.

However, urban trees offer more public benefits. “Compared to one additional tree left standing in a far-off industrial forest, each additional urban tree we protect has an outsized human impact,” argued Governali, because these trees bring cooling on hot days, better air quality, and even improved mental health. Finally, he noted, the sale of carbon credits from urban trees can help a municipality buy the underlying land and make it a public park, “a place for families to gather, relieve stress, get some exercise, relax, and for children to play and learn.”

At the outset, the work adds to already full urban-forest workloads and stretches budgets, at least until credit revenue from buyers can support the programs. “We’re good at planting trees, but documenting the work to create an official carbon credit is new for us,” said Austin’s Baumer. However, generating credits is one more way to stall or reverse tree loss at a time when people are just starting to understand how critical trees — whether elms, oaks, Douglas firs, or cedars — are to a city’s health and economy.

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Carbon offsets for urban trees are on the horizon

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The Best Composting Options for City Dwellers

Growing up, my family had an incredible compost mound in the backyard. Month by month, the pile ? with the help of a mass of worms and other critters ? turned?eggshells, vegetable peelings and even chicken droppings from our flock?into a rich black compost which my dad would later use to?give his plants a boost.

Idyllic as it sounds, there’s no way this method would ever work in an apartment (What landlord would be cool with a rotting compost pile in the corner of the living room?), which is why many city dwellers assume composting is totally out of reach. That’s just not true! With the green movement growing stronger every day, companies and individuals alike are stepping up to find composting solutions that work well in small spaces.

But before we get into what I consider the best small-space?options for city dwellers, let’s first take a look at three great?reasons to compost in the first place:

  1. Apply nutrient-rich compost?to houseplants and patio?containers to help the plants grow tall and strong. Anything you don’t use can be shared with friends or donated to a community garden in your area.
  2. Limit the amount of waste you send to landfill by making productive use of kitchen scraps (35 percent of the average garbage can is filled with wasted food). Save scraps in your freezer in the intermediate.
  3. Reduce your greenhouse gas emissions. The?same food waste that is filling up your trash can will later emit methane in the landfill, a greenhouse gas that’s increasing the rate of global climate change. Eek!

Now onto the good stuff. Here are four?of the most effective?composting options you have available to you if you live in an apartment, tiny house or similar urban situation, ordered from least to most complex.

Option #1:?Compost Collection

Many large cities have started adding compost pickup to their waste collection services. Composting not expressly listed? See if you can opt in individually on the waste management company’s page, or look into privately-owned services.

Pros:?Compost collection is convenient and trouble free. Plus, you’re supporting local business!

Cons:?Paying for compost pickup year round can be expensive.

Option #2: Countertop?Composting

Countertop?composting is beyond simple. All you have to do is get a container with a tightly-sealed lid?and start saving?your scraps bit by bit. I highly recommend that you crush or shred them before adding to the bin.?Layer scraps with a scoop of new soil and dry natural papers (newspaper works perfectly) once a week and mix frequently.

Pros:?Countertop composting is hassle free and inexpensive.

Cons:?Fruit flies can be trouble. Saving scraps in the freezer can help with this!

Option #3:?Compost Tumblers

If you’re fortunate to have a good-sized balcony or patio, a compost tumbler might just do the trick! Tumblers are fully sealed to preserve the heat energy produced by decomposition and protect against vermin, and are equipped with a turning mechanism to help aerate and mix the scraps. They’re also bigger than vermicomposting bins (see below) so you can compost in larger amounts.

Pros:?Tumblers are tidy and efficient ? perfect if you have the space!

Cons:?These can be hard to rotate/mix when full and require careful ratio management.

Option #4:?Vermicomposting (a.k.a. Worm Composting)

Ready to get serious about indoor composting? Vermicomposting with redworms is the way to go. Adding worms to your compost setup helps replicate the?outdoor environment, allowing nature to take its course a little more easily, and they don’t require any turning like tumblers do.

Pros:?Vermicomposters quickly and easily process household?waste, inside?or outside.

Cons:?Worms need to be protected from the elements?and compost on a small scale.

Additional Resources

If you’d like to get a more in-depth look at small-space composting, I highly recommend that you check out the book Compost City: Practical Composting Know-How for Small-Space Living. It’s very comprehensive. Best of luck!

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How to Lead a Nearly Zero-Waste Life

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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The Best Composting Options for City Dwellers

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The National Urban League Just Released a Report that Shows Black America Has a Lot to Worry About Under Trump

Mother Jones

Black and Hispanic Americans continue to lag behind their white counterparts when it comes to equal access to employment, housing, education, and other areas. But a new report argues that with a new presidential administration unlikely to enforce longstanding civil rights laws, black America must also fight to protect the progress that they have already made.

That’s the main takeaway from the 2017 State of Black America report, released Tuesday by the National Urban League, a civil rights organization established in 1910 to focus on the economic empowerment of African Americans. The report, which has been released annually for more than four decades, evaluates how black life in America compares to that of whites on a number of issues, including housing, economics, education, social justice, and civic engagement.

For the past 13 years, the report has utilized a “National Equality Index,” a set of statistical measurements that provide a quantitative breakdown to assess exactly how the lives of blacks and Hispanics stack up when compared to whites in the United States. White America is given the baseline number of 100, which is intended to represent the full access to opportunity that whites have historically been afforded when compared to other racial groups. By giving each metric a score out of 100, the report is able to provide a specific assessment of the progress nonwhite groups have made in narrowing the gaps, and how much they continue to lag behind over time.

This year’s report tracks through the end of 2016, making it the last one to follow the progress of black America under President Barack Obama. Marc Morial, the President of the National Urban League, tells Mother Jones, that while looking at yearly changes in the measured variables make it difficult to grasp long-term shifts in the equality of nonwhite groups, this year provided an opportunity to assess the difference in the status of black Americans after eight years with the first African American president. “During the Obama era, the economy added 15 million new jobs, the Black unemployment rate dropped and the high school graduation rate for African Americans soared,” Morial notes in the report. “Now that progress, and much more, is threatened.”

The 2016 edition, which was entitled “Locked Out: Education, Jobs, and Justice,” emphasized that black America still had much farther to go, but this year’s report—”Protect our Progress”—argues that under the Trump administration many hard-won gains are in jeopardy. In an interview with Mother Jones before the report’s launch, Morial noted that the presidential election had played a large role in the shift in tone of the report, adding during the official launch on Tuesday, “It would be difficult to pinpoint any moment in recent history where so much of our economic and social progress stood at dire risk as it does today.”

“There are several actions taken by the new administration that raise great cause for concern,” Morial says. He points to the Justice Department as his most immediate concern, noting Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ efforts to undermine consent decrees with police departments and voting rights enforcement “are inconsistent with the idea of a Justice Department that should enforce civil rights law.” He also points to the Department of Education, and “what could be an anti-public schools agenda” should the agency make good on its promise to promote school choice.

The report notes there have been small, but important, developments over the past year. Overall, Black Americans are 72.3 percent equal to their white counterparts, slight progress from last year when they stood at 72.2 percent. Specific areas reveal a more complicated picture. Across individual metrics there were some slight increases for black America, with education moving to 78.2 percent from 77.4 percent last year, likely because of an increase in the number of students working with more experienced teachers and a decline in the number of high school dropouts across all racial groups. Health outcomes improved from 79.4 percent to 80 percent, which may be because of more equal Medicare expenditures among blacks and whites. Economics—a metric that takes employment rates, wages, and business ownership into account—increased slightly to 56.5 percent from 56.2 percent with continued improvements in the black unemployment rate.

Black Americans are more civically engaged than whites, scoring 100.6 percent in both years. Social justice declined, falling to 57.4 percent in 2017 from 60.9 percent last year. The National Urban League attributes much of the decline to the change in the way the Bureau of Justice Statistics—a main source of raw data for the social justice index’s calculation of racial disparities in traffic enforcement—reports racial disparities in traffic stops.

The report also tracks the equality of Hispanics compared to whites, finding that overall, Hispanic Americans are at 78.4 percent in 2017 compared to 77.9 percent in the previous year. Much of this increase was due to a jump in the health index, which can be attributed to a decrease in the maternal mortality rate and an increase in insurance coverage. Similar to black Americans, there were also increases in economics and education. These increases helped offset declines in civic engagement and social justice.

The National Urban League also tracks gaps in unemployment and income equality between racial groups living in major metropolitan areas, and found the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, California, metro area continues to have the smallest gap between the incomes of black and white residents. Minneapolis, Minnesota, has the largest. The unemployment rate between the races in the San Antonio-New Braunfels, Texas, metro area has the smallest disparity, while Milwaukee has the greatest. For Hispanics, the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida, metro region is best for unemployment equality—Rochester, New York, is the worst. While Modesto, California has the smallest racial income gap, Springfield, Massachusetts, has the largest according to the report.

The State of Black America describes the problems but it also attempts to outline proposed policy solutions in the portion of the report entitled “Main Street Marshall Plan.” During Tuesday’s press conference, Morial called the plan—which supports several policy proposals including a $15 minimum wage, universal childhood education, summer jobs for youth, job training and workforce development, infrastructure, and affordable housing—a “forward-leaning investment,” suggesting that its rigorous research could provide politicians with some guidance as they plan for the future.

Critics have already slammed the Trump administration for being weak on civil rights, and the president notably declined an invitation to address the National Urban League’s annual conference during the election season. The National Urban League has not met with Trump recently, but members of the organization have met with Ivanka Trump and spoken to Jeff Sessions. In the past month several groups, particularly the Congressional Black Caucus, have held discussions with the administration and offered policy proposals for communities of color, only to then speak out when the administration moved against civil rights in some way.

Still Morial remains confident that even under these conditions, there is a chance for progress. “Obviously in this political environment, we are going to face headwinds,” he says. “However I think that this is just a question of politicians being able to get their act together.”

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The National Urban League Just Released a Report that Shows Black America Has a Lot to Worry About Under Trump

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Trump’s First Move as President: Screwing Over Homeowners

Mother Jones

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Earlier this month, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive action requiring the Federal Housing Administration to decrease insurance premiums on FHA mortgages, a change that could have potentially saved low-income homeowners as much as $900 per year. In his first administrative order as president, President Donald Trump suspended this Obama order, which was slated to go into effect on January 27. In practice, this means that low-income homeowners will be stuck paying higher insurance premiums on their FHA-insured mortgages.

FHA loans enable homebuyers—often those with lower incomes and who have fewer assets or bad credit—to bypass conventional lenders who would likely deny them loans by taking out a mortgage that’s insured by the federal government. The borrowers have to pay FHA mortgage insurance, to protect the mortgage lender from a loss should the borrower default on their home loan. In his announcement of the change, Obama said the drop in premiums would help stabilize the housing market and spur growth in housing markets still recovering from the financial crisis.

At his confirmation hearing last week, Ben Carson, Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the FHA, said he was concerned about the Obama administration’s last-minute implementation of this insurance premium drop and would reexamine it. “I, too, was surprised to see something of this nature done on the way out the door,” Carson told members of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committee. “Certainly, if confirmed, I’m going to work with the FHA administrator and other financial experts to really examine that policy.”

Presidential executive orders require no congressional approval to pass or overturn. Trump has vowed to eliminate all of Obama’s executive actions during his first days in office. This may be his first step toward fulfilling that promise.

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Trump’s First Move as President: Screwing Over Homeowners

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Here’s what Standing Rock looked like on Thanksgiving.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and right-wing pundit, told Fox News that President-elect Trump has asked him to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. (Trump tweeted that he is “seriously considering” Carson for the post.)

Carson has already turned down a chance to be Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services on the grounds that he is unprepared to run a federal agency. So how is HUD any different? Good question.

Carson lacks any relevant experience. HUD is charged with developing affordable and inclusive housing. Under the Obama administration, it has promoted smart-growth goals, such as linking low-income housing with mass transit.

During Carson’s unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he never proposed any policies to promote low-cost or integrated housing. Asked on Fox about his knowledge of HUD’s work, Carson pointed to his experience growing up in a city.

Trump is also reportedly considering Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino to run HUD. Under Astorino, the county has failed to comply with a 2009 settlement in which it agreed to build more affordable housing.

So Trump will nominate either someone wholly unqualified or someone who opposes affordable housing. It’s almost as if the luxury real-estate developer once sued for discriminating against black tenants doesn’t care about affordability or integration.

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Here’s what Standing Rock looked like on Thanksgiving.

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Trump is still ranting against a wind farm being built near his Scottish golf course.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and right-wing pundit, told Fox News that President-elect Trump has asked him to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. (Trump tweeted that he is “seriously considering” Carson for the post.)

Carson has already turned down a chance to be Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services on the grounds that he is unprepared to run a federal agency. So how is HUD any different? Good question.

Carson lacks any relevant experience. HUD is charged with developing affordable and inclusive housing. Under the Obama administration, it has promoted smart-growth goals, such as linking low-income housing with mass transit.

During Carson’s unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he never proposed any policies to promote low-cost or integrated housing. Asked on Fox about his knowledge of HUD’s work, Carson pointed to his experience growing up in a city.

Trump is also reportedly considering Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino to run HUD. Under Astorino, the county has failed to comply with a 2009 settlement in which it agreed to build more affordable housing.

So Trump will nominate either someone wholly unqualified or someone who opposes affordable housing. It’s almost as if the luxury real-estate developer once sued for discriminating against black tenants doesn’t care about affordability or integration.

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Trump is still ranting against a wind farm being built near his Scottish golf course.

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Obama took up Standing Rock, albeit delicately, at his last Tribal Nations Conference.

Yes, if Sen. Debbie Stabenow has her way. The Michigan Democrat announced The Urban Agriculture Act in Detroit on Monday.

The Department of Agriculture already offers support for city farmers, but this bill would add to those grants, loans, and education programs. It would also provide $10 million for urban ag research, $5 million for community gardens, incentives for farmers to provision neighbors with fresh food, and resources for composting and cleaning up contaminated soil.

So far Stabenow hasn’t released much more than a list of bullet points. The road from proposing a bill and passing a law is long, and details could change, which means there’s not much to analyze. But in general, urban ag is a mixed bag of policy greens.

Urban farms can build community, teach people about farming, and provide extra cash to laborers in cities, but they don’t create many good-paying jobs. If we farm vacant lots, rooftops, and former lawns, that’s likely a win for the environment. But if farms displace housing and spread cities out, that’s a loss. Similarly, if we replace plants grown under the sun with plants grown indoors under artificial lights, that’s no good for the climate.

For more on urban farms see our previous work, and this Next City analysis.

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Obama took up Standing Rock, albeit delicately, at his last Tribal Nations Conference.

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California is betting $2 million that its traffic jams can generate electricity.

Yes, if Sen. Debbie Stabenow has her way. The Michigan Democrat announced The Urban Agriculture Act in Detroit on Monday.

The Department of Agriculture already offers support for city farmers, but this bill would add to those grants, loans, and education programs. It would also provide $10 million for urban ag research, $5 million for community gardens, incentives for farmers to provision neighbors with fresh food, and resources for composting and cleaning up contaminated soil.

So far Stabenow hasn’t released much more than a list of bullet points. The road from proposing a bill and passing a law is long, and details could change, which means there’s not much to analyze. But in general, urban ag is a mixed bag of policy greens.

Urban farms can build community, teach people about farming, and provide extra cash to laborers in cities, but they don’t create many good-paying jobs. If we farm vacant lots, rooftops, and former lawns, that’s likely a win for the environment. But if farms displace housing and spread cities out, that’s a loss. Similarly, if we replace plants grown under the sun with plants grown indoors under artificial lights, that’s no good for the climate.

For more on urban farms see our previous work, and this Next City analysis.

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California is betting $2 million that its traffic jams can generate electricity.

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New York City hopes a 10-foot wall can save it from rising seas

New York City hopes a 10-foot wall can save it from rising seas

By on Jul 6, 2016Share

New York City is in trouble.

Location, population, and a massive underground infrastructure system: All this makes New York especially vulnerable to climate change. This was most starkly felt in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, when more than 88,000 buildings flooded, 250,000 vehicles were destroyed, and 44 people were killed. It’s cost $60 billion to rebuild damaged areas, much of which is being paid for by the federal government.

In an effort to stave off another Sandy, the city is prepared to wall off one of its wealthiest areas, Lower Manhattan, from massive storms and rising seas. Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell writes that New York will break ground later this year on the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, a 10-foot-high reinforced wall that will run two miles along the East River.

The plan, called the Big U, is the brain child of Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group, which won a $930 million competition sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2014. Based on a video from the design firm, the $3 billion project looks more like a park than a wall. There is space for gardening, recreation, walking, and dining, and indoor and outdoor markets.

It is not, however, without critics. Urban planners told Goodell they doubt the final design will include any of the recreational spaces. It’s just too expensive. “When it’s done, it’s just going to be a big dumb wall,” one architect said. Plus, there is the wall’s location. While Wall Street might be safe from the storm, the wall could actually make flooding in neighboring Brooklyn worse.

Regardless, it will take more than a wall around Lower Manhattan to save New York residents and businesses. As Goodell notes, New York might prevent another Sandy, but not the worsening storms expected from climate change. The solution requires more than just a big wall; it requires comprehensive rethinking of government policy and infrastructure spending, and a new approach to combatting long-term threats.

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New York City hopes a 10-foot wall can save it from rising seas

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America’s Prison Population Is Falling, but Too Slowly to Undo Decades of Growth

Mother Jones

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Here’s the good news: The number of prisoners in the United States dropped last year to its lowest point since 2005, a trend likely to continue following the release of about 6,000 inmates from federal prisons in the past few days.

And here’s the bad: The prison population still only dropped by 1 percent in 2014, to about 1.6 million. At this rate, we won’t return to the incarceration rate the country had in 1994, before tough new legislation sent the prison population soaring, until 2027, according to Matthew Friedman at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice.

Momentum is growing in Washington to tackle criminal justice reform. A group of about 130 police chiefs and prosecutors last month called to reduce the prison population; President Obama is increasingly focusing on criminal justice reform; and presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle have come out with their own proposals, in a striking reversal of the “tough on crime” rhetoric of past decades.

Reform has already had some impact. The total US prison population fell by 15,400 people last year, its second largest decline in 35 years, according to data released by the Department of Justice.

Notably, the number of inmates in federal prisons fell for the second year in a row after several decades of steady growth. Although the Federal Bureau of Prisons housed only about 13 percent of all US prisoners at the end of last year, it is still the country’s largest prison system, followed by the state systems in Texas and California.

A closer look at the data reveals that the decline in the number of inmates comes largely from one side of the equation. There was a sharp drop in the number of people admitted to prison, but no meaningful change in the number of people released from prison.

“Reducing the number of admissions is unequivocally a positive development, but without significant changes in the number of releases, incarceration rates won’t return to comparatively reasonable levels for decades,” Friedman wrote.

A report by the Urban Institute think tank reached similar conclusions, finding that current and projected falls “will provide some relief to the bloated federal prison system” but are “not sufficient to relieve severe overcrowding.”

To substantively reduce the federal prison population, the Urban Institute researchers said, reform will have to focus on drug crimes. Half of male prisoners and 59 percent of female prisoners in the federal system were incarcerated for drug offenses as of September 2014, according to the DOJ.

“Cutting lengths of stay 50 percent for drug trafficking offenses would reduce the federal prison population 18 percent by 2023, compared with the baseline projection,” the researchers said. The Urban Institute created an interactive model that allows people to experiment with different formulas for reducing the federal prison population.

Fortunately for prison reform advocates, precedent is in no short supply. Twenty-four states reduced their prison populations last year, primarily by releasing more prisoners. Mississippi, historically one of the states with the highest incarceration rates, led the pack with a 14.5 percent reduction of its prison population, thanks to an extensive package of reforms that included shorter sentences for some drug crimes.

The federal government too is making moves in this direction. The Federal Sentencing Commission last year passed an amendment to cut sentences for many drug offenders, which culminated in the release of more than 6,000 federal prisoners since Friday. The commission said at the time that retroactive application of the new guidelines could make more than 40,000 prisoners eligible for sentence reductions.

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America’s Prison Population Is Falling, but Too Slowly to Undo Decades of Growth

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