Can Throwing a Tantrum Help Save Us From Climate Change?

Climate scientist Michael E. Mann and children’s book author Megan Herbert want kids (and maybe also adults) to learn that their voices can and must be heard.

Sometimes truly effective change starts when a polar bear knocks at your door and asks for a place to live.

Well, maybe those exact circumstances aren’t too common, but they do kick off a marvelous new kids’ book, The Tantrum That Saved the World, by writer/artist Megan Herbert and climate scientist Michael E. Mann.

The book opens when a young girl named Sophia meets a desperate polar bear whose Arctic home has melted away, leaving him with no place else to go.

“The ice that he lived on had ceased to exist. He hoped that Sophia would kindly assist.”

tantrum polar bear — Artist: Megan Herbert

It turns out the polar bear is not alone. Soon he and Sophia are joined by other climate refugees: farmers whose land has flooded; fishermen whose nets have come up empty; and a flamingo, sea turtle and Bengal tiger that have fled various climate-threatened habitats.

Sophia sets out to help these lost souls, only to be met with resistance and dismissal by her local government officials.

“Someone must help them. Why not you,” Sophia asks.

“We see you’re upset, but we’ve got things to do,” comes the backhanded reply.

Sophia feels momentarily helpless and frustrated at this inaction — common emotions among people who care about environmental issues. That’s something the authors say they needed to tap into.

“This is exactly the feeling that the book addresses, because it was exactly the feeling that we were experiencing ourselves,” says Herbert. “Some days it feels like no one in a position of power to make substantive change — in politics or industry — is really listening or realizing the urgency of the situation we’re in. It can make you want to cry or scream or completely lose hope.”

Mann — who’s faced down the climate-denial machine in order to spread the world about the latest climate-change science — says he feels frustration sometimes himself. “I can tell you that there’s a mix of emotions that I encounter when I speak to audiences about climate change,” he says, “and powerlessness is one of them — powerlessness in the face of what seems like an overwhelming challenge.”

herbert and mann — Herbert and Mann. Art: Megan Herbert

Ultimately, though, the book isn’t about feeling helpless. It’s about overcoming that. Sophia gets motivated, raises her voice, organizes, and throws a tantrum that, well, helps create change and save the world (the title’s a bit of a spoiler).

“We wanted a story that would be empowering,” explains Mann. “I hope that the kids and parents who read this book will indeed feel empowered to make their voices heard.”

Herbert says that’s the key to Tantrum. “When talking to kids about an issue as big and scary as climate change, you need to give them a feeling of empowerment that they can do something about it, otherwise it can lead to a sense of hopelessness and a lack of engagement,” she explains. “We wanted to avoid that at all costs. So by telling kids that yes, this is a huge problem, and it’s not fair that it falls to you, and it’s frustrating and you want to scream, but there are things you can do about it, then it gives them the tools to convert all their negative emotions about it — fear, anger, frustration — into positive ones, like agency, action, positivity and hope.”

Herbert acknowledges that the word “tantrum” has a bad reputation, but says it may be the most important tool we have left. “Tantrums are seen as negative behavior, the last straw for a child with limited means to communicate their frustration to try to be heard,” she says. “Right now, that feels like the position that we’re in. The people who have the will to do something to stop the burning of fossil fuels are being roundly ignored by the people who want to keep burning them. The time for polite conversation and reasonable discussion is past. It’s time for us all to make a lot of noise and demand to be heard. As long as that tantrum is followed up by positive action, then I think it’s completely justifiable.”

She adds, “I don’t think this message is just relevant to kids.” She hopes parents who read this book to their children will also be inspired to speak up and make changes in their households and communities. “I hope they will help their children to contact their elected officials to reach the people who have the power to make bigger legislative changes, and by doing that they will find a way to convert their own frustration into positive action.”

Mann, who just last week won an award for his climate-communication efforts, says working on the book gave him some new communication tools. “Most of my outreach and communication has been aimed at adults,” he says. “I learned a lot from working with Meg about the additional challenges of using appropriate language and explaining things at level that’s accessible to a younger audience. That’s been a very rewarding experience for me.”

In addition to showing Sophia in action, Tantrum also comes with a detailed action guide, giving kids some tools to help change the world themselves, such as saying no to plastic and learning to fix things instead of just replacing them. Beyond those recommendations, Mann says the most important tool for kids is to talk about climate change — “with your parents, your friends, your relatives and your schoolmates. The first step to solving the problem is talking about it. And the more we talk about it, the more difficult it is for politicians to ignore it.”

The Tantrum That Saved the World is available now in e-book form from World Saving Books. A carbon-neutral printed version will ship beginning in March.

Previously in The Revelator:

February’s Best New Eco-books — All 17 of Them

Aichi or Bust: Is the World on Target to Protect Its Most Threatened Ecosystems?

The 196 nations that agreed to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets have just two years to meet auspicious conservation goals. How are we doing?

The Paris Climate Accord has gotten a lot of press lately, but did you know there’s an equally important international strategy to preserve the world’s most threatened ecosystems?

The Aichi Biodiversity Targets — named after Japan’s Aichi Prefecture — were established under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and are quite possibly the best roadmap nations have for biodiversity conservation. Unfortunately, though the deadline to meet the Aichi Targets is looming, few people have ever heard of it.

That’s a shame, because Aichi’s goals are arguably just as important as the Paris Climate Accord, which set worldwide goals to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Aichi targets predate Paris, going back to 2010, when 194 signatories of the Convention gathered in Nagoya, Japan, to hammer out 20 ambitious conservation goals to safeguard global biodiversity. The targets ranged from preventing the extinction of threatened species to halving the rate of forest loss.

Each nation was expected to meet all 20 of these targets by 2020, but with just two years left to go, the world is falling short. “Our assessment suggests that no country is currently on track to reach of all the Aichi Biodiversity Targets,” Convention on Biological Diversity Executive Secretary Cristiana Paşca Palmer tells The Revelator. “However, in many cases progress has been made.”

How far off are we? A 2016 report by The Nature Conservancy, WWF, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and BirdLife International found that only 5 percent of countries appeared to be on track to meet their global targets. Though roughly three-quarters of signatories are making progress, none are moving quickly enough to meet the 2020 deadline. And 20 percent of nations have made no progress at all — or are even moving further away. (The United States, meanwhile, is the only country in the world that hasn’t ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, so it’s excluded from the get-go.)

Where are countries struggling and succeeding the most?

One of the first steps outlined under Aichi was for each party to update and revise its national biodiversity strategies and action plans. In these plans parties were to develop their own national targets using the Aichi Biodiversity Targets as a framework, but with some flexibility dependent upon national priorities and capacities. Ultimately, though, these plans were meant to contribute to the collective effort to reach the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. To date 151 nations — 77 percent of the convention’s now-196 parties — have submitted their plans post-Nagoya. The submission of these plans is actually an Aichi Target itself (number 17), making it the goal with the most progress made thus far.

Similarly, countries are making the most progress on targets that are procedural in nature, such as ratifying the Nagoya Protocol and submitting such action plans.

But more practical progress has also been made. Another key area of success is Target 11, which calls for conserving “at least 17 percent of terrestrial and inland water, and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services.” As of June 2017, 87 parties to the Convention have achieved their terrestrial protection goals.

Work on protected areas has long been integrated into national strategies, far ahead of the official Aichi Biodiversity Targets, which understandably means more countries have moved toward this target. Still, though the target represents only a modest increase in the proportion of land protected from previous levels, it includes “a more ambitious increase for marine protected areas,” says Paşca Palmer.

Target 11 is about more than just setting aside land and water. By achieving this goal, countries will “help us achieve other targets in restoring ecosystems and contribute to the challenges that we have in addressing climate change and so on,” explained Convention on Biological Diversity Deputy Executive Secretary David Cooper when he spoke at the last Conference of the Parties in Cancun, Mexico, in late 2016 (COP-13).

Speaking at the same COP, Elizabeth Mrema, director of the UN Environment’s law division, noted that just declaring protection for land and marine areas is not enough. Though the world has already exceeded protection of 10 percent of coastal and marine areas, she emphasized that “we need to also ensure there is effective legislation and enforcement to ensure those protected areas are well-managed and conserved, and not just laws on paper.”

On the flip side, Target 20, which calls for resource mobilization — i.e. monetary contribution — toward implementing the strategic plan, is faring poorly. Fewer than 15 percent of parties have met their commitments. “The low level of progress for many countries is likely to be explained in part due to competing national resource allocation,” explained the 2016 report.

Indeed the Aichi Targets also depend on governments to frequently monitor and report their biodiversity, using surveys to estimate each nation’s total species richness. For poorer countries, allocating resources to continually measure progress is asking a lot.

However, one silver lining is that least-developed countries appear to be showing a higher level of ambition than developed countries, “and are thus demonstrating a different development pathway that better recognizes the value of nature to economic growth and prosperity,” Andrew Deutz, director of international government relations at The Nature Conservancy, said in a 2016 press release.

While it’s hard to individually name countries that are in the lead, the executive secretariat points to a few specific national projects that are making inroads.

In India, for example, the government is taking steps to encourage balanced fertilizer use to help maintain soil biodiversity, and to sustain and increase the rate of agricultural productivity by reforming fertilizer pricing to encourage the use of potassium, phosphorus and micronutrient based fertilizers while reducing the use of urea, which has more damaging effects on the environment.

Ultimately, though, 95 percent of countries are behind schedule on the Aichi Targets, and the targets won’t be met unless countries significantly ramp up their efforts.

So what’s next?

One of the main areas of focus in the next two years will be increasing support for low-income countries to turn their ambitious goals into reality.

There’s hope that bilateral and multilateral funding mechanisms such as the Global Environmental Facility, which provides money to developing countries to meet the objectives of international environmental conventions and agreements, will make this a priority.

Meanwhile the executive secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity will conduct a full assessment of progress toward the targets; a final assessment will be published in the fifth edition of Global Biodiversity Outlook in 2019, the first update since 2014.

Before that the parties will meet again in November 2018 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, where they’ll discuss plans for follow-up to the 2011-2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity.

What will follow after Aichi 2020 deadline has passed? Paşca Palmer says the status quo is not enough. “It is clear that business-as-usual approaches must be abandoned. What is needed now is transformational change… This includes a change in behavior at the levels of producers and consumers, governments and businesses that in turn will lead to tangible results on the ground.”

Paşca Palmer says that echoes the goals of the Aichi Targets. “We need to remember that biodiversity is not a hindrance, but rather a solution for sustainable economic growth and human well-being by supporting the functioning of our Earth’s life support system.”

How to Inoculate Yourself Against Climate Denial Misinformation

Fake news may be hard to spot, but fake arguments don’t have to be.

Much of the public discussion about climate science consists of a stream of assertions. The climate is changing or it isn’t; carbon dioxide causes global warming or it doesn’t; humans are partly responsible or they are not; scientists have a rigorous process of peer review or they don’t, and so on.

Despite scientists’ best efforts at communicating with the public, not everyone knows enough about the underlying science to make a call one way or the other. Not only is climate science very complex, but it has also been targeted by deliberate obfuscation campaigns.

If we lack the expertise to evaluate the detail behind a claim, we typically substitute judgment about something complex (like climate science) with judgment about something simple (the character of people who speak about climate science).

But there are ways to analyze the strength of an argument without needing specialist knowledge. My colleagues, Dave Kinkead from the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project and John Cook from George Mason University in the U.S., and I published a paper in Environmental Research Letters on a critical thinking approach to climate change denial.

We applied this simple method to 42 common climate-contrarian arguments, and found that all of them contained errors in reasoning that are independent of the science itself.

In the video abstract for the paper, we outline an example of our approach, which can be described in six simple steps.

The authors discuss the myth that climate change is natural.

Six steps to evaluate contrarian climate claims

Identify the claim: First, identify as simply as possible what the actual claim is. In this case, the argument is:

The climate is currently changing as a result of natural processes.

Construct the supporting argument: An argument requires premises (those things we take to be true for the purposes of the argument) and a conclusion (effectively the claim being made). The premises together give us reason to accept the conclusion. The argument structure is something like this:

Premise one: The climate has changed in the past through natural processes
Premise two: The climate is currently changing
Conclusion: The climate is currently changing through natural processes.

Determine the intended strength of the claim: Determining the exact kind of argument requires a quick detour into the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning. Bear with me!

In our paper we examined arguments against climate change that are framed as definitive claims. A claim is definitive when it says something is definitely the case, rather than being probable or possible.

Definitive claims must be supported by deductive reasoning. Essentially, this means that if the premises are true, the conclusion is inevitably true.

This might sound like an obvious point, but many of our arguments are not like this. In inductive reasoning, the premises might support a conclusion but the conclusion need not be inevitable.

An example of inductive reasoning is:

Premise one: Every time I’ve had a chocolate-covered oyster I’ve been sick
Premise two: I’ve just had a chocolate-covered oyster
Conclusion: I’m going to be sick.

This is not a bad argument – I’ll probably get sick – but it’s not inevitable. It’s possible that every time I’ve had a chocolate-covered oyster I’ve coincidentally got sick from something else. Perhaps previous oysters have been kept in the cupboard, but the most recent one was kept in the fridge.

Because climate-contrarian arguments are often definitive, the reasoning used to support them must be deductive. That is, the premises must inevitably lead to the conclusion.

Check the logical structure: We can see that in the argument from step two – that the climate change is changing because of natural processes – the truth of the conclusion is not guaranteed by the truth of the premises.

In the spirit of honesty and charity, we take this invalid argument and attempt to make it valid through the addition of another (previously hidden) premise.

Premise one: The climate has changed in the past through natural processes
Premise two: The climate is currently changing
Premise three: If something was the cause of an event in the past, it must be the cause of the event now
Conclusion: The climate is currently changing through natural processes.

Adding the third premise makes the argument valid, but validity is not the same thing as truth. Validity is a necessary condition for accepting the conclusion, but it is not sufficient. There are a couple of hurdles that still need to be cleared.

Check for ambiguity: The argument mentions climate change in its premises and conclusion. But the climate can change in many ways, and the phrase itself can have a variety of meanings. The problem with this argument is that the phrase is used to describe two different kinds of change.

Current climate change is much more rapid than previous climate change – they are not the same phenomenon. The syntax conveys the impression that the argument is valid, but it is not. To clear up the ambiguity, the argument can be presented more accurately by changing the second premise:

Premise one: The climate has changed in the past through natural processes
Premise two: The climate is currently changing at a more rapid rate than can be explained by natural processes
Conclusion: The climate is currently changing through natural processes.

This correction for ambiguity has resulted in a conclusion that clearly does not follow from the premises. The argument has become invalid once again.

We can restore validity by considering what conclusion would follow from the premises. This leads us to the conclusion:

Conclusion: Human (non-natural) activity is necessary to explain current climate change.

Importantly, this conclusion has not been reached arbitrarily. It has become necessary as a result of restoring validity.

Note also that in the process of correcting for ambiguity and the consequent restoring of validity, the attempted refutation of human-induced climate science has demonstrably failed.

Check premises for truth or plausibility: Even if there were no ambiguity about the term “climate change,” the argument would still fail when the premises were tested. In step four, the third premise, “If something was the cause of an event in the past, it must be the cause of the event now,” is clearly false.

Applying the same logic to another context, we would arrive at conclusions like: people have died of natural causes in the past; therefore any particular death must be from natural causes.

Restoring validity by identifying the “hidden” premises often produces such glaringly false claims. Recognizing this as a false premise does not always require knowledge of climate science.

Flow chart for argument analysis and evaluation.

When determining the truth of a premise does require deep knowledge in a particular area of science, we may defer to experts. But there are many arguments that do not, and in these circumstances this method has optimal value.

Inoculating against poor arguments

Previous work by Cook and others has focused on the ability to inoculate people against climate science misinformation. By preemptively exposing people to misinformation with explanation they become “vaccinated” against it, showing “resistance” to developing beliefs based on misinformation.

This reason-based approach extends inoculation theory to argument analysis, providing a practical and transferable method of evaluating claims that does not require expertise in climate science.

Fake news may be hard to spot, but fake arguments don’t have to be.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Read More: Find out how the authors debunked 42 major climate skeptic talking points.

Previously in The Revelator:

Drawdown: 100 Powerful (and Sometimes Surprising) Solutions to Global Warming

Yes, We Need a New Gas Tax…But Not the One Trump Wants

An added 25-cents-per-gallon fuel tax would hurt consumers, but something different could benefit the environment.

Start hunting around your couch cushions for extra quarters, folks. You may need them soon. President Trump has reportedly endorsed the idea of raising the federal gas tax by 25 cents a gallon to help fund trillions of dollars’ worth of national infrastructure projects.

Trump’s supposed backing for this new fuel tax, currently at 18.4 cents a gallon, echoes an op-ed last month from Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (the country’s largest lobbying organization), which called for a five-cent-a-year increase over the next five years. Donohue pointed out that the fuel tax has not been raised in 25 years and said the funds could help revitalize the lagging construction industry — a major component of the Chamber’s membership.

Last week, when asked about Donohue’s op-ed, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said the fuel tax increase was “on the table,” but added that it would have a “very regressive effect” on low-income Americans. Indeed, one research firm estimates it would cost American consumers $71.6 billion a year. That hasn’t gone unnoticed: Dozens of conservative groups have come out against the tax, as have politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Now, cost aside, there is a potential environmental benefit to an increased gas tax: It could actually decrease gas use. An analysis by the policy group called Energy Innovation, which supports the growth of clean energy, estimates that higher gas prices would actually push 1.2 million people toward getting rid of their expensive gas-guzzlers and switching to electric vehicles. In the process, it would also cause consumers to use less fuel — 1.3 billion barrels of oil through the year 2050.

But that points to one of the major flaws in a gas tax: How much longer will we actually be using gas to fuel our vehicles? It certainly won’t be forever. The average American keeps her or his car on the road for a little longer than 11 years, and with the rapid improvements in electric-vehicle technologies we’re going to see a paradigm shift in what Americans drive over the next decade as those older cars age out of the system. Just about every major analysis — including one by OPEC itself — predicts a major increase in electric vehicle ownership worldwide by mid-century. You can’t keep funding infrastructure with a gas tax if fewer people are using gas. In fact, some experts propose replacing the fuel tax with a new kind of tax based on how many miles you drive each year.

Of course that brings us to the second flaw with gas taxes: asking consumers to foot the bill. The tax that really needs to be raised is the tax on fossil-fuel company profits. A report last year estimated that an astonishing 6.5 percent of the entire world’s Gross Domestic Project — $5.3 trillion in 2015 — goes toward subsidizing the fossil-fuel industry. Not only do these companies get drilling rights (usually on public land) at bargain-basement prices, their tax rates are way too low and they defer their environmental and health costs onto governments and people, who pay and pay and pay for the right of energy CEOs to make hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

And that’s the third flaw of gas taxes — they should go toward helping to build infrastructure, sure, but maybe not roads and bridges. Fuel taxes could do a heck of a lot more good if they were put toward getting us away from the fossil-fuel economy. We could use those funds to support clean-energy infrastructure, new renewable energy technologies and climate-change mitigation. Think of what we could do as a nation — and as a world — with a few billion extra dollars a year pointed in those directions.

Of course, the thought of President Trump proposing anything like that seems, at best, unlikely, especially since he already wants to slash federal funding for sustainable-energy research. Then again, maybe all he needs is the right person to whisper the idea in his ear. That seems to be where this gas-tax increase idea came from in the first place, after all.

Previously in The Revelator:

Drill, Baby, Drill: The U.S. Added 38 Percent More Oil and Gas Rigs Last Year

Border Fortunes: Promises of ‘Free Money’ at the 2018 Border Security Expo

There’s little talk of actually building a physical wall, though, and more discussion of cameras, facial recognition and other technology.

Maurice Gill practically jumps up and down on stage in his green uniform. “It’s free money!” Gill, law-enforcement liaison with the U.S. Border Patrol, shouts at the crowd. “For us! For you! We need to operationalize right now.”

Gill is addressing a room of around 150 border-security industry executives at the 2018 Border Security Expo in San Antonio, Texas, describing the tidal wave of funding Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have received from the Trump administration. This year border-security budgets have ballooned, growing 23 percent for border protection and 30 percent for immigration enforcement, two agencies that operate under Department of Homeland Security authority to enforce immigration laws and police borders. This is in stark comparison to budgets slashed 30 percent for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of State.

border security expo speakers — Photo: Laiken Jordahl

Jay Ahern, former acting head of Customs and Border Protection and principal at the Chertoff Group, suggests to the crowd that this border-security funding boom mirrors that of the post 9/11 era.

“We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunity,” adds Benjamin Huffman, chief of strategic planning and analysis for Customs and Border Protection. He enunciates each word slowly and carefully. The industry executives are attentive, situated at the helm of an industry whose time has come.

An entrepreneurial spirit pervades the three day-conference. Homeland Security officials eagerly describe new frontiers to deploy technology and manpower, and few of these frontiers are anywhere near the physical border. Increased funding and personnel will allow the department to beef up interior enforcement and international operations like never before, which deputy director Elaine Duke calls “the away game of national security.” She describes how the border-security technology industry will play a crucial role in this expansion.

On the expo floor, industry contractors show off their gadgetry, ranging from high-resolution facial recognition cameras to ATVs mounted with assault rifles and air-conditioned K-9 kennels.

Amid talk of drones, biometrics and expanding enterprise, there is conspicuously little discussion of the border wall.

When the wall is mentioned, it is done so with the obligatory “big and beautiful” prefix, or the dubious “sea to shining sea” postscript, each of which elicits an audible chuckle from the crowd. One Border Patrol official likens the wall to a token of acknowledgment for the president. The same official then assures the crowd that no wall will be complete without an arsenal of motion sensors, cameras, lighting and other technology, though these assurances contradict prior reporting that Trump has offered to slash funding for border-security technology in order to pay for his wall.

Of course, there was no discussion of topics such as endangered species, land takings or environmental justice concerns at the Border Security Expo. There’s no need. Due to the legal waiver authority granted to Homeland Security under the Real ID Act of 2005, the department’s secretary holds the singular power to waive any and all laws in regard to constructing barriers and roads along the border. This degree of power wielded by the secretary, an unelected official who can nullify any congressionally mandated law at the strike of a pen, is truly unprecedented.

Using the Real ID Act waiver, the Trump administration has already waived dozens of environmental and public-health laws to build border-wall prototypes, replace sections of fencing in San Diego and build new fencing in the Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico. Laws voided by the administration include the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and dozens more. Due to this unchecked authority to waive any and all laws, the administration doesn’t have to confront the disastrous implications border walls have for wildlife and communities.

And based on recently introduced legislation, the border-security industry may not have to consider the human and environmental costs of the deployment of radio towers, motion sensors, cameras or other gadgetry, either. Though the digital wall is often touted as an environmentally amenable solution, fortifications to the existing network of towers, sensors, drones and cameras will have clear impacts on ecosystems and wilderness areas, especially if laws are waived to expedite their deployment.

Much of this digital wall is already in place, officials at the expo explain, and with a seemingly bottomless border-security slush fund, it’s rapidly becoming more powerful. Cameras can detect motion from seven miles away, differentiating between human and animal movement. Facial recognition technology can rapidly tell agents who’s in a vehicle traveling 100 miles per hour, all from a split-second snapshot. The virtual surveillance possibilities are almost limitless.

Throughout the expo, far more attention is given to the development of a tactical network of technology than to border walls. One official notes that more than 650 miles of existing border barriers already exist, built in high-traffic urban areas and travel corridors where, from a tactical perspective, these barriers are most effective. Border-security officials are tacticians; it makes sense that the strategy put forth at the expo is one of sophisticated tactical deployment. The wall, on the other hand, is born from a political rather than tactical mindset. It seems that everyone in the conference hall is well aware of this fact.

As day two at the expo begins, breakout panels address the fentanyl epidemic, the changing supply routes of drugs coming into the country and the transnational criminal organizations working to undermine border security. Each of these presentations paints a grave picture of threats streaming into the country. Metaphors frequently compare the arrival of people, drugs and even religious ideologies to water. Migrants “flood” across our borders. Drugs “pour” onto our streets. We must “stem the tide” of refugees before we are overrun. According to the forecast given at the expo, it feels as though a cyclone is enveloping the country, and the foreign seas of contraband, disease and criminality are lapping at our feet.

border communications vehicle — Photo: Laiken Jordahl

What expo presenters fail to mention is the fact that apprehensions on the southwestern border are actually at a 46-year low. In 2017 Customs and Border Protection apprehended fewer undocumented immigrants on the border than any year since 1971. In fact, since 2015 — well before President Trump was elected — more undocumented Mexican immigrants have been leaving the United States than coming in. As U.S. Representative Ron Kind said last year, “to build a wall now would be locking them in this country.”

Under the Trump doctrine of nativism and deregulation, the border-security industry is poised to win big. And with an annual market valuation reaching upwards of $600 billion, a blank check from the federal government, and little oversight or accountability, it doesn’t matter that our country is no longer in an immigration crisis. There is money to be made.

For the border security industry, the stars have aligned — this truly is an era of insurmountable opportunity.

Livestock Grazing on Public Lands: The Perils of “Multiple Use”

A new book offers insight into how our public lands were created — and what that means as we fight to protect them today and in the future.

“Through interpretation, understanding; through understanding, appreciation; through appreciation, protection.” —Anonymous, U.S. National Park Service administrative manual

Nine of 12 members of the congressionally mandated National Parks System Advisory Board resigned in late January over their inability to obtain a meeting with current Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, the former Navy SEAL and U.S. congressman who has professed, “I’m a Teddy Roosevelt guy!” and “No one loves public lands more than I do.” In the resignation letter, co-signed by eight other advisers, former Alaska governor Tony Knowles wrote, “I have a profound concern that the mission of stewardship, protection, and advancement of our National Parks has been set aside.”

Previous Interior Secretary Sally Jewell noted in a recent NPR interview that this administration has launched an “all-out attack on public lands.” It’s hard to view the actions of this administration any other way. As Knowles noted in his letter, Zinke has “no interest in continuing the agenda of science, the effect of climate change, pursuing the protection of the ecosystem.”

Indeed President Donald Trump has made it clear that the fox is guarding the henhouse, and fossil-fuel industries reign supreme. Step one was to hire hatchetmen such as Zinke and others who have spent their careers undermining environmental regulation in order to rollback federal protections for human and environmental health, and thereby support extractive industries.

Given the president’s unprecedented attack on the people’s lands and the environment, as well as the ever-unfolding escapades of Cliven Bundy and his ilk and Trump’s desire to build the ecological disaster that is “the wall,” one can learn a lot from the recent book by journalist Stephen Nash. Nash’s Grand Canyon for Sale (University of California Press, 2017) is a love story about what was, is, and should be our number-one focus on conservation on U.S. federal lands, especially national parks, monuments, wildlife refuges and other places. Nash’s work is about not only sense of place and the need to prioritize conservation above other interests but also the degradation of the people’s lands and how they are routinely trampled as private interests seek to control those lands and work in concert with politicians to make it happen.

The hands of federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and Parks Service were tied long before Trump took office. These agencies have the ability to prioritize science and the conservation of healthy plants, animals and lands, but that is not happening, to the detriment of ecosystems. As Nash makes abundantly clear, America’s greatest invention — national parks — and other federal lands are under attack by developers, cattle ranchers, introduced and other invasive plant and animal species, tourists and climate change. Using Grand Canyon National Park and surrounding federal lands as his case study, Nash offers each chapter as a vignette looking at topics affecting the ability of our national parks and our public/federal lands to thrive.

Nearly one-fourth of the book adroitly describes the perils associated with cattle grazing on federal lands and the need to establish a “national cow conversation.” Such dialogue is needed, as cattle — an invasive, non-native species to North America — are one of the biggest environmental stressors after climate change. Overgrazing is simply “grazing” and like large-scale dam projects, such as the nefarious Glen Canyon Dam, it has had dramatic and negative impacts on plant and animal life in the Grand Canyon and much of the Southwest.

Huge swaths of federal land are grazed. In fact a majority of Bureau-controlled lands are grazed. The only reasonable conclusion from the evidence presented by Nash is that “multiple use” is not likely always possible, and should not be the standard under which we decide what activities to support in our parks and other federal lands. Some uses are incompatible with natural ecosystems. We should forbid special interests such as mining, oil and gas extraction, energy generation, and sheep and cattle ranching from operating on federal lands. (If any environmentalist reading this review still doubts the collective impact cattle ranching has on natural ecosystems or the need to adopt a plants-only diet, I challenge you to read page 122.)

According to the language in the Organic Act of 1916, which created the National Park Service, “The service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments, and reservations.” Furthermore, the “purpose” of these federal lands “is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” The goal is sustainability, not ranching, oil and gas extraction, etc., for as Theodore Roosevelt once put it when describing the Grand Canyon: “Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it.”

The scale of the constant intrusions into the parks and federal lands by ranchers, business owners and politicians should be unsettling to everyone. Some of the wealthiest Americans and private international corporations — including David and Charles Koch, Stanley Kroenke, the descendants of W. Barron Hilton, and others — are essentially on the federal dole and benefit from the beauty of cheap grazing leases, resulting in yearly deficits to the taxpayers. If we stopped private grazing on Bureau and Forest Service lands, American citizens would save $50 to $125 million a year. In fact, we could likely pay the ranchers to stop ranching and still come out ahead.

The bottom line is that “federal lands” are our lands, not the private playgrounds for the rich and well connected. Nash shares the words of Freeman Tilden, the man who worked with the National Park Service to protect public lands: “The national parks are not in the least degree the special property of those who happen to live near them. They are national domain.” Continued Tilden, “Yellowstone and Yosemite belong as much to the citizens of Maine as to those of Wyoming and California; Isle Royale to the New Mexican as much as to the people of Michigan.”

Nash’s book is missing indigenous voices. They were dispossessed of these lands first, oftentimes by the U.S. military, Mormons and businessmen working side-by-side. Their voices need to be foregrounded in the narrative. However, my small critique in no way detracts from the success of the book, nor its more-important-than-ever message. Nash is excellent at providing a broad outlook — the big picture on every issue and topic. Although the obvious focus of the book is the Grand Canyon, the aim is much larger and makes an even more significant point about all federal lands and all national parks, monuments and refuges everywhere in the United States.

Stephen Nash’s book is important and strong medicine, chock-a-block with important insights and suggestions. His comments and research cover, for example, entrance fees, the failure of “multiple use,” cattle ranching, politics, economics, dams, coal-fired power plants, ecological restoration, including reseeding with native species, and increased inspection of goods and agricultural products arriving in our nation’s ports. He highlights the need for substantially more money in historically cash-strapped federal land-based agencies, and, most significantly, the need for citizens to not only educate themselves about what is happening to our federal lands but also to do something about it.

In the context of Trump-era threats to parks, other federal lands, and other nature infrastructure, it is important to get outraged, to do something, and to reprioritize sustainability and conservation now. As Nash wrote, “These natural systems are unraveling quickly. We need to see the protection of all public lands as the potential salvation for the parks… National parks…need powerful and consistent political support, loudly expressed.” Lend your voice to the effort. Make America the world leader of conservation of public lands again.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

The Biofuel Bomb Will Devastate Nature

Growing palm oil for use in food is already destroying habitats and causing extinctions. Using it for biofuel will make things even worse.

Malaysia and Indonesia are massive producers of palm oil, much of which is exported overseas.

Oil palm is not only the biggest direct driver of deforestation and peat-swamp destruction in these nations but is a growing forest-killer elsewhere in the tropics — often in mega-diversity areas such as New Guinea, Equatorial Africa and Latin America.

Native forests and peat swamps in the tropics have remarkable biodiversity and are massive stores of carbon — the destruction of which spews out billions of tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions each year.

Growers Love to Clear Native Forests

Those investing in oil palm love to find unoccupied, intact forests for their plantations. They don’t have to worry about local residents kicking up a fuss about losing their land, and the valuable timber in the forest can be used to help offset the costs of plantation production.

No wonder that vast areas of native forests are being mowed down or burned for oil palm plantations. As one example, in Terengganu state in Peninsular Malaysia, the government is about to allow a native forest reserve of 4,500 hectares (11,300 acres) to be destroyed for oil palm plantations.

The Malaysian Nature Society says that in just five years, from 2010 to 2015, more than 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of native forest has been cleared in Peninsular Malaysia, mostly for oil palm and exotic-rubber plantations.

Demand Set to Skyrocket

And now a new report by the respected Rainforest Foundation Norway suggests that oil palm could become a far bigger driver of deforestation in places like Indonesia and Malaysia.

This is because the global demand for oil palm is expected to grow six-fold by the year 2030, thanks to its rising use to create transport fuel, which is being spurred in part by alarming policy changes in China, Indonesia and the aviation sector.

And this is despite clear evidence that oil palm is one of the worst feed-stocks for producing biodiesel because of the exceptionally high environmental costs — to biodiversity and our climate — as well as to local landowners displaced by the big plantation companies.

Backlash Ahead?

It’s for this reason that the European Union is planning to completely phase out imports of oil palm from Indonesia and Malaysia for biofuel production, as of 2021 — a move that is causing both producer nations to howl in protest.

This kind of backlash has been a long time coming — and let’s hope that pending counter-moves by China and Indonesia don’t offset the courageous E.U. ban.

Originally published by Alert-Conservation. Reprinted with permission.

14 Environmental Programs Eliminated in Trump’s Budget Proposal

Trump’s proposed budget wipes out funding for numerous programs devoted to climate change, public lands and sustainable energy.

President Trump released his proposed federal budget for 2019 on Monday, and in the process pushed for the complete elimination of more than a dozen key environmental programs. These include, but are not limited to, areas of the government focusing on climate change, public lands and energy efficiency.

Of course, these fully eliminated programs are just the tip of the iceberg. Trump’s proposal also drastically slashes the budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies critical to a sustainable future.

The impact of proposed budget cuts on the EPA and other agencies, if passed, will be dramatic, but many operations will probably manage to limp on. That may not be so with the 14 programs Trump has proposed eliminating altogether:

The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program ($305 million), which supports the development of sustainable energy. Trump’s proposal to eliminate this program comes just a few weeks before ARPA-E’s 2018 Energy Innovation Summit and on the very day that proposals were due for its latest round of funding.
The Global Climate Change Initiative, a joint operation of the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development ($160 million). The budget proposal says this is “consistent with the President’s plan to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.”
The popular and effective Energy Star Program ($66 million), which has helped to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 8 million metric tons. The Trump budget says this is not part of the EPA’s core mission (even though the program is actually co-managed by the Department of Energy) and “can be implemented by the private sector.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s categorical grants ($1.066 billion), which provides states with “funds to implement the various water, air, waste, pesticides and toxic substances programs.”
The Department of Agriculture’s little-known but effective Rural Business and Cooperative Service ($103 million). Among the service’s programs are tools to help rural residents and businesses develop sustainable renewable-energy systems. As the service’s administrator told me in 2016, their Rural Energy for America grant program had helped to finance and install so many renewable energy systems it was “the equivalent to removing more than a million cars from the road annually.”
The Economic Development Administration ($266 million). The program provides federal grants for local economic growth. One of the administration’s most recent grants was $2.1 million to help provide sustainable water for businesses in Michigan.
The U.S. Forest Service’s budget for land acquisition ($56 million). The budget points out that the Forest Service already owns about 30 percent of federally owned public lands and blames the cuts on the need to maintain the land we already own.
Many grant and education programs offered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including Sea Grant; the National Estuarine Research Reserve System; Coastal Zone Management Grants; the Office of Education; and the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund ($273 million).
The Weatherization Assistance Program, which helps low-income families increase the energy efficiency of their homes. The program supports 8,500 jobs. Trump’s budget also wipes out the State Energy Program, which provides funding and technical assistance for projects to reduce energy waste. (No budget proposal attached dollar value to either of these programs.)
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program ($3.39 billion). The budget request blames this on “fraud and abuse,” not the high cost of heating fuel.
The Abandoned Mine Land Grants program ($105 million), which helps clean and redevelop former coal mines — a program paid for by coal-mine operators.
The Heritage Partnership Program ($20 million), which commemorates, conserves and promotes “areas that include important natural, scenic, historic, cultural, and recreational resources.”
The Chemical Safety Board ($11 million), which investigates accidents at chemical facilities and has pushed for greater regulation of the chemical industry.

On top of all of this, the budget also seeks to eliminate numerous programs for education, literacy and the arts — all of which have clear connections to improving the public’s understanding of environmental issues.

Of course, so far this is just all just proposed. The budget still has a long way to go before anything’s official, and many of these programs and agencies could survive to fight another day, but what we’re seeing this week clearly encapsulates the administration’s priorities.

The Surprising Ways Tigers Benefit Farmers and Livestock Owners

A new study finds that the often-feared big cats actually help keep crops and domesticated animals safe from other threats.

Farmers and livestock owners tend not to like living too close to large predators, but maybe that’s something they should reconsider. New research finds that the presence of nearby tigers (Panthera tigris) actually benefits farming communities in some pretty surprising ways.

According to a paper published last week in the journal Biological Conservation, tigers tend to live in the deepest, most pristine habitats they can find. In Bhutan, where the study was conducted, tigers then push two other predator species — leopards (Panthera pardus) and dholes (Cuon alpinus) — to the edge of those habitats, where they’re closer to human villages and agricultural areas.

This doesn’t put people or livestock at risk, though. Instead, the leopards and dholes (a type of wild dog) end up preying on the smaller herbivores such as wild pigs (Sus scrofa) that would otherwise be eating farmers’ crops. The crops end up doing better, as do the farmers.

Livestock also fared well, but in a different way. The domesticated animals raised by pastoralists in Bhutan tend to range relatively unattended and often graze in the forests surrounding villages. Tigers prey on livestock in the forests, but there aren’t that many tigers left in the area. The primary predators for the livestock, then, would be leopards and dholes, but they have been pushed out of the forests toward cropland where there are fewer livestock animals for them to eat. As a result, total livestock losses go down when tigers are on the landscape.

A dhole with prey. Photo: Dhruvaraj S (CC BY 2.0)

“Livestock and crop losses are two big issues faced by the agro-pastoralists in Bhutan,” says lead author Phuntsho Thinley, principal research officer with the Ugyen Wangchuck Institute for Conservation and Environment Research in Bhutan. “I wanted to study the core underlying causes of the issues in order to devise pragmatic solutions.”

The paper, which notes a history of predator persecution in Bhutan, recommends promoting apex predators for the ecological services they provide. Thinley and his collaborators calculate that the presence of a tiger would reduce so much herbivore crop damage it would be like putting an extra $450 a year in each family’s pockets. Livestock losses would also be reduced by an average of 2.4 animals per farm, the equivalent of saving $1,120 a year. Considering the per capita income of Bhutan is just about $2,200, that’s a potential economic windfall — all thanks to tigers.

Thinley says the results have been well received in Bhutan. He’s communicated his findings to local farmers and been interviewed on national TV. “Some of my scientific recommendations will also be incorporated into the government policy and environmental conservation plans,” he says.

The findings could have value elsewhere. “This is a really important paper and they’ve found something new that could be applicable to other areas,” says John Goodrich, senior tiger program director for Panthera, the global wild-cat conservation organization, who was not associated with the study.

For one thing, it could help teach people not to always blame tigers for livestock losses. “In my experience, every time something gets killed, it all gets blamed on tigers,” he says. With only about 3,800 wild tigers left in the world, reducing the number of tigers killed in retaliation for real or perceived livestock losses is critically important.

The study could also provide an incentive to use fewer snares around crops, where they’re used to catch herbivores but also capture anything else that wanders by. “Snares are indiscriminate,” says Goodrich. “They’re legal in a lot of places, like in Sumatra. Snares kill tigers’ prey, but tigers are also getting caught. It’s a huge problem.”

Goodrich notes that Sumatra doesn’t have leopards or wandering livestock as they do in Bhutan, so the same dynamic may not be at play there, but he sees value from this study in countries such as Nepal and India. “There you have high densities of tigers, high densities of livestock, and a lot of livestock depredation and issues with crop depredation,” he says. “So this could be a really useful tool in other places.”

Thinley, meanwhile, thinks the study could be replicated with other species, such as lions and cheetahs in Africa and wolves and coyotes in the United States. “I feel that the wildlife conservationists and researchers should follow suit,” he says, “particularly to highlight the ecological roles of wild animals to strongly justify their conservation rather than selling the vague idea of general conservation significance, which I think general people are not easily understanding and buying.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Tinder Talks Tough on Tigers

Drill, Baby, Drill: The U.S. Added 38 Percent More Oil and Gas Rigs Last Year

Burn, baby, burn: Experts express fear about the enormous climate impact of this boom in new fossil fuel development.

The number of oil and gas rigs in the United States has increased an astonishing 38 percent over the past year. That’s according to S&P Global Platts Analytics, which reported this week that the country had 1,070 rigs at the end of January, up from just 773 a year earlier.

Experts expressed fear that all of this new development does not bode well for the planet. “This will have a very significant climate impact,” says Romany Webb, climate law fellow with the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “The oil and gas industry is a huge source of methane, which is a really potent greenhouse gas. And then on top of that you also have the carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of this oil and gas. So this is very concerning from a climate perspective.”

Webb links the increase in drilling, in part, to the recent rise in prices for crude oil and natural gas. “Oil is now above $60 a barrel, which is what the industry always said that they needed to ramp up production,” she says.

Experts also connect the boom to the policies of the Trump administration, which has prioritized the extraction of oil, natural gas and coal over the development of renewable energies even as the planet continues to warm. “That the hottest years in human history coincide with a dramatic increase in U.S. drilling for oil and gas is a reminder of what a rogue nation we now live in,” says noted environmentalist Bill McKibben.

The Boom

The extraction boom took place nationwide, with all but one of S&P’s reporting regions (see below) gaining new rigs. The fastest growth occurred in two states in the natural gas-rich Permian Basin: Texas gained 141 rigs, while New Mexico added 43. S&P also noted that extraction companies are moving outside the Permian Basin, which, according to senior analyst Trey Cowan, indicates “future growth being led from other regions in the months ahead.”

The analysis includes rigs located on U.S. land, as well as in inland waters and the Gulf of Mexico.

	Jan 2017	Jan 2018	Variance Year over Year (YOY)	YOY % Variance
Colorado	30	34	4	13%
Louisiana	33	52	19	58%
New Mexico	40	83	43	108%
North Dakota	36	50	14	39%
Oklahoma	106	128	22	21%
Texas	367	508	141	38%
Rest of U.S. Land	121	172	51	42%
U.S. Land Subtotal	733	1,027	294	40%
U.S. Inland Waters	6	5	-1	-17%
U.S. Gulf of Mexico	34	38	4	12%
U.S. Inland and Gulf of Mexico	40	43	3	8%
Total U.S. Rig Count	773	1,070	+297	38%

Source: S&P Global Platts Analytics

It doesn’t look like this will slow down any time soon. The number of rigs has already increased in the few days since January ended. The weekly Platts RigData Locations & Operators Report for Feb. 5 reveals that there are now three additional rigs in operation, for a total of 1,073, with 61 more facilities “waiting to spud” (industry terminology for getting ready to start drilling).

The Future: More Drilling, More Impact

S&P released its data the same day the U.S. Energy Information Administration issued its annual Energy Outlook report for 2018, which projects U.S. oil production will soar past 11 million barrels a day by the end of this year.

The report also found that natural gas use in this country will increase at an annual rate of 0.8 percent through the year 2050. The use of wind and solar energies is also projected to increase at a similar rate. Coal and oil are expected to decline, that won’t be enough to offset the increase in emissions caused by the use of natural gas. The Energy Information Administration predicts that the U.S. carbon footprint will dip slightly over the next few years and then increase by mid-century.

The impact won’t just occur in the United States, as the agency found that the United States will become a net energy exporter by the year 2022, pushing an additional rise in emissions worldwide. As Inside Climate News put it, “the U.S. would almost single-handedly exhaust the whole world’s carbon budget by midcentury.”

The total effect of this mad rush to drill may be felt for even longer than that. “Our short-term folly will be felt for tens of thousands of years in the geologic record,” says McKibben.

Previously in The Revelator:

Trump’s Offshore Oil Plan: Like Nothing the Country Has Ever Seen