Democracy Depends on Scientific Information

We need all the tools we can get to address the environmental and economic inequality felt by many across the globe.

Recently, high ranking officials from President Donald Trump’s government gave the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) a selection of common words it was forbidden from using in draft budget requests.

The now well-circulated list included “diversity,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

Fighting infectious diseases is a difficult task but hindering the ability of organizations like the CDC to explain their core functions does a disservice to us all.

But this is far from an isolated incident.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency deleted key statistics on its web page about the percentage of Puerto Ricans who were living without drinking water and electricity, along with other key measurements of recovery.

This made it difficult to judge the effectiveness of recovery efforts, even if the numbers were later restored. Three weeks after the storm, 35 per cent of residents did not have access to safe drinking water and some were even drinking water from toxic Superfund sites.

Now, the territory is reexamining the number of reported deaths due to Hurricane Maria, and suggesting that the official numbers need to be revised — 10 times as many people may have died.

These events highlight the Trump administration’s hostility towards science — and its fight against the public’s right to scientific information.

Democracy depends on citizens having knowledge and being a part of the environmental decision making process — being shut out results in growing gaps between those who are protected and those who are not.

The key to public participation

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is well known for his description of known knowns, the “things we know we know,” and the unknown unknowns, “the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

This second part is the realm of science. Exploring, searching, finding. But, as we saw numerous times in 2017, today we struggle to keep the catalogue of what we do know.

These are the details the public needs so that it can be engaged and informed, take part in the decision-making process and be able to shift its collective focus and energy to where it is needed most. This information is critical to holding all elected officials — from small town mayor to prime minister or president — accountable, a key point in a democracy.

The public’s rights to knowledge and to participate in the environmental decision-making process are outlined by the Aarhus Convention. Although neither the U.S. nor Canada are signatories to the convention, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said its “significance … is global… the most ambitious venture in the area of environmental democracy.” States have a requirement to collect and disseminate facts “important in framing major environmental policy proposals.”

The value of an informed public

Only when the public is made aware of environmental information, can it act.

We saw that in the 1970s when concern about the growing ozone hole and its link to an increased risk of skin cancer stirred public opinion and resulted in the groundbreaking Montreal Protocol, the international treaty that phases out the production of substances that deplete the ozone layer.

And we saw it in Canada when the longform census was cut by the Harper administration and vast areas of the country were unaccounted for. This vital information was no longer available to anyone, including the community groups and businesses that depend on reliable information to plan their approaches to addressing our key problems.

Knowledge increases accountability

Knowing the environmental facts is also key to holding our public officials accountable.

The drinking water situation in Puerto Rico echoes the story line from Flint, Mich. There, the public was shut out of the city’s money-saving decision to change the source of its drinking water.

Free clinic medical treatment — Veronica Robinson draws blood from 7-year-old Zyontae Looney at a lead-testing clinic. Thousands of parents in Flint, Mich. have had their children tested at free clinics since they became aware that their water had become contaminated with lead. (AP Photo/Mike Householder)

The move resulted in a massive public health crisis that continues to unfold. More than year later, the residents of Flint still deal with contaminated water. Five people connected to the decision have been charged with involuntary manslaughter.

In both Flint and Puerto Rico, public policy failures were related to a lack of openness around public access to information. How can policy be evaluated in the absence of scientific fact?

As my own fieldwork in South Africa has shown, when members of the public have trouble accessing scientific information and the public participation process they can resort to the legal system. However, laws that support the public’s right are essential.

Our future — climate change and science

In the future, our response to climate change will be critical in determining what happens to the world’s most vulnerable people. Until recently, climate change mitigation has mainly been discussed on the global stage, but soon it will shift from being an international issue to one that affects communities large and small.

The impacts of climate change are numerous, and will increase inequality in many ways. Destabilized economies will shed low-skill jobs, rising sea levels will force many to move, and longer bouts of severe heat will create more demand for air conditioning, which will stress electricity grids, add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and release more heat to the environment.

These outcomes are more easily weathered by well-off individuals and families, but could prove disastrous to those living on lower incomes.

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, the U.S. administration began neutering references to the well-documented impacts of climate change. These actions were opposed by many cities, including Chicago.

“The Trump administration can attempt to erase decades of work from scientists and federal employees on the reality of climate change, but burying your head in the sand doesn’t erase the problem,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said at the time.

Science can help the public address an uncertain future. Only a policy of openness will ensure a shared commitment of equality for everyone.

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

Ghost Cat Gone: Eastern Cougar Officially Declared Extinct

The subspecies has now been removed from the Endangered Species Act, 80 years after its last sighting.

Say good-bye to the “ghost cat.” This week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially declared the eastern cougar (Puma concolor couguar) to be extinct and removed it from the endangered species list.

This news, sad though it is, has been a long time coming. The big cats, once native to New England, were last verifiably observed back in 1938. The Service first concluded that the species was extinct back in 2011, and then proposed removing its protected status in 2015. This latest step, taken after extensive scientific review and public comment, completes the eastern cougar’s long journey into the night.

Eastern cougars — also known as “ghost cats,” catamounts, panthers and, of course, mountain lions — disappeared after decades of overhunting on multiple fronts. The large predators were seen as threats to livestock, which resulted in the cats being actively hunted and bounties placed on their heads.

On top of that, the cats also ran out of their primary prey, deer, which were themselves hunted into near-extinction. “White-tailed deer were nearly eradicated from the eastern U.S. in the late 1800s,” Service biologist Mark McCollough told me in 2011. “The few cougars that survived [after that] would have had very little food to support them.”

Biologist Bruce Wright poses with the body of the last known eastern cougar in 1938. USFWS

Extinct or not, the eastern cougar remains a vital part of New England culture and mythology. Several boys’ and girls’ sports teams in the region are still called the Cougars or Catamounts, and people still think they see the animals quite frequently, although these sightings are usually later proven to be bobcats, lynx or other animals. A few New England sightings, however, have been confirmed to be escaped captive cougars of other subspecies. One of the most credible reports took place just a couple of miles from where I used to live in Wiscasset, Maine.

Meanwhile cougars from the West are actually expanding their range and repopulating areas where they had once been exterminated. Most of those settle in the Midwest, but one famous mountain lion trekked all the way from the Black Hills of South Dakota to Connecticut a few years ago — a journey of about 2,000 miles.

That particular cat died after being struck by an SUV — like so many of its Florida panther cousins — but it may not be the last western panther to make New England its home, even temporarily. Many experts feel the Maine woods and other New England locations hold a lot of potential as a possible sites for cougar rewilding as the species continues its eastward expansion. “Biologically, it wouldn’t be hard to resettle them,” McCollough said at a meeting in Damariscotta, Maine, last year. “They could adapt to the East.”

That would be too little, too late to make up for the extinction of the eastern cougar, but who knows, maybe one day soon the forests of New England will once again have their own populations of breeding big cats, not just the ghosts that used to live there.

Previously in Extinction Countdown:

Christmas Island Bat, Last Seen in 2009, Confirmed Extinct

222 Bird Species Worldwide Now Critically Endangered

According to the latest IUCN Red List update, 13 percent of the world’s bird species are now threatened.

What do the southern red-breasted plover, ultramarine lorikeet and Rimatara reed warbler have in common?

Here’s the unfortunate answer: They’re just a few of the bird species newly listed as critically endangered in the latest update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The update, released last month by BirdLife International, cites climate change and overfishing as causes of the population declines of many species, particularly seabirds.

All told 222 bird species worldwide are now considered critically endangered, putting them one step above extinction. In fact, some of those species may already be gone: 21 species haven’t been seen in years and are actually listed as “critically endangered, possibly extinct.”

The yellow-breasted bunting (Emberiza aureola) could join that list of extinct species before too much longer. Previously considered to be of least concern, this once-common Asian species has experienced a catastrophic 80 percent population decline over the past 13 years and is now listed as critically endangered. The brightly colored bird is commonly trapped and sold as food on China’s black market, despite being legally protected in that country.

In addition to the critically endangered list, another 461 bird species are now listed as endangered, with another 786 considered vulnerable. Fully 13 percent of the world’s bird species are now considered threatened.

BirdLife didn’t reassess every bird species this year, but it did publish new data on 238 of them. Among the most striking examples:

Snowy owls (Bubo scandiacus), previously listed as of least concern, are now considered vulnerable, with threats ranging from illegal hunting to climate change.
Nesting black-legged kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) are having trouble feeding their chicks as overfishing and climate change have robbed them of their food, a situation echoed with several other seabird species. The Cape gannet (Morus capensis), for example, has resorted to following fishing vessels in search of food and now relies on the discards thrown off the boats — essentially low-nutrition “junk food” that lowers the survival rates of newborn chicks.
Similarly, the kea (Nestor notabilis), a parrot from New Zealand, has been listed as endangered because tourists keep feeding them unhealthy food like bread and potato chips.

Thankfully, there are several bright spots amongst all of this bad news. BirdLife found that several dozen bird species are now doing better than they were and have been downlisted to lower threat categories. This includes two species of kiwi, five owls, three parakeets and a number of warblers and babblers. Most notably the Dalmatian pelican (Pelecanus crispus), the world’s largest freshwater bird, has been downlisted from vulnerable to near threatened — a testament to decades of protective efforts and proof that the fate of many of these endangered species can still be turned around.

One Year Into the Trump Administration, Where Do We Stand?

Attacks on science and the environment have been met with an increase in civic engagement and resistance.

What a long, strange year it’s been.

On Saturday, Jan. 20, the world will mark the one-year anniversary of the Trump administration officially taking office after a long and arduous election. It’s a year that has seen seemingly unending attacks on science and the environment, along with a rise in hateful rhetoric and racially motivated policies. But it’s almost been met by the continuing growth of the efforts to resist what the Trump administration has to offer.

So where do we stand, one year in?

Well, for one thing, we can say that the year has given the administration’s actions a visible shape. “These are not isolated incidents at this point,” says Jacob Carter, research scientist for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who has been tracking the administration’s attacks against science — at least 65 since the president took office. “They’re happening so often now that there is definitely a pattern starting to emerge. The administration really wants to undermine the role of science and science-based decision making. They’re getting the expertise out of the way to further a political agenda.”

Carter says these attempts to remove science from government decision-making — ranging from ending a study of the health effects of mountaintop-removal mining to eliminating the words “climate change” from all EPA grants — “have real consequences on peoples’ lives. It’s about our health and safety. If we don’t listen to the best available science, then our lives are at risk.”

But pushing science and scientists aside doesn’t mean they go away forever. “Under this administration we know the scientific evidence isn’t going to be able to speak for itself, so scientists really have to step up and speak for it,” Carter says. And scientists have been doing that in record numbers, starting with last year’s March on Science and continuing on multiple fronts ever since. “They’re stepping up in an unprecedented number and saying science has got to be used in policy-making decisions.” That’s not slowing down; Carter recalls how he attended two big scientific conferences last year and “I had tons of scientists coming up and asking me how they can advocate, what they could do to make sure that science is being used and remains in a proper place.”

That increased level of activism is not unique to scientists, as people from many walks of live have definitely become more politically engaged in the past year. “Trump’s election was a wakeup call in a way,” says Gayle Alberda, an assistant professor of politics at Connecticut’s Fairfield University, who studies elections, political participation and civic engagement. “Nation-wide, we’ve seen this huge influx of people wanting to know not only how to run for office, but how to get politically engaged.”

Of course, people are rising up on both sides of the political aisle. In addition to the citizens opposing Trump’s policies, Alberda says the people who see Trump as representing their ideals have also made their voices louder over the past year. “I think both sides are getting pushed in a way to really engage vastly differently than we have in the past,” she says.

Unfortunately, the two sides aren’t exactly talking to each other, and that’s bad for the country. “We’re losing the ability to engage in civil discourse in a way that’s healthy for democracy,” Alberda days.

Alberda says this has been building for a while, even before the election. “It’s almost like you keep throwing firewood onto the fire and you don’t realize how big it is until it blows up,” she says. “You’re like, ‘whoa, that’s a big fire.’ Lots of little things have happened over the years and we’re kind of seeing that all of a sudden in our face, because you have all of these questions about the state of democracy today.” She says examples such as Trump’s attacks on the free press, the Republican push to pass their legislative agenda, and the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the last election have only served to stoke this fire even further.

So where do we go as we enter the administration’s second year? One avenue is to look toward groups that have experience fighting these kinds of regressive activities. “One of the strengths of the movement is solidarity,” says Nadia Aziz, program manager of the Stop Hate Project run by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “There are a lot of organizations like ours that have been around for 50 years or more. We’ve been fighting to secure equal justice for racial and ethnic minorities for a very long time. I think we’re very resilient organizations because of that,” she says.

That resilience is important, she says, because right now we’re at a critical point: “How do you make sure that this movement that we’re all in, this resistance, is creating sustainable action and that we all don’t get burned out?”

One way Aziz says she keeps herself strong is by seeing and experiencing what others are doing. “There are a lot of a lot of groups are doing such wonderful work,” she says. “One of the most inspiring things about my job is being able to connect with people. I think that gives me resiliency, seeing how awesome the people are on the ground what the remarkable work they’re doing.”

That, in fact, may be one of the lasting legacies of this administration: Local community groups and national groups are connecting with each other, learning from each other, and collectively strengthening their voices. “I do think we’re going to keep getting stronger and we’re going to keep building out our movement,” Aziz says.

As we enter year two of this administration, Alberda says she’s looking toward local 2018 elections and the rise of candidates opposing Trump and his policies. “That is going to be really interesting,” she says. “We’ve seen already that Republicans in safe Republican state legislative seats are getting challengers. I think that’s indicative that we’re going to see some interesting elections.”

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

We mapped out where the drilling could take place — and how it overlaps with the critical habitats of the most sensitive species at risk.

President Trump’s new five-year plan for offshore oil drilling, announced Jan. 4, represents an unprecedented increase in offshore leasing over the previous administration. By opening virtually the entire U.S. coast to offshore drilling, including areas previously unavailable to the energy industry, the plan is set to increase the number of drilling pads, pipelines and tankers operating in U.S. waters — and in all likelihood, the number of oil spills associated with them.

Take a look at how Trump’s plan would increase the scale of offshore drilling over previous five-year plans:

It’s impossible to predict if any of this drilling will actually take place — many states have already objected to the plan — or which, if any, future projects could result in oil leaks. But offshore energy extraction has a far-from pristine record, and the Trump administration is also in the process of removing or revising critical safety regulations. Many conservation experts fear that could lead to major catastrophes such as the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the Exxon Valdez spill, which were disastrous for wildlife and the environment. Even smaller leaks could create numerous problems. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “relatively small oil spills can cause major environmental and economic harm, depending on the location, season, environmental sensitivity and type of oil.”

What could be affected?

Hundreds of species live in and around, or migrate through, the areas Trump wants to open to drilling. Many of these species are protected by the Endangered Species Act.

The risks don’t end with the species on this map. Dozens of additional threatened and endangered species — and potentially thousands of other types of fish, birds, marine mammals and plants — live in or migrate through these areas. With almost the entire U.S. coast now potentially opened to drilling, it opens up a world of risks to U.S. wildlife.

How Can We Help Put a Human Face on Climate Change?

Learning how to communicate the issues in a way that people can understand and feel is the key to positive change.

Communicating the truths about climate change isn’t always easy. Sometimes the effects of climate change seem to hover in the future, or are occurring most visibly in other parts of the world. Other times they’re subtle — at least for now. And of course, there are some people who just don’t want to hear anything about it.

With those and other challenges, how can we as a society do a better job communicating the facts and realities of global warming? One way, experts tell us, is to try to show that climate change is affecting people now, in ways we can see, feel and understand.

So how do we show those impacts on real people? We asked several climate experts to tell us:

How can we help put a human face on the effects of climate change?

Their answers may surprise you — or they may give you the tools you need to communicate this vitally important topic.

Valentina Bosetti, professor of climate change economics, Bocconi University

When people think of climate change, they think of the damages, physical and economic, deriving from it. However, there is also the other side of the problem. Mitigating climate change is forcing us to rethink the way we move around, produce goods, generate electricity, feed ourselves, and many other aspects of human activities.

This requires inventing technologies, processes and coming up with revolutionary and bold concepts, and daring to push them out in to the economy. Who are the people that will bring this change about? What are the faces of the myriad passionate students who will make this happen? What about the young entrepreneurs who are betting on this side of the battle we are fighting? These are the faces we should also show to the world.

Michael Burger, executive director, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

It’s hard to believe that we are still at a point where people need to be persuaded that climate change is a problem for people, here and now, including you and me and all our friends and relations. With the devastation caused by the insane 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, the wildfires running rampant throughout the American West, daily flooding from sea-level rise in major American cities, heat waves year after year, ongoing changes in local fauna and flora, and the extraordinary expenses being taken on by cities and states to adapt to these impacts, one would hope the point has become clear.

And, in fact, I think it largely has. The days of imagining climate change as a problem remote in time and space, potentially harming polar bears and impoverished communities in a place called Bangladesh, are coming to an end. Yet, there will always be a gap between the perception of the problem and the willingness to make real sacrifices in the present tense in order to address it.

One way of helping to bridge that gap is to highlight the ways that climate change impacts public health, especially for vulnerable populations, including children, the elderly and the poor. Among other things, climate change makes air quality and water quality worse, increases the risk of exposures to toxic pollution, increases the risk of displacement from one’s home, all of which are terrible for one’s well-being, including one’s mental health. As people come to understand the pervasive effects of climate change, and the many ways it impacts the people they know living in the world today, the chances of the well-mobilized political pressure we need to enact real reforms will grow.

Astrid Caldas, senior climate scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists

One could argue that climate change is all about people, and that a need to “put a human face” on it would be totally unnecessary. However, we know that is not what happens. Concerns range from lifestyles to the economy, when they should be about livelihoods and the society as a whole, not only the economic aspect.

Various initiatives exist to show “the faces of climate change.” The sobering images show people — many of them children — suffering as their lives are directly affected by floods, droughts, wildfires and sea-level rise; homeowners coming back to what’s left of their flooded or burned homes after a heavy rain event or a wildfire; people in drought-stricken regions either looking in despair at their destroyed crops or holding their starving babies, a lost look in their eyes; people in the Arctic seeing their villages disappear into the sea as it rises. These events are happening all over the world and are being made more likely by climate change — attribution studies have determined how much more likely or stronger some have been made by human caused global warming. But most people don’t know that.

These initiatives are not reaching enough people. Mainstream media should be showing these on a regular basis, as these impacts are ongoing, not only when some disaster happens. They should be making the connection between climate change, and those events, and the consequences (human, economic, social) while also highlighting that there is something we can do to avert the worst. They should be pulling at peoples’ heartstrings, because research shows that when people relate to, or are emotionally affected by, something, they are more likely to act — and we need people to act.

Perhaps one of the most poignant examples of a human face of climate change that has stayed with me is that of the Yupik people in Alaska. They have various words for sea ice, like the one for thick, dark, weathered ice, which has become very rare: tagneghneq. That is hard to explain to the next generation — one cannot know what something is if one cannot see it. Their cultural heritage is at risk because of climate change, and like them, many will lose much more than property or livelihoods to climate change. They are losing their way of life, and that’s something one cannot get back with insurance. Most people don’t think about that when they think about climate change.

Alexis Berg, associate research scholar, Princeton University

This is going to sound obvious, but I think it’s simply about telling the stories of people, here and elsewhere, already significantly and demonstrably affected by ongoing climate change, illustrating the hardship they are facing while warning that it’s still only a preview of things to come. It’s about finding the human canaries in the climate change coal mines.

It’s a tall order because not every extreme weather event, and certainly not every regional trend in climate — for instance, a decrease in precipitation somewhere — can be rigorously attributed to climate change at this point. There are some current, observed trends, though, that can be: heatwaves, etc. Current regional drying in certain places such as the Mediterranean or the Southwest U.S. is also certainly consistent with climate model projections. Sea-level rise is a clear and attributable signal as well.

I think stories identifying connections (even very partial) between political events and their consequences in places like the Middle East, such the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War, to regional changes in climate, are really powerful. Likewise, stories about communities and people affected by incremental sea-level rise are quite telling — for instance, stories about people who already might not be able to insure of sell their homes in places like Miami.

Somewhat sadly, as time goes by and climate change impacts emerge more and more clearly, such stories should become more and more obvious!

Trump Wants More Offshore Drilling. That Ignores the Deadly Lessons of Deepwater Horizon

BP’s mistakes, rooted in regulator failures, revealed “such systematic failures in risk management that they place in doubt the safety culture of the entire industry.”

The Trump Administration is proposing to ease regulations that were adopted to make offshore oil and gas drilling operations safer after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. This event was the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Eleven workers died in the explosion and sinking of the oil rig, and more than 4 million barrels of oil were released into the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists have estimated that the spill caused more than US$17 billion in damages to natural resources.

I served on the bipartisan National Commission that investigated the causes of this epic blowout. We spent six months assessing what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon and the effectiveness of the spill response, conducting our own investigations and hearing testimony from dozens of expert witnesses.

Our panel concluded that the immediate cause of the blowout was a series of identifiable mistakes by BP, the company drilling the well; Halliburton, which cemented the well; and Transocean, the drill ship operator. We wrote that these mistakes revealed “such systematic failures in risk management that they place in doubt the safety culture of the entire industry.” The root causes for these mistakes included regulatory failures.

Now, however, the Trump administration wants to increase domestic production by “reducing the regulatory burden on industry.” In my view, such a shift will put workers and the environment at risk, and ignores the painful lessons of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The administration has just proposed opening virtually all U.S. waters to offshore drilling, which makes it all the more urgent to assess whether it is prepared to regulate this industry effectively.

Oil spill commissioners Dr. Donald Boesch, center, and Frances Ulmer, former Alaska lieutenant governor, on left, visit the Louisiana Gulf Coast in 2010 to see impacts of the BP spill. Photo courtesy Donald Boesch

Separating regulation and promotion

During our commission’s review of the BP spill, I visited the Gulf office of the Minerals Management Service in September 2010. This Interior Department agency was responsible for “expeditious and orderly development of offshore resources,” including protection of human safety and the environment.

The most prominent feature in the windowless conference room was a large chart that showed revenue growth from oil and gas leasing and production in the Gulf of Mexico. It was a point of pride for MMS officials that their agency was the nation’s second-largest generator of revenue, exceeded only by the Internal Revenue Service.

We ultimately concluded that an inherent conflict existed within MMS between pressures to increase production and maximize revenues on one hand, and the agency’s safety and environmental protection functions on the other. In our report, we observed that MMS regulations were “inadequate to address the risks of deepwater drilling,” and that the agency had ceded control over many crucial aspects of drilling operations to industry.

In response, we recommended creating a new independent agency with enforcement authority within Interior to oversee all aspects of offshore drilling safety, and the structural and operational integrity of all offshore energy production facilities. Then-Secretary Ken Salazar completed the separation of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement from MMS in October 2011.

Officials at this new agency reviewed multiple investigations and studies of the BP spill and offshore drilling safety issues, including several by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. They also consulted extensively with the industry to develop a revised a Safety and Environmental Management System and other regulations.

In April 2016, BSEE issued a new well control rule that required standards for design operation and testing of blowout preventers, real-time monitoring and safe drilling pressure margins. Prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the oil industry had effectively blocked adoption of such regulations for years.

About-face under Trump

President Trump’s March 28, 2017 executive order instructing agencies to reduce undue burdens on domestic energy production signaled a change of course. The American Petroleum Institute and other industry organizations have lobbied hard to rescind or modify the new offshore drilling regulations, calling them impractical and burdensome.

In April 2017, Trump’s Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, appointed Louisiana politician Scott Angelle to lead BSEE. Unlike his predecessors – two retired Coast Guard admirals – Angelle lacks any experience in maritime safety. In July 2010 as interim Lieutenant Governor, Angelle organized a rally in Lafayette, Louisiana, against the Obama administration’s moratorium on deepwater drilling operations after the BP spill, leading chants of “Lift the ban!”

Even now, Angelle asserts there was no evidence of systemic problems in offshore drilling regulation at the time of the spill. This view contradicts not only our commission’s findings, but also reviews by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board and a joint investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Interior Department.

Oiled Kemp’s Ridley turtle captured June 1, 2010, during the BP spill. The turtle was cleaned, provided veterinary care and taken to the Audubon Aquarium. Photo: NOAA

Fewer inspections and looser oversight

On December 28, 2017, BSEE formally proposed changes in production safety systems. As evidenced by multiple references within these proposed rules, they generally rely on standards developed by the American Petroleum Institute rather than government requirements.

One change would eliminate BSEE certification of third-party inspectors for critical equipment, such as blowout preventers. The Chemical Safety Board’s investigation of the BP spill found that the Deepwater Horizon’s blowout preventer had not been tested and was miswired. It recommended that BSEE should certify third-party inspectors for such critical equipment.

Another proposal would relax requirements for onshore remote monitoring of drilling. While serving on the presidential commission in 2010, I visited Shell’s operation in New Orleans that remotely monitored the company’s offshore drilling activities. This site operated on a 24-7 basis, ever ready to provide assistance, but not all companies met this standard. BP’s counterpart operation in Houston was used only for daily meetings prior to the Deepwater Horizon spill. Consequently, its drillers offshore urgently struggled to get assistance prior to the blowout via cellphones.

On December 7, 2017 BSEE ordered the National Academies to stop work on a study that the agency had commissioned on improving its inspection program. This was the most recent in a series of studies, and was to include recommendations on the appropriate role of independent third parties and remote monitoring.

Minor savings, major risk

BSEE estimates that its proposals to change production safety rules could save the industry at least $228 million in compliance costs over 10 years. This is a modest sum considering that offshore oil production has averaged more than 500 million barrels yearly over the past decade. Even with oil prices around $60 per barrel, this means oil companies are earning more than $30 billion annually. Industry decisions about offshore production are driven by fluctuations in the price of crude oil and booming production of onshore shale oil, not by the costs of safety regulations.

BSEE’s projected savings are also trivial compared to the $60 billion in costs that BP has incurred because of its role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Since then explosions, deaths, injuries and leaks in the oil industry have continued to occur mainly from production facilities. On-the-job fatalities are higher in oil and gas extraction than any other U.S. industry.

Some aspects of the Trump administration’s proposed regulatory changes might achieve greater effectiveness and efficiency in safety procedures. But it is not at all clear that what Angelle describes as a “paradigm shift” will maintain “a high bar for safety and environmental sustainability,” as he claims. Instead, it looks more like a shift back to the old days of over-relying on industry practices and preferences.

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

Don’t Believe the Hype: Giant Pandas Are Still Endangered

Panda habitats remain heavily fractured, while new research shows breeding centers expose the endangered animals to a hidden yet potentially deadly threat.

In September 2016 the International Union for the Conservation of Nature made a huge announcement: the giant panda, previously listed as an endangered species, had been downgraded from endangered to vulnerable. This news, covered by media around the world, was based in part on 2015 data presented by the Chinese State Forestry Administration that panda populations had risen to an estimated 1,864 wild individuals. While this action was lauded as an example of bringing a conservation icon back from the brink of extinction, we argue that the downlisting was premature and ill-advised.

Giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) now occupy only small fragments of their historic range, fragments left in the wake of human population expansion, attendant land-use change and road construction. Other threats include natural disasters such as earthquakes and landslides and ongoing climatic change, which is shifting the range of pandas’ preferred bamboo species, accelerating the flowering and aging of bamboo and simultaneously enhancing outbreaks of herbivorous insects. Indeed, wild pandas now are isolated only on six mountains in Gansu, Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces.

Habitat fragmentation stresses giant panda populations by limiting their movement. Major highways and railways crisscross southwest China and limit movement of pandas from one forest fragment to another. Fragmentation presents lethal challenges after bamboo plants flower — this monocarpic perennial plant dies after the one time in its life that it flowers and sets seed — because pandas cannot move easily from one isolated area to another. For example, 250 giant pandas starved to death following a widespread flowering episode that occurred between 1975 and 1983 in Pingwu and Nanping counties of Sichuan Province. Subsequently, the total numbers of giant pandas in China declined by more than 50 percent, from approximately 2,000 individuals in 1976 to about 1,000 less than a decade later. Thirty years later, the total number of wild pandas remaining still hasn’t fully recovered.

At the same time that wild panda populations are increasingly isolated from one another, their popularity with “ecotourists” is increasing unabated, facilitated by road construction into previously remote areas where wildlife is concentrated and easier to observe. Visitor numbers to the Foping Natural Reserve area in Shaanxi Province increased 40-fold after 2005 when a road was opened into this reserve set aside for the panda. Similarly, visitors to the Tangjiahe Natural Reserve in Sichuan Province increased from about 75,000 in 2011 to 110,000 in 2015. Noise produced by tourists and cars directly impacts the health of the giant panda. Research has shown that concentrations of cortisol in panda fecal samples, which are correlated with stress levels, increase in parallel with the numbers of tourists.

Other effects of ecological tourism include transmission of infectious diseases. In 2015 there was an outbreak of canine distemper virus — spread by domestic dogs — at the Shaanxi Wild Animal Research Center. Although the virus was eventually contained, several adult female giant pandas were killed.

Complicating matters is a little-known fact: There are actually two recognized subspecies of giant pandas, the more common Sichuan subspecies and the much rarer Qinling subspecies. Fewer than 350 Qinling pandas, which diverged from the Sichuan subspecies more than 50,000 years ago, remain alive today in small, remote habitat fragments. Ongoing efforts to restore both Qinling and Sichuan panda populations are reliant on captive-breeding programs, and all but one of the breeding centers focus on breeding Sichuan pandas (or hybrid Sichuan-Qinling pandas). Only the Shaanxi center focuses exclusively on Qinling panda breeding. A recent evaluation of the captive-breeding program revealed that genetic diversity of captive-bred pandas is quite low, because fewer than 10 individuals account for 50 percent of the current captive-panda gene pool.

And breeding centers may not be the safe refuges we think they are, either. Our research has revealed that captive pandas are exposed to high concentrations of toxic chemicals, including PCDDs (polychlorinated didenzo-p-dioxins), PCDFs (polychlorinated dibenzofurans), PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), PBDE (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) and heavy metals. These toxicants, ultimately derived from atmospheric emissions associated with rapid industrialization and urbanization, concentrate in the soil and bioaccumulate in bamboo and feedstuff manufactured for captive pandas. Exposure of Qinling pandas to these toxicants, both through their food and in the air they breathe, is associated with liver, kidney and reproductive impairment in captive pandas. These threats to panda health were not considered in the decision to downgrade the panda’s status from endangered to threatened.

It’s a long-term, arduous task to conserve the giant panda, and the 2016 decision by the IUCN to downgrade its conservation status from endangered to vulnerable appears to us to be ill-considered and premature. Successful protection of this conservation icon needs to evaluate the success of captive breeding programs not only relative to persistent failures to reintroduce it into the wild but also relative to ongoing and increasing external threats, including habitat fragmentation, mismanagement of ecotourism, interactions with domestic animals and the diseases they carry, atmospheric deposition and bioaccumulation of toxicants and heavy metals, and climatic change.

In short, the giant panda is still an endangered species, and protection effort and enthusiasm from the global conservation community should be strengthened continuously. Otherwise we’ll once again witness the truth of the Chinese proverb: The lack of one basketful of earth will spoil the entire effort to build a nine-ren mountain.

For further reading:

Chen, Y.-P., L, Maltby, Q. Liu, Y.-J. Zheng, A.M. Ellison, Q.-Y. Ma, & X.-M. Wu. 2016. Captive pandas are at risk from environmental toxins. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 14: 363-367.

Chen, Y.-P., Y. Zhao, A. M. Ellison, Q. Liu, & Y. Zheng. 2017. PBDEs pose a risk to captive pandas. Environmental Pollution 226: 174-181.

Chen, Y.-P., Y.-J. Zheng, Q. Liu, Y. Song, Z.-S. An, Q.-Y. Ma, & A.M. Ellison. 2017. Atmospheric deposition exposes pandas to toxic pollutants. Ecological Applications 27: 343-348.

Koerth-Baker, M. 2017. The complicated legacy of a panda who was really good at sex. FiveThirtyEight.com, November 28, 2017. Available online:

Liu, J.G. 2015. Promises and perils for the panda. Science 345: 642.

Xu, W., A. Viña, L. Kong, S.L. Pimm, J. Zhang, W. Yang, Y. Xiao, L. Zhang, X. Chen, J. Liu, and Z. Ouyang. 2017. Reassessing the conservation status of the giant panda using remote sensing. Nature Ecology & Evolution 1: 1635-1638.

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.

Bundy Trial Dismissed: “A Sad Day for America’s Public Lands”

Experts warn this could lead to further threats of violence and “religious war” against federal officials.

Shock, disappointment and warnings of potential for more armed standoffs over U.S. public lands were among the reactions Monday from two academic experts and a former Oregon county judge to a federal judge’s order dismissing the government’s criminal charges against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, two of his sons and a fourth man linked to militia groups.

“This is a very sad day for America’s public lands,” says Peter Walker, a University of Oregon geography professor who studies the social and political environmental aspects of the American West and is writing a book on the Bundy family’s conflicts with the federal government.

“Even though this was a procedural decision based on mistakes made by the prosecution, the Bundy family and their supporters will spin it as validation of their ideology,” Walker says.

The Revelator published an investigative report in November detailing the Bundy family’s far-right Mormon extremism in the family’s effort to instigate an armed rebellion to force the federal government off public lands in the West.

On Monday U.S. District Court Judge Gloria M. Navarro dismissed the case against the men in a ruling from the bench in her Las Vegas, Nev. courtroom. The decision could be appealed by prosecutors. But they would only be able to bring charges again if they won the appeal and the ruling was reversed — and they then got a new indictment from a new grand jury, the New York Times reported.

The four defendants — Cliven Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan, and militia leader Ryan Payne — were charged with threatening a federal officer, carrying and using a firearm, and engaging in conspiracy stemming from a 2014 showdown with federal officers near Bunkerville, Nev. The government was attempting to remove patriarch Cliven Bundy’s cattle from federal land after more than 20 years of trespassing and failing to pay more than $1 million in grazing fees.

Hundreds of Bundy supporters rallied to their call for assistance, many of them armed. Several Bundy supporters pointed high-powered rifles at federal law-enforcement officers who were trying to execute a court order to remove the trespassing cattle from U.S. Bureau of Land Management property northeast of Las Vegas. The government withdrew from the armed confrontation.

Ammon and Ryan Bundy, along with Ryan Payne, later led an armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in south-central Oregon in January 2016. The armed standoff eventually ended but only after the group’s spokesman, LaVoy Finicum, was shot and killed by police after appearing to be reaching for a gun.

Cliven Bundy wasted no time in declaring victory after Navarro’s ruling Monday as he walked out of the courtroom a free man for the first time in 700 days.

“My defense is a 15-second defense: I graze my cattle only on Clark County, Nev., land and I have no contract with the federal government,” he said according to the Los Angeles Times. “This court has no jurisdiction or authority over this matter. And I’ve put up with this court in America as a political prisoner for two years.”

Bundy’s claims were never put to a test in the courtroom because Judge Navarro ruled the prosecution’s failure to share evidence with the defense made it impossible for the defendants to receive a fair trial.

Walker says the Bundy religious ideology is drawn from fringe Mormon theologians including W. Cleon Skousen, as well as mainstream church leaders including former Mormon Church President Ezra Taft Benson, who was agriculture secretary in the Eisenhower administration.

The Bundy family, Walker says, believes the U.S. Constitution does not allow the federal government to own land outside of Washington D.C. and, that under the Second Amendment, citizens have an obligation to force the federal government off public land.

“This court decision will cause every person who agrees with the Bundy ideology to believe they can threaten federal employees on public land with firearms and pay no cost,” Walker said. “Every hardworking federal employee on federal public lands now has a huge target painted on their back.”

In Burns, Ore., former Harney County Judge Steve Grasty tells The Revelator he is “very disappointed” that the case ended before it was presented to a jury. Grasty tangled with Ammon and Ryan Bundy and Ryan Payne when the men led the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County in January 2016.

Grasty said the Bundy family’s efforts to trigger an armed insurrection against the federal government in Harney County was a terrorist act that drew overwhelming opposition from most of the rural, ranching community.

“No matter what the outcome of the trial was, I think it would have been beneficial, even to the Bundys, to have gotten all the way through the trial and have all the evidence out in front…and have jurors make a decision,” Grasty says.

Betsy Gaines Quammen, an expert on the impact of Mormonism and public lands, says the court ruling “will glorify Cliven Bundy” in the minds of his followers.

“It could well convince his supporters that the Bundy family stands in God’s favor,” she says. “He has always said that he was waging a religious war and with that rationale, this mistrial makes it appear as if Bundy has heavenly approval.”

Quammen wrote a doctoral thesis at Montana State University entitled “American Zion: Mormon Perspectives on Landscape, from Zion National Park to the Bundy Family War.” She is currently writing a book about Mormon worldview and U.S. public lands called “American Zion.”

She predicts that the mistrial will provide “momentum to the current agenda of developing federal lands and the push towards privatization.”

Quammen says a potential flashpoint in the near future could be related to ongoing litigation to stop President Donald Trump’s executive order sharply reducing the size of two national monuments located in southwest Utah, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante.

“If there is litigation that puts a ‘stay’ on national monument reduction, I wouldn’t be surprised if guys with guns show up on public lands,” she says. “Ranchers have fought on the ground. Dark money has fought in Washington. And public lands are more vulnerable than they have ever been.”

Walker says the Bundy family has been very skillful focusing the public’s attention on government overreach, while keeping the religious roots of their opposition to the federal government out of public debate.

Their deep ties to extreme Mormon teachings, however, generated widespread media coverage during the Las Vegas trial when Bundy supporters distributed a 200-page manuscript called “The Nay Book” outlining their philosophy.

The booklet starts with a letter from Bundy posing the document’s central question: “What is the constitutional duty of a member of the Lord’s church?” Bundy found answers in the scripture that he believed directed and justified him in “defending my rights and my ranch against the federal government’s tyrannical” usurpation of his land, The Washington Post reported in December.

“Bundy represented himself as peacefully protesting government overreach. Who wouldn’t go along with that?” Walker says. “In reality, he was talking about an armed religious crusade to overthrow the federal government. If he said that honestly, a lot fewer people would support him.”

For Florida Panthers, Extinction Comes on Four Wheels

2017 was another deadly year for panthers. How many more years can this critically endangered species survive?

Patterns emerge in life, and in death.

Those patterns aren’t always immediately clear. When you first look at this map on the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s website, all you see is a collection of blue dots, hundreds of them — an amorphous cloud over the southwestern portion of the state.

Zoom in closer and the patterns begin to reveal themselves. The blue dots take on clearer shapes. Toward the Gulf Coast, a dozen dots form a straight line between Fort Myers and Bonita Springs. Another pattern of about 20 dots begins near the city of Naples and stretches out to the east. At one point on that line, roughly 30 miles inland, another straight line emerges, this one heading north and south. This third line is littered with dozens of blue dots.

Only they’re not just dots. Each of these pale blue spots marks the location where a Florida panther has been found dead over the past 46 years.

And those lines? They’re roads. Routes 41, 29 and 75, best known as the Everglades Parkway.

Roads kill, especially if you’re a critically endangered Florida panther.

Last year, according to newly released data, at least 24 Florida panthers died after being struck by vehicles on these and other Florida roads — 83 percent of the 30 known panther fatalities in the state in 2017. (Four additional deaths were caused by panthers killing other cats that invaded their territories; two deaths were from unknown causes.)

No one knows exactly how many of the big cats still roam the state, but the most recent estimates put the population at somewhere between 120 and 230 adults and juveniles, a number that’s almost certainly on the decline. According to those estimates, this year’s dead could represent somewhere between 13 and 25 percent of the species’ entire viable population. Even worse, more than a third of this year’s mortalities were breeding-age females, limiting the cats’ chance of bouncing back.

Of course, 2017 didn’t see the highest ever number of annual panther fatalities in the state, but it would be hard to beat the 42 found dead each year in 2015 and 2016, the two worst years on record since the big cats were protected under 1967’s predecessor law to the Endangered Species Act. The total number of vehicular fatalities was also down from the previous two years, but it did represent a new record for the percentage of panthers killed by vehicles.

Fortunately, even amidst the deaths there’s some sign of life. At least 19 panthers are known to have been born during the course of 2017 — a slight improvement over the 14 cubs observed in 2016 and the 15 cubs in 2015 — but that’s not enough to compensate for the cost of the dead on the population as a whole.

And yes, the pattern of deaths and low birth rates over the past three years has undoubtedly reduced the number of surviving Florida panthers. More of the animals die each year than are being born. “The Florida panther is suffering slow-motion extinction,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, in a recent public statement.

What comes next? In all likelihood the news about Florida panthers will continue to be dire. “There are currently no coherent efforts to save the Florida panther from extirpation in the wild, and during a Trump presidency we are unlikely to see one emerge,” Ruch said. In fact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently considering whether or not panthers should retain their full protected status under the Endangered Species Act, or even if they should still be considered their own subspecies, a matter of ongoing taxonomic debate.

After more than a decade of writing about these big cats, I expect that without drastic steps the number of Florida panthers killed each year will continue to hit new records as the population declines on a curve toward oblivion. That pattern is clear, and we need to change it.