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?
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
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.
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.
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
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.
© 2018 Aaron M. Ellison and Yi-ping Chen. All rights reserved.
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”
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
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.
Sold Out: Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Over the holidays the Republican tax bill gifted one of our most treasured national landscapes to oil companies. Against any measure of public interest, and in defiance of plausible economic reason, the new law mandates oil drilling in Alaska’s iconic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is a gift to Alaskan politicians and an unneeded bonus for the world’s richest corporations. It must be reversed.
The Refuge, as many Alaskans reverentially call it, has been steadily targeted by Alaska politicians for decades. Its federal protection came in 1960, when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower formally recognized its national importance, preserving its “unique wildlife, wilderness and recreational values.”
Eisenhower was informed by even more decades of research and advocacy from some of the most prominent figures in American conservation, including Olaus Murie, Bob Marshall, Justice William O. Douglas and the indefatigable Mardy Murie. Over many years each poured passion, science and reason into ensuring future Americans — you and I — would inherit a slice of unspoiled Arctic Alaska. Congress affirmed the refuge’s national significance in 1980, enlarging it and designating much of it as federal wilderness. The move came just in time: By then most of Alaska’s coastal arctic plain was already open to drilling.
But the refuge is more than conservation legacy. Most famously, it’s the birthing grounds of the massive Porcupine caribou herd, which migrates 400 miles each spring to raise thousands of newborn calves on the area’s coastal plain, the very place Republicans just opened to drilling. Additionally, it supports Alaska’s highest concentration of denning polar bears — mothers nursing newborn cubs. It is also the locus for millions of migrating birds, arriving each spring from nearly every continent to raise the next generation of swans, terns, sandpipers, loons and eiders. In late summer these flocks disperse to backyards, beaches and wetlands across the planet. With grizzly bears, wolves, musk oxen and other species also present, many dub the refuge “America’s Serengeti.”
But it’s also critical human habitat. The Gwich’in people have lived there for millennia, calling the coastal plain Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, which translates as “the sacred place where life begins.” The Porcupine caribou are a nutritional and cultural staple, and fighting for their protection has long been a matter of cultural identity and civil rights. The new tax law is a gut-punch to the Gwich’in. It also stabs at small businesses bringing hikers, rafters, researchers and others to the refuge every year, contributing jobs and revenue to Alaska’s economy.
And then there’s climate change. Just days before Republicans passed their bill, scientists west of the refuge were double-checking their instruments, doubting an extreme spike in temperatures. But the gauges were correct, recording yet more alarming warmth in a state facing melting permafrost, disappearing sea ice, acidifying oceans and glaciers wasting away to rubble.
America doesn’t need more Arctic drilling; it needs clean energy.
So if drilling the Arctic Refuge trashes American conservation history, endangers wildlife, violates the cultural identity of local people and scoffs at the notion of catastrophic climate change, why did Republicans do this?
A main goal, it seems, was securing tax plan support from Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who attached refuge drilling to the bill. Murkowski had already demonstrated her potential for disrupting Trump’s legislative agenda by voting against health-care repeal, and Republicans were not about to mess with her. For their part, Murkowski and other Alaska politicians have long obsessed over drilling in the refuge. One reason, as recently described by Philip Wight in Yale Environment 360, is that refuge oil could decrease operating costs and extend the life of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, a gift to oil companies. Depending on upcoming discoveries, it may also boost the state’s oil-rigged economy.
But do we really need to destroy a prized national wildlife refuge so Alaska can go after more oil? Keep in mind that oil has eliminated the need for Alaska sales and income taxes, and that every woman, child and man here still receives an annual oil dividend check, which typically exceeded $1,000 before recent cuts. Also remember that U.S. oil production is soaring — we are not desperate for new sources.
Murkowski knows drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is unpopular. That’s why she slipped it into the tax law, with the bogus promise that it will send $1 billion to the U.S. Treasury and help cover tax cut costs. It’s a preposterous claim, first because no one knows how much oil lies beneath the refuge, and second because $1 billion covers only a sliver of the $1.5 trillion tax cut. Even that $1 billion number is in question, as a sale of other Alaskan oil and gas leases last month netted less than 1 percent of expected bids at far lower prices than expected.
And please don’t buy Murkowski’s claim that drilling would only affect 2,000 acres of the refuge. The figure imagines a line tightly drawn around every road, pipeline and oil rig necessary for drilling. In reality, a toxic spider web of infrastructure would lace the refuge’s coastal plan, as it currently does nearby Prudhoe Bay, where oil spills are common.
What happens next is uncertain. Watch for Murkowski to press for fast action from oil companies to secure their presence and de facto ownership of refuge lands. Concerned citizens should tune into the hard-working folks at Trustees for Alaska, the Alaska Wilderness League, The Wilderness Society and others who have fought for generations to protect the refuge. Their lawsuits or other actions will be the place’s last defense. We can also hope for continued low oil prices, surging renewables and growing divestment from fossil fuel companies, which might discourage bidding on upcoming refuge leases. And in 2018 we must change the balance of power in Washington, where Republican attacks on public lands are only beginning.
© 2018 Tim Lydon. All rights reserved.
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.
As the Arctic Melts, Nations Race to Own What’s Left Behind
Geopolitics in the Arctic are quickly becoming incompatible with the physical and social realities of the region.
According to NASA, the average amount of Arctic sea ice present after the summer melting season has shrunk by 40 percent since 1980. Winter sea ice has also been at record lows.
As melting ice frees up once-inaccessible sections of the frozen Arctic Ocean, the seven nations around it will have to negotiate new borders — a series of decisions that has the potential to alter the Arctic landscape and make life harder for its people and wildlife.
In 2018 these nations will attempt to answer a question with massive implications: Who owns the Arctic Ocean?
For the nations in the Arctic Council — Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and the United States — climate change presents an opportunity for access to brand new waters, previously cloaked in ice, that are chock full of valuable resources.
Russia and Denmark have submitted new territorial claims in 2017, with Canada expected to follow, and it’s up to the United Nations to determine which country gets what in 2018.
How these competing interests are negotiated will affect the whole world, says Andrey Petrov, a Russian scientist, professor and member of the International Arctic Science Committee.
“This should get settled because it applies to both short-term change and long-term impact,” says Petrov. “It’s important to consider how the Arctic is connected to the world, and how climate change and economic interests are changing life for the people living there.”
Differing Claims
The problem is there’s a lot of overlap between each of the three claims. Denmark claims sovereignty over the 347,500 square miles north of Greenland, which includes the North Pole and the contentious Lomonosov Ridge, but so do Russia and Canada. In 2007 the Russian government even went so far as to dive 2 miles below the surface near the North Pole to plant its flag on the seabed.
A potential trove of resources hide in these contested waters, ranging from untapped fishing stocks of cod and snow crabs (in which even non-Arctic nations like China and South Korea have expressed interest), to rare minerals like manganese, uranium, copper and iron below the seafloor.
Nations are also interested in drilling for energy resources in the Arctic, which the U.S. Geological Survey estimate contains 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 13 percent of the world’s oil.
New Arctic oil-development projects and the emissions they create would also exacerbate climate change, the very force that’s providing access to these new resources in the first place. Each year the Environmental Protection Agency publishes a report detailing which U.S. industries contribute the most to carbon emissions — from 2011 to today, oil and gas production is the second biggest polluter of greenhouse gases, behind power plants. Currently at 282.9 million metric tons of CO2 emitted in 2016, this number could be expected to rise with new developments.
But the troubling relationship among carbon emissions, climate change and development in the Arctic isn’t enough to quench a country’s thirst for oil.
The Russian minister for the environment and natural resources told The Daily Telegraph last year that the country was looking for “recognition of exclusive economic rights to about 460,000 square miles, estimated to hold 5 billion tons of hitherto unexploited oil and gas.”
In addition to its impact on global carbon emissions, oil development in the Arctic can damage the environment around drilling sites beyond repair.
This past December the U.S. Senate approved of the Republican tax overhaul, which has hidden in it a provision to approve of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, an area that although uncontested internationally, is of huge importance to the native Gwich’in’ people, who fear that oil development will affect caribou, their main source of food.
The fear of a major disaster in the refuge is real, too. According to a 2014 report from the National Research Council, Alaska is ill prepared to respond to a spill or other event, with the nearest Coast Guard station more than 1,000 miles away from the proposed drilling site (which would be capable of releasing 21 million gallons of oil).
The scramble to stake claims in the Arctic also has implications for trade and diplomacy. The United States has challenged Canada’s sovereignty in the Northwest Passage, for instance, arguing that the strait is international, while Canada wants its own maritime laws to apply there.
And national-security interests depend on Arctic territorial claims that will largely dictate which country has military dominance in the area. Over the years Russia has beefed up its military might in the Arctic. According to a report released in September by the Henry Jackson Society, a UK think tank, Russia currently has 45,000 troops, 3,400 military vehicles, 41 ships, 15 submarines and 110 aircraft in the Arctic region — a display of power that makes neighboring countries uneasy.
“We can no longer ignore Russia’s growing military footprint in the Arctic,” noted James Gray, a UK MP and member of the House of Commons Defense Select Committee, in the report. “As the ice melts and new commercial opportunities emerge in the region, Britain and her allies must do more to ensure that the Arctic remains stable and peaceful.”
The Arctic People
Andrei Petrov, as chairman of the International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences — a triennial conference that brings scientists from around the world together to share research on the Arctic — is interested in improving life for the 4 million people in the region’s communities who stand to lose the most from climate change and geopolitical interest.
Petrov says environmental changes in the Arctic, such as flooding, coastal erosion, permafrost thawing, altered migration patterns of both land and sea animals, and a shifting in vegetation zones, have already had drastic impacts on indigenous communities that rely on subsistence hunting and fishing.
According to him, communities in the Arctic are grappling with diet changes, high suicide rates and a degradation of local culture from the tides of globalization that bring big industries to their once isolated and sustainable communities.
“Unfortunately, with most of the development happening today, the local communities receive very little in return,” says Petrov. “Right now we’re at the point where we need social responsibility and a general understanding of human rights in the Arctic. The hope is that development will pay attention to that. It’s important that locals will have the chance to say no to oil development.”
Tricky Negotiations
These high stakes are why clearly defined borders in the Arctic matter, but how are the border claims going to get negotiated?
Currently, under Article 76 of the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Seas, nations have territorial rights to the waters that extend 200 nautical miles beyond their shores. In 2009 Norway was the first country to submit territorial claims to a special U.N. committee, successfully extending its border by 235,000 square kilometers. The United States has not ratified the convention but recognizes it as international law.
If they want to gain access and rights to the new sections of Arctic ocean, Russia, Denmark and Canada need to prove to the United Nations how far their respective continental shelf — the shallow extension of the continent’s landmass under the ocean — actually reaches.
These countries have spent the past couple of years collecting geological data from their submarines and radar in order to prove that the land extending past their established border — 200 nautical miles off the coast of each — is indeed part of their continental shelf.
And if U.N.-appointed geologists can verify the data submitted by each country, then officials there can legally draw new borders and gain new territory, with clear strategic benefits.
“The main thing is that there are a lot of resources there and big interest at play to access them,” says Petrov. “It’s important that eventually we reach some solution about who’s there and what’s the agreement.”
Otherwise competing interests could lead to unregulated construction, overfishing, oil spills and military clashes, which will have consequences not just for life in the Arctic, but for life on the planet.
“These are trans-border issues,” says Petrov. “It’s very important that countries work together.”
In other words, this is a problem the world needs to own.
© 2018 Francis Flisiuk. All rights reserved.
Revelator Reads: 6 New Environmental Books for the New Year
January is always such a great time of year. We start the month well-rested, the pressures of the holidays are over, and we get a chance to look at the New Year with fresh eyes and new perspective. Maybe that’s why so many great environmental books are scheduled for publication this month — they provide a perfect primer for change and opportunity.
Here are our picks of the best new eco-books coming out in January 2018, covering topics ranging from climate change and sustainability to gorillas and Godzilla (yes, really). As usual we tried to pick books for inspired activists, interested kids and hard-working professionals — or anyone with a holiday gift card burning a hole in their pocket.
The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. MannThis month’s most challenging tome: a look at the radically different ideas proposed by twentieth-century scientists Norman Borlaug and William Vogt. Borlaug, founder of the so-called “Green Revolution,” set out to feed the world. Vogt, who advocated for reducing the human population, called for us to dramatically cut back on our consumption. How will their ideas fare in a world poised to soon contain 10 billion people? (Knopf, Jan. 23, $28.95)
Snowy Owl Invasion! Tracking an Unusual Migration by Sandra Markle
Here’s a fun one for kids that I’m actually looking forward to reading myself. Why did snowy owls start leaving the Arctic in 2013 to arrive in far-flung places like southern Florida? This beautifully illustrated science book for students digs into the reasons behind this rare phenomenon. (Millbrook Press, Jan. 1, $31.99 print/$6.99 digital)
Ranger Rick: I Wish I Was a Gorilla by Jennifer Bové
Boy, would I have loved this book when I was just starting to read. Gorillas were probably the earliest thing that drew me into caring about animals and the environment. If you’ve got a nature-loving wee one, check this out. (HarperCollins, Jan. 2, $16.99 print/$4.99 digital)
The End of Sustainability: Resilience and the Future of Environmental Governance in the Anthropocene by Melinda Harm Benson and Robin Kundis CraigIs it time to retire the word “sustainability”? The authors argue that we should replace it with a better word: “resilience.” Will their ideas prove to be resilient? Read the book to find out. (University of Kansas Press, Jan. 5, $29.95)
Tide of War: The Impact of Weather on Warfare by David R. Petriello
In a world where climate change is sometimes making things a little…tense…around the world, perhaps it’s time to take a look back at history to see how past weather events have influenced conflict. From massive rainstorms to the outbreak of disease to the appearance of Halley’s Comet, Petriello digs into the past to reveal what might happen in the future. (Skyhorse Publishing, Jan. 16, $24.99)
Japan’s Green Monsters: Environmental Commentary in Kaiju Cinema by Sean Rhoads and Brooke McCorkle
Godzilla is more than just a big green monster that breathes radioactive fire. Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera and other Japanese movie creatures (collectively known as kaiju) are also environmental metaphors for topics such as extinction, pollution, nuclear power and climate change. This academic text explores the deeper meaning behind the big green guy and his rubbery ilk. (McFarland, Jan. 29, $37.95)
Well, that’s it for our list this month. Happy reading — and feel free to share your own recent recommendations in the comments.
17 Ways the Trump Administration Assaulted the Environment Over the Holidays
While visions of sugarplums danced in some of our heads, the Trump administration had a different vision — of a country unbound by rules that protect people, places, wildlife and the climate. Over the past two weeks, the administration has proposed or finalized changes to how the government and the industries it regulates respond to climate change, migratory birds, clean energy, pesticides and toxic chemicals. Here’s a timeline:
Dec. 18: Announced a plan to possibly replace the Clean Power Plan, one of President Obama’s signature climate actions.
Dec. 18: Dropped climate change from the list of global threats affecting national security. (Oddly enough, Trump did this just five days after he signed off on next year’s military budget, which just so happens to call climate change a national security threat.)
Dec. 19: Hid language that would exempt the Federal Emergency Management Agency from following requirements set by the Endangered Species Act in an an $81 billion emergency supplemental funding bill.
Dec. 20: Indefinitely postponed the previously announced ban of three toxic chemicals, methylene chloride, N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) and trichloroethylene (TCE).
Dec. 20: Signed an executive order requiring the “streamlining” of the leasing and permitting processes for exploration, production and refining of vaguely defined “critical minerals” (a list of which will be announced later by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke).
Dec. 21: Halted two independent studies by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, one to improve the safety of offshore drilling platforms and another to look at the health risks of mountaintop-removal coal mining in central Appalachia.
Dec. 21: Revoked the Obama-era Resource Management Planning Rule (Planning 2.0 Rule), which advocated new technologies to improve transparency related to mining on public lands. A Federal Register filing said this rule “shall be treated as if it had never taken effect.”
Dec. 22: Signed the massive, unpopular Republican “tax reform” bill. The bill, which strongly benefits the richest Americans, contains numerous anti-environmental elements, including opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
Dec. 22: Ruled that “incidental” killings of 1,000 migratory bird species are, somehow, not illegal under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The legal opinion is considered by many a giveaway to the energy industry — which applauded the change — and was written by a former Koch staffer turned Trump political appointee.
Dec. 22: Reversed a previous Obama-era Interior Department decision to withdraw permits for a proposed $2.8 billion copper mine in Minnesota. The mine lease is owned by the Chilean billionaire who also happens to own Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s rented D.C. mansion.
Dec. 27: Announced a plan to consider dramatically expanding the use of a neonicotinoid insecticide called thiamethoxam, which has been proven damaging or deadly to bees.
Dec. 27: Prioritized oil and gas leasing and development near and even inside greater sage-grouse habitat management areas, yet another Obama-era reversal.
Dec. 28: Declared the beaverpond marstonia snail extinct, the first such extinction under the Trump administration. (Obviously this is a failure of the administrations that preceded Trump, but the declaration still comes under his watch.)
Dec. 28: Announced a plan to repeal yet another Obama-era rule, this one governing fracking standards on federal and tribal lands. The rule, which never actually took effect, would have required companies to disclose chemicals used in their fracking fluids, set standards for well construction and required surface ponds holding fracking fluids to be covered.
Dec. 28: Trump sent yet another tweet mocking climate change during a period of record cold temperatures, a not-so-subtle hint about his legislative agenda and personal intractability on the subject.
Dec. 29: Proposed to remove or rewrite offshore-drilling safety regulations put in place by the Obama administration after the deadly Deepwater Horizon disaster, saying “it’s time for a paradigm shift” in regulations.
Now that the New Year has arrived, how many other changes will follow? In all likelihood, this is just the beginning. President Trump’s “Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions,” announced Dec. 14, contains hundreds of provisions affecting endangered species, energy development and just about every other major environmental issue. Those will all start to move forward in the months ahead.