In a move that should surprise nobody, President Trump today announced that the United States would withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate accord, an agreement between 195 countries to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Trump did not provide details about the withdrawal, a process that according to the original agreement will legally take about four years. The president did proclaim that the U.S. would immediately cease implementation of the accord’s non-binding elements, including withdrawing from the U.N. Green Climate Fund, and offered to rejoin the accord or some future agreement under different, to-be-negotiated terms.
Does Trump Really Have the Authority to Shrink National Monuments?
A study of the Antiquities Act reveals that presidents can create national monuments, but not remove or reduce them.
If President Trump gets his way, more than two dozen of the country’s protected national monuments could soon be a thing of the past.
There’s just one problem: According to a new study, President Trump can’t get his way. That’s because the Antiquities Act of 1906 only grants the President the ability to create new national monuments, not destroy them. “The President lacks the authority to rescind, downsize or otherwise weaken the protections afforded by a national monument proclamation declared by a predecessor,” the paper, published in Virginia Law Review Online, concludes.
That one-way authority, admittedly, makes the Antiquities Act a bit of an “oddball law,” says one of the paper’s authors, Sean Hecht, who’s also co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law. Still, this legal power has remained unchanged since the Antiquities Act was passed 111 years ago. “I guess Congress has decided that it likes it enough that it hasn’t touched it, so it stands in its current form,” Hecht says.
So if Trump can’t shrink national monuments, who can? Interestingly enough, according to Hecht and his co-authors, that ability lies with the very institution that did not pass the authority on to presidents in the first place. “We argue that Congress is the body that would have the power to do that,” Hecht says.
Congress, however, has only taken that action once: a 105-acre reduction in Idaho’s Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve in 1996.
Does this mean Bears Ears and other national monuments are safe from the twin threats of dissolution and development? That remains to be seen. Hecht points out the Department of the Interior is clearly setting up President Trump to take action to reduce national monuments, whether it’s legal or not.
That means Trump and his allies could still take action against sites’ national monument status. “This president and other presidents have demonstrated they will take action even if their legal authority to do so is questionable,” Hecht says. “Clearly the president could just decide to shrink or even revoke the status of a national monument and then people would have to sue and the courts would have to resolve the issue.”
Forgotten but not Gone: The Pacific Fisher
Facing new threats — including toxins from illegal marijuana grows — the fate of this little-known mammal hangs in the balance.
Don’t miss this fascinating video by Day’s Edge Productions for bioGraphic, an online magazine about nature and sustainability.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, populations of the fisher (Pekania pennanti) — a forest-dwelling member of the weasel and otter family — were in steep decline across much of its native range of northern North America. Both fur trapping and habitat loss from logging and urbanization took a heavy toll. However, once trapping bans and timber harvest restrictions were put in place, the species rebounded in many regions.
Unfortunately, that trend hasn’t carried over to the West Coast of the U.S., where an isolated population of fishers, known as the Pacific fisher, continues to struggle. Scientists estimate that only 4,000 Pacific fishers remain, with just 300 left in California’s Sierra Nevada Range. These individuals now face a new and rising threat: illegal marijuana grow sites that are cropping up on public lands. Growers use poisons to protect their plants from rodents, and these chemicals are indiscriminate killers.
Despite the Pacific fisher’s high vulnerability to extinction, this little-known mammal has yet to receive federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. In the absence of this type of government regulation, an uneasy collaboration among scientists, conservation organizations, and the timber industry has filled in to take its place. For now, these efforts offer hope for the Pacific fisher — but without endangered species status, there are no assurances that current protections will continue into the future.
(The Revelator is published by the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the organizations featured in the above video.)
Additional Reading:
Potential Budget Cuts Threaten a Mission to Preserve Fragile Seabeds
Deep-sea mining could soon become a reality, experts warn.
Could deep-sea exploration give way to deep-sea mining?
For the past two years the Okeanos Explorer, an exploration vessel operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization, has been crisscrossing the Pacific Ocean, diving in U.S. marine protected areas to improve our understanding of the 95 percent of deep ocean that remains unexplored. The ship transmits live video feed from hi-def cameras on its two remotely operated vehicles — “ROVs” — to scientists both onboard and onshore (and members of the public like you and me, with internet connections).
The chosen dive locations for the three-year CAPSTONE (Campaign to Address Pacific monument Science, Technology, and Ocean Needs) expedition — seamounts, trenches and ridges — are hotbeds of life. The ROVs find “new” species all the time.
The dives also document what would be destroyed by mining.
You see, these locations contain deposits of manganese and rare earth elements, valued for use in computers, cellphone and rechargeable batteries for electric and hybrid cars. The technology to exploit the minerals has been elusive, but the likelihood that these places will be mined continues to hover on the horizon.
According to Professor Cindy Lee Van Dover, a marine scientist at Duke University, there’s a lot of activity in the maritime sector related to building technologies — though she doesn’t think any active commercial mining is yet taking place on the seabed. She did point out that two mining licenses for exploitation (a step beyond exploration) have been issued for deep-sea work in Papua New Guinea and Saudi Arabia.
Deep-sea mining involves three materials: polymetallic nodules, polymetallic sulphides and cobalt-rich ferromanganese (Fe-Mn) crusts. The first, better known as manganese nodules, and the second, found around hydrothermal vents, are likely to be developed first, according to Dr. Christopher Kelley, science advisor to CAPSTONE.
The third — perhaps the most interesting and environmentally sensitive — won’t be far behind. Ferromanganese crusts are laid down on the flanks of seamounts by minerals precipitating out of seawater at 1 to 5 millimeters per million years. Seamounts are often inhabited by animals that grow extremely slowly and have low reproductive rates.
Such habitats don’t rebound quickly after intervention. Mining these deposits, which are up to three times richer than deposits on land, involves stripping the crust off the hard substrate and getting the lode to the surface — an invasive and difficult process. China currently controls most terrestrial rare-earth element production, so other countries see the potential for big profits beneath the sea even with technological difficulties to overcome.
Why is this important to know? Well, countries have control over resources in their Exclusive Economic Zones, so the United States can extend leases to mine in the Marianas, which are a U.S. territory. The International Seabed Authority controls mining in the “Area,” which is what it calls the 64 percent outside national jurisdiction. The United States has not ratified the Law of the Sea and so is not a party to the authority — yet it does attempt to abide by its stated commitment to minimize harmful effects of deep-sea mining. Okeanos Explorer, according to its website, provides crucial baseline information “to gain a better understanding of the communities that are at risk and put measures in place to mitigate the impacts of mining and help preserve these unique communities.”
I have followed the ship’s expeditions since I stumbled on its web link last summer, which offers a much closer view of corals, sponges and sea cucumbers than I have ever seen SCUBA diving. During broadcasts the scientists discuss previously undiscovered gorgeous and unusual life forms; they even redefine species parameters in real time, by phone link and in a chat room. Before the voyages of the Okeanos and other exploratory vessels, the bottom of the deep ocean was believed to be fairly barren — but as it turns out, it teems with animal life (no plants though; they need sunlight to live). Bright white LEDs on Deep Discoverer, the main ROV, uncover vibrant colors that seem out of place in this sightless, lightless world.
What’s the future of these missions? In early March of this year, under the new, anti-science Donald Trump administration, NOAA seemed poised to lose 17 percent of its budget. Fortunately a May 1 congressional compromise to keep government functioning through September spared the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which contains the office that operates Okeanos Explorer. The agency has declined to elaborate on how future funding prospects may fare, although its own 2018 budget request cuts $12.5 million from its ocean exploration program. Meanwhile, Trump’s proposed “Taxpayer First” budget, announced last week, also contains a broad 15.8 percent cut to the Department of Commerce, under which NOAA operates.
Beyond the budget itself, Trump last month ordered a review of drilling rules instituted after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a move that, according to the “Presidential Executive Order Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy,” will encourage energy exploration and production. The order also states “The Secretary of Commerce shall, unless expressly required otherwise, refrain from designating or expanding any National Marine Sanctuary under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act…unless the sanctuary designation or expansion proposal includes a timely, full accounting from the Department of the Interior of any energy or mineral resource potential within the designated area” (emphasis added).
On April 26 Trump ordered Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to reconsider the status of recent national monuments. Four of them are areas under exploration by the Okeanos, including the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument. This comes after NOAA’s March 13 decision to add the monument to the national inventory list for possible change to marine sanctuary status. Marine national monuments and marine sanctuaries offer similar protections, but monuments are established by presidential proclamation and sanctuaries by the marine agency, with extensive public input.
In July 2015 scientists from the United States and New Zealand wrote a report, published in the journal Science, favoring the use of networks of marine protected areas to “reduce uncertainty about future mining activities and protect existing mining claims and economic investments, all while safeguarding deep-sea biodiversity and ecosystem function at relevant geographic scales.” The report came out in advance of an international meeting that formulated a draft code for regulating mineral exploitation in international waters. Similar mining-test activities are ongoing on national seabeds, yielding vital data for conservationists: By illuminating the Pacific areas protected by the United States, the Okeanos makes us acutely aware of what could be destroyed by a political push to dig up these minerals.
The original work for the report was done in 2007-2008 but Jack Kittinger, coauthor and senior director at Conservation International Center for Oceans, stands by the research conclusions. While he feels that a number of issues could affect how soon mining becomes economically viable, whether of manganese nodules or ferromanganese crust, “implementation of marine protected areas and protection of seamounts should be done regardless of what’s going to happen with deep-sea mining,” he says. “It’s good precautionary principles. It’s good PR.”
Budget cuts could still affect the Okeanos, but certainly won’t doom deep-sea mining. Yet if the planning process incorporates preservation, it’s possible to avoid the scenario — with Trump’s emphasis on promoting business and rolling back regulations — that the government will grant deep-ocean leases and a new section of the Earth will be pillaged without effective oversight or sufficient public understanding.
Copyright © 2017 Ann Hoffner. All rights reserved.
Climate Change & Heat Island Effect Threaten City Economies
Anyone who has ever spent a summer in a city knows the pain of the heat island effect. Buildings and roads absorb heat and sunlight and emit it as heat at night, causing temperatures to soar as much as 22 additional degrees. Well, according to new research, climate change will make this an economic hardship for most cities, costing them up to 10.9 percent of their gross domestic products. That’s compared to 5.6 percent for rural economies. The costs come from spending more on cooling plus worker health effects from decreased air and water quality. Installing “cool” pavements and roofs, the authors say, could help reduce those costs — not to mention the risks.
Hilcorp Revealed: The Results of Our Investigation
Texas Billionaire Jeffery Hildebrand’s operations have left a long trail of environmental and safety violations, with few repercussions.
The Revelator’s five-part investigative series this week on Texas billionaire Jeffery Hildebrand’s Hilcorp Energy companies exposed a blatant history of environmental and safety violations in Alaska and Louisiana that has put endangered wildlife at risk and workers’ lives in serious jeopardy.
Part I: Hilcorp Runs Aground
Part II: Hilcorp: Putting Lives in Danger
Part III: Oysters vs. Oil: Hilcorp’s Bayou Battle
Part IV: Hilcorp’s Oil Spills Stain Louisiana Marshlands and Rivers
Part V: Hilcorp Alaska Avoids Fines for Cook Inlet Methane Leak
The reclusive Hildebrand built his fortune by rehabilitating played-out oil and gas fields previously abandoned by other fossil fuel companies. His strategy involves deploying an aggressive cost-cutting workforce and advanced technology to extract remaining supplies of oil and gas that previous exploitation left behind.
Hildebrand created a corporate culture based on six-figure bonuses for every employee when certain production goals are met. Generous rewards can certainly boost employee morale, but our investigation shows they also can lead to a workforce that puts increasing production ahead of protecting the environment and worker safety.
As with most environmental violations, state and federal regulators in the fossil fuel industry rarely impose fines substantive enough to act as a significant deterrence. That has definitely been the case with Hilcorp. Alaska regulators, for example, fined Hilcorp $200,000 for an incident that nearly killed three workers. But the fine was equal to only two of the $100,000 bonuses Hildebrand paid to each of his 1,000 or so employees in December 2015.
In Louisiana, the series revealed, a Hilcorp employee appears to have provided false information to federal regulators when he denied the company used tugboats to drag drilling barges through oyster beds, destroying the oysters and contributing to rapid coastal erosion. Hilcorp is Louisiana’s largest oil producer and has benefited from years of lax regulatory oversight.
The series also shows the impact of massive taxpayer subsidies provided to the fossil fuel industry to stimulate production. In Alaska, the availability of hundreds of millions of dollars a year in subsidies was the fundamental reason Hilcorp purchased declining oil and gas fields in Cook Inlet and on the North Slope.
Hildebrand entered Alaska in 2011, when oil prices were above $100 a barrel and the state was flush with cash and willing to dole out subsidies. But the oil market crashed in 2014, and our investigation reveals that Hilcorp’s financial outlook in Alaska is now in question.
Compounding the publicity-shy company’s Alaska problems were the very public failure of two methane undersea pipelines last winter. The leaks exposed the serious dangers of operating 50-year-old infrastructure in treacherous Cook Inlet, which is subject to ice sheets, high tides, strong currents and powerful winds.
The rise and decline of the Cook Inlet oil and gas industry from the 1960s to today corresponds to a stunning decline in the number of the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas), which are facing extinction unless fundamental changes are imposed to protect their environment.
The Revelator will continue to report on Hilcorp’s nationwide operations as well as the environmental impacts of the fossil fuel industry in Cook Inlet, the North Slope and elsewhere.
We welcome your ideas and tips.
Hilcorp Alaska Avoids Fines for Cook Inlet Methane Leak
Feds give company two years to install modern pipeline-testing technology.
(Editor’s note: This is the final story in The Revelator’s months-long investigation into Hilcorp Energy. You can find the entire investigation here.)
Newly released documents reveal that privately held energy producer Hilcorp Alaska has managed to avoid both federal and state fines in the wake of the company’s very public pipeline failure in Cook Inlet, which leaked methane gas into the fragile ecosystem for nearly four months. Cook Inlet is home to endangered beluga whales, among other at-risk wildlife.
The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and Hilcorp quietly signed a “consent order” more than six weeks ago that sets deadlines — some as far in the future as September 2019 — for the company to inspect and repair the damaged pipeline and additional methane pipelines associated with Hilcorp’s Middle Ground Shoal oil and gas field.
The consent order — a binding legal agreement privately negotiated between Hilcorp and the pipeline safety administration, signed April 11 but not posted on the government website until early May — does not require Hilcorp, the largest oil and gas producer in Cook Inlet, to conduct additional inspections of its extensive oil and gas facilities in the area. These include a second methane pipeline that failed last month, which ran from the company’s Steelhead platform to shore days before the order was signed. The pipeline was shut down, but no information has been released on how much of the greenhouse gas escaped into the environment.
Environmental groups requested earlier this year that the pipeline safety administration require a system-wide inspection of all oil and gas pipelines in Cook Inlet. An agency official not authorized to speak publicly told The Revelator that the administration is “reviewing this request and will respond appropriately.”
The federal consent order’s lack of a penalty is alarming to Lois Epstein, engineering and Arctic program director at The Wilderness Society, who reviewed it. “They should be fining the company when they have these kinds of problems,” she says.
Bob Shavelson, advocacy director at a Homer, Alaska environmental group called Cook Inletkeeper, says the consent order is a “little stronger than we have seen in the past,” but adds that oil and gas operators in Cook Inlet continue to “get special treatment from regulators.”
Kristen Monsell, a staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Oceans Program, says the consent order fails to protect Cook Inlet’s beluga whales, fish and local communities from offshore drilling in the Inlet.
“Giving the company years to inspect and repair the rest of its damaged pipeline would be laughable if it weren’t so reckless,” she says, calling the company’s aging pipelines and infrastructure “nothing but a recipe for another disaster.” (The Revelator is published by the Center for Biological Diversity.)
Hilcorp has not issued a public statement concerning the consent order and did not respond to The Revelator’s written questions.
- Houston-based Hilcorp arrived in Alaska in 2011 when it purchased Cook Inlet oil and gas production and pipeline facilities from Union Oil Company. See “Hilcorp Runs Aground,” Part I of our series.
- Hilcorp’s cost-cutting philosophy collided with Alaska regulators. See “Hilcorp: Putting Lives in Danger,” Part II of our series.
Alaska to Conduct Oil and Gas Assessment in Cook Inlet
Although Hilcorp avoided pipeline safety fines, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and the Cook Inlet Regional Citizens Advisory Council are moving forward with a joint assessment of Cook Inlet oil and gas facilities.
“The scope of the project is to perform an inventory of the oil and natural gas sub-sea infrastructure and platforms of Cook Inlet and identify the regulatory framework that dictates their operation,” stated Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation spokesperson Candice Bressler, in a May 23 email.
But the assessment will not include a visual inspection of the undersea pipelines, Bressler said. She said a taskforce of “interested regulatory agencies” has been formed to develop the scope of oil and gas infrastructure assessment. There is currently no date by which the assessment will be completed, and Hilcorp is not paying for the assessment.
The state agency issued its final report on the pipeline leak on May 22, saying Hilcorp divers completed permanent repairs on a 3/16 inch wide by 3/8 inch long crack in the pipeline on May 19 — four days after the consent order deadline to complete the permanent repair.
Methane leaked from the pipeline at a rate of between 210,000 to 310,000 cubic feet per day for nearly four months. Prior to the leak, the pipeline transported between 1.6 million and 2.5 million cubic feet of gas per day.
By comparison, Enstar Natural Gas Company’s 136,000 Alaska gas customers use about 33 billion cubic feet of natural gas a year, equal to about 665 cubic feet of gas per customer each day, according the Anchorage Daily News.
Harsh Conditions and a History of Leaks
Cook Inlet’s powerful tides and currents have long been known to cause pipelines to shift and scrape against dangerous rocks, and that’s what caused Hilcorp’s Middle Ground Shoal pipeline to crack, according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. The crack was the third for the same pipeline since 2014, which Hilcorp purchased from Exxon Mobil subsidiary XTO in 2015.
The first leak, in June 2014, lasted five days and released 240,000 cubic feet of methane a day, according to Bressler. The state “does not have an official record” of a second leak that occurred in August 2014, she said.
XTO, however, told federal regulators that both leaks were caused by rocks scraping against the pipeline, according to pipeline safety administration records. The 2014 leaks were 42 yards apart and about two-thirds of a mile from the latest failure.
The latest methane leak began in late December 2016 but was not visually verified by Hilcorp until Feb. 7. The company issued media statements and notified the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration it could not repair the leaking pipeline until the ice cleared from Cook Inlet.
And, the company said, it could not stop moving methane through the line. Hilcorp claimed water could infiltrate the pipeline through the crack and possibly release oil left over from when the line was used to transport crude oil rather than methane.
The company continued to pump onshore methane through the leaking pipeline to two oil-production platforms that used the gas to power their equipment. Hilcorp transported about 3,700 barrels of a mix of oil and water back to shore a day through another eight-inch pipeline that runs parallel to the methane line, federal records show.
Concerned that rocks could also damage the oil pipeline, causing an oil spill, the safety administration issued a “proposed safety order” to Hilcorp on March 17 requiring the company to visually inspect the line. Hilcorp shut down the oil pipeline on March 25 after discussions with Alaska Governor Bill Walker.
The oil pipeline remains shut down, states Bressler. Hilcorp continues to operate the repaired methane line at low pressure to supply energy to the offshore platforms — enough to operate lights and other maintenance operations.
Consent Order Requires Hilcorp to Upgrade Inspection Technology
The federal consent order requires Hilcorp to install in-line inspection monitoring technology, also known as “smart pigs,” in its Middle Ground Shoal gas pipelines.
Smart pigs are robotic devices capable of detecting gouges, metal loss, excessive bending and other anomalies in pipelines. For decades they’ve routinely been used by the oil and gas industry. The term “pig” comes from the squealing sound made by the device as it moves through a pipeline.
However, the Hilcorp pipelines in Middle Ground Shoal were not designed to use smart pig technology. Shell Oil Company installed the eight-inch pipelines in 1965, making them the oldest undersea pipelines in Cook Inlet, according to Shavelson.
The two pipelines are so old they don’t have the necessary equipment to launch and recover the pigs, said Epstein. Still, the order requires Hilcorp to somehow deploy smart pigs or an alternative federally approved technology and make necessary repairs on the failed pipeline segment by Sept. 30, 2018.
The 7.2-mile section runs from the shore to oil production Platform “A.” The leak occurred 2.6 miles from Platform A in about 80 feet of water.
Hilcorp is also required to use smart pigs and make necessary repairs to the additional gas pipelines that extend from Platform “A” to three other offshore facilities by Sept. 30, 2019.
The consent order also requires Hilcorp to conduct “high-resolution sonar inspection” of its entire Middle Ground Shoal methane pipeline system within 90 days of this year’s spring thaw. The inspection is supposed to identify sections of pipeline that are “not adequately supported” and “thus susceptible to excessive bending or current-induced vibrations that may damage” the pipeline.
In addition, the company must identify pipeline segments greater than 20 feet that are not supported by the seabed and where the gap between the pipeline and the seabed is greater than 8 inches. Federal safety officials initially sought inspections of pipeline segments greater than 10 feet not supported by seabed, according to a March 3 proposed safety order.
To accomplish these inspections, divers will need to traverse Cook Inlet’s dangerous tides to determine “those areas that require mitigation to address the threats of excessive bending and vibration induced failure.” The inspections must be completed by Oct. 31.
Hilcorp must also employ divers to inspect areas where the pipelines cross rock outcroppings in order to address the threat of additional damage.
Finally, the inspection of the pipeline segment that failed last winter must be completed by Oct. 31, 2017 and the rest of the Middle Ground Shoal gas lines by Oct. 31, 2018.
The consent order contains no cost estimation of the mandated inspections.
Carl Weimer, executive director of Pipeline Safety Trust, a Bellingham, Wash., citizen’s group that monitors pipelines nationally, said the consent order’s pipeline monitoring requirements are “reasonable.”
“Due to the short work window in Alaska it seems to us the required initial fix, sonar testing, diver inspections, modifying the pipeline to accommodate smart pigs, and then proceeding with the smart pig testing and any needed repairs all seems to be reasonable,” Weimer stated in a May 23 email.
Will Hilcorp continue to avoid punishment for the Cook Inlet leak?
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation considered the methane leak to be a “discharge of hazardous substance” that is prohibited unless approved by the state.
The state has not yet fined the company or sought restitution for damage to the environment. Bressler stated in a May 24 email that the state does not comment on ongoing investigations or potential enforcement actions.
Additional federal actions against the company could still be pending: Hilcorp and federal safety regulators held private discussions on May 9 that could lead to a second consent order in connection with the oil pipeline, according to an administration official not authorized to publicly discuss the negotiations.
The nature of that order remains to be seen, as do the long-term environmental impacts of Hilcorp Alaska’s four-month methane leak.
Is Utopian Thinking the Antidote to Trump’s Bleak Vision?
Rutger Bregman’s book Utopia for Realists offers solutions and an ambitious “dream big” vision.
Regulations protecting our air, water and public lands are under attack by President Trump and his industry-backed, science-denying political appointees. They’re even trying to derail nascent efforts to reduce the carbon emissions causing climate change and ocean acidification.
Things seem bleak. So it’s easy to fall into a grim pessimism and feel that the only thing the conservation community can do is play defense. We need to be realistic, right?
Yet Dutch writer Rutger Bregman has just the opposite advice: This is the moment to dream big and create a better world.
Bregman’s book Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World was a big hit in Europe when it came out in 2014, sparking a basic minimum income movement that’s gaining international attention. The book was just released in the United States this spring (Little, Brown and Company, $27).
Its basic premise is that as society made progress toward alleviating many of the problems that have plagued humanity — disease, hunger, violence, isolation, ignorance, fear — we stopped striving for utopia and left human progress up to the technocrats. We accepted the world as it is as the endpoint of human history.
But the reality is, argues Bregman, that most people are stressed out, unhappy, worried about the plight of our planet, and working either too much or not enough to meet their needs. So Bregman uses deep research and a lively, convincing writing style to explore ideas like universal basic income, drastically shortened workweeks, open borders and other radical ideas for fundamentally reordering society.
While the book largely avoids environmental issues (perhaps its greatest flaw), the solutions Bregman proffers for improving human happiness and creating a better, fairer economic system would bring benefits for addressing climate change and other environmental crises as well.
While working the San Francisco Bay Guardian a few years ago, I explored the connection between the long hours Americans work and our impact on climate change and habitat destruction. My article “Save the World, Work Less” drew on some of the same source material Bregman used in his book, concluding that reducing work hours is good for humanity and the planet.
What struck me during my reporting was that it was once widely assumed — across the ideological spectrum — that the increased productivity enabled by new technology would translate into fewer work hours and increased time for leisure, activism or other pursuits of our choosing.
Not only did that not happen, but even the goal was largely forgotten following World War II. Bregman chronicles similar societal amnesia when it comes to a universal basic income (which even President Nixon seriously considered in 1969), open borders and other utopian ideals.
The point is that we shouldn’t let the rich and powerful today dictate what’s possible, particularly given the self-serving limits they place on utopian dreams. Now is the moment to be bold.
“Don’t let anyone tell you what’s what,” Bregman writes in his book. “If we want to change the world, we need to be unrealistic, unreasonable, and impossible. Remember: those who called for the abolition of slavery, for suffrage for women, and for same-sex marriage were also once branded lunatics. Until history proved them right,” he concludes.
The Trump era will end, as bad as it is and may still become. The question is what we’re going to replace it with. If you take climate change, the current mass extinction crisis and other dire planetary threats seriously, then you may agree that tinkering at the margins won’t be enough.
Maybe we all need to help create a utopia that the people and wildlife of the world really need.
5 Ways Trump’s Budget Shortchanges Wildlife
Programs to protect endangered species face the axe, as does the entire Marine Mammal Commission.
President Trump submitted his 2018 budget proposal on Monday, and it was far from wildlife-friendly. Advocates immediately criticized the so-called “Taxpayer First Budget,” pointing out that it slashes funding and changes priorities for many critical conservation programs.
The proposals, which are not final, include:
- A 6 percent reduction in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s budget, and, according to numbers provided by the Service, around a 5.3 percent decrease in funding for recovery efforts under the Endangered Species Act. (That latter number is a story in itself, as it reflects last year’s tumultuous budget process.)
- A 32-percent reduction in foreign-assistance funds, potentially including some programs to combat wildlife trafficking and related organized crime. “American security and global leadership depends on equal parts defense, diplomacy and development,” Cristián Samper, president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society, said about the cuts in a prepared release. “Without strong support for all three, the world is a more dangerous place.”
- The elimination of the Marine Mammal Commission, a 45-year-old program that supports whales, seals, manatees, polar bears and other species — all at a cost of just 1 cent per taxpayer per year. As commission chair Daryl J. Boness wrote in a prepared release: “The proposed elimination of the Commission comes at a time when decades of marine stewardship are achieving success because of a strong American environmental ethic that balances economic needs with the conservation of our natural resources. We are loyal to our Congressional mandate to responsibly manage and protect marine mammals and their ecosystems, which are vital to our economy, prosperity, and future.”
- Opening up the biodiversity-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas leasing. ANWR, as it’s sometimes better known, is home of more than 200 bird species and a host of other wildlife. Environmental activists have long opposed such drilling efforts, but they remain in favor among Alaska’s Republican officials.
- And finally, a 31 percent budget cut for the Environmental Protection Agency, which would affect numerous programs and policies designed to protect all of the species on the planet from climate change, pollution, etc.
Of course, none of this is written in stone. President Trump’s budget proposal is just one step in a long process to fund the federal government for the coming year. Figuring out which of these cuts will remain at the end of that process will take weeks, if not months. The Revelator will be watching.
Oysters vs. Oil: Hilcorp’s Bayou Battle
Hilcorp Energy’s history of violating Louisiana coastal protection regulations leads to citizens’ Clean Water Act lawsuit.
(Editor’s note: This is part three of The Revelator’s months-long investigation into Hilcorp Energy. You can find the entire investigation here.)
Gleason Alexis was ready with his camera phone to record the destruction of his family’s oyster beds by contractors working for Houston billionaire Jeffery Hildebrand’s Hilcorp Energy Company.
For the third time in five years, Alexis says, Hilcorp contractors used tugboats to drag an oil-drilling barge through a shallow Louisiana wetland where his mother has had a lease to grow oysters for more than 15 years. The lease is in Barataria Bay, on the Louisiana coast south of New Orleans.
Each time, Alexis says, the Hilcorp contractors’ drilling barge and tugboats cut channels into the seafloor, destroying the oyster beds and stirring up silt that deposits on other nearby oyster beds, smothering the shellfish.
“Every time it kills another generation of oysters,” Alexis, 49, says. It takes about three years to grow a generation of oysters. “Once the bottom is damaged it pretty much won’t repair itself,” he says.
Alexis says he saw workers at a Hilcorp well site in late January 2016, and they told him they were preparing the area for work. On Jan. 28, 2016, attorneys representing the Louisiana Oystermen Association sent a “cease and desist” email to Hilcorp asking the company to stop actions that could damage oyster leases.
Related: Hilcorp’s Oil Spills Stain Louisiana Marshlands and Rivers
The next day, while inspecting the oyster beds, Alexis saw a tugboat dragging a drilling barge through his family’s oyster lease.
“I was prepared to film the mud and wheel-washing so I would have some kind of proof,” he says of the Jan. 29, 2016 incident. Here’s that footage:
Wheel-washing, also known as prop-washing, is a method for dredging channels in shallow wetlands. Powerful tugboat engines are operated at high speed to forcefully churn the water to create a current that cuts channels into the seafloor.
“Prop-washing through oyster leases rips up and smothers hard bottom that is carefully cultivated by oyster farmers for harvest,” says Scott Eustis, coastal wetland specialist for the Gulf Restoration Network. “But that hard bottom and shell, or rip rap, is also a form of erosion control for the coastal marshes.”
For decades, oil companies used prop-washing to move their oil rigs into the marshes. The process has been linked to the steady erosion of Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, estimated at an acre per hour. (See a photographic timeline showing the erosion of Louisiana’s coastal area since the 1930s, produced by ProPublica, here.)
“The coastal law forbids prop-wash if there are practical alternatives to suction the sediment,” Eustis says.
Hilcorp, Eustis says, is one of the few companies that continue to use the process, even in areas where the state is trying to restore marshes. The corporation has been acquiring oyster leases to allow it to cut channels without conflicts with oyster growers, according to state records gathered by Gulf Restoration Network.
The channelization, Eustis says, makes a marshland restoration project located in the same area as some of Hilcorp’s oyster leases more expensive and perhaps even impossible to achieve.
“Every other company seems to get it but Hilcorp,” Eustis says, pointing out that the company is the largest oil producer in Louisiana. “They are a company whose business model is rip and run, and their acquisition of oyster leases is a plan to pollute.”
The prop-washing incident across Alexis’ leasehold is now the primary example in a federal Clean Water Act citizens’ lawsuit filed against Hilcorp last June by the Louisiana Oystermen Association.
Michael Brown, a New Orleans attorney representing the oystermen’s association, says Hilcorp did not obtain a state “coastal use permit” and federal Clean Water Act Section 404 permit required before damaging wetlands with dredged or fill material.
Initiating the permitting process would have given the public an opportunity to comment on Hilcorp’s plans to move the oil-drilling barge and its impact on wetlands — a process that could have forced the company to use alternative, more expensive methods to access the well site, Brown says.
“All of that is thrown out the window when Hilcorp fails to apply for the permits,” Brown says.
Hilcorp spokeswoman Lori Nelson said the company “cannot comment to ongoing litigation” with the Louisiana Oystermen Association. She said Hilcorp “has a strict adherence to all state and federal regulations.”
The oystermen’s association, as well as Brown’s law firm, notified the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which oversees 404 permitting, and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources Office of Coastal Management (OCM) of Hilcorp’s prop-washing on the same day that Alexis videoed the tugboats dragging the drilling barge.
“In response to USACE and OCM inquiries, Hilcorp denied wrongdoing and illegally misrepresented key facts to enforcement personnel,” Brown’s law partner, Joel Waltzer, stated in a Dec. 19, 2016 letter to the Office of Coastal Management.
According to the letter, the Army Corps held a Feb. 1, 2016 conference call with Hilcorp to discuss the complaints. Hilcorp officials told the Corps their equipment had drafts between 4 feet and 6 feet and that the channel was 7 feet to 8.5 feet deep, notes from the conference call show.
“Most importantly — we did not prop-wash and/or dredge to access the location in question,” Hilcorp environmental specialist Cory Johnson stated in a Feb. 1, 2016 email to Corps inspector Rob Heffner.
Heffner accepted Hilcorp’s assertion and, without conducting a field inspection, closed the case. “Therefore it was determined that it was unlikely their equipment caused any damage to the water bottoms or oyster leases in the area,” Heffner wrote in the case file.
A copy of the Hilcorp email and Heffner’s notes are included in Waltzer’s Dec. 19, 2016 letter to the Office of Coastal Management.
Hilcorp declined to respond to The Revelator’s written question asking why Hilcorp environmental specialist Johnson sent an email to the Army Corps stating the company did not prop-wash.
Waltzer’s letter also states the video evidence, documentation of the drafts of the tugboats and drilling barge and seafloor measurements taken by an Office of Coastal Management investigator after the dredging was completed on Feb. 5, 2016 show that Hilcorp cut a channel at least eight feet deep through oyster beds that averaged six feet deep.
Hilcorp has a long history of violating state coastal regulations, dating back to at least 2006. Most of the violations claim Hilcorp was conducting activities without a state permit. In almost every case, the state retroactively granted an “after-the-fact,” or ATF, permit to Hilcorp. The violations, compiled by the oystermen association’s law firm, include:
- Illegally damaging a marsh with marsh buggies (2006). ATF permit granted. “We shouldn’t have to be on their back about this,” the Louisiana Department of Natural Resource’s file states. “They’re cutting corners.”
- Dumped fill excavated from the water bottom in a manner that posed a navigation hazard, without proper authorization (2009). ATF permit granted.
- Prop-washing without a permit (2011). ATF permit granted.
- Hilcorp was forced to obtain three ATF permits after failing to submit coastal use permits for emergency repairs (2013).
- DNR discovered Hilcorp destroyed 1.83 acres of marsh after telling the state “no excavation or fill will be required.” DNR required Hilcorp to apply for an ATF permit and to pay $87,856 to Coastal Mitigation Fund and pay a small fine (2013).
- Hilcorp was required to apply for two ATF permits after conducting well repairs. (2015)
- Hilcorp allegedly removed an oil pipeline prior to receiving a permit. DNR is conducting an investigation (2016).
Hilcorp spokeswoman Nelson stated that the company does “not agree with the assessment of ‘after-the-fact’ permit attainment” and that Hilcorp “attains necessary permits as required for our operations.”
In addition to the DNR violations, the Louisiana Office of Conservation, which is in charge of drilling regulations, has an 18-page list of operator warnings, violations and compliance record for Hilcorp, with numerous civil fines issued against the company. The list is attached to the oystermen association’s initial pleading in the Clean Water Act lawsuit.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has also reached 10 consent decrees with Hilcorp for Clean Water Act violations in Louisiana in the past decade, EPA records show.
After initially denying that it had done any work on the well site near Alexis’ oyster lease that required a permit, Hilcorp, once again, is a seeking an after-the-fact permit. Hilcorp’s request for retroactive approval triggered strong opposition during a March public hearing, according to The Lens, a New Orleans nonprofit news site.
“Hilcorp is a bad operator in coastal Louisiana,” The Lens reported Michael Roberts, president of the Association of Family Fishermen, as saying during the hearing. “They’ve done hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to these people’s [oyster] leases, if not more. It’s time that every future permit for Hilcorp is done with the utmost scrutiny so that they start obeying the law.”
A DNR spokesman told The Revelator that the agency is not expected to make a decision on Hilcorp’s ATF application for months.
The oystermen’s association’s Clean Water Act lawsuit survived Hilcorp’s motion to dismiss when a federal judge ruled in January the case could proceed.
And the lawsuit is already having a direct impact on Alexis’ family. In the years following Hurricane Katrina, his brother had a tugboat contract with Hilcorp while he focused on the family oyster business.
“Hilcorp has been good to my family,” he says.
But that was before the conflict over the oyster leases eventually led to the federal lawsuit.
“When that happened, they took my brother off the vendors list,” Alexis says. His brother, he pointed out, has nothing to do with the oyster business.