Saving Mother Earth: New Books About Feminism and Women Protecting the Planet

Protecting women’s rights and the environment go hand-in-hand in these new books, which also celebrate female leaders and scientists.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s devastating decision to strike down Roe v. Wade, it feels more important than ever to talk about the roles feminism plays in environmental protection.

So let’s dig in. Here are publishers’ descriptions of 20 books — most released in the past 18 months, plus a few forthcoming titles and one classic read — that address the intersection of feminism and the environment, explore the female side of nature, or seek to encourage women activists, leaders and naturalists. Many of these volumes will help inspire, while some will shine a light on ignored aspects of nature. And critically, a few of these books are written for the next generation, who now have another of our messes to repair.

Ecofeminism, Intersectionality & Inclusion

The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (40th anniversary edition)

by Carolyn Merchant

“An examination of the Scientific Revolution that shows how the mechanistic world view of modern science has sanctioned the exploitation of nature, unrestrained commercial expansion, and a new socioeconomic order that subordinates women.”

The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet

by Leah Thomas

“From the activist who coined the term comes a primer on intersectional environmentalism for the next generation of activists looking to create meaningful, inclusive and sustainable change. The Intersectional Environmentalist examines the inextricable link between environmentalism, racism and privilege, and promotes awareness of the fundamental truth that we cannot save the planet without uplifting the voices of its people — especially those most often unheard.”

Feminism or Death: How the Women’s Movement Can Save the Planet

by Françoise d’Eaubonne, translated by Ruth Hottell

“Originally published in French in 1974, radical feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne surveyed women’s status around the globe and argued that the stakes of feminist struggles were not about equality but about life and death — for humans and the planet. In this wide-ranging manifesto, d’Eaubonne first proposed a politics of ecofeminism, the idea that the patriarchal system’s claim over women’s bodies and the natural world destroys both, and that feminism and environmentalism must bring about a new ‘mutation’ — an overthrow of not just male power but the system of power itself.”

Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science

by Jessica Hernandez

“An Indigenous environmental scientist breaks down why western conservationism isn’t working — and offers Indigenous models informed by case studies, personal stories and family histories that center the voices of Latin American women and land protectors.”

Ecofeminism, Second Edition: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth

edited by Carol J. Adams & Lori Gruen

“Drawing on animal studies, environmental studies, feminist/gender studies and practical ethics, the ecofeminist contributors to this volume stress the need to move beyond binaries and attend to context over universal judgments; spotlight the importance of care as well as justice, emotion as well as reason; and work to undo the logic of domination and its material implications.”

Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land and Energy in Making the North American West

by E Cram

“Violent Inheritance deepens the analysis of settler colonialism’s endurance in the North American West and how infrastructures that ground sexual modernity are both reproduced and challenged by publics who have inherited them. E Cram redefines sexual modernity through extractivism, wherein sexuality functions to extract value from life including land, air, minerals and bodies. Analyzing struggles over memory cultures through the region’s land use controversies at the turn of and well into the twentieth century, Cram unpacks the consequences of western settlement and the energy regimes that fueled it.”

Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory

by Alice Crary & Lori Gruen

“In stark contrast to traditional theories in animal ethics, which abstract from social mechanisms harmful to human beings, Animal Crisis makes the case that there can be no animal liberation without human emancipation. Borrowing from critical theories such as ecofeminism, Crary and Gruen present a critical animal theory for understanding and combating the structural forces that enable the diminishment of so many to the advantage of a few. With seven case studies of complex human-animal relations, they make an urgent plea to dismantle the ‘human supremacism’ that is devastating animal lives and hurtling us toward ecocide.”

Fat Girls Hiking: An Inclusive Guide to Getting Outdoors at Any Size or Ability

by Summer Michaud-Skog

“From the founder of the Fat Girls Hiking community comes an inclusive, inspiring call to the outdoors for people of all body types, sizes and backgrounds. In a book brimming with heartfelt stories, practical advice, personal profiles of Fat Girls Hiking community members and helpful trail reviews, Summer Michaud-Skog creates space for marginalized bodies with an insistent conviction that outdoor recreation should welcome everyone.”

Unsettling: Surviving Extinction Together

by Elizabeth Weinberg

“Using the stories of animals, landscapes and people who have exhibited resilience in the face of persistent colonization across the North American continent, science writer Elizabeth Weinberg explores how climate change is a direct result of white supremacy, colonialism, sexism and heteronormativity.” (Available Oct. 18)

Modern Female Leaders & Activists

Still Hopeful: Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism

by Maude Barlow

“In this timely book, Barlow counters the prevailing atmosphere of pessimism that surrounds us and offers lessons of hope that she has learned from a lifetime of activism. She has been a linchpin in three major movements in her life: second-wave feminism, the battle against free trade and globalization, and the global fight for water justice. From each of these she draws her lessons of hope, emphasizing that effective activism is not really about the goal, rather it is about building a movement and finding like-minded people to carry the load with you. Barlow knows firsthand how hard fighting for change can be. But she also knows that change does happen and that hope is the essential ingredient.”

Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership (second edition)

by Nina Simons

“Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons offers inspiration for anyone who aspires to grow into their own unique form of leadership with resilience and joy. Informed by her extensive experience with multicultural women’s leadership development, Simons replaces the old patriarchal leadership paradigm with a more feminine-inflected style that illustrates the interconnected nature of the issues we face today.”

Land of Women

by María Sánchez, translated by Curtis Bauer

“María Sánchez is obsessed with what she cannot see. As a field veterinarian following in the footsteps of generations before her, she travels the countryside of Spain bearing witness to a life eroding before her eyes — words, practices and people slipping away because of depopulation, exploitation of natural resources, inadequate environmental policies, and development encroaching on farmland and villages. Sánchez, the first woman in her family to dedicate herself to what has traditionally been a male-dominated profession, rebuffs the bucolic narrative of rural life often written by — and for consumption by — people in cities, describing the multilayered social complexity of people who are proud, resilient and often misunderstood.”

Right Here, Right Now: How Woman Can Lead the Way in the Climate Emergency

by Natalie Isaacs

“The science is clear: if we continue to burn fossil fuels at current rates, the Earth will continue to warm. Already, the consequences of climate change are upon us. Now, in this powerful call to action with optimism at its heart, the founder of the global climate action movement 1 Million Women explains why we all must act, wherever we are, and why, in this decisive decade, we must act now.” (Available Oct. 25)

The Female in Nature

Bitch: On the Female of the Species

by Lucy Cooke

“Since Charles Darwin, evolutionary biologists have been convinced that the males of the animal kingdom are the interesting ones — dominating and promiscuous, while females are dull, passive and devoted. In Bitch, Cooke tells a new story. Whether investigating same-sex female albatross couples that raise chicks, murderous mother meerkats, or the titanic battle of the sexes waged by ducks, Cooke shows us new evolutionary biology, one where females can be as dynamic as any male. This isn’t your grandfather’s evolutionary biology. It’s more inclusive, truer to life and, simply, more fun.”

Sexus Animalis: There Is Nothing Unnatural in Nature

by Emmanuelle Pouydebat

“In the animal kingdom we find heterosexual, lesbian, gay and bisexual behavior, as well as monogamy, polygamy and polyandry … Sexus Animalis tells us everything we never dreamed we wanted to know about the reproductive systems, genital organs and sexual practices of animals.”

Lessons from History

Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay

by Merilyn Simonds

“Referred to as a Canadian Rachel Carson, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence lived and worked in an isolated log cabin near North Bay. After her husband was murdered by Bolsheviks, she refused her Swedish privilege and joined the Canadian Red Cross, visiting her northern Ontario patients by dogsled. When Elzire Dionne gave birth to five babies, Louise became nurse to the Dionne Quintuplets. Repulsed by the media circus, she retreated to her wilderness cabin, where she devoted herself to studying the birds that nested in her forest. Author of six books and scores of magazine stories, de Kiriline Lawrence and her ‘loghouse nest’ became a Mecca for international ornithologists.”

A Mighty Force: Dr. Elizabeth Hayes and Her War for Public Health

by Marcia Biederman

“…Elizabeth O. Hayes, MD, doctor for a coal company that owned the town of Force, Penn., where sewage contaminated the drinking waters and ambulances sank into muddy unpaved roads while corrupt managers… When Hayes resigned to protest intolerable living conditions, 350 miners followed her in strike, shaking the foundation of the town and attracting a national media storm. Press — including women reporters, temporarily assigned to national news desks in wartime — flocked to the small mining town to champion Dr. Hayes’ cause. Slim, blonde and 33, ‘Dr. Betty’ became the heroine of an environmental drama that captured the nation’s attention, complete with mustache-twirling villains, surprises, setbacks and a mostly happy ending.”

Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women

by Annabel Abbs

“…a beautifully written meditation on connecting with the outdoors through the simple act of walking. In captivating and elegant prose, Abbs follows in the footsteps of women who boldly reclaimed wild landscapes for themselves, including Georgia O’Keeffe in the empty plains of Texas and New Mexico, Nan Shepherd in the mountains of Scotland, Gwen John following the French River Garonne, Daphne du Maurier along the River Rhône and Simone de Beauvoir — who walked as much as twenty-five miles a day in a dress and espadrilles — through the mountains and forests of France… Abbs explores a forgotten legacy of moving on foot and discovers how it has helped women throughout history to find their voices, to reimagine their lives, and to break free from convention.”

For the Next Generation

Rebel Girls: Climate Warriors

by Rebel Girls

“For Earth Day (and every day!), this mini edition of the award-winning Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls series spotlights the ground-breaking work of women on the frontlines of the fight for climate justice.”

No Boundaries: 25 Women Explorers and Scientists Share Adventures, Inspiration and Advice

by Clare Fieseler & Gabby Salazar

“Meet 25 female explorers and scientists in these inspirational and poignant stories of exploration, courage and girl power. Along the way, they share lessons learned and words of wisdom sure to inspire the next generation of scientists, adventurers and world-changers.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

Ten New Environmental Books Offering Inspiration, Insight and Ideas

Salmon Farming’s Dirty Business

A new book looks at the “dark underbelly of our favorite fish” and urges regulators and businesses to better protect wild salmon, coastal ecosystems and consumers.

Sometimes all it takes is a single photograph to change someone’s mind or inspire them to take action. For Catherine Collins and her husband Douglas Frantz, that was a photo of a yardstick plunged 32 inches into filth below a salmon farm near Port Mouton, Nova Scotia.

It led the two investigative journalists to take a deep dive into the salmon-farming industry and its dirty business. The result is their newly published book Salmon Wars: The Dark Underbelly of Our Favorite Fish.

Collins and Frantz, who are also the authors of several other nonfiction books, write about how salmon farming exploded into a $20 billion industry and why that threatens wild salmon, coastal ecosystems and unsuspecting consumers.

There are more than a few descriptions in the book that may leave readers with searing mental images. Here’s one: Sea lice on farmed salmon can number in the hundreds on a single fish, “so numerous that at some fish-processing plants workers use Shop-Vacs to remove them from incoming salmon.”

In an interview with The Revelator, Collins and Frantz explain the threats posed to wildlife, what happens to scientists and activists who challenge the industry, and whether land-based salmon rearing is a better alternative.

Why did you decide to write this book?

Catherine Collins: Salmon Wars may seem like an odd topic for us because neither one of us is an angler, a marine biologist, or even an environmental activist. Instead, we’re like our potential readers — simply people doing our best to eat healthy and responsibly.

That said, we do have connections to the topic that not everyone will have. My father was an avid fly fisherman. For years wild-caught Atlantic salmon was served for special occasions at our house. Sadly, our children have never known that pleasure.

Our view of salmon farms was shaped initially by a small farm that we saw go into the water not far from my parents’ cottage on the South Shore of Nova Scotia in the early 1990s. At first my parents were intrigued. They hoped that aquaculture might take some of the pressure off the dwindling numbers of wild Atlantic salmon. But they realized quickly, as the trash piled up on the shoreline and the eel grass on the seabed below the farm died, that the new technology was not the answer. In fact, it could represent a new threat to wild salmon.

Doug Frantz: Fast forward a couple decades. In January 2020 we went to a public meeting in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, a few minutes from our home. A group called the Twin Bays Coalition had sounded an alarm about plans by two multinational salmon-farming companies to locate more than 20 new open-net-pen farms along our coast.

By then salmon farming had grown into a $20 billion industry, and so had evidence of environmental damage from open-net farms. About 400 other people crowded into the community hall and spilled into the corridors that day to hear warnings from environmentalists, lobster fishers, businesspeople and ordinary folks.

We have spent our careers investigating and reporting for newspapers, government and law firms. So we did what we do — we investigated.

We were surprised, and continue to be surprised, by how little people know about the salmon they’re buying in markets or eating in restaurants. Honestly, smart people have no idea about the environmental harm caused by open-net salmon farms or the potential health risks from eating fish that might contain contaminants. This is one of the factors that compelled us to write Salmon Wars.

What are some of the ways that salmon farming can harm wild salmon and other wildlife?

Frantz: Open-net salmon farms are floating feedlots. Each farm generally consists of 10 to 12 cages, also called pens, made of tough plastic netting to allow the ocean currents to flow through while keeping out predators. Each cage holds up to 100,000 fish and a site can contain a million salmon.

The excrement, excess feed and chemical residue from a single farm can equal the waste produced by a town of 65,000 people, according to one study. But a city’s sewage is treated, while a salmon farm simply allows its waste to drift to the seabed, creating a toxic stew that can damage marine life for hundreds of yards.

These farms are often located on wild salmon migration routes. The logic of the salmon farmers is that a good environment for a wild salmon is a good environment for its farmed cousin.

That’s just not true. These farms spew parasites and pathogens that are a proven threat to wild salmon, particularly young salmon as they migrate from rivers to the ocean. One of the biggest threats is from tiny sea lice that attach to those migrating juvenile salmon. It doesn’t take many of these parasites to kill a young salmon.

In addition to the persistent incremental environmental damage, there is a concern about the chance of a catastrophic event — such as the 2017 collapse of the Cooke Aquaculture salmon farms near Cypress Island, Washington. A scathing report by the three Washington state agencies found that the company falsely blamed the collapse on a solar eclipse when it was the company’s own negligence that led to the collapse. In the days after, 250,000 farmed Atlantic salmon escaped into the Puget Sound, competing with the native Pacific salmon for food, threatening native fish with the diseases rampant in the farm environment and potentially interbreeding with the native wild salmon.

Most North Americans likely don’t know that their farmed salmon could have an impact on people as far away as West Africa. Can you explain why?

Collins: Salmon are carnivores and the main ingredient in their feed is small forage fish, such as sardines, anchovies and mackerel. In the early days of aquaculture, it took as much as three pounds of wild fish to grow a pound of farmed salmon. Advances in fish meal production has improved the feed ratio but as salmon farming has grown dramatically around the world, so has demand for wild forage fish.

The impact is clearest along the 3,400-mile Atlantic coast of West Africa, where huge trawlers scoop up thousands of tons of these small fish for processing into fishmeal and fish oil to feed salmon that wind up on dinner tables in wealthier countries.

For Africans, this has been a disaster. The United Nations says half the fish stocks off West Africa are overfished and at risk of collapse. And 40% of these trawlers are operating illegally. Subsistence fishermen have seen catches drop sharply. Women who process and sell the fish in local markets can no longer make a living. And food insecurity is increased in one of the world’s poorest regions.

Do you see similarities with the salmon farming industry and the tobacco or oil industries?

Frantz: We aren’t arguing that eating salmon is as bad for your health as smoking or as bad for the climate as fossil fuels. But there are other parallels.

In the early 1950s tobacco industry scientists discovered links between smoking and cancer. For decades, the industry covered up its findings and waged a war to discredit independent scientists and other critics. The oil and gas industry has tried to shift the blame for the climate crises to individuals, hiding behind slick advertising and captive politicians.

Similarly, big salmon farmers disparage scientists who point out the health and environmental risks from farmed salmon and try to discredit critics. We tell the stories of several people who challenged the salmon farming giants and wound up losing their jobs or facing lawsuits.

Salmon farmers sell their product as naturally raised and sustainable. Last year a federal judge in New York approved a settlement in which Norway’s Mowi ASA, the world’s largest salmon farmer, paid $1.3 million for deceptive advertising, and agreed to stop claiming its Ducktrap brand of smoked salmon was “sustainably sourced,” “all natural” and “from Maine.” This should be seen as a critical moment for the entire industry, and for responsible consumers.

Salmon farming can be reformed, if the public demands that its salmon is raised in healthier, environmentally friendly ways. The fact is that salmon farming, as it has been practiced until recently, is a freeloading business. In most countries salmon farms use the coastline and the water with impunity, paying little to lease the sites and nothing to clean up the damage they cause. In a single-minded pursuit of profit, the multinational corporations behind salmon farming exploit public resources and ignore public health.

Does salmon farming have a future and if so, what would a healthy one look like?

Collins: We think it does. There are three steps necessary to make that happen.

First, consumers need to understand the risks and rewards from eating farmed salmon. That means greater transparency from grocery stores, restaurants and salmon farmers. Something like a QR code on salmon should disclose where and how it was raised and list the chemicals in the water and feed.

Second, individual responsibility should be translated into coordinated action. Educated consumers can team up with environmental groups, scientists and government reformers to build a movement that demands that salmon farmers protect the environment and ensure the health of the fish they sell.

Third, governments in salmon-farming countries should stop favoring the economic interests of the industry over protection of the environment and public health.

The industry justifies itself by saying it plays an essential role in feeding the world. But there are better ways to provide the protein the world needs. One technology with the capacity to upend the status quo is recycled aquaculture systems (RAS). These facilities raise salmon on land in large tanks using filtered and recycled water. They don’t need excessive chemicals or antibiotics because the water quality is controlled. And they don’t threaten wild salmon or other marine life because the fish never touch the ocean.

One issue that even RAS plants haven’t solved is the feed. Using ground fishmeal from small fish means farmed salmon is inherently unsustainable, both in open-net pens on the ocean and giant tanks on land. New types of feed are being developed as alternatives to small fish and governments should support these efforts and consumers should vote with their pocketbooks by demanding the healthier, environmentally friendly salmon grown in RAS facilities.

Here’s the bottom line: Options exist to the open-net salmon farms that dominate our supply chain today. Change depends on the actions both of our governments and regulators, but just as importantly, consumers. Change will come when individual decisions are transformed into public demands, regulatory action and a responsible salmon-farming industry.

We can choose a better way and still feed the world.

Previously in The Revelator:

Save Salmon, Save Ourselves

WTO Agreement Boosts Efforts for a Sustainable Ocean

Fishing subsidies threaten ocean health and food security. The World Trade Organization has a plan to address that, but implementation must come quickly.

After 20 years of discussion, the World Trade Organization has reached an agreement on fishing subsidies. It states that all members should eliminate harmful subsidies contributing to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and the overfishing of at-risk fish populations. It also requires annual reviews on each nation’s progress on implementation and operations.

This required a difficult consensus of the 164 member states, making the agreement an important step forward. But there are still key loopholes and exceptions that must be ironed out for the agreement to be successful. And any agreement is only as good as its implementation.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, more than 35% of our world’s fish population has been overfished, and that percentage is only rising. Meanwhile around $22 billion was spent in 2018 on subsidies — public funding to make fisheries more profitable — to increase fishing capacity. In many cases fish populations have been so heavily exploited that fishing vessels rely on the distorting effect of subsidies to turn a profit; one expert analysis puts the figure at over half of current high-seas fishing grounds.

For too long these subsidies have devastated marine wildlife, local livelihoods and food security around the world. Fish are a vital source of protein in least-developed countries. As they are overexploited, vulnerable coastal communities are left at risk of starvation; more than half of the small-scale fishers that my organization, the Environmental Justice Foundation, recently interviewed in Ghana reported going without sufficient food in the past year.

An open letter from the Ghana National Canoe Fishermen’s Council says that if illegal fishing — driven in part by harmful fisheries subsidies — isn’t addressed, “the source of income for over 2.7 million Ghanaians will be lost.”

Small-scale fishers deserve a fair playing field. Once all harmful subsidies are removed, alongside increased transparency and enforcement of regulations to end overfishing, they have a chance to be part of a sustainable global fishing network.

Industrial Trawling

Experts estimate that 81% of governments’ fisheries subsidies benefit large industrial fleets, distorting access to marine resources and destroying the heart of many coastal communities. In Africa twice the amount of subsidies from foreign nations goes toward distant water vessels to fish off the African coast than goes to African vessels themselves.

Shamefully, wealthy countries have been directly funding wasteful overfishing and illegal fishing at the expense of small-scale fishing communities. This WTO agreement means we can give fishing communities a chance of survival and begin the end of this clear injustice.

However, this deal is just the start of the shift we need toward a more sustainable fishery sector. Harmful fisheries subsidies aren’t limited to those that prop up illegal fishing or overcapacity. At the moment prohibitions on fuel subsidies — 22% of all fisheries subsidies — have been left out of the text, meaning that there’s still work to be done to restore a truly thriving ocean.

small fishing boat leaving the beach in wave — A fishing boat in Ghana. Photo: Albert Gößwein (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Blue Carbon and the Climate Crisis

This agreement is good news for the climate, too, as the ocean is the world’s largest carbon sink. Around 43.5% of the carbon in marine life like fish — so-called “blue carbon”— extracted from the high seas comes from areas that would be unprofitable to fish without financial support, so we have been driving ocean ecosystems to collapse and speeding up the climate crisis with the same set of subsidies.

For every degree Celsius of warming, global fisheries catch potential will fall by more than 3 million metric tons. These impacts will predominantly be felt by equatorial countries, many of them low-income, where their annual catches will fall by half. This means that ending some of these subsidies for good protects our climate, ocean and peoples’ food security and livelihoods with one stroke of the pen.

Implementation

It’s clear that this agreement has the potential to bring an opportunity for our over-exploited oceans to recover, but at present it relies too heavily on self-reporting from subsidizing member countries, with no binding enforcement measures or mechanism to ensure countries follow through.

All countries must implement the agreement as well as go beyond it, by urgently reflecting this decision in their domestic regulations and removing all harmful subsidies — not just those covered in the agreement — ensuring transparency throughout the process. The European Union and the United States — which both have strong commitments to fight illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing globally – should move quickly and lead by example in removing harmful subsidies from their fleets. But every nation can and must go faster and further than this agreement for a truly sustainable ocean.

At present, subsidies will be limited for at least the next four years as negotiations to expand the reach of this agreement will continue for the duration. We don’t have four more years to continue at this pace — we need quick, joint action from the international and national levels. While the WTO must speed up negotiations to expand the agreement’s remit and make it binding, national governments must also go beyond what the WTO mandates and use their powers to drive sweeping change in both policy and action.

Two key additional aspects will be ending fuel subsidies and addressing subsidies that support fishing overcapacity, which allows fishers to go beyond sustainable catch levels. The latter is mentioned in the agreement, but no comprehensive deal was made. Both international and national actors must include fuel subsidies and fishing overcapacity in their agreements and policies, as well as take more immediate action toward implementing it.

It has taken two decades for the WTO to take meaningful action on ending subsidies for overfishing. We can’t afford to take this long to implement this agreement. If fishing nations take action now and cut the flow of finance to illegal fishing, overfishing and overcapacity, we can drive real progress toward a secure and sustainable future for the ocean and the people who depend on it.

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.

Previously in The Revelator:

Outlaw Oceans: Exposing Slavery, Overfishing and Other Abuses on the High Seas

‘Soil Isn’t Forever’: Why Biodiversity Also Needs Protection Below the Ground

We know more than ever about the abundance of life in the soil. Now we have to step up to save it.

Look down. You may not see the soil beneath your feet as teeming with life, but it is.

Better scientific tools are helping us understand that dirt isn’t just dirt. Life in the soil includes microbes like bacteria and fungi; invertebrates such as earthworms and nematodes; plant roots; and even mammals like gophers and badgers who spend part of their time below ground.

It’s commonly said that a quarter of all the planet’s biodiversity lives in the soil, but that’s likely a vast understatement. Many species that reside there, particularly microorganisms such as viruses, bacteria, fungi and protists, aren’t yet known to science.

“Published literature has only just begun to unravel the complexity of soil biological systems,” a 2020 study by researchers from University of Reading found. “We barely know what is there, let alone their breadth of functional roles, niche partitioning and interaction between these organisms.”

But what scientists do know is that healthy and biodiverse soil communities support a wide variety of functions that sustain life on Earth. That includes nutrient cycling, food production, carbon storage and water filtration.

What happens belowground supports life aboveground. And not surprisingly, if that underground biodiversity is threatened, so are the important functions that soil performs.

“When soil organisms begin to disappear, ecosystems will soon start to underperform, potentially hindering their vital functions for humankind,” wrote researchers in a 2020 Science study.

Threats

plane sprays pesticides over wetland — Pesticides being sprayed at the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge in Calif. Photo: Don McCullough (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Unfortunately there’s evidence that soil biodiversity is decreasing today — how badly is still a matter researchers are working to determine. By just one metric, studies found that 60–70% of soils in the European Union are now unhealthy.

The threats there — and across the world — are numerous.

The Reading University researchers narrowed them down to five main areas:

Human exploitation, including intensive agriculture, pesticides, fertilizers and genetically modified organisms.
Land-use change like deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and soil sealing.
Soil degradation from compaction, erosion, and loss of nutrients.
Climate change, which influences temperature and moisture.
The growing threat from plastic pollution.

“Land changes [like intensive agriculture] are right up there with climate change,” says Diana H. Wall, a biology professor at Colorado State University and director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability. “Because what we’re doing is tearing up the soil. And that’s the habitat for all these species.”

When we lose biodiversity in the soil it leads to a decrease in the soil’s ability to withstand disturbances — that could cause a loss of important functions and even more biodiversity.

Knowledge Gaps

Much like new molecular tools have helped researchers understand the microbiome in people’s guts, scientists can now also learn much more about the tiny organisms living in the soil, says Wall. But while research about soil biodiversity is growing, there are still significant knowledge gaps.

A 2020 study on “blind spots” in global soil biodiversity and ecosystem function found that most research focused on a single sampling event and didn’t study how soil changed in the same area over time, which the authors say is “essential for assessing trends in key taxa and functions, and their vulnerability to global change.”

The research has also been geographically unbalanced, they found. Temperate areas, which include broadleaved mixed forests and the Mediterranean, have received more study than many tropical areas, tundra or flooded grasslands.

This is not a new problem: Another study revealed that we lack historical information on soil biodiversity that would make it possible to understand baselines on previous land cover and local drivers of biodiversity. Without understanding past conditions, it’s not clear how things are changing or why.

Knowledge gaps aren’t just limited to science, either. When it comes to policy, national and international bodies lack systematic ways to monitor and protect soil biodiversity.

“At the global scale, soil biodiversity is still a blind spot: most Parties of the Convention on Biodiversity neither protect soils nor their biodiversity explicitly,” found a study published in April in Biological Conservation.

dried soils — CIAT researchers are collecting data on soil erosion as part of the Africa Rising Initiative. Photo: 2015CIAT/Georgina Smith (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Taking Action

Efforts to better study and protect soil biodiversity have begun to ramp up.

One is the Soil Biodiversity Observation Network (Soil BON), co-led by Wall, which is a coordinated global project to monitor soil biodiversity and ecosystem function to help inform policy.

Wall also leads the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative, a volunteer scientific network of more than 4,000 researchers who are studying the vulnerability of belowground biodiversity. The group recently sent a letter to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity urging action to protect soil biodiversity.

“Knowledge of the importance of the vast diversity of fauna and flora that inhabit soil and sustain all life aboveground should be recognized and included in global policies for the protection, restoration, and promotion of biodiversity,” the group wrote.

Europe isn’t waiting for the U.N. to take action.

The Farm to Fork Strategy, part of the European Green New Deal, calls for better soil protection, including cutting pesticide use in half by 2030. The European Union also launched the Zero Pollution Action Plan for Air, Water and Soil that aims to improve soil quality. And the EU could push further action with a planned Soil Health Law in 2023.

And while soil health demands more big government efforts, there are a lot of changes at the local level and by industries that could help.

In urban areas, pavement that has sealed off soil can be removed and replaced by vegetation. The construction of green roofs and gardens rich in plant diversity can aid soil biodiversity, too.

Farmers, Wall says, have also expressed increasing interest in soil regeneration and carbon sequestration. “There are definitely things that you can do to return the organic matter to the soil,” she says. “What we want is good cover for soil so it doesn’t blow away or wash away. And we also want to make sure that we’re not just cutting vegetation down to bare ground.”

red and green sedges and grasses on a rooftop — Scandinavian Green Roof Institute. Photo: International Sustainable Solutions (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Society also needs to be mindful of the chemicals that we use in our homes, farms and cities, she says: “Pollution in soil is very bad for the organisms that live in the soil, and it’s bad for any that may have a pupating cycle in the soil.”

Soil biodiversity can recover after industrial or agricultural sites are taken out of production, but it may happen slowly and require specialized restoration efforts. In those cases, “microbial transplants together with seeding of target plant species might help speed up these processes,” suggests a 2019 study co-authored by Wall. “Even small changes, which often come at little monetary cost, may increase soil biodiversity and ecosystem services.”

And an even smaller change is also important — getting people to notice and appreciate the role healthy soil plays in our lives and why it’s so vital we protect it.

“Something that we really ought to realize is that soil isn’t forever,” Wall says. “Soils are vulnerable, and we know that worldwide. Pay attention to the life beneath your feet — it’s fragile.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Why It’s Time to Include Fungi in Global Conservation Goals

Armadillos Make Great Neighbors

Despite their reputation as destructive pests, new research reveals that armadillos support dozens of other species — including, possibly, humans.

When people encounter armadillos, they usually describe the armored mammals in derogatory terms.

“Pests” is a common word, as are “invaders” and even “speed bumps.” Many homeowners brag of “eradicating” them from their properties.

Why the hatred? Nine-banded armadillos (Dasypus novemcinctus) — the only armadillo species in the United States — have slowly expanded their range through the southern and midwestern United States over the past few decades, a process that’s sped up in recent years. Whenever they arrive, they start digging — either to find tasty insects or grubs to eat, or to carve out the large burrows they call home. Those holes can disrupt agricultural fields, backyard gardens and golf courses. And all too often, these incursions into human territory cost the cat-sized animals their lives.

An armadillo stands on its hind legs — Photo: Eileen Fonferko (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

“Some of my students are born and raised in Arkansas, and they’ve said that growing up, the prevailing thing to do when you see an armadillo is shoot it,” says Brett DeGregorio, a wildlife biologist and principal investigator at the USGS Fish and Wildlife Cooperative Research Unit at the University of Arkansas.

But people encountering nine-banded armadillos might want to reconsider their attitudes. It turns out their pesky burrows have a lot to offer local communities.

Home Is Where the Burrow Is

DeGregorio, his colleagues and his students study the shifting wildlife of Arkansas. “Fayetteville is a really fast-growing area, so I’m really interested in how the mammal community changes as we develop,” he says.

In their work, they spend a lot of time setting up wildlife cameras in various parts of the state and examining the images they find. Armadillos weren’t the initial targets of their research, but they proved hard to resist.

“The more cameras we put out, the more time we spent in the field, the more and more interested I got in the armadillos. And we started noticing these patterns.”

As patterns revealed new research questions, DeGregorio encouraged his students to point their motion-triggered cameras at armadillo burrows whenever they were in the field. And they found plenty of burrows to study.

“Each armadillo usually digs about ten of them within their little home range,” he says. “So even if you only have a few armadillos living in the area, you have lots of these holes, and they’re only using one at any given time.”

The burrows themselves are amazing structures. “There’s a perfectly round opening,” he says, “and they don’t go too deep into the ground — maybe three feet down — but they’re really long. If you were to stick your arm down one, you probably couldn’t get to the end.” Armadillos, he points out, don’t do very well in cold weather, and burrows help keep them warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Ultimately, the researchers spent a year collecting images from burrows at 35 sites across Arkansas, including a woodlot in a suburban neighborhood, a heavily forested park in the Ozark Mountains, a national wildlife refuge, and a rural cattle pasture.

Along the way they documented plenty of armadillos — and a lot more.

A Community of Critters

The research, published this May in the journal Ecology and Evolution, found that nine-banded armadillo burrows were incredibly popular sites, used not just by their original architects but also by at least 64 other species. This included bobcats, foxes, opossums, raccoons, skunks, frogs, skinks, snakes, turtles and 40 bird species.

Some of these animals, like groundhogs and foxes, took over armadillo burrows and adapted them for their own use. The researchers documented one red fox giving birth in its new home, and several Virginia opossums spent long periods in burrows caring for their newborns.

Other animals used the burrows to store food. Cameras frequently caught gray squirrels hiding acorns near or on burrow entrances and later digging them up — if mice didn’t steal them first.

Still other species used burrows as hunting sites. Those acorn-seeking mice made great prey for red-tailed hawks, which appeared to stake out burrow entrances.

DeGregorio says he wasn’t surprised by what they found because similar behavior has been documented around the burrow of other species — notably, tortoises.

“Gopher and desert tortoises get a lot of credit for being these ecosystem engineers because they also dig these extensive burrow systems,” he says. “That’s one of the key talking points for conservation of the tortoises: that they benefit so many other species.”

He expected a similarly extensive list of species benefiting from armadillo burrows — and he found it: “They create a lot of refuges for other animals to take advantage of.”

That may provide a whole other layer of benefits.

“If you’ve got armadillos around, the general biodiversity in that area is probably higher,” DeGregorio says. “To turn this into a selfish, human-centric thing: We know that biodiversity is directly linked to many human health benefits. One of the species we saw using these burrows the most was the Virginia opossum, which are amazing tick predators. The more opossum we have around, the fewer ticks and the lower prevalence of Lyme disease and the other nasty stuff that keeps us up at night. If armadillos can contribute to that, especially in suburban and rapidly developing areas where they persist really well, I think we should embrace that.”

Shifting Patterns

But those rapidly developing areas come with costs for armadillos.

In another study stemming from the same research, DeGregorio and his team found that humans don’t always make the best neighbors for these armored animals.

It’s not just their perpetual persecution of armadillos as “pests.” It’s also the noise.

The study found that the further armadillos got from Fayetteville, the more active they were during the day. Closer to the city, though, the armadillos were more active in the quiet of the night, when humans wouldn’t disturb them.

Nocturnal activity may make armadillos safer from humans, but it creates other threats.

For one thing, moving around at night exposes them to nocturnal predators like great horned owls and cougars.

For another, it’s just colder at night.

“Armadillos have a really low body temperature,” DeGregorio says. “When we force them to be active during the coldest parts of the night, during the winter, we’re making them do something that they don’t want to do. There’s a real cost to that. It takes them days and days to recover.”

An armadillo on a cement structure — An armadillo under a facet near a campsite at Guadalupe River State Park, Texas. Photo: Corey Leopold (CC BY 2.0)

And yet, they persist. No one knows why they’ve expanded their range so much in recent years — some say it’s climate change, while DeGregorio theorizes human development helped pave their way. Whatever the reason, it keeps bringing nine-banded armadillos to other parts of the United States.

And they’ve accomplished this spread in spite of their other … challenges.

“They’re a puzzling species,” DeGregorio says. “One of the things that really strikes you when you start working in armadillo country is kind of how clueless they seem. They have poor eyesight, and when they’re out foraging, they’re so focused on the ground. If you just stand still, it’s not uncommon for them to bump into your legs and then, you know, panic, jump in the air, then run away.”

None of their shortcomings seems to stop them from surviving, thriving and contributing to their surroundings.

“Not only are they surviving in the wild — they’re also extremely adaptable,” he says. “They’re spreading their geographic range at a remarkable rate, and they’re really changing the environment to the benefit of other animals around them.”

Will this research help challenge people’s unfair attitude toward armadillos? “I would love to see that perception change a little bit,” he admits.

It has certainly shifted his own idea of the species, DeGregorio says. He used to see armadillos as “this kind of goofy, overlooked animal.” Now, he says, it’s changed to “Wow — they make a meaningful difference for the ecosystem.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Mice, Hedgehogs and Voles Need Conservation Champions

Could Cleaning the Tigris River Help Repair Iraq’s Damaged Reputation?

One man’s mission to remove trash from the polluted river in Baghdad has inspired a nationwide movement that shows how environmental efforts inspire peace.

The sun beat down on hundreds of Iraqis who met on the banks of the Tigris, in Baghdad, to clean the river.

They gathered this past April under the banner of “Clean Iraq,” a grassroot movement organizing weekly cleanups. It was founded in February by Murtadha Al-Tameemi, a software engineer who grew up in Baghdad but has been traveling the world for the past few years.

“When I came back to Baghdad after being away for a while, I wanted to enjoy the sunset by the river,” Al-Tameemi tells me. “But when I arrived, I could not help noticing the trash that ruined the beautiful nature.”

He started going to the riverbanks every day to pick up trash, and he spread the message on social media. Soon other Iraqis started getting involved. Now, every time there’s an event, several hundred volunteers participate.

Tigris cleanup effort — Photo: Katarzyna Rybarczyk

He only expected to spend only a few weeks at home, visiting friends and family, but when his project took off he decided to stay longer to oversee it.

The April event, though it was hard work, carried a welcoming and friendly atmosphere. People got to know each other a bit, making a seemingly tedious activity enjoyable while making visible progress. With every hour I spent by the river, I saw garbage bags piling up at the water’s edge.

garbage bags — Photo: Katarzyna Rybarczyk

Similar cleanup events take place at rivers and creeks around the world, but in Iraq this initiative is something new. Al-Tameemi says he believes it has the power to drive positive change well beyond the environmental benefits — it could help transform the image many people have of Baghdad and Iraq as a whole.

But I couldn’t help but wonder: Is the movement making a real change, or is the destruction of the Tigris irreversible?

An Ancient River Suffers From Modern Pollution

For centuries the Tigris has been the lifeline of Iraq. Ancient civilizations settled around the river, boosting trade, urbanization and economic growth.

Historically it was also a symbol of the country’s prosperity. Iraq used to be one of the water-richest states in the Arab world.

Now, however, the pollution of the Tigris River has reached levels so high that those who rely on its water are at risk of contracting life-threatening diseases.

For decades Baghdad has produced more sewage than its three main wastewater-treatment plants can handle — about twice as much every day. A study published this April in the journal Water found that the Tigris in Baghdad contained unhealthy levels of fecal coliform bacteria — about three times what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for domestic water supplies in the United States.

A paper published in 2020 in the Polish Journal of Environmental Studies identified severe pollution of Tigris’s water as “one of Iraqis’ major sources of cancer.” And a 2017 report published by Save the Tigris, a network of civil society organizations working together to ensure safe access to water for the people of Mesopotamia, found that “every 24 hours around 400 children were being admitted to Baghdad’s Sadr Hospital with diseases caused by polluted water.”

Inappropriate sewage treatment is just the tip of the iceberg, however.

After ISIS gained control over parts of Iraq in 2014, extremists would regularly demolish dams and poison wells to cut Iraqi forces off from clean water and coerce local communities into obedience. To contaminate groundwater, ISIS would release oil or metal debris into outlets such as the Tigris.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, ISIS fighters would also dump the bodies of their victims into the river. During the war and in months following, corpses washed up on the riverbanks downstream from Baghdad or Mosul. Hundreds of undiscovered bodies stayed in the water and decomposed, contributing to the pollution.

ISIS also targeted oil wells in towns close to the Tigris, spilling crude oil into the streets and river. Even when attacks did not directly target oil installations or water infrastructure, explosions would damage nearby sewage networks, pipelines and water-treatment plants.

It’s been five years since the war against ISIS officially ended, but more than 1 million Iraqis remain what’s known as “internally displaced persons” living in informal settlements. In Baghdad alone, there are more than 1,000 informal settlement areas that lack sanitation facilities and sewage disposal. These displaced people often have no choice but to dispose of their waste directly into the Tigris River.

And it’s not just these internal refugees. In a country that lacks proper strategy for waste collection and disposal, throwing trash into the river has become a common practice.

Can the Tigris and Its People Be Saved?

Experts say the Tigris is dying and requires urgent action.

Last November Cascades — a consortium established to examine how cascading climate change effects can cross international borders — published a study of the Euphrates-Tigris basin which found that ”the gradual deterioration of water quality is rendering a significant proportion of water unusable.” The researchers said Iraq urgently needs to reduce the sources of water pollution and use its water supplies more efficiently.

Unfortunately no government projects currently focus on putting an end to the gradual destruction of the river.

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A post shared by سفراء النظافة (@clean.iraq)

But the rapid growth of Clean Iraq suggests that at least some Iraqis themselves want to mobilize and work together to restore the Tigris’s glory. Already some 30,000 volunteers have contributed to cleaning the river. The first cleanups took place only in Baghdad, where they’ve managed to fill more than 24,000 garbage bags with trash found around the river and cleaned a stretch of three kilometers. As the initiative gained publicity, citizens of other governorates expressed interest in joining. With the permission of Al-Tameemi, they started organizing events in other parts of Iraq as well.

Despite their achievements, there’s a risk that the campaign could become stagnant, especially if people start losing their motivation to clean the river.

Cleanup volunteer — Abdul, a volunteer taking part in the cleanup campaign. Photo: Katarzyna Rybarczyk

That could happen if they fail to see any progress. Many of the volunteers I met told me that it’s not uncommon for Iraqis to throw their waste into the river without realizing the harms. Therefore, even as the campaign grows, there will always be people who keep polluting the Tigris.

Cascades’ paper confirmed that, saying Iraq is characterized by “low public awareness on environmental topics.”

And even if all the rubbish is removed from the river’s banks and people stopped adding new garbage, the water is still contaminated with toxins from trash that already broke down, oil spills and industrial waste.

Environmental Peace

Al-Tameemi, recognizing that gap, says he wants to not only clean the river but teach people about the importance of keeping the environment garbage- and pollution-free.

“It’s not just about cleaning the river,” says a videographer named Karrar, who creates content for the campaign’s social media accounts. “It’s about spreading awareness, making a change and bringing people together.”

Theoretically, it might achieve even more for Iraq.

According to a special issue of the journal International Affairs published in January 2021, environmental initiatives like this can play a major role in peacebuilding in conflict areas. Papers in the issue used cases from Colombia, Liberia, Yemen and other countries to show how working together on protecting nature reduces tensions, drives integration and unites members of society.

“Environmental challenges offer opportunities for cooperation,” the editors wrote, “because they transcend political boundaries, may be less sensitive politically than other topics, and may stimulate actors to consider longer time horizons… Cooperation on environmental challenges can be instrumental in building trust and understanding between social groups.”

After decades of tyranny, Iraq finally appears to be stable enough that people can focus on actions such as this. Environmental degradation is a major consequence of armed conflict, so cleaning the Tigris River could be a sign of the country’s cautious recovery.

As part of that, the Clean Iraq movement — which has received global news coverage — could show foreigners that Iraq is open to the world and that it’s no longer a war-torn country where people live amid horror and fear.

“We are always happy to see foreigners in Baghdad,” says Abdul, a participant at one of the cleanup events. “Not many people come here because they think the war is still happening. But Iraq is peaceful now, and it is a beautiful place.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Strengthening Mussels for Cleaner Rivers

Time for Solar Energy to Shine

President Biden made waves with recent actions to boost solar manufacturing, but states have been busy, too.

This spring President Biden gave a shot in the arm to solar and other clean-energy technologies with a couple of important executive actions. The move comes at a critical time, since Congress has yet to pass comprehensive legislation needed to help fight climate change.

Fossil fuels still make up the largest share of electricity generation in the United States, but renewables have chipped away at dirty power and now represent the majority of new power sources coming online.

Wind is behind nearly half of all electricity generation from renewables, but a lot of solar is waiting in the wings. Berkeley Labs reports that solar combined with battery storage accounted for 85% of new capacity awaiting grid connection at the end of 2021.

The last decade has been a big one for solar, with a 40-fold increase in electricity-generation capacity between 2010 and 2021.

That has a lot to do with solar panel costs coming down and efficiency going up. In 2010 the price for residential solar was $7.53 per watt — that fell to $2.65 at the beginning of 2021. Over the same time, utility-scale solar dropped from $5.66 per watt to $0.89.

But not everything about solar is bright this year. The outlook dimmed a bit as economic and political forces squeezed the industry.

manufacturing lab — Solar modules manufacturing by Giga Solar. Photo: Solar Giga (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Federal Action

The first quarter of the year wasn’t a good one for solar — installations fell 24% compared to the first quarter of last year.

One of the biggest issues stems from a Department of Commerce investigation into whether China is skirting import duties by shipping solar components through a handful of southeast Asian nations. That’s led to a threat of new tariffs, which has put nearly two-thirds of planned U.S. solar installations in jeopardy, according to a report from industry researcher Rystad Energy.

It’s put the Biden administration’s climate agenda in peril.

To counter that, the administration in June announced a two-year tariff exemption on solar panels from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam as a result of the Commerce investigation.

Those four countries account for about 80% of the U.S. supply of solar modules, which is why most U.S. solar companies welcomed the news.

“The 24-month tariff extension offers some certainty at a time when it is needed most, and it buys some time for industrial clean energy policies like long-term tax credits and manufacturing incentives to be put into place,” reported PV Magazine.

About two-thirds of solar industry jobs in the United States are in the development and installation of projects, with only 14% in manufacturing, according to Canary Media.

Of course, the companies that do manufacture in the United States, like Auxin Solar, weren’t excited by Biden’s action.

But the president also took action to boost domestic production by invoking the Defense Protection Act to kickstart manufacturing of solar-panel parts and other clean energy-related technologies, including insulation, heat pumps and materials needed for power-grid infrastructure.

Additionally, the administration hopes to spur more domestic solar-manufacturing capacity by using the federal procurement process to streamline government purchasing.

Now come a few more critical steps. Congress needs to get to work funding these initiatives, and homeowners and businesses need incentives to start buying the products.

Regional Growth

Action on solar hasn’t been confined to D.C.

Florida scored a defensive solar win, which came from a somewhat unlikely source: Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, not normally a pal to environmentalists. In April he vetoed a bill that would have set back the state’s burgeoning solar industry by reducing how much money homeowners with rooftop solar get from the extra power they send back to the grid.

In Puerto Rico residents are tapping solar and storage systems on their road to recovery and resilience after a duo of devastating hurricanes hit the island in 2017. There are now more than 8 times as many rooftop solar systems compared to 2016. Much of the growth has been spurred by grassroots efforts, though, and residents say more help from the government and utilities is still needed.

New York, meanwhile, is using the power of the sun to edge closer to its goal of getting 70% of its electricity from renewables by 2030. On June 2, state officials announced contracts for 22 large-scale solar and energy storage projects with enough capacity to power 620,000 homes. It’s the largest land-based procurement so far for the state and will add more than 2 gigawatts of solar and 160 megawatts of storage.

Siting Concerns

A significant advancement came from Maryland, where the state legislature passed House Bill 1039 to exempt solar projects from county and municipal property taxes if half of the electricity they generate goes to low-to-moderate income customers at a cost that’s 20% lower than the base rate of the local utility.

That’s good for climate equity. But the bill had another bonus. The same tax breaks also apply for projects that make use of marginal lands like rooftops, brownfields and landfills, as well as for “agrivoltaics,” in which land accommodates both solar and agriculture.

panels stretch down long, flat roof. — A rooftop solar project in San Pedro at the Port of Los Angeles. Photo: Eric Garcetti (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Maryland’s plan takes a critical issue into consideration: As solar installations increase, where the projects are sited has become paramount.

Massachusetts is making a big push for renewables, but some of that is coming at the expense of important natural areas.

A 2020 Audubon report found that a quarter of land being developed in the state is for ground-mounted solar arrays. Additional research found that most of that development was razing farmland and forest, including in the ecologically important Coastal Pine Barrens.

If current trends hold, 150,000 acres of land will be lost to development for renewable energy in Massachusetts — land that provides other important functions fighting climate change.

The Audubon report suggests a different path forward: “We must encourage the continued growth of the solar energy sector while emphasizing rooftop and parking lot canopy systems rather than ground-mounted arrays that degrade wildlife habitat and other important values of natural land.”

Existing rooftops could meet up to 47% of the electricity needs in Massachusetts. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

A report from Environment America found that big box retail stores, shopping centers and malls across the country have a combined 7.2 billion square feet of rooftop space that could help generate 84.4 terawatt-hours of solar electricity each year — enough to power almost 8 million average U.S. homes. The states with the biggest potential, according to the study, are California, Florida, Texas, Ohio and Illinois.

California also has another opportunity beyond marginal land — marginal waters.

This fall, a pilot project to construct solar panels over irrigation canals will begin in Turlock Irrigation District near Modesto. The solar-water combo is expected to be a win-win. The canal water will cool the solar panels, increasing their efficiency, while the panels stretched over the canals will provide shade, lowering evaporation and reducing the growth of aquatic weeds.

If the test project is successful, California has ample opportunity to expand it. Research by University of California Merced found that covering the state’s 4,000 miles of canals with solar panels could reduce evaporation by 82%, save 63 billion gallons of water a year, and generate 13 gigawatts of power.

There’s another huge benefit. Building these arrays over California’s canals could prevent more than 80,000 acres of farmland or natural habitat from being developed into solar projects, according to UC Merced engineering professor Roger Bales, who’s been involved in the research.

“Solar canal installations will also protect wildlife, ecosystems and culturally important land,” he wrote in The Conversation. “Large-scale solar developments can result in habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation, which can harm threatened species such as the Mojave desert tortoise.”

Desert solar development has also endangered desert plant communities, which play important ecological roles, as well as providing cultural resources to Tribes.

While we do need to build more solar, we don’t need to do it in sensitive habitats. If more states — or the federal government — follow Maryland’s lead and incentivize renewable development on marginal lands, we can advance clean energy while not further imperiling biodiversity.

And we’ll need to — we can’t fight climate change without thriving ecosystems.

Previously in The Revelator:

The Race to Build Solar Power in the Desert — and Protect Rare Plants and Animals

Links From the American Brink: Abortion, Insurrection, Pollution

The Supreme Court pushed its radical agenda this past month, while the threat from extremism grew. But all is not lost.

The United States took a hard, fast and dangerous turn during the last eight days of June, when members of the Supreme Court’s ultraconservative wing — emboldened and empowered by four years of the Trump administration and an even longer period of court-stacking machinations by Sen. Mitch McConnell — fulfilled their long-simmering mandate to cripple the federal government and reduce the rights enjoyed and depended on by Americans.

Their accomplishments included slashing reproductive rights, expanding gun rights, reducing Miranda rights, eroding the separation of church and state, whittling away at Tribal sovereignty and, in one last blow, partially dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate pollution — a decision that could have dangerous effects on the worldwide climate as well as the power of all other federal agencies.

“I cannot think of many things more frightening,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent of the EPA decision. “Today, the Court strips the Environmental Protection Agency of the power Congress gave it to respond to ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.’ … The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision-maker on climate policy.”

Meanwhile, thanks to the Congressional commission investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, we learned more about the insidious depths of Trump’s attempted coup. Apparently, democracy came close to ending not with a bang or a whimper but with the signatures of fake electors, the crash of fine China, and the sight of leftover ketchup dripping down the White House walls.

What does this momentous month mean for the future? We’ve collected some essential reads, context and commentary about these issues.

Abortion and Reproductive Rights:

Why are abortion rights an environmental issue? Kierán Suckling, executive director of our parent organization, the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote this: “Without reproductive justice there can’t be environmental justice. People, wildlife and wild places across the world are threatened by the same systems of abuse and exploitation. Pregnant people are particularly vulnerable to the harms of pollution, and sexual and reproductive healthcare are critical to help people face the challenges of the climate crisis.”

Ms. Magazine made similar points back in March in an extensive piece by Katherine Gladhart-Hayes, who pointed out that climate change, wildfires, increased storms and pandemics make travel particularly dangerous for any people who need to travel to find abortion access.

For added context, Naveena Sadasivam and Eve Andrews wrote for Grist about how the Roe v. Wade decision would affect pregnant people in pollution hotspots.

Of course, it’s not just abortion. As Justice Clarence Thomas made clear in the Supreme Court’s decision, birth control is now in his crosshairs.

And speaking of birth control, Thomas has an unlikely ally tangentially tied to the environmental movement: online natural-living influencers who promote a “glamorous version of femininity untarnished by modern chemicals,” as Keira Butler at Mother Jones wrote recently. By the way, these are the same types of people who often spread disinformation about vaccines and Covid-19.

On a related note, NBC News sent its producers to several crisis pregnancy centers, which don’t offer abortion services, and found them to be hotbeds of scientific disinformation — often from the same types of faith-based groups that have been known to spread climate disinformation and dissent.

One last added context: Some legal scholars also worry that the ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization narrows who could have standing in legal cases and therefore could limit which cases are heard — a problem that could stretch well beyond women’s health. “Dobbs can be read as a signal that the new conservative majority is poised to embrace a once-minority viewpoint on third-party standing, making it harder for environmental advocates and other public interests to pry open the courthouse door,” John Echeverria, a professor at Vermont Law School, told E&E News.

Insurrection and Extremism:

Will the Jan. 6 hearings make any long-term difference to those whose minds have already been poisoned by Trump’s lies? Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony on June 29 made some inroads into the right-wing media echo chamber, but pundits like Tucker Carlson continue to diminish and disparage the commission’s work — all while spreading more lies and conspiracy theories. Death threats against the committee and their family members highlight this continued threat to democracy, which puts all other progress at risk.

Speaking of threats: Several dozen members of the Proud Boys have been convicted or remain in jail awaiting trial for their roles in the insurrection, but don’t count these far-right extremists out. Although their national leadership is currently in shambles, local Proud Boys chapters have grown since Jan. 6, and they’re increasingly showing up to cause trouble at events like town halls and school board meetings. At least 17% of these appearances have turned violent.

There is, of course, an environmental connection: As climate journalist Emily Atkin wrote in 2020, the Proud Boys and their ilk are driven by “the exact same type of masculinity that researchers have repeatedly shown to be a driving force behind climate denial.” Oh, and some of them are running for or have been voted into office.

The Proud Boys haven’t shown up at many environmental events yet, but let’s not forget the link between violent far-right extremism, racism and eco-fascism, or that Homeland Security says the country “remains in a heightened threat environment” and that it fears further violence from domestic terror.

That threat has grown in the American West, which journalist Leah Sottile calls “a de facto testing ground for the far right to see what it can get away with.” She points to militias summoned by the antigovernment Bundy clan to their infamous 2014 standoff in Nevada and the 2016 occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, adding that members of those militia groups later stormed the Capitol in 2021.

Finally, we also need to remember the link between the insurrection and corporate interests. This relationship is perhaps most closely embodied by one of the foot soldiers of the coup, Jeffrey Clark, who is often mischaracterized in the media as an “environmental lawyer.” But as Lawrence Tribe and many others have pointed out, he’s the opposite — “a hired gun for the fossil fuel industry.”

Pollution and Climate:

Why does the Supreme Court’s ruling against the EPA matter? Oddly enough, it doesn’t change any existing regulations, but it does place limits on future regulations from the EPA and other agencies. Basically, the court is saying that major policies and actions need to come from Congress, not a federal agency. Of course, given the current disfunction in Congress, how likely is that?

Adding further context, Cara Horowitz, the co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law, explained that the ruling “holds that it is unlawful for EPA to regulate existing power plant climate pollution by requiring generation shifting from dirtier sources to cleaner ones — which my grid expert clients and many others know to be the best, cheapest and fastest way to reduce climate pollution from this sector.”

How did this happen? Writing in The New Yorker, Bill McKibben gives some important historical context for the ruling, explaining how it’s “the culmination of a five-decade effort to make sure that the federal government won’t threaten the business status quo.” Echoing that, Emily Sanders of the Center for Climate Integrity wrote that Big Oil finally got what it paid for, and Coral Davenport of The New York Times wrote that the case was “the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to the oil and coal industries, to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming.” We can be sure that push will continue now that they have this victory under their belts.

But all is not lost. Writing on the Legal Planet blog, environmental law professor Dan Farber calls the Supreme Court decision “more than a flesh wound” but emphasizes that “it didn’t hit any vital organs.” He continues: “Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion leaves EPA other options to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. It also gives a fairly narrow reading to a legal doctrine that could limit the fallout from the case in terms of other regulatory powers.”

On that note, climate journalist Amy Westervelt laid out several ways the EPA, the federal government (especially the Biden administration), state and local governments, and activists can still act on climate. It’s a great roadmap for change.

Looking to the future, this ruling isn’t the only legal threat to environmental protections. Umair Irfan and Neel Dhanesha at Vox highlight some concerning state actions and an upcoming Supreme Court case in October that will determine how the EPA is able to regulate pollution in our waterways.

Finally, here’s an important reminder from the not-so-distant past: what America looked like before the EPA.

Previously in The Revelator:

Life Before the EPA

Regulators Have a Big Chance to Advance Energy Equity

A small circle of industry insiders controls crucial decisions about energy projects. New changes — if done right — can offer communities a seat at the table.

These days the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission can no longer be described as a technocratic, under-the-radar agency that sets policies on energy infrastructure and market rules, rates, and standards.

As energy policy has become front-page news — driven by climate change and recent price volatility — FERC has begun updating its regulations to meet new exigencies. The agency has taken big steps this spring to support affordability and a transition to cleaner energy, including proposing updates to the way it permits natural gas pipelines and beginning to overhaul how regions plan and pay for the expansion of electricity transmission infrastructure.

These moves have provoked controversy because their stakes are high: Billions of dollars of infrastructure expenditures are on the table. What gets built, who pays, who hosts this infrastructure, and who makes those decisions also have major implications for equity and racial justice.

In 2017 the residents of Union Hill, Virginia, a predominantly Black community settled by freed slaves in the aftermath of the Civil War, witnessed this firsthand. Over their objections FERC approved plans by the developer of the controversial Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline to site a highly polluting facility known as a compressor station in their community.

Spurred in part by pushback from incidents like these, this past April FERC signaled a new approach when it released its Equity Action Plan, which aims to better account for how its policies affect structurally marginalized communities.

People carrying union hill banner walk down the street — A protest march and calls for equity in Union Hill, Va. Photo: Caitlin Morris, (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Fittingly, the plan casts the agency’s newly constituted Office of Public Participation in a starring role. As we document in a recent report, this office represents a crucial experiment in “energy democracy” — that is, making FERC’s policymaking actions more responsive to and inclusive of the public, particularly members of marginalized communities.

In removing barriers to public participation, the Office of Public Participation has the potential to bring a sea change to an agency that has historically been inhospitable to the views of anyone beyond a small circle of industry insiders. Our report offers several recommendations for how the new office can fulfill its potential and spur FERC to better engage with the public and incorporate their on-the-ground perspectives to inform policy — and ultimately make better, fairer decisions. Many of our recommendations closely align with three priorities outlined in FERC’s plan.

The plan’s first priority is building the office itself. We urge FERC to continue the progress it has made over the past year in establishing its institutional capacity, including identifying leadership and hiring staff.

To further advance this priority, we call on the Office of Public Participation to enact new internal policies like instituting an “intervenor funding” program that would set aside money to reimburse individuals for some or all costs incurred when participating in the agency’s policymaking processes, such as attorneys’ fees. Inadequate funds are one of the biggest barriers to participation that communities face. The Equity Action Plan singled out intervenor funding as a key objective for establishing the office.

A second priority in the plan calls for aligning natural gas projects with environmental justice principles. FERC’s tentative moves in this direction have garnered substantial industry pushback, but the necessary reforms are anything but radical — they merely update FERC’s longstanding statutory obligation to ensure that pipeline development is in the public interest.

The office can and should go further, though. Our report recommends that it take steps to revise procedural requirements for participating in natural gas project proceedings and identify opportunities for streamlining and simplification. These include instituting a new policy in which it serves as FERC’s main point of contact with communities affected by natural gas pipeline development. Currently pipeline developers themselves play this role, despite the obvious conflict of interest.

But it is not enough merely to collect views — FERC must integrate them into its decision-making. To this end, a third priority of its Equity Action Plan looks at whether it has the skills and cultural commitment to promote equity as part of its organization mission. It calls for surveying staff capacity to incorporate equity considerations into the agency’s decision-making and providing equity training for staff.

Internal agency capacity will play a crucial role in promoting equity. We call on the Office of Public Participation to reorient FERC’s organizational culture so it genuinely values and embraces public engagement. It must go beyond simple staff training and adopt relevant performance metrics that reinforce widespread commitment to this culture and incentivize the agency’s political leaders to nurture and sustain it over the long term.

Worsening climate-induced disasters disproportionately harm those who contributed the least to them. Our nation’s energy policy must incorporate the voices of those who pay the greatest price for our fossil-fueled energy prosperity. Communities like Union Hill must have a meaningful chance to shape the energy policy questions that affect them, including where they get their energy from and what, if any, energy infrastructure they will host. Indeed, while Union Hill was eventually able to block construction of the compressor station in their community, it was only after prevailing at a different agency under a different law.

As it scales up its operations, FERC’s Office of Public Participation has a historic opportunity to redesign public participation toward a goal of energy democracy. If successful it will not only bring greater fairness and equity to its work but stand out as a leader among agencies in advancing our constitutional vision of government “by the people.”

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.

Previously in The Revelator:

Closing the Tree Equity Divide

Can Sanctions Help Tackle Climate Change?

New research highlights the benefits sanctions can provide to international cooperation, while proposed legislation would put them into action.

Over the past few weeks, the United States and other nations have slapped a series of new financial sanctions on the Russian Federation and its key officials and oligarchs. The hope is that those sanctions will put enough pressure on Vladimir Putin and associated powers in Russia to convince them to end their brutal war against Ukraine.

Could similar sanctions help protect the planet from countries that fail to meet their international climate obligations?

New economic and social-science research out of Germany and Russia puts that question to the test.

The study — conducted and submitted before the invasion of Ukraine — examined the potential of sanctions to improve international cooperation to address climate change. To accomplish this, the researchers designed an experiment to analyze the actions of individuals from Germany, where sanctions have historically paid off, and Russia, where historical sanctions haven’t been as effective. More than 750 people participated in the study, which assessed how they managed simulated funds devoted to collective risk under scenarios with and without sanctions.

The results were “very surprising,” says lead author Gianluca Grimalda, an experimental economist and social psychologist with the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and the Centre for Global Cooperation Research at Duisburg-Essen University.

Although the paper calls Russia an example of “low-cooperator groups,” the researchers still found that participants representing both nations improved their levels of international financial cooperation under scenarios that included climate sanctions.

“What I would have expected — and what surely many other researchers would have expected — would have been a drop in cooperation in the international interaction,” Grimalda says. “When one mixes high cooperators and low cooperators in a group, normally a ‘bad apple effect’ predominates. That is, high cooperators tend to become dissatisfied with the presence of free riders in their group, and they lower their own cooperation levels. The antagonism between different national groups makes things even worse.”

A field of flags against a blue sky — Photo: Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro/DoD

Grimalda credits their experimental results to two factors. First, they used sanctions, which are more active than you might find in other research into international cooperation. Second, they used a model that focused on avoiding collective losses, rather than one in which international cooperation would simply contribute to the public good.

That doesn’t mean there was no “public good” in their outcome. “This is a ‘positive sum’ game, where a surplus exists if everyone cooperates,” he says.

That makes it different from Russia’s war against Ukraine. “It would be tempting to apply our study to the understanding of the tragedy of Ukraine war, but the context is obviously very different,” he says. “A war is a zero-sum game, or probably a ‘negative-sum game,’ in which everyone loses.”

That said, their experiment showed that individuals from both Germany and Russia would be willing to cooperate with interests from outside their own nations.

Would political leaders follow? Not necessarily. “I often think that decisions made by political leaders do not really reflect the preferences of their citizens,” Grimalda says. “Politicians — especially in autarchies — often have a private agenda that clashes with citizens’ interests and wellbeing. I think there is more distrust and hatred among political leaders than among ordinary citizens of the countries they represent.”

Putin at a podium — Vladimir Putin speaks at the U.N. climate conference in 2015. Photo: United Nations (uncredited) (CC BY 2.0)

Perhaps that’s one reason why some past sanctions have done more environmental harm than good. “Fascist Italy, imperial Japan and Franco’s Spain all responded to Western energy sanctions by promoting self-sufficiency in fuel production, at tremendous economic and environmental cost,” historian Nicholas Mulder wrote in The Nation in 2019.

To increase their effectiveness, Mulder and other experts suggest that climate sanctions be levied against corporations, not nations.

Progressive Democrats in the United States are already thinking along those lines. Last year Sens. Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, along with Rep. Veronica Escobar, called on the Biden administration to levy sanctions against the government officials, individuals and corporations “that are perpetrating the worst climate damage.”

As the legislators wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, “Combined with additional climate diplomacy with key countries like China, financial sanctions would ensure that addressing the climate crisis remains at the center of U.S. foreign and national security strategy.” They urged the administration to employ the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to accomplish these climate goals — a new direction for both of those laws.

china air pollution — Air pollution in China. Photo: Nicolò Lazzati (CC BY 2.0)

That call built on ideas set forth in legislation proposed by Markey and Escobar. The Targeting Environmental and Climate Recklessness Act would “restrict access to the U.S. financial system for those individuals and companies most responsible for exacerbating climate change.” The bill was referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in April 2021 but hasn’t moved forward since.

“The climate crisis is an existential threat to our planet, which is why the United States must exhaust all of the tools we possess to hold destructive companies and individuals responsible for contributing to the worst effects of climate change accountable,” Markey tells The Revelator. “I will continue to engage with the Biden administration to use the available domestic and foreign policy tools at our disposal to hold destructive companies and individuals responsible for contributing to the worsening effects of climate change.”

Of course, American companies, CEOs and legislators have in many cases also failed to rein in emissions in the United States, and the country has fallen way behind its climate goals. Democrats last year also proposed a $500 billion tax against big polluters — including U.S.-based companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron and international players with U.S. subsidiaries. And the European Union could soon vote on a proposal to tax imported goods based on their carbon emissions. Neither of these ideas quite fall into the realm of sanctions, but they could complement tariffs and other efforts.

Of course, the long-term effect of sanctions related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine remain to be seen, and this March Russia claimed sanctions will harm the country’s ability to meet its own (already inadequate) climate goals. Without a clear example of success, legislators may still have difficulty pushing sanctions as a solution to the climate crisis.

But Markey says they remain a viable option. “As the real-world impacts of climate change continue to grow,” he says, “we must urgently and strategically enhance our global strategy to prevent and mitigate harm to the environment, while working to protect those that advocate on the planet’s behalf.”

Climate sanctions may yet prove to be one more tool in the toolbox to help accomplish that.

Previously in The Revelator:

10 Ways War Harms Wildlife