Offshore Wind Power Is Ready to Boom. Here’s What That Means for Wildlife

Climate change threatens many marine species, but some climate solutions pose risks, too. Researchers say offshore wind needs continued study and better regulations.

A key part of the United States’ clean energy transition has started to take shape, but you may need to squint to see it. About 2,000 wind turbines could be built far offshore, in federal waters off the Atlantic Coast, in the next 10 years. And more are expected.

East Coast states from Maine to North Carolina are working to procure nearly 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035 — a huge leap from the five turbines currently generating 30 megawatts in Rhode Island waters. If a regulatory backlog of projects awaiting approval from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is finally unstuck — as experts hope will happen this year — the buildout of offshore wind will arrive during a crucial decade for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Spinning turbine blades on the watery horizon may be a welcome sight in the fight against climate change, but they still come with potential threats to marine wildlife. Many environmental groups believe the challenges aren’t insurmountable if scientific study can help inform regulatory action and if we can learn — and adapt our practices — as we go.

“We believe that offshore wind can absolutely be developed in an environmentally responsible manner,” says Francine Kershaw, a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But that has to be incorporated throughout the whole process — from site assessment through development, construction and operations.”

Threats to Birds

One of the gravest threats facing birds is climate change, according to Audubon, which found that rising temperatures threaten nearly two-thirds of North America’s bird species. That’s why the impending development of offshore wind is a good thing, says Shilo Felton, a field manager in the organization’s Clean Energy Initiative, but it also comes with dangers to birds that need to be better studied and mitigated.

The most obvious risk comes from birds colliding with spinning turbine blades. But offshore wind developments can also displace birds from foraging or roost sites, as well as migratory pathways.

Along the Atlantic Coast four imperiled species are of top concern to conservationists: the endangered piping plover, red knot, roseate tern and black-capped petrel, which is being considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act.

“Those four species are of utmost importance to make sure that we understand the impacts,” says Felton. “But beyond that there are many species that are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act that could potentially see more impacts from offshore wind.”

Northern gannets, for example, are at risk not just for collision but habitat displacement.

A northern gannet flying along Cape May, N.J. Photo: Ann Marie Morrison, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

“There’s some evidence that they just won’t use areas where turbines are, but that also excludes them from key foraging areas,” says Felton. Researchers are still studying what this may mean for the birds. But a study published in December 2020 conducted at Bass Rock, Scotland — home to the world’s largest northern gannet colony — found that wind developments could reduce their growth rate, though not enough to cause a population decline.

Other birds, such as great cormorants and European shags, are attracted to wind developments and use the infrastructure to rest while opening up new foraging areas farther from shore.

“There’s plenty of potential for a bird to use a wind farm and still to avoid the turbines themselves,” says Felton.

Birds like pelicans, however, are less versatile in their movements and are at particular risk of collision because of their flight pattern, she says.

But how disruptive or dangerous offshore turbines will be along the East Coast isn’t yet known.

Federal and state agencies, along with nongovernmental organizations, says Felton, have done good research to try to better understand those potential impacts. “But these are all theoretical, because we don’t have a lot of offshore wind yet in the United States.”

Threats to Ocean Life

Birds aren’t the only wildlife of concern. More development in ocean waters could affect a litany of marine species, some of which are already facing other pressures from overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction and climate change.

Scientists have found that marine mammals like whales and dolphins could be disturbed by the jarring sounds of construction, especially if pile driving is used to hammer the steel turbine platform into the seafloor.

The noises, though short-lived, could impede communication between animals, divert them from migration routes or cause them to seek less suitable areas for feeding or breeding. Research from Europe found that harbor porpoises, seals and dolphins may avoid development areas during construction. In most, but not all cases, the animals were believed to have returned to the area following construction.

The biggest concern for conservation groups in the United States is the critically endangered North American right whale. There are fewer than 400 remaining, and the species’ habitat overlaps with a number of planned wind development areas along the East Coast.

“Offshore wind is in no way the cause of the challenges the whales face, but it’s going to be another pressure point,” says John Rogers, senior energy analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Researchers aren’t sure how right whales will respond to the noise from pile driving.

“But we are concerned, based on what we know about how whales react to other noise sources, that they may avoid [wind development] areas,” says Kershaw.

And if that displacement causes them to miss out on important food resources, it could be dangerous for a species already on the brink.

There are a few other potential threats, too.

Ships associated with the development — more plentiful during construction — also pose a danger. In the past few years cargo ships, fishing boats and other vessels have caused half of all deaths of North Atlantic right whales.

whale breaching — A juvenile right whale breaches against the backdrop of a ship near the St. Johns River entrance. Photo: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, NOAA Research Permit #775-1600-10

And after construction, the noise from the spinning turbines will be present in the water at low decibels. “We don’t quite know how the great whales will react to those sounds,” says Jeremy Firestone, the director of the Center for Research in Wind at the University of Delaware.

Other marine mammals may also perceive the noise, but at low decibels it’s unlikely to be an impediment, research has found.

And it’s possible that wind development could help some ocean life. Turbine foundations can attract fish and invertebrates for whom hard substrates create habitat complexity — known as the “reef effect,” according to researchers from the University of Rhode Island’s Discovery of Sound in the Sea program. Exclusion of commercial fishing nearby may also help shelter fish and protect marine mammals from entanglements in fishing gear.

Ensuring Safe Development

Despite the potential dangers, researchers have gathered a few best practices to help diminish and possibly eliminate some risks.

When it comes to ship strikes, the easiest thing is to slow boats down, mandating a speed of 10 knots in wind development areas, and using visual and acoustic monitoring for whales.

Adjusting operations to reduce boat trips between the shore and the wind development will also help. A new series of service operating vessels can allow maintenance staff to spent multiple days onsite, says Kershaw, cutting down on boat traffic.

For construction noise concerns, developers can avoid pile driving during times of the year when whales are present. And, depending on the marine environment, developers could use “quiet foundations” that don’t require pile driving. These include gravity-based or suction caisson platforms.

Floating turbines are also used in deep water, where they’re effectively anchored in place — although that poses its own potential danger. “We have concerns that marine debris could potentially become entangled around the mooring cables of the floating arrays and pose a secondarily entanglement risk to some species,” says Felton, who thinks more research should be conducted before those become operational in U.S. waters — a process that’s already underway in Maine, where a demonstration project is being built.

If loud noises are unavoidable during construction, noise-reducing technologies such as bubble curtains can help dampen the sound. And scheduling adjacent projects to conduct similar work at the same time could limit the duration of disturbances.

ship working at sea — The foundation installation of the off shore wind farm Sandbank using a bubble curtain. Photo: Vattenfall/Ulrich Wirrwa, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Once turbines become operational, reducing the amount of light on wind platforms or using flashing lights could help deter some seabirds, NRDC researchers reported. And scientists are exploring using ultrasonic noises and ultraviolet lighting to keep bats away. “Feathering,” or shutting down the turbine blades during key migration times, could also help prevent fatalities.

“We need to make sure that offshore wind is the best steward it can be of the marine ecosystem, because we want and expect it to be a significant part of the clean energy picture in some parts of the country,” says Rogers. “We also have to recognize that we’re going to learn by doing, and that some of these things we’re going to figure out best once we have more turbines in the water.”

That’s why environmental groups say it’s important to establish baseline information on species before projects begin, and then require developers to conduct monitoring during construction and for years after projects are operational.

Employing an “adaptive management framework” will ensure that developers can adjust their management practices as they go when new information becomes available, and that those best practices are incorporated into the requirements for future projects.

Putting Research Into Action

Advancing these conversations at the federal level during the Trump administration, though, has been slow going.

“We didn’t really have any productive discussions with the administration in the last four years,” says Kershaw.

And when it comes to birds, Felton says the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s recently completed “draft cumulative environmental impact statement” covering offshore wind developments had a lot of good environmental research, but little focus on birds.

“Part of that comes from the current administration’s interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act,” she says.

President Trump has been hostile to both wind energy and birds, and finished gutting the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in his administration’s the final days, removing penalties for companies whose operations kill migratory birds.

There’s hope that the Biden administration will take a different approach. But where the federal government has been lacking lately, Kershaw says, they’ve seen states step up.

New York, for example, has established an Environmental Technical Working Group composed of stakeholders to advise on environmentally responsible development of offshore wind.

The group is led by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, but it isn’t limited to the Empire State. It’s regional in focus and includes representatives from wind developers with leases between Massachusetts and North Carolina; state agencies from Massachusetts to Virginia; federal agencies; and science-based environmental NGOs.

New York’s latest solicitation for clean energy projects includes up to 2,500 megawatts of offshore wind and requires developers to contribute at least $10,000 per megawatt for regional monitoring of fisheries and other wildlife.

Environmental groups have also worked directly with developers, including an agreement with Vineyard Wind — an 800-megawatt project off the Massachusetts coast that could be the first utility-scale wind development in federal waters — to help protect North Atlantic right whales.

The agreement includes no pile driving from Jan. 1 to April 30, ceasing activities at other times when whales are visually or acoustically identified in the area, speed restrictions on vessels, and the use of noise reduction technology, such as a bubble curtain during pile driving.

“The developers signed the agreement with us, and then they incorporated, most, if not all of those measures into the federal permitting documents,” says Kershaw. “The developers really did a lot of bottom up work to make sure that they were being very protective of right whales.”

Environmental groups are in talks with other developers on agreements too, but Felton wants to see best practices being mandated at the federal level.

“It’s the sort of a role that should be being played by the federal government, and without that it makes the permitting and regulation process less stable and less transparent,” she says.” And that in turn slows down the build out of projects, which is also bad for birds because it doesn’t help us address and mitigate for climate change.”

Kershaw agrees there’s a lot more work to be done, especially at the federal level, but thinks we’re moving in the right direction.

“I think the work that’s been done so far in the United States has really laid the groundwork for advancing this in the right way and in a way that’s protective of species and the environment,” she says. “At the same time, it’s important that offshore wind does advance quickly. We really need it to help us combat the worst effects of climate change.”

Will 2021 Be the Year Offshore Wind Power Finally Takes Off?

A presidential administration ready to tackle climate change may help — but it’s the years of planning that could really pay off.

Five lonely wind turbines spin in the state waters off the coast of Rhode Island. They’re the entirety of the Block Island Wind Farm, the United States’ only commercial-scale offshore wind facility currently in service, with an installed capacity of just 30 megawatts.

By contrast, on-land renewables are growing. We’ve installed more than 100 gigawatts of onshore wind capacity and 89 gigawatts of solar.

The Block Island project, completed in 2016, remains a monument to possibility, though. And it’s one that’s about to be realized.

Admittedly, no new commercial-scale offshore wind energy projects will break water this year in the United States. Despite that, the industry is poised for a big year. And we desperately need it, experts say.

“If we’re thinking about powering the nation in line with global climate science assessments, we need serious investment in renewable energy and serious deployment,” says John Rogers, senior energy analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “And that includes large-scale offshore wind.”

Coastal states account for 80% of U.S. electricity demand and the federal government has estimated that offshore wind has the technical potential to supply more than double the country’s demand.

In the next decade our existing five turbines could be joined by 2,000 more — a fleet of projects capable of generating 22 gigawatts of energy.

Those projects would be the result of years of work, efforts which experts say could begin to pay off this year. East Coast states have set ambitious procurement targets for offshore wind, technological advances have made costs competitive and European companies have brought their experience stateside. A White House that will soon look a whole lot greener is likely to be a big bonus.

turbines in the water — Denmark’s Middelgrunden offshore wind farm. Photo: Øyvind Holmstad, (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Europe already has 22 gigawatts of installed capacity, and the European Union hopes to increase that number by 25-fold in the next three decades. Offshore wind’s slow start in the United States has much to do with a climate of regulatory uncertainty and the slow pace of federal permitting — the domain of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). But there are signs that’s changing, too.

“This year I think we will break the logjam on project approvals,” says Jeremy Firestone, the director of the Center for Research in Wind at the University of Delaware. “We might consider that to be the beginning of pretty large and steep buildup.”

Still, it’s not all smooth sailing ahead.

Vineyard Wind Saga

In federal waters along the Atlantic coast there are already 15 active leases for offshore wind projects. Developers for 10 of those that have submitted their construction and operations plans for the federal environmental review and permitting process.

But the fate of the project that had been at the front of the line — Vineyard Wind — could influence the rest.

The 800-megawatt project of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid Renewables was set to be the first utility-scale wind development in federal waters. If approved, it would be built 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and could generate enough electricity to power 400,000 homes.

Vineyard Wind initially expected a federal permitting decision from BOEM in August 2019. But Interior Secretary David Bernhardt unexpectedly announced his agency would instead require a supplemental study to examine the cumulative impacts of all the other offshore wind projects planned in Northeast and mid-Atlantic waters.

The move came after the commercial fishing industry raised concerns that the turbines would interfere with its operations.

The decision also sparked worry among some that it was an intentional delay from President Trump, who’s been outspoken about his dislike of wind energy, even falsely claiming that turbines cause cancer.

“I think it’s important to look closely at projects — and at suites of projects — but that process would have been easier to take if it had been a little bit more predictable and if there was less suspicion that some things were be done just to throw monkey wrenches in the progress of particular projects,” says Rogers.

That supplement to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement was published in June 2020, with the final EIS expected this past December. But then the decision was delayed again. This time until January 15 — just five days before Trump leaves office.

In response, Vineyard Wind added its own speed bump to the process.

The developers announced at the start of December that they wanted to hit pause and were temporarily withdrawing the construction and operations plan so they could update their project with the most recent technology. Replacing the planned 12-megawatt GE Haliade-X wind turbine with a new 13-megawatt turbine would enable the project to trim its 84 turbines to 62, while still producing the same amount of power.

Despite the benefits of a smaller price tag and footprint, experts speculated that the decision was a political calculation and Vineyard Wind wanted to push off a decision on its project until the Biden administration took the helm.

But Trump’s Interior Department responded by declaring that the Vineyard Wind application was being terminated and its developers would need to restart the application process for a federal permit.

What that means to the timeline of the project, and the other developments waiting in the permitting line behind it, is unclear. Years of scientific inquiry and project planning have already been completed, so in theory, restarting the process wouldn’t be starting from square one.

“BOEM already knows a lot and they will still know a lot come Jan. 21,” says Rogers. “One could imagine that they should remember what they know and, assuming that the science is solid, they could proceed quickly.”

If Vineyard Wind does get its eventual go-ahead from BOEM, the hope is that the completed cumulative environmental impact statement could help speed up the process for other projects in the pipeline.

“And that will give some needed confidence to the industry and their investors that these projects are going to move forward,” says Firestone.

It’s also likely that another project will leapfrog Vineyard Wind. A 132-megawatt project in New York by Ørsted and Eversource Energy is now next in the queue.

States Drive Action

The federal approval process is paramount, but we wouldn’t be standing on this precipice without a few other factors, too. One of the biggest is the push from state governments to mandate offshore wind procurement in the mix of clean energy solutions being employed.

States from North Carolina to Maine have used the legislative or regulatory process to call for upwards of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035. Rogers predicts that offshore wind along the eastern seaboard “is going to be the dominant piece of the expected power mix as we look to fully decarbonize.”

Governor Ralph Northam at a press conference — Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announces the Virginia offshore wind demonstration project in 2018. Photo: Governor Ralph Northam (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Virginia, which is looking to procure 5,200 megawatts by 2034, is already off to the races. In 2020 Dominion Energy built a two-turbine pilot project off the state’s coast. Following successful reliability testing, the company has just submitted plans for its full 2,640-megawatt project — the largest thus far in the pipeline.

And while East coast states are leading the charge, there’s offshore wind potential in other coastal waters, too.

The Gulf Coast, now home to the oil and gas industry, is readying for wind development. In November, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards called on BOEM to start a task force to coordinate leasing in federal waters in the Gulf.

On the West Coast, California is studying where offshore wind power could best be sited. Because of the depth of the waters, wind developments will likely be floating arrays — a technology that’s been used in Europe and soon in Maine.

Even lakes are in play. In the Midwest, Icebreaker Wind is nearing approval for a plan to construct North America’s first freshwater offshore wind development on Lake Erie.

Technical Advances and Environmental Challenges

Like the rest of the clean energy industry, offshore wind has seen technology growing by leaps and costs falling. The most noticeable difference is the size of turbines, which have gotten bigger and more efficient.

The blades now stretch about the length of a football field, and towers reach 400 feet. The six-megawatt turbines used at Block Island are now being upgraded to 13-megawatt turbines for new projects. Operating at full power, a single 13-megawatt turbine could supply a whole household’s daily electricity needs in seven seconds, Rogers calculated.

These advances mean that fewer structures need to be constructed in the ocean to generate the same amount of power and they can be farther apart. A decade ago, the thinking was that turbines need to be spaced about 0.6 nautical miles apart. Now the industry says it can make do at 1 nautical mile — which creates a bigger pathway for fishing boats, search and rescue, and other marine vessels.

How the proliferation of wind development along the Atlantic coast will affect wildlife — particularly marine mammals, like endangered North Atlantic right whales, and birds — is still being studied and best practices developed.

Aerial view of two whales — North Atlantic right whales. Photo: NOAA

From a climate change perspective, the impending build out of offshore wind energy is good, says Shilo Felton, the field manager of Audubon’s Clean Energy Initiative. But there are potential harms to birds that include collisions with turbines, or the development displacing birds from foraging or roosting sites, or migratory pathways.

“We don’t really know to what degree the species that we have off the coast of the United States will experience these effects,” she says. “It could be very minimal, but we still want to know.”

The threats to marine mammals are greatest during construction, and some animals could be bothered by noise from the turbines after they’re operational, but experts say there are existing and emerging technologies that could help to avoid or minimize the impact.

“We believe that offshore wind can absolutely be developed in an environmentally responsible manner,” says Francine Kershaw, staff scientist at NRDC. “But it requires a collaborative effort between developers, agencies and other stakeholders.”

Political Landscape

As 2020 came to a close, the wind industry scored wins with the end-of-the-year COVID relief and government spending bill, including a five-year extension for offshore wind tax credits. And with the Biden-Harris administration soon taking up the reins, the political landscape for offshore wind development looks more certain.

“We’ll shortly leave behind an administration that has been at best ambiguous and at worst downright hostile to clean energy and maybe especially offshore wind,” says Rogers. “And there’s no question that the incoming [Biden] administration will be a whole new ballgame when it comes to the importance of addressing climate change, cleaning up the power sector and embracing clean energy.”

As the administration looks to tackle climate change and shore up an economy struggling with the pandemic, offshore wind could boost both, its backers say. The offshore wind industry could add 83,000 the U.S. economy in the next 10 years, according to the American Clean Power Association.

“Continued efforts by the states to build out offshore wind supply chains, port infrastructure and local workforces will be key as the industry develops,” says Laura Morton, senior director of policy and regulatory affairs for the group.

The industry and environmental organizations have their own wishlists from the administration, but University of Delaware’s Firestone says one helpful immediate change would be a budget increase for BOEM.

“It needs to staff up greatly to handle the 30 gigawatts of presently planned offshore wind,” he says. “They need a lot more people in order to review those plans if the projects are to be built in a timely fashion.”

Rogers is optimistic that the new administration, and the years of work that have come before, could result in a breakout year for the industry.

“I think it could be an incredible year for offshore wind,” says Rogers. “And given the scale of the challenges we face — from an energy and an economic perspective — I think we really need it to be an incredible year for offshore wind.”

Justice First: How to Make the Clean Energy Transition Equitable

Switching to renewables won’t solve the inequities already baked into our system, says energy and environmental law expert Shalanda Baker. We need a different approach.

When Shalanda Baker stopped in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2009 to brush up on her Spanish before heading to Colombia, she didn’t realize it would be a life-changing event. She’d just left her job at a corporate law firm with the hope of lending her expertise to coShalanda Bakermmunities fighting coal mines or other dirty energy projects in South America.

But in Oaxaca she met Indigenous community members fighting a different type of energy project: large-scale wind development.

“Their struggles echoed the stories of countless communities around the world affected by oil and gas development: dispossession, displacement, environmental harm, unfair contracts, racism and a litany of concerns about impact to culture and community,” she writes in her new book Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transition.

And she realized that in the pursuit of clean energy and climate solutions, we were on course to replicate many of the same injustices of the fossil fuel economy.

“I knew, in that moment, that this tension — between Indigenous rights and clean energy, between the rush to avert catastrophic climate change and social justice — would form the foundation of my work as an activist and scholar. It would also become my life’s work,” she writes.

Baker is currently a professor of law, public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern University and cofounder of the Initiative for Energy Justice, where she continues to work on making the clean energy transition more just.

Shalanda Baker. Photo: Courtesy

The Revelator spoke with Baker about why we can’t solve our current climate crisis by following the same energy playbook and what it means to put justice concerns first.

“Energy justice” may be a new term for people. How do you define it?

I feel like it’s helpful to distinguish it from environmental justice as well as climate justice. They’re interrelated and, I think, inextricably intertwined.

Environmental justice is a product of the ’80s and ’90s, where people began recognizing the harms that Black and Brown communities disproportionately face due to industry, including the energy system. The movement was really aiming to remediate those harms through policy.

We had seen landmark environmental legislation passed in the 1970s which largely failed to address energy distributional concerns and largely left communities of color to fend for themselves through regular civil rights claims to sort out those burdens. And that actually didn’t work out.

So the environmental justice movement continues and on their shoulders is the climate justice movement, which very much recognizes that island communities and other communities in the Global South, as well as environmental justice communities including in the United States, will be the first and worst impacted by climate change.

So they’re really working to create policies that respond to that vulnerability.

But energy justice for me is the most hopeful aspect of this because it’s forward looking. To me, it’s about dreaming and saying, “What system can we create that not only remediates or helps to remediate some of that environmental harm, but can make us less vulnerable in the face of climate change?”

Rooftop solar, batteries, things that allow us to bounce back more quickly in the face of climate change — this hopeful terrain of energy policy that is reflective of energy justice principles is where I like to do my work.

You write in your book about how you first got into this work because you worried that we were going to make the same mistakes with clean energy that we made with fossil fuels. How have you seen this play out?

My first experience witnessing it was Oaxaca, Mexico where I met the Indigenous peoples fighting against “big wind.” And there was this moment where I thought, “Oh my gosh, we’re doing this the same way.” We’re relying on the same logic, the same structure, the same financing models. The same entities and corporations are basically just changing hats and changing names to be able to participate in the clean economy.

They’re still relying on extraction, exploitation and getting it done for the lowest cost, which often means massive projects that can really change the shape of communities.

That’s what was happening in Mexico in 2009. It’s still very much happening in Oaxaca, which is the windiest place in Mexico. It’s also happening in the Yucatan peninsula in a place that I went to in 2016 to do a Fulbright.

The second time I saw this was in Hawai‘i in 2014. At that time Hawai‘i was embarking on its own ambitious energy reform project. But it was approached as being about just a technical change — a switching of fuels to renewables. They were basically, again, replicating the inequality baked into the system.

In Hawai‘i folks pay the highest costs for electricity in the country, poverty rates are high and BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of color] communities live amidst fossil fuel generation. But BIPOC communities had no real say in shaping the energy future and were structurally excluded from it.

Moreover, communities were not viewed as stakeholders with an authentic economic interest in the projects that were slated for development. Because of this exclusion, I witnessed a lack of community participation in the overall development process, large-scale renewable energy projects going into BIPOC communities and rural communities without authentic community engagement, and a failure to think creatively about economic benefits (such as ownership) available to communities through clean energy development.

For me, the more tragic part was that the stakeholders and policymakers didn’t see the transition as an opportunity to create social change and to remediate structural inequality.

This approach mirrored Mexico’s wind energy development, and I saw, in Hawai‘i, a real missed opportunity to allow communities to design the new energy system in service of their vision and in service of the deeper principles of economic and social justice.

What response do you get when you talk about energy justice now?

If you had asked me that six months ago, I would have said that it’s very hard. No one’s listening, it’s terrible.

But since the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the murder of George Floyd, we have seen this sort of awakening, for lack of a better term, with respect to the multiple layers of oppression and inequality that certain communities face.

We know that communities of color are more likely to be environmental justice communities, breathing in toxic fumes. We know that they’re more likely to experience energy burden, paying more of their overall income to meet basic energy needs. And now we know that they’re more likely to die from a pandemic and that the likelihood of having the worst effects of COVID relates back to the energy system.

So now there’s an opening, there’s an opportunity. Since June there’s really been more of a willingness to learn about this — and not in just the typical places, but with policymakers, with folks from departments of energy around the country and attorneys general offices.

Are there examples of energy justice in action you’ve seen around the country?

I think it’s still too early to tell.

Rooftop solar was one way that people could have more control over their energy system and make some economic gains by creating their own energy and selling it back to the grid or offsetting their own use. But that opportunity and policy framework has largely left out a lot of Black and Brown folks.

solar on house roof — Solar PV panels covering the roof of a home in Oahu, Hawaii. Photo: Tony Webster, (CC BY 2.0)

The alternative was a model called community energy. Sometimes it’s about communities coming together or a church or another kind of institution in the community saying, “let’s create an energy project and we can all share in it.”

But unfortunately, I think we need more research to really know if it’s actually benefiting low-income folks and Black and Brown people.

So the jury is still out for me on how energy justice is manifesting. But I do think there are a couple of policy wins that we’ve seen.

One is in New York through the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which was signed into law about a year ago and was very much a product of grassroots advocacy. A coalition called NY Renews made sure that that law included a carve-out for environmental justice communities [requiring] that 35% of climate investments have to go back to those communities.

We see similar things in California with Senate Bill 535, which is essentially a redistribution of the benefits of that state’s cap and trade policy to so-called “disadvantaged communities.”

So there are wins here and there, but we have to keep fighting.

What needs to change in terms to regulations or financing to help move that fight along?

There are two pieces of the financial story. One is the utility story. We have massive investor-owned entities that are essentially companies that are regulated to be able to provide power and get a reasonable return on any investments that they make in the infrastructure.

So as we move toward more distributed resources, there’s a pushback by these entities because they want to continue to own all of the assets and they want to continue to be able to get a return on any investments that they make in our electricity infrastructure.

But in an ideal world, we’ll see individuals and communities owning more of their energy assets, and then being able to share them across a grid that may be managed by an investor-owned or publicly owned utility.

And I think we need regulators to push utilities to behave in the way that we want them to behave.

We also need to think about how we organize our rate structure. Right now rates are generally regressive and they have higher impacts on the poorest folks.

The literature around energy burden says that we should be paying around 6% of our household income to meet energy needs. But some households are paying upwards of 40% or even 75%.

One problem is that low-income folks often live in housing that isn’t properly weatherized and energy is lost through holes in the walls or inefficient windows. Our standard programs for weatherization assistance are not reaching the places they need to be reaching.

I think the other part of this is how we get households access to rooftop solar. One study has shown a huge racial gap between those who have rooftop solar and those who don’t.

That gap is persistent even when you correct for home ownership, even when you correct for income, which indicates that there may be a racial dimension — maybe racism — with respect to why people just aren’t getting approached for rooftop solar or why they’re not able to put it on their homes.

We need to understand this problem more.

You write in your book about how the goal for many activists has been “climate first, justice later.” But you advocate for justice first. Why?

Bringing in the voices of folks who’ve been historically colonized and excluded for hundreds of years is just the morally right thing to do.

But I think more and more, we’re starting to understand that our fates are linked. And we cannot leave behind certain squads of the population in pursuit of our own gains. We have to make sure that they have a voice at the table and are able to bring life to their own vision of what the energy system should look like.

Or else we’ll get kicked by it at the end of the day. We’ll be hit by the realization that we’ve left out this entire segment of the population that can’t pay their electricity bills or that now has to move because of climate change. That will ultimately create substantial social costs down the road.

So for me, it’s about making a stronger society.

I really want ordinary folks — our aunts or uncles, our friends who are not in energy or environmental law and policy — to engage with these ideas and to see the ways in which energy is such an intimate part of our lives.

I want people to get curious and begin to organize around a just energy future. And to also maybe even get a little upset about the deep injustice that is embedded into not just the fossil fuel system — because that’s a story we know — but into this clean energy transition, where we are not only replicating but in some ways exacerbating inequality.

Why Plastic Pollution Is a Producer Responsibility

We won’t be able to stem the tide of plastic waste until manufacturers are held accountable for their products.

We’re all culprits in the plastic pollution crisis — and that’s by design.

I was reminded of this recently when I ordered a set of carbon filters for my countertop compost bin. (Like most people, I don’t care for smelly kitchens.) The package arrived in a layered-plastic bubble envelope. Inside I found another clear plastic bag encasing the filters. Finally, adding insult to injury, each filter was wrapped individually in plastic. That made at least three layers of plastic for each filter.

Frustratingly, in an effort to reduce waste, I had created more. And I’m not alone. A recent landmark study confirmed that the United States is the most plastic-polluting country in the world. Every 16 hours Americans throw away enough plastic to fill a football stadium.

Adding to my frustration was a sense of helplessness. There was no way I could have known or changed the fact that these products were shrouded in layer upon layer of disposable plastic packaging.

I know millions of Americans feel the same way. We want to reduce our waste, particularly our use of disposable plastic, but we’re rarely given the opportunity. Even when sustainable products are minimally packaged or designed for reuse, they often must be purchased online (delivered in more packaging, often disposable) or at specialty stores (rarities). Countless times I’ve wished that I could have avoided buying things that created so much trash.

But what if, in demanding better of ourselves, we’re missing the point? The companies that design our products and packaging to be disposable not only created this system but are rewarded by it. Waste equals profit through cost avoidance.

Disposable products are cheap for industry, but costly to the rest of us. As taxpayers we have to pay for trash collection and recycling. As citizens we’re exposed to pollutants from excessive manufacturing and microplastics shed from disposable products into our drinking water and food.

Meanwhile our oceans and waterways are being bombarded with millions of tons of plastic every year, killing wildlife and spreading disease.

plastic waste on beach — Marine litter on a remote stretch of Norway coastline. Photo: Bo Eide, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

The cost to the companies making these wasteful products? Zero. In a shareholder profit-maximizing world, making disposable junk wins every time.

But what if these companies were held responsible for their products? Would it prevent the onslaught of plastic junk filling up our landfills and too often ending up in the ocean? History suggests manufacturers would design products to be more reusable, repairable and resilient, because they’d want to limit the waste they would have to manage.

Which brings us to an idea known as producer responsibility.

Producer responsibility programs have existed around the world for decades and have successfully increased collection, recycling and reuse for the products they cover. For the most part these programs regulate hazardous, hard-to-dispose-of products such as batteries, paint, mercury thermostats, carpet, pesticides, tires and pharmaceuticals. Dozens of states already have programs in place for these items.

For example, thermostat makers are required to finance and sometimes run convenient recycling programs to keep mercury, a potent neurotoxin, from escaping and causing damage. Not all programs require producers to collect their own trash, but they all require adequate financing for safe collection. Producers that redesign their products to be less dangerous or more reusable can often avoid higher fees.

Unfortunately we don’t have programs in place for single-use packaging and foodware, despite the fact that those products are also hazardous and hard to dispose of. That’s why we need to create them. British Columbia has already implemented producer responsibility legislation, and a handful of U.S. states — from Washington to Maine — are considering similar programs. If implemented, these programs would create jobs, generate revenue streams for local municipalities to further reduce waste and, in the long run, improve human health and help fight climate change.

With support and pressure from residents, we could see laws pass as early as 2021, forcing our product-makers to either be better or pay out.

The idea is even gaining support at the federal level, as members of Congress respond to growing calls from constituents to address the plastic pollution crisis. Even the remote possibility of a federal program may push states to establish their own programs first.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, industry groups that represent manufacturers of these products have already opposed efforts to hold their clients responsible, which is why we must continue to push our legislators to support these programs now and into the future. In other words, the jig is up — but only if we say so.

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.

What We’ve Lost: The Species Declared Extinct in 2020

Dozens of frogs, fish, orchids and other species — many unseen for decades — may no longer exist due to humanity’s destructive effects on the planet.

A few months ago a group of scientists warned about the rise of “extinction denial,” an effort much like climate denial to mischaracterize the extinction crisis and suggest that human activity isn’t really having a damaging effect on ecosystems and the whole planet.

That damaging effect is, in reality, impossible to deny.

This past year scientists and conservation organizations declared that a long list of species may have gone extinct, including dozens of frogs, orchids and fish. Most of these species haven’t been seen in decades, despite frequent and regular expeditions to find out if they still exist. The causes of these extinctions range from diseases to invasive species to habitat loss, but most boil down to human behavior.

Of course, proving a negative is always hard, and scientists are often cautious about declaring species truly lost. Do it too soon, they warn, and the last conservation efforts necessary to save a species could evaporate, a problem known as the Romeo and Juliet Effect. Because of that, and because many of these species live in hard-to-survey regions, many of the announcements this past year declared species possibly or probably lost, a sign that hope springs eternal.

And there’s reason for that hope: When we devote energy and resources to saving species, it often works. A study published in 2019 found that conservation efforts have reduced bird extinction rates by 40%. Another recent paper found that conservation actions have prevented dozens of bird and mammal extinctions over just the past few decades. The new paper warns that many of the species remain critically endangered, or could still go extinct, but we can at least stop the bleeding.

And sometimes we can do better than that. This year the IUCN — the organization that tracks the extinction risk of species around the world — announced several conservation victories, including the previously critically endangered Oaxaca treefrog (Sarcohyla celata), which is now considered “near threatened” due to protective actions taken by the people who live near it.

“We can turn things around. We don’t just have to sit there and cry,” says conservation scientist Stuart Pimm, founder of the organization Saving Nature.

But at the same time, we need to recognize what we’ve lost, or potentially lost. We can mourn them and vow to prevent as many others as possible from joining their ranks.

With that in mind, here are the species that scientists and the conservation community declared lost in 2020, culled from media reports, scientific papers, the IUCN Red List and my own reporting.

32 orchid species in Bangladesh — One of the first papers of 2020 to report any extinctions announced the probable loss of 17% of Bangladesh’s 187 known orchid species. Some of these still exist in other countries, but even regional extinctions (or extirpations, as they’re called) tell us that we’ve taken a toll on our ecological habitats. A similar paper published just days later suggested that nine more orchid species from Madagascar may have also gone extinct.

extinct orchids — 19th century drawings of orchid species recently declared extinct in Bangladesh.

Smooth handfish (Sympterichthys unipennis) — One of the few extinctions of 2020 that received much media attention, and it’s easy to see why. Handfish are an unusual group of species whose front fins look somewhat like human appendages, which they use to walk around the ocean floor. The smooth species, which hasn’t been seen since 1802, lived off the coast of Tasmania and was probably common when it was first collected by naturalists. Bottom fishing, pollution, habitat destruction, bycatch and other threats are all listed as among the probable reasons for its extinction. Even though the local fishery collapsed more than 50 years ago, the remaining handfish species are still critically endangered, so this extinction should serve as an important wake-up call to save them.

65 North American plants — This past year researchers set out to determine how many plants in the continental United States had been lost. They catalogued 65, including five small trees, eight shrubs, 37 perennial herbs and 15 annual herbs. Some of these had been reported before, but for most this is the first time they’ve been declared extinct. The list includes Marshallia grandiflora, a large flowering plant from the American Southeast that was declared its own species this past year. Too bad it was last seen in 1919 (and has been confused with other species for even longer).

The original Marshallia grandiflora holotype. Smithsonian NMNH (Creative Commons)

22 frog species — The IUCN this year declared nearly two dozen long-unseen Central and South American frog species as “critically endangered (possibly extinct)” — victims of the amphibian-killing chytrid fungus. They include the Aragua robber frog (Pristimantis anotis), which hasn’t been observed in 46 years, and the Piñango stubfoot toad (Atelopus pinangoi), which mostly disappeared in the 1980s. A single juvenile toad observed in 2008 leads scientists to say this species “is either possibly extinct or if there is still an extant population, that it is very small (<50 mature individuals).”

Chiriqui harlequin frog (Atelopus chiriquiensis) and splendid poison frog (Oophaga speciosa) — Last seen in 1996 and 1992, these frogs from Costa Rica and Panama fell victim to the chytrid fungus and were declared extinct in December.

15% of mite species — This requires a lot more research, but a paper published this past August announced “evidence of widespread mite extinctions” following similar disappearances of plants and vertebrates. Mites may not look or sound important, but they play key roles in their native ecosystems. If 15% of the world’s 1.25 million mite species were lost by the year 200, we’re talking tens to hundreds of thousands of extinctions — a number the researchers predict will continue to rise.

Simeulue Hill mynas — An alarming paper called this an “extinction-in-process” of a previously undescribed bird that probably went extinct in the wild in the past two to three years due to overcollection for the songbird trade. A few may still exist in captivity — for now.

17 freshwater fish from Lake Lanao, Mindanao, the Philippines — A combination of predatory invasive species, overharvesting and destructing fishing methods (such as dynamite fishing) wiped these lost species out. The IUCN this year listed 15 of the species as “extinct” following extensive searches and surveys; the remaining two as “critically endangered (possibly extinct).” The predators, by the way, are still doing just fine. Here are the 15 extinct species:

Barbodes disa — last seen in 1964.
Barbodes truncatulus – last seen in 1973.
Barbodes pachycheilus – last seen in 1964.
Barbodes palaemophagus – last seen in 1975.
Barbodes amarus – Last seen in 1982.
Barbodes manalak – Once a commercially valuable fish, last seen in 1977.
Barbodes clemensi – last seen in 1975.
Barbodes flavifuscus – last seen in 1964.
Barbodes katolo – last seen in 1977.
Barbodes palata – last seen in 1964.
Barbodes baoulan — last seen in 1991.
Barbodes herrei — last seen in 1974, when just 40 pounds’ worth of fish were caught.
Barbodes lanaoensis — last seen in 1964.
Barbodes resimus — last seen in 1964.
Barbodes tras — last seen in 1976.

Lake Lanao fish — Some of the extinct species from Lake Lanao. Photo © Armi G. Torres courtesy IUCN.

Bonin pipistrelle (Pipistrellus sturdeei) — Scientists only recorded this Japanese bat one time, back in the 19th century. The IUCN listed it as “data deficient” from 2006 to 2020, a period during which its taxonomy was under debate, but a paper published in March settled that issue, and the latest Red List update placed the species in the the extinct category. The Japanese government itself has listed the bat as extinct since 2014.

Pseudoyersinia brevipennis — This praying mantis from France hasn’t been seen since 1860. Its declared extinction comes after some extended (and still unresolved) debate over its validity as a unique species.

Agave lurida — Last seen in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2001, this succulent was finally declared extinct in the wild this year after numerous expeditions searching for remaining plants. As the IUCN Red List notes, “There are only a few specimens left in ex-situ collections, which is a concern for the extinction of the species in the near future.”

Falso Maguey Grande (Furcraea macdougallii) — Another Oaxacan succulent that’s extinct in the wild but still exists in cultivated form (you can buy these plants online today for as little as $15). Last seen growing naturally in 1973, the plant’s main habitat was degraded in 1953 to make way for agave plantations for mezcal production. Wildfires may have also played a role, but the species’ limited distribution also made it easier to kill it off: “The restricted range of the species also made it very vulnerable to small local disturbances, and hence the last few individuals were easily destroyed,” according to the IUCN.

Eriocaulon inundatum — Last scientifically collected in Senegal in 1943, this pipewort’s only know habitat has since been destroyed by salt mining.

Persoonia laxa — This shrub from New South Wales, Australia, was collected just two times — in 1907 and 1908 — in habitats that have since become “highly urbanized.” The NSW government still lists it as “presumed extinct,” but the IUCN placed it fully in the “extinct” category in 2020.

Nazareno (Monteverdia lineata) — Scientific papers declared this Cuban flowering plant species extinct in 2010 and 2015, although it wasn’t catalogued in the IUCN Red List until this year. It grew in a habitat now severely degraded by agriculture and livestock farming.

Wynberg conebush (Leucadendron grandiflorum) — This South African plant hasn’t been seen in more than 200 years and was long considered the earliest documented extinction from that country, although it only made it to the IUCN Red List recently. Its sole habitat “was the location of the earliest colonial farms,” including vineyards.

Wolseley conebush (Leucadendron spirale) — Another South African plant, this one last seen in 1933 and since extensively sought after, including high rewards for its rediscovery. The IUCN says the cause of its extinction is unknown “but is likely the result of habitat loss to crop cultivation, alien plant invasion and afforestation.” Oh yeah, and it probably didn’t help that in 1809 a scientist wrote that the species possessed “little beauty” and discouraged it from further collection.

Schizothorax saltans — This fish from Kazakhstan was last seen in 1953, around the time the rivers feeding its lake habitats were drained for irrigation. The IUCN did not assess the species before this past year.

Alphonsea hortensis — Declared “extinct in the wild” this year after no observations since 1969, the last specimens of this Sri Lankan tree species now grow at Peradeniya Royal Botanic Garden.

Lord Howe long-eared bat (Nyctophilus howensis) — This island species is known from a single skull discovered in 1972. Conservationists held out hope that it still existed following several possible sightings, but those hopes have now been dashed.

Deppea splendens — This IUCN declared this beautiful plant species “extinct in the wild” this year. All living specimens exist only because botanist Dennis Breedlove, who discovered the species in 1973, collected seeds before the plant’s sole habitat in Mexico was plowed over to make way for farmland. Now known as a “holy grail” for some gardeners, cultivated plants descended from Breedlove’s seeds can be purchased online for as little as $16.95.

Pass stubfoot toad (Atelopus senex) — Another Costa Rican chytrid victim, last seen in 1986.

Craugastor myllomyllon — A Guatemalan frog that never had a common name and hasn’t been seen since 1978 (although it wasn’t declared a species until 2000). Unlike the other frogs on this year’s list, this one disappeared before the chytrid fungus arrived; it was likely wiped out when agriculture destroyed its only habitat.

Spined dwarf mantis (Ameles fasciipennis) — This Italian praying mantis was only scientifically collected once, in or around 1871, and never seen again. The IUCN says the genus’s taxonomy is “rather confusing and further analysis need to be done to confirm the validity of this species.” Here’s what we do know, though: There are none to be found today, despite extensive surveys.

Scleria chevalieri — This Senagalese plant, last seen in 1929, once grew in swamps that have since been drained to irrigate local gardens.

Hawai‘i yellowwood (Ochrosia kilaueaensis) — This tree hasn’t been seen since 1927. Its rainforest habitat has been severely degraded by invasive plants and goats, as well as fires. It’s currently listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, but the IUCN declared it extinct this past year.

Roystonea stellate — Scientists only collected this Cuban palm tree a single time, back in 1939. Several searches have failed to uncover evidence of its continued existence, probably due to conversion of its only habitats to coffee plantations.

Jalpa false brook salamander (Pseudoeurycea exspectata) — Small farms, cattle grazing and logging appear to have wiped out this once-common Guatemalan amphibian, last seen in 1976. At least 16 surveys since 1985 did not find any evidence of the species’ continued existence.

Faramea chiapensis — Only collected once in 1953, this Mexican plant lost its cloud-forest habitat to colonialism and deforestation.

Euchorium cubense — Last seen in 1924, this Cuban flowering plant — the only member of its genus — has long been assumed lost. The IUCN characterized it as extinct in 2020 along with Banara wilsonii, another Cuban plant last seen in 1938 before its habitat was cleared for a sugarcane plantation.

Aloe silicicola — Last seen in 1920, this plant from the mountains of Madagascar enters the IUCN Red List as “extinct in the wild” due to a vague reference that it still exists in a botanical garden. Its previous habitat has been the site of frequent fires.

Chitala lopis — A large fish from the island of Java, this species hasn’t been seen since 1851 (although many online sources use this taxonomic name for other “featherback” fish species that still exist). It was probably wiped out by a wide range of habitat-degrading factors, including pollution, unsustainable fishing and near-complete deforestation around nearby rivers.

Eriocaulon jordanii — This grass species formerly occurred in two known sites in coastal Sierra Leone, where its previous habitats were converted to rice fields in the 1950s.

Amomum sumatranum — A relative of cardamom, this plant from Sumatra was only scientifically collected once, back in 1921, and the forest where that sample originated has now been completely developed. The IUCN says one remaining cultivated population exists, so they’ve declared it “extinct in the wild.”

Lost shark (Carcharhinus obsoletus) — This species makes its second annual appearance on this list. Scientists described this species in 2019 after examining decades-old specimens, noting that it hadn’t been observed since the 1930s. This year the IUCN added the species to the Red List and declared it “critically endangered (possibly extinct).”

Cora timucua — This lichen from Florida was just identified from historical collections through DNA barcoding. Unfortunately no new samples have been collected since the turn of the 19th century. The scientists who named the species this past December call it “potentially extinct” but suggest it be listed as critically endangered in case it still hangs on in remote parts of the highly developed state. They caution, however, that it hasn’t turned up in any recent surveys.

Dama gazelle (Nanger dama) in Tunisia — This critically endangered species still hangs on in a few other countries, and in captivity, but the death of the last individual in Tunisia marked one more country in which the gazelle has now been extirpated and serves as a stark reminder to keep the rest from fading away.

Midnight Rush: 6 Ways Trump Trashed the Environment During the Holidays

Protections for endangered species, disaster assistance and conservation were all targets of the most recent round of attacks on the environment.

This holiday season just about everything was different. Vacations were postponed. Parties and family get-togethers were canceled or moved online as folks hunkered down at the request of public-health officials. But one thing continued as usual: President Trump’s attacks on the environment.

In the weeks following the Nov. 3 election, Trump’s team continued its unprecedented onslaught on environmental regulations, with nearly a dozen new rollbacks or threats to public health, wildlife, clean air, public lands and the climate.

As the New Year approached, the assaults didn’t let up. Here are some of the most recent:

1. Cutting Disaster Funding

Despite a record-tying 16 weather and climate disasters topping $1 billion each this year in the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency proposed a plan to curtail federal disaster aid.

It would affect wealthier states the most, requiring that they have higher levels of damage than less wealthy states to get federal assistance.

The proposal, announced on Dec. 14, “would be one of the most significant revisions of federal disaster policy in nearly a half-century and comes as states grapple with massive fiscal shortfalls due to the pandemic,” E&E News reported.

The new rule is now open for public comments until Feb. 12 and would fall under the incoming Biden administration to move it forward — if it wishes.

2. Efficiency Rollbacks

The Department of Energy took two steps back on Dec. 15., finalizing new rules that ease efficiency requirements for some fixtures and appliances.

The move comes a year after Trump complained that showerheads don’t have enough flow for him to wash his hair and toilets need to be flushed 10 or 15 times, which earned him a hearty amount of ridicule on social media.

But his new rules are no laughing matter when it comes to conservation and efficiency.

One of the rules would roll back a water-efficiency requirement for showerheads put in place by Congress in 1992 during the George H.W. Bush administration. The other would allow for some new washers and dryers to use more water and energy.

Both would amount to more needlessly wasted energy, water and money.

3. No Help for Monarchs

monarchs on leaves — Monarch butterflies stop in Beatrice, NE enroute to Mexico. Photo: John Carrel, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Monarch butterflies on both the east and west coasts are in perilous decline, with populations falling 80% or more. So it made sense that on Dec. 15 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ruled that the butterflies were in need of protection under the Endangered Species Act. But the agency unfortunately decided those protections wouldn’t be immediately forthcoming.

Monarchs were essentially told to get in line behind other species awaiting protection — and there are a lot of those these days. “The Trump administration has listed only 25 species — fewer than any since the [Endangered Species] act took effect in 1973,” the AP reported. “The Obama administration added 360.”

The current plan proposes delaying action to list monarchs until 2024, which would then be followed by another year of public comment and development of the final rule: time the species may not have.

4. Pardons

In late December Trump issued dozens of pardons and commutations in what The Guardian called “another audacious application of presidential power to reward loyalists.” The list included predictable names of political allies like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, but among them was a pardon for Utah state Rep. Phil Lyman.

Lyman has railed against the federal management of public lands and in 2015, when he was serving as a San Juan County commissioner, he led 50 all-terrain vehicles on a ride through Utah’s Recapture Canyon. The area had been closed to motorized vehicle traffic to protect archeological sites. The illegal stunt earned him 5 days in jail and a $96,000 fine.

5. Airplane Emissions

On Dec. 28 the EPA finalized the first rule regulating greenhouse gas emissions from commercial airplanes. But hold your applause: The historic step isn’t likely to amount to much.

The agency said that all the planes likely to be affected by the rule would be compliant by the date required, and therefore, EPA doesn’t think there’ll be any emission reductions associated with the greenhouse gas regulations or that they’ll help spur technical improvements that wouldn’t already have happened.

This “do-nothing rule,” as environmental groups have dubbed it, may be hard for the Biden administration to quickly undo as the EPA has decided to forgo the usual 30-day waiting period between the publication of the final rule and its implementation.

“The agency has used the procedural tactic — which is legally allowed with ‘good cause’ — in recent weeks in an apparent effort to obstruct the incoming Biden administration,” E&E News reported.

6. Endangered Species Act

The outgoing Trump administration took two more swings at the Endangered Species Act, which it has worked to undo in the last four years.

On Dec. 15 the administration finalized a rule that narrowed the definition of habitat to only areas that currently support a species. This would eliminate the government’s ability to protect areas that could help support species in the future and areas previously occupied by the species. The move limits the tools available to protect endangered species, many of which have seen their historic range greatly diminished by development, agriculture and now climate change.

Two days later the Fish and Wildlife Service undermined the law again with a rule that lets money trump science. The change would allow the agency to omit areas from critical habitat designation if a review of the economic costs to industry outweigh the ecological benefits.

The Revelator’s Top 12 Articles of 2020

Pandemics and other disasters showed us what we have to lose — and how hard people are working to save the planet.

What a year.

Looking back on 2020 is probably enough to start most of us screaming, but if we’re going to move forward in 2021 we need to find out how we got here — and what steps people are taking to push us back in the right direction.

Here are a dozen Revelator articles from the past year that reflect that need. Many of them dig into dark topics — that’s hard to avoid when writing about the environment these days — but you’ll also find information and stories that may help guide us through the shadows.

The Faces of Extinction: The Species We Lost in 2019 — Let’s never forget what we’ve already lost, even as we celebrate every step taken to prevent more losses.

Where Pandemics Come From and How to Stop Them— The first of our COVID-related stories for the year. Little did we realize at the time how bad things would become.

A Dam Comes Down — and Tribes, Cities, Salmon and Orcas Could All Benefit — We dug into issues related to dams throughout the year. This one still resonates with readers.

10 Things We’ve Learned a Decade After the Deepwater Horizon Disaster — Some of the best coverage of this grim anniversary.

Mangroves Could Help Save Us From Climate Change. Climate Change Is Killing Mangroves. — Coastal ecosystems don’t get enough attention — and that could cost us.

A Virus Wiped Out 90% of This Turtle Species. Can It Recover? — A tale about a turtle, but also a story about people making a difference.

Are Forever Chemicals Harming Ocean Life? — It’s amazing how little these toxins remain in the public eye.

As Glaciers Melt, Will Deadly Landslides Increase? — A little-understood consequence of climate change.

5 Things You Should Know About the Earth’s Warming Ocean — Every degree matters, often in unexpected ways.

How One Utah Community Fought the Fracking Industry — and Won — Resistance and persistence pay off.

The Long-lost Frogs Found in a Remote Ecuadorian Reserve — and the Threat That Could Wipe Them All Out — Just because few people visit an ecosystem doesn’t mean it’s not threatened.

Promise or Peril? Importing Hydropower to Fuel the Clean Energy Transition — An illuminating portrait of the complexities of renewable energy.

What were your favorites? Did anything you enjoyed reading on The Revelator this year not make the list? Let us know.

The Revelator’s Top 12 Environmental Commentaries of 2020

Our contributors offered expert ideas and perspective about pandemics, climate change, the Trump administration and more.

This was the year of Tiger King and COVID-19. But that’s just scratching the surface.

Every month The Revelator invites top experts from around the world to share their insights into the environmental issues defining the news — and sometimes the topics people should be talking about but aren’t.

This year the pandemic dominated our Ideas section, as did the damaging impacts of the Trump administration. We also addressed the science and policies of environmental justice, climate change and more, including a few moving personal narratives from people directly involved in those efforts.

Here are 12 of the essays and op-eds that stuck with us as we closed the door on a very difficult year:

Picking Up the Pieces: My Search and Rescue Mission for Fallen Songbirds — A personal scientific story that shows how success is possible, even if it takes more time than we’d like.

A Crop Pandemic Would Be as Devastating for Biodiversity and Food Security as COVID-19 — A little-known threat that could destroy plants much as the coronavirus destroyed communities.

Tiger King: 5 Lessons From Beneath the Mayhem — The famously salacious docuseries left reality on the cutting-room floor. Two conservationists filled us in on what the producers missed.

Working From Home During the Pandemic Has Environmental Benefits — But We Can Do Even Better — And let’s hope this remains our work reality for as long as possible.

COVID-19 Reveals a Crisis of Public Spaces — Always ask yourself: Who’s left out of the conversation?

200 Years Ago My Family Built a Dam — Now My Organization Is Tearing It Down — You never know what you’re going to find in your own family history.

Don’t Look Away — Our editorial about why justice matters.

Food Waste in the Time of COVID-19: The Real Reason to Cry Over Spilt Milk — A shocking news story leads to a call for change.

How COVID-19 Took Hold and Why We Must End the Wildlife Trade — A cry for action.

Coronaviruses and the Human Meat Market — A grisly look at the human factor behind the pandemic.

EPA Enforcement in Distress — and More Trouble Is Brewing — An insider reveals what those in power would prefer to remain hidden.

How to Make Climate Refugee Protections a Reality — A framework for helping the most vulnerable being affected by the climate crisis.

The new year will undoubtedly bring new discoveries — and some opportunities.

Would you like to be a part of the conversation in the year ahead? We’re always looking for new voices. Find out how to contribute here.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We survived the pandemic, the election and worsening climate change — but not without a few scars. Now’s the time to stay safe and build resilience.

Let’s be honest: This has been a truly exhausting year.

We started 2020 already worn thin by three years of the Trump administration, with its constant assaults on the environment and human decency on display almost every single day — and it got worse from there.

In February the coronavirus pandemic hit and took off like a wildfire, killing hundreds of thousands of people in this country and leaving millions underemployed or without jobs, healthcare, homes or beloved family and friends.

The virus would have been bad enough on its own, but the willful, outrageous failure of the Trump administration to address it, and the failure of many state and local elected officials as well, made it all much worse — and so much more exhausting.

But then, that failure shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The denial of climate science from just about everyone on the far right — fueled by corporate influencers, Fox News, social-media platforms and their soul-draining ilk — had already showed us that science denial could rear its ugly head the next time we faced a crisis.

And it did, in spades.

Of course, COVID-19 wasn’t the only thing to sap our strength this year. The pandemic came alongside seemingly countless racial injustices, angry protests, violence and intimidation by right-wing extremists, and the worst election season this country has ever seen — one characterized more than anything else by a bloviating, habitual liar seeking reelection.

His performance in the first presidential debate — like watching a rabid dog on stage — may be what pushed my own exhaustion past the breaking point. From then on the election kept going downhill, my doomscrolling went into hyperdrive, and our collective grief continued to swell while more and more people got sick and died.

And yet it kept getting worse. Spurred on by Trump’s lies about the virus, people and communities “debated” whether they should or should not wear masks, stay home, stop partying, stop coming to the office — an endless fuel of “free-dumbness” driven once again by the increasingly righter-than-ever right-wing media and what passes for leadership in the Grand Old Party.

And through it all, the world experienced record temperatures, species went extinct, millions were displaced by the world’s worst hurricane season and endless fires, and…and…and…

…and a record 81 million people stood up and voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. More voters turned out this year than any election in history, and many of us had to fight to get our votes and our voices recognized.

Maybe we weren’t so exhausted, after all? Or maybe we tapped into some final reserve of strength, saved for just such an emergency.

So here’s where we are now: Although the shockwaves of 2020 will be felt for a long time, and we’re all obviously still exhausted, this devastating year is nearly over. Now’s the time to heal, to rest, and to take all the energy we would normally have poured into the holidays and pour it into taking care of ourselves and our loved ones.

And while we’re at it, stay safe and physically distant, wear masks, share scientifically accurate information, and help others to recover from the ravages of the pandemic so we can get back to the greater task of saving the planet.

And the Biden win — assuming it’s not stolen at the last minute by Trump operatives and Republican legislators committed to a coup — sets us up for a lot of success.

“Biden has put forward a bold climate plan with ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions and support for both regulatory and market-driven policy measures,” climate scientist Michael E. Mann tells me. “If Democrats take back the Senate, there is real opportunity for meaningful climate action by the U.S. — and not a moment too soon. A Biden win will stop the hemorrhaging, but there is a lot of work that will need to be done in repairing our reputation on the world stage.”

Heck, there’s still a lot of work and repairing to do in general — more than ever, in fact, since we’re now four years behind where we should have been by this point.

But that work won’t be possible without taking care of ourselves. That’s why our team here at The Revelator is about to take a couple of weeks off to recuperate and recharge. We’ve published hundreds of articles and commentaries over the past year and we’re going to do it again next year — but if we don’t rest up now, we won’t make it very far.

I sincerely hope you also get a chance to rest the final few weeks of the year. I know that kind of rest is a privilege not everyone has.

So do our best to reboot and meet back here the first week of January. We already have a lot of good stories in development for the New Year, and we’re excited to share them with you.

Of course, before we get that far, we’ll have one more source of exhaustion to contend with: the drawn-out, sore-loser end of the Trump era. Just as the post-election period was filled with Trump shenanigans, malarkey and the attempted reversal of the election, so will the very last weeks be a chance for the outgoing White House occupants and their enablers to tear every bite they can out of the government and the environment.

So keep an eye out for tomfoolery — we will, too.

Rest up, exhausted readers. The fight to save our planet and everything that lives here will keep up in 2021 — and far beyond.

For a Path Forward on Climate, Let’s Learn From the Original New Deal

A broad, progressive coalition came together in the 1930s to bring the United States out of the Great Depression. It can be done again in the face of COVID and climate change.

You may not know it, but Democrats and Republicans share a growing concern about the climate and environment. With extreme weather events becoming more common, many young Republicans now question their allegiance to a party that denies the reality of climate change. After the destructive environmental policies of the Trump administration, there are high hopes among many Americans that progress will be possible under a new administration — even if Biden’s reluctant to abandon fracking or adopt all the language of a “Green New Deal.”

But to envision a path forward on environmental policy, we should remember some key lessons from the original New Deal, the 1930s-era policies that pulled the United States out of the Great Depression through a combination of relief programs, public-works projects, financial reforms and progressive regulation.

The first key lesson: The New Deal was implemented in D.C., but many of its policies emerged from earlier state experiments. A second point: The space for progressive presidential action was opened up by labor and grassroots organizing that didn’t just rely on elected leaders but shifted the political calculus of what was possible.

We should also be careful not to repeat past mistakes. For the New Deal had a major Achilles’ heel: In an attempt to secure support from Southern Democrats, many of its programs left Black Americans and other people of color behind (such as by excluding domestic and agricultural workers from Social Security).

For a new national environmental policy to be successful, we need to lift up state experimentation, provide political pressure and political cover for doing what’s right, and be sure to center, not derail, racial equity.

Our scholarship has been looking at just these issues for the past few years, examining how some states are trying to transition off fossil fuel in a way that protects workers and communities and addresses environmental injustice. Known as “just transition,” this notion focuses not only on the technical and policy aspects of power generation but also on the nitty-gritty of power-building to organize for change.

There’s good news to report from states and localities. For example, in keeping with its ambitious approach to greenhouse gas reduction over the past decade and a half, California recently declared that the state would phase out the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035, creating impetus for a market in electric and other zero-emission vehicles. Meanwhile, in New York, more than 200 groups have come together as NY Renews and won the most ambitious climate protection bill in the nation. Passed in 2019, it will dramatically limit emissions, invest in vulnerable communities, and chart a path to 100% carbon-free electricity.

Part of what’s making such policy change possible is power-building among those whose voices have traditionally been sidelined. As a NY Renews coalition member told us, “Power is built when you stand shoulder-to-shoulder and when you stand up for someone else, not just yourself.” So the group built a broad coalition, ranging from labor unions to environmental justice organizations to faith-based organizations, that aimed not just to reduce emissions but to support vulnerable communities.

A similar success story can be found in Arvin, California, a small town in the southern San Joaquin Valley, where local advocates have shown how to dig in against Big Oil. After launching a multifaceted campaign to keep new oil and gas drilling 300 feet from residential or commercial properties, Arvin quickly became a battleground pitting over-polluted residents against the behemoth fossil fuel industry. Despite the pressure, advocates launched a full-scale electoral push that brought in a new, progressive mayor and a wave of young Latina city council members who passed the first setback ordinance in California.

These are examples of state and local innovation — inspired by grassroots activism and multiracial and multisector coalitions — that should now make their way to the federal level, much as the New Deal picked up ideas such as unemployment insurance, minimum wages and labor protections from experiments in New York, Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

The combination of state experimentation, local power-building and attention to racial justice is all the more urgent now because we also need to make our way to a post-climate, post-COVID world. Both our environmental and public health challenges have some common themes and present an opportunity for a new narrative: In each arena we need to prioritize those with the highest risks, act to shield those we may never know, and learn to replace “me” — the spirit of self-interest — with “we,” the impulses of solidarity with people and the planet.

On the policy side, we can clearly learn from state efforts to address climate change. But just as important will be learning from state and local organizing. The secret sauce is not in the technology: moving away from an oil- and coal-fueled power grid to a people-driven power structure will require the science of coalition-building.

Power must be built to hold a new administration accountable, push it further toward bold climate policy and economic and racial justice, and create the political space for a massive federal investment in public health and clean energy. The future of America and the planet depend on it.

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