The Biden administration must focus on science and enforcement, reverse Trump deregulation efforts and reenergize EPA employment.
There is ample evidence that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suffered a clear loss of focus, a sharp drop in morale among its career staff, and disastrous policy reversals during the Trump administration. Remedying these setbacks will take sustained and persistent effort — more akin to priming a pump than flipping a light switch. Nonetheless, if the Biden administration persistently pursues several steps, it can go a long way toward restoring the effective EPA Americans need and deserve.
First, the agency’s full-time equivalent workforce is overdue for a significant increase — well beyond reversing the reductions enacted under Trump. Ideally, any staff augmentation will be phased in prudently to allow ample time for recruiting and training new employees, and to account for all new EPA obligations that may arise with respect to curbing climate change.
A restored EPA will also need to rebuild its foundation of scientific expertise. A new administration will do well to restore the agency’s prior emphasis on mitigation of and adaptation to the climate crisis. The EPA must also be part of an administration-wide push for comprehensive legislation to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. And the Trump administration’s attempts to censor sound science — by falsely purporting to improve transparency in order to unreasonably limit the application of legitimate scientific findings — must be promptly reversed.
American Federation of Government Employees rally outside of EPA headquarters. Photo: Chelsea Bland (CC BY 2.0)
In a deliberate and legally sound way, a revived EPA also needs to reverse specific Trump administration actions and policies that have weakened critical protections of public health and the environment, such as its attempt to narrow the reach of the Clean Water Act by narrowly defining the statutory term “waters of the United States,” and its drastic weakening of automobile emission standards. In fact, there are potentially hundreds of Trump era regulatory changes that need to be reversed, so this won’t be an easy task. The new administration should assign a team of agency scientists to survey the prior administration’s regulatory changes at EPA to promptly and identify Trump-era regulations that do the most environmental harm. That set of regulations should receive priority attention for “rolling back the rollbacks.”
Finally the EPA’s new leadership must give high priority to restoring its traditional emphasis on a deterrent approach to enforcement. As I wrote earlier this year, EPA enforcement fell to a 20-year low under the Trump administration. It is crucial that EPA’s new leadership announce and continually reiterate its unwavering support — both publicly and internally — for a vigorous enforcement effort.
And in keeping with one of my previous recommendations, the EPA’s enforcement programs greatly need an influx of skilled new personnel — particularly criminal investigators, lawyers and engineers. Those new employees may be used to increase the number of plant inspections completed by the agency and the overall number of criminal, civil and administrative enforcement cases it pursues.
It should also foster deterrence by extensively publicizing its enforcement work, which it can accomplish by routinely distributing public announcements regarding specific enforcement case initiations and resolutions. These will serve as warnings to other companies while increasing public confidence in the agency’s efforts.
The road back from the EPA’s decline under Trump may be slow and arduous. Nonetheless, with persistent effort, strong encouragement from a new cohort of agency leaders, and unwavering support from the White House, it can be restored as a diligent protector of the nation’s health and environment.
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.
Giant forest elephants and blue whales play an enormous role in climate sequestration. Can putting a financial value on that role help conserve them — and us?
Despite their massive size, African forest elephants remains an elusive species, poorly studied because of their habitat in the dense tropical forests of West Africa and the Congo.
But the more we learn about them, the more we know that forest elephants are in trouble. Like their slightly larger and better-known cousins, the bush or savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana), forest elephants (L. cyclotis) face rampant poaching for their majestic ivory tusks and the growing bush meat trade. More than 80% of the population has been killed off in central Africa since 2002.
Today fewer than 100,000 forest elephants occupy their dwindling habitat. Conservationists worry they could soon head toward extinction if nothing is done.
Photo: Richard Ruggiero/USFWS (public domain)
And now a new threat has emerged: A study published this September found that climate change has resulted in an 81% decline in fruit production in one forest elephant habitat in Gabon. That’s caused the elephants there to experience an 11% decline in body condition since 2008.
But other research, also published in September, suggests a possible solution to both these crises.
Elephants and Carbon
It all boils down to carbon dioxide.
Forest elephants play a huge role in supporting the carbon sequestration power of their tropical habitats. Hungry pachyderms act as mega-gardeners as they roam across the landscape searching for bits of leaves, tree bark and fruit; stomping on small trees and bushes; and spreading seeds in their dung. This promotes the growth of larger carbon-absorbing trees, allowing forests to sequester more carbon from the air.
A July 2019 study by ecologist Fabio Berzaghi, a researcher at the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences in France, estimated that if forest elephants disappeared African forests would lose 7% of their biomass — a stunning 3 billion-ton loss of carbon.
And they’re not unique in this oversized role, although the closest equivalent lives in an entirely different type of habitat.
Last year a team of researchers led by Ralph Chami, an economist and assistant director at the International Monetary Fund, published a groundbreaking report on the monetary value of great whales, the 13 large species that include blue and humpback whales. The study accounted for whales’ enormous carbon-capturing functions, from fertilizing oxygen-producing phytoplankton to storing enormous amounts of carbon in their bodies when they die and sink to the seafloor. After also including tourism values, Chami’s study estimated each whale was worth $2 million, amounting to a staggering $1 trillion for the entire global population of whales.
Photo: Kaitlin Thoreson, National Park Service (public domain)
“It’s a win-win for everyone,” Chami says of his economic models, which place a monetary value on the “natural capital” of wildlife, including the carbon sequestration activities of whales and elephants. “By allowing nature to regenerate, [elephants and whales] are far more valuable to us than if we extract them. If nature thrives, you thrive.”
Soon after the publication of Chami’s whale study, Berzaghi called and asked if the economist could run the numbers on forest elephants too. Chami agreed, and this September they published the results. The elephants, they calculated, are worth about $1.75 million each due to their forest carbon sequestration value alone.
Even more importantly, they found that if forest elephants were allowed to rebound to their former populations, their carbon-capturing value would jump to more than $150 billion.
And as climate change worsens, Chami says forest elephants will become even more valuable in terms of their carbon sequestration role — and as individuals. “The loss of their habitats has the impact of causing them more stress and to have fewer babies,” he says.
Turning Numbers Into Action
Despite these stunning, if theoretical, numbers, the researchers knew they needed a financial plan that could be implemented and sustained in the real world.
That starts with keeping elephants alive.
Poachers receive pennies on the dollar for elephant tusks that, once they finally reach consumers, can fetch prices of up to $40,000 on the illegal ivory market.
Gavin Shire / USFWS
Chami says that pales in comparison to the $1.75 million an elephant could be worth for its carbon sequestration services, an amount that works out to roughly $80 a day over an elephant’s 60-year average lifetime.
But how do you deliver that value to the people who live near elephants, including people who perhaps currently poach the animals? Chami turned to worldwide carbon markets, which encourage countries or companies to offset their greenhouse gases by investing in restorative measures in other parts of the world.
To activate that proposed value, Chami brought together a group of conservation, business technology and economic experts to develop a pilot project that could promote the protection of forest elephants in Africa. Together, they aim to create a legal framework and a secure financial distribution system that would use of carbon markets to pay local communities to protect forest elephants. Individual elephants would be tracked using satellite technology to ensure their safety. As long as the elephants remain alive, communities could receive regular payments from a carbon market funded by corporations, individuals and governments to offset their pollution. Elephants could become “living assets” for countries that protect them.
Those assets could add up. Chami says the population of 1,500 elephants in Gabon’s Loango National Forest would provide $2.4 million in annual revenue.
“We need to build a market around living elephants,” Chami says. “The poachers can become the caretakers.”
That’s an exciting concept to wildlife experts, who have already had some success empowering communities through tourism. But for elephants that live in remote areas of African forests, tourism is less of an option. A market that places a value on elephants for their global carbon sequestration and climate contributions opens a new opportunity for support.
“It potentially changes how people think of the value of elephants,” said Ian Redmond, a renowned African conservationist who’s working with Chami and others to fund forest elephant protection efforts.
Redmond says he’s thrilled about this new plan because it incentivizes locals to protect their natural resources, not exploit them.
“It’s a gamechanger, not just for its ecological benefits, but for poverty reduction,” he says. “It’s a mechanism of change for people in the forest for people who before now only get money if they kill something. Now there’s an economic incentive to protect the elephants and their carbon-rich habitat so everyone benefits, locally and globally.”
The trick, the experts say, is getting money dispersed fairly and securely to local communities. Chami’s team says the revolution in new secure financial networks such as blockchain, the building block of digital monetary systems like Bitcoin, can help establish a monetary system that can be more efficient and transparent than traditional banking systems. Africa’s ahead of the curve when it comes to dealing in these new digital monetary technologies, which, though not perfect, can be a positive anti-corruption tool in the murky world of international carbon markets and debt swaps sometimes linked to fraud and influence peddling.
Walid Al Saqqaf, a startup founder and technology expert who produces the weekly podcast Insureblocks, is working closely with Chami and conservationists like Redmond to tap into global carbon exchange markets and create a framework for local funding efforts. Al Saqqaf says the secure nature of blockchain technology can attract international governmental agencies as well as private sector banks and insurance companies who will increasingly want to offset carbon footprints by investing in carbon-sequestering natural resources. “We take a toxic asset such as carbon and transform it into carbon for social good,” Al Saqqaf says.
The group is setting up technology, legal and science working groups to develop a cohesive plan that could go into effect next year, although the conservation team says it’s too early to announce specifics of the pilot program. They say they are in early discussions with African governments hoping to protect their elephants as well as private enterprises interested in offsetting carbon emissions.
A Ticking Clock, But Forward Motion
Meanwhile the threats from both climate change and poaching continue. A study published this June found that, despite efforts to reduce the ivory trade, elephant poaching rates remain “near their peak and have changed little since 2011.”
The rapidly growing risks of extinctions, fueled in part by climate change, have pushed the team to quickly get their ground-breaking plan up and running. “We are in a race against time,” Al Saqqaf says.
While the work on elephants remains on the drawing board, Chami’s earlier study on the economic value of whales has already started generating real-world action. A G20 working group recommended this year that member countries take whales into account for their climate mitigation and ecosystem values. In Chile a national initiative is using Chami’s economic model to help design a project called the Blue Boat Initiative, a sophisticated satellite and sea-based plan supported by the Chilean government to protect whales from ship collisions.
“The valuation of ecosystem services is very relevant because it allows us to show the oceans are not only a raw material,” says Patricia Morales, general manager of Fundacion Cortes Solari, a private foundation that supports the Blue Boat Initiative and other climate and environmental issues. “We need to move from the current paradigm to the blue economy.”
Chami says the positive global response to their work is rewarding, but it’s far from complete. His team — which plans to apply this methodology to other species — knows the dire state of the natural world, and the challenges of creating new international funding and conservation models are huge. But Chami and his colleagues say that by “translating science into dollars,” researchers can build a powerful market-based mechanism that can reverse society’s incentive to destroy the natural world.
“We need to learn to live in balance with nature,” Chami says. “Our sustainability depends on protecting our ecosystems.”
Undoing Trump’s damage won’t be enough. Here’s where Biden can push forward public lands, climate and energy policy.
In early 2017, not long after President Donald J. Trump moved into the White House, his chief advisor, Steve Bannon, said that the administration’s aim was the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” A charitable listener might have heard a run-of-the-mill libertarian goal, to downsize the bloated government in order to make room for personal liberties.
It has since become clear that Trump cared more about freedom for government and corporations — and for that matter, COVID-19 — to run rampant.
Perhaps nowhere was Trump’s approach more thorough than when it came to the Earth. He removed limits on mercury and methane emissions, incapacitated the Clean Water Act and gutted protections for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, to name just a few of nearly 100 rollbacks. All purportedly to help the economy, achieve “energy dominance” on public lands and make him look good — energy-efficient light bulbs, he said, “make you look orange.”
President-elect Joseph R. Biden has indicated that he’ll quickly roll back the rollbacks as soon as he’s inaugurated. Yet a reset is not enough. In fact, many of the rules didn’t cut it under President Obama, and though Obama tried to fix many of them, his efforts often fell short.
Here are a few examples of policies and rules that Trump obliterated and that Biden — hopefully with Congress’s help — could now rebuild, making them better and stronger than before.
Clean Power Plan: President Obama’s plan mandated a cut in power sector carbon emissions by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030, which essentially would have forced coal out of the energy mix while leaving room for natural gas.
Before it went into effect, Trump gutted the plan, though it was hardly necessary: Economics forced coal-plant retirements after Trump’s election, coal-mining jobs continued to wane, and emissions dropped even more than the Obama plan would have required. The plan was obsolete before it was finalized.
Biden’s plan must include more ambitious emissions cuts and, equally as important, provide for a just transition for workers and communities that will be abandoned by the fossil fuel industries.
Oil and gas development: Trump rolled over the environment by rolling back rules for fracking, stocking the Department of the Interior with industry insiders, ramming through approvals of pipelines built by his multimillion-dollar donors, and by slashing royalties paid by oil companies.
Yet Obama’s policies were equally friendly to energy development. His administration leased out 2 million more acres of public land to oil and gas companies during his first term than Trump and oversaw a drilling boom of unprecedented magnitude.
Oil and gas development on public lands. Photo: WildEarth Guardians, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Biden needs not only to roll back the rollbacks, but also to overhaul the leasing process to shift power away from corporate boardrooms and back into public hands and increase oil and gas royalty payments across the board to give American taxpayers a fair shake.
Bears Ears National Monument: In 2015, the Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute, Hopi and Zuni tribes asked Obama to designate as a national monument 1.9 million acres of public land in southeastern Utah, with tribal representatives having a major management role. When Obama established the monument, it was 600,000 acres smaller than the proposal, and the tribal role was reduced to an advisory one. Trump slashed the monument by 85% and rammed through a shoddy management plan for what remained, further diminishing the tribal role.
Biden should restore the monument, giving the tribal nations an equal role in determining new boundaries and creating a strong management plan.
That’s only the beginning.
Biden will also have to restore another 80 or more regulations, redirect agencies that have been steered off-course, invalidate the lease sale for the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, bring science back into policymaking, stop the building of the border wall, and clean the house of Trump appointees who are trying to destroy the so-called administrative state from within.
That includes William Perry Pendley — Twitter handle @Sagebrush_Rebel — whom Trump installed as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management in 2019. This September a judge ruled that Pendley — never approved by Congress — had served unlawfully, and ordered him out of his role.
Pendley changed his title and refused to leave, insisting that the law and the court’s order “has no impact” on him.
With Trump now taking a similar stance, Biden may be forced to drag two people out of office come January.
Reprinted fromWriters on the Range, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.
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.
Editor’s note: This contributed article is not covered by The Revelator’s usual Creative Commons reprint policy.
Claims that a massive new methanol refinery fed with fracked gas is actually good for the climate need to be firmly rejected — before they enable similar pushes in other states.
Washington state is on the cusp of making its biggest climate pollution decision in years. The state has the power to stop the world’s largest fracked gas-to-methanol refinery, proposed along the Columbia River’s shores in Kalama. But a dangerous new climate theory stands in the way: the displacement theory.
Yet project-backer Northwest Innovation Works suggests that building this new methanol refinery is somehow good for our climate.
How is that possible? The company’s rationale is based on the “displacement theory,” which posits that global emissions will increase more slowly if Washington approves the Kalama methanol refinery because the company would ship the methanol to China to make plastics or to burn as fuel. And if Washington-produced methanol doesn’t exist, China will produce methanol using coal-fired power instead of fracked gas.
This twisted logic isn’t just the company’s rhetoric; it’s been repeated in a new draft study by consultants hired by the Washington Department of Ecology, which is now weighing whether to permit the refinery.
The department’s analysis rests on the assumptions that no cleaner methanol or substitutes will attempt to enter the market in the next 40 years and neither the United States nor China will enact new regulations to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. This presents a dim view of humanity’s history of innovation and commitment to tackling the climate crisis.
Any fossil fuel developer can fabricate worse alternatives. And it’s been tried before.
Backers of the Millennium coal-export terminal in Longview, Washington, claimed their coal would displace dirtier coal in Asia. Tesoro claimed its “lower-carbon Bakken crude” would displace dirtier oil when it proposed the nation’s largest oil-by-rail terminal along the Columbia River.
Washington leaders didn’t take the bait on those proposals because displacement is speculative and unenforceable. And, most importantly, our climate can’t afford to lock in fossil fuel infrastructure for the next 50 years. If Washington — or any other state — adopts the displacement theory, it would create a precedent that invites new fossil fuel projects — and more fracking.
The project, however, was dealt a significant blow Nov. 23 when a court sided with Columbia Riverkeeper and our allies (including the Center for Biological Diversity, publishers of The Revelator) by overturning federal permits for the refinery’s dock. The court held that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cannot reissue the permits without first completing a full “environmental impact statement” to consider the proposal’s life-cycle greenhouse gas pollution and other issues.
While this is good news, we don’t need to wait for a federal agency’s environmental review and decision. Washington can stop this climate disaster in its tracks before the end of 2020.
Hundreds of people from Cowlitz County and neighboring areas rallied before a 2018 hearing to call on Gov. Inslee and Ecology to deny the proposed fracked-gas-to-methanol refinery in Kalama, WA. Photo: Columbia Riverkeeper
The first step: Washington — a state with a mandate to achieve 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045 — should reject the displacement theory’s bleak and dangerous reasoning.
Research has shown that using hydraulically fracturing to produce shale gas has led to a global spike in methane emissions — a potent greenhouse gas — as well as other environmental harms and health concerns.
In fact, in spring 2019 Gov. Jay Inslee said, “I cannot in good conscience support … a methanol production facility in Kalama.”
If that’s the case, why would Washington adopt the displacement theory, which would ramp up fracking and climate emissions?
The Department of Ecology’s analysis also presents a false choice: Is fuel better if it’s derived from gas or coal? The real comparison isn’t coal versus gas, but fracked gas versus clean energy.
Many climate experts tout vehicle electrification as a necessary step toward a truly low-carbon future, but an abundance of cheap fossil fuels — like Northwest Innovation Works’ methanol — could disrupt the adoption of electric vehicle technology.
The displacement theory is antithetical to everything our state is working to accomplish.
Washington, like many states, is innovating new technologies and fighting for new policies. We’re creating positive change, not passively accepting a dark future.
The Department of Ecology’s initial willingness to accept Northwest Innovation Works’ speculative, self-serving and defeatist climate rationalizations jeopardizes Gov. Inslee’s credibility and accomplishments as a climate leader.
But the story is not over.
The department still has time to abandon the displacement theory. It will issue a final environmental review any day, and based on that review will approve or deny a key permit before the end of the year. If Ecology denies the permit, Northwest Innovation Works can’t build the refinery.
With the climate crisis bearing down on us, we demand Gov. Inslee and the Department of Ecology reject the fossil fuel industry’s false choice and embrace a clean energy future.
The answer is clear: Deny the world’s largest fracked gas-to-methanol refinery. In doing so, Washington will set important precedent that other states threatened by fossil fuel infrastructure can look to when making similar decisions.
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.
Alabama’s Mobile River basin has the most aquatic biodiversity in the country. But we’re in danger of losing it before we even know what’s there.
When longtime environmental journalist Ben Raines started writing a book about the biodiversity in Alabama, the state had 354 fish species known to science. When he finished writing 10 years later, that number had jumped to 450 thanks to a bounty of new discoveries. Crawfish species leaped from 84 to 97 during the same time.
It’s indicative of a larger trend: Alabama is one of the most biodiverse states in the country, but few people know it. And even scientists are still discovering the rich diversity of life that exists there, particularly in the Mobile River basin.
The Revelator talked with Raines about why this region is so biodiverse, why it’s been overlooked, and what efforts are being made to protect it.
What makes Alabama, and particularly the Mobile River system, so biodiverse?
The past kind of defines the present in Alabama.
During the ice ages, when much of the nation was frozen under these giant glaciers, Alabama wasn’t. The glaciers petered out by the time they hit Tennessee. It was much colder but things here didn’t die.
Everything that had evolved in Alabama over successive ice ages is still here. We have a salamander, the Red Hills salamander, that branched off from all other salamander trees 50 million years ago. So this is an ancient salamander, but it’s still here because it never died out.
The other thing you have here, in addition to not freezing, is that it’s really warm. Where I am in Mobile, we’re on the same latitude as Cairo. So the same sun that bakes the Sahara Desert is baking here.
But we also have the rainiest climate in the United States along Alabama’s coast. It actually rains about 70 inches a year here. By comparison, Seattle gets about 55 inches. It makes for a sort of greenhouse effect where we have this intense sun and then plenty of water. Alabama has more miles of rivers and streams than any other state.
Things just grow here.
The pitcher plant bogs of Alabama, for example, are literally among the most diverse places on the planet. In the 1960s a scientist went out and counted every species of flowering plant in an Alabama pitcher plant bog. He came up with 63. That was the highest total found on Earth in a square meter for a decade or more.
For a long time the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was thought to be the center of oak tree diversity in the world because they have about 15 species of oaks in the confines of the park. Well, two years ago scientists working in this area called the Red Hills along the Alabama River found 20 species of oak trees on a single hillside. It’s just staggering.
Why is Alabama’s rich biodiversity not well known or studied?
The state was never known for being a biodiverse place until the early 2000s, when NatureServe came out with this big survey of all the states. It surprised everyone because it showed Alabama leading in aquatic diversity in all the categories — more species of fish, turtles, salamanders, mussels, snails.
This blew everybody away because Alabama in everybody’s mind is the civil rights protests of the 1960s, the KKK, steel mills and cotton fields. But that’s not what’s in Alabama, that’s what we’ve done to Alabama since we’ve been here.
I think part of it also has to do with being a long way from Harvard and Yale and Stanford and the great research institutions that were sending biologists all over the world. Alabama just wasn’t really studied or explored.
Again and again, the story in Alabama is that nobody has ever looked.
That’s one of E.O. Wilson’s big messages about Alabama. He is our most famous living scientist, I would say, or certainly biologist. He grew up here, and now in his twilight years his big mission has become trying to save Alabama. And he describes it as less explored than Borneo and says we have no idea what miracle cures and things we may find in the Mobile River system, which is what I call “America’s Amazon.”
As you write about in your book, all this newly discovered biodiversity is at risk. What’s happening?
Alabama is in a very precarious situation. We have the worst environmental laws in the country and the state environmental agency has been the lowest funded of any state going back decades. So there’s very little enforcement. Maybe that’s because nobody realized how rich this place was in terms of diversity, so there was no move to protect it.
But Alabama’s early history, from the discovery of coal, which happened in the 1800s, has been one of exploitation. Massive amounts of forests were taken down in the 1800s for cotton fields. This state produced more cotton than any other back then, and that took a huge natural toll. And typically it’s people from other places, or even other countries, coming here to harvest the natural resources.
When I was born in Alabama in 1970, there were 15 steel mills in Birmingham going full blast. The air and water pollution from the steel mills and the coal mines were on a scale that’s almost unbelievable.
So even when we talk about the biodiversity we have now, we can’t even imagine what we’ve already lost. And this history of exploitation is still going on today. The largest factory built in the United States in the last 25 years was built in Alabama.
Alabama is inviting industry — and industry is coming because you can get a permit here in 30 to 60 days from the state environmental agency. That same permit in California would probably take 10 to 20 years to secure.
One example is the way Alabama does water permits: There’s no limit on how much water industries can take, no matter what environmental havoc may occur.
A couple of years ago we had droughts so bad we actually saw some of the state’s major rivers run dry. The Cahaba River is 150 miles long and it has 120 fish species — more than in the entire state of California.
And during this drought, the industries and golf courses were allowed to suck so much water out of the river it went dry. It only started flowing again downstream from a sewage plant. The entire flow of one of the most diverse rivers in America was the outfall from a sewage plant. It’s the kind of thing you can’t imagine happening in the United States, but it happened here and there were no laws to stop it.
Are there forces pushing back against this, and are people beginning to see the value of Alabama’s biodiversity?
Environmental groups here are having an amazing growth spurt. Twenty years ago our Baykeeper group, which is part of the Riverkeeper alliance, was a one-woman show.
Now it has about a dozen employees and a huge membership. There are many other environmental groups now that have appeared and are doing good work all over the state.
That’s a big change.
As ecotourism is spreading across the country, it’s starting to happen here, too. The state is quickly catching up. There was great outrage among the populace when I wrote a story about the rivers running dry and now there’s an effort at the state level to make a water plan and to actually limit how much water industry can take.
It sounds like there’s still a long way to go for Alabama to catch up with environmental regulations — what else would you like to see happen?
I write a lot in the book about wetlands because so much of our diversity is in these edges where water and land meet. I would like to see the edges protected, but of course the problem is that’s where people want to be. They want to live on the river, on the bay, on the beach. When you couple that with rising sea levels, there’s a collision that’s coming between people and the edges.
We have to protect that intertidal habitat now and then buy the uplands behind it to get ready for sea-level rise because otherwise our coastal habitats will have nowhere to go.
I would also really like to see Alabama adopt the pollution standards that you see in the surrounding states. For reasons that escape me, the levels of PCBs in fish we allow people to consume before we issue a warning is 10 times higher than any other state. There’s no scientific reason why we would be so far out of step with our neighboring states.
And then there’s the extinction issue. The rate of extinctions in Alabama is roughly double that seen anywhere else in the continental United States. It has more extinctions than Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee put together.
We’re going to go from being the king of diversity to the king of extinctions. And that’ll be a terrible thing not just for Alabama, but for what we know about nature. Alabama has more than twice as many species per square mile as any other state. And if we start losing that diversity, we’re going to have no idea what we’ve lost.
What do you hope people do after reading your book?
I would hope they come to Alabama to see some of these things, because that’s what will make the powers that be care — when ecotourism becomes an industry that can rival industrial manufacturing, then ecotourism will carry as much weight among the lawmakers.
I’ve been here about 20 years, much of that time as the environment reporter for the state’s three biggest newspapers. Those papers were the environment’s best friend. But they’ve been basically destroyed. The papers are just too anemic. In Mobile, we had a newsroom with 90 people in it, and now they have three reporters. The last thing you’re going to see is an in-depth environmental story anymore.
So the book is a love letter and it’s a call to arms, and it’s saying, “love this place, but help.”
I guess at the end of the day, the story in Alabama about the natural world has been a story of taking and never giving back or appreciating what was here in the first place. That’s what has to change. Because if you just keep taking, you know how it will end. There’ll be nothing left.
The Biden presidency will re-energize international climate action. But there’s no time to bask in victory.
Joe Biden’s election is a huge positive in a year that has been extremely difficult across the globe. I speak for a vast number of people who watched anxiously from outside the United States when I heartily thank those who mobilized, campaigned and voted to make it happen. Your hard work affects us all.
But we’re not at the end of the line. Far from it.
Biden shows promise, but there can be no backsliding and or watering down. In fact, the ambition needs to grow. Now is the time for truly bold vision, leadership and action. For instance, Biden has said repeatedly that he will not ban fracking, a destructive and polluting practice that uses high-pressure injections of water, chemicals and sand to suck yet more fossil fuels from the ground. Instead he turns to carbon capture to offset these emissions, a plan that relies on untested technology and does nothing to deal with fracking’s methane release, water pollution and health issues.
He can and must do better. And there are two key areas where he can focus to help push transformative climate action: jobs and justice.
Jobs
The fact that Biden ran and won with a proposal to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 highlights one key aspect he got right: A transformation to sustainability means innovation, new livelihoods, revitalization and importantly, jobs.
The green economy in the United States already employs 10 times as many people as the fossil fuel industry, and Biden’s plan specifically focuses on the economic opportunities that tackling climate change will bring.
But climate action is not a flail that we must use to flog ourselves in penitence, seeking absolution for past sins. Action for our planet creates untold opportunities for us. It will provide different ways of living that will reimagine and reinvigorate our relationship with the natural world, making us happier and healthier.
It will give us livelihoods that are truly sustainable, not based on the myth of infinite growth on a finite planet.
Biden’s plan for net zero in energy production by 2035 is a good example of how a climate-smart jobs boom could work. At present 62% of energy in the United States comes from fossil fuels. Wind, hydroelectric and solar power are all growing industries, and renewable energy is expected to be the biggest global energy source by 2025. Shifting U.S. energy production to net zero will create solid, reliable and well-paid jobs across the nation as renewable energy truly takes off. Funding training to enable workers to shift from fossil fuels will be a key part of that transition.
An environmental justice march in Detroit. Photo: Marcus Johnstone, (CC BY-NC 2.0).
Justice
Biden has also referenced the need for equality in climate action, setting a goal for disadvantaged communities to receive 40% of all the clean energy and infrastructure benefits his plan would generate.
While this goal is a relatively small step for a big problem, the recognition is important. Ninety-nine percent of all deaths from weather-related disasters occur in the world’s 50 least developed countries — countries that have contributed less than 1% of global carbon emissions.
In every nation around the world, including the United States, this is played out again on a smaller scale. We can’t continue to allow the poorer, marginalized and more vulnerable communities to bear the brunt of a crisis they did not cause.
The U.S. government is uniquely placed to drive forward international progress on climate.
Biden’s climate plan explicitly includes environmental justice as a key target. Within the United States this encompasses standing up to polluters who disproportionately harm marginalized communities.
The United States must reduce its own emissions and maintain strong diplomacy with its international partners. This leadership will allow the Biden-Harris administration to champion environmental justice around the world.
The swift congratulations on Biden’s victory offered by Frank Bainimarama, the Fijian prime minister, show what can now be achieved. The United States being back in a leading role on global climate action means that small island nations, responsible for minimal emissions but suffering outsized, unjust climate impacts, may have a chance of survival. Tens of millions of people have already been displaced by climate breakdown, a grave global environmental injustice. The new administration has a chance to reverse this.
As a major developed economy and one of the worst emitters, action from the United States would put pressure on others — such as China — to do more. Meaningful progress within the United States and European Union, and strong, progressive voices from both parties at the negotiation table could be the change we need.
The votes for this election have been counted, but now the real work begins. We will all be needed — both in and outside the United States — to show again and again that we are watching and we will fight for our future, and our planet, with everything we have.
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.
Underwater meadows have rapidly disappeared around the world, but new research suggests they may be the easiest coastal habitat to restore.
Two decades ago scientists and volunteers along the Virginia coast started tossing seagrass seeds into barren seaside lagoons. Disease and an intense hurricane had wiped out the plants in the 1930s, and no nearby meadows could serve as a naturally dispersing source of seeds to bring them back.
The seeding effort eventually delivered more than 70 million seeds — and it paid off, creating some 9,000 acres of the underwater plants.
Now monitoring of these restored meadows reveals multiple benefits to their restoration, including substantial increases in fish and invertebrate abundance, improved water clarity, and significant trapping of carbon and nitrogen.
“Planting adult seagrass is very labor intensive, but we started looking at using seeds in the lab and found it was quite easy,” says biologist Robert “JJ” Orth, lead author on a new paper about the project. “These areas have good water quality, are shallow and are near the ocean so they get bathed in cooler water — perfect conditions. It was a surprise how quickly it happened.”
Restored seagrass beds in Virginia now provide habitat for hundreds of thousands of scallops. Photo: Bob Orth, Virginia Institute of Marine Science (CC BY 2.0)
The paper is part of a growing trend of evidence suggesting seagrass meadows can be easier to restore than other coastal habitats.
Successful seagrass-restoration methods include transplanting shoots, mechanized planting and, more recently, biodegradable mats. Removing threats, proximity to donor seagrass beds, planting techniques, project size and site selection all play roles in a restoration effort’s success.
Human assistance isn’t always necessary, though. In areas where some beds remain, seagrass can even recover on its own when stressors are reduced or removed. For example, seagrass began to recover when Tampa Bay improved its water quality by reducing nitrogen loads from runoff by roughly 90%.
But more and more, seagrass meadows struggle to hang on.
The marine flowering plants have declined globally since the 1930s and currently disappear at a rate equivalent to a football field every 30 minutes, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. And research published in 2018 found the rate of decline is accelerating in many regions.
The causes of decline vary and overlap, depending on the region. They include thermal stress from climate change; human activities such as dredging, anchoring and coastal infrastructure; and intentional removal in tourist areas. In addition, increased runoff from land carries sediment that clouds the water, blocking sunlight the plants need for photosynthesis. Runoff can also carry contaminants and nutrients from fertilizer that disrupt habitats and cause algal blooms.
All that damage comes with a cost.
The Value of Seagrass
As with ecosystems like rainforests and mangroves, loss of seagrass increases carbon dioxide emissions. And that spells trouble not just for certain habitats but for the whole planet.
Although seagrass covers at most 0.2% of the seabed, it accounts for 10% of the ocean’s capacity to store carbon in soils, and these meadows store carbon dioxide an estimated 30 times faster than most terrestrial forests. Slow decomposition rates in seagrass sediments contribute to their high carbon burial rates. In Australia, according to research by scientists at Edith Cowan University, loss of seagrass meadows since the 1950s has increased carbon dioxide emissions by an amount equivalent to 5 million cars a year. The United Nations Environment Programme reports that a 29% decline in seagrass in Chesapeake Bay between 1991 and 2006 resulted in an estimated loss of up to 1.8 million tons of carbon.
Eelgrass in the river delta at Prince William Sound, Alaska. Photo: Alaska ShoreZone Program NOAA/NMFS/AKFSC; Courtesy of Mandy Lindeberg, NOAA/NMFS/AKFSC.
Seagrasses also protect costal habitats. A healthy meadow slows wave energy, reduces erosion and lowers the risk of flooding. In Morro Bay, California, a 90% decline in the seagrass species known as eelgrass caused extensive erosion, according to a paper from researchers at California Polytechnic State University.
“Right away, we noticed big patterns in sediment loss or erosion,” says lead author Ryan Walter. “Many studies have shown this on individual eelgrass beds, but very few studies looked at it on a systemwide scale.”
In the tropics, seagrass’s natural protection can reduce the need for expensive and often-environmentally unfriendly beach nourishments regularly conducted in tourism areas.
Seagrass ecosystems improve water quality and clarity, filtering particles out of the water column and preventing resuspension of sediment. This role could be even more important in the future. By producing oxygen through photosynthesis, meadows could help offset decreased oxygen levels caused by warmer water temperatures (oxygen is less soluble in warm than in cold water).
The meadows also provide vital habitat for a wide variety of marine life, including fish, sea turtles, birds, marine mammals such as manatees, invertebrates and algae. They provide nursery habitat for roughly 20% of the world’s largest fisheries — an estimated 70% of fish habitats in Florida alone.
Conversely, their disappearance can contribute to die-offs of marine life. The loss of more than 20 square miles of seagrass in Florida’s Biscayne Bay may have helped set the stage for a widespread fish kill in summer 2020. Lack of grasses to produce oxygen left the basin more vulnerable when temperatures rose and oxygen levels dropped as a result, says Florida International University professor Piero Gardinali.
Damaged Systems, a Changing Climate
Governments and conservationists around the world have already put a lot of effort into coastal restoration efforts. And that’s helped some seagrass populations.
Where stressors remain, though, restoration grows more complicated. Research published this September found that only 37% of seagrass restorations have survived. Newly restored meadows remain vulnerable to the original stressors that depleted them, as well as to storms — and climate change.
Seagrass in Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida. Photo: Alicia Wellman/Florida Fish and Wildlife (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
In Chesapeake Bay a cold-water species of seagrass is currently hitting its heat limit, especially in summer, according to Alexander Challen Hyman of University of Florida’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. As waters continue to warm due to climate change, the species likely will disappear there.
Climate-driven sea-level rise complicates the problem as well. Seagrasses thrive at specific depths — too shallow and they dry out or are eaten, too deep and there isn’t enough light for photosynthesis.
But There’s Good News, Too
Luckily, left to its own devices, a seagrass meadow can flourish for hundreds of years, according to a paper published last year by Hyman and other researchers from the University of Florida. The researchers arrived at their conclusion by looking at shells of living mollusks and fossil shells to estimate the ages of meadows in Florida’s Big Bend region on the Gulf Coast.
That area has extensive, relatively pristine seagrass meadows. “Our motivation was to understand the past history of these systems, and shells store a lot of history,” says co-author Michal Kowalewski.
A high degree of similarity between living and dead shells indicates a stable area, while a mismatch suggests an area shifted from seagrass to barren sand. The researchers found that long-term accumulations of shells resembled living ones, suggesting that the seagrass habitats have been stable over time.
That stability allows biodiversity to thrive, creating conditions where specialist species can survive and flourish, according to Hyman.
Discovering the long-term stability of seagrass meadows has implications for choosing restoration sites, Kowalewski notes.
“There must be reasons they thrive in one place, while a mile away they don’t and fossil data says they probably never did,” he says. “If we remove a seagrass patch, we cannot hope to plant it somewhere else. It’s not just the seagrass that is special. The location at which it’s found is special, too.”
A better approach is conserving these habitats in the first place, but we’re not doing enough of that right now. The UN reports that marine protected areas safeguard just 26% of recorded seagrass meadows, compared with 40% of coral reefs and 43% of mangroves.
In the meantime, small actions can make a big difference — such as fertilizer ordinances, for example, Gardinali suggests.
“Nitrogen and phosphorus are the problem,” he says. “It’s an easy first step. We can change the way we do small things, one at a time.”
Everything we do at this point will help, not only seagrass but everything that depends on it.
“These habitats are so vital,” Hyman says. “Putting aside erosion control and all these benefits people might not find as important, they harbor juvenile stages of all these marine species we like to eat — blue crabs, for example. From that standpoint alone, seagrass provides countless benefits to the economy.”
Those benefits have mostly gone ignored in favor of more visible, charismatic land-based habitats. That needs to change, the experts say.
“What the trees in the Amazon rainforest provide for that system is what eelgrass provides in estuarine systems,” says Walter. “So many ecosystem services, beyond just being a beautiful grass.”
One that, if we let it, will provide those services for hundreds of years.
The report looked at how much renewable energy potential each state had within its own borders and found that almost every state could deliver all its electricity needs from instate renewable sources.
And that’s just a start: The report found that there’s so much potential for renewable energy sourcing, some states could produce 10 times the electricity they need. Cost remains an issue, as does connecting all of this capacity to the grid, but prices have dropped significantly, and efficiency continues to improve. Clean energy is not only affordable but could be a big boost to the economy. Locally sourced renewables create jobs, reduce pollution, and make communities more climate resilient.
So where are the opportunities? Rooftop solar, the study found, could supply six states with at least half of their electricity needs. But wind had the greatest potential. For 35 states, onshore wind alone could supply 100% of their energy demand, and offshore wind could do the same in 21 states. (The numbers overlap a bit.)
The study follows a similar report conducted a decade ago and shows that the clean energy field has made substantial progress in that time.
The Revelator spoke with Maria McCoy, a research associate at the Institute and report co-author, about what’s changed and how to turn all the potential into reality.
What’s changed in the 10 years since you last looked at the potential for instate renewable energy?
Maria McCoy. Photo: Courtesy of ILSR
There’s definitely been technology improvements in all the energy sources, but especially solar. Obviously there’s the same amount of sun, but the solar panels themselves have a higher percentage of solar photovoltaic efficiency. Most states, on average, had 16% more solar potential this time around than they did a decade ago.
And for the other technologies, it’s a matter of either more space being available or the technologies themselves improving. Wind turbines now can generate a lot more energy with the same amount of wind.
Where do you see the most potential?
There’s been a lot of development in offshore wind and I think it’s on the cusp of really becoming a big player in the clean energy field. But regulations, including at the federal level, have blocked it from happening at scale in the United States. Whereas in Europe there’s already some incredibly efficient offshore wind farms that are generating a lot of electricity. Those companies are just starting to move into the U.S. market.
But it’s onshore wind that has the biggest potential. Our research found that some states could generate over 1,000% of their energy with onshore wind if they really took advantage of it.
Your report didn’t consider the potential of large-scale solar. Why?
We looked at the potential of rooftop solar rather than large-scale solar because as an energy democracy organization, we’re really focused on distributed and community-owned energy. But it’s also because pretty much every state has enough capacity to completely be powered by large-scale solar. It just then becomes an issue of land-usage debates and other challenges.
Your research shows there’s a ton of potential for renewables across the country. How do we realize that potential?
Graphic: ILSR, Energy Self-Reliant States 2020
Continued support for renewable energy is a big one. There are a lot of credits that are phasing out and without renewing those, it will make it a little bit tougher for the market.
We were looking at just the technical ability to produce the energy and not necessarily the cost effectiveness, but we did recognize in the report that the costs have come down. The cost of solar PV, for example, has dropped 70%. So this is not really a pie-in-the-sky goal. It’s definitely gotten a lot more feasible and many cities are already doing it or planning to in the near future.
I think the will is there and people want renewable energy, it’s just a matter of fighting the status quo. A lot of these utilities have been using the same business model for decades and they’re not really keeping up with where things are going and where the community wants things to go.
They’re holding on to their fossil fuel infrastructure and their business model that profits off building more fossil gas plants when solar plus storage is already a cheaper energy source for customers. And wind is very cheap. If utility regulators and state and national policy could hold these utilities accountable to serving the public, which is their job as regulated monopolies, we could finally get to see some of this potential becoming a reality.
Having the ability to generate energy locally and store it and use it locally will create jobs and provide a lot of resilience to the grid and communities. And with climate change, I think that’s becoming more and more important.
Was there anything that surprised you about your findings?
We definitely expected things to be better but I don’t know if we expected them to be this much better in 10 years. Seeing all this potential and these ridiculously high percentages — I mean, being able to generate greater than 1,000% of the electricity we need with renewables in some states is just a sign of how abundant clean energy is.
And it’s kind of sad, I guess, that some states aren’t even able to get to 25% or 50% clean energy goals in their renewable portfolio standards. I would hope that the train starts rolling a little faster.
And I hope our research can inspire others who think maybe their state doesn’t have a lot of renewable energy capacity in their area to realize that they do, and it could provide for all that they need and more.
The incoming administration has an important opportunity to protect biodiversity and human health.
Joseph Biden was elected to office as the world continues to struggle with a global pandemic that has killed more than a million people and wreaked devastating economic havoc. The pandemic has highlighted how humankind’s abuse of our planet and the irreversible loss of the biodiversity and ecosystem services upon which we all rely for our very existence simply can’t go on.
I work for TRAFFIC, a nongovernmental organization addressing issues related to wildlife trade, and the COVID pandemic has thrust this topic into the limelight. While we fully acknowledge and appreciate support received under previous administrations, it’s clear that the world has underestimated the importance and potential impacts of failing to manage wildlife trade in a way that’s legal, sustainable and, critically, includes measures to mitigate against the risk of zoonotic-disease spillover events.
Centers for Disease Control staff inspect bushmeat being imported into the U.S. (Photo: CDC)
How do we move forward? First, I would argue that allocating resources to understanding the risks associated with trade in animals — from any source — and how to lessen the danger of disease spillover events is a wise investment. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, USAID gave the go-ahead to activities under a second phase of a Wildlife Trafficking Response, Assessment and Priority Setting (Wildlife TRAPS) Project implemented by TRAFFIC, with a renewed zoonotic disease risk focus. TRAFFIC will endeavor to ensure it’s money well spent.
Meanwhile welcome global attention has been paid to addressing the wildlife crime that undermines society and threatens the future of many of the world’s wild plants and animals. But we’re still not there in curbing these crimes. More resources will help get us over the line.
These include better equipment, training and working conditions for the rangers on the front lines; enhanced use of wildlife forensics; training of detector dogs; and even access to skilled translators to assist enforcement agencies with interpreting transactions involving foreign nationals. We also need to see renewed efforts by governments, helped by nongovernmental organizations and others, to reduce the consumer demand that fuels such trade.
Rangers on patrol in Kruger National Park, South Africa. Photo by Bernard DuPont (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Finally, the Biden era must go down in history as the turning point when world governments came together in a united front to address the conservation crisis and start down the long road to repair. Next year the delayed 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity will take place, when world governments will finalize the goals and policies of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework that will guide humankind to a biodiverse and sustainable future. The current draft of the Framework features, for the first time, a target on wildlife trade. It calls on governments to ensure that the harvesting, trade and use of wild species of fauna and flora are legal, at sustainable levels, and safe by 2030. It would be entirely appropriate if the Biden administration were at center stage throughout the negotiations. Given the role of the United States on the world stage, if Biden takes strong action, other countries will doubtless follow his lead.
Already the U.S. intention to rejoin the Paris Climate agreement has been a major symbolic step, signaling the country’s aim to be at the forefront of global efforts to begin the healing process. Make no mistake: Building a green future is an enormous opportunity for businesses in the United States and beyond to meet the challenges of, and profit from, achieving the goal of a zero-carbon economy. Biden’s policies should encourage achievement of that goal on every level. The future is bright, but only if it’s green.
With the world’s climate, forests and other natural resources under ever-increasing pressure, there has never been a more urgent need for the robust guidance, sound policies and strong leadership needed to protect our planet. The next four years could be the make-or-break moment.
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.
Addressing the coronavirus pandemic can also provide opportunities to fight climate change and boost equity.
The next president will be inaugurated in the midst of a raging pandemic, an economic recession, a crisis of structural racism and an escalating climate emergency. The best chance for making progress on any of these issues is to tackle them all together.
That’s an approach called multisolving — ensuring that every dollar invested in solving one problem solves others at the same time. It’s the preferred approach when facing intersecting problems with tight budgets and an urgent timeline.
A COVID-19 economic recovery package will be one of the biggest opportunities to multisolve in 2021. A well-designed recovery could lock in decades of low-carbon emissions. It could reap the public health benefits that come along with replacing air-polluting energy sources with clean energy generation. And it could steer benefits, like good jobs that can’t be offshored, to the communities that have historically been left out of economic opportunity.
But multisolving doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design. If the next administration wants to achieve four benefits — climate protection, economic recovery, health and equity — for the price of one, it will need to place multisolving at the center of its plans.
Nine months into the pandemic, there are bright spots around the world that show what might be possible if economic recovery investments were designed to achieve multiple goals. These can be found in small developing countries and in major economies. Their focus ranges from clean energy to ecosystem restoration to walking and cycling infrastructure.
Separated bike lane. Photo: Paul Krueger, (CC BY 2.0).
Here are a few cases drawn from a growing database of examples my colleagues and I are tracking:
The Nigerian government is focusing on solar electricity as part of its recovery plan, with a goal of installing solar-generation capacity on 5 million homes;
Spain has pinned its recovery on an “ecological transformation” including installing 100,000 electric vehicle charging stations, making 500,000 homes more energy efficient and accelerating progress toward its goal of 100% renewable electricity by 2050;
A joint EU-Africa project will direct €300 million ($354 million) to projects that help businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially ones owned by women. At least 25% of the funds are for projects involving renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate change resilience;
The United Kingdom has launched a £2 billion ($2.6 billion) plan to increase cycling infrastructure as part of its COVID-19 response. In the short term this will help people travel safely through the pandemic. In the long term it will reduce emissions from transportation and capture the health benefits of active travel.
Sadly, these bright spots are so far the exception, not the rule.
A study published last month in Science highlights the potential of this moment. Countries around the world have already committed $12 trillion to economic recovery packages. If only 12% of that amount were to be invested in the next five years in clean energy and energy efficiency the world could place itself on a path to meeting the goals of Paris Climate Agreement, while also driving job opportunities and improving human health. But so far, the world as whole is falling short of even this modest amount of multisolving.
Some regions are doing well, though. In the European Union, for instance, somewhere between 19% to 30% of recovery investments are rated as “green.” But many other governments are allowing this opportunity to multisolve slip away. Estimates are that only 1% of U.S. recovery funding so far has been green. For China the estimate is 0.3%; for India it’s 2.4%.
With recovery plans still taking shape, and with many of the opportunities for investment on hold until the public health threat of the virus is under control, the window of opportunity has not yet closed. That is good news. The United States, under the incoming administration, could direct the funds needed to stimulate the economy in a way that simultaneously helps us meet climate, health and equity goals.
To ensure this quadruple benefit is captured, each element of a recovery plan will need to be designed with multiple criteria in mind. Policy makers should be asking questions such as:
Does an energy infrastructure project lock in low carbon emissions while also providing good jobs?
Does a particular investment include racial, gender and economic equity provisions to make sure benefits go to communities that have been left out of past opportunities?
Are investments like home weatherization targeted towards low-wealth communities, where the resulting utility bill savings will make the most difference?
Are job training, healthcare and childcare offered so that everyone can benefit from new employment opportunities?
Success will require sustained effort well beyond the design phase. It will require agencies to work together. Can an energy efficiency program coordinate with a jobs program? Can a cycling project be designed with input from housing and public health?
A true multisolving recovery will invest authority in local communities. While the federal government functions in silos, all the elements of carbon emissions, health, jobs, equity and well-being come together on the ground, at the grassroots level. Funding mechanisms will need to be flexible to allow communities to steer their own green and equitable recoveries.
That’s a tall order, and even the most effective multisolving recovery plan will not be enough if it focuses only within the United States. The transition to a zero-carbon future needs to be a global one. Rich nations like the United States can offer financial assistance so that all countries can recover in ways that are green, resilient and equitable.
The country and the world could emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic more resilient, more equitable, and on track to meet climate goals. But that won’t happen by accident. It’s time to start multisolving.
You can learn more about multisolving on Climate Interactive’s website, where you can also explore a database of green, resilient, equitable recovery measures being taken around the world.
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.
