Across the country voters will weigh in on ballot measures to decide issues like wolf reintroduction, taxes on oil companies and renewable energy standards.
Maybe we can blame COVID-19 for making it hard to hit the streets and gather signatures to get initiatives on state ballots. But this year there are markedly fewer environmental issues up for vote than in 2018.
While the number of initiatives may be down, there’s no less at stake. Voters will still have to make decisions about wildlife, renewable energy, oil companies and future elections.
Here’s the rundown of what’s happening where.
Return of an Apex Predator
Wolves are on the ballot in Colorado. Proposition 114 would require the state’s Parks and Wildlife Commission to create a plan by 2023 for the reintroduction and management of gray wolves (Canis lupus) in areas west of the continental divide.
Gray wolves once roamed across the western United States but were mostly eradicated by the 1930s. Slowly efforts are being made to bring them back. The reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1996 has been hailed as a rewilding success.
“The argument is that by putting back in wolves — an apex predator that has evolved alongside their prey species — we’re putting things back into ecological balance,” University of Colorado Boulder ecology professor Joanna Lambert told The Revelator in a February interview about the science behind wolf reintroductions.
Gray wolf. Photo: ohn & Karen Hollingsworth/USFWS
The Colorado initiative is backed by the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project.
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Colorado Farm Bureau are two of the top donors to the opposition groups.
The measure does include compensation for losses of livestock caused by gray wolves.
“What we’re all hoping for is a landscape where we can coexist with the species that were originally here, but also acknowledging that humans need to make a living and that the costs of this initiative will be felt by some folks more than others,” Lambert said.
Confusion Over Clean Energy
In Nevada voters will take a second swing at a constitutional amendment to require that electric utilities source 50% of their electricity from renewables by 2030. Voters passed the same measure, Question 6, in 2018, but state law requires that constitutional amendments be passed in two consecutive even-numbered election years.
More clean energy for the state may seem good. But there’s concern that enshrining 50% renewables by 2030 in the state’s constitution isn’t that ambitious and it will make it harder to continue the push for 100% renewables in the future. To do that would be another constitutional amendment that would again take four years and two consecutive ballot wins to move the needle.
Also, the state is already on its way to the same renewable goal.
A legislative effort to achieve 50% renewables by 2030 — but with a slightly different timeline for the increments to get there — was signed into law in April 2019 by Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak. Renewable advocates hope the state will do even better than that benchmark, but passing Question 6 would make it harder.
Paying a Fair Share
If California’s Proposition 15 passes, commercial and industrial properties will need to start paying taxes based on their current market value, instead of paying based on the purchase price from decades prior (which stems from Proposition 13 passed back in 1978). The initiative would exempt agricultural land, small businesses, renters and homeowners.
Reassessing the worth of large commercial properties could bring in between $7.5 billion and $12 billion a year that would go toward supporting local governments, school districts and community colleges.
Most of the opposition has come from big business and anti-taxation groups.
The California Teachers Association Issues PAC is the biggest supporter of the effort, but a number of environmental groups have also endorsed the measure, which would likely see oil companies and other big industrial polluters having to kick in more money.
“The oil industry has used Prop. 13 loopholes to evade tens of millions of dollars in property taxes,” wrote Victoria Lome, California legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Companies like Chevron, Exxon, Phillips 66, Shell and Tosco are paying taxes based on assessments taken prior to 2000. Prop. 15 would end this hidden subsidy to dirty energy.”
Oil companies could stand to lose in Alaska, too. Voters there will weigh in on Ballot Measure 1, which would increase taxes on big oil producers (those that have produced more than 400 million barrels overall or 40,000 barrels a day in the past year) operating in three established oil fields in the North Slope.
Taking the Wind Out of the Sails of the Electoral College
Colorado’s Proposition 113 isn’t about environmental issues directly but could cause big shifts in how presidential elections are run and what states and issues are considered important.
The initiative would add Colorado to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. That effort is aimed at ensuring the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote wins the election. It doesn’t eliminate the Electoral College, but it saps its power.
The compact needs states representing at least 270 Electoral College votes to go into effect. It’s currently at 196.
If Colorado’s proposition is passed, and if the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact eventually gets enough votes to go into effect, then Colorado’s nine electoral votes would go to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote, not to the one who gets the most votes in Colorado.
With his new “field atlas,” Kaufmann challenges readers to better understand the places where we live — and to protect them.
As 25 wildfires burn through California in another record-breaking fire season, it’s a good time to talk about the state’s forests and their future. That’s the focus of a new book — The Forests of California — from Oakland, California-based artist and naturalist Obi Kaufmann.
Wildfire is an intrinsic part of most landscapes in California, so much so that Kaufmann says, “trees themselves in California are fire waiting to burn.”
Kaufmann’s new book isn’t focused on wildfire specifically (that will come in a later volume), but he does lay important groundwork to help people better understand the complex ecology of the state’s varied forests and why they are so important.
“Although California accounts for only 3% of the land area in the United States, more than 30% of all plant and vertebrate species in the nation find habitat here,” he writes.
But this amazing biodiversity and the systems that link it together are under threat from human development, climate change, misguided management and invasive species.
Forests of California, the third book from Kaufmann, is no ordinary reading. It’s a “field atlas,” a construct of his own making and not to be confused with a field guide. This 600-page volume describes ecological forces at work in California’s forests with artistically rendered data, watercolor drawings and maps, detailed research, and knowledge accumulated from decades exploring the backcountry.
Kaufmann calls the book “an activist’s guide” and a “work of hope,” meant to inspire people to help protect California and other places they love.
We talked to Kaufmann about geographic literacy, overcoming “plant blindness” and his favorite forests.
Unless folks have picked up your first book, The California Field Atlas, they’re likely unfamiliar with this genre. Can you explain what it is?
The “field atlas” is a genre that I invented in order to tell the story that I wanted to tell.
I think most people confuse it with a field guide, which would be a reference book aimed towards biological identification — or looking at the what of things. But a field atlas is a story of the character of California that has always been, continues to be, and will always be despite our very successfully imposed urban veneer over the past 170 years.
I am not concerned so much with the what of things, or even the where of things, which is funny for something calling itself an atlas.
But I am obsessed with learning about the how of things. How the whole cycle works from growth through conservation to release, and then regrowth. Most often, and dramatically, this is expressed across California’s extremely varied topography through fire.
And I’m interested in how the resiliency mechanisms within those ecosystems are triggered and how succession works within the forests in California.
The book is a unique combination of research, art and science. How did you decide to organize it?
I’m fascinated by systems thinking. And I think ecology is an academic discipline that really lends itself to those kinds of models. The organization is basically structured around three concentric circles. The first inner circle, circle A, is tree associations. How tree species in California tend to grow in each other’s proximity. The very skeleton of what might eventually become habitat, which would be circle B.
How then, once these trees are grouped together in particular locales, do they attract other species? Maybe it’s an understory or what is happening along the forest floor. Maybe we can then include wildlife that finds its niche opportunities within this arboreal architecture.
And then finally the largest circle, circle C, would be the forests themselves. And that is where I use the contrivance of contemporary political boundaries across the 23 national forests as they are currently described in California, which covers roughly half the state’s total land area.
I go through and give six examples in each one of the national forests of what habitats and forest types exist within them.
That gets to my larger mission, which is to alleviate what has been called “plant blindness,” which is [when people fail to see the variety around them and just think] ‘a tree, is a tree, is a tree.’ In fact, here in California we enjoy an elite class of biodiversity that rivals all other portfolios of such measurement around the world.
We’ve got it all here in a unique, complex and very precious structure. And telling that story on a popular level where I am not only describing the trees themselves, but where the trees are, then that biogeography leads to a kind of geographic literacy.
Stages of the adaptive cycle. Watercolor by Obi Kaufmann.
I believe that our greatest tool as an informed citizenry is knowing what actually there is to protect. People protect what they love. And people love what they understand and know.
So we have to begin with an inventory of what there is to protect.
Do you have a favorite forest type or place in California?
I am really drawn to the area near Duck Lake in the Russian Wilderness, where 19 species of conifers live within one square mile. All of these conifer species together like that exist nowhere else in the world.
I’m also always looking for a way to get back to the High Sierra. The Crystal Range within Desolation Wilderness is not called that for nothing. When the sunset hits it on a clear July night, the whole place radiates a prismatic quality that will rival anything in the Italian Alps or anywhere else in the world for its alpine beauty.
And the third one I’m going to give you is my home mountain, Mount Diablo [near Oakland], which is such an excellent little topographic anomaly. It jets out like a thumb into the Central Valley and catches all the seeds from the Northwest temperate rainforest and all the seeds from the Southwest deserts to create this really unique little wildflower bloom every year.
It’s a jewel of biodiversity and wilderness just set like a diamond inside this hub of urban activity that is the East Bay.
For folks who don’t live in California and don’t have a rad field atlas for their home, how can they begin to better understand the place where they live?
I use California as my focus, but it really is a metaphor about looking at nature. You can swap out any of these maps with any other geographic region at scale — wherever you are in the world. This is the beauty of ecological science.
Obi Kaufmann painting. Photo: Paul Collins
For me, it’s wrapped up in art and my own personal expression. But I think there’s a subtler truth here that these books are not necessarily about nature, but about me looking at nature. So on one level, these books are about me, which I think is a place to start for anybody.
I’d love to give license to whoever wants to make the field atlas of Minnesota. I’d love to see that. It can be done and it’s going to be your field atlas.
What do you hope for California’s forests and also for our environment more generally?
As we move through this century and begin our discussions about what 22nd century conservation policy might look like, we need to look at the shortcomings of 20th century policy and realize how much we’ve learned and how much indeed there is to learn.
What we’re actually learning now with the advent of such disciplines as corridor ecology and a better understanding of how wildlife actually move throughout a mosaiced habitat, is how to get more specific about the quality and diversity of habitat types that we should be conserving.
And we shouldn’t just talk about endangered species, but also habitat and perhaps even endangered phenomenon, like coastal fog. It’s a phenomenon upon which coastal redwoods, for example, depend. But it’s threatened by climate breakdown.
We have the opportunity to leave the 21st century with the natural world of California in better shape than we left it at the end of the 20th century, which is very a hopeful thing to say.
I’m often asked what people can do right now to help in response to all of the alarms going off — to help save this idea of nature in California or wherever else. And I always answer that question with a question: “When was the last time you went camping?”
And it’s hard to say under these apocalyptic [smoke-filled] skies right now, but I want to encourage anyone who’s feeling that to get out and take some time to literally take your shoes and socks off and put your toes into the cold, clear, clean water and feel nature around you.
Because it’s all still here. And breathe that deeply. Whatever happens next, we’re going to need you grounded, unpanicked and ready to change the story.
A plan to import hydropower from Canada to Massachusetts begs the question of whether big hydro along with its reservoirs and dams, is green enough to be worth the cost.
Is renewable energy always sustainable — or just? Today we launch a two-part series looking at the role of Canadian hydropower in helping the U.S. Northeast meet its climate goals.
Construction could start soon on New England’s biggest renewable energy project, a 1,200-megawatt-capacity transmission line to deliver renewable energy to Massachusetts customers. The proposed project, New England Clean Energy Connect, has cleared most of its significant regulatory hurdles. But it hasn’t been without opposition.
Some of the fiercest challenges have come from environmental groups, who question the purported green benefits. That’s because this isn’t a wind or solar project — it’s big hydro imported from Canada. The power would come from a massive network of 63 hydropower stations and numerous large dams owned by Hydro-Québec, a monopoly utility run by the province. Some of this energy could travel more than 800 miles from turbine to light switch.
And in order to get the power to Massachusetts, 145 miles of new high-voltage direct current transmission line will need to run through Maine — including more than 50 miles slashed through the North Maine Woods.
The project is regionally significant but also nationally important. New England is getting serious about climate change, with all six states pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions 80% over 1990 levels by 2050. Neighboring New York has even greater ambitions — and is similarly interested in importing Canadian hydropower.
Hydro-Québec already supplies about 17% of the electricity for New England and 5% for New York, and the company has been banking on those numbers increasing. “We’re poised to play a bigger role,” says Gary Sutherland, director of strategic affairs for northeast markets at Hydro-Québec.
NECEC would lock in a 20-year contract for Hydro-Québec and partner Central Maine Power to deliver about one-fifth of Massachusetts’s electric power needs to its utilities. But is the project worth hailing as a big step in fighting greenhouse gas emissions, or is it committing the region to decades of energy from a source that fails to live up to its environmental promise?
Project Selection
In order to up its clean energy game, Massachusetts passed legislation in 2016 requiring its electric utilities to secure about 9.45 terawatt-hours per year of low-carbon power by 2022. In a competitive bidding process to solicit projects, the state received 46 clean energy proposals, many wind and solar, but decided to go with hydropower — with a very long extension cord.
The winning selection at the time, a project called Northern Pass, was pitched as a 200-mile-long transmission line — much of which would be buried underground or follow existing corridors — to import Quebec hydroelectric power through New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
But New Hampshire regulators rejected the plan. The evaluation committee unanimously found that applicant Eversource Energy “failed to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that the Project would not unduly interfere with the orderly development of the region,” which includes tourism, property values and existing rights of way. They also took issue with the project’s proposed benefits in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Eversource appealed the decision, but the state Supreme Court later upheld the committee’s ruling.
Massachusetts then moved a state east and selected a similar project, New England Clean Energy Connect, that would instead move the power through Maine in a transmission line constructed by Central Maine Power, a subsidiary of Avangrid, which is owned by the Spanish multinational utility Iberdrola.
Unlike the proposed Northern Pass project in New Hampshire, virtually all of the Maine project, which is estimated to cost Massachusetts ratepayers close to $1 billion, will be aboveground. This includes a 54-foot-wide corridor stretching 53 miles through the North Maine Woods, the largest contiguous temperate forest in North America. The transmission line would fragment forest and aquatic habitat across a region that’s home to American martens, ovenbirds, endangered wood turtles and threatened Canada lynx.
Ground-nesting ovenbirds could be imperiled by new transmission lines. Photo: Fyn Kynd (CC BY 2.0)
Despite the project costs, Bay State residents are expected to see electrical rates drop between 2-4% a year — a savings estimated at nearly $4 billion over the two-decade-long contract, according to the project partners, Central Maine Power and Hydro-Québec.
All the new infrastructure for the project will be built in Maine, but the primary beneficiary will be Massachusetts. Some recent concessions sweetened the deal for Maine residents, though, and helped bring around Maine Gov. Janet Mills and environmental groups like the Conservation Law Foundation (which was an outspoken opponent of Northern Pass) and the Acadia Center.
A small slice of discounted energy would go to Maine — enough to supply 70,000 homes or 10,000 businesses. But so far it’s unclear who the buyer for that power in Maine would be. The deal also accelerates the distribution of a fund for the state that includes $170 million in rate relief and clean energy projects, including heat pumps and electric vehicles.
The Natural Resources Council of Maine, however, wasn’t swayed by the new stipulations. The environmental nonprofit, which works on statewide conservation and climate issues, has fought the project at every turn.
Sticky Greenhouse Gas Emissions Issues
One of the biggest sources of contention with the project is how much it will actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which is, after all, the driving force behind bringing clean energy projects into the mix.
NECEC will reduce New England greenhouse gas emissions by 3 million tons a year by displacing dirtier fuels from the grid — the equivalent of taking 700,000 cars off the road.
“And that may be true, but it’s also irrelevant,” says Nick Bennett, staff scientist at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. “It doesn’t matter if you reduce greenhouse gas emissions in New England by 3 million tons if they just go up by a corresponding amount elsewhere.”
Because the project doesn’t involve the construction of new generating facilities, Bennett says he’s concerned that Hydro-Québec will simply shift power from existing customers in order to send it to Massachusetts, which is willing to pay more.
“We get this big power line pushed through Maine, Hydro-Québec and Central Maine Power get rich, but there are no global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions because other jurisdictions that get power from Hydro-Québec now are going to lose that power and they’re going to have to make up for it quickly,” he theorizes. “And that means natural gas or coal.”
Bennett and the Natural Resources Council of Maine aren’t the only ones who share this concern.
When New Hampshire regulators rejected the Northern Pass route, they came to a similar conclusion, finding in their decision that “no actual greenhouse gas emission reductions would be realized if no new source of hydropower is introduced and the power delivered by the Project to New England is simply diverted from Ontario or New York.”
In Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s office, which looks out for the state’s ratepayers, was also concerned the contract language left open the possibility that hydropower already being sold by Hydro-Québec would simply be moved to the new contracts for NECEC, and it wouldn’t necessarily amount to an addition of clean energy.
Representatives from Hydro-Québec, however, say they have been ramping up their operations for more than a decade in anticipation of exporting additional energy into the Northeast U.S.
“We have been developing our generation resources over the last 16-17 years because it takes a long time to actually bring a hydropower generating station online,” says Sutherland. “We went on a pretty extensive build-out phase in the early 2000s.” That, he says, should be enough to supply this new demand and existing customers, although the company is also hoping to secure new projects in other northeast states, as well, in coming years.
More Tricky Accounting
Hydro-Québec’s new capacity — an estimated 5,000 megawatts in recent years — is not without environmental cost, either. But determining the greenhouse gas footprint of hydropower isn’t straightforward.
Harnessing the power of rivers was once thought of as a zero-emissions energy source, but studies in the past decade have shown that’s not the case.
Reservoirs can emit methane and carbon dioxide — in some cases on par with fossil fuel power plants. But calculating those emissions isn’t as simple as measuring what’s spewing out of a coal stack.
That’s because a ton of variables affect what a reservoir emits, including the geographic location, climate, the area of land that’s flooded, the type of submerged vegetation, management practices, and the age of the impoundment. This last factor is especially important because many reservoirs emit more greenhouse gases in the first years (sometimes decades) after they’re filled, as submerged organic matter breaks down. Measuring emissions five years or 50 years after reservoirs become operational will lead to much different numbers.
Churchill Falls in Labrador. The hydroelectric plant supplies power to Hydro-Quebec. Photo: Axel Drainville, (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Studies have also shown that emissions are particularly high in tropical regions where there is a lot of vegetation that decomposes in warm waters. But a 2019 study in Environmental Science and Technology found that the best indicator of greenhouse gas emissions is the “ratio of reservoir surface area to electricity generation.” A large, shallow area — characteristic of many reservoirs in Canada’s boreal forests — will release a lot more emissions relative to the power generated than damming a steep, rocky valley where more power is generated in a smaller space.
“Some of Hydro-Québec’s reservoirs flood thousands of square kilometers of forest land and they’re not all that deep,” says Brad Hager, a professor of earth sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-director of one of MIT’s Low Carbon Energy Centers. “So they emit a lot of carbon dioxide, but they don’t generate as much electricity per amount of water in the dam.”
In testimony to the Army Corps of Engineers, Hager, who’s also a part-time Maine resident, said that Hydro-Quebec’s operations are “definitively not the source of green power that they are made out to be.”
Research on the global carbon footprint of hydropower showed that six of Hydro-Québec’s reservoirs rank in the top quarter of the world’s biggest emitting hydro facilities.
A 2012 study published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles looked at emissions from Hydro-Québec’s Eastmain‐1 reservoir, which flooded a boreal forest in Northwest Quebec in 2006. The reservoir, constructed during the time the company was ramping up to meet export goals, stretches across nearly 380 square miles with an average depth of 36 feet.
It’s only one of numerous dams run by the company, and emissions are likely to vary by project. Still, the results are illuminating.
The researchers, including one from Hydro-Québec, found that during the reservoir’s first year of operation it emitted 77% more carbon than a natural gas plant. And it took five years for it to reach the same level as natural gas.
They estimated that after 25 years, the reservoir’s emissions would be about 50% lower than gas and over a 100-year lifespan it will “emit the equivalent of 40% of the carbon emissions that the currently most efficient thermal power plant would have for an equivalent amount of energy production.”
In the long term, it’s an improvement over fossil fuels — but is that good enough, considering the timeline of the climate crisis we currently face?
Hager doesn’t think so.
“From my analysis of the average greenhouse gas footprint of Hydro-Québec, the electricity is not all that clean,” he says. “It’s probably on average a factor of two better than natural gas, but it’s like a factor of 20 higher than wind.”
That means that a contract to lock in hydro for two decades in Massachusetts could push out cleaner sources of energy at a time when they’re desperately needed to combat rising global greenhouse gas emissions.
“My main concern is that the long length of the contract with Central Maine Power and Hydro-Québec will put the dampers on renewables like solar and wind,” he says.
That could be a problem in Maine, too, in terms of transmission space.
Bennett says limited grid connections in Maine mean that NECEC “will make it very difficult for any other renewable energy projects to export their electricity.”
Other Environmental Problems
Beyond just the greenhouse gas issues are the obvious environmental harms that come from damming and diverting rivers and razing carbon-sequestering forests in the process. This includes damage to fisheries, loss of sediment and natural river flows, and the accumulation of methyl mercury in the aquatic food web — a human health risk, especially for Indigenous communities that rely on subsistence resources.
“As we all know dams irreversibly destroy rivers,” says Meg Sheehan, coordinator of the nonprofit coalition North American Megadam Resistance Alliance, which has been fighting the construction of big dams in Canada and the exportation of energy to the United States. “Hydro-Québec’s dams are so massive that they have obliterated hundreds of thousands of square miles of forest, wetlands and permanently damaged rivers.” The company’s Robert-Bourassa dam on La Grande River, for example, impounds a 1,000-square-mile reservoir.
She doesn’t think hydropower generated from these large projects and exported to the United States should count as green or renewable.
“You can’t say that just because the water comes from the sky and ends up in their storage reservoir where they hoard it, completely altering the natural flow of the rivers, that the electricity that you produce is renewable,” she says.
Much of this dam building in Canada has also taken place on the ancestral lands of Indigenous nations. Hydro-Québec says they have signed 40 agreements with Indigenous communities related to hydropower development and transition in the last four decades.
That history hasn’t been lost on tribes in the United States, either.
Most recently the Penobscot Nation came out against the Maine transmission corridor. In a July 22 letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, the tribe’s Chief Kirk Francis called for a thorough environmental review and said the agency, “must consider not only the Maine impacts, but also those in Canada,” including the harm to Indigenous people.
The letter also cited the corridor’s potential to harm brook trout habitat and endangered species such as roaring brook mayfly and northern spring salamanders.
Attean Pond and forests along the transmission corridor route in Maine. Photo: Natural Resources Council of Maine / Jerry Monkman
The forest is an important deer wintering habitat and is known for being some of the best brook trout habitat left in the United States. “From a perspective of a brook trout, you just couldn’t put this line in a worse place,” says Bennett.
Approval Process
Despite all these issues, the project has already received most of the approvals it needs, including from the Maine Public Utility Commission, the Land Use Planning Commission and the Department of Environmental Protection.
The issue was set to come before Maine voters in November, when a ballot initiative could have halted the project. But in August the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled the referendum unconstitutional, deciding voters don’t have the authority to override the Public Utilities Commission’s decision.
Even though the battle over the issue didn’t make it to the ballot on Election Day, it was still costly. Political action committees backed by Central Maine Power and Hydro-Québec spent $19 million fighting the effort — a feat enabled by a loophole in Maine law that allows foreign entities to contribute to ballot initiatives.
The project does still need approval from the Army Corps of Engineers and the issuance of a “presidential permit” from the Department of Energy because it crosses an international border. Decisions on both could come soon.
The Corps didn’t require an environmental impact statement, only a less-stringent environmental assessment, which is being prepared by Central Maine Power. Documents obtained by the Natural Resources Council of Maine, through the Freedom of Information Act, found the Corps still had some questions about the touted greenhouse gas and other benefits of the project.
Opponents of NECEC are also challenging the approval on two legal fronts. The first is an appeal of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection permit decision.
A second legal challenge from opponents, including several state lawmakers, concerns a piece of public land the state’s Bureau of Public Lands leased to Central Maine Power back in 2014 that is now being used for the transmission line project.
The lawsuit contends that the Bureau did not get the necessary two-thirds vote from the legislature required for leases that “substantially alter” public lands. Furthermore, it argues, Central Maine Power would have needed to have the Public Utilities Commission permit in hand first, before applying for the lease. But when this lease was granted, the transmission project hadn’t yet been proposed.
Whether these lawsuits can put the brakes on the project isn’t clear yet. Project opponents are also considering another ballot initiative for 2021 that would require a two-thirds vote in the state legislature to approve new transmission lines and to use public lands for the projects — and it would retroactively cover projects from the preceding six years.
Bennett thinks that instead of pushing a corridor through Maine, Massachusetts should do more to develop its own renewable energy resources.
Remember Cape Wind? The offshore wind project, first proposed in 2001, could have brought 468 megawatts to the state but was shot down by a barrage of litigation, including suits from wealthy residents who didn’t want their view obstructed.
“Part of the problem here is that Massachusetts has been real slackers in terms of building wind in their own state,” says Bennett. “They need to build onshore and offshore wind, and to stop exporting responsibility for generating their own clean energy to other people who sometimes don’t want it.”
His organization wants to see more clean energy in the region, but this project doesn’t fit the bill.
“This isn’t a case where, you know, we all have to kind of suck it up and take the impacts in order to help the climate — that’s bogus,” he says. “This is simply a for-profit venture that will have no climate benefits and will have terrible on-the-ground environmental impacts for Maine.”
Correction:The width of the transmission corridor through the North Woods would be 54 feet, not 150 feet as first proposed.
Coming soon: Part 2 of our series on climate change and hydropower.
Thousands of fires in the world’s largest tropical wetlands have put the region’s Indigenous communities and Brazil’s unique wildlife at risk.
One of the world’s most important ecosystems is on fire.
Since the beginning of the year, Brazilian scientists have identified more than 3,600 fires in the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetlands. The fires have burned at least 14,000 square miles, according to analysis by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro — about 16% of the Pantanal. NASA data puts the destruction even higher, at more than 16,000 square miles.
The fires, as you might expect, are big enough to see from space.
But what does that look like in context? By examining data from NASA satellites, we developed an animated representation of the fires, showing how they’ve grown throughout 2020 and how destructive they are now. You can see the results below:
Of course, fire is a natural thing in the Pantanal — which is home to Indigenous communities and more than 12,000 vertebrate species — but this year’s wildfires are three times as large as what the region experienced in 2019.
Many of these fires appear to have been human-caused, but they’ve been exacerbated by climate change. The region has experienced a severe drought and near-record-high temperatures this past year due to shifts in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, NASA scientist Doug Morton told Voice of America. That’s similar to what’s happened in the United States following changes in the El Niño weather pattern.
“Everything is suffering,” farmhand Dorvalino Conceicao Camargo told Al Jazeera as he worked to fight one of the fires.
Biologists told the news service they have encountered thousands of dead or wounded animals, including jaguars, caiman and snakes. One of the most important sites for threatened hyacinth macaws (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus) has been particularly hard-hit, according to Mongabay.
And here’s the worst part: Experts say these fires are bad enough that they’ll make it more likely for the region to experience additional burning events in the years ahead. Given the Pantanal’s important value as a carbon sink, that poses a problem not just for this vital wetland but for the planet as a whole.
Data source: Jpss1-viirs-c2 via NASA FIRMS Archive, January 1 to September 16, 2020.
Despite divestment victories, big banks and asset managers continue driving climate change through their lending practices.
“CalSTRS is using our teachers’ money to invest in the destruction of our own future,” says teen climate activist Dulce Arias.
She’s talking about the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which has billions of dollars invested in fossil fuel operations. Last year Arias and fellow activists in the Bay Area climate justice organization Youth Vs. Apocalypse launched a campaign to divest fossil fuel investments from the program. They have marched in the streets waving signs, sometimes dousing themselves in mock oil to call attention to the stakes. They’ve confronted decision-makers and politicians and more recently taken the fight online during COVID-19 quarantines.
The 19-year-old is part of a global movement fighting climate-divestment battles to essentially “defund” industries driving climate change by hitting companies where it hurts — on the stock markets and in access to loans and other financing. A report published last December by 350.org and DivestInvest called these global divestment efforts “the fastest growing social movement in history,” which has helped steer a growing sum of money away from fossil fuel investments — from $52 billion in 2014 to more than $11 trillion last year.
These passionate people-powered divestment campaigns even helped set the stage for Big Oil’s 2020 reversal of fortunes, according to financial analysts.
Despite all this, fossil fuel companies continue to wield enormous power and political influence — remaining a formidable, if weakening, opponent.
Climate scientists, meanwhile, warn that we must act now to head off the worst impacts of climate change.
“We are out of time,” says climate scientist and author Peter Kalmus. “The planet is screaming loudly…and it’s going to scream louder and louder the more we emit. More people are going to suffer and die and more ecosystems are going to be lost. The more fossil fuels we produce, the worse our lives today and the planet we leave for future generations will become.”
Business as Usual
Despite dire scientific warnings, fossil fuel financing continues full steam ahead.
A slew of expert reports say that most commercial banks remain resistant to adopting more stringent underwriting standards, which would enable further divestment. Even high-profile viral video campaigns like Jane Fonda cutting up bank cards have failed to shame big banks into making a change, and much of the banking and financial sector continues to resist “greening” their businesses.
“Move Chase’s money out of coal, oil, and gas now. If you don’t, we’ll leave your bank.” — @JaneFonda@Chase, we’re building an army to take on fossil fuel finance and #StopTheMoneyPipeline.
Commercial banks have talked about greening their portfolios for decades, but critics say most have done little more than discuss risk “metrics” for analyzing portfolios, while limiting concrete changes to easier “sustainability” efforts like renovating their branches and corporate offices.
“There is no way through the climate crisis without addressing the financing behind the climate crisis,” says Jeff Conant, senior international forest program director with Friends of the Earth, part of Stop The Money Pipeline, a coalition of environmental and human rights organizations putting pressure on the financial sector. “It’s very hard to be optimistic.”
Indeed the numbers don’t look promising. A report published in March found that 35 global banks had provided $2.7 trillion in financing to fossil fuel companies since the United Nations’ Paris climate agreement was adopted in 2016.
Global deforestation, the second most significant climate change driver after fossil fuels, remains another area where lending practices are going in the wrong direction, Conant says. Another $154 billion in lending and capital have flowed to the top 300 companies known to be involved in global deforestation since the Paris accord was signed, he says.
“It’s clear that the finance sector is doing exactly the opposite of what it needs to do in terms of drawing down financing for these destructive industries,” says Conant.
As a result Stop The Money Pipeline has ratcheted up the pressure on banks, insurance companies, university endowments, pension funds like CalSTRS and companies like BlackRock, the world’s largest assets manager.
In response to climate activism, BlackRock chairman and CEO Larry Fink stunned the world of finance in January when he pledged to consider climate change impacts in the company’s investment decisions. “[W]e will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them,” Fink wrote in his annual letter to corporate executives.
Environmentalists, however, say BlackRock has yet to act on those intentions.
BlackRock has made “great strides in the last few years thanks to pressure from activists and the public, but in terms of coming up with an approach that actually makes a difference with the [climate] crisis, there’s a really long way to go,” says Conant. “For people in the finance industry, it was something that was unthinkable just a few years ago. So in that sense, it’s tremendous. But we have yet to see any of those words be put into action.”
Mounting Victories
There are reasons to believe that we’re nearing a tipping point, though.
In a webinar earlier this month, energy strategist Kingsmill Bond of Carbon Tracker, a London-based think tank focused on the impact of climate change on financial markets, urged listeners to be skeptical of “rather naïve” oil company forecasts that demand for their products will go back to business as usual.
“That’s just not going to happen,” he said, explaining that the COVID crisis has complicated matters for the whole fossil fuel sector at the same time the industry is going through structural changes. As a result, the pandemic will bring forward the date of peak demand for fossil fuels and hasten the transition to fossil-free energy powering our homes, offices and cars.
Financial analysts have no doubt that the divestment campaigns are contributing to Big Oil’s historic decline this year, as a COVID-induced recession led to an oil glut that sent crude prices plummeting below zero for the first time ever this spring.
Perhaps the most cautionary tale comes from Exxon Mobil Corporation, which saw itself delisted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in August, a few weeks after the company reported a second straight quarterly loss and its stock price cratered. It was a spectacular tumble for a company that was ranked as the country’s most valuable as recently as 2011. The depth of the industry’s troubles developed surprisingly fast this year, exposing, analysts say, the extent to which the clean energy transition is increasingly inevitable.
“It’s very clear to us that COVID-19 will speed up the energy transition, in spite of the best attempts by the fossil fuel lobbyists to roll back the regulatory pressures,” said Bond.
Youth and environmental groups marched on January 30, 2020 in Sacramento, California to urge fossil fuel divestment from CalSTRS. Photo: Peg Hunter, (CC BY-NC 2.0)
What activists have achieved to date is no small feat. In California divestment advocates have already notched some significant victories. Last year, for instance, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order calling on CalSTRS and other state pension plans to shift their portfolios to drive investment in climate resilience and carbon-neutral technologies.
Whether CalSTRS actually divests is still to be seen, but the momentum in California and globally appears to be building behind the activists. Of course, daunting obstacles remain — even more so in these COVID times when in-person activism is limited.
“On social media, when we put out something regarding the climate or anything related to climate justice, most of the time it’s only our own followers who see this content,” says Arias.
Nevertheless, she says she’s undeterred. She finds inspiration in the work of her fellow youth climate activists, as well as other movements for racial and social justice and immigrant rights.
This intersection of social and environmental movements, she says, will be key to tackling the climate crisis, along with other social and economic problems that COVID-19 has only exposed and exacerbated.
“Once we all unite, band together and show up for one another,” she says, “that is when we will have real change.”
West Coast citizens who’ve lost their homes or fled to other locations still have opportunities to participate in the election. But they have to act quickly.
Voting in this year’s election was already going to be hard enough due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Now citizens on the West Coast have massive disruptions from climate-fueled fires and smoke added to the mix.
We reached out to the Secretary of State offices for California, Oregon and Washington for guidance on how people who have lost their homes or been displaced by the fires can make sure their votes count this season. Here’s how they responded. The Revelator will add other states to this list as necessary, especially as hurricane season develops.
California:
“California already provides multiple options for voters to cast their ballots — which is extra important during an emergency such as a wildfire,” says Sam Mahood, press secretary for California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who provided some tips for voters:
If you are unsure about how to vote after being displaced, or are worried you won’t get your vote-by-mail ballot, contact your county elections office ASAP. They handle the printing, mailing and processing of ballots and can help find a solution. In California ballots will begin to be mailed out to voters by Oct. 5. It should be noted that the U.S. Postal Service can’t forward your vote-by-mail ballot, so you will need to work to update your registration to have the correct mailing address.
If you’re displaced, you can update the mailing address of your voter registration online at registertovote.ca.gov
If you’ve already received your vote-by-mail (VBM) ballot you have multiple options for returning it:
All VBM ballots come with prepaid postage return envelopes. Just fill out your ballot, seal it, sign the return envelope, and drop it in the mail.
Completed VBM ballots can also be dropped off at any polling location, drop box or county elections office in the state. Elections officials will route your ballot to the appropriate county elections office to be counted.
We have also expanded access to Remote Access Vote-by-Mail (RAVBM) to all voters for this election. RAVBM allows voters to receive to receive their ballot electronically, mark their selections, print it out, and send it to their county elections official.
In-person voting locations will be available in every county. Voters can re-register to vote all the way through Election Day at voting locations and cast a ballot.
Oregon:
“The families and communities affected by the devastating wildfires across Oregon are in my thoughts and prayers,” Secretary of State Bev Clarno said in a press statement on Sept. 15. “For any Oregonians displaced from their home and concerned about voting in the General Election this November, rest assured we have a plan and are working closely with local election officials to ensure you can receive your ballot, vote, and make your voices heard.”
How can I receive my ballot if I have been displaced by wildfires?
Ballots will start being mailed Oct. 14. If you know an address where you will be able to receive mail then, you can add a temporary mailing address at oregonvotes.gov/myvote.
If I submit a change of address through USPS, will my ballot be forwarded to the new address?
No. Ballots are unable to be forwarded. It is one of the security features of our system. You must inform election officials of your temporary address using one of the methods above in order to have your ballot sent there.
Do I need to register to vote from my temporary address?
No. You do not need to re-register to vote if you are living somewhere temporarily because you have been displaced by wildfires. You just need to let us know where to mail your ballot by one of the methods above.
Will I be able to vote on the local measures where my permanent address is located, even if I am temporarily living outside that area?
Yes. The ballot you receive will contain the contests for your residential address, not your temporary mailing address.
What if my mailbox was destroyed?
If mail cannot be delivered to your home or mailbox, it will be held at your local post office and you can pick it up there.
Washington:
Ballots for the 2020 November General Election in Washington state will be mailed by county election offices no later than Oct. 16.
At the time of registration, voters must provide their residential (physical) address. Voters can also provide a mailing address where they can receive mailed ballot materials. The mailing address may differ from their residential address.
A voter may make changes to their registration record up to eight days prior to Election Day by visiting VoteWA.gov or contacting their county elections office. Changes may include updating residential and mailing addresses, last name (have you been married or divorced since the last time you voted?), providing additional contact information and more.
At VoteWA.gov, voters can also access an online voter’s guide, update their registration information, track their ballot, and download and print a replacement ballot.
Now through Oct. 26, voters facing possible displacement due to wildfires and who have plans to receive mail at a location different than their currently listed mailing address in their voter registration record can update their mailing address by logging into VoteWA.gov. Voters are encouraged to make updates to their voter registration as soon as possible to ensure their ballot is delivered to the correct location on the first try. Ballots will be mailed no later than Oct. 16. Beginning Oct. 16 through Election Day, a voter may also log in to VoteWA.gov to download and print a replacement ballot, and return it according to the instructions specified. By-mail, drop box, and in-person return options are available. Ballots returned by mail must be postmarked on or before Election Day in order to be counted.
After Oct. 26 a voter may visit any county elections office or voting center during business hours and through 8 p.m. Election Day to register to vote and receive a ballot or receive a replacement ballot if they’re already registered.
A new paper identifies 65 plant extinctions in the continental United States and Canada — but that’s probably just a fraction of what we’ve lost.
The Caddo false foxglove. The pale bugseed. The largeleaf leather-root.
These are just a few of the plant species and varieties that have gone extinct in the continental United States and Canada since the beginning of European colonization.
A new paper documents 65 such plant extinctions — five small trees, eight shrubs, 37 perennial herbs and 15 annual herbs — the losses of most of which have never been reported before. Most of these species had limited ranges or were known from single sites, and likely went extinct following the destruction of their habitats. A few were lost due to dams, invasive species or overgrazing.
This new record of what we’ve lost contains 51 species and 14 varieties. These variants, or “infraspecific taxa,” as the paper calls them, may not have been full species, but they still contained unique and potentially important genetic traits.
The list includes a three-foot-tall daisy called Marshallia grandiflora, which some of the same authors declared extinct earlier this year.
It also includes seven plants that are now considered “extinct in the wild,” meaning they only exist in botanical gardens. Four of those “extinct in the wild” plants were, until this paper, thought to still be living in the wild. The evidence now suggests that three trees from the hawthorn family — Crataegus delawarensis, C. fecunda and C. lanuginose — and a bittersweet shrub variety called Euonymus atropurpureus var. cheatumii have narrowly avoided extinction due to their cultivation in botanical gardens.
“I was astonished,” says biologist Wesley Knapp of the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, the lead author of the new paper. “The fact that botanical gardens had the last known living material of a species, yet they were unaware of this, was shocking and it’s spurring future work. Unfortunately for some species, there is little hope aside from a future in gardens or seedbanks. This is certainly better than extinction.”
Losing 65 species and varieties is bad enough, but, as the paper also warns, the continent has probably experienced a much higher level of extinction than could ever be catalogued or assessed. That’s because Europeans settlers typically moved into new areas, particularly the American West, before scientists could document the species that lived there. If those species had small ranges, the authors write, they could have easily disappeared due to agriculture and other development before they were identified or named by scientists.
Of the extinctions that researchers could catalog, 19 came from California, nine from Texas and five from New England. Only one extinct plant on the list came from Canada — suggesting more of a knowledge gap or a research opportunity than necessarily a better conservation record. “It is highly unlikely that New England would have seen five extinctions but adjacent parts of Canada zero. I suspect this is all an artifact of our knowledge — or lack of,” says Knapp.
As bad as this news is, the authors caution that most of these losses should be considered “presumed extinctions.” Even though many species have not been seen for decades, they could reemerge if people look long and hard enough.
“Surprises happen,” says Knapp. He points to this year’s rediscovery of a grass subspecies called Sphenopholis interrupta californica — which was found in California after previously being known from two sites in Mexico — and the famous case of the Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis), which was known only from fossil records before it was found alive in Australia in 1995.
“Even plants not seen for millions of years, or plants completely new to a geographic area where they have not been seen before, can be found,” he says. “I hope every plant on this list is ultimately rediscovered. Drawing attention to them is the best way to possibly help spur their rediscovery.”
And the paper may serve as incentive to find and save other plant species, especially ones that have been sparsely documented in the scientific literature, or species without known living specimens available for genetic testing.
To assist in these types of efforts, the authors developed what they call the “Index of Taxonomic Uncertainty,” a new methodology that ranks species based on how often they’ve been studied. The rarer the study, the lower the level of certainty about whether the plants truly represent species, subspecies or variants, or if even if they still exist. The paper’s supplements contain rankings on more than 400 such plants, about 150 of which have rarely been seen or never catalogued after their initial scientific description.
Knapp says this system, or others like it, may help to reassess rarely seen species or inspire efforts to fill scientific gaps about little-known plants. “Our knowledge is ever-changing,” he says.
That’s reflected in the paper itself, which in earlier drafts projected 53 species extinctions, not the published 51. One of the species was moved to the variety list during peer review, Knapp says.
As to the other? Well, Knapp says recent reports suggest an assumed-lost species of hollyhock could represent another possible rediscovery — proof that hope remains and that we should never give up looking for species we may have lost.
The full list of extinct plant species appears below:
Taxonomic name
Common name (if known)
Agalinis caddoensis
Caddo false foxglove
Arctostaphylos franciscana
Franciscan manzanita
Astilbe crenatiloba
Roan Mountain false goat’s beard
Astragalus endopterus
Sandbar milkvetch
Astragalus kentrophyta var. douglasii
Barneby Douglas’ thistle milkvetch
Astragalus robbinsii var. robbinsii
Robbins’ milkvetch
Atriplex tularensis
Bakersfield smallscale, Tulare saltbush or Tulare orach
Blephilia hirsuta var. glabrata
Hairy wood-mint
Boechera fructicosa
Brickellia chenopodina
Chenopod brickellbush
Brickellia hinckleyi Standley var. terlinguensis
Calochortus indecorus
Sexton Mountain mariposa lily
Calochortus monanthus
Single-flowered mariposa lily or Shasta River mariposa lily
Calystegia sepium binghamiae
Bingham’s false bindweed
Castilleja leschkeana
Point Reyes paintbrush
Castilleja uliginosa
Pitkin Marsh Indian paintbrush
Cirsium praeteriens
Palo Alto thistle
Corispermum pallidum
Mosyakin pale bugseed
Crataegus austromontana
Valley Head hawthorn
Crataegus delawarensis
Crataegus fecunda
St. Clair or fecund hawthorn
Crataegus lanuginose
Woolly hawthorn
Cryptantha aperta
Grand Junction cryptantha
Cryptantha hooveri
Hoover’s cryptantha
Cryptantha insolita
Las Vegas cryptantha
Dalea sabinalis
Sabinal prairie clover
Digitaria filiformis var. laeviglumis
Slender crabgrass
Diplacus traskiae
Mimulus traskiae
Eleocharis brachycarpa
Shortfruit spikerush
Elodea schweinitzii
Schwe initz’s waterweed
Erigeron mariposanus
Foothill fleabane, Mariposa daisy or Mariposa erigeron
Eriochloa michauxii var. simpsonii
Simpson’s cupgrass
Euonymus atropurpureus var. cheatumii (extinct in the wild)
Eastern wahoo
Franklinia alatamaha
Franklin tree
Govenia floridana
Gowen’s orchid
Hedeoma pilosa
Old blue false pennyroyal
Helianthus nuttallii parishii
Los Angeles sunflower or Parish’s sunflower
Helianthus praetermissus
Lost sunflower
Isocoma humilis
Zion goldenbush or Zion jimmyweed
Juncus pervetus
Blunt-flower rush
Lechea lakelae
Lakela’s pinweed
Lycium verrucosum
San Nicholas desert thorn or San Nicolas island desert thorn
Marshallia grandiflora
Barbara’s buttons
Micranthemum micranthemoides
Pearl weed
Monardella leucocephala
Monardella pringlei
Pringle’s monardella
Narthecium montanum
Appalachian yellow asphodel
Orbexilum macrophyllum
Largeleaf leather-root
Orbexilum stipulatum
Largestipule leather-root or Falls-of-the-Ohio scurfpea
This month’s western megafires have burned millions of acres and upended countless lives. It’s a sign of things to come if we don’t start to listen and act.
Fire is the great equalizer.
Young or old, rich or poor, rural or urban, we’re all in the path of the flames these days. As I write this, tens of thousands of people in three western states remain under evacuation orders, more than a million acres of Oregon forest have burned, and entire towns have been wiped off the map. Meanwhile the residents of half the country find themselves cloaked in clouds of megafire emissions big enough to be seen from space.
Smoke from severe wildfires raging on the West Coast has blown thousands of miles east, reaching parts of the Midwest, Canada and upstate New York. https://t.co/jbvToWqhZ1
My small town just north of Portland, Oregon, hasn’t seen much fire, but the smoke has hung over us for more than 10 days. At first it seemed like nothing more than a few stray wisps and the smell of burning wood. By last Friday things were so bad we stopped going outside for longer than a few minutes. Over the weekend our air contained so much particulate matter and carbon monoxide that the Air Quality Index shot well into — and beyond — the hazardous zone.
A healthy AQI is in the 0-50 range. On Saturday ours reached nearly 600.
The official Air Quality Index stops at 500, meaning we’ve now gone well beyond what experts ever predicted when they created the index in the first place.
These levels of fire pollution pose potentially deadly health risks. It’s more than just difficulty breathing, headaches, nausea, watering eyes and irritated skin. The worst kinds of particulate matter — those smaller than 2.5 microns — can lodge in your lungs or even pass through them into the bloodstream, where they can cause heart attacks or other health problems.
It’s no wonder that one of the many websites tracking AQI used a cartoon skull-and-crossbones icon to indicate this weekend’s risk levels.
Smoke mixes with fog on Sunday, Sept. 13. Photo: John R. Platt/The Revelator
All things told, though, my own family’s been lucky — much luckier than those to the south. Our town never even came close to an evacuation order. Our home is safe, we’re relatively well-stocked, we have two brand-new filters in our air purifiers, and we work at home. We don’t need to expose ourselves unnecessarily. Aside from taking our elderly dog into the backyard a few times a day, we haven’t had to go outside since Thursday.
But what if we’d been closer to the flames, like so many of our friends and colleagues? Quite frankly, we might have been in serious trouble. For one thing, we’re down to our last N95 mask — not good enough for two people. Although we’re well stocked on pandemic-style cloth masks, they won’t protect us from particulate matter. Bigger picture, we don’t have a go-bag ready or nearly enough medical supplies, let alone a family evacuation plan for emergencies like this one.
That will need to change.
There’s a lot of talk about “the new normal” when it comes to climate change. Being prepared to hunker down at home or flee for your life has now become a big part of it.
None of this destruction should come as a surprise. The warnings about climate change, overdevelopment and decades of wildfire suppression have been repeated and intensified over the years.
We need to start listening to those warnings — and doing something about them. The conditions we’ve created will affect us all sooner or later.
Fire and smoke, like the other effects of climate change, don’t discriminate. They flow where they flow, following the natural patterns that have defined them for millennia. Everyone and everything in their paths get affected equally.
But the sins that helped feed those fires — those are not equal.
Fossil-fuel corporations, science-denying politicians, and greedy developers are among the worst offenders — those who brought the climate crisis to our forests, landscapes, towns and lungs.
We know this to be true. And yet, how many of them pay the price for their misdeeds? It’s the people who can’t flee or hide from the problems the powerful have caused who pay the highest prices: choking air, lost homes and memories, trauma. Sickness, collapsed wages, pain, suffering and death.
A burned-out fire truck. Photo: Oregon Department of Transportation (CC BY 2.0)
But the corporations that caused this crisis made record profits for decades. They ruined entire landscapes, then moved on to the next areas to plunder. Along the way their executives took home big bonuses and moved their mansions to areas less likely to burn or suffer other unnatural catastrophes.
Even the politicians who claim to understand the climate crisis don’t always commit to actions that match their words. California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters this weekend that the fires are fueled by climate change, yet his administration continues to approve new fossil-fuel extraction permits. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown called the fires ravaging her state a “once-in-a-generation event,” implying that they’re an anomaly, yet these mass catastrophes now seem to happen almost every year.
We don’t have time for government and corporations to waffle. The homes and towns and lives lost to flame tell us that the climate crisis is here, affecting us now. The smoke choking entire states tells us that things need to change, and quickly. This month’s destruction and the potentially record-breaking hurricane season building in the Atlantic that will follow tell us the threats we’ll face have become wide and varied, and already affect millions of people in this country alone.
Once our eyes stop watering from the smoke, will the powerful finally open their ears to listen?
As I write this on Monday morning, our air quality has shown marginal improvements. The AQI in my town slowly dropped — first to 520, then 500. That remains hazardous to human health, but at least it’s no longer literally off the chart.
Still, even indoors, I struggle a bit to breathe. My eyes continue to water, blurring out the sight of my monitor as I type. My skin itches as it never has on my worst allergy days. I’m tired from lack of sleep, yet wired from lack of exercise. And my hearts feels as heavy as it ever has.
Articles, essays and videos discussing critical issues about zoonotic diseases — and what’s going on behind the scenes while we’re coping with this crisis.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a harsh light on critical issues related to wildlife, the environment and our human systems. Here you’ll find The Revelator’s coverage of the crisis — both about the virus itself and what’s going on behind the scenes. Plus we’ve got some tools to keep you connected to the planet during these difficult times.
The EPA allowed polluters to stop monitoring or even preventing their emissions, and many states followed suit. Here’s what happened — and how to fix it.
The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a wave of worrisome and needless regulatory relaxations that have increased pollution across the United States. Recent reporting by the Associated Press and other outlets has documented more than 3,000 pandemic-based requests from polluters to state agencies and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for waivers of environmental requirements. Numerous state governments, with the tacit encouragement of the EPA, went along with many of those requests. All too often, those waivers — requested, ostensibly, to protect American workers from exposure to the coronavirus — were granted with little or no review, notwithstanding the risks the resulting emissions posed to public health and the environment.
EPA invited this wave of waivers back in March, announcing it would relax its enforcement upon request, under cover of COVID-19. The policy allowed polluters that asserted COVID-19 prevented them from monitoring and reporting their own pollution to refrain from doing so without penalty.
Many of the largest regulated polluters, such as refineries and chemical plants, were designated as essential businesses that were to keep operating during the pandemic. But EPA’s waiver policy allowed these companies to send home “nonessential” environmental and safety inspectors whose job it is to protect the public. Only to an agency that devalues pollution impacts and protecting the public does such a policy make sense.
This policy also left EPA and state officials in the dark about where and why polluter self-monitoring had been halted. Many in the oil and gas industry raced to suspend Leak Detection and Reporting, a critical protection against fugitive toxic gas leaks. Without self-measurements, even refinery owners and operators may have been unaware of any hazardous contaminants their plants were emitting.
Strikingly, more than 50 of the facilities that obtained rule exemptions had troubling pre-pandemic records of environmental violations. Waiver petitions from such recidivists should have received the most careful and exacting scrutiny. But in the frenzy to grant passes to polluters under cover of the pandemic, even that sensible safeguard went unobserved.
Regulators suspended in-person self-inspections at a nuclear test site in Nevada.
North Dakota officials granted a request to suspend groundwater sampling at a natural-gas processing plant where 837,000 gallons of liquid natural gas had spilled from a leak over the preceding five years.
Arkansas granted a long-term blanket waiver of safety testing for abandoned oil and gas wells.
Wyoming granted (mostly very large) oil and gas companies a pass on air-pollution emission rules.
Michigan approved requests from several cities to delay testing for lead in drinking water and for replacing the sort of lead pipes that created the horrific public health disaster in Flint.
These regulatory failures have occurred against the backdrop of a steady decline in both federal and state environmental enforcement. The numbers of government scientists and attorneys whose work focuses on enforcing environmental laws has dropped significantly in recent years. There have also been substantial decreases in the numbers of in-person government inspections of pollution sources, the volume of enforcement actions pursued, the number of environmental criminal investigations, and the amount of money that polluters have been compelled to spend on pollution control as a direct result of enforcement activities. EPA has all but abandoned its longstanding oversight of state enforcement work. And the federal agency has cravenly deferred to state enforcement (or nonenforcement) priorities, even though quite a few states lack the resources and/or political will to effectively enforce environmental standards.
Howls of protest and a federal lawsuit prompted EPA to terminate its COVID policy as of Aug. 31. But too much damage has already been done.
How do we move forward, even as the pandemic continues? Several measures are urgently needed to reinvigorate environmental enforcement in the United States. Certainly any overtly fraudulent suspension applications must be identified and be the basis for strict enforcement measures. Though we may never know the full scope of the damage, any available data collected by the regulated entities or the public during the enforcement suspension should be scrutinized to ensure that harms aren’t continuing. More federal and state money must be allocated to environmental enforcement work — and the size of EPA grants to state agencies must be meaningfully increased. The EPA and the states must devote time and energy to recruiting new enforcement professionals and support staffs. And — importantly — environmental agencies must upgrade the training they provide for newly hired staffers so mistakes by inexperienced rookies will be minimized.
Protecting government and private-sector employees from disease is unquestionably a legitimate and worthwhile goal. However, employee protection should not be used as an excuse to suspend government enforcement of critical environmental safeguards. The health of all Americans requires nothing less.
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.
Project Selection
Of course, fire is a natural thing in the Pantanal — which is home to Indigenous communities and more than 12,000 vertebrate species — but this year’s wildfires are three times as large as what the region experienced in 2019.
