Here’s What Climate Change Means for Wildfires in the West

Two recent studies find different factors increasing wildfire risk across California and the Pacific Northwest, but the solutions in each location are similar.

Exploding saguaros in Arizona have signaled an ominous start to wildfire season. The Big Horn Fire outside of Tucson — just one of dozens of blazes underway across western states — has grown to more than 52,000 acres and may have killed at least 2,000 slow-growing saguaros, which usually don’t burn.

Western states have seen an increase in large fires in recent years, sometimes with devastating losses of human life and massive economic damages.

While there are numerous factors that can lead to increased wildfire risk, a growing body of scientific evidence finds that climate change is a wildfire “threat multiplier,” amplifying both natural and human risk factors.

But how climate will influence western communities and ecosystems varies considerably. Two recent studies in California and the Pacific Northwest help to bring some of this into better focus.

California’s Windy Problem

Climate change is already making the conditions in California that fuel wildfires even worse, according to a recent study published in Environmental Research Letters and led by Stanford University scientist Michael Goss and six other researchers.

They found that since the 1980s autumn temperatures have increased by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit, while precipitation fell by 30%. The combination has meant a doubling in the number of days with extreme fire weather conditions in the fall.

Stretching the fire season into the later months of fall is especially dangerous because grasslands and forests are tinder dry at that time of year, and strong seasonal winds kick up — known as “Diablo” in Northern California and “Santa Ana” in Southern California.

Autumn wind-driven wildfires in the state in 2017 and 2018 caused the most deadly and destructive wildfires in its history, with 150 lives lost, 30,000 structures burned, and estimated economic losses topping $40 billion.

Worse still, researchers have found that both the north and south parts of the state are likely to face these threats at the same time, as occurred in November 2018 when the Camp Fire ripped through Paradise in the Northern California Sierra foothills and the Woolsey Fire erupted outside Los Angeles. That means the state could find itself short on necessary resources to combat large blazes simultaneously.

A satellite image of the smoke from the wind-driven Camp Fire in 2018. Photo: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

The Wet Pacific Northwest

Fire regimes are changing in the Pacific Northwest, too, although seasonal winds aren’t the biggest factor there.

Washington saw its largest wildfire in 2014, Oregon in 2017. In 2015 the temperate rainforest of the Olympic peninsula had a rare wildfire. And in another unlikely occurrence, an area of southwestern Washington burned three times between 2008 and 2015.

What does the future hold for the region?

A study in Fire Ecology, by Jessica E. Halofsky of the U.S. Forest Service and David L. Peterson and Brian J. Harvey of the University of Washington, looked at how climate change will affect wildfires across the Pacific Northwest states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Montana.

While the researchers conclude that climate change will increase fire risk across the region, it won’t happen uniformly. The biggest determinant has to do with ecology.

Areas likely to fare best contain moist, coniferous forests dominated by Douglas fir and western hemlocks, such as those found on the western side of the Cascades in Oregon and Washington. Fire frequency there could increase some, but the fires aren’t likely to grow in size.

The next best-positioned sites are high-elevation forests, such as those dominated by mountain hemlock and lodgepole pine, which are likely to see an increase in frequency and a slight increase in severity.

The greatest increase in the risk of larger and more frequent fires will be in low-elevation ponderosa forests found on the east side of the Cascades, the researchers found. This could mean increased fire risk in tens of thousands of miles of biodiversity-rich locations.

black smoke — A single-engine tanker makes a water drop on a wildfire in central Washington as firefighters from numerous agencies watch and fight the blaze in 2018. Photo: Nick Pieper, BLM

Taking Action

Since a key factor in driving larger and more severe fires is climate change, action is needed to curb greenhouse gas emissions. If we don’t, the authors of the California-based study warn, we can expect conditions to get much worse.

“Our climate model analyses suggest that continued climate change will further amplify the number of days with extreme fire weather by the end of this century,” they wrote. But action to curb climate change consistent with the U.N. Paris commitments “would substantially curb that increase.”

And while the long-term plan should involve reducing greenhouse gases, other short-term options they cite that can help include “the use of prescribed burning to reduce fuel loads and improve ecosystem health, upgrades to emergency communications and response systems, community-level development of protective fire breaks and defensible space, and the adoption of new zoning rules and building codes to promote fire-resilient construction.”

The Pacific Northwest study authors also point to efforts to control invasive species that can increase fire danger. They suggest working collaboratively among land-management agencies, rural communities, private landowners, tribes and conservation groups.

There are a number of variables that will affect wildfire risk in these and other regions, including how vegetation may change over the years because of wildfires. And, of course, it will depend on what we humans do (or don’t) to change land-management policy, reduce ignitions and curb development in fire-prone areas.

But, they write, if we’re serious about reducing the risk of wildfires in our future, “Scientists and managers can work together to implement an adaptive management framework and ensure that the best available science is used to inform management actions on the ground.”

We’ll still need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, too.

Researchers Call for Rare Tree’s Conservation — Decades After Its Declared Extinction

Mistakenly presumed extinct for 22 years, the rare Wendlandia angustifolia tree now has an opportunity for priority preservation.

An extinct tree grows in India’s Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve.

Well, it’s not exactly extinct. But the small, flowering tree species, known only as Wendlandia angustifolia, has had a long history of going unnoticed.

Scientists collected the first specimen of the plant in 1867, then didn’t observe it again until 1917. After that no one officially saw it for another 81 years — possibly because the initial descriptions had placed it in the wrong location. But the observation in 1998 wasn’t published in the scientific literature until 2000 — two years after other scientists declared the long-unseen species to be extinct. It’s been listed that way on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species ever since.

In part that error has persisted for 22 years because rare plants don’t get much conservation attention or funding compared to charismatic megafauna like the reserve’s titular tigers. And because of that, no one took the effort to assess the potential conservation needs of the rediscovered species.

Meanwhile occasional sightings of the plant continued, including a fortuitous specimen collection in 2011 by Ladan Rasingam of the Botanical Survey of India. But the species’ categorization remained unchanged.

Recently, though, researcher Chellam Muthumperumal proposed a project to assess rare plants in Western Ghats. In response Rasingam suggested he look for Wendlandia angustifolia and finally determine its conservation status.

And now, 138 years after the species was first described, we finally know how many Wendlandia angustifoliaI exist in the world, how they’re doing, and whether they’re in need of protection.

The results, published recently in the Journal of Threatened Taxa, suggest we should have gone looking a lot earlier.

Muthumperumal and his colleagues found just 1,091 individual trees growing along seven gently flowing, rocky streams in the tiger reserve. That may seem like a decent number, but the majority — 862 trees — were seedlings and saplings, each under three feet high with trunks less than four inches in circumference. Only 54 trees were large enough to be considered “established individuals.”

While a few of those mature trees reached about 20 feet in height, most exhibited stunted growth. Some weren’t much taller than the saplings — likely a side effect of the region’s seasonal floods and droughts.

Despite their “dwarf” status, the mature trees seemed healthy.

“They are mature enough to produce flowers and fruits even in the dwarf condition,” Muthumperumal says. That probably explains why there were so many young trees nearby. But the floods and drought may prevent many of those young trees from growing up enough to also reproduce and help keep the species going. Disturbance by tourists visiting the reserve could also play a role, he notes.

As a result of the small population, low level of mature trees, and the continued threat from flooding and drought, Muthumperumal — who now hopes to assess more of India’s rare plants — says he and his colleagues are preparing a note to the IUCN to finally change the species’ status from “extinct” to “endangered.”

That, in turn, could inspire new conservation efforts to preserve this rarely seen tree. The paper mentions the importance of additional searches to see if the tree exists in other parts of the reserve, regular monitoring, and “an immense need to implement a restoration program to conserve this narrow endemic tree species.”

We hope that won’t take another 22 years.

Sink or Swim: Miami’s Perilous Future Facing Climate Change

Miami is on the front lines of the U.S. climate crisis. Journalist Mario Alejandro Ariza’s new book takes a critical look at the larger lessons for all of our hometowns.

With its white-sand beaches and glittery high-rises, Miami is still a vacation hotspot. But lapping at those shores is another reality. The city is also a “possible future Atlantis, and a metonymic stand-in for how the rest of the developed world might fail — or succeed — in the climate-changed future,” writes Miami journalist Mario Alejandro Ariza in his forthcoming book, Disposable City: Miami’s Future on the Shores of Climate Catastrophe.

This may not be news to some. The city’s plight has been the subject of investigative reporting and even viral news stories after an octopus showed up in a parking garage following an especially high tide.

But Ariza takes a much deeper, more personal dive into the slowly unfolding disaster. Along the way he finds that the central question is whether South Florida — home to 6.5 million people — can equitably withstand what’s coming. To do so it will need to reckon with its past sins. “Miami is a damn beautiful city, and it rests on a sodden foundation of merciless racial and environmental exploitation,” he writes.

The first step is figuring out how much sea-level rise there may be and when it’s coming — but even that isn’t easy, and there’s no one definitive number. The regional climate change compact predicts two to six feet of sea-level rise by the end of the century; a NASA scientist has said eight to 10 feet.

One thing is certain, though: 20% of Miami-Dade County sits less than two feet above the sea. And by some estimates, the water could get that high in just 40 years.

The time to determine what future Miami may have is now.

After detailing that grim if uncertain reality, Ariza takes a detailed journey through South Florida’s vulnerabilities, what actions the region is taking, and those it isn’t. The first-person narrative follows Ariza through smelly, flooded city streets; a rigorous paddle to assess the risks to local infrastructure by kayak; and a day traipsing through thick swamps with two veterans to capture invasive Burmese pythons slithering amok.

This drives home a few points: South Florida’s environmental problems aren’t limited to sea-level rise — although the rising water could make much of it worse.

The draining of swamps, altering of water courses and brazen development have taken a mighty ecological toll. The Everglades are dying, and restoration efforts are painfully slow. The Miami River is choked by nutrient pollution — from leaking septic systems and fertilizer runoff — that’s killing seagrasses, a keystone species of shallow marine ecosystems, and an important buffer against storms.

Environmental collapse is just part of the problem, though. There’s also economic distress.

“If you expect to survive into the middle of the 21st century, you might just get to watch Miami die,” Ariza writes. “But not before the changing climate stretches the city’s already yawning gap between rich and poor past its breaking point.”

Miami-Dade is a majority-minority county with half its residents foreign-born. It also has an enormous wealth gap, with 6 in 10 residents spending more than one-third of their income on housing. And most of those who are struggling to make ends meet are black and Hispanic service-sector workers, Ariza explains.

It’s precisely those communities with the fewest resources that will be hardest hit by stronger storms, hotter temperatures and rising tides. These inequities “are as dangerous as the city’s low-lying topography and porous geology,” he writes.

Already a kind of climate gentrification is underway.

Flooded street — Flooding in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood in 2017. Photo: Phillip Pessar, (CC BY 2.0)

Ariza explains how decades of racist policies and real-estate practices have pushed communities of color away from the beach and the newly emerging suburbs. They ended up sandwiched in between, in an area of high ground that now looks enticing to developers.

This new pressure is increasing gentrification in communities already barely surviving. It’s liable to get worse, too, Ariza explains. Between $15-$23 billion worth of property may be underwater in 30 years. The market has yet to broadly reflect that, but developers are building on borrowed time, even as the lower-income communities are already feeling the pinch.

“Everything we know about climate change indicates that it pulls at society’s loose ends,” says Ariza. These cracks in vulnerability could become chasms if the right policies aren’t enacted as the city works to mitigate and adapt.

By the end of Disposable City, it’s likely readers won’t be wildly optimistic about Miami’s chances. But they will be armed with a deeper view of what’s at stake and the complexities of trying to solve an environmental and social challenge of this magnitude. Even if the city itself does everything right, it still needs the state of Florida to embrace climate reality and the rest of the world to meet science-based targets for greenhouse gas reductions. Efforts are underway, including a newly released draft plan from the Army Corps of Engineers to spend $4.6 billion on sea walls and other projects to protect businesses and homes from storm surges. But much more will be needed.

In Miami these next decades will be fight or flight. Or a combination of both. And he muses on what that would look like. And feel like. Ariza himself is an immigrant, having come to Miami from the Dominican Republic as a kid. He already carries the grief of having left a homeland — a feeling that half the city’s population also knows intimately.

“Now we have to face the fact that climate change may well force us to scatter again,” he writes.

The end of the book turns from this hard reality to a future vision as Ariza shifts to a fictional envisioning. No spoilers, but it’s safe to say Miami in 2100 will be a changed place. And that’s at least one thing we know for sure about this warming world — it is a changing one.

Ariza’s deep dive into Miami is an intricate look at his vulnerable city, but it’s likely to get readers thinking about their own. What will your hometown look like in 80 years? What do you want it to look like? What will you do to make that hope a reality?

An ‘Extinction Hotspot’ in Appalachia

The discovery of a lost plant species highlights the need to protect other endangered species in one of the most biodiverse regions in the United States.

Botanist Wesley Knapp has a reputation for finding lost plants.

In 2016 Knapp’s rediscovery of a rare Maryland flower called Solidago rupestris — last seen more than 100 years ago — resulted in headlines calling him “the Indiana Jones of botany.”

Now Knapp has contributed to a new discovery — the identity of a plant species that’s been hiding under experts’ eyes and noses for decades.

It’s probably been extinct for much of that time.

The lost plant, a three-foot-tall daisy called Marshallia grandiflora, grew in just two western North Carolina counties and hasn’t been officially seen since 1919, according to a paper published this month in the journal Phytotaxa.

Knapp says people have looked for this plant for years with no luck, and it’s something that would have been fairly easy to find at the right time of year. Grandiflora was (as you might guess from the name) “a showy plant, so it’s not the kind of thing that most botanists would pass by when it was in flower,” he says.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not out there,” he’s quick to add. “The phrase I like to use is ‘presumably extinct.’ I hope we’re wrong. I hope somebody goes out and finds it, because it will immediately become a conservation priority.”

In fact, Knapp and his coauthors say, the entire region may also need additional conservation attention. The paper calls Henderson and Polk counties, home to the presumably extinct M. grandiflora, “a previously unrecognized extinction hotspot” because two other plant species from the same region — Narthecium montanum and Orbexilum macrophyllum — have also gone extinct. The counties, Knapp says, have seen a lot of habitat degradation from agriculture and residential development, so there’s not a lot of room left for lost plants to hide.

A New Identity, an Opportunity to Protect

Knapp and his coauthors — Derick Poindexter and Alan Weakley of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — say this species eluded scientific description for so long because it had been incorrectly lumped in with a more widely ranging Marshallia species, commonly known as large-flowered Barbara’s buttons, which they’ve now renamed M. pulchra.

With too few botanists historically working to resolve confusing plant taxonomy, no one had ever noticed that the two species had noticeable differences in size and shape until Knapp commented that museum specimens of plants collected in North Carolina looked quite a bit larger than plants he’d seen in the field in other states.

The wider-ranging species has, for several years, been under review for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act, and is already listed as endangered on the state level in Kentucky, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. With the North Carolina plants now considered their own species, the authors say the renamed M. pulchra may have an even smaller population than previously realized and require conservation. They recommend it be placed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as “vulnerable to extinction.”

They also recommend a third Marshallia species, M. legrandii, be listed as critically endangered. It’s known from just two sites in North Carolina and Virginia, with a total habitat under 4 square miles.

Although scientists are always cautious about declaring a species extinct, Weakley, the director of the UNC-CH Herbarium, calls the probable loss of M. grandiflora “a sad, likely truth. The chance to find it again seems low, maybe very low.”

But he also calls it “a kick in the pants — you know, a motivation.” He says North Carolina and the rest of the American Southeast remain rich in biodiversity, much of which is still being identified and named — even while the threats to these species increase.

“We’re behind the curve,” he says. “We still have a lot of novelties that are being discovered. Almost 500 vascular plant species, flowering plants, have been named in the southeastern United States over the last 50 years. That’s almost 10% of the flora, and most of those are specialized species in limited habitats.”

That makes them in need of greater attention. “A lot of these new species are super, super rare,” he says. “They’re actually more deserving of federal endangered status than many of the species that are actually on the list. And yet because of how broken the federal listing process is, they don’t get listed. I think we just need to document all of these species — the ones that haven’t been described and the populations of the ones that have been described — and really make the case for appropriate conservation and legal listing status for them.”

That could be easier said than done.

“The job has become increasingly difficult,” says Poindexter. “The plants that we’re working on are often cryptic, local endemics. The larger, more charismatic plants have already been done as low-hanging fruit. We’re dealing with the really hard questions now.”

Answering those questions about which species to protect might start with additional searches for M. grandiflora or protecting what little of its historic range remains.

“Let’s go look at any remaining habitat that we think might be there,” Weakley says. “Let’s try to identify that habitat, let’s survey it. And let’s use this as a reminder that we’re letting species go extinct on our watch. Let’s do our damnedest to prevent that from happening.”

16 Essential Books About Environmental Justice, Racism and Activism

These books provide insight into the problems that plague people and the planet, while also offering solutions for a more just future.

This year has brought us some brutal lessons so far, chief among them the fact that systemic racism drives or amplifies nearly all our societal and environmental ills.

Now is the time to listen to the people affected most by those problems of environmental justice and racism — and the activists working to solve them.

Here’s a good place to start: We’ve gathered 16 essential recent books on environmental racism and related topics from leading journalists and experts. Two of these are hot off the presses and scheduled to hit shelves this month, while the rest were pulled from previous “Revelator Reads” installments. All provide vital insight into the problems that plague people and the planet, while also offering solutions for a more just future.

Since we’re still in the middle of a pandemic — another problem made worse by racial injustice — it obviously remains challenging to visit local bookstores and libraries, so these links all go to publishers’ sites, where you can order hard copies or e-books. You can also find enough information to order any of these books from local stores, which may offer delivery or curbside pickup.

This list is hardly exhaustive and pulls mostly from books published over the past two years, and it weighs a bit heavily on Indigenous authors and protests like Standing Rock. So please feel free to recommend any insightful books we missed.

Engage, Connect, Protect: Empowering Diverse Youth as Environmental Leaders by Angelou Ezeilo

The founder of the Greening Youth Foundation provides a critique of the too-white environmental movement and a toolkit for engaging younger participants from African American, Latinx and Native American communities.

As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock by Dina Gilio-Whitaker

The history of Indigenous resistance may offer all of us the strength we need to keep fighting, from the coauthor of “All the Real Indians Died Off” and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans.

Youth to Power: Your Voice and How to Use It by Jamie Margolin

An essential book by one of the country’s most engaging youth activists. Margolin, a queer Latinx, cofounded Zero Hour and helped energize 2018’s record-breaking Youth Climate March. Now she shares her experience and expertise — along with that of other young activists — and offers advice on everything from organizing peaceful protests to protecting your mental health in a time of crisis. Greta Thunberg provides the foreword.

Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger by Julie Sze

As we’ve seen many times over the years, activists standing up for environmental justice often face violent reprisal. This academic book examines the what Sze calls the “historical and cultural forces and resistance to violence, death, and destruction of lives and bodies” to reveal guideposts for future (and hopefully safer) action.

Climate Change From the Streets by Michael Méndez

Méndez argues that the climate crisis is also a crisis for public health, especially in lower-income communities of color, and that both problems can only be solved by addressing issues of environmental justice. His book — subtitled “How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement” — taps into Méndez’s own research into California communities and grassroots activism to show how the problems that plague us can also bring us together — but only if we invite everyone to the table.

Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial edited by Sarah D. Wald, David J. Vázquez, Priscilla Solis Ybarra and Sarah Jaquette Ray

More than a dozen top minds come together to examine thoughts and cultural processes otherwise ignored by the environmental movement.

A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind by Harriet A. Washington

This book will open your eyes, make you angry, and then point you toward solutions for ending the plague of pollution-related health problems in marginalized communities of color.

Full Spectrum Resistance by Aric McBay

This two-volume series provides a powerful primer for activism on social-justice and environmental issues, using examples from more than 50 resistance movements around the world. The first book discusses how to build movements, while the second examines strategies for change.

Indigenous Environmental Justice edited by Karen Jarratt-Snider and Marianne O. Nielsen

When pollution harms your physical, financial and spiritual health, it’s more than an injustice. But that’s what happens time and time again in Indian Country. This book addresses situations ranging from Standing Rock to uranium mining on Navajo and Hopi lands through lenses of colonization, sovereignty and — perhaps most importantly — victory.

Poisoned Water: How the Citizens of Flint, Michigan, Fought for Their Lives and Warned the Nation by Candy J. Cooper with Marc Aronson

We’ve already seen several bestselling and powerful books address the Flint water crisis, but this is the first one specifically written for young-adult readers. When you consider that kids were among the worst affected by the Flint tragedy, that makes this a story they need to read and understand — so they can grow up and help prevent it from happening to anyone else.

Unearthing Justice: How to Protect Your Community From the Mining Industry by Joan Kuyek

Covering everything from how to stop a new mining project to figuring out how to clean up an abandoned mine, this important book offers activists a primer for taking on all manner of extractive industries that can harm human health and the environment.

Whose Water Is It, Anyway? Taking Water Protection Into Public Hands by Maude Barlow

One of the world’s most notable water-justice activists provides a step-by-step guide to help communities keep themselves from going dry due to the actions of irresponsible companies and governments.

Standing With Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement edited by Nick Estes and Jaskiran Dhillon

An essential volume to understand the history and significance of the famous resistance action, combining everything from essays and interviews to poems and photography.

One Earth: People of Color Protecting Our Planet by Anuradha Rao

This book for pre-teen readers delivers 20 short biographies of activists around the world who are working to save everything from trees to dolphins to people. In the process, it hopes to inspire the next generation of activists — especially those who might not have seen themselves represented in the still all-too-white environmental movement.

Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman

A how-to guide for ending racism and injustice in our country’s food system, both on farms themselves and in nutrition-starved African American communities. Bonus: The same techniques improve the soil, treat livestock humanely, preserve rare plant varieties and provide benefits for the climate.

Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet by Nina Lakhani

Honduran indigenous leader and activist Berta Cáceres won the prestigious Goldman Prize in 2015 — one year before she was murdered for her work trying to stop a hydroelectric dam from destroying a sacred river. This powerful book tells the story of her life and death, a tragedy echoed in the murders and assaults committed against hundreds of environmental defenders every year.

Permafrost: The Hidden Climate Risk in the Arctic

A warming planet will unleash the carbon and methane locked away in frozen Arctic soils. How bad will it be? Researcher Christina Schädel explains the risk.

Happenings in the Arctic rarely make the news unless — as we saw this May — a heatwave strikes or a wildfire erupts. Both of those increasingly common events remind us that climate change is already transforming the region — and by extension, the rest of the planet.

But there’s another process underway in the Arctic that gets less attention but poses a looming threat: thawing permafrost.

A whopping 25% of the land in the northern hemisphere is underlain by permafrost — land that’s been frozen for at least two consecutive years, although some of it’s been frozen for millennia. Scientists estimate that there’s about twice as much carbon locked away in these frozen soils as is currently contained in the atmosphere.

Our burning of fossil fuels could further warm the Arctic and unleash that stored permafrost carbon — and set the planet on a dangerous course.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the “climate bomb” potential of melting permafrost. Christina Schädel, a biogeochemist at Northern Arizona University, believes it’s an urgent issue. She’s spent the last nine years studying permafrost carbon and its potential to exacerbate climate change.

We talked with Schädel, who also co-leads the Permafrost Collaboration Team of the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee, about the climate risks and whether we’ve passed a key tipping point.

How is the current level of warming affecting permafrost?

We have more than twice as much warming in the Arctic compared to the rest of the globe. And warming air also means warmer soil temperatures, so permafrost warms up as well and then it transitions from frozen to unfrozen. As it thaws, the microbes that live in permafrost wake up. They become active and start decomposing organic material that has been frozen, and that releases additional amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

What does this mean for the climate? Have we passed a tipping point?

This means more greenhouse gases and even more warming. Because the Arctic is already warming more, it creates a feedback loop that gets stronger and stronger. That’s a big issue for the global climate.

It’s something we should be worried about now, because any greenhouse gases that have been released will not go back into permafrost.

But if we stop warming now, we have a chance of keeping some of the permafrost frozen — that is the goal.

How much carbon dioxide could be released?

If current warming continues, an estimated 130-160 billion tons of permafrost carbon could be released into the atmosphere in the form of greenhouse gases during this century. By comparison, it’s less than emissions from burning fossil fuels but similar to what’s expected from deforestation. The important thing to consider is that those emissions from permafrost are on top of human-caused emissions.

When we talk about the available carbon budget that countries can emit before we hit too much warming, we should account for permafrost carbon loss as well because it’s almost like its own country. It has a certain amount of carbon that will also be released and so on a political level, it’s something that should be accounted for, but it isn’t yet.

Are certain areas more vulnerable than others to thawing?

Circular lake — A thermokarst pond created by melting permafrost in the Blackstone Uplands in the North Ogilvie Mountains of the northern Yukon. Photo: Keith Williams, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Yes, one area is the region further south where the permafrost is already warmer. It’s hovering just below the freezing point, so the transition to unfrozen can happen very quickly.

The other areas that are vulnerable are those that have a lot of ice in them. If the ice melts, then you have the disruption of the soil structure. That exposes the soil to much warmer temperatures from the air, and that can enhance microbial decomposition.

So it’s not just the southern edges of permafrost that are vulnerable, it’s also the far North locations. If a wildfire happens, for example, that can cause permafrost to thaw because the insulating layer of mosses will burn away, and then much warmer temperatures will penetrate the soil.

And it’s not just carbon dioxide, but also methane that’s a potential risk, right?

Yes, methane is definitely a concern, too. It’s another greenhouse gas with a higher global warming potential [in the short term] than CO₂.

We have a hard time so far identifying exactly where methane versus carbon dioxide is going to be released, because it depends on the wetness of the soil. Under anaerobic conditions you have methane, and under aerobic conditions you have mostly carbon dioxide. Some permafrost contains a lot of ice. Other profiles contain much less ice. So it’s unclear which areas will become wetter and which ones will become drier, and that will influence the ratio of carbon dioxide to methane that’s released when the permafrost thaws.

What else are researchers still learning about permafrost and climate change, and why does that work matter when the world faces so many other climate threats?

We’d like to get better at identifying carbon stocks — how much carbon there is in the permafrost. We have a pretty good idea, but it’s such a vast area. And then we would really like to improve models that predict permafrost carbon loss and permafrost extent loss.

In addition, better quantifying abrupt versus gradual thaw is considered important and timely. Gradual thaw is mostly a top-down thaw, and abrupt thaw occurs more sporadically in places where ground ice is abundant. When it melts the ground collapses because there is empty space where the ice used to be.

What happens in the Arctic is so important because greenhouse gases mix really well [throughout the atmosphere]. So even if they are released in the far North, they can be measured here in Arizona where I live.

More greenhouse gases being released means more warming. It doesn’t matter where. We all share the same atmosphere.

Trump Administration Eliminates Protections for Vast Ocean Monument — Experts React

Here’s why the action is so harmful, how it’s possibly illegal, and why it won’t help struggling fishing communities.

While most eyes were elsewhere last week, President Trump signed a proclamation to remove fishing restrictions within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The 4,900-square-mile marine protected area off the coast of New England is home to numerous endangered species and fragile deep-sea corals that can live for thousands of years.

The announcement took place late Friday afternoon in a week beset by protests over systemic racism in the middle of a pandemic.

Experts say removing protections puts a wide range of ocean species in harm’s way. It would also distance the nation from the goals of several scientific calls to fully protect 30% of the ocean by the year 2030.

Established by President Obama in 2016, the monument represents only about 1.5% of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone in the Atlantic Ocean, but it encompasses the majority of strongly protected marine protected areas in continental U.S. waters. Removing its fishing restrictions would eliminate 84% of ocean protections within the continental United States, according to the Center for American Progress.

fish — Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

Trump’s public announcement at an event in Bangor, Maine, failed to recognize the scope or value of the monument.

“What reason did [Obama] have for closing 5,000 miles,” Trump said. “That’s a lot of miles. Five thousand square miles is a lot.” The statement ignored the fact that President George W. Bush protected an even larger ocean area in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands.

“He didn’t have a reason, in my opinion,” Trump continued. “For me, I can’t even believe they can do a thing like that. That’s a terrible thing. That’s a terrible thing.”

But there is a reason: Fishing restrictions were put in place in the monument to protect the many fascinating and threatened species that call these waters home.

Octocoral bush and a beautiful yellow sponge. Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

We don’t really know exactly how badly this change will hurt those species, though, because this decision is unprecedented — no one in U.S. history has ever done so much to un-protect protected areas.

It’s also on uncertain legal ground, as many experts say the move — similar to Trump’s removal of protections at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments — may even be illegal.

Of course the removal of protections — which some experts call one of the most anti-conservation efforts in human history — happened as part of a discussion that included the president boastfully and incorrectly claiming that “I’m a big environmentalist.”

We spoke with several top ocean conservation experts to find out why Trump’s latest move to weaken environmental protections matters, why marine protected areas and the national monument — especially this one — are so important, and what comes next.

What Is a Marine Protected Area?

Marine protected areas like Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument are a key mechanism for protecting ocean biodiversity and the planet.

A marine protected area, or MPA, can be thought of like an underwater national park. Definitions vary, but the term usually represents “no-take” MPAs, or marine reserves — places in which no fishing or oil and gas development are permitted.

Antimora and crab — Face off! Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

The goal of establishing these MPAs is to have some parts of the ocean free from human-caused destruction and overexploitation. This allows them to serve as both sanctuaries for endangered animals and as places where overharvested fish populations can recover. When MPAs are properly designed and effectively administered, they result in more biomass and more biodiversity within their boundaries.

This doesn’t mean people are forbidden from entering an MPA, but it does place certain limits on how the areas can be used or commercialized.

“Multiple uses of the ocean benefit communities, but these uses need to be balanced, and part of the balance means that some places need to be sed aside to enable the ocean to stay healthy,” says Kelly Kryc, director of conservation policy and leadership at the New England Aquarium. “Only a healthy ocean provides all the benefits humans need.”

Those benefits extend beyond marine species’ populations. There’s also some evidence that protecting ocean habitats can contribute to planetary climate resilience.

Marine protected areas are growing around the world, but not fast enough, according to most conservation experts.

Goals set under the international Convention on Biological Diversity required the nations of the world — excluding the United States, which is the only United Nations member that hasn’t signed onto the Convention — to fully protect 10% of coastal and marine areas by this year. According to a recent report, that benchmark which has not been met. In fact, we’ve only protected about 2% so far worldwide.

Another goal, established under the aegis of the IUCN World Conservation Congress, calls for the world’s nations to increase the amount of MPAs to protect 30% of the ocean by the year 2030.

Un-protecting this monument, experts say, is a major step in the wrong direction.

And a surprising step, since MPAs have proven to be very widely supported.

A Bipartisan History in the United States

Although elements of the fishing industry and the oil and gas industry oppose MPAs on principle, the general concept of protecting some parts of the ocean remains overwhelmingly popular in the United States.

A 2019 survey by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation found that 92% of Americans believe government regulation is necessary to protect the ocean, and 95% support the establishment of more marine protected areas — stunningly high support in a divided country where 55% support is often considered a landslide.

king crab — King crab. Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

And this isn’t a left-right issue. President George W. Bush, at one point, held the record for creating the largest marine protected area in the United States — the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, which Bush later renamed Papahānaumokuākea and Obama expanded.

Obama then continued that conservation effort with his creation of Northeast Canyons, the first marine monument in the U.S. Atlantic Ocean.

What Is Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument, and What Does It Protect?

Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument covers (as its name suggests) four underwater mountains and three deep-sea canyons, as well as a wide range of unique species. President Obama declared it a site worthy of conservation under the Antiquities Act in September 2016.

Octopus in a safe space. Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

But it wasn’t a new idea. Discussions about creating an Atlantic marine monument had been ongoing for decades. The Bush White House considered acting on it, according to Peter Auster, a senior research scientist at the Mystic Aquarium who was involved in evaluating candidate sites for protection.

“Many presidents have used the Antiquities Act to expand the diversity of public lands that are conserved, protecting important examples of our nation’s natural heritage,” Auster says.

The area that eventually became Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument won the honor because of its relatively untouched nature and incredible biodiversity. It’s home to so many fish that one of Auster’s colleagues described it as “obscenely abundant.”

One of the most endangered species found there at certain times of year is North Atlantic right whales, primarily threatened by fishing gear entanglement and ship strikes.

Experts say the region includes habitat for fragile deep-sea corals and sponges, which take centuries to grow and are incredibly vulnerable to several types of fishing gear.

“Allowing commercial-scale fishing here will greatly affect the ecosystem,” Auster says. “We need to protect the whole ecosystem from any threats. This isn’t just about protecting corals in the deep canyons, but about protecting the whole wide web of ecological interactions.”

Brisingid Sea Star — Brisingid sea star. Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

Everything that happens in Northeast Canyons is part of a vast, interconnected system, any element of which could easily be disrupted. There are food web linkages between the surface and the deep ocean, Auster says. “Beaked whales dive 2,000 meters and transfer energy between the deep sea and the surface. This will all be disrupted by commercial fisheries.”

Disputing Claims and Criticisms

There’s no doubt that the U.S. fishing industry is hurting now, as the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in making fishing more dangerous for crews working in close quarters, similar to what’s happening in meat-packing plants on land. Meanwhile the pandemic has also sharply reduced demand for seafood.

However, the establishment of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument does not appear to have influenced the fishing industry in any way.

“The problem facing U.S. fisheries isn’t lack of supply,” says Miriam Goldstein, director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress. “The problem is there’s no one to buy it because most seafood is bought in restaurants. The administration’s own economic analysis found that there were no impacts to the monument and no benefits to the rollback of protections.”

And the amount of protected areas that could now be fished don’t represent all that much opportunity for fishing fleets. Auster notes that Northeast Canyons only represents 1.5% of the U.S. Atlantic Ocean’s exclusive economic zone. The remaining 98.5% was always open to fishing.

In fact, part of the reason this area was chosen is that hardly anyone was fishing there to begin with. And some of that fishing remained legal after the monument’s establishment. Recreational fishing is still permitted, and crab and lobster fishing were allowed until 2023.

Hake and Red Crab — Hake and red crab. Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

“At the time the monument was designated, there were just six permits to fish in those waters,” says Kryc, who notes that the actual boundaries of the monument were designed with input from industry to minimize disruption to local fisheries.

On the other hand, Trump’s process and decision to revoke protections did not include other stakeholders.

“Despite concerns from the fishing community that this monument would have a negative impact on industry, years of data have shown that this just hasn’t happened,” Kryc points out. “Landings for the fishery have actually increased since the monument was designated.”

Supporters of the monument dispute some observers’ claims that President Obama’s creation of it, while legal under the Antiquities Act, bypassed some of the processes typically associated with U.S. ocean management, such as a lack of involvement of fisheries management councils.

“Fisheries management councils are not in charge of everything about the ocean,” Goldstein says. “There are many uses of the ocean, and fishing interests shouldn’t control all of it. We have to figure out how to do more than one thing with the ocean. Supporting sustainable seafood practices is not an argument against protecting some areas of the ocean. Additionally, there are certain areas of the ocean that are just not compatible with fisheries, and deep-sea coral habitat is one of them.”

What Should Be Done Instead?

Goldstein suggests several things the Trump administration could do instead of removing protections for the monument that would help New England fishing communities more than allowing fishing within Northeast Canyons.

“The administration could give more economic relief to fishermen,” she says, echoing points she made in a recent op-ed. “The CARES act included hundreds of millions of dollars for fishermen, but that was for the entire country, so it didn’t go far enough.”

Goldstein also notes that the administration’s ongoing trade war with China hurt the Maine lobster fishery, resulting in tariffs on American-caught lobster and an increase in Chinese consumption of Canadian lobster.

The fisheries could also help feed people hurt by the pandemic. “The government has the power through the USDA to directly buy seafood and freeze it or distribute it to people in need,” she says. “They’re already doing this a little, but could do more.”

And finally, the biggest problem by far for Gulf of Maine fisheries is climate change — which, of course, the administration is either not addressing or actively exacerbating.

What Comes Next?

It’s not clear if this decision by President Trump is legal, and environmental groups have already pledged to take the administration to court, meaning the final fate of National Canyons remains in limbo.

In the meantime, experts say, we can still move forward to support both the monument and ocean biodiversity in general.

First, people can voice support for the monument and MPAs. “The best thing people can do is communicate to elected officials that you want the monument to exist, and you want more of them,” says Kryc. “We need support from Congress.”

red brittle star and pinkish anemone in Paramuricea coral bush — Red brittle star and pinkish anemone in Paramuricea coral bush. Photo: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program, 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition

They also suggest moving to protect more ocean hotspots on the state level. “You can help a lot by protecting state waters, which the federal government doesn’t have control over,” Goldstein says, noting that there are bills being debated in South Carolina and California about creating state-level MPAs now.

And we can’t forget the people who are suffering: We need solutions that can benefit both communities and the environment.

“The fact that President Trump is spending time on this at all during a pandemic and civil unrest and 40 million people unemployed while the very fishermen he’s trying to help are asking for specific assistance he’s not providing is just…ugh,” Goldstein says.

New EU Biodiversity Strategy Can Reduce Risk of Future Pandemics — If It Fully Addresses Wildlife Trade

The strategy represents hope for people and wildlife, and can be a model for governments, but it still lacks critical funding to carry out its goals.

As the planet faces the multiple impacts of COVID-19 on human health, well-being and economies, it’s time for governments across the globe to show leadership and take the necessary steps to help prevent future major pandemics.

The emergence of COVID-19 and other zoonotic diseases, which spread from wildlife to humans, shows that our relationship with the environment must now be rethought. We have no other choice but to protect nature and put an end to biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation and climate change. There’s no secret about it. Our health depends on the health of the planet — a fact supported by innumerable scientific studies.

With this in mind, many of us in the conservation community are now waiting for the European Union to deliver on its promised Green Deal.

When discussing the EU COVID-19 recovery recently, European Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans made a welcome statement and declared that the Green Deal is not a luxury but something that’s essential for Europe’s future. Done right, this plan for a sustainable economy can send a strong message to its citizens and to the world: We’re all in this together, and we will protect nature and people.

As part of the Green Deal, the EU has started developing or reviewing major initiatives, including the EU Biodiversity Strategy. The new version of the Strategy, published May 20, sets the EU’s biodiversity conservation objectives for the next 10 years. It also guides the EU’s engagement within international agreements to which it is a party, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Nature restoration is a central element of our recovery plan from the coronavirus pandemic.

The #EUBiodiversity strategy will bring nature back in our lives by providing investment opportunities for restoring our economy. → https://t.co/kPQksLBt2S #EUGreenDeal pic.twitter.com/wopszI92zE

— European Commission 🇪🇺 #UnitedAgainstCoronavirus (@EU_Commission) May 30, 2020

The implementation of this strategy could represent new hope. If the actions it outlines are fully implemented and financed, it will be a critical tool to ensure the reduction of direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss at a global scale, including the EU’s global ecological footprint, and to address the drivers of ecosystem degradation and deforestation.

This is important, because the EU — like any major government or region — has a critical role to play, not only within its own borders but around the globe.

While it is, of course, essential that the EU protect native biodiversity within its 27 member states, the majority of global biodiversity lies in the tropics, where thousands of species are deeply affected by EU policies. So it’s vital that the EU addresses the biodiversity beyond its borders through a global dimension.

Trade, Biodiversity and Diseases

The strategy, as published, does a great job acknowledging that efforts to address wildlife trade and consumption will help prevent and build up resilience to possible future diseases and pandemics.

But it doesn’t go far enough. The EU must also assist the global community in ending the commercial trade and sale in markets of wildlife for human consumption — particularly birds and mammals — as a key outcome to prevent future zoonotic outbreaks.

Although much of the wildlife sold in these markets is legal, the illegal trade in wild animals continues to harm both wildlife and local communities. It can also produce the conditions for disastrous and deadly pandemics. The EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking — first published in 2016 and due to expire this year — will therefore be a critical instrument for reducing that threat. The Biodiversity Strategy calls for the revision of the wildlife trafficking plan in 2021.

Southern white rhino, a frequently trafficked species, in Uganda. Photo: Rod Waddington (CC BY-SA 2.0)

This commitment is welcome and will provide an opportunity for the EU and its Member States to step up their efforts to combat wildlife trafficking and finally treat it as serious crime. Hopefully it will include a commitment to deploying a similar level of resources and penalties as currently devoted to crimes like drug trafficking. Without such deterrents in place, the EU — like any government or region — won’t be able to put an end to wildlife trafficking.

The EU is also now determining its long-term budget — the Multiannual Financial Framework — and will soon set spending targets for the next seven years. The MFF and the next EU development-aid budget (the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument) are critical in outlining the EU’s top priorities.

Those priorities must include high, ambitious spending targets for climate, environment and biodiversity. Without proper financing mechanisms, the EU won’t be able to implement any strategies or actions to preserve our environment and health. While the Biodiversity Strategy states that the EU’s ready to increase its support to developing countries for biodiversity after this year, no detailed financial pledge has yet been made. The EU has missed an opportunity to make a much-needed commitment in this regard, but it’s not too late to establish one.

The EU has all the cards in its hands to make the right decisions — not only to significantly reduce the risk of future major pandemics but to build a new paradigm in which we can live in harmony with nature. It published a well-thought-out strategy that provides the foundation for ambitious actions to tackle the biodiversity crisis; now it needs to put its money where its mouth is.

The EU and its member states have established bold and immediate measures to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on human health, wellbeing and security. Now it must do the same to tackle the biodiversity crisis — whose impacts on our society are likely to be far worse than those of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The EU has a unique opportunity to show leadership, to be a game-changer, and to be on the right side of history a model that other governments and regions across the globe can emulate. Let’s hope it doesn’t let us down.

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.

Trump’s Slash and Burn

The administration has brazenly axed another long list of environmental protections — when it should have been healing a nation wounded by the pandemic and racist violence.

Under cover of tear gas, the Trump administration last week intensified its ongoing demolition of the country’s bedrock environmental protections — a series of calculated moves made while the nation remained gripped by the twin viruses of COVID-19 and institutional racism.

It started on Thursday, June 4, when President Trump used the pandemic as an “emergency” excuse to issue an executive order allowing federal agencies to set aside key protections in the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act in order to speed up the construction of oil and gas pipelines, highways and other projects.

Trump’s long-threatened NEPA rollback, which will limit citizens’ ability to voice objections to destructive projects, poses a direct threat to minority communities already facing greater levels of illness and death under the COVID-19 pandemic following decades of environmental racism.

“Here we are in the midst of an epidemic that affects your respiratory system and communities that are concerned about respiratory health are losing a voice to stop projects that exacerbate serious health issues,” David Hayes, executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center at New York University’s School of Law, told The Hill.

The executive order came three days after Trump used police and teargas to clear away peaceful crowds protesting racially biased police violence to make room for his now-notorious photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

And it came the same day the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that world atmospheric carbon dioxide levels had reached a new record high of 417.1 parts per million, putting the planet further on the path toward runaway climate change. “Progress in emissions reductions is not visible in the CO2 record,” NOAA senior scientist Pieter Tans said in the announcement. “We continue to commit our planet — for centuries or longer — to more global heating, sea level rise and extreme weather events every year.”

The text of the press release continued: “If humans were to suddenly stop emitting CO2, it would take thousands of years for our CO2 emissions so far to be absorbed into the deep ocean and atmospheric CO2 to return to pre-industrial levels.”

Atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa Observatory reached a seasonal peak of 417.1 parts per million (ppm) in May 2020, 2.4 ppm higher than the 2019 peak of 414.7 ppm. https://t.co/BRF9VmLGIO #ClimateChange pic.twitter.com/wVhlQUGvdl

— NOAA Research (@NOAAResearch) June 6, 2020

Which made it all the more perplexing when the EPA, following Trump’s order for additional “emergency” deregulation, announced it would ease the rules that require factories and power plants to report — or even monitor — their pollution emissions, although it did state that these industries should continue to obey existing pollution limits.

In another giveaway to industry, the new policy has been made retroactive to March 13, 2020.

As if those two changes weren’t enough, the slash and burn of environmental protections continued Friday, June 5, when Trump opened Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. The 4,913-square-mile reserve, located 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, was established by President Obama in 2016 under the Antiquities Act and is home to “fragile and largely pristine deep marine ecosystems and rich biodiversity,” according to NOAA.

The move came exactly one week after Trump declared June to be “National Ocean Month” in a bizarre proclamation that focused more on offshore oil and gas development and seafood production than conservation.

The changes were, of course, immediate criticized.

“This rollback essentially sells off the future of the ocean and the future of the ecosystem for almost no present economic benefit,” Miriam Goldstein, ocean policy director at the Center for American Progress, told The Guardian. She added that it’s “puzzling that the president is doing it now, in the middle of the pandemic and with police riots going on around the country.”

Mystic Aquarium was instrumental in providing the scientific rationale for the designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, an area critical to combating the climate crisis that we are facing. To roll back protections is a mistake. pic.twitter.com/E9pdH1m6jd

— Mystic Aquarium (@mysticaquarium) June 5, 2020

Much like Trump’s similar moves to shrink or eliminate other national monuments established by Obama under the Antiquities Act, the change to Northeast Canyons and Seamounts is probably illegal. As we’ve written before, presidents have the legal authority to establish monuments but not to rescind or downsize them. Lawsuits over Trump’s previous monument reductions continue to work their way through the courts, and new suits over this rollback are already expected to follow.

Still more rollbacks are on the way.

Also on Friday June 5, the Trump administration moved forward with plans to reduce the protections offered under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, another giveaway to the oil and gas industries — a particularly tone-deaf move during the middle of Black Birders Week, a nationwide event celebrating diversity in nature that coincided with the protests over racial police violence.

The changes to the 1918 international treaty law, which has helped hundreds of species over the past century, would decriminalize “incidental” (non-intentional) bird deaths caused by industrial projects such as oil pits, mines, telecommunications towers, wind turbines and other threats.

The changes aren’t final and are subject to a public-comments period, although citizens have already submitted approximately 200,000 public comments in favor of keeping the law as-is. But as National Audubon Society CEO David Yarnold pointed out, comment periods under the Trump administration “have become a cruel joke. The administration continues to ignore scientists, experts and … bird-lovers in favor of a few bad corporate actors who can’t be bothered with common sense environmental protections.”

Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) also criticized the changes, saying they would “lead to the deaths of thousands and thousands of birds protected under the MBTA. The administration’s radical action needlessly ties the hands of the [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service], while at the same time undermining our international treaty obligations.”

What does all of this really mean in the long run? Legal experts have already pointed out that Trump’s executive order doesn’t have many teeth. “The Order is legally shaky and unlikely to accomplish much,” Dan Farber of UC Berkeley School of Law wrote this week.

Even corporate interests expressed some doubt, especially since the executive order will undoubtedly face court challenges. One engineer tweeted, as quoted by the Washington Post, that “there is *NO WAY* I would turn a shovelful of dirt based on this Order.”

But industry groups actively celebrated the changes and expressed hope they would extend beyond the “emergency” period.

“We value the importance of these reforms now and underscore the need for finalizing rules across regulatory agencies that will implement permanent reforms,” American Exploration and Production Council chief executive Anne Bradbury told the Post.

It’s the last two words of Bradbury’s quote — “permanent reforms” — that say the most. We can expect industry to continue to ask for — and the Trump administration to grant — expanded, permanent deregulatory favors beyond this “emergency” period, changes that will continue to worsen our environment for people, wildlife and entire ecosystems.

And as with so much the Trump administration has done over the past three and a half years, these slash-and-burn changes will come as quietly as they can manage, with regressive actions continuing to take place under cover of darkness or tear gas.

Of course none of them will address the many other real crises this nation faces — and as we’ve seen this past week, all of them will likely only serve to make things worse.

‘Megadrought’ and ‘Aridification’ — Understanding the New Language of a Warming World

New research reveals a creeping, permanent dryness expanding across the United States. It’s much more than “drought,” and researchers hope more accurate descriptions will spur critical action.

After nearly two decades of declining water flows into the Colorado River Basin, scientists have decided the word drought doesn’t cut it anymore. We need different terms, they say, to help people fully grasp what has happened and the long-term implications of climate change — not just in the Southwest, but across the country.

The term that’s caught the most attention lately is “megadrought.”

It’s not a new word, but it’s one that’s come sharply into focus in recent months, following a study published this April in the journal Science that found the North American Southwest has experienced an abnormally severe drought over the past two decades — its second driest stretch in 1,200 years.

Archaeological evidence has linked previous decades-long megadroughts to several historical societal collapses, including the Mayan civilization and Kublai Khan’s Yuan dynasty in China.

Let that sink in a minute if you need to.

The researchers, led by A. Park Williams of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, say this prolonged megadrought — which reached from Oregon and Idaho down to northern Mexico — would likely have been just a bad drought if not for climate change. The increase in temperatures from our burning of fossil fuels supercharged naturally varying conditions, creating one of the worst megadroughts in human history.

“The new study provided a nice basis to what many of us have felt now for a number of years,” says Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, who was not involved in the research. “The basin has really entered a fundamentally different period than what we experienced during the 20th century.”

low water rings — Lake Mead in 2017. Photo: Karen, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

That may not come as a surprise to those who have noticed that the Colorado River’s biggest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are now sitting half-empty.

But linking modern reality to the megadroughts of history is something new — and researchers say this and other changes to our language matter for the future.

Hot Drought

The current megadrought in the Southwest is defined not so much by declining precipitation — although that did have an effect too — but by increasing temperatures from climate change. That’s going to continue to climb as long as we keep burning greenhouse gases.

Udall and Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, have spent more than a decade studying the effect of this warming on the Colorado River, a crucial water source in the West. The river irrigates 5 million acres of farmland, provides water to 40 million people in seven states — including in the West’s biggest cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix and Denver — and helps keep the lights on in the “city of lights,” among other towns.

This exploitation has come at an ecological cost, though. Thanks to diversions for our various human uses, the river now runs dry before it reaches the sea. More water rights have been allotted than nature can provide, which is undoubtedly a management issue (although a complex one to solve), but in the last two decades this is being more acutely felt.

In part that’s because less water is running off into the basin.

Udall and Overpeck found in a 2017 study published in Water Resources Research that Colorado River flows between 2000 and 2014 were 19% below normal. Reduced rainfall was partially responsible. But on average, they found, about one-third of the runoff decline resulted from warming temperatures from human-caused climate change.

Snow-capped mountains — Snowmelt is an important part of the freshwater system in the Colorado River Basin. Photo: NASA/ Thaddeus Cesari

Higher temperatures from this “hot drought,” as it’s also called, means more evaporation from water bodies and soil, more evapotranspiration from plants and more sublimation from snow. For the West, where water resources are stretched thin already, this can have far-reaching economic and ecological consequences.

Which brings us to another proposed change in the way we describe things.

In a 2018 paper the Colorado River Research Group, which includes Udall and Overpeck, called for new language to describe the scientific reality on the ground. The term “drought,” they wrote, wasn’t accurate.

“Aridification,” they argued, was a more fitting description.

The semantics here are important.

Aridification, they explained, “describes a period of transition to an increasingly water scarce environment — an evolving new baseline around which future extreme events (droughts and floods) will occur.”

Or more simply: Drought is temporary. Aridification is permanent.

This reinforces the fact that climate change isn’t a distant phenomenon, but one that’s already underway and causing life-altering changes. Depending on where you live, it’s causing more severe floods, destructive hurricanes, prolonged droughts or lengthened fire seasons.

And it’s here to stay, given our current course. The “new normal” of climate change could, like megadroughts, be felt for decades.

“We’ve been wanting to make the case that this is not a normal drought,” says Udall. “A drought implies that some kind of return to normalcy will occur in the near future, and that’s not what we’ve seen and not what the science tells us is likely to happen.”

Aridification Creep

This isn’t a problem contained to just the Colorado River basin or the Southwest, either.

Warmer summer temperatures are likely to reduce flows in other key western rivers, including the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest, and rivers across California’s Sierra Nevada, other research has shown. And warming temperatures are driving similar changes further east, too.

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined flows in the Missouri River, the country’s longest river, which cuts through the Midwest. The researchers, led by USGS scientist Justin Martin, found that during the first decade of the 2000s the Upper Missouri River Basin had drought conditions “unmatched over the last 1,200 years.”

The culprit? Warming temperatures from climate change that reduced runoff from snowfall in Rocky Mountain headwater streams that feed the Missouri.

Same story, different river.

But while that paper did occasionally use the term “megadrought,” it mostly characterized what’s happening in the Missouri as a “severe drought.”

Framing the problem in that manner, some say, may not be enough to convey the seriousness of the situation or to inspire action from water managers and the public.

To change the narrative, we have to change the framing, Udall and Overpeck argue in a new commentary published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in response to the Missouri River study. Thinking of what’s happening on the Missouri, and other rivers across the West, as a drought, they wrote, ignores the real and long-term effect that warming temperatures will have on our rivers.

“This translates into an increasingly arid Southwest and West, with progressively lower river flows, drier landscapes, higher forest mortality, and more severe and widespread wildfires,” they wrote, “not year on year, but instead a clear longer-term trend toward greater aridification, a trend that only climate action can stop.”

And that gets to about the only good news in any of the recent research. We know what’s causing the problem. We just need to do something about it.

A first step is making sure changes in water-management policy reflect scientific reality, and that’s where using language for planning that matches the task at hand becomes crucial.

drought planning ceremony — Colorado River drought contingency plans signing ceremony in May 2019. Photo: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

Water managers traditionally use the past as a guide by examining the hydrologic record to calculate important baselines for the average high and low flows, the size of possible floods and the length of probable droughts.

But that’s all changing now “because the future is no longer going to look like the past,” says Eric Kuhn, the former general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District and coauthor of the book Science Be Damned: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River. Now, he says, “water managers are trying to move forward in what we call ‘deep uncertainty’” — a process that requires planning for any number of plausible futures, including a very dry one.

We will get a chance to see what this looks like at the basin-scale as a seven-year process to renegotiate how the Colorado River is shared among its many uses is now underway.

Whether those at the table take to heart the scientific findings about the prognosis for “aridification” and “megadrought” will have big ramifications on the future ecological, economic and political health of the Colorado River basin.

Outside the basin the larger work continues as well.

“The sooner emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere are eliminated,” Udall and Overpeck concluded, “the sooner the aridification of North America will stop getting worse.”