Twisted Logic: Why Washington State Should Reject a Dangerous New Climate Theory

Claims that a massive new methanol refinery fed with fracked gas is actually good for the climate need to be firmly rejected — before they enable similar pushes in other states.

Washington state is on the cusp of making its biggest climate pollution decision in years. The state has the power to stop the world’s largest fracked gas-to-methanol refinery, proposed along the Columbia River’s shores in Kalama. But a dangerous new climate theory stands in the way: the displacement theory.

If built this single refinery would use more fracked gas than all the power plants in Washington combined and increase the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by between 4.17 and 5.41 million metric tons a year.

Yet project-backer Northwest Innovation Works suggests that building this new methanol refinery is somehow good for our climate.

How is that possible? The company’s rationale is based on the “displacement theory,” which posits that global emissions will increase more slowly if Washington approves the Kalama methanol refinery because the company would ship the methanol to China to make plastics or to burn as fuel. And if Washington-produced methanol doesn’t exist, China will produce methanol using coal-fired power instead of fracked gas.

This twisted logic isn’t just the company’s rhetoric; it’s been repeated in a new draft study by consultants hired by the Washington Department of Ecology, which is now weighing whether to permit the refinery.

The department’s analysis rests on the assumptions that no cleaner methanol or substitutes will attempt to enter the market in the next 40 years and neither the United States nor China will enact new regulations to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. This presents a dim view of humanity’s history of innovation and commitment to tackling the climate crisis.

Any fossil fuel developer can fabricate worse alternatives. And it’s been tried before.

Backers of the Millennium coal-export terminal in Longview, Washington, claimed their coal would displace dirtier coal in Asia. Tesoro claimed its “lower-carbon Bakken crude” would displace dirtier oil when it proposed the nation’s largest oil-by-rail terminal along the Columbia River.

Washington leaders didn’t take the bait on those proposals because displacement is speculative and unenforceable. And, most importantly, our climate can’t afford to lock in fossil fuel infrastructure for the next 50 years. If Washington — or any other state — adopts the displacement theory, it would create a precedent that invites new fossil fuel projects — and more fracking.

The project, however, was dealt a significant blow Nov. 23 when a court sided with Columbia Riverkeeper and our allies (including the Center for Biological Diversity, publishers of The Revelator) by overturning federal permits for the refinery’s dock. The court held that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cannot reissue the permits without first completing a full “environmental impact statement” to consider the proposal’s life-cycle greenhouse gas pollution and other issues.

While this is good news, we don’t need to wait for a federal agency’s environmental review and decision. Washington can stop this climate disaster in its tracks before the end of 2020.

activists holding sign — Hundreds of people from Cowlitz County and neighboring areas rallied before a 2018 hearing to call on Gov. Inslee and Ecology to deny the proposed fracked-gas-to-methanol refinery in Kalama, WA. Photo: Columbia Riverkeeper

The first step: Washington — a state with a mandate to achieve 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045 — should reject the displacement theory’s bleak and dangerous reasoning.

Research has shown that using hydraulically fracturing to produce shale gas has led to a global spike in methane emissions — a potent greenhouse gas — as well as other environmental harms and health concerns.

In fact, in spring 2019 Gov. Jay Inslee said, “I cannot in good conscience support … a methanol production facility in Kalama.”

If that’s the case, why would Washington adopt the displacement theory, which would ramp up fracking and climate emissions?

The Department of Ecology’s analysis also presents a false choice: Is fuel better if it’s derived from gas or coal? The real comparison isn’t coal versus gas, but fracked gas versus clean energy.

Many climate experts tout vehicle electrification as a necessary step toward a truly low-carbon future, but an abundance of cheap fossil fuels — like Northwest Innovation Works’ methanol — could disrupt the adoption of electric vehicle technology.

The displacement theory is antithetical to everything our state is working to accomplish.

Washington, like many states, is innovating new technologies and fighting for new policies. We’re creating positive change, not passively accepting a dark future.

The Department of Ecology’s initial willingness to accept Northwest Innovation Works’ speculative, self-serving and defeatist climate rationalizations jeopardizes Gov. Inslee’s credibility and accomplishments as a climate leader.

But the story is not over.

The department still has time to abandon the displacement theory. It will issue a final environmental review any day, and based on that review will approve or deny a key permit before the end of the year. If Ecology denies the permit, Northwest Innovation Works can’t build the refinery.

With the climate crisis bearing down on us, we demand Gov. Inslee and the Department of Ecology reject the fossil fuel industry’s false choice and embrace a clean energy future.

The answer is clear: Deny the world’s largest fracked gas-to-methanol refinery. In doing so, Washington will set important precedent that other states threatened by fossil fuel infrastructure can look to when making similar decisions.

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

Is it Too Late to Save ‘America’s Amazon’?

Alabama’s Mobile River basin has the most aquatic biodiversity in the country. But we’re in danger of losing it before we even know what’s there.

When longtime environmental journalist Ben Raines started writing a book about the biodiversity in Alabama, the state had 354 fish species known to science. When he finished writing 10 years later, that number had jumped to 450 thanks to a bounty of new discoveries. Crawfish species leaped from 84 to 97 during the same time.

It’s indicative of a larger trend: Alabama is one of the most biodiverse states in the country, but few people know it. And even scientists are still discovering the rich diversity of life that exists there, particularly in the Mobile River basin.

All this newly discovered biodiversity is also gravely at risk from centuries of exploitation, which is what prompted Raines to write his new book, Saving America’s Amazon: The Threat to Our Nation’s Most Biodiverse River System.

The Revelator talked with Raines about why this region is so biodiverse, why it’s been overlooked, and what efforts are being made to protect it.

What makes Alabama, and particularly the Mobile River system, so biodiverse?

The past kind of defines the present in Alabama.

During the ice ages, when much of the nation was frozen under these giant glaciers, Alabama wasn’t. The glaciers petered out by the time they hit Tennessee. It was much colder but things here didn’t die.

Everything that had evolved in Alabama over successive ice ages is still here. We have a salamander, the Red Hills salamander, that branched off from all other salamander trees 50 million years ago. So this is an ancient salamander, but it’s still here because it never died out.

The other thing you have here, in addition to not freezing, is that it’s really warm. Where I am in Mobile, we’re on the same latitude as Cairo. So the same sun that bakes the Sahara Desert is baking here.

But we also have the rainiest climate in the United States along Alabama’s coast. It actually rains about 70 inches a year here. By comparison, Seattle gets about 55 inches. It makes for a sort of greenhouse effect where we have this intense sun and then plenty of water. Alabama has more miles of rivers and streams than any other state.

Things just grow here.

The pitcher plant bogs of Alabama, for example, are literally among the most diverse places on the planet. In the 1960s a scientist went out and counted every species of flowering plant in an Alabama pitcher plant bog. He came up with 63. That was the highest total found on Earth in a square meter for a decade or more.

For a long time the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was thought to be the center of oak tree diversity in the world because they have about 15 species of oaks in the confines of the park. Well, two years ago scientists working in this area called the Red Hills along the Alabama River found 20 species of oak trees on a single hillside. It’s just staggering.

Why is Alabama’s rich biodiversity not well known or studied?

The state was never known for being a biodiverse place until the early 2000s, when NatureServe came out with this big survey of all the states. It surprised everyone because it showed Alabama leading in aquatic diversity in all the categories — more species of fish, turtles, salamanders, mussels, snails.

This blew everybody away because Alabama in everybody’s mind is the civil rights protests of the 1960s, the KKK, steel mills and cotton fields. But that’s not what’s in Alabama, that’s what we’ve done to Alabama since we’ve been here.

I think part of it also has to do with being a long way from Harvard and Yale and Stanford and the great research institutions that were sending biologists all over the world. Alabama just wasn’t really studied or explored.

Again and again, the story in Alabama is that nobody has ever looked.

That’s one of E.O. Wilson’s big messages about Alabama. He is our most famous living scientist, I would say, or certainly biologist. He grew up here, and now in his twilight years his big mission has become trying to save Alabama. And he describes it as less explored than Borneo and says we have no idea what miracle cures and things we may find in the Mobile River system, which is what I call “America’s Amazon.”

flowering iris — Iris bloom play a significant role in the swamp ecosystem helping to hold the mud in place. Photo: © Ben Raines

As you write about in your book, all this newly discovered biodiversity is at risk. What’s happening?

Alabama is in a very precarious situation. We have the worst environmental laws in the country and the state environmental agency has been the lowest funded of any state going back decades. So there’s very little enforcement. Maybe that’s because nobody realized how rich this place was in terms of diversity, so there was no move to protect it.

But Alabama’s early history, from the discovery of coal, which happened in the 1800s, has been one of exploitation. Massive amounts of forests were taken down in the 1800s for cotton fields. This state produced more cotton than any other back then, and that took a huge natural toll. And typically it’s people from other places, or even other countries, coming here to harvest the natural resources.

When I was born in Alabama in 1970, there were 15 steel mills in Birmingham going full blast. The air and water pollution from the steel mills and the coal mines were on a scale that’s almost unbelievable.

So even when we talk about the biodiversity we have now, we can’t even imagine what we’ve already lost. And this history of exploitation is still going on today. The largest factory built in the United States in the last 25 years was built in Alabama.

Alabama is inviting industry — and industry is coming because you can get a permit here in 30 to 60 days from the state environmental agency. That same permit in California would probably take 10 to 20 years to secure.

One example is the way Alabama does water permits: There’s no limit on how much water industries can take, no matter what environmental havoc may occur.

A couple of years ago we had droughts so bad we actually saw some of the state’s major rivers run dry. The Cahaba River is 150 miles long and it has 120 fish species — more than in the entire state of California.

And during this drought, the industries and golf courses were allowed to suck so much water out of the river it went dry. It only started flowing again downstream from a sewage plant. The entire flow of one of the most diverse rivers in America was the outfall from a sewage plant. It’s the kind of thing you can’t imagine happening in the United States, but it happened here and there were no laws to stop it.

Are there forces pushing back against this, and are people beginning to see the value of Alabama’s biodiversity?

Environmental groups here are having an amazing growth spurt. Twenty years ago our Baykeeper group, which is part of the Riverkeeper alliance, was a one-woman show.

Now it has about a dozen employees and a huge membership. There are many other environmental groups now that have appeared and are doing good work all over the state.

That’s a big change.

As ecotourism is spreading across the country, it’s starting to happen here, too. The state is quickly catching up. There was great outrage among the populace when I wrote a story about the rivers running dry and now there’s an effort at the state level to make a water plan and to actually limit how much water industry can take.

It sounds like there’s still a long way to go for Alabama to catch up with environmental regulations — what else would you like to see happen?

I write a lot in the book about wetlands because so much of our diversity is in these edges where water and land meet. I would like to see the edges protected, but of course the problem is that’s where people want to be. They want to live on the river, on the bay, on the beach. When you couple that with rising sea levels, there’s a collision that’s coming between people and the edges.

Red-wing blackbird on iris — A red-wing blackbird atop the stalk of a lotus blossom. Photo: © Ben Raines

We have to protect that intertidal habitat now and then buy the uplands behind it to get ready for sea-level rise because otherwise our coastal habitats will have nowhere to go.

I would also really like to see Alabama adopt the pollution standards that you see in the surrounding states. For reasons that escape me, the levels of PCBs in fish we allow people to consume before we issue a warning is 10 times higher than any other state. There’s no scientific reason why we would be so far out of step with our neighboring states.

And then there’s the extinction issue. The rate of extinctions in Alabama is roughly double that seen anywhere else in the continental United States. It has more extinctions than Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee put together.

We’re going to go from being the king of diversity to the king of extinctions. And that’ll be a terrible thing not just for Alabama, but for what we know about nature. Alabama has more than twice as many species per square mile as any other state. And if we start losing that diversity, we’re going to have no idea what we’ve lost.

What do you hope people do after reading your book?

I would hope they come to Alabama to see some of these things, because that’s what will make the powers that be care — when ecotourism becomes an industry that can rival industrial manufacturing, then ecotourism will carry as much weight among the lawmakers.

I’ve been here about 20 years, much of that time as the environment reporter for the state’s three biggest newspapers. Those papers were the environment’s best friend. But they’ve been basically destroyed. The papers are just too anemic. In Mobile, we had a newsroom with 90 people in it, and now they have three reporters. The last thing you’re going to see is an in-depth environmental story anymore.

So the book is a love letter and it’s a call to arms, and it’s saying, “love this place, but help.”

I guess at the end of the day, the story in Alabama about the natural world has been a story of taking and never giving back or appreciating what was here in the first place. That’s what has to change. Because if you just keep taking, you know how it will end. There’ll be nothing left.

Biden-Harris Climate Plan: ‘Not Trump’ Is Not Enough

The Biden presidency will re-energize international climate action. But there’s no time to bask in victory.

Joe Biden’s election is a huge positive in a year that has been extremely difficult across the globe. I speak for a vast number of people who watched anxiously from outside the United States when I heartily thank those who mobilized, campaigned and voted to make it happen. Your hard work affects us all.

But we’re not at the end of the line. Far from it.

Biden shows promise, but there can be no backsliding and or watering down. In fact, the ambition needs to grow. Now is the time for truly bold vision, leadership and action. For instance, Biden has said repeatedly that he will not ban fracking, a destructive and polluting practice that uses high-pressure injections of water, chemicals and sand to suck yet more fossil fuels from the ground. Instead he turns to carbon capture to offset these emissions, a plan that relies on untested technology and does nothing to deal with fracking’s methane release, water pollution and health issues.

He can and must do better. And there are two key areas where he can focus to help push transformative climate action: jobs and justice.

Jobs

The fact that Biden ran and won with a proposal to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 highlights one key aspect he got right: A transformation to sustainability means innovation, new livelihoods, revitalization and importantly, jobs.

The green economy in the United States already employs 10 times as many people as the fossil fuel industry, and Biden’s plan specifically focuses on the economic opportunities that tackling climate change will bring.

But climate action is not a flail that we must use to flog ourselves in penitence, seeking absolution for past sins. Action for our planet creates untold opportunities for us. It will provide different ways of living that will reimagine and reinvigorate our relationship with the natural world, making us happier and healthier.

It will give us livelihoods that are truly sustainable, not based on the myth of infinite growth on a finite planet.

Biden’s plan for net zero in energy production by 2035 is a good example of how a climate-smart jobs boom could work. At present 62% of energy in the United States comes from fossil fuels. Wind, hydroelectric and solar power are all growing industries, and renewable energy is expected to be the biggest global energy source by 2025. Shifting U.S. energy production to net zero will create solid, reliable and well-paid jobs across the nation as renewable energy truly takes off. Funding training to enable workers to shift from fossil fuels will be a key part of that transition.

Sunflower signs at a march — An environmental justice march in Detroit. Photo: Marcus Johnstone, (CC BY-NC 2.0).

Justice

Biden has also referenced the need for equality in climate action, setting a goal for disadvantaged communities to receive 40% of all the clean energy and infrastructure benefits his plan would generate.

While this goal is a relatively small step for a big problem, the recognition is important. Ninety-nine percent of all deaths from weather-related disasters occur in the world’s 50 least developed countries — countries that have contributed less than 1% of global carbon emissions.

In every nation around the world, including the United States, this is played out again on a smaller scale. We can’t continue to allow the poorer, marginalized and more vulnerable communities to bear the brunt of a crisis they did not cause.

The U.S. government is uniquely placed to drive forward international progress on climate.

Biden’s climate plan explicitly includes environmental justice as a key target. Within the United States this encompasses standing up to polluters who disproportionately harm marginalized communities.

The United States must reduce its own emissions and maintain strong diplomacy with its international partners. This leadership will allow the Biden-Harris administration to champion environmental justice around the world.

The swift congratulations on Biden’s victory offered by Frank Bainimarama, the Fijian prime minister, show what can now be achieved. The United States being back in a leading role on global climate action means that small island nations, responsible for minimal emissions but suffering outsized, unjust climate impacts, may have a chance of survival. Tens of millions of people have already been displaced by climate breakdown, a grave global environmental injustice. The new administration has a chance to reverse this.

As a major developed economy and one of the worst emitters, action from the United States would put pressure on others — such as China — to do more. Meaningful progress within the United States and European Union, and strong, progressive voices from both parties at the negotiation table could be the change we need.

The votes for this election have been counted, but now the real work begins. We will all be needed — both in and outside the United States — to show again and again that we are watching and we will fight for our future, and our planet, with everything we have.

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

Seagrass: Another Vital Carbon-Sequestering Ecosystem Threatened by Climate Change

Underwater meadows have rapidly disappeared around the world, but new research suggests they may be the easiest coastal habitat to restore.

Two decades ago scientists and volunteers along the Virginia coast started tossing seagrass seeds into barren seaside lagoons. Disease and an intense hurricane had wiped out the plants in the 1930s, and no nearby meadows could serve as a naturally dispersing source of seeds to bring them back.

The seeding effort eventually delivered more than 70 million seeds — and it paid off, creating some 9,000 acres of the underwater plants.

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Please share this important new video because we must make EVERYONE aware that seagrass captures harmful CO2 up to 35x faster than tropical rainforests, so these guys are doing important work! Grass forests also serve as nurseries for TONS of marine species, literally breathing life into the ocean. Thanks to this underwater restoration effort, Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay is thriving and playing a key role towards slowing down climate change! Share this post and tag people who need to see it too as we MUST all support hardworking organizations and crucial environmental initiatives for our planet and oceans like this too! GREAT Video by @vainstituteofmarinescience @get.waste.ed #seagrass #climatechange #karmagawa #savethereef

A post shared by SaveTheReef (@savethereef) on Nov 1, 2020 at 8:01pm PST

Now monitoring of these restored meadows reveals multiple benefits to their restoration, including substantial increases in fish and invertebrate abundance, improved water clarity, and significant trapping of carbon and nitrogen.

“Planting adult seagrass is very labor intensive, but we started looking at using seeds in the lab and found it was quite easy,” says biologist Robert “JJ” Orth, lead author on a new paper about the project. “These areas have good water quality, are shallow and are near the ocean so they get bathed in cooler water — perfect conditions. It was a surprise how quickly it happened.”

Seagrass scallops — Restored seagrass beds in Virginia now provide habitat for hundreds of thousands of scallops. Photo: Bob Orth, Virginia Institute of Marine Science (CC BY 2.0)

The paper is part of a growing trend of evidence suggesting seagrass meadows can be easier to restore than other coastal habitats.

Successful seagrass-restoration methods include transplanting shoots, mechanized planting and, more recently, biodegradable mats. Removing threats, proximity to donor seagrass beds, planting techniques, project size and site selection all play roles in a restoration effort’s success.

Human assistance isn’t always necessary, though. In areas where some beds remain, seagrass can even recover on its own when stressors are reduced or removed. For example, seagrass began to recover when Tampa Bay improved its water quality by reducing nitrogen loads from runoff by roughly 90%.

But more and more, seagrass meadows struggle to hang on.

The marine flowering plants have declined globally since the 1930s and currently disappear at a rate equivalent to a football field every 30 minutes, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. And research published in 2018 found the rate of decline is accelerating in many regions.

The causes of decline vary and overlap, depending on the region. They include thermal stress from climate change; human activities such as dredging, anchoring and coastal infrastructure; and intentional removal in tourist areas. In addition, increased runoff from land carries sediment that clouds the water, blocking sunlight the plants need for photosynthesis. Runoff can also carry contaminants and nutrients from fertilizer that disrupt habitats and cause algal blooms.

All that damage comes with a cost.

The Value of Seagrass

As with ecosystems like rainforests and mangroves, loss of seagrass increases carbon dioxide emissions. And that spells trouble not just for certain habitats but for the whole planet.

Although seagrass covers at most 0.2% of the seabed, it accounts for 10% of the ocean’s capacity to store carbon in soils, and these meadows store carbon dioxide an estimated 30 times faster than most terrestrial forests. Slow decomposition rates in seagrass sediments contribute to their high carbon burial rates. In Australia, according to research by scientists at Edith Cowan University, loss of seagrass meadows since the 1950s has increased carbon dioxide emissions by an amount equivalent to 5 million cars a year. The United Nations Environment Programme reports that a 29% decline in seagrass in Chesapeake Bay between 1991 and 2006 resulted in an estimated loss of up to 1.8 million tons of carbon.

Seagrasses also protect costal habitats. A healthy meadow slows wave energy, reduces erosion and lowers the risk of flooding. In Morro Bay, California, a 90% decline in the seagrass species known as eelgrass caused extensive erosion, according to a paper from researchers at California Polytechnic State University.

“Right away, we noticed big patterns in sediment loss or erosion,” says lead author Ryan Walter. “Many studies have shown this on individual eelgrass beds, but very few studies looked at it on a systemwide scale.”

In the tropics, seagrass’s natural protection can reduce the need for expensive and often-environmentally unfriendly beach nourishments regularly conducted in tourism areas.

Seagrass ecosystems improve water quality and clarity, filtering particles out of the water column and preventing resuspension of sediment. This role could be even more important in the future. By producing oxygen through photosynthesis, meadows could help offset decreased oxygen levels caused by warmer water temperatures (oxygen is less soluble in warm than in cold water).

The meadows also provide vital habitat for a wide variety of marine life, including fish, sea turtles, birds, marine mammals such as manatees, invertebrates and algae. They provide nursery habitat for roughly 20% of the world’s largest fisheries — an estimated 70% of fish habitats in Florida alone.

Conversely, their disappearance can contribute to die-offs of marine life. The loss of more than 20 square miles of seagrass in Florida’s Biscayne Bay may have helped set the stage for a widespread fish kill in summer 2020. Lack of grasses to produce oxygen left the basin more vulnerable when temperatures rose and oxygen levels dropped as a result, says Florida International University professor Piero Gardinali.

Damaged Systems, a Changing Climate

Governments and conservationists around the world have already put a lot of effort into coastal restoration efforts. And that’s helped some seagrass populations.

Where stressors remain, though, restoration grows more complicated. Research published this September found that only 37% of seagrass restorations have survived. Newly restored meadows remain vulnerable to the original stressors that depleted them, as well as to storms — and climate change.

In Chesapeake Bay a cold-water species of seagrass is currently hitting its heat limit, especially in summer, according to Alexander Challen Hyman of University of Florida’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. As waters continue to warm due to climate change, the species likely will disappear there.

Climate-driven sea-level rise complicates the problem as well. Seagrasses thrive at specific depths — too shallow and they dry out or are eaten, too deep and there isn’t enough light for photosynthesis.

But There’s Good News, Too

Luckily, left to its own devices, a seagrass meadow can flourish for hundreds of years, according to a paper published last year by Hyman and other researchers from the University of Florida. The researchers arrived at their conclusion by looking at shells of living mollusks and fossil shells to estimate the ages of meadows in Florida’s Big Bend region on the Gulf Coast.

That area has extensive, relatively pristine seagrass meadows. “Our motivation was to understand the past history of these systems, and shells store a lot of history,” says co-author Michal Kowalewski.

A high degree of similarity between living and dead shells indicates a stable area, while a mismatch suggests an area shifted from seagrass to barren sand. The researchers found that long-term accumulations of shells resembled living ones, suggesting that the seagrass habitats have been stable over time.

That stability allows biodiversity to thrive, creating conditions where specialist species can survive and flourish, according to Hyman.

Discovering the long-term stability of seagrass meadows has implications for choosing restoration sites, Kowalewski notes.

“There must be reasons they thrive in one place, while a mile away they don’t and fossil data says they probably never did,” he says. “If we remove a seagrass patch, we cannot hope to plant it somewhere else. It’s not just the seagrass that is special. The location at which it’s found is special, too.”

A better approach is conserving these habitats in the first place, but we’re not doing enough of that right now. The UN reports that marine protected areas safeguard just 26% of recorded seagrass meadows, compared with 40% of coral reefs and 43% of mangroves.

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The roughtail stingray, Dasyatis centroura, is the largest of the whiptail stingrays, growing to over 7 feet wide. Here, you can see one cruising over the seagrass in the Canary Islands 🌱 🎥: @especies_de_canarias

A post shared by Project Seagrass (@projectseagrass) on Oct 29, 2020 at 12:41pm PDT

In the meantime, small actions can make a big difference — such as fertilizer ordinances, for example, Gardinali suggests.

“Nitrogen and phosphorus are the problem,” he says. “It’s an easy first step. We can change the way we do small things, one at a time.”

Everything we do at this point will help, not only seagrass but everything that depends on it.

“These habitats are so vital,” Hyman says. “Putting aside erosion control and all these benefits people might not find as important, they harbor juvenile stages of all these marine species we like to eat — blue crabs, for example. From that standpoint alone, seagrass provides countless benefits to the economy.”

Those benefits have mostly gone ignored in favor of more visible, charismatic land-based habitats. That needs to change, the experts say.

“What the trees in the Amazon rainforest provide for that system is what eelgrass provides in estuarine systems,” says Walter. “So many ecosystem services, beyond just being a beautiful grass.”

One that, if we let it, will provide those services for hundreds of years.

How Renewable Energy Could Power Your State

Some parts of the United States could easily generate 10 times their energy needs, according to a new report.

How much of U.S. energy demand could be met by renewable sources?

According to a new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the answer is an easy 100%.

The report looked at how much renewable energy potential each state had within its own borders and found that almost every state could deliver all its electricity needs from instate renewable sources.

And that’s just a start: The report found that there’s so much potential for renewable energy sourcing, some states could produce 10 times the electricity they need. Cost remains an issue, as does connecting all of this capacity to the grid, but prices have dropped significantly, and efficiency continues to improve. Clean energy is not only affordable but could be a big boost to the economy. Locally sourced renewables create jobs, reduce pollution, and make communities more climate resilient.

So where are the opportunities? Rooftop solar, the study found, could supply six states with at least half of their electricity needs. But wind had the greatest potential. For 35 states, onshore wind alone could supply 100% of their energy demand, and offshore wind could do the same in 21 states. (The numbers overlap a bit.)

The study follows a similar report conducted a decade ago and shows that the clean energy field has made substantial progress in that time.

The Revelator spoke with Maria McCoy, a research associate at the Institute and report co-author, about what’s changed and how to turn all the potential into reality.

What’s changed in the 10 years since you last looked at the potential for instate renewable energy?

Maria McCoy. Photo: Courtesy of ILSR

There’s definitely been technology improvements in all the energy sources, but especially solar. Obviously there’s the same amount of sun, but the solar panels themselves have a higher percentage of solar photovoltaic efficiency. Most states, on average, had 16% more solar potential this time around than they did a decade ago.

And for the other technologies, it’s a matter of either more space being available or the technologies themselves improving. Wind turbines now can generate a lot more energy with the same amount of wind.

Where do you see the most potential?

There’s been a lot of development in offshore wind and I think it’s on the cusp of really becoming a big player in the clean energy field. But regulations, including at the federal level, have blocked it from happening at scale in the United States. Whereas in Europe there’s already some incredibly efficient offshore wind farms that are generating a lot of electricity. Those companies are just starting to move into the U.S. market.

But it’s onshore wind that has the biggest potential. Our research found that some states could generate over 1,000% of their energy with onshore wind if they really took advantage of it.

Your report didn’t consider the potential of large-scale solar. Why?

We looked at the potential of rooftop solar rather than large-scale solar because as an energy democracy organization, we’re really focused on distributed and community-owned energy. But it’s also because pretty much every state has enough capacity to completely be powered by large-scale solar. It just then becomes an issue of land-usage debates and other challenges.

Your research shows there’s a ton of potential for renewables across the country. How do we realize that potential?

map — Graphic: ILSR, Energy Self-Reliant States 2020

Continued support for renewable energy is a big one. There are a lot of credits that are phasing out and without renewing those, it will make it a little bit tougher for the market.

We were looking at just the technical ability to produce the energy and not necessarily the cost effectiveness, but we did recognize in the report that the costs have come down. The cost of solar PV, for example, has dropped 70%. So this is not really a pie-in-the-sky goal. It’s definitely gotten a lot more feasible and many cities are already doing it or planning to in the near future.

I think the will is there and people want renewable energy, it’s just a matter of fighting the status quo. A lot of these utilities have been using the same business model for decades and they’re not really keeping up with where things are going and where the community wants things to go.

They’re holding on to their fossil fuel infrastructure and their business model that profits off building more fossil gas plants when solar plus storage is already a cheaper energy source for customers. And wind is very cheap. If utility regulators and state and national policy could hold these utilities accountable to serving the public, which is their job as regulated monopolies, we could finally get to see some of this potential becoming a reality.

Having the ability to generate energy locally and store it and use it locally will create jobs and provide a lot of resilience to the grid and communities. And with climate change, I think that’s becoming more and more important.

Was there anything that surprised you about your findings?

We definitely expected things to be better but I don’t know if we expected them to be this much better in 10 years. Seeing all this potential and these ridiculously high percentages — I mean, being able to generate greater than 1,000% of the electricity we need with renewables in some states is just a sign of how abundant clean energy is.

And it’s kind of sad, I guess, that some states aren’t even able to get to 25% or 50% clean energy goals in their renewable portfolio standards. I would hope that the train starts rolling a little faster.

And I hope our research can inspire others who think maybe their state doesn’t have a lot of renewable energy capacity in their area to realize that they do, and it could provide for all that they need and more.

Biden Must Take a Leadership Role Against Wildlife Crime

The incoming administration has an important opportunity to protect biodiversity and human health.

Joseph Biden was elected to office as the world continues to struggle with a global pandemic that has killed more than a million people and wreaked devastating economic havoc. The pandemic has highlighted how humankind’s abuse of our planet and the irreversible loss of the biodiversity and ecosystem services upon which we all rely for our very existence simply can’t go on.

I work for TRAFFIC, a nongovernmental organization addressing issues related to wildlife trade, and the COVID pandemic has thrust this topic into the limelight. While we fully acknowledge and appreciate support received under previous administrations, it’s clear that the world has underestimated the importance and potential impacts of failing to manage wildlife trade in a way that’s legal, sustainable and, critically, includes measures to mitigate against the risk of zoonotic-disease spillover events.

Centers for Disease Control staff inspect bushmeat being imported into the U.S. (Photo: CDC)

How do we move forward? First, I would argue that allocating resources to understanding the risks associated with trade in animals — from any source — and how to lessen the danger of disease spillover events is a wise investment. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, USAID gave the go-ahead to activities under a second phase of a Wildlife Trafficking Response, Assessment and Priority Setting (Wildlife TRAPS) Project implemented by TRAFFIC, with a renewed zoonotic disease risk focus. TRAFFIC will endeavor to ensure it’s money well spent.

Meanwhile welcome global attention has been paid to addressing the wildlife crime that undermines society and threatens the future of many of the world’s wild plants and animals. But we’re still not there in curbing these crimes. More resources will help get us over the line.

These include better equipment, training and working conditions for the rangers on the front lines; enhanced use of wildlife forensics; training of detector dogs; and even access to skilled translators to assist enforcement agencies with interpreting transactions involving foreign nationals. We also need to see renewed efforts by governments, helped by nongovernmental organizations and others, to reduce the consumer demand that fuels such trade.

Finally, the Biden era must go down in history as the turning point when world governments came together in a united front to address the conservation crisis and start down the long road to repair. Next year the delayed 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity will take place, when world governments will finalize the goals and policies of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework that will guide humankind to a biodiverse and sustainable future. The current draft of the Framework features, for the first time, a target on wildlife trade. It calls on governments to ensure that the harvesting, trade and use of wild species of fauna and flora are legal, at sustainable levels, and safe by 2030. It would be entirely appropriate if the Biden administration were at center stage throughout the negotiations. Given the role of the United States on the world stage, if Biden takes strong action, other countries will doubtless follow his lead.

Already the U.S. intention to rejoin the Paris Climate agreement has been a major symbolic step, signaling the country’s aim to be at the forefront of global efforts to begin the healing process. Make no mistake: Building a green future is an enormous opportunity for businesses in the United States and beyond to meet the challenges of, and profit from, achieving the goal of a zero-carbon economy. Biden’s policies should encourage achievement of that goal on every level. The future is bright, but only if it’s green.

With the world’s climate, forests and other natural resources under ever-increasing pressure, there has never been a more urgent need for the robust guidance, sound policies and strong leadership needed to protect our planet. The next four years could be the make-or-break moment.

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

Multisolving Our Way to COVID-19 Economic Recovery

Addressing the coronavirus pandemic can also provide opportunities to fight climate change and boost equity.

The next president will be inaugurated in the midst of a raging pandemic, an economic recession, a crisis of structural racism and an escalating climate emergency. The best chance for making progress on any of these issues is to tackle them all together.

That’s an approach called multisolving — ensuring that every dollar invested in solving one problem solves others at the same time. It’s the preferred approach when facing intersecting problems with tight budgets and an urgent timeline.

A COVID-19 economic recovery package will be one of the biggest opportunities to multisolve in 2021. A well-designed recovery could lock in decades of low-carbon emissions. It could reap the public health benefits that come along with replacing air-polluting energy sources with clean energy generation. And it could steer benefits, like good jobs that can’t be offshored, to the communities that have historically been left out of economic opportunity.

But multisolving doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design. If the next administration wants to achieve four benefits — climate protection, economic recovery, health and equity — for the price of one, it will need to place multisolving at the center of its plans.

Nine months into the pandemic, there are bright spots around the world that show what might be possible if economic recovery investments were designed to achieve multiple goals. These can be found in small developing countries and in major economies. Their focus ranges from clean energy to ecosystem restoration to walking and cycling infrastructure.

Biker in bike lane — Separated bike lane. Photo: Paul Krueger, (CC BY 2.0).

Here are a few cases drawn from a growing database of examples my colleagues and I are tracking:

The Nigerian government is focusing on solar electricity as part of its recovery plan, with a goal of installing solar-generation capacity on 5 million homes;
Spain has pinned its recovery on an “ecological transformation” including installing 100,000 electric vehicle charging stations, making 500,000 homes more energy efficient and accelerating progress toward its goal of 100% renewable electricity by 2050;
A joint EU-Africa project will direct €300 million ($354 million) to projects that help businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially ones owned by women. At least 25% of the funds are for projects involving renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate change resilience;
The United Kingdom has launched a £2 billion ($2.6 billion) plan to increase cycling infrastructure as part of its COVID-19 response. In the short term this will help people travel safely through the pandemic. In the long term it will reduce emissions from transportation and capture the health benefits of active travel.

Sadly, these bright spots are so far the exception, not the rule.

A study published last month in Science highlights the potential of this moment. Countries around the world have already committed $12 trillion to economic recovery packages. If only 12% of that amount were to be invested in the next five years in clean energy and energy efficiency the world could place itself on a path to meeting the goals of Paris Climate Agreement, while also driving job opportunities and improving human health. But so far, the world as whole is falling short of even this modest amount of multisolving.

Some regions are doing well, though. In the European Union, for instance, somewhere between 19% to 30% of recovery investments are rated as “green.” But many other governments are allowing this opportunity to multisolve slip away. Estimates are that only 1% of U.S. recovery funding so far has been green. For China the estimate is 0.3%; for India it’s 2.4%.

With recovery plans still taking shape, and with many of the opportunities for investment on hold until the public health threat of the virus is under control, the window of opportunity has not yet closed. That is good news. The United States, under the incoming administration, could direct the funds needed to stimulate the economy in a way that simultaneously helps us meet climate, health and equity goals.

To ensure this quadruple benefit is captured, each element of a recovery plan will need to be designed with multiple criteria in mind. Policy makers should be asking questions such as:

Does an energy infrastructure project lock in low carbon emissions while also providing good jobs?
Does a particular investment include racial, gender and economic equity provisions to make sure benefits go to communities that have been left out of past opportunities?
Are investments like home weatherization targeted towards low-wealth communities, where the resulting utility bill savings will make the most difference?
Are job training, healthcare and childcare offered so that everyone can benefit from new employment opportunities?

Success will require sustained effort well beyond the design phase. It will require agencies to work together. Can an energy efficiency program coordinate with a jobs program? Can a cycling project be designed with input from housing and public health?

A true multisolving recovery will invest authority in local communities. While the federal government functions in silos, all the elements of carbon emissions, health, jobs, equity and well-being come together on the ground, at the grassroots level. Funding mechanisms will need to be flexible to allow communities to steer their own green and equitable recoveries.

That’s a tall order, and even the most effective multisolving recovery plan will not be enough if it focuses only within the United States. The transition to a zero-carbon future needs to be a global one. Rich nations like the United States can offer financial assistance so that all countries can recover in ways that are green, resilient and equitable.

The country and the world could emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic more resilient, more equitable, and on track to meet climate goals. But that won’t happen by accident. It’s time to start multisolving.

You can learn more about multisolving on Climate Interactive’s website, where you can also explore a database of green, resilient, equitable recovery measures being taken around the world.

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

Linda Cayot: Lessons From a Life in Conservation

The famed scientist has played a critical role in restoring Galápagos tortoises and other species. Now retired, she offers four key takeaways for the next generation of biologists.

Linda J. Cayot’s scientific focus for the day was a male giant tortoise, part of her dissertation research on the ecology of these iconic Galápagos reptiles. When her study animal lumbered into a swirling torrent of muddy El Niño waters, the intrepid scientist jumped in, too. Together they banged against rocks, his carapace and her daypack catching on tree branches as they thumped in tandem down the river to the lowlands of Santa Cruz Island.

Cayot’s epic 1983 journey launched a 40-year career devoted to conserving the Galápagos Islands. She supervised giant tortoise and land iguana breeding programs; organized campaigns to eradicate invasive species; and coordinated repatriation of tortoises to their native islands. When she began working in the Galápagos, the islands’ giant tortoise populations were down to less than 10% of their historic abundance. They’ve grown since then, bolstered by programs she helped put in place.

Linda Cayot — Cayot studied Galápagos giant tortoises on many islands during her 40-year career. This 1982 photo is from Pinzon Island. (© Theresa Kineke Brooks, used with permission)

The goal remains to restore tortoise populations to their historic numbers and distribution. At the current rate, that might be achieved within two centuries.

For Cayot, who thinks of conservation in terms of deep time, it’s the trajectory that’s critical.

She retired early this year and has just completed co-writing and editing Galápagos Giant Tortoises, a synthesis of knowledge of these island endemics, including the 60-year history of their conservation. Cayot was honored in October with the Prichard Turtle Conservation Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Cayot is a visionary with a practical, one-step-at-a-time approach. If she hadn’t fallen in love with Galápagos, she says, she would have been conserving species somewhere else.

When I asked her about the lessons she’s learned from a lifetime of conservation, it came as no surprise that her succinct responses made little mention of tortoises or the Galápagos. Instead she focused on universal elements that speak to the human element of conservation.

Respectful Relationships: Value Everyone’s Input

“You accomplish much more conservation by having good relationships with everyone,” says Linda Cayot.

As a scientist Cayot worked with Galápagos National Park Directorate rangers who were fresh out of high school, as well as some of the world’s leading herpetologists and geneticists. She sought out people with the tools and ability to solve problems, regardless of their credentials.

Wacho Tapia is among of them. When he was a 17-year-old Galapagoan volunteer Cayot recognized his passion for giant tortoises and determination to save them. Now director of Galápagos Conservancy’s Giant Tortoise Restoration Initiative, Tapia’s years of working with Cayot ensure continuity in the tortoise restoration projects she initiated.

The respect Cayot demonstrated throughout her career is reflected in a small incident on Pinta Island. She asked Joe Flanagan, an American collaborator and chief veterinarian at the Houston Zoo, to document the repatriation of tortoises by photographing the park rangers carrying them to their release sites. One after another refused to be photographed. But when he said the photos were for Cayot, each ranger agreed. Some even primped.

“Linda recognizes that most conservation problems are caused by people, but she strongly believes that people are also the solution,” Flanagan says.

Long-term Vision: Conservation Happens Slowly

“Projects can take 50 years,” says Cayot. “That’s a hell of a long time! But those are the projects that push conservation forward.”

Cayot has always maintained a long-term vision. But working in the Galápagos honed it from years to decades and centuries.

The successful projects she worked on included repatriating tortoises to Española, the southernmost island. In the 1960s park rangers found just 14 tortoises there.

They took them to the Santa Cruz breeding center, added a male from the San Diego Zoo, and launched a breeding program Cayot later supervised. When young tortoises born at the center were old enough to survive out of captivity, they were released on the island of their ancestors.

In June Galápagos Park marked the successful conclusion of the project by returning the original tortoises to Española — 55 years after removing them — to join their progeny and the offspring they in turn had produced.

Cayot also had a central role in eradicating invasive species from the islands. When she first arrived in Galápagos, the southern rim of Alcedo Volcano was covered with Zanthoxylum trees. By the early 1990s, invasive goats were destroying the forest, a critical area for giant tortoises. Cayot coordinated Project Isabela, the largest invasive species eradication ever attempted anywhere.

It took nearly a decade. Today the vegetation is slowly regenerating. Full restoration will take decades more, but that’s not a problem in her mind: Cayot views Galápagos conservation in 100-year increments.

“I worked on the everyday details of Project Isabela, but I was thinking ahead to a century and beyond,” she says.

Serendipity: Learn From Surprises

“Don’t worry if it takes a long time,” says Cayot. “Emerging knowledge may result in significant changes and greater success in the end.”

In 1972 Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island tortoise, was taken to a Santa Cruz Island pen for his protection. Scientists later decided to return tortoises to Pinta, where the habitat was declining without them. Although they would not be the endemic Pinta species, they would still disperse native plant seeds and modify habitat to help other animals and plants thrive, scientists reasoned.

But the herpetologists working on Galápagos tortoise conservation disagreed, and breeding tortoises were never moved to Pinta.

It ended up being a fortuitous delay. Soon expeditions to Wolf Volcano, a remote island where a variety of tortoise species roamed, discovered living tortoises with mixed ancestry, including the Pinta tortoise. That sparked hope that scientists might eventually find others more closely related to Lonesome George — a better option for release on Pinta.

For now, though, this northernmost island remains without the tortoises that evolved there. And that may be for the best.

“We don’t know everything,” says Cayot. “The more knowledge we get the more carefully we can find the right tortoises for that island.”

Collaboration: One Solution From Many Agendas

“You can see the excitement growing when you come up with solutions no one had thought of before,” says Cayot.

When Cayot began coordinating Project Isabela, she knew it would only succeed if Galápagos Park Directorate and Charles Darwin Research Station worked together.

Because they’d never officially co-run a project, Cayot spent an evening sewing. She took a park hat and a station hat — each of which bore an image of a tortoise — cut them both in half and stitched them back together, making the bisected embroidered tortoise whole again. Cayot wore that hat when she gave talks, pulling it on if discussions became contentious.

The grand plan to restore giant tortoises to their historic numbers and distribution included an international workshop in 2012 that she facilitated. Scientists and rangers were beginning to design expeditions to Wolf Volcano. The geneticists focused on finding animals with genetic material from two extinct species and breeding them, a process that would involve multiple generations and take at least 100 years. Conservationists also wanted to find the highest genetic matches possible, but their priority was getting tortoises onto the islands, where they’re key to habitat restoration; they couldn’t wait a century.

These differences challenged geneticists and conservationists alike to be creative. The solution they adopted is the basis for an ambitious plan to revive extinct species and restore island ecosystems. They’re using the knowledge of the geneticists to select the best animals to breed in captivity. Those with lesser genetic material will be released to the islands of their ancestors, satisfying the conservationists’ goal.

“With everyone willing to think outside the box, we ended up with novel solutions, ones that we all liked better than our own individual plans,” Cayot says. “That can only happen when everyone values each other’s input and respects each other’s knowledge.”

Biden Can Leverage Larger Trends to Make Climate Progress

Even if Republicans hang onto the Senate, Biden can use these three strategies to make major progress on climate issues.

With the next president of the United States finally decided, we can now begin moving on to the work at hand.

Joe Biden’s election creates an exciting opportunity for climate action. But there’s one clear hurdle: Unless the January runoff elections in Georgia for two Senate seats deliver surprising success to the Democrats, President-elect Biden will face a Senate led again by Mitch McConnell. That narrows the range of available policy instruments, but Biden should still be able to make real progress.

He has the advantage of the tide moving in the direction of clean energy. Market forces are shifting strongly away from fossil fuels and toward renewables and energy storage. State governments are moving in the same direction. And public opinion has shifted, with more people recognizing the importance of climate change and the benefits of clean energy. The trick will be to leverage these trends into faster and larger changes.

I’d advocate a three-pronged approach to take advantage of these trends: (1) aggressive use of established regulatory tools; (2) funding to improve and deploy new technologies; and (3) government support for state and private sector climate efforts.

The first prong was utilized heavily by the Obama administration.

Like Obama Biden needs to make aggressive use of existing law. Given a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court, it would be best to avoid anything that looks legally innovative and instead push as hard as possible on legally established channels.

That would mean strictly regulating conventional pollution from fossil fuels, using the Clean Air Act as well as other environmental statutes. Additional avenues include ramping up standards for methane emissions, cutting back on leasing public lands for fossil fuels, and higher fuel-efficiency standards.

There will be industry resistance to these efforts, but economic trends may help dampen that.

turbines in field — Wind turbines. Photo: Shawn Meng, Oregon Department of Agriculture (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

The second prong is legislative.

Although a GOP or 50-50 Senate will be a challenge, some kinds of legislation may have a chance of sneaking through.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski has an energy bill she has been trying to get to the floor that seems to have bipartisan support. The bill focuses on spending for research and demonstration projects. Even when the GOP controlled Congress during the first two years of Trump’s presidency, Congress voted to increase funding for renewable energy for the Defense Department and to increase funding for research into innovative new energy technologies.

If Murkowski and fellow Republican Sen. Susan Collins can be brought on board, it may also be possible to adopt energy-related amendments to must-pass bills.

Finally, increased funding for adaptation-related spending by FEMA, the Defense Department and the Army Corps of Engineers may also be feasible.

The third prong involves climate efforts outside the federal government.

During the Trump administration, many states increased their use of renewable energy and a smaller group have adopted serious carbon reduction targets. The federal government can defend these efforts in court; can provide states technical resources; and can use its regulatory powers over energy markets to reinforce state climate programs.

We’ve also seen a serious movement by investors away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. The federal government can support these trends through its regulation of financial markets.

And the power of presidential jawboning should not be underestimated. Presidential appeals to business leaders can carry considerable clout, as can public praise or shaming.

Even if Biden is handicapped by the lack of Senate control, a lot can still be done. And the climate crisis is too urgent for us to pass up any available tool for addressing it.

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

The Biggest Environmental Wins and Losses of the 2020 Election

The planet needed a big win, and from the top to the bottom of the ballot there were a number of crucial victories.

Election Day 2020 — the day before the United States officially left the Paris climate agreement — didn’t deliver an immediate rebuke to President Trump or relief for environmentalists.

That would have to wait.

“The election hasn’t produced the outcome that the planet badly needed,” Bill McKibben of 350.org summed up in The New Yorker the following day.

But as the votes continued to be counted in battleground states, the mood shifted from despair to hope, and finally, on Nov. 7, to celebration when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were pronounced victors.

So much was riding on this election — and not just in the United States.

“There is no pathway to meaningful global climate action without our federal government playing a prominent part,” wrote Mary Annaïse Heglar in The New Republic just before the election.

A Biden-Harris victory doesn’t undo all the environmental harm caused by the Trump administration and its 125 rollbacks of environmental protections, but it provides a much-needed opportunity to restore scientific integrity and take action on climate change, environmental justice, biodiversity and other pressing concerns.

That’s good news. And looking down the ballot there were also other environmental victories — as well as some places where ground was lost. Here are the biggest takeaways:

The Good Stuff

Few big-ticket wins were clear early except for the fact that Democrats held onto the House of Representatives — an expected but not inconsequential victory. And although their majority slimmed, several new additions will be a boon for environmental issues.

One of those is progressive Cori Bush, who cruised to victory in Missouri’s 1st congressional district. She’s the first Black woman from the state to be elected to Congress. The nurse, pastor and Black Lives Matter activist is also a Green New Deal supporter.

In gubernatorial fights, Washington’s climate champion Jay Inslee won re-election. So did Democrat Roy Cooper in North Carolina, which E&E News called a significant victory in the state’s push for clean energy.

Mark Kelly flipped a Senate seat blue in Arizona, and so did John Hickenlooper in Colorado.

Hickenlooper, a booster of the fracking industry during his time as Colorado governor, is not exactly beloved by environmentalists in the state. But his defeat of Cory Gardner was hailed by the League of Conservation Voters, which called Gardner one of “worst anti-environmental candidates” running this year. It was also the first time in 84 years that Democrats swept all statewide races in Colorado.

Along with those victories came one for wolves, too. Colorado voters passed Proposition 114, which will require the state Parks and Wildlife department to develop a restoration and management plan for the reintroduction of gray wolves. It comes less than a week after the Trump administration removed federal protection from gray wolves across the country.

Wolf howling — Photo by Steve Felberg/Pixabay (CC)

In other statewide races, Nevada’s Question 6, which would require electric utilities to get 50% of their electricity from renewables by 2030, was approved by voters. But how much that helps the state’s clean energy future is a matter of debate. Nevada has already passed similar legislation. Enshrining this benchmark into the state constitution could help protect it from future rollbacks — or it could make efforts to raise the target even harder.

Much further down the ballot, climate champions made gains in city council positions in major cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco and Portland.

Denver also approved an increase in sales tax to help fund climate and clean energy initiatives. And Columbus, Ohio passed a measure that would help the city secure more locally sourced renewable energy.

“City leadership is important for advancing climate action but new research finds U.S. cities falling behind,” Daniel Melling, communications manager for the UCLA Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, wrote for Legal Planet.

The Bad Stuff

An anticipated, decisive retaking of the Senate by Democrats never materialized, and whether it remains in Republican hands won’t be decided for bit. Two Georgia races are headed to a January runoff.

If Republicans do hang on to the Senate, that will mean any bold new climate legislation — or likely any meaningful environmental legislation at all — coming out of the House will be stymied, especially if Mitch McConnell retains his role as Senate leader.

Meanwhile several Republican senators with dismal environmental records will be back, including Iowa’s Joni Ernst, Mississippi’s Cindy Hyde-Smith, Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville and Roger Marshall from Kansas. Lindsay Graham, who has a mixed at best record when it comes to climate legislation, also returns.

While Colorado may have seen a blue wave, Montana was awash in red. A Republican sweep across the state included a victory by coal-industry ally Greg Gianforte, who took the governor’s mansion out of control of Democrats for the first time in 16 years.

Gianforte previously said he “would advocate as governor for increased port capacity on the West Coast to get coal to market,” reported E&E News. Montana coal production fell 21% during the pandemic.

train snaking through plains — Coal train loading at Spring Creek mine, Montana. Photo: WildEarth Guardians, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

“Montana didn’t just go Republican on Tuesday,” wrote Gwen Florio in The Nation. “It went deeply conservative Republican.” The effect of that will be felt not just on energy policy, but the fate of public lands and wildlife, including sage grouse and grizzlies.

In a new low, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia became the first QAnon conspiracy theory believer elected to Congress. In addition to a record of racist statements, she ran on a platform that included blocking the Green New Deal.

Democrats had hoped to make a small gain in Texas. But even $2.5 million in backing from Michael Bloomberg couldn’t get Democrat Chrysta Castañeda elected to the Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees issues related to oil and gas — a state race that has worldwide impact.

The race was won by Jim Wright, whom the Huffington Post describes as “a hardcore climate change denier and owner of an oil-field services company.”

The oil industry may have also garnered a victory in Alaska. There Measure 1, which would raise taxes on some North Slope oil companies, is trailing by a wide margin.

But when you tally it all up at the end of the day — or week, really — even McKibben had to concede that overall things are looking up.

“It could have gone much better,” he wrote on Nov. 7. “(Specifically, a deadlocked Senate will make action on the dominant issue of our lifetimes, climate change, more difficult to address than it should be.) But it went.”