Westward Heave-ho: How a Federal Agency’s Move to Colorado Threatens Public Lands, Science and the Climate

The Bureau of Land Management relocation to Grand Junction reflects a widespread pattern of destabilization under President Trump.

When it comes to public lands, the National Park Service has better name recognition among Americans, but it’s the Bureau of Land Management, along with the USDA’s Forest Service, that has more influence. The BLM has jurisdiction over 246 million acres — more than the Forest Service and three times that of the National Park Service — and makes important decisions about oil and gas leasing, mining, grazing, recreation, and other uses of those lands.

Now it seems the BLM’s vast holdings may be in peril due to continued attacks on the agency by the Trump administration, including its decision to relocate the agency’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, and scatter other employees around the country.

All but about 60 of the agency’s hundreds of Washington, D.C. staff will be sent “out West,” including the relocation of congressional affairs staff to Reno, Nevada, and the distribution of the environmental staff to offices in seven states. In total more than 200  positions will be relocated. High-level officials in the Department of the Interior, which oversees the BLM, justified the move by saying it will bring the staff closer to the lands that they manage, most of which are in the West.

“Shifting critical leadership positions and supporting staff to western states — where an overwhelming majority of federal lands are located — is not only a better management system, it is beneficial to the interest of the American public in these communities, cities, counties and states,” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said in a statement.

Not everyone agrees, and some fear an underlying motive is to weaken the agency’s effectiveness and allow oil and gas companies better access to agency staff.

“[The Trump administration] wants the agency to be lock-step with state interests in western resource-extraction states like Utah,” says Peter Jenkins, senior counsel for the whistleblower group PEER, which helps support public employees working on environmental protection.

The fact that the Grand Junction headquarters will be in a building shared by oil giant Chevron only fuels the fire. But there are other reasons to be concerned about the move.

Unraveling From Inside Out

One of the biggest concerns with the dismantling of the BLM’s headquarters in Washington and the scattering of employees across the West is that it will undermine the effectiveness of the agency.

“This was the goal all along,” says former BLM ecologist Joel Clement. “It was to break government and reduce the regulatory state.”

Tim Whitehouse, director of PEER, agrees that the move was not intended to benefit the agency but rather to destroy it.

“There’s a narrative that the administration is decentralizing agencies and moving employees back to the field so that they can be closer to their regulated communities and their constituents,” he says. “But that’s not true. What they’re actually doing is breaking these agencies up and sending employees to remote locations that are difficult to reach and that are far from the powers making the decisions.”

oil drilling
Oil drilling on BLM land in Utah. (Photo by Wild Earth Guardians, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Dozens of former BLM employees wrote a public letter to Bernhardt asking him to reconsider the move. They argue that the move to Grand Junction would actually make it more difficult for constituents to reach the BLM, prevent the agency from being part of decisions in the capital, and increase costs significantly. “The proposed dismantling of the BLM Headquarters Office would adversely affect public service, sustainable management of public lands, and operational effectiveness with no discernable benefit to the agency’s mission under law,” the letter stated.

The concern doesn’t end there. Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) was so alarmed by the move that after repeatedly expressing concerns in meetings, letters and briefings without response, on November 14 he asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office to investigate the agency’s decision and the process by which it was made. “We are concerned about how this reorganization will impact the long-term ability of BLM to carry out their obligations and responsibilities,” he wrote.

BLM staffers told E&E News that as many as 75 percent of the  employees of the agency may leave BLM — a scenario that is already playing out at another federal agency. When two USDA agencies, the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, were relocated earlier this year, hundreds of employees quit. Rather than being alarmed by this, the administration actually seemed pleased. “What a wonderful way to kind of streamline government and do what we haven’t been able to do for a long time,” acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told NBC News.

If BLM follows a similar trend, the move could gut the agency.

A Larger Strategy

The BLM’s move to Grand Junction is about more than a single agency — it’s emblematic of bigger problems Interior has faced since the election of Trump. It highlights administration-wide attacks on employees working on environmental regulations and scientific research.

Shuffling employees around the country — and away from centers of power where they could be involved in decisions — has become par for the course for the Trump administration. In 2017 now-disgraced former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reassigned 27 senior executives of the Department of the Interior (of the 227 total). Several of those executives resigned, including Yellowstone National Park’s superintendent, Dan Wenk, who told CBS News he felt he had been reassigned as a “punitive action.” The Government Accountability Office conducted an investigation on the reassignments and found that there was insufficient documentation and inconsistent reasoning given to justify them.

They weren’t the only ones, though.

Clement used to oversee climate policy before he was abruptly reassigned to a position in an accounting office dealing with oil and gas companies. He blew the whistle on the Interior Department’s attacks on science in 2017, before leaving his position, and now works at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Out of everything they have done, the only transparent thing that has happened in the Trump administration is that they are openly serving industry,” he says of the BLM relocations. “And this might be the most glaring example of that.”

The discord in the department continued in 2018 when nearly all of the members of the National Parks Service Advisory Board quit over frustrations with Zinke. The board, which normally meets twice a year, had not been able to meet because Zinke had suspended all outside committees in order to “review their work.” Things have not improved after Bernhardt, a former oil industry lobbyist, took over the department following Zinke’s resignation.

PEER recently conducted a survey of high-level Interior Department employees and the results were damning. Anonymous respondents wrote that “morale of career staff is abysmally low,” and that staffers were leaving because “the agency is so unbearable to work at,” because of “inexperience, lack of competence and extreme political influence.”

“This lack of morale, the loss of long-term staff is a real concern and an impact we will see into the future,” says Jenkins.

And that’s because the problems can be traced even higher up.

Most of Trump’s appointees to lead federal agencies have not been career staffers and have turned over frequently. For the most part, they’ve come from the private sector, not government careers.

“These people they are appointing don’t even think that the agency should exist at all, like [acting director William Perry] Pendley, who has actually advocated for selling off most of the BLM’s land,” says Jenkins.

Like many members of the Trump administration, Pendley is technically still an acting director and was never confirmed by Congress. Jenkins and many at PEER believe that the Trump administration is breaking the Federal Vacancies Reform Act by having acting directors operating in the capacity of permanent directors without any of the oversight that is normally part of the nomination process.

scenic BLM land
The Centennial Mountains Wilderness Study Area in Montana is managed by the BLM. (Photo by Bob Wick/BLM, CC BY 2.0)

“The Trump administration has been avoiding the requirements of the Constitution and figuring out workarounds…if they’re successful, they will have gone through three years without Senate advice and consent, which seems obviously against the Constitution,” says Jenkins, whose organization is in the process of taking legal action against the administration over the issue.

Issues of staffing and the effectiveness of agency workers is no small matter. Considering the vast amount of land under the BLM’s control, there are striking implications for the health of the American public and critical ecosystems. If the BLM continues to increase permits to allow drilling and fracking on federal lands, not only will greenhouse gas emissions grow unchecked, but there could be negative effects on public health. Air pollutants released by fracking can cause a variety of health problems, including respiratory issues, birth defects and cancer.

“[The West] is full of oil and gas extraction and industrial activities and the air is bad, really bad,” says Clement. The American West — with its millions of acres of scenic public lands — has a reputation for clean air and water, but as oil and gas activity in the region has increased, so has pollution, endangering health as well as the environment.

“American health and safety are not of much concern for this administration,” adds Clement. “That’s why they reassigned so many of us in 2017, that’s why they relocated science agencies to get people to quit, and that’s why they’ve marginalized science left and right.”

Enough With the Fake Rhino Horns

Scientists have once again developed a method to fabricate horns in the lab, supposedly to disrupt poachers and wildlife traffickers. Here’s why that won’t work.

Earlier this month a team of scientists announced they’ve developed a high-tech way to help save rhinos from poachers: They propose fabricating fake horns out of horse hair (which is also composed of inert keratin, like human fingernails) and then flooding the illegal market with their products, thereby lowering the price of powdered rhino horns so much that no one will ever want to kill another rhino again.

Sigh.

This isn’t the first time someone’s come up with the well-intentioned (yet illogical) idea of creating fake rhino horn, and it probably won’t be the last. But it should be the last, because there are several reasons why this concept, no matter how it’s executed, is doomed to fail.

Let’s explore them.

Perhaps most obviously, selling fake rhino horn doesn’t do anything to address the end-user demand for these illegal products, which are driven by either fortunes or phony medicinal claims. These are ultimately the reasons rhinos and many other species are poached in the first place. As a result the best way to eliminate the financial incentive to sell these wildlife products is to get consumers to understand why they shouldn’t be buying them in the first place. We’ve already seen this work; conservationists have finally started to make headway on curbing the shark-fin trade in China after extensive public-awareness campaigns called attention to the dangers the practice poses to people and marine ecosystems. Similar initiatives have started to help chip away at consumer demand for rhino horns there as well (thanks, Jackie Chan).

Progress still needs to be made on reducing the market for products from those species, as well as with other heavily trafficked animals such as pangolins, but that’s another reason why purposefully selling fake rhino horns is wrong: The more you say that any aspect of the market for rhino horn is okay, which is what happens when you put these fake products (or limited real products) up for sale, the more it will expand the market. We’ve seen this before in the surge of elephant poaching after a one-off sale of ivory tusks in 2008, which was meant to flood the market and reduce the profitability of poaching but horrifically backfired. Elephants had begun to recover before that, and now they’re in crisis. Rhinos are already in crisis — do we want to make things even worse?

On a broader and similar note, creating fake substitutes ignores a major aspect of what drives sales of many of these wildlife products. In traditional Asian medicine, “wild” products are considered more potent — and therefore more valuable — than anything that comes out of a lab or from a farm. That’s why China still has trouble commercializing its vast network of tiger farms (yes, you read that right). Consumers want wild products, so even if you do succeed in commercializing “fake” or farmed products, it will tend to normalize demand for all these biological byproducts and further drive desire for “prestige” animals poached from their native habitats.

Meanwhile some well-healed people are actually investing in the possibility of extinction. Rich consumers in China and other countries have been known to buy rhino horns, tiger bones, live tortoises and other species in anticipation that a species will become rarer or even go extinct in the wild, therefore making their assets even more valuable. That threat will never evaporate through the addition of fake products on the marketplace — because, yes, extinction is profitable.

rhino horns
Confiscated rhino horns about to be burned. Photo: Joanna Gilkeson, USFWS

Let’s get to the ethical aspects of this trade in fakes. For one thing many consumers — those who actually use powdered rhino horn as “medicine” instead of holding on to it for eventual sale — are already being exploited. They’re buying into false claims that rhino horn has curative qualities, including the recent and spurious assertion that it can treat cancer. By selling fake rhino horns, you become complicit in that lie and directly harm people who could, and should, seek more appropriate and effective medical care.

Another ethical quandary: How are you going to get these products into the black market without putting your undercover operatives in direct harm from the violent criminals who run wildlife trafficking networks? And do we really think anyone’s going to be able to squeeze these products into the same illegal market that professional law-enforcement operations haven’t been able to shut down? The chances of success there seem slim — and potentially dangerous.

Finally let’s address the invisible gorilla in the room: Selling fake rhino horn doesn’t do anything to resolve the inequality that inspires poaching. More often than not, people hunt illegally to support their families. The monies they get from poaching may mean the difference between comfortable living and going hungry. Sure, their pay comes from the people higher up the clandestine ladder — and sure, some poachers are more criminally minded themselves — but if we want to solve the problem of poaching, we always have to factor in the fate of people on the ground.

Having said all this, I have to point out that the current idea to sell fake rhino horns is just lab science. The researchers fully acknowledge that they don’t have an actual initiative to get these products into the market. They say it’s up to someone else to actually figure out how to make their idea a reality — so for now it’s basically a thought exercise, not a concrete plan.

I have a better idea: Let’s leave this fake horn concept in the lab where it belongs and commit to more practical initiatives to help rhinos — and people — in threatened habitats, where real assistance is desperately needed. With poaching and illegal trafficking still running rampant, rhinos don’t have time left for anything less.

Previously in The Revelator:

Another Deadly Year for Rhinos

How an Old Law Is Helping Fight New Plastic Problems

New legislative efforts to ban plastics are important, but a recent court ruling in Texas reminds us that enforcing existing laws is a crucial part of the plastics fight.

On October 15 a federal court approved the largest citizen-suit settlement ever awarded under the Clean Water Act: $50 million.

A fourth-generation Texas shrimper, Diane Wilson, used the citizen suit provision of the Clean Water Act to sue the petrochemical manufacturer Formosa Plastic for violating the Clean Water Act. Formosa was discharging plastic pellets into Lavaca Bay, a water body located off the Gulf of Mexico halfway between Houston and Corpus Christi.

In the recent fight against plastic pollution, advocates and lawmakers have focused their attention on enacting new laws like plastic bans. But Wilson’s victory is a reminder that enforcement of existing laws is still a valuable tool in battling plastic pollution — and citizen suits can be leveraged to hold industry accountable.

To understand how this works, let’s go back almost 50 years.

The Clean Water Act was a part of the “burst” of federal environmental legislation enacted in the 1970s in response to perceived inadequacies in common law. Like its contemporary environmental statutes of the 1970s, the Clean Water Act contains a citizen suit provision allowing private citizens to sue facilities suspected of violating the law. But unlike its contemporaries, a violation of this particular law is relatively easy to prove. If a facility discharges a pollutant into water without a permit, a violation has occurred. The Clean Water Act also allows plaintiffs to sue for monetary penalties of up to $25,000 per day for violations (paid to the U.S. Treasury), a remedy that’s not available through other environmental statutes. As a result more citizen-suit provisions have been brought under the Clean Water Act than under any other environmental statute.

Formosa manufacturers lentil-sized plastic pellets called nurdles — the raw material for everyday plastic products. Because of their size, the pellets are difficult to remove from the environment and are easily ingested by marine life. The company’s Clean Water Act permit prohibited the “discharge of floating solids or visible foam in other than trace amounts,” but for several years Wilson noticed that pellets were being discharged almost daily from outfalls at the Formosa plant in Point Comfort, Texas, into Lavaca Bay. She also noticed a measurable decline in shrimp, crabs and mullets.

With her livelihood at stake, Wilson took action.

Using the citizen suit provision of the Clean Water Act, she, along with the San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper, filed suit against Formosa in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in 2017, alleging that the petrochemical manufacturer was violating its permit and thereby the Clean Water Act.  At a bench trial in March 2019, a federal judge reviewed more than 2,400 samples of plastic, as well as 110 videos and 44 photos from Lavaca Bay. After considering the evidence and hearing from multiple witnesses including several experts, the court ruled in Wilson’s favor.

In its June 2019 order, the court found that Formosa’s discharges consistently exceeded “plastics of more than trace amounts.” Ultimately the evidence demonstrated that the company had violated its permit on more than 1,000 days and that the violations were “enormous.” The court order called Formosa a “serial offender” who had “caused or contributed to the damages suffered by the recreational, aesthetic and economic value” of the area.

The parties entered into settlement negotiations that were finalized on October 15.  The agreement requires Formosa to pay $50 million over five years for mitigation efforts to “provide environmental benefits to affected areas.” Formosa must also engage engineers to design a system to halt the discharge of plastic pellets and pay more the $3 million in attorneys’ fees.

Wilson and the San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper’s win is a small, but important, victory in the fight against plastic pollution. Other environmental groups have already taken notice and are making use of the citizen-suit provision: The Southern Environmental Law Center recently filed its 60-day notice to sue Frontier Logistics, a pellet-packaging company, for plastic-pellet discharges into Cooper River in South Carolina.

In an era of decreased regulation, citizen suits offer a promising way to reduce plastic pollution by ensuring compliance with existing federal law. But public participation is also key. Citizen suits require citizen plaintiffs, and this victory wouldn’t have been achieved without Wilson and her efforts to document Formosa’s violations. As she told local media, “If we can do it, anybody can.” And thanks to her work, that next fight is already underway in South Carolina.

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 Trouble With Biofuels

The Trump administration has promised to expand their use, which would make farmers happy. But are consumers aware of biofuels’ potential consequences?

A ruckus over biofuels has been brewing in Iowa.

For months now the Trump administration has been promising to deliver a new biofuels package that would boost the market for production of soy- and corn-based alternative fuels. The move would help American farmers hurt by the administration’s tariffs, as well as ease their anger over changing regulations that have exempted several oil refineries from blending biofuels with their other fuels.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandated that all fuels produced in the United States contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels. Part of that came in the form of biofuels, derived from living, renewable sources such as crops or plants. The term “biofuels” generally refers to the gasoline substitute derived from corn, while “biodiesel” is a diesel substitute derived from soybean oil or animal fats.

At the time many experts predicted biofuels would provide a renewable source of energy, help reduce the use of fossil fuels, and lessen the risks of climate change. After the Act was passed, the biofuels market jolted into life.

“In 2000 we used less corn for ethanol than sweeteners in soda,” says Jeremy Martin, director of fuels policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “By 2010 ethanol was up there with animal feed as the largest consumer of corn.” Last year total U.S. biofuel production reached 16 billion gallons a year, and industry projections anticipate continued growth.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the expansion of the biofuels industry — as a share of the fuel market and a lobbying power — is that the general public hasn’t really noticed. Compared with fracking or coal, biofuels aren’t the subject of many policy reports or New York Times op-eds. Media coverage of the biofuels package has been limited.

But as President Donald Trump continues to make promises about the future of biofuels, two important questions loom: Should the rest of the country care about what’s going on in Iowa and other corn-belt states? And is biofuel expansion something we should welcome or oppose?

Lobbying and Public Perception

The industry often referred to as “Big Corn” has a surprising amount of power and has actively intensified its lobbying efforts.

In 2018 several biofuel interest groups each spent more than $1 million to lobby the government over the Renewable Fuel Standard, an average increase from 2017 of around $200,000. This is obviously small change compared with what the fossil-fuel industry spends — the biggest oil companies each spend $40-50 million every year — but the biofuel groups’ efforts have paid off to some degree. Although the ethanol lobby has not made headway reducing the number of small refinery waivers issued by the government, they’re getting other desired results: The Trump administration favors raising the minimum ethanol volume in gasoline, something the oil and gas lobby opposes.

Critics say this lobbying has allowed the industry to successfully broaden its market without fully informing customers of the potential costs and concerns, which range from reduced gas mileage to increased air pollution.

Perhaps as a result, the public perception of biofuels — or what little we know about it — remains fairly positive.

Unsurprisingly, one place where public approval seems to be holding is Iowa, a state whose economy also depends on biofuels.

According to a public opinion poll by the Iowa Biodiesel Board, a state trade association, 65 percent of Iowans have a positive opinion of biodiesel, while just 4 percent have a negative opinion. Those numbers haven’t changed much over time.

“It’s holding pretty steady,” says Grant Kimberley, executive director of the association.

A national voter poll by the American Biodiesel Board released in October 2019 paints a similar picture. More than half of survey participants said they believed the federal government should encourage the use of biofuels.

Outside of trade group polls, though, there isn’t a lot of academic research on public attitudes to biofuels and biodiesel. Gallup and Pew Research opinion polls don’t ask about them, so we don’t know the true national consensus on biofuels, or whether biofuels are more popular than other nontraditional sources of energy such as fracking, solar or nuclear power.

What we do know comes from a few years ago.

Bret Shaw, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has researched public attitudes within his state. His papers from 2011 and 2012 (based on research conducted in 2009) are some of the most recent to document American opinion. Almost two-thirds of Wisconsinites surveyed told him they support the use of biofuels, which matches the Iowa poll. They correctly answered an average of 5 out of 9 questions about biofuels, demonstrating reasonably good knowledge.

However, Shaw’s studies suggested that public opinion may be more malleable and precarious than those robust approval ratings imply. In his surveys he found that renaming “biofuels” as “ethanol” negatively affected the opinion of Democrats but didn’t sway Republicans. Public opinion on both sides dipped when the surveys stated that adding biofuel blends could lower a car’s gas mileage.

When asked about ethanol’s impact on the environment, 41 percent believed it causes less damage than gasoline, 44 percent believed it was about the same and only 15 percent thought ethanol caused more environmental damage.

Shaw cautions that public attitudes may have shifted in the past decade, but his studies still present the clearest snapshot of public perception of biofuels — as well as the opportunity to better inform consumers about the products that go into their gas tanks.

So why should the public care, especially since they have so little choice in the matter?

What the Public Doesn’t Know Can’t Hurt Them — Can It?

Advocates of biofuels around the country tout them as better for the environment than fossil fuels, a fact that polls tell us the public doesn’t disagree with.

Scientists, on the other hand, have begun to question some of those environmental benefits. According to some studies, biodiesels emit more of certain pollutants than regular diesel, and biofuels can have a larger carbon footprint than gasoline, depending on where you start in the production cycle. These findings don’t seem to enter the public discourse.

Increased corn production can also harm farmland because it causes farmers to cut back on crop rotation, a process essential to maintaining soil quality and reducing pests. Farmers also have an increased incentive to plant corn in ecologically sensitive grassland or wetlands.

corn post-harvest
Corn stalks after harvest. Photo: Phil Roeder (CC BY 2.0)

But the effects of biofuel production on wildlife and public health are subtle and hard to separate from the consequences of food production. This sets biodiesel apart from other sources of pollution and environmental health, such as fracking, which are often much more immediately visible. For example, images of brown tap water were enough to mobilize national opposition to fracking. Intensified corn production doesn’t generate such arresting sights. Corn requires more fertilizer than other crops, and the toxic algal bloom caused by fertilizer runoff into the rivers is a visible consequence of increased corn production to meet biofuel demand. However, these blooms occur out of sight in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Union of Concerned Scientists advocates for cleaner energy, but stands neither for nor against biofuels.

“Our position is that all fuel producers should be cleaning up their act,” says Martin. “More emphasis on ‘how do we make biofuels better’ rather than just ‘let’s have more biofuels’.”

Although these problems have been identified and studied, if not widely discussed, some experts suggest that maybe they don’t matter in the long term.

“When they passed the first Renewable Fuel Standard, every forecast was that demand for gasoline would rise forever with economic growth,” says Martin. “Now most long-term forecasts reflect that gas consumption is likely to fall rather than rise. That means we’re headed towards ethanol use falling.”

He adds that wide-scale electric vehicle adoption, unthinkable in 2005, now looks closer to reality. Once that happens, ethanol use could go into freefall.

Back in Iowa, biofuels and biodiesel advocates remain bullish about market expansion, even though the government remains only partially on their side.

“In the near future we think we can easily double our industry,” says Kimberley, who doesn’t believe a widespread adoption of large electric vehicles in sectors like commercial trucking, where vehicles otherwise run on bio-blends of diesel, is coming anytime soon.

Meanwhile the drama in Washington continues. The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a subcommittee hearing on the Trump plan to exempt certain oil refiners from the Renewable Fuel Standard’s biofuel blending requirements. That plan made oil companies happy but enraged Iowa farmers. For now, that tension may continue to grow.

‘Science Be Dammed’: Learning From History’s Mistake on the Colorado River

A new book explains why policymakers nearly 100 years ago chose to ignore the best science on the Colorado River’s flow — and the dangers if we repeat their mistake.

TUCSON, Ariz.— In late October we joined a group of academics and water managers who gathered at the University of Arizona to hash over a pressing set of questions: As water scarcity overtakes the Southwest, what do we know about the Colorado River, and what do we need to know?

The meeting was a far cry from the way participants’ forebears approached this question nearly a century ago, when the leaders of the seven U.S. states that must share the Colorado River’s precious waters gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to hash out the final details of the Colorado River Compact.

The negotiators famously brokered a deal allocating far more water than the river has to offer — a deal we’re paying the price for today.

“They had a glaring need for sound information,” the Colorado River historian Norris Hundley wrote in his book Water in the West, “but no concerted attempt was made to call on the scientific community for help…. Without authoritative data, they had an opportunity to pick and choose information that best suited their interests and uncertainties. And that is what they did.” Science by Dammed

The conventional story of how this happened, enshrined in Marc Reisner’s seminal 1986 book Cadillac Desert, is that in overestimating the available supply of water, the authors of the 1922 Compact did the best with what they had — “about 18 years of streamflow measurement … During all of that period, the river had gone on a binge.” Our great misfortune, that conventional story would have us believe, was that the compact’s framers could not have known that they were allocating the water during unusually wet times.

In our new book Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River, we argue that the story is more complex than it appears in Reisner’s telling, in ways that are important as we struggle with the river’s overallocation today.

Returning to the seminal 1916 hydrologic analysis of U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist Eugene Clyde LaRue, we argue that the decision-makers actually had available — had they chosen to use it — a relatively thorough, complete and almost modern picture of the river’s hydrology. They had available — but chose not to use — data suggesting a much smaller river in the years prior to the 18 years on which they were relying. Had they taken the science seriously, they almost certainly would have had to admit that the Colorado contained less water than they were assuming in making their rapid plans for its use.

LaRue was not alone; others agreed with his conclusion of a smaller river, including Herman Stabler of the U.S. Geological Survey and retired military engineer William Sibert, who reviewed the Compact’s allocations for the U.S. Congress in the months before the pact’s final ratification.

The problem in the 1920s was neither the lack of good science nor the inability of decision-makers to understand the basin’s hydrology. They were intelligent, skilled professionals — but they were motivated by the narrow interests of their own states and agencies. In an era driven by politics of competition for a limited supply of river water and federal dollars, those decision-makers had the opportunity to selectively use the available science as a tool to sell their projects and vision for the river’s future to Congress and the general public.

Their choice to do so would color most of the major policy decisions on the river, setting a precedent that would hold for decades as succeeding decision-makers also selectively used or ignored the available science

Today the Colorado River is fully used — most would say overused. Not a drop of its water reaches the Sea of Cortez unless by careful design, as happened in the spring of 2014 with an experimental environmental “pulse flow.” Demands for the river’s waters already exceed the available supply, a situation that will only grow more difficult with continued growth and the impacts of climate change.

“To study the past,” wrote historian Jill Lepore in her 2018 book These Truths, “is to unlock the prison of the present.” We wrote this story not simply to correct the historical record but because we believe it should inform our future decisions.

When LaRue wrote in 1916 — before the Colorado River Compact, before Hoover Dam, before all the development that was to follow — that “the flow of the Colorado River and its tributaries is not sufficient to irrigate all the irrigable lands lying within the basin,” he prefaced his observation with a caveat. “More complete data,” he wrote, “would probably indicate a greater shortage in the water supply available” (emphasis added).

LaRue’s first point is easy to grasp: There simply wasn’t enough water. But his second point may be the more important — the need for humility in the face of uncertainty. The need to build that humility and uncertainty into the institutions we construct to use and manage the river.

That’s the challenge before us now. There is, in fact, less water. Our best modern understanding suggests LaRue, Stabler and Sibert were right — that there probably always was less. But with climate change it’s crystal clear, and the best science of the first decades of the 21st century suggests we don’t know how far below us the floor lies.

As water-management communities proceed after October’s meeting, we must learn from our mistakes and move forward without ego, without cherry-picking the science that fits our arguments, and with an expectation that future events will create an uncomfortable lack of certainty. Only then can we prepare and adapt for a more parched world, address the question of what comes next, and begin to correct the mistakes made by our predecessors.

Based on an excerpt from the just released book Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River.

How to Make ‘Farm-to-closet’ Clothing a Reality

The new book Fibershed explains how to build a textile economy that benefits both people and the planet — and why we desperately need it.

If I were to open my refrigerator, the origins of most of the food wouldn’t be too much of a mystery — the milk, cheese and produce all come from relatively nearby farms. I can tell from the labels on other packaged goods if they’re fair trade, non-GMO or organic.

But if I were to open my closet, it’d be a different story. I know shockingly little about where the clothes I own come from, what chemicals went into making them, or how far they may have traveled.

In recent years the idea of eating from our own local foodsheds has become more popular, but can the idea of locally sourcing things we use be taken beyond food?

Rebecca Burgess wondered that, too. A trained weaver and dyer, she came up with the idea of a fibersheds project about 10 years ago to develop an eco-friendly, locally sourced wardrobe.

The project led to the establishment of a nonprofit, Fibershed, to put some of her experiences into practice. Now Burgess has expanded it even more in her new book, Fibershed: Growing a Movement of Farmers, Fashion Activists and Makers for a New Textile Economy.

As Burgess writes, we’re still a long way from local fibersheds supplying our clothes, but fixing that paradigm is the focus of the book.book cover

Burgess describes fibersheds as “place-based textile sovereignty…focused on the source of the raw material, the transparency with which it is converted into clothing, and the connectivity among all parts, from soil to skin and back to soil.”

Essentially, it’s knowing a lot better where your clothes come from. But it’s also about disconnecting from a harmful system and reinvigorating a local, place-based economy where the process of “farm to closet” is beneficial for the environment and all the people involved in the supply chain.

The main focus of the book is explaining the tough work of how to create a fibershed, but she starts with why we need one to begin with. And it’s a pretty convincing picture.

“The [textile] industry utilizes thousands of synthetic compounds, often in various combinations to soften, process and dye our clothing, many of which are linked to a range of human diseases, including chronic illnesses and cancer,” she writes.

About 98 percent of the clothes sold in the United States are made overseas, many in factories where workers face dangerous conditions. These days we also buy more clothes than we have in the past, and we keep them for less time. “Fast fashion” — clothes designed to last just two weeks before being thrown away — is a real thing. And a real problem.

The entire textile economy — much like the industrial food economy — is bad for people and the planet.

So what do we do about it? Burgess spends most of her book focusing on how to build the infrastructure to produce the materials we need locally, ethically and sustainably. And she doesn’t skirt around the fact that this is really tough to pull off.

As she found in her initial year-long project, getting local clothes is not nearly as easy as getting local food because the materials for clothes need to be processed in multiple stages. That takes specific equipment and skilled labor — something in short supply in the United States these days.

Take cotton, for example.

Burgess’s home state of California still grows a lot of cotton, but most of it is shipped overseas for combing and spinning, and then to be cheaply made into clothes. And what’s grown here is almost all genetically modified.

“Global-scale commodity systems have done a very good job of making it harder and more expensive to purchase a locally grown cotton T-shirt than it is to drive to a box store and purchase an equivalent garment grown and constructed on several different continents,” she writes.

That doesn’t mean the system can’t be changed. Doing so means supporting existing farmers and helping them transition to more climate-friendly farming practices, she says. Burgess weaves a whole chapter about how good farming techniques can help build healthy soil, an important component for making the most of water resources (which can be sparse in California) and helping to sequester carbon.

fibershed chart
Source: Chelsea Green

As an example she points to California grower Sally Fox, who breeds naturally colored cotton (apparently not all cotton is white) in the Capay Valley and implements soil-building farming practices rotating cotton with heirloom wheat and a flock of Merino sheep.

Burgess also stitches together examples of other plant and animal-based fibers being used in her region of Northern California and explains why they can help supplant the need for synthetic and chemical-based fabrics we mostly rely on now.

There’s flax, which produces linen, and is best suited for growing during California’s rainy season when farmers don’t need additional irrigation water. And of course the use of water-thrifty hemp has experienced a resurgence since most restrictions on farming and selling it have been lifted.

And then there are a litany of animal fibers. In her region in Northern California alone, she writes, there are around 20 different types of sheep being raised, as well as Huacaya and Suri alpaca, mohair goats, llamas, Angora rabbits and guanacos (a close relative of the llama).

But finding the fiber is just one part of the equation. Processing all of this raw material — each of which requires different techniques — is the biggest obstacle.

California produces 3 million pounds of wool a year but has the milling capacity for just 10,000 pounds. That’s a very big gap to close — but Burgess and her collaborators are trying. They have a plan for a “closed-loop manufacturing model” that will help bring the right milling equipment close to home and connect it to local producers and artisans. But it comes with a price tag of $26 million.

Every fibershed is likely to have different costs depending on local materials, equipment and expertise, but they all face the same conundrum: How do you produce enough locally sourced materials to fund the systems to make even more locally sourced materials?

In order to move forward projects like this one in Northern California and in other communities around the country, we’ll need vastly more demand and real commitment from clothing companies and retailers. There’s less in the book specifically focused on how consumers can actively help drive that process. But there are ample resources if you want to learn more about what fibersheds are being developed where you live or how to engage in the process yourself. Don’t expect the book to read like a “how to” manual, though. It’s more of a thoughtful discussion of issues, obstacles and solutions, including meeting on-the-ground farmers and producers who are putting these practices to work.

At the very minimum the book has made me rethink virtually everything my closet, and even a shift in consuming thinking at this point seems like a step in the right direction. Supporting fibersheds may not be as simple as shopping at farmers markets instead of box stores, but Burgess drives home the tremendous value in just trying.

Her yearlong local clothes experiment 10 years ago, for example, led to new friendships and the launch of four new businesses. Engaging in this kind of process, she writes, creates “opportunities to build new relationships that are rooted in sharing skills, physical labor, and creativity, all of which carry meaning, purpose, and a way to belong to one another and to the land.”

That’s the perfect antidote to “fast fashion” and a reminder that our allegiance to a disposable, throwaway culture — the one that produces plastic bottles, flimsy T-shirts and weak interpersonal relationships — is what needs to be tossed.

How Do We Solve a Problem Like Wildlife Trade?

A discussion on the “Our Wild World” podcast looks at the future for rhinos, elephants, giraffes, vaquitas and other species affected by legal and illegal wildlife trafficking.

When it comes to solving problems related to wildlife trade, there are an awful lot of “sticky widgets.”

That’s what Eli Weiss, founder of the WildiZe Foundation and host of the “Our Wild World” podcast, calls some of the most pressing issues related to legal and illegal wildlife trafficking. These big questions — which often have no easy answers — include the fate of the nearly extinct vaquita, the future of farmed rhinos, the hidden threat to giraffes, and potential new roles for (and threats to) the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

We discussed these issues — and a whole lot more — in a wide-ranging conversation on the podcast that aired Nov. 4. Check it out below:

Storms and Rising Seas Threaten Coastal Ecosystems — Here’s What We Can Do

We’ve made little progress in preparing our communities and vital ecosystems for storms and sea-level rise, but there are tools we can use if government agencies and nonprofits take action.

A century from now, the U.S. coastline will look very different from how it looks today. In the coming decades our beaches, wetlands and estuaries along the shore will be lost or degraded by a one-two punch of more severe storms and rising seas. This combination will drive communities inland and force the relocation of critical infrastructure. The consequences for fish, wildlife and ecosystems could also be devastating.

We’re already getting a glimpse of how bad things can get.

The three major storms of 2017 — Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria — caused more than 3,000 deaths and some $275 billion in damages. The longer-term ecosystem impacts of major storms like these are harder to quantify, but no less important. These include shifting of beaches and dunes, saltwater intrusion to freshwater systems, ecosystems contaminated by polluted floodwaters, and damage to habitat, oyster beds and coral. Rising sea levels are steadily pushing storm damage farther inland.

The country has done surprisingly little to meet this daunting challenge. As I wrote in my book A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas, there are steps that need to be taken now to help protect coastal ecosystems and the communities that depend on them. 

Measuring Loss

A first step toward better protecting beaches and coastal wetlands is to understand the risks they face from storms and rising seas.book cover

Scientists predict that as the climate warms, coastal storms will become more intense and melting glaciers and ice sheets could push global sea level up four feet by 2100. Along the U.S. coast, the rise in sea level could be 15 to 25 percent higher due to land subsidence and ocean dynamics.

What will this mean for ecosystems? It’s hard to know exactly.

There is currently no national assessment of how ecosystems along the U.S. coast will change. What little we do know points to serious decline in the health of these resources.

For example, a study of the Gulf of Mexico region predicted these losses of coastal wetlands by 2060: 37 percent in Texas, 32 percent in Florida, and 26 percent in Alabama and Mississippi. A 2017 study by the U.S. Geological Survey found that up to 31 percent of California beaches would be lost in the event of 3 feet of sea-level rise and 67 percent in the event of 6 feet.

As beaches and wetlands are inundated or migrate inland, some of the ecosystem services they provide will be lost. We are likely to see diminished abundance and diversity of fish and wildlife. Other benefits of coastal ecosystems that are at risk include protection from the impacts of storm surges, protection of water quality, mitigation of coastal erosion, and sequestration of carbon.

The effects of more severe storms and rising oceans on fish and wildlife are not well studied, but the Center for Biological Diversity (publisher of The Revelator) reported that 233 threatened and endangered species in 23 coastal states — roughly 1 out of 6 of the country’s protected species — are at risk from sea-level rise.

Manmade Threats

In addition to suffering damages from storms and gradual inundation by rising seas, coastal ecosystems may fall victim to human efforts to protect communities and infrastructure from these risks.

Built structures such as seawalls,  damage beach systems and can prevent healthy functioning of marshes and wetlands. Living shorelines, which use natural materials such as plants, sand, or rock to stabilize the shoreline, are an improvement over conventional concrete seawalls but can have some of the same damaging impacts. Beach restoration projects can also harm the ecosystem of the beach as well as the sites from which sand is taken.

Still another manmade threat is the failure to provide space for coastal ecosystems to migrate landward as seas rise. As the inevitability of stepping back from the current coastline is better recognized, land areas that are safe from storms and rising seas will be committed to meet human needs. Ecosystems could lose out on this valuable space.

Strengthening Protections

So what do we do?

The good news is, we already have a lot of the tools and programs we need to make sure that coastal ecosystems are protected as the climate warms. For example, the Coastal Zone Management Program supports state planning for coastal protection. But existing programs need to be strengthened and expanded.

A key first step should be a careful mapping of existing coastal ecosystems and of the potential for successful landward shift of these resources. With such an atlas in hand, governments and nonprofit organizations can identify upland areas that can become coastal ecosystems over time. Special attention needs to be given to mapping fish and wildlife and assessing ecosystem services, so that gains or losses can be tracked and migration corridors protected as these ecosystems shift geographically.

Some coastal mapping initiatives are moving in this direction. For example, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has developed a Regional Coastal Resilience Assessment that identifies “resilience hubs” and other information to guide local conservation planning. Likewise, the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy includes a “blueprint” that identifies places for conservation and restoration.

When it comes to diminishing manmade threats, some states have restricted the use of seawalls and similar hard protection structures. Development on some coastal wetlands is limited by the permit program under section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Nonprofit organizations like the Nature Conservancy are working to protect these resources though acquisition or purchase of easements.

But that won’t be enough.

Protecting both existing ecosystems, and the areas these ecosystems will migrate to, will require major new investment in planning and significant new funding to implement plans.

Federal agencies will need to work with state and local governments and nonprofit organizations to successfully manage a long-term landward migration of coastal ecosystems. This will require creating a planning process able to make hard decisions to find space to allow ecosystems to migrate inland.

States and localities also need to consider alternatives to seawalls and other coastal protection structures that pose barriers to inland migration of coastal ecosystems. Can flood waters from coastal storms be accommodated by elevating buildings or critical infrastructure? Is the permanent inundation that comes with rising seas better managed in the long-run by stepping back from the shoreline to safer ground? The federal government needs to provide the science, policy guidance, and funding that state and local governments need to cope with these questions.

Any effort to protect coastal ecosystems from more severe storms and rising seas has a better chance of success if it occurs in the context of a larger effort to protect communities and infrastructure from these risks. For example, existing federal policies related to flood insurance and disaster relief need to be updated to reduce incentives to locate in risky coastal places. This will reduce future demand for structural protection that harms ecosystems. New national policies to require disclosure of flood and sea-level rise risks to a property at time of sale would also help steer investment away from risky areas.

Finally, the federal government should help coastal homeowners avoid devastating financial losses as growing flood risks drive down property values. For example, the government could buy risky property well ahead of rising sea levels and allow current owners to stay — paying rent but not flood insurance premiums — until the property becomes unsafe. Such a program would give these homeowners financial freedom to move to safer ground, reduce the chance of widespread structural protection projects, and expand options for landward migration of ecosystems as well as communities.

To increase the odds that healthy coastal ecosystems will line the U.S. coast 100 years from now, governments and nonprofit organizations need to act fast to ramp up existing protection efforts and be effective advocates for these threatened resources.

Strength in Numbers: November’s Best Environmental Books

This month’s new books dig deep into the need for diverse environmentalists, climate adaptation, wildlife coexistence and the Green New Deal.

An important theme runs through November’s new environmental books: We’re stronger together than apart.

revelator readsFor one author that means fostering the ability of people and wildlife to coexist. For a group of experts, it involves working hard to adapt to the threats of climate change. And two new books make the case for diversifying the environmental movement — because we all need each other.

You’ll find our selections for November’s 12 most noteworthy eco-books below. Check them out, pick the ones (or pairs) that are best for you, and then prepare to do some illuminating and world-changing reading — and maybe pull a few friends along while you’re at it.

Our Wild CallingOur Wild Calling: How Connecting With Animals Can Transform Our Lives — and Save Theirs by Richard Louv

The author of the classic Last Child in the Woods returns with a howling-good new book about the scientific, moral, ethical and spiritual need for human-animal coexistence. (Hint: It will help the animals, too.)

resilient tomorrow new coastBuilding a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption by Alice C. Hill and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz

A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas by Jeffrey Peterson

With climate change already causing problems for coasts and other communities and habitats around the world, we’d better start planning how to adapt for a risky and uncertain future. These two new books by former officials in the Obama administration concentrate on developing actionable successes to minimize the damage and ensure that the systems we depend upon can persist.

Engage Connect ProtectEngage, 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, Latino and Native American communities.

lantinx 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.

Green New DealThe Case for the Green New Deal by Ann Pettifor

A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Riofrancos

Radical publisher Verso Books brings us two new volumes about the Green New Deal this month. Each tackles the topic from a different perspective (the first covers economics, while the second focuses on politics), but both see it as a critical way to address the inequality that causes so many of the world’s problems.

American ResistanceAmerican Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave by Dana R. Fisher

What can we learn from the wave of resistance that blossomed after the election of President Donald Trump? And can efforts like the Climate Strike make a difference in 2020 and beyond? Fisher looks deep into the data to reveal how this movement can keep making progress.

common senseCommon Sense for the 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse by Roger Hallam

One of the cofounders of Extinction Rebellion provides a call to action inspired by Thomas Paine’s original Revolutionary War-era Common Sense but updated for a modern, warmer world and the need for civil disobedience.

all hellAll Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change by Michael T. Klare

If the Pentagon worries about floods, disease, drought, climate refugees and so many other threats, then the rest of us should, too.

recyclingRecycling by Finn Arne Jørgensen

A fascinating examination of how we transform some things into other things — physically and culturally. This book follows a selection of products through the supply chain, from creation to disposal to re-creation. Along the way it aims to prove that recycling isn’t just important for the planet; it also plays a vital psychological role for those of us participating in the process.

Science by DammedScience Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River by Eric Kuhn and John Fleck

The authors examine the Colorado River’s history of mismanagement, providing both a cautionary tale and a look ahead at how we can (hopefully) resolve the mistakes of the past — and maybe avoid similar problems on other rivers.

That’s our list for this month, but you’ll find dozens of other recent eco-books in the “Revelator Reads” archive.

12 Strategies to Fight the Oil Industry and Transform Our Energy System

The oil industry has long fought, and will continue to fight, against energy transformation. Here’s how we can fight back.

The oil industry is enormous — something like 2-3 percent of global GDP. Individual firms like ExxonMobil earn tens of billions of dollars each quarter. Controlling climate change will mean drastic curtailment in the coming decades of the industry’s major products. There’s no way that industry will accept this lying down, and it’s a formidable opponent.

To be successful we will need a combination of strategies beyond from the virtue of our cause. There’s no doubt there will be major battles with industry. The question is only whether we can strengthen the forces on our side or reduce the stakes for the industry now and then. Here are some strategies of both types.

  1. Expand transparency. Most obviously, everything that undermines the political clout of oil companies is good. That means more investigations of how they exercise political influence and of their manipulation of public opinion, some of which the state of New York has already begun. Other activities, such as the efforts of activist shareholders, are also desirable.
  2. Adapt strategies from the coal realm. The decline of the coal industry isn’t just due to cheaper alternatives. It is also due to a concerted effort by regulators and environmental groups to address the environmental harms caused by the industry. We need tighter regulation of oil-company activities, including drilling, refining, transportation and storage. Federal, state and local efforts are all needed.
  3. Nurture new technologies. The cheaper we can make electric vehicles, biofuels, and other substitutes for oil, the more readily these will take hold. This will require much greater funding for research and development to improve the relevant technologies.
  4. Eliminate subsidies for oil. The oil and gas industry has long benefitted from implicit subsidies. It may be possible to fight these, including alliances with small-government and deficit-hawk conservatives. Oil and gas make enough money on their own without requiring government giveaways.
  5. Cultivate business alliances. Utilities have a strong interest in expanding the use of electric vehicles. So do the renewable energy companies that will meet much of the new power demand. Car manufacturers also seem to think EVs will be future money-makers. Anything that makes these industries stronger provides a counterweight to oil-industry influence.
  6. Recognize the interests of oil states. Alaska, the Gulf states and others including California derive large economic benefits from oil and gas, including tax revenues and jobs. We need to start thinking of how to cushion those losses and not wait until people are already losing jobs to design retraining and placement programs. It’s unrealistic to think we can make everyone a winner during the carbon transition, but we can at least try to keep as many stakeholders as possible from losing too badly.
  7. Support political reforms. Anything that would reduce the role of money in politics will soften the political clout of the oil industry. So will general ethics and transparency laws. The oil industry is the paradigm special interest. Anything that reduces special interest influence and empowers the general public also helps with climate change.
  8. Keep it in the ground. The oil industry gets access to the oil and gas on federal lands at below-market prices. This is another subsidy that should be axed. The government should eliminate industry access to public lands as much as possible, including the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and offshore waters.
  9. Encourage biofuels. Biofuels aren’t likely to be the answer to our need to decarbonize the transportation sector. But they could provide some much-needed help, especially if efforts to use cellulose and algae as feedstocks pan out. And selling more biofuels means selling less petroleum, shaving away at the industry’s financial heft.
  10. Expose oil’s international entanglements. Big Oil has always had links with repressive, corrupt regimes and autocrats who’ve meddled in international politics. Those won’t particularly endear them to the American public. We need to start investigating and publicizing those links. And speaking of geopolitical factors, we also need to start some serious investigations of the sovereign wealth funds of the oil powers. Those people are not necessarily on our side.
  11. Find common ground where possible. Despite the basic conflict between oil and climate stability, there are some areas where interests may coincide, such as decreasing methane leaks and reducing CO2 from existing industry operations. While they’re still in operation, it would be worth putting some real government money into carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).
  12. Subsidize the industry’s transition. Although in general I’m opposed to subsidizing the industry, it may be worthwhile to provide incentives for it to invest more heavily in fields outside its core business. This could help diminish, even if only a little, the industry’s incentive to fight the transformation of the U.S. energy system.

Transforming our energy system, especially transportation, is going involve major political struggles. Those should be front and central in devising our strategies, not an afterthought.

This story first appeared on Legal Planet.

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.