Climate change is bringing the tick-borne illness to new parts of the country every year, outpacing data collection and response by the Centers for Disease Control.
Ticks and the diseases they carry are spreading so quickly across the United States — likely driven by climate change — that the government is having trouble keeping up with the data.
In the past most cases of Lyme disease, the country’s most common tick-borne illness, occurred in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic and Upper Midwest states. But a recent report issued by lab-testing company Quest Diagnostics reveals the disease has dramatically expanded its range. According to the report, Lyme disease has now been found in all 50 states.
“Our data show that positive results for Lyme are both increasing in number and occurring in geographic areas not historically associated with the disease,” Quest’s senior medical director, Harvey W. Kaufman, M.D., said in a prepared statement last summer. “We hypothesize that these significant rates of increase may reinforce other research suggesting changing climate conditions that allow ticks to live longer and in more regions may factor into disease risk.”
Lyme outbreaks have long been tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but the agency’s data present an incomplete picture because Lyme reporting is still voluntary in many states. Quest’s report, compiled from data on physician-ordered blood tests for the disease, presents a bigger picture of the spread and shows higher numbers of cases in some states than those in the CDC’s records. Quest’s Lyme disease cast count for California in 2017 is more than three times higher than the CDC’s count.
Adding to the picture, a recent citizen science study published in PLoS ONE detected the species of tick that carries Lyme disease in several counties previously not reported by the CDC.
The spread of these ticks and their diseases is just one more economic cost created by climate change. A recently published review found that the annual economic impact of Lyme disease in the United States is $786 million — and that’s only going to grow as the disease continues to advance. Groups are now advocating for increased government budgeting for Lyme disease initiatives.
How bad is it? These maps show the geographic spread and steady increase in Lyme disease cases in the states where it is still most prevalent. (According to the CDC, these numbers probably represent about one-tenth of all new U.S. Lyme diseases cases.)
Note: The CDC’s records for Massachusetts have dropped sharply since 2016, though the state reports that new infections have continued to rise through that period.
For more information on Lyme disease and your risks, visit cdc.gov/lyme/.
Sources and Methods:
County-level Lyme disease data reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2000 – 2017 available here.
Dot density maps were developed in ArcGIS Pro by randomly placing a tick symbol within a county’s boundaries for every 20 or 5 Lyme diseases cases (in the Northeast or Great Lakes regions respectively) reported from that county.
The CDC’s surveillance data are captured by county of residence, not county of exposure. The CDC also notes this data set is limited by under-reporting of cases in highly endemic areas.
Railways can be deadly for animals ranging from elephants to grizzlies and frogs, but we’re just beginning to understand the causes and solutions.
Last year a terrible accident in India made headlines around the world. Late one February night, a speeding train struck a herd of elephants crossing the tracks, instantly killing two adults and two calves. A third adult died soon after.
It wasn’t an isolated incident. Over the past 30 years train collisions have killed more than 220 elephants in India alone.
Most of those incidents don’t generate international headlines; nor do the deaths of thousands of additional animals killed by trains worldwide each year. In fact most wildlife-train collisions go unnoticed, their fatalities left uncounted — which has made it difficult for experts to study the problem and mitigate its impacts.
That puts us woefully behind similar research to reduce vehicle-wildlife collisions on roads, an active field of research for the past two decades. That’s because car-animal collisions present a greater danger to human safety and property, according to a 2016 study surveying the emerging field of railway ecology. “Despite the field of road ecology rapidly expanding and the large footprint created by railways, there is a prominent lack of research related to railways and their effects on wildlife,” the study found.
Here’s what we do know: Like roads, railways fragment habitat and can affect all kinds of wildlife in varying ways. Collisions are the most common cause of mortality, but some animals die from electrocution or being stuck between the rails, leaving them susceptible to predation, starvation or dehydration.
Exactly how many animals die is a bit of a mystery. Railway mortalities are usually not as visible to the public as roadkill, and railways can be harder to access for research and data collection, the 2016 study found.
The little research that has been done on railways and wildlife has been largely limited in both scope and geography. The majority of studies have looked at large mammals, mostly in North America and Europe, with some attention paid to elephant strikes in India.
“The mammal species receiving the most attention are frequently the larger ones, such as moose, bears or elephants as they cause more damage to trains, disrupt the normal operation of the train network, or hold higher conservation and economic status,” according to the editors of the 2017 book Railway Ecology.
Understanding how to curb wildlife deaths from trains means first understanding what draws animals to the tracks in the first place, which is not always easy. New research is working to close that knowledge gap, identify problem areas and find cost-effective solutions.
Deer on the railway tracks in New York. (Photo by Timothy Vogel, CC BY-NC 2.0)
The timing of this research, experts tell us, is important. With rail transit of products and materials on the rise and high-speed rail networks expected to grow as we work globally to lower our carbon footprint, the number of fatalities could soon increase unless we devote more resources to additional research and mitigation.
Railway Barriers
Rail tracks can make for tough times if you’re a toad — even a big one.
In Brazil a 2018 study found an estimated 10,000 Cururu toads (Rhinella marina) and related species, often called giant toads, were dying every year along a 500-mile stretch of railway. Researcher Rubem Dornas says they still don’t know exactly why so many toads die, but it appears the tracks formed a barrier the toads can’t cross while migrating. Despite the large size of the toads, which average about 4 to 6 inches in length, the researchers found they may not be able to jump or climb over rails more than 6 inches high.
“We think the main problem is the barrier effect caused by the rails,” says Dornas.
Not all the fatalities are the result of being run over by passing trains. Some of the toads appeared to have died from desiccation due to extreme heat from the tracks.
Most horrifyingly, others showed signs of barotrauma, where a sudden change in air pressure from the fast-moving train causes the inner organs to be blown out — the toads literally exploded from the inside.
While additional research would help to better understand the problem and its population-level impacts for the toads, Dornas says that providing passage underneath the rails could be a useful solution.
A 2018 study of endangered gopher tortoises (Gopherus polyphemus), which have been known to cross railways near John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, came to a similar conclusion.
“We predict that nearly all tortoises in the vicinity of railways are susceptible to becoming entrapped or experiencing reduced movement and dispersal,” the researchers wrote. They recommended trenches that can create a safe passage underneath the tracks and an escape route for those that get caught between rails.
While smaller in size, these trenches are similar in concept to corridor bridges and tunnels that are commonly used to help animals safely cross roadways. And while crossing structures may be used occasionally for railways — like a “landscape” bridge over railway tracks that was opened in Stockholm, Sweden in 2017 — it’s far less common. The biggest reason is simply financial — the structures take resources to build, and so far more investments have been devoted to reducing wildlife collisions on roads than rails.
Wildlife overpasses, like this one in British Columbia, is more common for roads than rails. (Photo by B.C. Ministry of Transport, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
That could change with more interest in railway ecology and cheaper building options. ARC Solutions, a project of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, held a recent design competition to rethink the materials and engineering used in wildlife overpasses to make them more sustainable and affordable. If those concepts come to fruition, it could mean an easier lift to develop safer crossing systems for all kinds of wildlife over both roads and rails.
Warning Systems
Getting animals over or under tracks safely is helpful when a railway is an obstacle. But, as researchers found in Alberta, Canada, railways can also be a destination. And that requires a new set of solutions.
Concern over grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) deaths on the Canadian Pacific Railway between Banff and Yoho national parks has prompted years of study. “The causes for attraction of bears to the rail are really surprisingly complex and variable among individuals,” says Colleen Cassady St. Clair, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta, who has been leading a team to determine why grizzlies end up on railways and how to prevent their deaths. “There just isn’t a single simple solution.”
The biggest reason is that railways are a good place for a bear to find food. For one thing, the trains can spill grain from their cargo cars, leaving behind a steady supply of free food.
The very existence of the railways also opens up avenues for grizzly dining. The carcasses of deer and other ungulates struck by trains are an attractant for bears. Railways are slightly warmer than adjacent forests, which attracts ants, another grizzly food, researchers have found. And palatable vegetation also grows along the tracks, providing grizzlies with a wide range of edible choices.
This “edge habitat,” according to a 2017 study co-authored by St. Clair, has “higher species richness, diversity and cover for seven of the eight most commonly-occurring species that are consumed by grizzly bears.” Buffaloberry, a local fruit that’s an important source of nutrients for bears pre-hibernation, was even found to have more fruit, ripen earlier and have higher sugar content within 15 meters the railway lines compared to the nearby interior forest.
Food that grizzly bears like, including berries, have been found to grow more abundantly near rail tracks. (Photo by Christian Tauber, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
More food along railways means the possibility of more train strikes on bears. So what to do about it?
One tactic would be to limit the growth of vegetation that attracts bears and other wildlife, or, as Canadian Pacific Railways has done, remove vegetation from along the tracks that could obscure sight and sounds lines to make approaching trains easier to see and hear at certain problem locations.
But St. Clair favors a different approach, developed by one of her graduate researchers, Jonathan Backs. He invented a warning system using a vibration sensor on the track that, farther down, triggers a ringing bell sound and flashing light 30 seconds before a train passes by a hotspot that has been designated for mitigation.
Acoustic warning systems have been developed elsewhere. Poland is testing a system that deters wildlife from approaching trains by loudly broadcasting recordings of barking dogs and alarm calls of other animals. Japan is testing a similar system. St. Clair says that these acoustic warning systems are promising, but it’s too early to determine how effective they’ll ultimately be. One drawback could be that if predator sounds are used as a deterrent and no predator ultimately appears, animals will stop associating those warning sounds with a risk.
To avoid that potential pitfall, the warning system that Backs is developing in Alberta has a key difference: It’s not meant to scare the animals, but to teach them.
“Our idea with this approach was to help the animals learn that these warning signals, which are not scary in themselves, are reliably associated with the train coming, which most animals seem to find scary,” says Backs. “And then the animals would learn to get out of the way when they receive these warning signals rather than waiting for the train to arrive.”
Backs says he’s still analyzing the data he has collected from trials of the warning system, but preliminary results are encouraging — and not just for bears. Other large animals appear to leave the tracks around six seconds earlier when the system is used.
And that’s another reason St. Clair is excited about the potential of this system. Public interest in grizzlies helped spur the research, but the mitigation can be useful for all kinds of wildlife and all over the world. “The principles potentially apply to all animals,” she says.
Backs says there is still more work to do to prove the concept and then find partner organizations to implement it. “The most important thing for me is to get it out there and make it real and put it in the hands of people who are working hard to keep animals safe,” he says. “It might end up being only one part of a broader toolbox — different solutions are appropriate in different situations — but it’s exciting that this could actually be used to save lives.”
And for the field of railway ecology, more research is still needed, too, says St. Clair.
“We need a broader understanding of where mortality is a real problem, for which species and what the circumstances are that generate locations of higher vulnerability,” she says. “Some ongoing work in Banff is trying to put together an entire database of animals that have been killed on the rail and determine what environmental and train operational factors seem to contribute to that vulnerability. With that information it will be possible to be more surgical, if you will, in applying the right kind of mitigation.”
A plan to lease oil and gas drilling rights on nearly a million acres of land near the Te-Moak Tribe of the Western Shoshone illustrates the consistent lack of government consultation with tribes.
It’s a frigid December morning when I meet Chairman Joseph Holley at the Te-Moak tribal headquarters in Elko, Nevada, seven hours north of Las Vegas. Holley, tall and round-faced, offers me a cup of coffee. He has the burly build of a man who worked 37 years in the area’s gold mines, drilling aboveground and digging below the surface.
Holley’s a relatively new tribal chairman, having served since November 2018. “I’m still catching up with a lot of things,” he tells me. He’s following in the footsteps of father, activist Glenn Holley, Sr., who fought for aboriginal title to restore Te-Moak lands starting in the 1970s.
That heritage of activism may need to be invoked for the struggle that Chairman Holley and the Te-Moak now face. A major plan to lease drilling rights near the Ruby Mountains, including land bordering the Ruby Lake Wildlife Refuge, threatens not just the local ecosystem but the tribe’s very existence.
Mining the Mountains
The Ruby Mountains are a prime summertime destination for anglers and hikers, but for the Te-Moak Tribe of the Western Shoshone, who have called the area home for tens of thousands of years, these are the Duka-Doya mountains. Here are pronghorn and bighorn sheep, mule deer and greater sage-grouse. The rivers run with mountain whitefish and native rainbow trout, while endangered Lahontan cutthroat trout swim in the lakes. Here the Te-Moak have gathered nuts and branches and tracked the pathways of wildlife, in tune with the changing seasons. Over millennia, the Te-Moak learned what plants grow where and when, and which animals come to drink in certain springs.
These are watering holes that — if oil and gas companies get their way — might dry up forever, bringing the Te-Moak cultural history to a close.
This June the Nevada Bureau of Land Management plans to auction oil and gas leasing rights on 934,244 acres of public lands in the Ruby Mountains area. Long in the works, the lease parcels were formally announced on Feb. 19. In Elko the BLM will offer 49 parcels, comprising 75,005 acres. In the nearby Battle Mountain district, it will lease 123 parcels, amounting to 264,075 acres. The Ely district will see the largest amount leased: 291 parcels totaling 604,164 acres.
According to Holley, lands included for possible leasing are both within and adjoining the South Fork Band reservation at the foothills of the Ruby Mountains. (The Te-Moak have four bands: the South Fork, Wells, Battle Mountain and Elko colonies.)
Another 52,533 acres in the nearby Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest were expected to be similarly auctioned, but the U.S. Forest Service denied that lease request on March 14 following months of public outcry and data that showed the land had little drilling value.
Thunderstorms near the Ruby Mountains near Elko, Nev., Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. Photo by Michael Balen. Credit: U.S. Forest Service.
When I visited Elko to talk with Chairman Holley and other residents, I found that many people were still unaware of the ongoing BLM leasing plans. Those who heard feared they would have devastating effects on the local land and peoples and expressed outrage at how little the tribe was consulted.
Polluted Medicines
I meet Fermina Stevens in an Elko hotel/casino. Stevens served as chairperson representing the Elko Band on the Te-Moak tribal council from 2000-2003 and since 2012 has worked as a legal assistant for the Cavanaugh-Bill Law office, where she’s assisted on cases of the Western Shoshone Defense Project.
As we sit at the casino bar, Stevens tells me she’s concerned about public access. Specifically, tribal access.
Historically the Western Shoshone used a wide swath of land, travelling to seasonal camps and trekking to different sites to gather various foods and medicinal plants. That traditional land is now federally owned “public” land, with highly restricted access. Only 14,005 acres have been accorded to the tribal reservations.
“We have to go to public lands to gather,” Stevens explains. “We gather willow across a wide area, which means we need wide access.”
Red and green willow, which are used to create cradleboards and baskets, have particularly important cultural significance, she tells me.
“Our culture is our gathering, our willow, our prayer. We come from the land.” Other important plants include cedar, sage, and the doza root that grows close to sagebrush. In early fall, from September to October, the Te-Moak gather pine nuts.
And the Te-Moak’s limited acreage doesn’t protect many sites of spiritual and cultural significance. If tribal members wish to conduct a ceremony on BLM land — for example, at the summer and fall solstices, the points of the year of highest cultural significance — they must submit a request to the agency, including a map of the area to be entered.
Holley later tells me this raises a particularly difficult dilemma: How do they protect these areas of sacred significance without announcing them to the outside world?
He asks, what will happen when those sites the Te-Moak have been utilizing for centuries end up in private hands? How will the continuity of their culture be affected?
Stevens says she also worries about how the land itself will be affected by oil and gas development, particularly fracking.
“Fracking pollutes our medicines, the water, the animals who are drinking the water,” she says. Leasing the land, including fracking, “affects us spiritually. It’s a big loss. We need clean water and plants to conduct our ceremony.”
Lost Lands
For the Western Shoshone, these lands have always been theirs.
The 1863 Treaty of Peace and Friendship at Ruby Valley acknowledged as Shoshone lands a wide swath from the Shoshone River Valley in the north, to the Smith Creek Mountains in the west, to the Colorado Desert in the south to the Great Salt Lake Valley in the east.
Holley asks: How will fracking affect those never-ceded lands, now held by BLM “as a trustee” of public lands?
If the piñon trees dry up because water-intensive fracking sucks springs dry, then how can the Western Shoshone teach their children about the history that happened at that spring?
“Kids will lose their culture, tradition and history.”
Holley has seen the pattern before with past mining projects. For example, the Newmont Mining Company’s open-pit Lone Tree gold mine notoriously polluted the local water with arsenic, boron and other contaminants. BLM promised the Te-Moak that water sources would remain unaffected. However, according to Holley, “the mine drew water down to where springs don’t flow any more. It changes the whole landscape, everything that depends on the water, the grasses, the trees, the animals that drink from the springs.”
More recently, Holley says, BLM permitted Newmont to dry up 63 springs near its Long Canyon Mine in Wells.
“BLM assures us that it will be fine, that the water will be healthy,” Holley says. “It never is fine.”
Chairman Joseph Holley. Photo: Tiffany Higgins
Kyle Hendrix, public affairs specialist for the Battle Mountain BLM district, later tells me that cleanup of mining waste by companies such as Newmont is “voluntary.”
In Elko Holley’s jaw is set, eyes registering the memory of failed promises.
Contradictory Stories About Consultation
During and after my visit to Elko, I’m told conflicting stories about whether and how tribes had been consulted on this leasing of public lands.
The Nevada BLM’s Environmental Assessment report, dated Feb. 13, states that consultation included “letters, phone calls, e-mails, and visits with individual tribal/band Environmental Coordinators or other representatives.”
Chairman Holley denies that, stating that aside from a Feb. 4 letter informing the tribe of the June auction, the Te-Moak have not been contacted in other manners. According to Holley, authentic consultation has not happened.
Letters, he says, show little understanding of his people’s culture or policies. BLM and Forest Service consultation-request letters require a reply within 30 days, but the Te-Moak Council, which makes all decisions collectively, meets only once a month. Ironically, the very letter to invite consultation from the tribes imposes a timeline that ignores the tribal calendar.
When I contact all three BLM relevant districts (Ely, Battle Mountain and Elko), the claim to have visited tribal members appears to be more aspirational than accurate. Greg Deimel, public affairs specialist for the Elko district, says their district’s tribal liaison Native American coordinator would have met with tribal councils in January were it not for the government shutdown.
Kyle Hendrix, public affairs specialist for the Battle Mountain district, tells me that the letters sent on Feb. 4 are “the only formal letter on consultation for the upcoming June sale.”
Hendrix says the BLM’s goal “is to provide government-to-government consultation with the sovereign tribes, which is a little bit elevated and happens earlier than the more standard public scoping processes. We’re looking to get early issues and concerns. If they’ve got an area of tribal significance, cultural significance, within some of these areas that we’re looking at doing that, it’s the opportunity to say ‘These are our concerns,’ and what can be done to include the removal of that parcel in that sale.”
He adds, “We’ve got a great working relationship with the tribes. It’s really a high priority for the Battle Mountain district.”
But Holley objects to smaller BLM districts sending letters to the tribe, arguing that it doesn’t constitute actual government-to-government consultation, which would be “President-to-president, country-to-country. Get us to the top, somebody that can make changes, make adjustments.” Meeting with his counterpart in the Nevada BLM at the state level, he says, would fulfill government-to-government consultation.
Federal Declarations on Consultation
What’s legally and culturally expected in tribal consultation?
International declarations require more than just consultation, says Matthew Campbell, attorney for the Native American Rights Fund. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Article 32, states that indigenous peoples must give “free, prior, and informed consent” to projects that will affect them.
In U.S. law, Campbell explains, “the federal government has an obligation to consult with Indian tribes on matters that will have an impact on the tribes, their resources, whether it’s water resources or land, their traditional resources, cultural resources, within their traditional areas.” He mentions directives issued by Presidents Clinton and Obama stating that the government needs to take its obligation to tribes very seriously.
Campbell says the federal government’s responsibility to tribes is “separate and apart from any obligation that it might have to the public. Tribes are not just mere stakeholders. Because they have the unique government-to-government relationship, the feds have a unique obligation to reach out, take affirmative steps to ensure the tribes understand what it intends to do and get the tribes’ position.”
I mention Chairman Holley’s contention that he’s only received a letter from BLM, but no contact beyond that.
Campbell declined to comment on the specific case, but says “in general, form letters should not be sufficient. They need to reach out to the tribes and ensure that they really understand what is taking place.”
How Are Cultural Resources Assessed? The Story Between the Stones
If the June auction goes through, any oil and gas companies winning leases would have to spell out their plans for the land. It’s only at this point that the BLM would hire an archaeologist to survey the “cultural resources” on those particular parcels.
Holley objects to this process, saying an archaeologist’s assessment can’t be called a “cultural survey” if the tribe isn’t asked to consult on it.
The problem, Holley says, is that an archaeologist may identify art on stones and determine those areas to be worthy of protection. But without the storied past of the Te-Moak culture, the expert might be ignorant of a spring or other natural features of cultural significance, where the Te-Moak have passed on teachings through the generations.
“They label archaeological surveys as cultural surveys, but they won’t pay or invite us to be on site,” he says. “So it’s not a cultural survey. This happens quite regularly, all the time.” Holley maintains that such surveys turn out to be rubber stamping what the company already intends to do.
“We’re much more than stones. Tell me what happened in between the stones,” Holley insists. It is a declaration that resists the historical tendency of anthropology and archaeology to see native peoples as physical artefacts rather than living cultures whose oral histories are embedded in the land.
Holley prods, “Who better to do such an assessment than the ones who live the story between the stones?” To his mind the Te-Moak should be integrated into the beginning of any cultural surveys. And be paid for it.
Although Hendrix of the BLM Battle Mountain district later notes hypothetical instances where tribes might be paid for consultation services, he doesn’t furnish any examples.
Holley also suggests that conducting an official ethnography — a scientific study of the customs of peoples and cultures — would go a long way toward recording, and perhaps protecting, traditionally used gathering sites. However, Holley describes struggling with BLM over who conducts the ethnography.
“Ethnography should be part of the process of reviewing a plan — for example, for oil and gas leasing or mining,” he says. “But they always want to choose the ethnographer,” which he says leads such reports to be biased. He’d like to raise funds to hire a non-BLM ethnographer, but so far the tribe hasn’t found the money to do so.
Past Experience
I ask Chairman Holley if he has faith that BLM would, if properly informed, indeed remove places of tribal concern from the parcels to be leased in June?
“No. I don’t trust how they do business,” he says. The tribe’s past experience has taught them differently.
“When you come face to face with BLM, they don’t hear a thing you’re saying,” he says. “It’s just frustrating.” He mentions BLM district administrators who “don’t do what they say they’re going to do,” and instead “go just the opposite direction.”
He challenges the BLM representatives to “tell us where the cultural side, the medicinal side is,” but despairs that they lack such knowledge and don’t seem interested in learning.
His tone turns urgent, the buildup of decades of not having the Te-Moak cosmology and cultural practices truly heard or respected: “We’re a part of the land, we hunt, we gather medicinal herbs, we pray. This is what’s required of us as human beings to give back to what’s provided to us to live by.”
He describes a relationship with the land and its denizens that is mutual. The land, which they call Newe Sogobia, requires humans’ humble tending. It’s a worldview distinct from the Western view of land as the deliverer of economic resources — oil, gas, and minerals for companies to exploit.
So will the tribe answer the February letters from the BLM districts, particularly the inquiry regarding identification of places of tribal concern?
“Yes,” Holley replies; they’ll answer the letters.
But in doing that, he says, they want the locations of their most significant places “under lock and key.” That hasn’t happened in the past. Before development of the Tosawihi Quarries within the Waterton Mining Company’s Hollister Mines, the Te-Moak identified and notified Elko BLM of ancient rock shelters that Holley says were used as blinds when gathering or hunting. Despite this notification, “these cairns got kicked over by the mining company.”
Another project saw workers drive right through a sacred site, which BLM reportedly blamed on its archaeologists’ GPS not synching up with the mining company’s maps.
“If BLM can’t even ensure that their own people will protect our sacred locations, then how can they keep others from destroying them?” Holley asks.
They’re hoping that this time, history won’t repeat itself.
Holding Out Hope for Consultation
On March 26, according to Holley, the tribe received a phone call from Elko District BLM Native American consultation coordinator/tribal liaison Jessica Montcalm. They’ve agreed that Montcalm, whose background is in industrial archaeology, will come to the April 3 tribal council meeting. Holley stresses that this classifies as information-gathering, not consultation. “She’s not the boss, so she can’t make the decision” about parcels to be leased for oil and gas uses.
“We always request to talk with the lead person in the agency.” He acknowledges that, in the past, the BLM-Elko district has sent its district manager, Jill Silvey. But in general he hasn’t seen the agency take steps allowing the Te-Moak to talk “with someone who can make laws and regulations.”
So far, he stresses, there has been no consultation. To begin true consultation, he’d like to see BLM approach the tribe to propose adequate dates to meet with the Te-Moak tribal council — and then not just give information, but listen.
I ask him if he thinks the BLM and the Te-Moak tribe will actually get to that phase of consultation. “Honestly, probably not. They’re too overworked, they’re too busy, they have no time. But, let’s see where it goes. Maybe they will.”
As time winds down before the June lease auction, Holley holds out that slim hope.
This month brings new books by Bill McKibben and Carl Safina, as well as important discussions about wildlife coexistence, poaching and dam removal.
If you’re looking for some inspiration, you’re in luck. Booksellers will soon see a massive influx of powerful and informative new environmental books. They cover everything from pollinators to animal cognition and predator coexistence to the morality of environmental protection.
We’ve picked the 17 best eco-books of April 2019, including titles for activists, scientists and eco-friendly kids. Links are to publishers’ websites, and you can also find any of these books at your favorite store or library. Pick the ones that are best for you and then put this new inspiration and information to good use saving the planet.
Wildlife and Endangered Species:
Protecting Pollinators: How to Save the Creatures That Feed Our World by Jodi Helmer — An in-depth look at the pollinator crisis (which is affecting bees, as well as bats, birds and other pollen-spreaders) and what people around the world are doing to reverse the declines. A buzz-worthy book.
Down From the Mountain: The Life and Death of a Grizzly Bear by Bryce Andrews — A cautionary tale of human-grizzly coexistence (or lack thereof). The book helps to illustrate the broader issues affecting grizzlies as their populations grow, pushing them closer and closer to humans (and, sadly, their guns).
Our Planet by Alastair Fothergill, Keith Scholey and Fred Pearce — The directors of the BBC’s Planet Earth and Blue Planet have brought their talents to Netflix for a new documentary series about conservation. This gorgeously photographed coffee-table book expands upon the documentary itself and gives us the chance to slow down and absorb every detail. David Attenborough, who narrates the TV series, provides the foreword.
The Sea Turtle Mystery — The famous “Boxcar Children Mysteries” series tackles the thorny issue of sea turtle egg poaching, a major threat to the survival of all sea turtle species. Can the kids solve the crime and save an endangered species? Geez, I sure hope so.
Yellowstone Cougars: Ecology Before and During Wolf Restoration by Toni K. Ruth, Polly C. Buotte and Maurice G. Hornocker — This massive book (525 pages, weighing 1.7 pounds!) is the result of years of fieldwork by the authors. It reveals how wolves and cougars compete with each other and sets the stage for what may be the next era of carnivore conservation and management in the West.
Don’t Let Them Disappear by Chelsea Clinton and Gianna Marino — A delightful kids’ book about why tigers, elephants, rhinos and other species are at risk and what we can do to help. Also available in Spanish.
Ocean Outbreak: Confronting the Rising Tide of Marine Disease by Drew Harvell — If you want to know more about diseases affecting marine wildlife, there’s no better person to turn to than Harvell, the scientist who led recent research into the starfish wasting epidemic affecting the west coast. Her new book examines starfish, as well as corals, abalone and salmon to define both the problem and the necessary solutions.
Morality and the Environmental Crisis by Roger S. Gottlieb — How can we be good people when so many of our individual and collective actions contribute to the destruction of the planet? This major new academic book explores the philosophical, religious, political, societal and ethical challenges and opportunities of living in a time of crisis. (Or you can just watch this episode of “The Good Place.”)
Pollution and Climate Change:
Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution by Beth Gardiner — My lungs hurt just reading the description of this book. Gardiner traveled the world to find out how pollution clogs our cities, hearts and politics. Along the way she uncovers the solutions that just may help us all breathe a little easier.
Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich — A book-length expansion of Rich’s widely shared New York Times Magazine article about how we could have solved the climate crisis in the 1980s — and maybe how we can put those lessons to better use today.
Science Comics: Wild Weather by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill — The science of storms, meteorology and climate change in a fun, easy-to-read graphic format. Like everything in the “Science Comics” series, this is sure to entertain while it educates, no matter what your age.
That’s our list for this month, but there’s plenty more to add to your reading lists. For dozens of additional recent eco-books, check out the “Revelator Reads” archive — and come back in just a few weeks for next month’s inspiring list.
The Story of Stuff Project’s Stiv Wilson talks about an upcoming film that traces the life cycle of plastic and the people leading the fight against it.
When you throw things away, do you wonder where “away” is? An upcoming film, to be released this fall by the nonprofit The Story of Stuff Project, traces the journey of our plastic products. It covers not just where our plastic goes but also where it comes from.
It’s a lesson we need.
We’re at a reckoning point with plastic waste. Many countries that once accepted our discards are now turning it away. Islands of plastic are growing in the ocean, and it’s being eaten by animals living in the farthest reaches of the planet. The current rate of plastic production is “incongruent to planet Earth,” says Stiv Wilson, director of campaigns for The Story of Stuff Project. And yet industry is planning to ramp up production fueled by the availability of cheap natural gas.
So what to do? According to Wilson, we need to lift up the voices of those who live in the most affected places. They already know what solutions work best.
Bringing those voices to the front is at the heart of The Story of Stuff’s new film, he says. But to find those people, they had to travel far and wide. The journey took them to the oilfields of Karnes County, Texas; a pipeline route through western Pennsylvania; the ship channel of Houston; the ghost towns in China that are turning away plastic waste; Jakarta, where plastic pollution is dozens of feet deep; and India, where plastic-burning incinerators spew toxic chemicals into the air.
We talked with Wilson about the upcoming movie and his journey to produce it.
The Story of Stuff Project’s Stiv Wilson has traveled the world looking for solutions to our plastic crisis.
What are you hoping this film will accomplish?
For a long time, I think, the plastic pollution issue has been framed as an ocean issue, and what we haven’t really talked about enough is what the whole system of plastic looks like. Plastic pollutes at every stage of its life cycle.
I don’t think most people know that if you want it to stop plastic from going into the ocean in Indonesia you need to ban fracking in the Ohio River valley. The U.S. is the largest exporter of oil and gas as feedstocks for plastic — we feed China, we feed Europe — because of the fracking boom here.
So our intention with the film is to show the entire system of plastic and that includes every stage and also that upstream the human health concerns are way more significant than eating fish that’s eaten plastic — living next to a refinery for plastics is going to be far more dangerous.
But all along the life cycle of plastics there’s people fighting back. These are people whose stories you don’t often hear and they are the people who actually have the solutions to the problem.
Were there places that really impacted you personally?
The hardest thing I witnessed on this whole trip was outside of Delhi. There was an open dump, which was bigger than the pyramids at Giza — you can see it 20 miles away. And at the base of that is an urban dairy farm. Then right adjacent to it is an incinerator where the toxic bottom and fly ash is going straight into the dump. Then it rains and that goes into water that cows are drinking. There was this one scene where I saw a baby cow drinking from its mother at the base of this dump with the incinerator in the background. And I’m talking to people who work on this urban dairy farm and they’re saying that you die 30 years earlier if you live here, but they have no other choice — this is their livelihood.
You go down the Ci Liwung River in Jakarta, Indonesia and you see the stratification of plastic bags 15-30 feet deep in the soil. Sadly, plastic is part of the geological record at this point.
It’s one thing to witness this as just an everyday citizen, but when you come at it from an activist perspective like myself, you’re looking at the whole system that created this. How many bad decisions in a row got us to this point, and how entrenched it is? And how do you stop this?
What’s the balance between cleanup and prevention at this point?
Every year we have this feel-good day in September for international coastal cleanup. And every year we realize that more and more plastic is on the beach. And it feels like a dog chasing its tail. But now with the Break Free From Plastic movement, which is 1,400 NGOs globally that are all operating from the same strategy, vision and principles, we’ve instituted a kind of hack to those cleanups to start reporting brand data. And that flips the narrative of who’s responsible for the stuff. It’s no longer that just everyday people are the problem — it’s the companies that produce this stuff.
I don’t believe that any cleanup efforts are going to work if we don’t prevent the problem in the first place. Industry will say it’s a management problem, but this is unmanageable. There’s way too much plastic in the system.
So the first message is, you have to stop this massive petrochemical buildout that’s looking to put 40 percent more plastic into commerce by 2025. Because we just can’t deal with that as a global society.
Plastic waste in Surabaya, Indonesia is openly burned or used as fuel for furnaces to boil water for tofu factories, with no environmental controls. (Photo by Stiv Wilson)
With fewer and fewer countries willing to accept our plastic, is recycling in jeopardy?
There’s so much plastic in the system that it doesn’t have much value for recycling any more. If the supply far exceeds the demand and it’s exponentially growing, you’re never going to solve the problem. You’re never going to make the economics of recycling really work. China closed its doors and now, on the West Coast of the United States, we’re stockpiling plastic. There’s nowhere for it to go, so it’s being landfilled.
We need to build circularity into our economy — stop waste exports, do domestic recycling and ban problematic products.
There’s this idea that recycling will save us. It’s wrong. It’s a good thing to recycle if you have good environmental controls and good protocols for human rights, but you don’t have that in the developing world. You don’t have either of those things because the margins are so small on recycling that you have to cut corners, and those corners that are cut affect both people and planet.
What did you find that was hopeful?
When you look at the people fighting back in the system, I think if we can elevate those voices, we can win. I see the unsung leaders from developing nations getting to the world stage and talking about real solutions.
For instance, we saw a decentralized waste-management program in the Philippines that provides basic collection and source segregation for materials. It was a very poor neighborhood that was filled with so much plastic you couldn’t see the ground, and now it’s absolutely immaculate. Waste pickers have been turned into civil servants.
It’s a very simple system that’s scalable and economic. It’s also 85 percent cheaper because all organics are composted and all materials that have markets for recycling are recycled. So you’re down to 10 to 20 percent residual waste, which means you’re sending one to two trucks to the landfill instead of 10, which saves a tremendous amount of money. You can see how this can be scaled at the country level and would work for other countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam.
Elsewhere there are also some really progressive policies that are starting to mandate that you put recycled content into new packaging applications so that you don’t need the feedstocks — you don’t need all the fracking.
At every part of the system you have people with really genius interventions, and it’s all about scaling this up through stories in media, popularizing those and then just implementing them because the solutions are there. It’s right in front of our face.
I’m also heartened by the Break Free From Plastic movement that’s building a lot of solidarity and power. It’s very intersectional. We’re finally talking about the entire system of plastic, and we’re crafting policy to address the entire system.
What makes me hopeful is that the scale of the movement responding to the problem is starting to match the scale of the problem itself. For many years we’ve been under-resourced and under-powered and that has changed. The movement is growing and it’s gaining in power.
The good news is that the solution is right in front us. The bad news is the current system is very entrenched, and there’s a lot of money behind it. So it’s a big fight.
Environmental and constitutional law scholar Dan Farber explains what a climate change emergency declaration could achieve.
The possibility of declaring a national emergency to address climate change will probably remain under discussion for the next couple of years, particularly if the courts uphold President Trump’s wall “emergency.” As a legal scholar, I want to explain how a climate emergency declaration would work and what it could and couldn’t do. But first I want to emphasize three key points:
Declaring a climate emergency should be off the table if the Supreme Court rules against Trump.
An emergency declaration is not a magic wand that gives presidents a blank check. A declaration would allow some constructive steps to be taken, but within limits.
The ultimate goal has to be congressional action, and an emergency declaration should only be considered as part of a larger legislative and administrative agenda.
Even if the Supreme Court upholds Trump, using this precedent to fight climate change will require some real soul-searching. Trump has violated a longstanding norm of presidential restraint in using emergency powers to address domestic policy. Whether to disavow or exploit that change in norms is a hard question. And declaring a climate emergency might help mobilize public opinion in support of legislative action, or it might cause a backlash that would make new legislation harder. But if the Supreme Court rules for Trump, the idea of a climate change emergency declaration has to be taken seriously.
Something of a compromise position might be to declare that the resilience of the electrical grid is a national emergency, not climate change itself. That would still allow some important actions that would help reduce carbon emissions. Basically, many of the steps that are needed to decarbonize the grid would also increase its ability to resist and bounce back from disruptions due to national disasters or cyberattacks on the energy system.
With all that in mind, here’s what you need to know about the issues.
Electric transmission lines. (Photo by Tonyglen14, CC BY 2.0)
Would Climate Change Qualify as a National Emergency?
Trump has declared a national emergency so he can build his wall. But if illegal border crossings are a national emergency, then there’s a strong case for viewing climate change in similar terms. That point has been made by observers ranging from Marco Rubio to a Legal Planet post by Jonathan Zasloff.
I agree, but I want to dig deeper because it’s such an important point. In order to uphold Trump’s emergency declaration, the Supreme Court will have to either rule that the definition of emergency is exceedingly broad or that courts have little or no power to scrutinize a presidential declaration. There is a genuine legal basis for calling climate change a national emergency, as opposed to Trump’s ridiculous border-security declaration.
If it upholds Trump’s declaration, it would be extremely hard for the Supreme Court to overturn a climate change declaration. One reason is that some attributes of climate change and immigration are similar. Both issues involve the country’s relations with the outside world, an area where presidential powers are strong. But it isn’t as if we suddenly found out about border crossings or climate change. Given these similarities, it would be very difficult for the conservative majority to explain why it was deferring to the president in one case but not the other.
The only major difference actually cuts strongly in favor of an emergency declaration for climate change: The U.S. government has already classified climate change as a serious threat to national security, and it is a threat that is getting stronger daily. Recent science indicates that climate action is even more urgent than we thought.
Trump’s stated justification in his proclamation is that “the problem of large-scale unlawful migration through the southern border is longstanding, and despite the executive branch’s exercise of existing statutory authorities, the situation has worsened in certain respects in recent years.” Climate change, too, is a “longstanding problem,” and it certainly has gotten worse despite the effort of the executive branch (Obama) to address the problem. Federal agencies, as well as Congress, have made it clear that climate is a serious threat to our nation.
Other parts of the government have weighed in as well.
The Environmental Protection Agency has made a formal finding, based on an exhaustive review of the scientific evidence, that greenhouse gases endanger human life and welfare both within the United States and globally. That finding was upheld by the D.C. Circuit. The Supreme Court reviewed other aspects of the D.C. Circuit’s decision but pointedly turned down requests that it review this EPA finding. The scientific evidence is ironclad. If a foreign power had somehow invented a weather-control technique to impose these harms on the United States, no one would doubt that this was a very serious national security problem. Trump is now trying to defuse this argument by convening a presidential commission, but the makeup of the commission will deprive it of any credibility.
National security agencies have also consistently viewed climate change as a serious threat. In written testimony to Congress about threats to national security, the Trump administration’s own Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats discussed the serious threat of climate change. “The past 115 years have been the warmest period in the history of modern civilization, and the past few years have been the warmest years on record,” he said. “Extreme weather events in a warmer world have the potential for greater impacts and can compound with other drivers to raise the risk of humanitarian disasters, conflict, water and food shortages, population migration, labor shortfalls, price shocks and power outages. Research has not identified indicators of tipping points in climate-linked earth systems, suggesting a possibility of abrupt climate change.”
The military has already taken a proactive stance on climate change. Former Secretary James Mattis was clear about the impact of climate change on national security: “Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today. . . It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning,” he said.
Retired U.S. Navy Captain Joe Bouchard, former commander of Naval Station Norfolk, which is threatened by sea-level rise. (Photo by Chesapeakeclimate, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Congress, too, has recognized climate change as a threat to national security and more specifically to military infrastructure and activities. The most significant action was the passage of the Defense Authorization Act of 2017, H.R. 1810. The Act was a funding statute for the Pentagon. Section 335 of the Act states that “climate change is a direct threat to the national security of the United States and is impacting stability in areas of the world both where the United States Armed Forces are operating today, and where strategic implications for future conflict exist.” In a crucial House vote, 46 Republicans crossed the aisle to vote against an effort to take out the climate provision. President Trump signed the bill.
Given all of this, if the Supreme Court does uphold Trump’s order, it will be very difficult to overturn a presidential declaration that climate change is a national emergency.
What Legal Authority Would an Emergency Climate Declaration Give the President?
What government powers would be unlocked by declaring a climate change emergency? One immediate possibility would be to use the same power that Trump is considering in order to divert military construction funds to other uses — in this case, perhaps building wind or solar farms or new transmission lines. But what else could President X do?
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law has compiled a helpful list of almost 150 statutes giving the president special powers during emergencies. The list doesn’t map the outer perimeter of presidential powers — there are other laws that give presidents powers to take action on the basis of national security, and the president also has some ill-defined, though not unlimited, powers to take action without explicit congressional authorization. But the list provides a good start, and here are just a few of the possibilities:
Oil leases are required to have clauses allowing them to be suspended during national emergencies. (43 USC 1341) If climate change is a national emergency caused by fossil fuels, then suspension seems like a logical response.
The president has emergency powers to respond to industrial shortfalls in national emergencies. (50 USC 4533). This could be used to support expansion of battery or electrical vehicle production. Another provision allows the president to extend loan guarantees to critical industries during national emergencies. (50 USC 4531). This could be used to support renewable energy more generally.
The secretary of Transportation has broad power to “coordinate transportation” during national emergencies. (49 U.S.C 114). This might allow various restrictions on automobile and truck use to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases.
The president may invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to deal with “any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States.” (50 USC 1701-1707). That description certainly applies to climate change. According to the Brennan Center, this Act “confers broad authority to regulate financial and other commercial transactions involving designated entities, including the power to impose sanctions on individuals and countries.” Conceivably, these powers could be deployed against companies or countries trafficking in fossil fuels.
Those are just some from the Brennan Center list. Moreover, as I said above, the president has other powers relating to national security, statutory and otherwise, that aren’t keyed to a declaration of national emergency — for instance, the kinds of tariffs Trump has imposed on foreign goods (say those relating to oil and gas drilling, or to oil imports).
The Houston ship channel. (Photo by Roy Luck, CC BY 2.0)
You might well respond that using these various powers to deal with climate change is stretching them far beyond any reasonable understanding of congressional intent. But if the courts upholds Trump’s action, that will be a sign that they’re not willing to apply any meaningful oversight to presidential actions.
What Would Be the Possible Benefits of an Emergency Declaration?
Declaring a climate emergency could have benefits even apart from any concrete follow-up. It would be a strong signal that the United States recognizes the urgent need to cut carbon emissions — a signal to the international community as well as courts and agencies within the country. That would be a plus by itself.
Beyond that, I would favor tying emergency actions (at least at the start) to recognized issues that impact our society’s security. One is grid resilience. Renewables and storage would make a particular contribution to resilience in areas where they have the least penetration, meaning the Southeast, but also in many other states. Microgrids combined with distributed solar could also be useful in the wake of natural disasters like the hurricanes endemic to the Gulf Coast. We need to jump-start the carbon transition in those parts of the country to pave the way for more comprehensive measures. We also need to upgrade the grid elsewhere. Doing so would allow much bigger cuts in emissions from the electricity sector.
Another security-related issue involves military installations. The military has already taken steps to increase use of renewables and to harden sites against sea level rise. But a lot more could be done, particularly in the way of much greater electrical storage capacity (which might include use of electric vehicle batteries). Military funds could be redirected for these purposes, and the military could also be involved in increasing grid resilience in areas surrounding military bases and for critical infrastructure more generally. This could be especially helpful in starting the ball rolling in the Southeast, which remains the most backward area in terms of renewable energy.
A third option would be to take America out of the business of encouraging the use of coal in other countries. Emergency and national security powers give the president considerable leverage over exports and financing of foreign projects. We should not be devoting our resources or production to encouraging countries like India to build more coal plants.
It would take a lot more work to turn these ideas into actionable proposals. We’d need to know the effect of these measures, the available resources and just what statutory provisions would support them. Closer study could also turn up additional possibilities. It would probably take a sustained effort, maybe by a small team, to work through the issues in-depth.
If the Supreme Court overturns Trump’s order, declaring a climate emergency seems far less appealing. But who knows if that will happen? And of course, we have no way of knowing just when we might have a president who actually wants to do something about climate change. That’s definitely not something we should take for granted. But if and when it does happen, he or she should have access to a full analysis of the policy options.
As much as I care about climate change, I am hoping that the courts reject Trump’s emergency declaration, which would make these questions moot. Even putting aside my feelings about the wall itself, I think it’s an undesirable expansion of presidential power. But there’s no guarantee the courts will stop Trump. If his action is upheld, the door will be open for declaring a climate emergency, if we choose to go down that path.
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.
It appears to have been wiped out by pollution, development and illegal mining by “sand mafias.” Will other plants soon follow?
Sand is big business — and a dangerous one.
Around the world illegal sand mining — often run by vicious “sand mafias” — has been linked to black markets, violence and even murder. It’s the shadier side of a multibillion-dollar industry with a voracious appetite for minerals used in everything from construction to electronics to toothpaste.
This criminal activity has already caused massive ecological problems wherever it occurs, and now the sand mafias appear to have contributed to something new: the extinction of a rare tree in coastal India.
According to a paper published in March in the journal Phytotaxa, an exhaustive search along the coasts of Tamil Nadu, India’s southernmost state, has failed to find any evidence of a rare legume tree known as Vachellia bolei. Researchers have declared the species is “possibly extinct.”
The paper itself blames “habitat destruction and other anthropogenic factors” for the possible extinction. That’s fairly general, but an email from the research team gets more specific.
“We strongly believe that sand mining, illegal felling of trees and conversion of coastal sand dunes for cultivation might be the major reasons for the possible extinction of Vachellia bolei,” write the authors, K. Sampath Kumar, K. Kathiresan and S. Arumugam.
The researchers conducted more than 100 surveys between 2012 and 2017 looking for Vachellia bolei and other local plants. As they write, it wasn’t always the easiest work. Illegal mining has eliminated many coastal sand dunes, causing severe coastal erosion, and “it is not even possible to survey some of the areas that are under the ‘control’ of these mafias,” they say. (They add that they never felt as though they were in danger, although they were blocked from exploring mining areas by workers who thought they were investigative journalists.)
Sand mining in the Kaveri River, Tamil Nadu. Photo: P Jeganathan (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The mafias aren’t alone in bearing the blame for damaging the local ecosystem. A number of other factors also threaten coastal plant species in Tamil Nadu, most notably “continuous and severe” pollution from a growing human population and rapid levels of development. “Mindless waste disposal all along the coastal habitats and into or near watercourses is rampant,” the researchers say. “We must remember that whatever pollution happening in the plains and the nearby hills ultimately reaches the estuaries and the sea. This also creates tremendous pressure on the fragile ecosystems.”
The North Chennai Thermal Power Station has a history of pollution. Photo: Prateek Rungta (CC BY 2.0)
Other risk factors include coral mining — which has resulted in the shrinking or submergence of several nearby islands — illegal logging for firewood and other uses, dwindling freshwater flow into estuaries, climate change and possibly invasive species.
As a result of all of these threats, Vachellia bolei is not the only plant at risk in Tamil Nadu.
“This is just tip of the iceberg, as there are many more species vanished or vanishing,” the researchers write. They estimate that about 30 percent of the estimated 2,000 plant species along the coast have now become locally threatened. In particular, they point out, the number of mangrove species known to grow in the area has fallen from 30 to just 13.
The ecological cost of losing Vachellia bolei is hard to estimate. The species was only scientifically collected three times, and although its role in the ecosystem was never studied it was probably significant. The researchers note that other legume species from the Acacia genus serve to enrich the soil, sequester carbon, stabilize dunes and provide habitat to a variety of birds and pollinator insects. The plants’ nutritious pods are eaten by humans and cattle, while the bark, flowers and other parts have been tapped for their medicinal uses.
Could Vachellia bolei still exist? The paper indicates the tree would have been hard to miss during surveys due to its large size, “prominently nerved” leaves and spines with sharp tips. Still, the researchers tell me, there’s a “most remote” change that it still clings to life in the region’s sacred groves, which have a long tradition of protecting local botanical species. The groves were not covered in this study because they’re typically located away from the coast.
Whether illegal sand mining caused, or just contributed to, this extinction, the announcement is a reminder of what else we have to lose. The authors say they hope this research will serve as an “eye-opener” to bring attention to the problems in Tamil Nadu and lead to “prioritizing and conserving many other wild threatened coastal plants of the region — and thereby preserve the diversity of dependent insects, animals and microbes — in the near future.” More broadly, conservation groups have long warned that sand mining around the world threatens biodiversity and endangered species, and without action Vachellia bolei may not be the last to disappear.
“I’m not surprised” by this extinction, says Kiran Pereira, founder of SandStories, an initiative that talks about the need to better manage the world’s consumption of sand. “I am saddened, but I would like to remain hopeful that we can turn the tide at least for the other species that depend on sand.”
What if we’d listened to the researchers who first warned us about plastic pollution in the 1970s?
There’s plastic in seabirds, in the middle of the remote Pacific Ocean, even in people. It’s a challenge to turn to the news these days without reading or hearing the latest horror story about plastic pollution. These updates seem new and striking and scary, but in reality much of the fundamental information contained in these stories is actually far from fresh.
“In the last five years there has been more published research on plastics than in the previous 50 years,” says Marcus Eriksen, 5 Gyres Institute cofounder and research director, who’s a well-known contemporary documentarian of microplastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other parts of the oceans. “In the past the public did not get adequate information, or the right information, early enough to act.”
The Revelator took a deep dive into reams of historic plastic pollution research and uncovered that much of what’s considered “new” today has actually been known by scientists for decades but was not well publicized in the popular media until recently.
That delay in spreading the news about the threats of plastic came with a major cost. In the time since scientific research on plastic pollution was first published in the early 1970s, billions of metric tons of plastic waste has been tossed in landfills and accumulated in terrestrial and marine ecosystems — and in the bodies of countless people and animals.
That scientists knew plastic pollution was a growing problem back in the Seventies begs two essential questions: What would the world be like if we had listened to early researchers much earlier? And what prevented us from listening?
Initial Findings
The earliest peer-reviewed research on plastic pollution in the oceans was based in observation of how the materials were behaving in the environment.
One paper, published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies in 1972, identified the phenomenon of plastic consumer packaging washing up on isolated shorelines as an ecological concern. Written by University of Aston chemist Gerald Scott, the paper discussed the problematically slow biodegradation speed of plastic in the marine environment and outlined a “need for the acceleration of this process” to prevent further ecological harm.
That same year a scientist named Edward J. Carpenter, who now works as a professor at San Francisco State University, became the first to publish warnings about what would eventually be known as “microplastics.” While posted as a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Carpenter published two landmark 1972 papers describing “plastic particles” in the Sargasso Sea and plastic spheres used for plastic production (called nurdles) that had absorbed PCBs in waters off Southern New England and were found inside several fish caught there.
The decades following Carpenter’s initial work saw the publication of just a few dozen papers on marine plastic pollution. In fact, from the time Carpenter announced finding small plastic particles in the oceans, it took more than three decades for the scientific term “microplastic” to be published in major international publications. Today publication of these papers is much more frequent. A search of Google Scholar found 771 papers containing the words “microplastic” or “microplastics” published in 2018 alone.
Although plastic pollution wasn’t making news headlines decades ago, the research did continue, with several important early findings made. This includes the 1973 discovery of small plastic particles accumulating in the bodies of seabirds (today we know more than 90 percent of all seabirds have eaten plastic at some point in their lives) and the identification of large quantities of plastic floating on the Pacific Ocean between California and Japan (where we now know the Great Pacific Garbage Patch lies).
Plastic found in one dead seabird’s stomach. Photo: Carol Meteyer, USGS
Early research suggests that scientists knew from the start that the biggest issue with plastic is that it never decomposes. It only breaks up into tiny pieces that can be ingested by marine wildlife and humans, with unclear — but almost certainly negative — consequences.
One major concern is toxins, which plastic can both absorb and leach out. While this issue has gotten significant amounts of media coverage in the past few years, some of the earliest plastic pollution researchers supposed that if ingested in small amounts, “consumed particles of plastic could release sufficient amounts of PCB’s to affect seabirds,” as Stephen I. Rothstein wrote in a 1973 paper on marine plastic pollution.
It took more than a decade after publication of the papers by Carpenter and other early researchers before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United States’ main ocean science agency, convened the world’s top marine scientists to discuss plastic pollution. In 1984 the agency hosted the First International Conference on Marine Debris. As former NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center deputy director Jim Coe later recalled, the goal of the conference was to discuss whether or not marine debris, specifically lost and abandoned fishing gear, “was a problem worth people’s attention.”
They quickly agreed that it was. Scientists at the conference concluded that plastic was accumulating in the natural environment and called for more research to better understand what seemed to be a growing problem. They also made the earliest call for legal action to prevent pollution from ships, which prompted Congress to fund an early version of NOAA’s Marine Debris Program called the Marine Entanglement and Research Program — which had a responsibility of facilitating research, publicizing data and minimizing the problem.
Plastic Industry Influence
During the early 1980s, plastic manufacturers continued to sell consumers on the utility of their products, specifically plastic bags, without publicly acknowledging that the materials were harming the environment. In fact, they tried to show the opposite by pushing ideas about plastic’s abilities to be reused and recycled.
“Plastic bags can be reused in more than 17 different ways, including as a wrap for frozen foods, a jogger’s wind breaker or a beach bag,” the industry-backed Plastic Grocery Sack Council told the Los Angeles Times in 1986. A New York Times story published a few years prior lightly debates whether or not consumers would prefer using plastic bags to paper, given the industry’s push to get them into grocery stores around the world — without mentioning any of the environmental consequences.
Photo: John Platt (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
But the real push for plastic started even earlier. Plastics-history expert Rebecca Altman recalls how a 1950s packaging magazine editor told industry insiders that “The future of plastics is in the trash can.” Altman, who has deeply explored the human connection to plastic, says that the world had to be conditioned to carelessly consume. Prior to that time, “it was not in the culture to use something once and throw it away.” Today the items most commonly found in nature are so-called “single-use” plastics.
Promoting public narratives about litter to focus on recycling as a solution has, for a long time, “been a way to deflect attention and responsibility for product design away from industry, and has been very effective,” says Eriksen.
Despite this focus on recycling, recent research finds just 9 percent of plastics ever made have been recycled, and the large majority has either ended up in landfills or the natural environment.
A Plastic Cover-up?
Though contemporary plastic pollution scientists say they are aware of these past studies and their significance, they claim the public is not — due to insufficient news coverage of the issue and industry campaigns designed to keep them in the dark.
“Industry has aggressively defended themselves, manipulating public perception, and attacking scientists perceived as a threat,” Eriksen says.
“For both papers in Science the Society of the Plastics Industry sent a representative (twice) to Woods Hole, basically to intimidate me,” claims Carpenter, the early plastics researcher. “I was not given tenure at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and I think the plastic papers hurt my career there.”
That trade group is now known as the Plastics Industry Association. When reached for comment, it refused to confirm or deny Carpenter’s claims.
But it’s well known that certain industries have covered up the link between tobacco use and cancer, and fossil fuel use and climate change. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists’ “Disinformation Playbook,” corporations have followed a specific pattern when attempting to block legislation and minimize their liability for problems created by their products. The plastics industry appears to have followed the same predictable plays as other deceptive businesses: blitzing scientists who speak out with “inconvenient” results or views, diverting attention from scientific recommendations (to cut plastic use), and making strong attempts to block unfavorable policies (banning or restricting plastic use), among other strategies.
Besides industry silencing of research and shaping consumers’ mindsets around waste, Altman suggests the media also played a part in the issue of global plastic pollution first being overlooked and then finally coming to the fore of global consciousness. It’s a combination of plastic pollution worsening and the nature of media changing over time, Altman says. Today social platforms have the ability for anyone, anywhere, to share what has been ignored long enough to become an enormous and visually compelling story. Just think of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and all the media attention that’s gotten in the past decade, she says.
“Culturally we focus on environmental problems of a spectacular nature, the kind of havoc that happens in a bewildering instant,” she says. “It’s hard to see the slow-moving disasters or tragedies that happen over time — the drip, drip, drip — until it’s of a disastrous proportion.”
Carpenter agrees, emphasizing the gap between the scientific discovery of plastic pollution in the oceans and publicity about the problem. “I believe that the Captain Moore TED Talk on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, plus Marcus Eriksen of 5 Gyres, plus a video on dying albatrosses at Midway Island, plus the graphic video of the sea turtle with the plastic straw up its nose began to finally wake up the public,” he says.
What’s the Solution?
Nonprofits like 5 Gyres are now pushing an agenda toward public awareness, corporate responsibility and the idea of a circular economy — an economy that focuses on keeping waste to a minimum while maximizing materials’ use. NGOs’ activism has also kick-started a spurt of municipal and national policies aimed at reducing use of plastic items worldwide in a bid to cut pollution. If people won’t stop using plastic items on their own accord, recent research suggests rules limiting their use of plastic items by charging a fee for its use or banning it outright is the best way to get them to stop.
The plastics industry has actively fought such legislation, and despite the publication of research calling for a reduction in plastic use it continues to sell its products while pushing recycling as the best method to reduce waste and litter. In one recent example, major beverage corporations led by the Coca-Cola Company sent a letter of opposition last year to the European Commission following the EU’s proposal to require that plastic bottles have tethered caps. Traditional bottle caps are commonly lost in the marine environment because they so easily separate from bottles. In the letter the corporations cite the efficacy of deposit return schemes and recycling in reducing plastic litter. They proposed increased efforts to “reinforce and incentivize [the] right consumer behaviors” in lieu of changing their product designs. Coca-Cola recently revealed that it produces 3 million metric tons of plastic packaging every year.
When asked about the issue of plastic pollution and how to best address it, the Plastics Industry Association sent a statement to The Revelator saying the association “believes uncollected plastics do not belong in the natural environment and that is why we partner with other associations, non-governmental organizations and intergovernmental authorities to coordinate efforts to strengthen recovery systems around the globe to prevent the loss of any plastics into the environment. Our members understand that our industry needs to be a part of the solution. We encourage education and call for the enhancement of our recycling infrastructure in order to encourage new end markets for plastics.”
But experts say product redesigns and infrastructure don’t solve the problem. “Ocean plastics are a symptom of poor upstream waste management, poor product design, as well as consumer littering behavior,” Eriksen says. “It’s a perpetuation of old narratives, where pollution is caused by consumers. Regulation of products and packaging must be fought for intensively.”
The quick solution to the problem: Use less plastic.
As Carpenter pointed out nearly five decades ago, the more plastic we make and use, the more will end up in the natural environment. As he wrote in 1972: “Increasing production of plastics, combined with present waste-disposal practices, will undoubtedly lead to increases in the concentration of these particles.”
That’s a message we should have listened to decades ago, which still needs to be heard today.
“The public did not get adequate information, or the right information, early enough to act,” says Eriksen. “Industry has been very effective at controlling the public narrative, but today they cannot control things the way they did in the past. Social media and mass communications have allowed people to organize.” And that’s starting to make a difference.
Surprisingly, the climate-threatening industry is still in a growth mode in some parts of the world. Will that change fast enough to save the planet?
What does the future look like for coal?
If you listen to coal insiders, the next few years will still burn bright for the notoriously polluting industry. According to data analytics company GlobalData, coal production will “grow exponentially to 2022,” with more than 300 potential new coal projects launching over the next four years. GlobalData predicts annual production increases in India, Indonesia and Australia at a staggering 10.9 percent, 3.9 percent and 2.3 percent.
Although GlobalData also predicts that 100 projects will close worldwide, the company anticipates a total annual coal production increase of 1.3 percent over the next four years, which follows a modest growth of 2.8 percent in 2017 and 0.1 percent in 2018.
But other experts offer a different picture, one that paints the coal industry with a far less certain brush. They point to climate change, failing economics, bank divestment, polluting technology, legal and social challenges, the rise of cheap natural gas (another potent source of greenhouse emissions) and vast improvements in renewable energy technologies. Combined, these factors suggest the coal industry may struggle to stay viable in the coming years.
For now, though, the question seems to be: Will the coal industry fade quickly enough to make a difference for the climate — or will it keep chugging along at current levels?
“Are we on a long flat plateau, which would still mean a disaster for the planet, or are we on an escalating downward path, a path toward actually saving the planet?” asks Justin Guay, director of global climate strategy at the Sunrise Foundation, which advocates for closing coal plants and shifting financing out of fossil fuels.
Demand, Not Supply
One major problem with GlobalData’s numbers is that coal production may be rising, but coal consumption hit its apex five years ago.
“Global coal consumption peaked in 2014 and has declined marginally since then,” says Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “Opening up new supply won’t increase demand, unless it results in an oversupply that forces the market price of coal down, so there is a price-driven increase in demand.”
That seems unlikely, since the price of coal has actually gone up over the past few years, Guay points out.
“That’s partially because we’re finally forcing the coal industry to pay for its externalities — mostly for air pollution, but also for water pollution and other things that they do to degrade the environment,” he says. “Once you slap these new technologies on a coal plant, their competitiveness against the newer, cleaner, cheaper stuff gets worse and worse and worse.”
Instead of looking at production, Buckley develops his own projections by looking at electricity demand, which partially drives the demand for coal. “China, India and Southeast Asia are all seeing electricity demand grow, whereas in America, Japan, Europe and Australia electricity demand has been flat at best for a decade,” he says.
Globally electricity demand increased by 27.5 percent between 2007 and 2017, according to IEEFA calculations. During that period, China’s energy demand nearly doubled, while India’s increased by 88 percent. Conversely, energy demand in the U.S. actually fell 3.4 percent during the same decade.
The reason coal has had such a growth curve in Southeast Asia is that renewable energy levels started so low in the region that countries turned to coal to keep up with demand. That’s about to change, Buckley says, as renewables have made enough inroads to the markets and are now growing at a pace that should cover all further increases in electricity demand.
“In India, in the 11 months to February 2019 net new thermal coal power additions were 20 megawatts whereas net new renewable energy installs were 6.7 gigawatts,” he says. “This is straight from the Central Electricity Authority reports — facts, not a forecast. Peak thermal coal in India is within sight. Other countries reliant on more expensive imported coal — think Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, Philippines, Malaysia — will see renewable energy tariffs fall below import coal-fired power plant tariffs over the coming five years. At that point thermal coal goes into a slow, inevitable, technology- and finance-driven terminal decline trajectory.”
Profits in the Wind
Speaking of renewable energy, the growth and improved efficiency of wind and solar power continue to chip away at coal’s market.
This comes in combination with the coal industry’s increasingly bad economic outlook.
A new report, issued March 25 by the policy group Energy Innovation, finds that 74 percent of existing coal plants in the United States actually cost more to operate in 2018 than it would cost to replace them with new wind and solar plants — often as much as 25 percent more.
According to the report, coal is at a “cost crossover” point in the United States, where the expense of operating a coal plant puts them financially at risk, compared to building new wild or solar projects.
This is a new dataset, but the trend has been clear for some time.
“If you look at the global model published by Carbon Tracker, 42 percent of existing coal units around the world are cash-flow negative today, which means essentially they’re bleeding money and not sustainable,” says Guay. “By 2030, 56 percent of all units around the world — China, India, everywhere — will be cash-flow negative. It’s pretty hard to maintain market share or let alone grow if you’re more expensive than your competitors. And that has been something that has been building for several decades as wind and solar costs have declined.”
Money Talks
As for cash, it’s becoming harder and harder for coal companies to get their hands on it.
The pace is accelerating. At least 34 of these divestments occurred just since the start of 2018. It’s not enough to compensate for the estimated $1.9 trillion that banks have invested in fossil fuels since the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, according to a new report from the Rainforest Action Network, but it’s a sign that coal financing is quickly becoming not worth the risk.
The limited access to investment capital is already making a difference when combined with the growth in renewables, Buckley reports.
“I was on a CoalTrans India panel debate with Tata Power, the largest private company in India a couple of weeks back. The opening comment from Tata was that they will never again build another coal-fired power plant in India. Why? Bank finance is not available, and renewable energy is now materially lower cost than a domestic thermal power plant in India… There goes the biggest growth market for coal globally — puff, gone.”
Buckley expects similar shifts in China in the next two years.
“It is very telling that this month the biggest Chinese holding investment company, SDIC, announced it had completed its exit from the coal industry now, two years ahead of schedule,” he says. “Coal was the single biggest profit contributor to SDIC over the last decade. This is a first for China, and it’s unlikely to be a lone event.”
Meanwhile, Buckley says he feels that lack of finance is already delaying previously announced projects, pointing to a laundry list of announced projects that have missed their expected start dates. “I would suggest new thermal coal mine developments are being delayed because global capital is rapidly reassessing the long term viability, and Chinese, Japanese and South Korean equity is far less available than it was five years ago,” he says.
The Social License
One of the reasons banks are pulling out is, of course, the risk to the planet — which may explain why public sentiment also has something to do with it.
“The social license for the industry has completely eroded,” adds Guay from the Sunrise Foundation. “Coal is now viewed as a toxic substance. It’s whispered in the same breath as tobacco or asbestos. Nobody wants to be associated with this industry. And when that happens, it’s pretty hard to then turn around to political benefactors ask for help. So that’s been a pretty big deal.”
As that social license dissolves, announcements of new coal projects around the world are being met with outcry, protests and lawsuits.
“People are joining together to dismantle the power of the fossil-fuel industry, cut their funding, and stop fossil-fuel projects in their tracks,” says Hoda Baraka, global communications director for the activist group 350.org.
Coal’s Last Gasp — and Ours?
But even with all of these threats to the industry, the industry still presents itself as healthy.
Once again that’s nothing new, says Guay, who points out a history of industry reports projecting dramatic growth over the past few years — most of which never materialized.
In many ways, though, the coal industry really is growing, at least for now. China, for example, just approved four massive new mines in an effort to grow its economy.
“We’ll see growth in places like India, Indonesia and Southeast Asia writ large,” says Guay. “But those growth centers can’t make up for the absolute declines we’re seeing, particularly in the U.S. but also in Europe, Australia and other countries where electricity demand is flat.”
Still, that worldwide growth, the experts tell us, puts the planet in peril.
“We cannot afford to build any more coal-fired power stations,” says Baraka. “Every ton of coal burned makes an immediate contribution to the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere, causing long-term and irreversible climate change. We need to keep fossil fuels in the ground now to ensure that we stay below 1.5 degrees in order to avoid catastrophic environmental breakdown.”
Everyone we interviewed for this article highlighted the absolute need to accelerate efforts to get rid of coal and disrupt this growth cycle.
“Of all the ways we generate energy, coal has just got to be the worst from start to finish, from extraction to burning and beyond,” says Guay. “It’s polluting along that entire chain. And frankly, even if climate change were not the existential threat I think it is, it would still merit disappearing from our lives based purely on air pollution concerns, water pollution concerns, and any of the other number of toxic elements that the industry spews every day. So yeah, to me it couldn’t be gone from our lives fast enough.”
There are specific things we can do to make sure good intentions don’t just transfer environmental harms from one place to another.
For many years environmentalists have urged the public to “think globally, act locally” – meaning, consider the health of the planet, then take action in your own community.
But this approach can have unintended consequences. In a recent study, I worked with colleagues from academia, government and the nonprofit world to gather examples of fishery, forestry, agriculture and biofuel policies that appeared successful locally, but on closer inspection actually created environmental problems elsewhere, or in some cases made them worse.
For example, in my field of fisheries ecology and management, one strategy for managing the problem of bycatch — when fishermen accidentally catch non-target species, such as sharks, sea turtles and dolphins — is to reduce local catch limits. But when the United States curtailed Pacific swordfish catch between April 2001 and March 2004 to protect sea turtles, U.S. wholesalers imported more swordfish from other countries’ fleets operating in the Western and Central Pacific.
These fleets subsequently caught more swordfish to meet continued U.S. market demand. In the process, the number of sea turtles unintentionally hooked by fishermen increased by nearly 3,000 compared to before the closure.
My colleagues and I see this pattern, which scholars often call leakage or slippage, as vast and growing. To help address it, we identified ways to avoid taking actions that just displace environmental harms from one place to another rather than reducing them.
Transferring Environmental Harm
Once environmental problems are addressed locally, people often assume that they have been solved. But if demand for whatever they are trying to conserve — land, wildlife, energy resources — stays high, people will obtain them from other sources. In the process, they cause environmental damage in locations or economic sectors that are less strictly regulated.
These scenarios often shift impacts from developed nations to emerging economies. For example, a study based on data from 2001 indicated that 31 percent of timber harvest reductions in the United States were shifted to less developed nations, including tropical forest countries in South and Central America, southeast Asia, and west and central Africa as well as boreal forest countries like Russia. Companies sought timber from these countries to satisfy demand in the United States and other parts of the world created by reduced U.S. exports.
Such effects are common in forestry. One study estimates that 42 to 95 percent of logging reductions in specific countries or regions are shifted elsewhere, offsetting environmental gains. Less wealthy countries that get the additional business often benefit economically, but in many cases they have not yet developed policies to help ensure that they use their natural resources sustainably.
Slippage can also occur within countries. Seeking to promote sustainable forest management, Peru adopted long-term logging concessions starting in 2002. By 2005, however, deforestation and forest disturbance increased three- to four-fold in surrounding nonconcession areas
Similarly, in 2003 Mexico enacted a federal conservation program that compensated landowners for forest protection. Deforestation significantly increased in neighboring, non-enrolled forest tracts.
The U.S. Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to take environmentally sensitive land out of production and plant it with species that will improve its health, may also cause such effects. One study found that between 1982 and 1992, Midwest farmers retired 17.6 million acres under the Conservation Reserve Program, but simultaneously brought at least 3.7 million acres into production — possibly because cropland retirements drove up crop prices. This offset 9 percent of water and 14 percent of wind erosion reduction benefits from retiring the original croplands.
A Path Forward
In a world where markets are becoming ever more globalized, it is urgent to limit negative environmental impacts of resource use, rather than just displace them from one region or nation to another. There are a number of ways to do this.
To assess whether a policy will cause environmental harm elsewhere, it is important for natural resource managers and policymakers to understand the relationship between demand for a product and its supply. For example, when prices of hardwood species are high, more environmentally conscious consumers or those on a budget are likely to use bamboo or other materials for flooring instead.
However, some varieties have unique features or connote social status. Examples include rosewood, which is highly prized for uses that include musical instruments, and shark fin soup, a dish viewed by many Asians as a symbol of wealth and prestige. Because these materials often are rare, possessing them becomes a sign of social status, which can stimulate wealthy consumers to purchase more. Conserving them may require other actions, such as special legal protection for source species.
Governments and environmental groups can also use marketing campaigns to reduce demand for scarce resources, educate consumers about the consequences of their purchasing decisions and encourage producers to be transparent about the environmental impacts of their products. Examples of such efforts include eco labels, traceability programs and consumer guides, which have been widely implemented for forestry, fisheries and agricultural products.
Excerpt from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch consumer guide (California version), encouraging users to choose fish from sustainably managed fisheries. Monterey Bay Aquarium, CC BY-ND
Studies show that such tools can produce real environmental benefits, such as increases in fish stocks and in support for creating protected areas. Most of these improvements appear to be made by industries that must make significant changes before they can join these programs. For example, fishermen may need to shift away from traditional but destructive fishing practices before their catch can be certified as sustainably caught. These programs often are more successful in developed countries that can finance such steps than in emerging economies.
Avoiding Conservation Illusions
Natural resource conservation policies are a fundamental tool for using Earth’s resources responsibly and sustainably. In a world where consumers can purchase products made on the opposite side of the planet, these policies must look beyond their own jurisdictions. If not, well-intentioned conservation efforts may only create the illusion of protection.
The opinions expressed above are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.
According to Holley, lands included for possible leasing are both within and adjoining the South Fork Band reservation at the foothills of the Ruby Mountains. (The Te-Moak have four bands: the South Fork, Wells, Battle Mountain and Elko colonies.)
We’ve picked the 17 best eco-books of April 2019, including titles for activists, scientists and eco-friendly kids. Links are to publishers’ websites, and you can also find any of these books at your favorite store or library. Pick the ones that are best for you and then put this new inspiration and information to good use saving the planet.
