Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 115

Michigan River Remains Poisoned By Oil Five Years After Massive Spill

Five years ago, a pipeline carrying crude oil from Canadian tar sands ruptured in Michigan, spilling over 1 million gallons into the Kalamazoo River in what would become the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history. Now, as oil companies attempt to expand pipelines across the upper Midwest, and as the Keystone Pipeline that would carry similar crude waits for approval from the State Department, activists and residents are gathering to remember the historic spill — and add their voices to a groundswell of local pipeline opposition that began five years ago.

“It’s telling that when we have been citing pipelines, even in Minnesota, the Kalamazoo spill is brought up an awful lot,” Andy Pearson, Midwest tar sands coordinator for MN350.org told ThinkProgress. “Kalamazoo is not in the past. It’s still really in the present for the people on the ground there. It’s something that shows how wrong it can go.”

When the pipeline — an aging structure owned by Canadian oil company Enbridge Inc. — first ruptured, it was the middle of the night on July 25, 2010. It took more than 17 hours for Enbridge to cut off the pipeline’s flow, a delayed response compounded by the company’s dismissal of alarms as a malfunction and attempts to fix the problem by pumping more oil into the pipeline. By the time the pipeline had been shut off, more than 1 million gallons of tar sands crude oil had spilled into the Kalamazoo River, impacting nearly 40 miles of the river and 4,435 acres of shoreline.

I went to a river that I had been to every day of my life, and it was unrecognizable

The spill was especially devastating because of the nature of tar sands crude — a substance that OnEarth’s Brian Palmer notes “looks more like dirt than conventional crude.” To get tar sands crude to travel through pipelines, oil companies mix the substance with natural gas liquids to create something called diluted bitumen, or dilbit. When the tar sands crude leaked into the river, the natural gas liquids vaporized and drifted into nearby neighborhoods, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of residents who lived in the area. The tar sands bitumen, however, drifted to the bottom of the river. That made cleanup especially difficult, because most oil spill cleanup technology is meant to deal with surface-level oil, through skimmers and vacuums made to remove oil from the water’s surface.

That technology was rendered essentially useless in the case of Kalamazoo, which was the first major pipeline disaster to involved diluted bitumen. Enbridge was forced to dredge the river to clean it, a costly and time consuming solution that proved not entirely effective. Even five years after the spill, environmentalists claim that tar sand bitumen remains in parts of the river.

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CREDIT: ThinkProgress/Dylan Petrohilos

“The Kalamazoo River still isn’t clean,” Anthony Swift, director of NRDC’s Canada Project, told OnEarth. “The EPA reached a point where additional cleanup might do more harm than good. Much of the river is still contaminated.”

In May, Enbridge agreed to pay $75 million for its role in the spill, on top of the $9.95 million it had already paid to settle previous fines and suits related to the disaster. The company could still face up to a $40 million fine from the EPA under the Clean Water Act, which InsideClimateNews reports would be the largest fine ever related to a pipeline spill.

To Chris Wahmhoff, who grew up a mere 100 yards from the Kalamazoo River, the fifth anniversary — and any potential EPA fines — are just another step in the long fight to hold Enbridge accountable for the damage they caused. Wahmhoff remembers playing in the river nearly every day as a child — an avid kayaker, the river was an integral part of his life until the 2010 spill, when residents were told to stay away.

All of us on the ground, we definitely embrace the idea that we’ve been the canary in the coal mine

“The biggest thing I remember is the word ‘control,'” Wahmhoff told ThinkProgress. “All we ever heard about the spill was that everything was under control and safe, but not to go in the water. That was mostly the information that the general public went with. No one went to the river for a year and a half.”

In 2012, Wahmhoff returned to the river alongside a former Enbridge employee, who told him about how the company had buried oil on the riverbanks. Wahmhoff didn’t believe him — his brother worked for Halliburton, he said, and he didn’t think that oil or gas companies would have any reason to obscure facts from the public. But he was shocked by what he saw when he finally returned to the river.

“I went to a river that I had been to every day of my life, and it was unrecognizable,” he said. “It looked like a grave. There was no vegetation.”

While at the river, Wahmhoff says that he stepped into sand that should have been about 10 inches deep. Instead, he was swallowed by a quicksand-like substance that engulfed him to his waist. According to Wahmhoff, when his friends managed to pull him out of the sand, his leg was covered in black oil. Wahmhoff says that he threw up for three days straight, and developed a rash a month later. Now, in 2015, he has been diagnosed with a rare disease that he says is a product of his exposure to the bitumen from the oil spill.

But beyond drawing attention to the communities and ecosystems impacted by the Kalamazoo spill, Wahmhoff hopes that his story — and the story of others who lived through the spill — can serve as inspiration to other Midwest communities fighting pipelines.

“All of us on the ground, we definitely embrace the idea that we’ve been the canary in the coal mine,” Wahmhoff said. “We want everyone to understand not just that there was an oil spill and not just that those chemicals make people sick, but that [oil companies] don’t do a good job of protecting the community or informing the community about what dangers they face.”

Wahmhoff is one of the primary organizers of Remember Kalamazoo, a three-day event meant both to mark the fifth anniversary of the spill and serve as a gathering of activists and communities worried about pipeline construction throughout the upper Midwest and beyond.

Enbridge is currently working to expand its network of pipelines across North America, attempting to construct or expand new pipeline projects through Illinois, northern Minnesota, and Wisconsin. And though Enbridge officials maintain that the pipelines are safe, the company has faced staunch opposition from local communities.

“Enbridge says that they are very unhappy about the [Kalamazoo River] spill and how it happened, but I think that what they are the most unhappy about is the movement that the spill unleashed,” Pearson said. “What they’ve chosen to do in Michigan is stand up and fight back.”

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Oil SpillTar Sands

The post Michigan River Remains Poisoned By Oil Five Years After Massive Spill appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Global Coal Boom Ends As China — And World — Wakes Up To Reality Of Carbon Pollution

“Global coal demand is slowing fast,” is the headline in a June Business Insider Australia story. “The global coal renaissance is the most important climate story today,” is the headline in a July Vox story.

Which is correct? Mostly the first one. There was a true global coal renaissance starting around the year 2000, a resurgence due primarily to China. But it is now stalling.

China was responsible for some 80 percent of the growth in global demand since 2000. You can see that in this June 15 chart from BP’s Group Chief Economist based on their newly-released “Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.”

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China, however, has completely reversed its strategy of coal-intensive growth as Climate Progress has been reporting since the U.S.-China climate deal was announced in November. The driving force of this reversal is the terrible toll coal pollution has taken on the health of Chinese citizens in urban or industrialized areas — combined with the growing realization at the highest levels of China’s government that climate change will devastate China and that it must become a leader in avoiding the worst impacts.

You can see in the chart above the result of two of China’s strategies. First, they are working to aggressively take market share away from coal and accelerate the transition to low-carbon and zero-carbon sources — natural gas, nuclear, wind power, solar power, and hydropower.

Second, on the industrial side, they are transitioning away from the coal-intensive and energy-intensive industries that have been driving growth and speeding up the transition to a more balanced economy, with much more service sector growth. Many of the Chinese climate and energy experts I spoke to during my trip last month used the word “sustainable” to describe the economy that the leadership would like.

The result of this second strategy began to bear fruit last year, as this BP chart shows:

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These two Chinese strategies combined are a key reason why China cut its coal consumption in 2014, the first drop this century. And since China has been the engine of the world coal market, it’s no surprise that global coal demand flatlined at 0.4 percent year over year growth in 2014.

Moreover, China’s coal-slashing strategies continue to have a huge impact into this year. Domestic demand continues to drop, and as Platts reported Wednesday, “China’s thermal coal imports in the first six months of 2015 were 42.35 million mt [metric tons], a 44% fall from the year-earlier period.”

China isn’t the only big user moving away from coal. In the United States, coal growth has been reversed by a combination of the economic slowdown, low natural gas prices, rapid expansion of renewables, and aggressive energy efficiency. As we reported earlier this month, for the first time ever “In April, 31 percent of electricity generation came from natural gas while 30 percent came from coal.”

“The Latest Sign That Coal Is Getting Killed,” was the headline of a July 13 BloombergBusiness piece, which noted “About 17 percent of U.S. coal-fired power generation will disappear over the next few years, according to an analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).”

The European Union has seen a sharp drop in coal consumption since 1990. And while that drop stalled in the last few years, it will continue as the EU moves to meet its aggressive new climate target announced for the Paris talks, a 40 percent drop in CO2 in emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.

Yes, it is true that some other countries in Asia and Africa have been expanding coal infrastructure and coal use. That is a point made in a recent study about the post-2000 coal renaissance. It concluded, “If future economic growth of poor countries is fueled mainly by coal, ambitious mitigation targets very likely will become infeasible.”

But right now, only India’s usage is enough to affect global coal demand for the foreseeable future — and it is unlikely India will expand coal use fast enough to reverse the impact of what is happening in the U.S., the EU, and China. Indeed, India was quite surprised by China’s aggressive CO2 and coal commitments, which leaves them isolated among the big countries refusing to give hard and fast carbon targets pre-Paris. Also, India (along with many other countries) has noticed that China’s coal-centric growth pattern has had a devastating impact on human health — and that as a result, China is shutting down coal plants before the end of their lifetimes, just as the United States is.

It bears repeating that in the big U.S.-China climate deal last fall, China pledged to “increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030.” That “will require China to deploy an additional 800-1,000 gigawatts of nuclear, wind, solar, and other zero emission generation capacity by 2030 — more than all the coal-fired power plants that exist in China today and close to total current electricity generation capacity in the United States.

Over the next 15 years, the Chinese will thus build enough clean electricity to power America. Why can’t India or other big developing countries do half as much in twice the time? Answer: They can, particularly since China’s commitment alone guarantees a continuation of the remarkable drop in the price of clean energy technologies, which in turn has led to the recent renewable power boom globally.

Coming out of the Paris climate talks in December, which have already spawned impressive CO2 commitments by a majority of the most polluting countries, there will be a renewed global push to accelerate the transition away from coal — and to provide capital and financing for developing countries that want to leapfrog coal entirely. And, of course, as each year passes, the dangerous impacts of carbon pollution become ever-more obvious, so the motivation and the global pressure will grow for developing countries to go straight to clean energy — and not waste precious capital building coal plants that will have to be shut down prematurely.

The Paris talks should also make obvious to all what the world’s top climate scientists and governments already know and have stated publicly: The world has to go to zero total carbon pollution long before 2100 and indeed as close to 2050 as possible — before actually going carbon negative.

So everybody is going to zero, and that means not only is the coal boom over for good, but an outright coal bust is not very far off. As a June Bloomberg piece explained, “The industrial age was built on coal. The next 25 years will be the end of its dominance.”

Note: I have an interview with NPR’s “Living on Earth” only after the global that while be posted in the next 24 hours. When it is up, I will link to it.

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ChinaClimate ChangeCoal

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EPA’s Climate Change Plan Could Save States Money On Energy Bills

States could end up saving money on their energy bills under the Obama Administration’s proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, according to a new report.

The report, published Thursday by energy research firm Synapse Energy Economics, looked at a future scenario in which states comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce emissions from power plants 25 percent from 2005 levels by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030. In the scenario, states meet or exceed their targets for the Clean Power Plan, and the U.S. as a whole ends up exceeding the goals of the regulation — achieving 58 percent reduction in emissions compared to 2005 levels by 2030. The report’s authors say they modeled the scenario in this way because they wanted to look at the “intent” of the Clean Power Plan instead of the proposed goals, which could change once the rule is finalized.

“Our Clean Energy Future scenario represents a substantial shift towards renewable generation as the costs of these technologies continue to decline and incentives are put in place to encourage adoption,” the authors write.

The report compares this scenario to a reference scenario, in which no new renewable energy or efficiency policies are adopted in states. It found that, in the Clean Energy Future scenario, energy bills in 2030 would be $35 per month lower than in the reference scenario. That’s $14 per month cheaper than household energy bills were in 2012. The Hill points out that this finding also portends higher savings than the $8 per month in savings that the EPA predicts will come from the climate rule.

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CREDIT: Synapse Energy Economics

The report’s findings contradict claims from lawmakers that the EPA’s climate plan, which is set to be finalized next month, will raise electricity rates. Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, for instance, has said that the rule would “bankrupt families.” And a House bill called the Ratepayer Protection Act would allow governors to refuse to comply with the reductions outlined in the plan if the regulation would have a “significant adverse effect” on electric bills or grid reliability. The bill passed the House in June, but hasn’t made it through the Senate.

Other reports have also pointed to the benefits that the country could see under the clean power plan. One study from earlier this year found that the proposed regulation will add more than a quarter of a million jobs to the U.S. economy by 2040. According to the report, the employment gains likely to be seen under the plan are equal to “roughly one month of healthy job gains.”

“Improvements in energy efficiency associated with the Clean Power Plan will reduce demand for electricity and, by extension, reduce electricity costs for households and businesses,” that report states.

The benefits aren’t only economic either. A May study published in the journal Nature Climate Change found that the carbon rule could prevent 3,500 premature deaths each year, in addition to 1,000 hospitalizations and about 220 heart attacks. Those prevented deaths and hospitalizations will be the result of the lower levels of particulates, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides that will result as carbon dioxide emissions from power plants are curbed. The study also found that some of the states that will benefit most from the rule in terms of health are states that are among the most opposed to the rule. That’s because many of the states that stand to gain the most health-related benefits from the Clean Power Plan rely fairly heavily on coal for their energy, so the rule would likely have a major impact on their air quality.

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Clean Power PlanClimate Change

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In Swing States, Voters Want Action On Climate Change

If Republican presidential candidates are looking to win votes in key swing states, they may want to change their tone on climate change.

A poll released Thursday by Quinnipiac University found that a majority of voters in Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia agree with Pope Francis that the world should increase efforts to combat the phenomenon, which scientists say is caused by carbon emissions. Those voters also overwhelmingly believe that climate change is caused by human activity, a fact that many Republican presidential candidates have so far been wary to address or accept.

Each of the three states’ voters agreed that climate action is needed by approximately 2-1 margins, with anywhere from 62 to 65 percent of voters agreeing and 25 to 31 percent disagreeing, depending on the state.

Those wide margins were largely decided by Democrats and politically independent voters, who agreed that climate action is important by wide margins in all three states. Democrats had particularly wide margins, with almost all self-identified Democrats saying that climate action should be a priority. In Colorado, 93 percent agreed, as did 90 percent of Iowa Democrats and 84 percent of Virginia Democrats.

But a good deal of Republicans also agreed with Pope Francis’ call to do more on climate. In all three swing states, Republicans disagreed that climate action is important, but by drastically closer margins than by which the Democrats agreed. In Iowa, only 44 percent of Republicans didn’t want action on climate change, while 40 percent did. Similarly, only 46 percent of Virginia Republicans disagreed, as did 53 percent of Colorado Republicans.

However, voters were all around reluctant to say that climate change is a moral issue, which runs contrary to the rhetoric frequently used by both Pope Francis and President Obama to defend climate action. Both leaders have argued that the detrimental impacts of climate change fall disproportionately on the poor, particularly those living in developing countries.

In Iowa and Virginia, 50 percent of voters said climate change is not a moral issue, while 44 percent said that it is. In Colorado, voters said climate change was not a moral issue by a 57-41 percent margin.

But even if morality is not the reason, voters in those three swing states still do want action on climate change, if the poll is any indication. That could present a challenge to many high-profile Republican candidates who are still reluctant to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change is real, harmful, and caused by humans. Marco Rubio has said “there’s no consensus” on the science; Ted Cruz has compared climate scientists to “flat-Earthers;” and Rand Paul has said the idea that humans cause climate change is “alarmist stuff.” Jeb Bush also recently called the idea that there’s a scientific consensus on climate change “intellectual arrogance,” though 97 percent of actively publishing researchers agree with the idea.

One of the only Republican presidential candidates to publicly accept the science of climate change is Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has previously called on members of his party to evolve on the issue.

“Here’s a question you need to ask everybody running as a Republican: What is the environmental policy of the Republican party?” he said last month. “When I ask that question, I get a blank stare.”

The results of Thursday’s poll came from phone interviews conducted by Quinnipiac from July 9 to July 20. In each state, approximately 1,200 voters were surveyed, and each state’s results had a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percentage points.

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Climate ChangeElection 2016Pope FrancisSwing States

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New Study Changes What We Know About The Extinction Of Mammoths

Studies have shown time and again that humans are pretty effective at driving other animals to extinction — but a new study published in Science this week suggests that when it comes to some species, that blame might have been misplaced.

The study — conducted by researchers at the University of Adelaide — claims that a series of abrupt climatic events, not humans, led to the extinction of certain megafauna, including mammoths, giant sloths, and other giant mammals. And while that might take away some of the historic blame humans have faced for hunting these animals to extinction, the authors warn that it’s actually bad news for humans, because if the current warming pattern isn’t abated, humans could face the same fate as the long-gone giants.

Human interest in megafauna like mammoths began more than two centuries ago with the discovery of their fossilized remains, and those fossils have long served as the primary tool scientists used to study the extinct animals. But researchers at the University of Adelaide, led by paleogeneticist Alan Cooper, decided to study the animals using a different tool: ancient DNA extracted from fossils. By figuring out how diverse a species’ DNA was for any one place, the researchers were able to figure out about how many animals from a given species existed at a specific time.

Using data from thousands of sites across America, Europe, and Asia, Cooper and his colleagues were able to map when and where different species began to disappear. They then turned to the climate record, using ice cores from Greenland and marine sediments from Venezuela to map temperature changes. They found that some 50,000 years ago, the Earth began going through periods of sudden warming — called interstadials — where the Earth’s average temperature increased by as much as 28.8 degrees Fahrenheit over a decade. Then, the Earth would cool — sometimes just as abruptly.

Scientists previously thought that the cooling periods were most likely linked with megafauna extinction, but Cooper and his colleagues’ findings refute that idea. Instead, they found that during the colder periods, the giant mammals did fine — it was only during the abrupt warming periods that megafauna populations underwent rapid declines.

Humans were likely the nail in the coffin for many of these species, but the study argues that humans weren’t always necessary for a megafauna species to go extinct. It points specifically to the short-faced bear, a giant bear that once roamed North America but went extinct, the study claims, well before humans migrated to the area.

Cooper isn’t sure what particular aspect of the warming period might have triggered extinctions, something he told the Washington Post would be the subject of more study.

“We can see the relationship between the warming periods and the extinctions,” Cooper said, “but can’t tell whether its the warming or the pace of change. It’s one of the two.”

Something that concerns climate scientists about current global warming trends is the rate at which climate change is unfolding — a rate that NASA says is “unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.” If a rapid series of warming 50,000 years ago led to the disappearance of some megafauna, the study warns, that could spell trouble for the future. Previous studies have already warned of the extinction that could occur if climate change goes unabated — one 2013 study found that species will have to evolve 10,000 times faster than they have in the past in order to keep up with the Earth’s warming.

“The study suggests that current warming trends are a major concern, as in many ways the rise of atmospheric CO2 levels and resulting warming effects are expected to have a similar rate of change to the onset of past interstadials, heralding another major phase of large mammal extinctions,” Cooper told the Conversation.

In an interview with Science, David Steadman, a paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History, raised some concerns about the study’s conclusions, worrying that it relied too much on the fossil record to determine when the animals had gone extinct. He also said that the study might lean to heavily on climate change as the driving force behind the extinctions — other warming events, he said, took place while the animals were alive and did not drive them to extinction. To Steadman, the fact that so many extinctions began to occur when humans arrived in the areas where the animals lived suggests that humans really were the driving factor.

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Citing Religious Freedom, Native Americans Fight To Take Back Sacred Land From Mining Companies

For generations, members of the Apache Native American tribe have viewed Oak Flat as a holy, sacred place. Located about an hour due east of Phoenix, Arizona, the land has long served as a site for traditional acorn gatherings, burial services, and rite of passage ceremonies for young women. The flat is tucked inside Arizona’s Tonto National Forest, and has historically been protected by the federal government.

“It’s our sacred land — it’s where we come to pray,” Carrie Sage Curley, an Apache woman, told ThinkProgress.

But last year, the land quietly became something else: A proposed site for a massive copper mining project spearheaded by Resolution Copper, an organization run by two multinational corporations based in the United Kingdom and Australia.

The aggressive mining operation resulted from a last-minute addition to the National Defense Authorization Act, a “must-pass” military spending bill pushed through in December 2014. The language, which was inserted at the 11th hour by Arizona Senators John McCain (R) and Jeff Flake (R), essentially traded Resolution 2,400 acres of Arizona (including Oak Flat) in exchange for 5,300 acres of private land they already own. The swap is believed to be one of the first instances of federal land being given to a foreign corporation.

We protect these temples, why can’t we do the same for our sacred land?

Arizona’s Native American population was outraged by the deal, having fought against several efforts by Republicans in Congress to broker similar agreements over the years. Some locals have argued that the land grab shortchanges American taxpayers, since profits will go primarily to companies rooted outside the United States. In addition, environmentalists and the Apache people have repeatedly expressed fears that, since the mining industry is often exempt from portions of environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act, the invasive copper mining project could damage the area’s water — a resource many Native Americans claim a spiritual obligation to protect.

“I have a great-grandmother who is buried at Oak Flat, we want to respect her, let her rest in peace,” said Sandra Rambler, an Apache woman from San Carlos, Arizona, told ThinkProgress. “My granddaughter had a [religious] dance there last year, and I’m hoping that my future grandchildren will dance there as well.”

The religious connections to Oak Flat are so powerful that mining the land could constitute a violation of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. That law, which was passed in 1978, stipulates that the federal government has an obligation to protect the religious liberty of Native Americans — including guaranteeing access to sites they hold sacred.

“It’s the same thing as a church,” Curley said. “We protect these temples, why can’t we do the same for our sacred land?”

Representatives from Resolution Copper have rejected such claims, insisting they intend to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and “laws that protect Native American cultural and sacred sites.” They also note that the deal doesn’t include any reservation lands and mandates protections for nearby historic site “Apache Leap,” which is reportedly where Apache warriors threw themselves off a cliff rather than surrender to American forces in 1870.

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Advocates for the protection of Oak Flat dance outside the U.S. Capitol.

CREDIT: ThinkProgress/Jack Jenkins

But Native Americans and environmental groups remain skeptical of such promises, and several groups are beginning to fight back against the land deal — this time with the help of federal lawmakers. In June, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) introduced the “Save Oak Flat Act,” which would protect the land from further mining operations.

“As a result of previous Federal land policies that resulted in the significant loss of lands of American Indian tribes, many sacred areas of tribes are now located on Federal lands,” the bill reads. “The United States has a trust responsibility acknowledged by Congress to protect tribal sacred areas on Federal lands. [The deal] sets dangerous legislative precedent for the lack of protection of tribal sacred areas located on Federal lands … [and] will require significant amounts of water that will likely affect the local hydrology, including the underlying aquifer, and will result in polluted water that will seep into drinking water supplies.”

But while the bill lists 24 bipartisan co-sponsors and is endorsed by both the National Congress of American Indians and the Sierra Club, it is expected to face significant hurdles before it can be considered by lawmakers. As such, Native Americans have begun mobilizing to draw attention to the issue: Over the past few weeks, advocates have solicited op-eds in the New York Times, visited Native American reservations across the country to drum up support, and held dramatic protests in Times Square and at the United Nations in New York City.

The campaign crescendoed this week in Washington, D.C., when a group organized largely by Native American advocacy organization Apache Stronghold staged a series of protest actions over the course of two days. In addition to a procession at Rock Creek Park, Native Americans embarked on a spiritual “run” throughout the city on Tuesday that concluded with a prayer service in front of the White House. And on Wednesday, a hundred or so supporters rallied on the West Lawn in front of the U.S. Capitol building to dance, chant, and give speeches expressing their frustration with the mining project.

“We have a freedom of religion,” Wendsler Nosie Sr., an Apache elder and former tribal chairman, told the crowd. “Congress shouldn’t ignore rights of people … It’s not right. Congress should repeal the law.”

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Spirit run participants pray outside the White House on July 21, 2015

CREDIT: ThinkProgress/Jack Jenkins

Participants at the rally hailed from a number of different tribes, but they were unanimous in their condemnation of efforts to mine Oak Flat.

“I feel violated — I feel like I’ve been raped,” Rambler said, choking back tears as she spoke about the possible destruction of a place she calls holy. “I feel that the earth has been raped. The Native American people are the caretakers of Mother Earth. When she’s violated, we’re violated. When you desecrate the land, you desecrate us.”

“When you take that away, you take away the identity of the Apaches,” she said.

It remains to be seen whether Congress will repeal what Rambler called the “sneaky rider” that McCain and Flake used to create the controversy. There is ample reason to be skeptical, as American history is rife with examples of Native Americans consistently losing fights with the federal government over land. As the Huffington Post noted this week, Native Americans in Hawaii and California are currently embroiled in efforts to keep outside groups from developing on their sacred spaces.

Yet Curley and other attendees at this week’s protests expressed dogged determination and a surprising degree of righteous optimism, pulling strength from the same source that drew them to Oak Flat in the first place: Their faith.

“We’re going to win this fight,” Curley said. “It’s a spiritual thing, and I know in my spirit, we’re going to win.”

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ApacheJohn McCainNative AmericanOak FlatResolution Copper

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Jeb Bush Wants To Kill Subsidies For Oil, Gas, And Renewables

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush told a student in New Hampshire on Wednesday that he supports killing all subsidies for oil and gas — including the billions in tax breaks the industry receives each year.

He was responding to a direct question about fossil fuels, but pivoted quickly to renewable sources of energy. “I think we should phase out, through tax reform, the tax credits for wind, for solar, for the oil and gas sector, for all that stuff,” Bush told Griffin Sinclair-Wingate, a student at the University of New Hampshire and an activist with 350.org’s action arm.

But while some environmentalists might have cheered at the comments from Bush — whose family ties to the oil and gas industry go back for decades — not everyone was impressed. Practically speaking, treating fossil fuel and renewable energy support as the same ignores the economic realities of climate change, Greenpeace senior legislative representative Kyle Ash told ThinkProgress.

“Bush’s position on energy subsidies seems disingenuous, and definitely reflects climate denialism,” Ash said.

It’s hard to measure the oil and gas industry’s total subsidies, but the industry receives $4.7 billion in production tax breaks each year alone, according to the U.S. Treasury. The Energy Information Administration estimated that in 2013 that all renewables, including wind and solar, received $3.8 billion in tax breaks. A recent report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found that, worldwide, $5.3 trillion a year is spent on fossil fuel subsidies, including oil, gas, and coal.

“Massive subsidies for wind and solar are justified,” Ash said, saying there was a “huge benefit” to carbon-neutral fuel. “Portraying all energy subsidies as equally bad ignores or rejects that fossil fuels create massive negative externalities, the largest and growing category being the hundreds of billions of dollars already spent on climate impacts.”

Bush has not admitted that climate change is a pressing issue for the economy, health, and human safety. In fact, in May, he said that accepting the science of climate change is “arrogant.” And when the pope released an encyclical on the climate, Bush said he wouldn’t get “economic policy” from his church leaders.

Bush’s false comparison of fossil fuel subsidies subsidies to renewable energy subsidies hits up against another issue: Fossil fuel interests have been on the receiving end of government support for a century. For instance, tax breaks for oil and gas exploration have been around since 1913. That’s a lot longer than the subsidies for renewable energy have been around, Ash said.

“If this is about leveling the playing field, let’s hear his position on oil and gas receiving subsidies 60 years longer than renewables, and more than 10 times the federal support. There is a legacy of government support for dirty fuels that a sudden impartial subsidy reform could not correct, even it did create some mythical, ideal free market,” he said.

Bush, however, would rather “let the markets decide,” adding later that he doesn’t “think we should pick winners and losers.”

A spokesperson for the Bush campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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2016Carbon Taxfossil fuelInvestment Tax CreditJeb BushOil and GasPolicyProduction Tax CreditRepublican candidate

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Have Scientists Found A Way To Feed The World Without Warming The Planet?

Aside from corn, rice might be the single most important staple crop on Earth. According to the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, more than 3.5 billion people around the world depend on rice for at least 20 percent of their daily caloric intake. But rice is also a major source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that’s more effective, at least in the short term, at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

Now, scientists at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences think they’ve found a solution: a high-yielding, low-methane type of rice that can cut methane emissions from rice cultivation by up to 90 percent.

To create the starchy, climate-friendly rice, the scientists transferred a single gene from barley to rice that stimulates the production of starch in grain and stems. According to the study, published this week in Nature, previous research has shown that rice plants with smaller root systems tended to expel less methane than plants with larger roots, and the scientists hoped that by emphasizing starch growth in the stems and grains, the rice plants would naturally grow smaller root systems. Root systems in rice secrete the carbohydrates created by photosynthesis — when rice paddies are flooded, the oxygen-devoid environment provides the perfect breeding ground for methane-producing bacteria that feed on these carbohydrates. By reducing the size of the rice plants’ roots, the scientists hoped that they could curb the amount of methane produced in the fields.

To test how the modified rice plants fared in the real world, the scientists planted the rice in two different fields in China, alongside conventional rice, which served as a benchmark. Over three years, they measured the methane emitted by the plants in the fall and summer, near the end of the growing season. They also took measurements of starch content in the plants’ stems, roots, and seeds.

They found the modified rice plants extremely effective at producing starch and curbing methane emissions. In the summer, when temperatures were highest, the modified rice cut methane emissions to 0.3 percent of conventional rice. On average, the modified rice produced less than 10 percent the methane of conventional rice, while providing 43 percent more grain per plant.

In an essay in Nature that accompanied the study’s publication, Paul Bodelier, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology who was not directly involved with the study, called the findings “a tremendous opportunity for more-sustainable rice cultivation,” but cautioned that large-scale trials are necessary before moving forward with full-scale commerical use. Without more trials, Bodelier wrote, it’s difficult to know how the genetic modification impacts the rice cultivar’s long-term chances for survival. It’s also important to study how the plant’s root system impacts microbes in the soil — microbes that themselves contribute to the production and consumption of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Bruce Linquist, a plant scientist at the University of California at Davis, echoed Bodelier’s sentiment. The research is too preliminary to know for sure how the genetic modification impacts methane production, Linquist said, and there is some concern that smaller root systems might impact the plants’ ability to take up nutrients.

Even if further trials prove the efficacy of the modified rice, it faces huge hurdles in order to become commercially viable. Largely in response to public distrust of genetically modified foods, no genetically modified rice has ever been successfully used in commercial production. Golden rice — a genetically modified strain of rice that contains beta carotene to combat malnutrition in developing countries — was ready for full-scale use in 2002, but has faced staunch opposition that has kept it from market for over a decade.

Despite public distrust — a January poll conducted by Pew found that 57 percent of Americans think genetically modified foods are generally unsafe to eat — nearly all scientific evidence suggests that genetically modified foods pose no threat to human health.

There is some concern, however, about the environmental impact of genetically modified foods. Crops like Roundup-resistant soy or corn have led to a marked increase in the use of herbicides in the United States, though some studies have also shown that genetically modified crops have led to a decrease in the use of some pesticides. Since the low-methane strain of rice isn’t bred to be herbicide or pesticide resistant, this most likely won’t be an issue with this particular strain — though the way that its root-system interacts with microbes in the soil is something to watch.

Tags

AgricultureClimate Change

The post Have Scientists Found A Way To Feed The World Without Warming The Planet? appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Could This Genetically Modified Rice Feed The World Without Warming The Planet?

Aside from corn, rice might be the single most important staple crop on Earth. According to the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, more than 3.5 billion people around the world depend on rice for at least 20 percent of their daily caloric intake. But rice is also a major source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that’s more effective, at least in the short term, at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

Now, scientists at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences think they’ve found a solution: a high-yielding, low-methane type of rice that can cut methane emissions from rice cultivation by up to 90 percent.

To create the starchy, climate-friendly rice, the scientists transferred a single gene from barley to rice that stimulates the production of starch in grain and stems. According to the study, published this week in Nature, previous research has shown that rice plants with smaller root systems tended to expel less methane than plants with larger roots, and the scientists hoped that by emphasizing starch growth in the stems and grains, the rice plants would naturally grow smaller root systems. Root systems in rice secrete the carbohydrates created by photosynthesis — when rice paddies are flooded, the oxygen-devoid environment provides the perfect breeding ground for methane-producing bacteria that feed on these carbohydrates. By reducing the size of the rice plants’ roots, the scientists hoped that they could curb the amount of methane produced in the fields.

To test how the modified rice plants fared in the real world, the scientists planted the rice in two different fields in China, alongside conventional rice, which served as a benchmark. Over three years, they measured the methane emitted by the plants in the fall and summer, near the end of the growing season. They also took measurements of starch content in the plants’ stems, roots, and seeds.

They found the modified rice plants extremely effective at producing starch and curbing methane emissions. In the summer, when temperatures were highest, the modified rice cut methane emissions to 0.3 percent of conventional rice. On average, the modified rice produced less than 10 percent the methane of conventional rice, while providing 43 percent more grain per plant.

In an essay in Nature that accompanied the study’s publication, Paul Bodelier, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology who was not directly involved with the study, called the findings “a tremendous opportunity for more-sustainable rice cultivation,” but cautioned that large-scale trials are necessary before moving forward with full-scale commerical use. Without more trials, Bodelier wrote, it’s difficult to know how the genetic modification impacts the rice cultivar’s long-term chances for survival. It’s also important to study how the plant’s root system impacts microbes in the soil — microbes that themselves contribute to the production and consumption of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Bruce Linquist, a plant scientist at the University of California at Davis, echoed Bodelier’s sentiment. The research is too preliminary to know for sure how the genetic modification impacts methane production, Linquist said, and there is some concern that smaller root systems might impact the plants’ ability to take up nutrients.

Even if further trials prove the efficacy of the modified rice, it faces huge hurdles in order to become commercially viable. Largely in response to public distrust of genetically modified foods, no genetically modified rice has ever been successfully used in commercial production. Golden rice — a genetically modified strain of rice that contains beta carotene to combat malnutrition in developing countries — was ready for full-scale use in 2002, but has faced staunch opposition that has kept it from market for over a decade.

Despite public distrust — a January poll conducted by Pew found that 57 percent of Americans think genetically modified foods are generally unsafe to eat — nearly all scientific evidence suggests that genetically modified foods pose no threat to human health.

There is some concern, however, about the environmental impact of genetically modified foods. Crops like Roundup-resistant soy or corn have led to a marked increase in the use of herbicides in the United States, though some studies have also shown that genetically modified crops have led to a decrease in the use of some pesticides. Since the low-methane strain of rice isn’t bred to be herbicide or pesticide resistant, this most likely won’t be an issue with this particular strain — though the way that its root-system interacts with microbes in the soil is something to watch.

Tags

AgricultureClimate Change

The post Could This Genetically Modified Rice Feed The World Without Warming The Planet? appeared first on ThinkProgress.

House Passes Bill That Would Allow Toxic Coal Ash Into Groundwater

The Republican-led House of Representatives struck another blow to environmental regulation Wednesday night, passing a bill that will undercut the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) coal ash regulations, opponents said.

Several key provisions in the EPA’s coal ash disposal rule — set to go into effect in October — would be either left to states to enforce or thrown out altogether under H.R. 1734, the “Improving Coal Combustion Residuals Regulation Act.”

“There are very big differences [between the bill and the EPA rule] that have huge impacts on public safety,” Lisa Evans, an attorney with Earthjustice, told ThinkProgress. Among the differences, she said, is the fact that the EPA rule prohibits disposing coal ash waste directly into the water supply, while the House bill does not. In a survey the EPA did of state laws on coal ash, only five of the 25 states surveyed specifically prohibited disposing of coal ash into groundwater, Evans said.

“It makes absolutely no sense,” Evans said of the bill, noting that even household waste can’t be legally disposed into aquifers. “It’s absurd and its unreasonable.”

The bill also delays implementation of coal ash disposal restrictions, allows utilities to avoid publicly posting contamination data, and allows companies to continue dumping coal ash into leaking surface impounds for as many as eight years after contamination is documented.

Coal ash is a byproduct of coal-fired power plants, and often contains toxic chemicals like arsenic, chromium, mercury, and lead. It is also the second-largest form of waste generated in the United States. Coal ash has earned headlines — and increased regulation — in recent years, particularly after a massive spill in the Dan River in North Carolina in 2014.

One of the most common ways companies dispose of coal ash is by storing it in man-made ponds or lagoons, of which there are hundreds across the country. The EPA’s first-ever coal ash rule, which requires all new coal ash pits to be lined and calls for some of the hundreds of old, unlined pits to be cleaned up, was criticized by environmentalists for not reaching far enough when it was released in December.

H.R. 1734 is the latest attempt to put coal ash regulation in the hands of the states, Nat Mund, legislative director for the Southern Environmental Law Center, told ThinkProgress.

“Our states don’t have a good track record of this issue,” Mund said.

Previous iterations of the bill — introduced over the last few years — had been predicated on the EPA’s lack of a coal ash rule, which created uncertainty for utilities, Mund said. “With the rule having been finalized, a lot of that uncertainty disappears,” he pointed out.

Several amendments to the bill were proposed Wednesday, including one by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) to reinstate the public information component. The EPA rule specifies what information must be available and how it would be posted. Under the Pallone amendment, utilities would have had “to maintain pages on their websites that document their compliance with a wide range of the criteria in the rule, including inspections and groundwater monitoring data,” Pallone said when it was introduced. Under the bill, utilities can sidestep that requirement.

That amendment, as well as others, failed. Pallone noted that amendments were not sufficient for improving the bill, though. “Even if they were all adopted, the bill would still be unnecessary and a dangerous precedent for public health,” he said on the House floor.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. David McKinley (R-WV), passed Wednesday night 258 – 166. One Republican voted against, and 19 Democrats voted in favor of the bill.

“The bottom line is whether we should place our trust in the states or the federal government to manage this waste byproduct. We should be a nation of laws, not one governed by regulations,” McKinley said in a statement following the bill’s passage.

One bright side for the bill’s opponents, though, is that the Obama administration announced this week that if the bill were to make it to the president’s desk — there is already a companion bill in the Senate — he would veto it.

“We were very pleased to see the strong statement from the Obama adminstration,” Earthjustice’s Evans said. “It’s an incredibly important position to take.”

Tags

CoalCoal AshEarthjusticeEnvironmental Protection AgencyEPAHouse of RepresentativesLisa EvansMcKinleyruleSouthern Environmental Law CentertoxicWasteWater

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