Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 126

China Makes Official Climate Pledge, Will ‘Work Hard’ To Peak Emissions Before 2030

On Tuesday, China released long-awaited final greenhouse gas targets as part of its submission to the United Nations climate talks in Paris later this year.

Li Keqiang, China’s prime minister, said in a statement the country “will work hard” to peak its CO2 emissions before 2030, which was its previous commitment as part of the United States-China joint pledge from November 2014, the first time China had agreed to mitigate emissions.

The statement also said that China will cut its carbon intensity, or greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP, by 60-65 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, a large increase from its 40-45 percent goal for 2020.

Stian Reklev at Carbon Pulse writes that this commitment is on the “lower end of expectations, as China is estimated to be on track to overachieve its current target of reducing its carbon intensity.”

“China has already achieved a 33 percent reduction in the carbon intensity of its booming economy since 2005, and last month the government ordered its manufacturers to cut current levels by a further 40 percent by 2025,” writes Reklev.

The statement also reaffirms China’s goal of increasing non-fossil fuel sources of energy consumption to about 20 percent by 2030.

“China’s climate action plan reaffirms its commitment to pursue a lower-carbon development pathway driven by domestic interests,” Nick Mabey, CEO and Founding Director of E3G, a sustainable development non-profit, said in a statement. “But it can do more. It must now integrate climate change actions into its ambitious development and economic reforms.”

While these are not bold new targets, they are of critical importance to the international negotiations surrounding the climate talks at the end of the year in which leaders hope to establish a post-2020 agreement that applies to all nations. China is the world’s second largest economy and biggest greenhouse gas emitter, and no deal would be achievable without their cooperation.

With China officially submitting its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to the UNFCCC, the world’s three largest carbon polluters, including the United States and the European Union, have all made commitments ahead of the Paris Summit. The United States plans to to reduce emissions by 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, and to make its best efforts to reduce by them by 28 percent. EU leaders have agreed to a 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target of at least 40 percent compared to 1990.

Even small decreases in China’s emissions seem like monumental feats when compared to other countries. According to a recent analysis, in the first four months of 2015, China’s coal use fell almost 8 percent compared to the same period last year — a reduction in emissions that’s approximately equal to the total carbon dioxide emissions of the U.K. over the same period.

Late last year the government announced it plans to cap coal use by 2020, a necessary target to meet its global pledge of peaking greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Reducing its use of coal, which still generates three-fourths of China’s electricity, is also a key element of China’s renewable energy target of 20 percent non-fossil fuels in “primary energy consumption by 2030.”

China is also the leading renewable energy investor, spending some $89.5 billion last year on clean energy, almost a third of the global total.

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Congressman Tries To Quietly Preserve Coal Loophole

Before leaving Washington D.C. last week for a 4th of July break, a Montana Congressman quietly proposed a budget rider that would allow some of the world’s biggest coal companies to continue to dodge royalty payments owed to U.S. taxpayers.

The amendment from Representative Ryan Zinke (R-MT), offered on a spending bill that the House is expected to vote on in July, would block the Obama Administration from implementing a forthcoming rule that would close a loophole in how royalties are collected from coal mined on federal lands.

As previously reported by ThinkProgress, coal companies are using a regulatory loophole to sell coal to their own subsidiary companies at intentionally depressed prices to avoid royalty payments. These so-called “captive transactions”, or inside deals between coal companies and their own subsidiaries, are shortchanging Western states on revenue that could be used for schools, roads, and other priorities.

“When coal companies underpay their federal royalties, state and local governments suffer nearly half that loss,” wrote Dan Bucks, the former director of the Montana Department of Revenue in May. “That is because the federal government shares its royalty receipts from Montana coal with the state of Montana, and the state splits its share with the counties where the production occurs.”

The rule that the Obama administration’s Department of the Interior proposed in January would require coal companies to pay royalties based on the price at which they sell coal to an independent, third-party purchaser.

Taxpayer watchdog groups, however, are urging the Obama administration to strengthen the proposed rule, arguing that coal companies would still be able to pay royalties on a price that is below the true market value. Independent economic analysis has shown that by strengthening the proposed rule, Montana could see an increase in revenue of nearly $19 million annually.

Montana ranchers, mayors from Western mountain towns, school board members, and conservation organizations have also called for the Department of the Interior to strengthen and finalize its rule to close loopholes and cut coal subsidies on federal lands.

Rep. Zinke’s amendment is the latest addition to a wishlist of fossil fuel industry priorities that some members of Congress are trying to attach as riders on the Interior appropriations bill. Other fossil fuel industry-supported proposals would roll back recent conservation efforts to protect the sage grouse and halt a rule to apply safety standards for hydraulic fracturing on public lands.

A recent review by the Western Values Project (WVP) found that three major coal companies have been providing thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Rep. Zinke.

“The math is pretty clear,” WVP wrote last week. “Coal companies can spend a little to back a Congressman who will protect their massive taxpayer-funded subsidies. That’s a good deal for coal companies and Rep. Zinke, but it’s bad for the rest of us.”

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CoalPublic LandsRyan ZinkeWyoming

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Congressman Fights To Preserve Loophole Allowing Coal Companies To Sell Coal To Themselves

Before leaving Washington D.C. last week for a 4th of July break, a Montana Congressman quietly proposed a budget rider that would allow some of the world’s biggest coal companies to continue to dodge royalty payments owed to U.S. taxpayers.

The amendment from Representative Ryan Zinke (R-MT), offered on a spending bill that the House is expected to vote on in July, would block the Obama Administration from implementing a forthcoming rule that would close a loophole in how royalties are collected from coal mined on federal lands.

As previously reported by ThinkProgress, coal companies are using a regulatory loophole to sell coal to their own subsidiary companies at intentionally depressed prices to avoid royalty payments. These so-called “captive transactions”, or inside deals between coal companies and their own subsidiaries, are shortchanging Western states on revenue that could be used for schools, roads, and other priorities.

“When coal companies underpay their federal royalties, state and local governments suffer nearly half that loss,” wrote Dan Bucks, the former director of the Montana Department of Revenue in May. “That is because the federal government shares its royalty receipts from Montana coal with the state of Montana, and the state splits its share with the counties where the production occurs.”

The rule that the Obama administration’s Department of the Interior proposed in January would require coal companies to pay royalties based on the price at which they sell coal to an independent, third-party purchaser.

Taxpayer watchdog groups, however, are urging the Obama administration to strengthen the proposed rule, arguing that coal companies would still be able to pay royalties on a price that is below the true market value. Independent economic analysis has shown that by strengthening the proposed rule, Montana could see an increase in revenue of nearly $19 million annually.

Montana ranchers, mayors from Western mountain towns, school board members, and conservation organizations have also called for the Department of the Interior to strengthen and finalize its rule to close loopholes and cut coal subsidies on federal lands.

Rep. Zinke’s amendment is the latest addition to a wishlist of fossil fuel industry priorities that some members of Congress are trying to attach as riders on the Interior appropriations bill. Other fossil fuel industry-supported proposals would roll back recent conservation efforts to protect the sage grouse and halt a rule to apply safety standards for hydraulic fracturing on public lands.

A recent review by the Western Values Project (WVP) found that three major coal companies have been providing thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Rep. Zinke.

“The math is pretty clear,” WVP wrote last week. “Coal companies can spend a little to back a Congressman who will protect their massive taxpayer-funded subsidies. That’s a good deal for coal companies and Rep. Zinke, but it’s bad for the rest of us.”

Tags

CoalPublic LandsRyan ZinkeWyoming

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New Lawsuit Says Clean Water Rule Threatens ‘The Very Structure Of The Constitution’

Sixteen states filed lawsuits Monday aimed at blocking the Obama administration’s Waters of the United States rule, which seeks to clarify the bodies of water that the EPA can regulate under the Clean Water Act.

Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi filed a joint lawsuit in a Houston federal court, asserting that the EPA’s final rule is “an unconstitutional and impermissible expansion of federal power over the states and their citizens and property owners.” While the EPA has the authority to regulate water quality, the suit says Congress has not granted the EPA the power to regulate water and land use.

The lawsuit claims that “the very structure of the Constitution, and therefore liberty itself, is threatened when administrative agencies attempt to assert independent sovereignty and lawmaking authority that is superior to the states, Congress, and the courts.”

In a separate case, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming are seeking to have the rule overturned. North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem called the rule “unnecessary” and “unlawful,” according to the Associated Press.

According to the Hill, these cases appear to be the first examples of states suing to block the rule, though the rule has faced opposition from states, businesses, farmers, and Republicans since it was first proposed in April 2014.

Finalized in late May, the Waters of the United States rule — commonly referred to as the Clean Water Rule — clarifies what bodies of water the EPA can legally regulate under the Clean Water Act, and restores protections to areas like tributaries and wetlands. The rule extends protections to some two million acres of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands that weren’t clearly protected under the Clean Water Act.

The EPA and environmentalists argue that the rule helps protect the drinking water of millions of Americans, without placing new restrictions or unnecessary burden on agriculture or industry. Some business groups — like a coalition of craft breweries led by NRDC — support the rule, claiming that clean water is central to their operations.

But others — predominantly agricultural interests and Congressional Republicans — have mounted staunch opposition to the rule, painting it as an example of burdensome federal overreach.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who co-sponsored a Senate bill aimed at forcing the EPA to completely rewrite the rule, has said that farmers in Oklahoma are more concerned about the Clean Water Rule than any other federal policy. The Senate bill, authored by Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), passed a committee vote and will head to the Senate floor. In May, the House passed a bill sponsored by Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) that also sought to block the EPA’s rule.

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Clean WaterEPAWater Pollution

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What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About The Supreme Court’s Mercury Pollution Ruling

Despite reports to the contrary in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and briefly this publication, the Supreme Court didn’t actually “strike down” the EPA’s regulations of toxic air pollution from power plants on Monday.

What the Supreme Court did do was put the regulation — which limits toxic heavy metal pollution like mercury from coal and oil-fired plants — in jeopardy. In a 5-4 decision led by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court said the EPA acted unlawfully when it failed to consider how much the regulation would cost the power industry before deciding to craft the rule.

However, that doesn’t mean the rule is gone. In fact, it’s still in place at this very moment. Right now, power plants are still required to limit their emissions of mercury, arsenic, chromium, and other toxins. A spokesperson for the EPA confirmed this to ThinkProgress.

What the Supreme Court’s ruling does is send the current mercury rule to the D.C. Circuit court for further consideration. The D.C. Circuit could very well invalidate the rule. But it could also uphold it, if the court finds more harm than good would be done by repealing it, or if the agency can offer a reasonable explanation of why costs weren’t included early on in the administrative record.

The D.C. Circuit has often left rules in place under similar circumstances, according to Jim Pew, an attorney at Earthjustice who worked on the case.

“It’s a narrow decision, that’s a really important point,” Pew told ThinkProgress by phone on Monday. “It leaves the rule in place. It doesn’t throw it out. And it leaves EPA with a lot of discretion.”

Pew said the ruling was actually not as bad as it could have been for environmental advocates. For one, the Supreme Court could have just thrown out the entire thing. It also could have doubted the EPA’s calculation of the benefits of limiting mercury and other toxic pollution, which include the prevention of 11,000 premature deaths every year and annual monetized benefits of between $37 billion and $90 billion.

The Supreme Court could have also said definitively that regulations on mercury emissions from power plants are too expensive, and that the costs outweigh the benefits. The court did not say that — it just said the EPA must consider cost at the very beginning of the regulatory process.

“[Scalia] just thought it was extreme that EPA interpreted that it could ignore costs altogether,” Pew said.

The EPA did not ignore monetary concerns entirely when it crafted the mercury rule. While it’s true that the EPA did not consider costs when it initially decided to issue a regulation on heavy metal emissions, the agency did evaluate how much the rule would cost the power industry later, when it decided what the regulation would actually be.

At its core, Monday’s ruling just says that consideration must come earlier in the process. And while Scalia’s ruling hinted that he thought the rule was too expensive to be justified, the effect of the ruling says nothing of the sort.

“[The ruling] said EPA had to consider costs, but it’s not saying anything about how EPA is supposed to consider costs and whether that particular decision would be right or wrong,” Pew said.

Another reason environmentalists might breathe at least a small sigh of relief is that many of the requirements set by the mercury regulations are already in place. A big chunk of power plants were forced to be in compliance with the rule back in April, meaning many power plants already have their emissions control systems installed. Of course, if the ruling is eventually invalidated, those plants could just turn those systems off if they really wanted to.

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Justice Kagan’s Blistering Response To The Supreme Court’s Ruling On Mercury Pollution

In a 5-4 ruling Monday, the Supreme Court found fault with the EPA’s regulation of toxic heavy metal pollution from coal and oil-fired plants, claiming that the agency failed to prove the regulations “appropriate and necessary” because they did not initially take costs into consideration.

To Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the Court’s dissent, that reasoning failed to acknowledge all the other times the EPA took cost into consideration throughout the regulatory process.

As Kagan wrote:

That is a peculiarly blinkered way for a court to assess the lawfulness of an agency’s rulemaking. I agree with the majority — let there be no doubt about this — that EPA’s power plant regulation would be unreasonable if ‘[t]he Agency gave cost no thought at all.’ … But that is just not what happened here. Over more than a decade, EPA took costs into account at multiple stages and through multiple means as it set emissions limits for power plants. And when making its initial ‘appropriate and necessary’ finding, EPA knew it would do exactly that — knew it would thoroughly consider the cost-effectiveness of emissions standards later on. That context matters.

When first deciding to regulate mercury pollution from power plants, Kagan noted that the EPA made its decision based on the fact “that power plants’ emissions pose a serious health problem, that solutions to the problem are available, and that the problem will remain unless action is taken.”

Kagan said the EPA didn’t consider costs in the first stage of the regulatory process because it knew that it would have a chance to consider costs later on.

“[T]he Agency, when making its ‘appropriate and necessary’ finding, did not decline to consider costs as part of the regulatory process,” she wrote. “Rather, it declined to consider costs at a single stage of that process, knowing that they would come in later on.”

Later in the dissent, Kagan argued that it would be impossible for an agency to anticipate all the consequences of a particular regulation during the regulation’s very first stages:

Suppose you were in charge of designing a regulatory process. The subject matter — an industry’s emissions of hazardous material — was highly complex, involving multivarious factors demanding years of study. Would you necessarily try to do everything at once? Or might you try to break down this lengthy and complicated process into discrete stages? And might you consider different factors, in different ways, at each of those junctures? I think you might.

Moreover, Kagan argued, the EPA made a decision to regulate mercury emissions from power plants before it designed those emission standards, making it impossible to calculate potential costs associated with standards that hadn’t even been created yet.

“Simply put,” Kagan wrote, “calculating costs before starting to write a regulation would put the cart before the horse.”

In the majority opinion, Scalia compared the EPA to a potential car owner looking to purchase a Ferrari without thinking about the costs of the car. It was a metaphor that Kagan didn’t love:

The comparison is witty but wholly inapt. To begin with, emissions limits are not a luxury good: They are a safety measure, designed to curtail the significant health and environmental harms caused by power plants spewing hazardous pollutants. And more: EPA knows from past experience and expertise alike that it will have the opportunity to purchase that good in a cost effective way. A better analogy might be to a car owner who decides without first checking prices that it is “appropriate and necessary” to replace her worn-out brake-pads, aware from prior experience that she has ample time to comparison shop and bring that purchase within her budget.

When deciding to regulate mercury pollution from power plants, Kagan contined, the EPA did not ignore the question of cost. Instead, it chose to wait until it had a better idea of what the emission regulations would be to consider the cost that those regulations would incur.

“The majority arrives at a different conclusion only by disregarding most of EPA’s regulatory process,” Kagan wrote. “It insists that EPA must consider costs — when EPA did just that, over and over and over again.”

The majority’s decision, Kagan concluded, ignored the latitude given to the EPA by Congress about how to best account for costs and benefits when designing emissions regulations.

“And the result,” she wrote, “is a decision that deprives the American public of the pollution control measures that the responsible Agency, acting well within its delegated authority, found would save many, many lives.”

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Sir David Attenborough To Obama: ‘The Natural World Is Part Of Your Inheritance’

On Sunday, acclaimed naturalist David Attenborough told President Obama that in order for humanity to get a handle on the numerous environmental problems ailing the planet, “what’s required is an understanding and a gut feeling that the natural world is part of your inheritance.”

What are the prospects for this blue marble that we live on in the middle of space?

As part of an interview recorded at the White House in May on the occasion of Attenborough’s 89th birthday, the British broadcaster drew from his 60-plus years as an environmental explorer and documentarian in responding to Obama’s questions. In a role reversal for the president, Obama — who said he grew up on some of Attenborough’s programming — asked the questions, which focused on addressing global environmental issues, including climate change, environmental degradation, and wildlife management.

“What are the prospects for this blue marble that we live on in the middle of space?” queried Obama for the BBC program. “Are we going to be able to get ahead of these problems?”

Attenborough, who has traveled the world extensively from the frozen reaches of the poles to the depths of the oceans, chose to steer away from political sticking points or international negotiations, and look at the bigger picture.

“Young people, they know and they care,” said Attenborough about the current environmental challenges. “They know this is the world they are going to grow up in and spend the rest of their lives in.”

The producer of some of the most popular nature programs in the last several decades, including Planet Earth, Blue Planet and Frozen Planet said he thinks it’s “more idealistic than that” and that today’s youth “actually believe that the human species has no right to destroy and despoil” the planet.

Obama agreed, saying that he finds his daughters are “much more environmentally aware” than some previous generations and that they “do not dispute the science around climate change.”

They don’t see a wild creature from dawn until dusk unless it’s a rat or a pigeon.

While it may be harder for young people to ignore the many stark ways that humans are impacting the environment — from stifling air pollution, to rising sea level, to the acidification of the oceans — Attenborough still worries about the disconnect with nature present in those growing up in the digital era.

“Some people are totally cutoff from nature,” he said. “They don’t see a wild creature from dawn until dusk unless it’s a rat or a pigeon.”

Attenborough found this disconcerting, because if today’s youth “don’t understand the workings of the natural world, they won’t take the trouble to protect it.”

“That’s one of the roles the media should have,” he said. “Maintaining a link between the population and the natural world.”

After a career of more than half a century in the business of naturalist filmmaking — a genre he pioneered — Attenborough continues to innovate, using the latest technology to capture ever-more stunning shots of nature at its most wondrous moments. He has experimented with extreme time lapse, 3D technology, and high definition imagery to bring the depths of the Great Barrier Reef and other remote areas to life in recent years.

He thinks technological revolutions will also play a significant role in steering the planet away from its current trajectory of catastrophic climate change and mass species extinction.

“We see what you did by saying we are going to put a man on the moon in ten years,” he told Obama, referring to United States’ role in the space race of the 1960s. “Supposing you said in ten years the United States will organize and energize the world to find a way of producing energy with no problems — that is to say, exploiting the sunshine and finding ways to store electricity.”

“If you did that, so many problems would be solved,” he said.

Obama agreed that more needs to be done.

“We’re not moving as fast as we need to and part of what I know from watching your programs, and all the great work you’ve done, is that these ecosystems are all interconnected. If just one country is doing the right thing but other countries are not then we’re not going to solve the problem, we’re going to have to have a global solution to this.”

The full episode is available online at BBC AMERICA.

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The Supreme Court Just Delivered A Victory To Coal Plants That Want To Emit Unlimited Mercury

Power plants may continue to be able to emit unlimited mercury, arsenic, and other pollutants thanks to the Supreme Court, which on Monday took steps toward invalidating the first-ever U.S. regulations to limit toxic heavy metal pollution from coal and oil-fired plants.

In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court found fault with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxic Standards, commonly referred to as MATS.

The EPA had been trying to implement a rule that cut down on toxic mercury pollution for more than two decades. But the Supreme Court majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, said the EPA acted unlawfully when it failed to consider how much the regulation would cost the power industry before deciding to craft the rule.

“EPA must consider cost — including cost of compliance — before deciding whether regulation is appropriate and necessary,” the opinion reads. “It will be up to the [EPA] to decide (as always, within the limits of reasonable interpretation) how to account for cost.”

The decision doesn’t mean power plants will never be subject to regulations on toxic air pollutants. Instead, the current rule will be remanded to the D.C. Circuit court for further consideration. If the D.C. Circuit invalidates the rule based on the Supreme Court’s ruling, the EPA will likely have to go back to the drawing board, and find some mechanism to consider how much the rule will cost the power industry. Until another version of MATS is approved — a process that often takes years — power plants will have no limits on their emissions of mercury, arsenic, chromium, and other toxins.

[image error]

Most of the arsenic, acid gases, sulfur dioxide and mercury in our atmosphere comes from power plants.

CREDIT: EPA.gov

Delaying the EPA’s proposed limits on mercury pollution from power plants has been a priority among some Congressional Republicans since at least 2011. Back then, Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY) — who is also trying to delay the EPA’s regulation on carbon emissions — said he didn’t think the mercury rule could legally be repealed, but that “if we can delay the final rule … then I think we’ve accomplished a lot.”

Coal- and oil-fired power plants are the largest industrial sources of toxic air pollution in the country. Power plants are responsible for 50 percent of all U.S. emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin particularly dangerous to unborn children. If the rule had been allowed to remain in place, the EPA estimated that 11,000 premature deaths would be prevented every year; that IQ loss to children exposed to mercury in the womb would be reduced; and that there would be annual monetized benefits of between $37 billion and $90 billion.

However, Monday’s decision surrounded not health benefits, but cost to industry. The lawsuit, brought by Michigan and 19 other Republican-led states, argued that the EPA didn’t consider how much it would cost the power industry before it decided to craft the regulations. Indeed, the EPA did not consider cost when it initially decided to issue a regulation on heavy metal emissions. In the first stages of regulation development, the EPA usually only considers whether a pollutant poses a threat to human health and the environment.

The EPA does, however, consider cost in the later stages of Clean Air Act regulation. Specifically, it considers cost when deciding what the specific limits on a pollutant should be. In the case of MATS, the EPA justified the estimated $9.6 billion yearly price tag for the proposed rule by also estimating a $37 billion to $90 billion yearly benefit.

In the ruling, Scalia seemed to doubt the calculation of benefits.

“It is not rational, never mind ‘appropriate,’ to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits,” he wrote, adding that “no regulation is ‘appropriate’ if it does significantly more harm than good.”

While environmentalists may be disappointed with the ruling, Bloomberg Business pointed out on Wednesday that there could be a silver lining. Pro-coal states have been using MATS as a key argument against the EPA’s proposed regulations on carbon emissions from power plants, regulations seen as important to fighting climate change. According to that argument, MATS precludes the carbon rule, since MATS already regulates pollutants from power plants.

If MATS is invalidated, the article asserts, the preclusion argument might go out the window with it. Then, the EPA would essentially be free to regulate carbon dioxide, and would also be free to regulate mercury at a later date. You can read more about how that would work here.

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Air PollutionAntonin ScaliaCoalemissionsEPAMercurypower plantsSupreme Court

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New Study Says There’s A Smarter Way To Deforest

As global population swells and the push to grow more food increases, forests often find themselves on the losing side of the equation.

The leading cause of deforestation across the globe is conversion to cropland or pasture. In the Amazon basin alone, conversion from tropical forest to cropland for soy production resulted in the loss of 80 million hectares of forest as of 2012.

And yet, the pace of agricultural expansion shows no sign of relenting. Instead, researchers at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment say that in order to keep pace with population growth, land used for agriculture will need to expand by more than 740 million acres — an area larger than India.

That realization left them with a question: If agricultural expansion — and deforestation — have to take place, does it matter how it’s done?

A new study says yes. Published earlier this month in the journal PNAS, it found that the way that deforestation occurs can have a huge impact on environmental losses, especially with regard to carbon storage and biodiversity.

“The goal should surely be to deforest less,” Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer, a research associate at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and co-author of the study, told ThinkProgress. But when deforestation must occur, she wondered, “Is there a way to avoid extreme impact?”

To get their results, Chaplin-Kramer and her colleagues looked at various deforestation scenarios in the Matto Grosso region of Brazil, one of the country’s largest soy producing regions. Using landscapes both real and theoretical, the researchers imagined what would happen if agricultural expansion happened along the edge of a forest, in the center of a forest, or in segments that fragment the forest into smaller pieces.

What Chaplin-Kramer and her colleagues found was that some deforestation methods are worse than others. For example, deforestation that occurs in a fragmentary pattern — like when a road is plowed through a forest and cropland is created off of that road — causes very steep losses in carbon storage and biodiversity, especially in the early stages of deforestation. When deforestation occurs in a fragmentary way, crucial corridors used by wildlife can be blocked, hindering wildlife’s ability to seek food, shelter, and mates.

On the other hand, deforestation that occurs at the edges of a forest and in consolidated patches reduces biodiversity losses by more than three times and preserves carbon storage by an order of magnitude, the study found. That’s because forest edges tend to store less carbon than trees deeper into a forest, because forest edges generally suffer higher mortality rates due to threats like wind damage, pests, or fire.

“There have been, especially in the Amazon, a few field studies that shows less carbon is stored in source edges because of wind edges, and in general, it’s thinner at the edges,” Chaplin-Kramer said. But the researchers were surprised to see just how much of an impact forest edges make on preserving carbon storage and biodiversity in deforestation scenarios.

“It’s so much deeper than what we’ve measured in the field, and it’s so pervasive,” Chaplin-Kramer said.

Chaplin-Kramer and her colleagues were so surprised by their findings that they expanded the study to look at deforestation patterns all across the tropics. That research, which Chaplin-Kramer says will be submitted soon to the journal Nature, found that the trends seen in Matto Grosso hold true for tropical forests around the world.

“It is very consistent across the tropics. It varies a lot depending on climate and human influences, and how deep the edge effects penetrate, but we do see these edge effects consistently throughout the tropics,” she said. “This isn’t just about Matto Grosso. We need to think about it much more broadly when we think about tropical deforestation.”

Chaplin-Kramer hopes that the findings encourage food corporations to think about how their sourcing impacts deforestation. In recent months, companies like Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest traders of agricultural commodities, and McDonald’s, the world’s largest fast food company, have made sweeping pledges to end deforestation in their supply chains.

But even if companies can’t end deforestation completely, Chaplin-Kramer notes that it’s still important to look at how agricultural expansion takes place in their supply chains.

“What we’ve learned from this is that it matters, so it’s worth paying attention. It’s worth looking at past trends and asking where the agricultural expansion has happened,” she said. “While [food companies] don’t get to say necessarily, ‘Don’t fragment your forest,’ they could certainly provide incentives.”

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Climate Change Could Cause More Than $40 Billion In Damage To National Parks

A report released this week by the National Park Service (NPS) found that sea level rise — a phenomenon caused by climate change — could cause more than $40 billion in damage to America’s national parks.

The report, released in time for the two-year anniversary of the announcement of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, examines the effects of a sea level rise on 40 coastal national parks across the United States. The NPS study examined “assets” in each national park, defined as historic sites, infrastructure, museum collections, and other cultural resources, finding that over 39 percent of the 10,000 assets were categorized as “high-exposure” to sea-level rise caused by climate change.

In total, it found, damages to high-exposure assets would cost taxpayers more than $40 billion.

“Climate change is visible at national parks across the country, but this report underscores the economic importance of cutting carbon pollution and making public lands more resilient to its dangerous impacts,” said Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell in a press release on Tuesday. Jewell also expressed hope that the NPS research could be used to “help protect some of America’s most iconic places.”

According to the study, low-lying coastal parks in the NPS’s Southeast Region will face the greatest risk for damage. Cost estimates of rebuilding infrastructure and assets at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, a prominent national park in North Carolina, stand at $1.2 billion. In addition to the Southeast regions, high exposure sites include the Statue of Liberty, Golden Gate, and the Redwoods.

Though the rise in sea level will vary based on location, in general scientists project that a one meter rise will occur over the next 100 to 150 years.

On Earth Day at Everglades National Park, another coastal park at high risk for damage, President Obama discussed the impacts of climate change on natural resources and described protecting national parks as “a good investment.” Additionally, he highlighted the specific restoration work in the Everglades, which is “one of the best defenses against climate change and rising sea levels,” and called on Congress to reauthorize and “fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which supports this work across the country.”

Created more than 50 years ago, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) is a budget-neutral program that uses revenues from offshore oil and gas development fees to fund federal, state and local conservation projects. LWCF has protected close to five million acres of public lands, including some of the country’s most iconic places such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park.

However, with the LWCF set to expire on September 30, inaction from Congress to reauthorize the program could result in dramatic decreases in funding for public lands and national park protections and resiliency programs. This would mean a restricted ability for national parks and other public lands to respond to the threat of sea level rise, as well as a significant loss for state and local conservation projects across the country.

On Thursday, at a bipartisan press conference calling for reauthorization of the LWCF before it expires in less than 100 days, Congressman Patrick Meehan (R-PA) praised the LWCF as “our nation’s single most successful conservation program,” and warned that without Congressional action, “the fund and its ongoing preservation projects will be in danger.” He continued, saying that “this could lead to the end of conservation projects and destruction of land that can never be undone […] It’s one of those rare issues that can earn support from both sides of the aisle.”

Announcing this week’s report, Rebecca Beavers, a lead NPS scientist and author of the report, said that “information from this report provides a useful way to help determine priorities for planning within coastal parks.”

The Department of the Interior plans to release an analysis of 30 additional coastal national park sites later this summer.

Annie Wang is an intern with the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress.

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Climate ChangeNational ParksPublic LandsSea Level Rise

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