Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 138

U.S. Congress Should Have No Part In International Climate Deal, French Minister Says

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France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, is at the helm of climate talks expected to culminate in Paris in December.

CREDIT: Fabrizio Bensch/Pool Photo via AP

On Day 1 of the newest round of the United Nations’ climate change negotiations, the French foreign minister warned delegates that any agreement to lower emissions would have to avoid needing approval from the United States Congress.

“We know the politics in the U.S.,” Laurent Fabius told African delegates, the AP reported. “Whether we like it or not, if it comes to the Congress, they will refuse.”

The United Nations is seeking to develop an agreement that will keep global warming to below the scientifically recognized two-degree limit to avoid cataclysmic climate change. Two weeks of negotiations began Monday, and the final agreement is scheduled for a December meeting in Paris.

The threat — almost guaranteed — of congressional refusal to ratify the United States’ participation in an international climate agreement might not be as meaningful as some would think. A successful, legal agreement to keep global warming to below two degrees could take a number forms, David Waskow, director of the World Resource Institute’s International Climate Initiative, told ThinkProgress.

Under U.S. law, any international treaty must be ratified by Congress. International agreements that bind or prohibit the United States from actions not otherwise mandated by law must also be ratified by Congress. But there have been hundreds of executive agreements that do not trigger Congressional action, Waskow said.

“It doesn’t have to be something that is strictly considered a protocol or treaty,” Waskow said, speaking from Bonn. “There are other ways to achieve a legal agreement.”

However, a strict and binding limitation on carbon emissions — which some negotiators are hoping for — would need to be ratified by Congress.

The current Republican-controlled Congress has adamantly rejected federal action to address the causes — or even reality — of anthropogenic climate change. Administrative action, including the proposed Clean Power Plan expected this summer, has been met with legislative and legal challenges.

Republican members of the 2015 Congress broadly reject the science backing climate change. In the House, 53 percent — 131 members — of the Republican caucus deny the occurrence of human-caused global warming; 70 percent — 38 members — of the Senate do.

This position is at odds with most of the rest of the world. Even big fossil fuel companies have called for action on carbon. At the U.N.’s welcome address Monday, Fabius, who will host the December talks in Paris, said that he has heard from many people that addressing climate change is a critical and important issue.

“We absolutely have to succeed in Paris,” Fabius said. “I am impressed by the mobilization on this subject and the immense will to succeed.”

One Maldives delegate said his group still wants a binding carbon emission target, but was upbeat about finding consensus, the Guardian reported. “I think it’s important that we get everyone on board. We are still looking into options,” Amjad Abdulla said.

The post U.S. Congress Should Have No Part In International Climate Deal, French Minister Says appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Researchers Call Out U.S. For Neglecting Emissions From Agriculture In Climate Plan

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CREDIT: AP Photo/Don Ryan

The United States and European Union aren’t doing enough to address emissions from land use — such as agriculture — in their carbon reduction plans for the upcoming climate talks in Paris, France, according to a new report.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) analyzed the “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs) of the U.S., Mexico, and the E.U. in a report released Tuesday. These INDCs are proposed plans to tackle climate change that each country must submit ahead of the Paris climate talks, a conference with the goal of reaching a binding international agreement on climate change.

The UCS researchers found that, in the plans of the E.U. and U.S., there is “practically no mention of specific actions that they plan to take in the land sector.”

“It is disappointing to see the U.S. neglect to address emissions from agriculture and forestry — especially when the potential for reductions is so considerable,” Doug Boucher, director of UCS’s Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative, said in a statement.

Mexico, on the other hand, “goes into considerable detail, putting forth plans to reduce deforestation to zero by 2030, restore forests and other biomes, increase carbon capture, and give greater protection to coastal ecosystems.” Mexico is more transparent about how it will achieve these goals than the U.S. and E.U. are, the report states, laying out specific actions that it wants to take in order to reduce its land sector emissions.

This transparency, “particularly compared with the developed countries, virtually sets a standard,” according to the report.

In Mexico, deforestation has decreased by 55 percent over the last decade. But it’s still a problem in the country. Deforestation is a major contributor to climate change, emitting more than 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, so tackling deforestation will help Mexico achieve its climate and conservation goals.

But the U.S. and E.U. could also do a lot to reduce their emissions from the land sector. In fact, according to another UCS report from this year, the U.S. has the largest potential for reductions in emissions from land use out of eight of the world’s biggest carbon emitters. That potential, according to the report, includes things that suppliers and governments can do, such as reducing nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer and cutting deforestation and depletion of agricultural soil. It also includes things that consumers in the U.S. can do, such as eating less beef and wasting less food.

Agriculture accounts for 9 percent of the U.S.’s carbon emissions, and soil management and livestock production are two of the top contributors to those agriculture-related emissions. Cows release methane through their digestive process, and their manure also releases methane and carbon dioxide as it decomposes. And certain practices, like no-till farming, can help soil retain carbon.

“The main problem with the U.S. INDC…is that it that it fails to specify any mitigation action in the land sector,” the report states. “The United States does have great potential, from options such as reducing consumption of high-emissions foods — e.g., beef — decreasing over-fertilization of crops, and increasing reforestation. But its INDC does not indicate any plans to make that potential a reality.”

The UCS report was released during climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany, which are going on this week. There, negotiators from around the world are working on developing a draft version of the climate change agreement that will be discussed and hopefully agreed upon in Paris this November and early December.

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Utah Lawmaker Accused Of ‘Illegal Scheme’ To Seize America’s Public Lands

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This June 18, 2014, file photo, Utah Republican state Rep. Ken Ivory speaks during a hearing at the Utah State Capitol, in Salt Lake City. The Campaign for Accountability group has asked three state attorneys generals Monday, June 1, 2015, to investigate the Utah lawmaker who has led a push for western states to take control of federal public lands.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer

A watchdog organization filed complaints against a Utah state representative on Monday for allegedly leading “an illegal scheme to defraud local government officials out of taxpayer funds” to finance a campaign to seize America’s public lands.

The complaints, filed by the Campaign for Accountability (CfA), request that the attorneys general of Utah, Arizona and Montana investigate state Rep. Ken Ivory (R) for “solicit[ing] funds from local officials, falsely claiming the federal government can be forced to transfer public lands to the states.” The complaints cite Ivory’s use of his role as president and founder of the American Lands Council (ALC), a Utah-based organization, to “enrich” his personal wealth and make “false or fraudulent representations to obtain money.”

Anne Weismann, executive director of the CfA, called Rep. Ivory a “snake oil salesman, cloaked with respectability by his position as a legislator,” in a press release.

“Ken Ivory has relied on his position and authority as a Utah state legislator to persuade unsuspecting local officials that if they contribute taxpayer dollars to his charity, they can help their states acquire federal land and increase revenues,” Weismann continued. “He might as well be trying to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge.”

The ALC, which Ivory founded to advocate for giving America’s public lands to state governments, pays both Ivory and his wife for their respective roles as the group’s president and communications director. Additionally, “more than 50 percent of the organization’s most recent budget,” which comes primarily from contributions made by local governments, “was spent enriching Rep. Ivory and his wife,” according to the press release announcing the complaints.

Ivory has denied the accusations of wrongdoing. In comments to the Associated Press, Ivory called the complaints shameful, saying they represented “bullying tactics to stifle legitimate political debate.” He said the group was his primary job and therefore it made sense that he was paid for his work. In addition, he said that his $40,000 yearly salary is “a small fraction of the salaries that environmental groups pay their top officers.”

In his role with ALC, Ivory travels across the West making presentations to convince local governments to become members, echoing the anti-federal government sentiments of outlaw rancher Cliven Bundy, who has also become a spokesperson for similar proposals to seize America’s public lands. According to CfA, Ivory claims that the federal government has “no legal right to the land,” and that the “return of the land would be a financial boon to the states.”

However, these proposals are deeply unpopular with Western voters, and are considered to be unconstitutional by some legal scholars. Moreover, they would place the extreme costs of managing the lands on state budgets, leaving local taxpayers with the bill, and potentially forcing states to raise taxes or sell of the lands for drilling, mining, and logging.

Controversy surrounding the ethics of ALC, Ivory and other associated lawmakers has been building in recent months. In May, Colorado Ethics Watch filed a complaint against the ALC for illegally lobbying “without registering in the state or reporting its income,” as reported by the Utah Political Capitol. In Montana, an aide for ALC spokesperson state Senator Jennifer Fielder (R) resigned for ethics violations after registering as a lobbyist for ALC.

With support from the oil and gas industry and the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), efforts to seize and sell off public lands have also gained attention at the national level. In April, seven Republican members of Congress, led by Utah Congressmen Chris Stewart and Rob Bishop, launched a “Federal Land Action Group” to develop legislation to give away America’s public lands. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Ted Cruz have also been vocal supporters in the Senate.

As the ethics inquiries into Rep. Ivory continue, the attorneys general have the opportunity to respond to CfA’s complaints by opening full investigations. According to the AP, representatives for the Utah and Montana attorneys general offices are reviewing the accusations.

Claire Moser is the research and advocacy associate with the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress. You can follow her on Twitter at @Claire_Moser.

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Big Trucks Emit Huge Amounts Of Carbon Every Year. The EPA Is About To Do Something About It.

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CREDIT: shutterstock

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to propose new standards for heavy-duty trucks this week, regulations aimed at reducing carbon emissions from tractor trailers and other big trucks.

It’s not yet known exactly what cuts the proposed regulations will call for, but according to the New York Times, the rule will likely require heavy trucks — like tractor trailers, buses, and garbage trucks — to increase their fuel economy by up to 40 percent compared to 2010 levels by 2027. Right now, the Times reports, a tractor trailer averages just five to six miles per gallon of diesel fuel. This rule could raise that to as much as nine mpg.

These trucks consume a lot of fuel. According to a fact sheet from several different environmental groups, the truck fleet in the U.S. consumed about 2.7 million barrels of fuel each day in 2013, and emitted a total of 530 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s about 12.5 percent of the U.S.’s total 6,673 million metric tons of emissions in 2013.

“Heavy trucks are energy hogs,” Luke Tonachel, senior vehicles analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Energy and Transportation program, told ThinkProgress. They make up just around 7 percent of the vehicles on the road in the U.S., but they consume about 25 percent of all fuel. And that fuel consumption differs depending on what kind of goods the trucks are shipping, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS):

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Fuel used to ship products via truck in the U.S.

CREDIT: Union of Concerned Scientists

The proposal — if it is what the New York Times reports it to be — would fall short of the hopes of multiple environmental groups, which have called for a 40 percent drop in fuel consumption compared to 2010 levels by 2025. A March report from UCS argued that “the average new truck” could reduce its fuel use by 40 percent by using technologies that are cheap and already available. More efficient trucks will also lead to fuel savings for truck owners, the report notes: owners of tractor trailers could save $30,000 per truck each year, which would allow the companies to quickly earn back the $32,000 per truck they’re estimated to need to spend to update their trucks to meet a 40 percent drop in fuel consumption. If these owners passed on half of their fuel savings to customers, each U.S. household could save $135 each year, according to the report.

That 40 percent drop in fuel consumption, however, is different than the 40 percent increase in fuel economy that the New York Times reports will be coming with the agency’s proposal. Jason Mathers, senior manager of supply chain logistics at the Environmental Defense Fund, told ThinkProgress that if the rule focused on fuel consumption, it would be able to drive up fuel economy more from heavy trucks.

“The 40 percent reduction of fuel consumption leads to more oil savings, more greenhouse gas savings, and more cost savings than a 40 percent increase in fuel economy,” he said.

EDF and other environmental groups have also called for a steeper regulation on tractor trailers, which comprise most of the country’s heavy- and medium-truck use. If the administration proposed rules to cut tractor trailer fuel consumption by 46 percent, it could increase tractor trailer fuel efficiency to 10.7 miles per gallon — rather than the nine mpg that’s estimated to result if the EPA proposes a 40 percent increase in fuel economy by 2027.

“The targets we’re talking about would reduce fuel consumption from new tractor trailer trucks from about 20,000 gallons a year to about 12,000 gallons a year,” Mathers said.

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Potential fuel savings in heavy-duty trucks.

CREDIT: ACEEE, EDF, UCS, Sierra Club, NRDC

Dave Cooke, a vehicles analyst in the Clean Vehicles Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists and author of the March 2015 report on truck fuel consumption, told ThinkProgress that already, some truck companies had increased their fuel economy above the six mpg average. In some cases they’ve done this by using technology that’s already on the market, like aerodynamic trailers and more efficient engines and tires.

“We’re starting to see some small fleets who’s top driver gets 10 or 11 mpg,” he said. “Which is really impressive but they’ve done that by in some cases building the technology themselves.”

These fleets and trucking companies understand the potential for cost savings with more efficient tractor trailers, he said, and he expects many of them to support the administration’s new proposals on truck emissions. Mathers agrees — these proposals, he said, will spur technological innovation that can allow truck companies to achieve greater efficiency than they can right now, so for the most part, he expects truck companies and companies that own major fleets to support them.

Already, some companies — like Pepsi, which owns one of the country’s largest private fleets of trucks — have signed on to a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in support of further regulations on heavy trucks.

“Strong fuel efficiency standards are good for American manufacturing because they incentivize innovation, making U.S. businesses more competitive globally,” the letter, which was sent last week, reads. “We urge EPA and DOT to propose strong phase two standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks in 2015.”

Heavy duty vehicles might be small slice of pie, but it’s going to be slice that continues to grow if we don’t do anything about it

Some trucking companies have already voiced their concern about new regulations, however — a “couple of bad apples” that have emerged as vocal opponents, Cooke said. Tony Greszler, vice president for government relations for Volvo Group North America, told the New York Times that Volvo had “concerns with how this will play out.” And Cooke said Daimler, too, has been wary about the proposals, though the company didn’t respond by press time to a call from ThinkProgress.

The regulations on heavy-duty trucks are coming about three years after the Obama administration finalized rules for cars and light trucks, standards that seek to increase the fuel economy of passenger vehicles to 54.5 mpg by 2025. Compared to some of the Obama administration’s other climate-fighting proposals, the heavy trucks standards might not seem like they’ll make much of a difference, Cooke said, but they’re key to meeting the administration’s climate goals.

“In terms of gross numbers, [truck standards] are not as large as light duty vehicles, or the clean power plant rule,” Cooke said of the expected emissions reductions. But use of heavy trucks for shipping is expected to grow over the next 20 years, so emissions from that sector are expected to grow too.

“If there’s a weak proposal on the table for trucks, it’s going to eat into any of savings [the administration] had to work hard for on light duty or power plants,” Cooke said. “Overall, heavy duty vehicles might be small slice of pie, but it’s going to be slice that continues to grow if we don’t do anything about it.”

The post Big Trucks Emit Huge Amounts Of Carbon Every Year. The EPA Is About To Do Something About It. appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Meet The Only Prominent GOP Presidential Candidate Who Accepts Climate Science

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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a Republican who says humans are causing harmful climate change.

CREDIT: AP

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) announced that he’s running for President on Monday, officially becoming the ninth declared Republican candidate. Of all of them, he’s only one of two who publicly accept the science behind human-caused climate change, while most of the rest are sticking to staunch denial.

To be totally clear, the science behind climate change is this: the earth’s atmosphere and oceans are warming, and this is primarily due to human-caused carbon emissions. That warming is going to have harmful effects, including sea level rise and increased risk of extreme weather. The worst impacts of this warming will primarily fall on developing countries, but the U.S. will see harmful impacts as well.

Marco Rubio says “there’s no consensus” on that science. Ted Cruz says people who believe in climate change are like “flat-Earthers.” Rand Paul has said the idea that humans cause climate change is “alarmist stuff,” and Ben Carson once said “We may be cooling.” Carly Fiorina; Mike Huckabee; Rick Santorum — all have expressed heavy to mild denial of the overwhelming scientific evidence that says humans cause climate change.

Aside from Graham, former New York governor George Pataki is the only other Republican presidential candidate with a background showing he accepts climate science and wants to do something about it. But as it stands now, Pataki’s pretty low on Americans’ radar — he’s been deemed one of the “longest long shots” of the 2016 GOP race. As the Atlantic’s Russell Berman explains, Pataki has “no devoted national followings, no networks of deep-pocketed financiers, not even radio or TV platforms with which to introduce [himself],” nothing.

All of which brings us to Lindsey Graham, who has been sort of a dark horse Republican Senator when it comes to climate change. In March, he said that global warming is “real,” and that “man has contributed to it in a substantial way.” He’s publicly called out his Republican colleagues for continuing to deny the science, and urged them to come up with a better platform for addressing the issue. He’s also said carbon dioxide is “worthy of being controlled,” and that it’s “worthy to clean up the air and make money doing so.”

All that certainly does not make him a climate hawk. Indeed, it’s largely because of Graham’s backtracking that a deal on cap-and-trade failed back in 2010. He has also said he thinks the issue of climate change has been “oversold” and over-hyped.

Still, of all the Republican candidates, he’s a far better alternative for those concerned about climate change. And while neither Pataki nor Graham have made much of a peep on the most recent polls, Graham has at least some national name recognition because of his current Senate seat, while Pataki, as 538 points out, “hasn’t been part of the political conversation since ‘Friends’ ended.” Graham’s also never lost a race.

Climate change is increasingly becoming a more prominent campaign topic, even as most Republican candidates deny it exists. During the 2014 midterm election cycle, ads mentioning climate change surged to record levels, an increase that reflected “the priorities of some of the nation’s wealthiest donors,” according to the New York Times. Many of those donors represented the fossil fuel industry, which collectively spent more than $721 million during that election cycle, according to a Center for American Progress analysis.

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Obama Administration Opens Up Thousands Of Acres Of Public Lands To Coal Mining

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Coal mining in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

CREDIT: Shutterstock

On May 29, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management released a for the Buffalo Field Office, the Wyoming office charged with managing the Powder River Basin, an area that supplies nearly 40 percent of U.S. coal.

Under the proposed plan, the BLM estimates that it will issue 28 new coal leases, which could open up the mining of 10 billion tons of coal over the next 20 years.

That seems like a lot of coal. But is it really?

“It’s a huge amount, especially because the leasing period is the time frame that the world needs to get a handle on carbon emissions,” Shannon Anderson, an organizer with the environmental non-profit Powder River Basin Council, told ThinkProgress.

The United States burns around 900 million tons of coal annually — the amount of coal made available under the proposed Buffalo regional management plan is more than ten times that.

According to a report released by Greenpeace, if all 10.2 billion tons of coal made available by the leases was to be burned, 16.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide would be released into the atmosphere. That carbon, Greenpeace notes, significantly dwarfs any reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that would come from President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, often considered the president’s most robust action on climate change.

The Clean Power Plan isn’t the only environmental action Obama has taken, so it’s not necessarily a one-to-one comparison — but as Joe Smyth, a media officer with Greenpeace told ThinkProgress, it does offer a useful comparison between what is largely considered Obama’s signature piece of climate legislation and the potential climate impact of the BLM’s decision.

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CREDIT: Greenpeace

“When you look at the emissions from the Buffalo regional management plan, it’s an off the chart, massive amount of carbon pollution,” Smyth said. “These actions by the BLM are still operating under a business as usual approach, and really ignoring the Obama administration’s efforts to reduce carbon pollution.”

The United States produces around 1 billion tons of coal annually, with approximately 400 million tons of that coming from the Powder River Basin. The new management plan, Anderson said, won’t necessarily flood the U.S. market with more coal — instead, it will help mining operations maintain current levels of production, allowing them to tap into new reserves if they exhaust current ones. That’s because the new management plan doesn’t actually change the status quo of land management in the area — it simply keeps coal lease decisions from 2001 in place. According to Greenwire, the BLM found that it had received “no substantial new information regarding coal leasing.”

“The expectation is that it’s maintaining the status quo,” Anderson said. “That decision is really made in a silo, without any consideration of environmental impacts, and especially climate change.”

As Dave Roberts at Vox points out, the regional management plan simply increases the national supply of coal, not the demand for it. The Energy Information Administration estimates that the Clean Power Plan will spur a wave of coal plant retirements, reducing the demand for coal domestically — but that doesn’t mean that the coal mined under the Buffalo regional management plan won’t be shipped to overseas markets.

“The regional management plan doesn’t take into account the potential for exports, even though the coal industry is quite explicit about their desire to export large quantities of coal from the Powder River Basin,” Smyth said. “The Interior Department is still taking the view that that’s not going to happen.”

Under the BLM’s coal leasing program, the government also leases land to mining companies under very generous terms — as little as a dollar per ton, according to Smyth. Environmentalists have argued that the government’s generous prices effectively subsidize coal from public lands, selling coal owned by taxpayers at prices that give coal a distinct advantage over renewable energy. According to a 2012 study conducted by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, the federal government has left as much as $28.9 billion in revenue on the table over the last 30 years by offering coal companies below-market prices.

“It’s not just that they’re allowing this coal to be leased, it’s that they’re giving it away for such low prices,” Symth said. “It’s favoring coal and the expense of better and cleaner alternatives.”

Environmental groups had hoped that the Buffalo regional management plan would address both the massive amounts of coal allowed to be mined under current leases and the below-market prices at which those leases are sold. During a speech in March, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell stoked those hopes, saying that the government “must do more to cut greenhouse gas pollution that is warming our planet.” She also called for reforming the way that federal coal is valued and leased, saying that “it’s time for an honest and open conversation about modernizing the federal coal program.”

The proposed Buffalo regional management plan, Smyth says, suggests that Jewell isn’t taking her own comments to heart.

“We think the Obama administration has not spent sufficient time and attention on [the plan] given the scale of emissions,” Smyth said. “They really need to understand how big a problem this is in order to reform the [federal coal] program or phase it out over time.”

The post Obama Administration Opens Up Thousands Of Acres Of Public Lands To Coal Mining appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Fracking Bans Are No Longer Allowed In Oklahoma

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Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, who signed a ban on fracking bans into law on Friday.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki

Oklahoma’s towns and cities are no longer allowed to ban fracking under a bill signed into law on Friday by Republican Gov. Mary Fallin.

The new law prohibits localities from choosing whether or not to have oil and gas operations within their jurisdictions, with exceptions for “reasonable” restrictions like noise and traffic issues. Other than that, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission will retain control over oil and gas drilling.

The state commission is run by three elected commissioners, all of whom are Republican. Chairman Bob Anthony is a member of the National Petroleum Council, a group that advises the U.S. Department of Energy on oil and gas industry interests. And Vice Chairman Dana Murphy is a geologist and attorney with “more than 22 years experience in the petroleum industry,” according to her bio page.

Fracking — the process of injecting high-pressure mixtures of water, sand, and chemicals underground to crack shale rock and release oil and gas — is prolific in Oklahoma, and Fallin said the new law would be necessary to prevent a “patchwork of inconsistent municipal regulations across the state.” In addition, Fallin said, allowing cities and towns to have control over whether fracking occurs could “damage the state’s largest industry, largest employers and largest taxpayers.”

Oklahoma is the second state to ban fracking bans. Last month, Texas became the first, when Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation to prohibit cities from banning the process.

That legislation was a major blow for the city of Denton, Texas, which had already passed a local fracking ban within city limits. Denton is now considering repealing that ban in the wake of Texas’ new law.

Oklahoma’s new ban comes amid warnings from the state’s own government that a recent dramatic spike in earthquakes is linked to wastewater injection, a key part of oil and gas activity and particularly fracking. To dispose of the immense amount of water used during fracking, companies inject it underground. Scientists increasingly believe the injections are disrupting faults and triggering quakes.

In saying oil and gas was likely responsible for the state’s earthquake epidemic, the state launched a website in April detailing why earthquakes are happening and what the state is doing to stop them. Letting localities ban fracking, however, is not one of the examples.

The post Fracking Bans Are No Longer Allowed In Oklahoma appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Can A 4°C Earth Support 10 Billion People?

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An asteroid helped wipe out the dinosaurs. Are we now the catastrophic agent?

CREDIT: Shutterstock

“Homo sapiens is poised to become the greatest catastrophic agent since a giant asteroid collided with the Earth 65,000,000 years ago, wiping out half the world’s species in a geological instant.” So wrote anthropologist Richard Leakey in his 1995 book, “The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind.”

Because of the vital dependence we have on the “ecosystem services” provided by the rest of nature, Leakey warned, “unrestrained, Homo sapiens might not only be the agent of the sixth extinction, but also risks being one of its victims.”

Twenty years later, the great climate journalist Elizabeth Kolbert has won a very deserved Pulitzer prize for her nonfiction book “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History.”

In her book, Kolbert quotes Leakey and explains that there’s no way of knowing if humanity will be wiped out in this self-inflicted disaster. For her, “what’s most worth attending to” right now, is the fact that “we are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathway remain open and which will forever be closed.” As she notes, “no other creature has ever managed this.”

I personally doubt homo sapiens will go fully extinct. The more important question for me is whether the planet can support upwards of 10 billion people post-2050 given that we have already overshot the Earth’s biocapacity — and the overshoot gets worse every year.

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Homo sapiens already use the equivalent of 1.5 Earths to support our consumption.

CREDIT: World Wildlife Fund

Most significantly, we are in the process of destroying a livable climate upon which so many species, including our own, rely. We are currently on a trajectory to warm the planet 4°C (7°F) or more this century and then continue warming in the next. In 2011, the UK Royal Society devoted a special issue of one of its journals to “Four degrees and beyond: the potential for a global temperature increase of four degrees and its implications.” The concluding piece warned:

“In such a 4°C world, the limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the limits for adaptation for natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world.”

In particular, “drought and desertification would be widespread” and we’d see “large areas of cropland becoming unsuitable for cultivation, and declining agricultural yields.” At the same time, we’d “also rapidly be losing [the world’s] ecosystem services, owing to large losses in biodiversity, forests, coastal wetlands, mangroves and saltmarshes, and terrestrial carbon stores, supported by an acidified and potentially dysfunctional marine ecosystem.”

Can such a world support 10 billion people?

As for biodiversity, a 2015 study in Science said we may lose one-sixth of all species to extinction if we warm 4°C. “Other experts said the real toll may turn out to be even worse,” reported the New York Times. The paper quoted evolutionary biologist John Wiens warning the number of extinctions “may well be two to three times higher.”

As I reported a few weeks ago, another 2015 study in Science concluded that the Permo-Triassic extinction 252 million years ago (“the greatest extinction of all time”) happened when massive amounts carbon dioxide were injected into the atmosphere, first slowly and then quickly (driven by volcanic eruptions). The researchers found “During the second extinction pulse, however, a rapid and large injection of carbon caused an abrupt acidification event that drove the preferential loss of heavily calcified marine biota.” This extinction killed over 90 percent of marine life and wiped out some 70 percent of land-based animal and plant life.

A 2014 review article in the journal Science led by Duke conservation ecologist Stuart Pimm, “The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection,” concluded, “Current rates of extinction are about 1,000 times the background rate of extinction. These are higher than previously estimated and likely still underestimated.”

The current mass extinction is due to a combination of factors, many driven by humans, including habitat destruction and over-fishing and over-hunting. A number of aspects of climate change have begun contributing to species extinction, but what is of most concern to biologists today is that as the rate of global warming speeds up in the coming decades, the climate may well change too quickly for many if not most species to adapt.

Significantly, there is more to biodiversity than just the number of species, as shown in a 2011 study , “Cryptic biodiversity loss linked to global climate change.” It was the first global study “to quantify the loss of biological diversity on the basis of genetic diversity.” Cryptic biodiversity “encompasses the diversity of genetic variations and deviations within described species.” It could only be studied in detail since molecular-genetic methods were developed.

Researchers noted that “If global warming continues as expected, it is estimated that almost a third of all flora and fauna species worldwide could become extinct.” But their research “discovered that the proportion of actual biodiversity loss should quite clearly be revised upwards: by 2080, more than 80% of genetic diversity within species may disappear in certain groups of organisms.” Species may survive, but ”the majority of the genetic variations, which in each case exist only in certain places, will not survive,” as study co-author Carsten Nowak explained. A species’ genetic variation increases its adaptability to a changing climate and changing habitats. Losing genetic diversity decreases the species’ long-term chances for survival.

A similar point was made in a January 2015 Science article, “Planetary boundaries,” by 18 international experts led by Will Steffen of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Here is the key chart of their findings (an update of their original 2009 findings).

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Researchers find 4 of 9 planetary boundaries have been crossed: climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change, altered biogeochemical cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen).

CREDIT: Steffen et al, Science 2015. Design: Globaïa.

We are already well beyond the zone of uncertainty and into the high risk area for the “genetic diversity” component of biosphere integrity. Researchers label climate change and biosphere integrity as “core boundaries.” They could “drive the Earth System into a new state” if substantially changed. Steffen notes, “Transgressing a boundary increases the risk that human activities could inadvertently drive the Earth System into a much less hospitable state, damaging efforts to reduce poverty and leading to a deterioration of human wellbeing in many parts of the world, including wealthy countries.”

The bottom line, as the Science authors explain, is that “The relatively stable, 11,700-year-long Holocene epoch is the only state of the ES [Earth System] that we know for certain can support contemporary human societies.” As we move beyond that stable state, the risks for all species — including ours — grow and grow.

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Yes, Religious Conservatives Accept Climate Change — Just Not The Ones You Think

Pope Francis

CREDIT: AP Photo/Jorge Saenz

On Friday, Chris Mooney published an eye-catching blog on the Washington Post website entitled “New study reaffirms the link between conservative religious faith and climate change doubt,” his second post in as many weeks on the connection between right-wing faith and skeptical views of global warming. But while Mooney and the researchers he cites do a good job of qualifying their claims, they fail to capture a far more interesting aspect of the religious debate over the environment: that some of America’s most religious and theologically conservative churchgoers are also the most concerned about our changing climate.

In his posts, Mooney uses two studies to argue that conservative religious belief can trigger climate change denial — namely, a chart created by Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education and new study conducted by David Konisky and Matthew Arbuckle of Georgetown and the University of Cincinnati, respectively. The chart is particularly telling, as more theologically conservative groups appear to cluster at the bottom-left of the graphic, signaling simultaneous opposition to evolution and “climate change policies.”

You can check out the chart embedded in the tweet below.

This fascinating chart on faith and climate change denial has been reinforced by new research http://t.co/ANbLwq6WcL pic.twitter.com/3PC3xkQUjz

— Post Green (@postgreen) May 29, 2015

Mooney’s most recent post, however, notes that Konisky and Arbuckle’s study echoes Rosenau’s findings.

“The result, at the broadest level, was that Catholics and Protestants were generally less worried about climate change than those who are religiously unaffiliated (although Jews were more worried),” Mooney writes. “For Catholics and Evangelical Protestants, the study found, more religiosity was also linked to less climate concern.”

Mooney is clear that he is generalizing here (he moves on to discuss primarily white evangelical Protestants, who clearly struggle to accept humanity’s role in climate change), but other data suggests the truth is a bit more complicated than he implies. According to two different studies conducted over the past three years by the Pew Research Center, Hispanic Catholics and black Protestants are second only to white evangelical Protestants in terms of church attendance and frequency of prayer, and both groups are actually significantly more likely than white Catholics to deny human evolution (50 percent of black Protestants, for instance, agree with the statement “humans have existed in their present form since the beginning.”) Although the exact definition of “conservative religious beliefs” is actively debated among religion scholars, these attributes fall squarely under Mooney’s own definition of church-going conservatives.

Nearly three-quarters of Hispanic Catholics said they were “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about climate change, and 58 percent of black Protestants said the same.

Yet a 2014 study by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that while some right-leaning religious groups — specifically white Evangelical Protestants and white Catholics — are quick to deny climate change (or at least humanity’s role therein), theologically conservative Hispanic Catholics and black Protestants are actually more concerned about global warming than any other major religious group, including historically liberal mainline Protestants. Nearly three-quarters of Hispanic Catholics said they were “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about climate change, and 58 percent of black Protestants said the same. According to PRRI researchers, this is primarily because these worshippers see themselves as more likely to be directly impacted by the effects of global warming.

“Hispanic Catholics (43 percent), black Protestants (36 percent), and religiously unaffiliated Americans (29 percent) are more likely than white mainline Protestants (17 percent), white evangelical Protestants (16 percent), white Catholics (13 percent) and Jewish Americans (14 percent) to predict that they will personally experience substantial harm because of climate change,” the PRRI study read. “Similarly, black Protestants (48 percent), Hispanic Catholics (45 percent), and religiously unaffiliated Americans (40 percent) are more likely to say that people living in the U.S. will face substantial negative consequences as a result of climate change compared to Jewish Americans (28 percent), white mainline Protestants (25 percent), white evangelical Protestants (24 percent), and white Catholics (22 percent).”

Perhaps most importantly for lawmakers, the survey also found that majorities of all major American religious groups — including 82 percent of Jewish Americans, 76 percent of black Protestants, and 69 percent of Hispanic Catholics — agreed that dealing with climate change now will help prevent future economic problems.

Mooney, to his credit, noted in both of his posts that Pope Francis’ upcoming encyclical on the environment could very well make more white Catholics open to discussions of global warming, as it will likely encourage Catholic clergy to discuss the subject with their parishioners. Indeed, PRRI’s report showed a strong link between pastors who talk about climate change in their sermons and congregations that voice concern for the environment: 70 percent of Hispanic Catholics said their clergy leader discusses climate change “often” or “sometimes,” as did a majority of black Protestants. By contrast, only 20 percent of white Catholics, who are generally skeptical of climate science, said they heard about climate change from their priest.

All of this, of course, glosses over the larger fact that Rosenau’s chart also shows strong majorities of progressive religious groups — especially liberal wings of mainline Protestantism such as Episcopalians and the United Church of Christ — believe in both evolution and climate change (the Catholic Church, for the record, has also been open to evolution for decades), and Mooney rightly rejects the claim that religious belief is synonymous with climate denial. In addition, there are growing factions in white evangelical communities working to convince their fellow believers to protect the planet; One of the more prominent climate scientists, for example, is Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, who also happens to be an evangelical Christian.

Nevertheless, it bears mentioning that while white evangelical Protestants have a lot of work to do on green issues, strong conservative religious belief — and even, it seems, rejection of human evolution — are not, for whatever reason, universally driving climate skepticism. On the contrary, given the firm belief in climate change among more financially disenfranchised Christians such as black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics, it would seem that economics, not theology, is the more important issue at play.

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‘It’s Shameful': Scientists Slam Ted Cruz For Dodging Climate Question After Texas Floods

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

CREDIT: AP images/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

After literally 35 trillion gallons of water fell on Texas this month, washing away homes and killing at least 28 people, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz still would not talk about climate change. “At a time of tragedy, I think it’s wrong to try to politicize a natural disaster,” the 2016 Republican presidential candidate said last week when asked about the role of climate change in the floods.

In a way, the “let’s not politicize this” response is similar to the familiar “I’m not a scientist” dodge — a way to avoid talking about the science that says human-made carbon emissions are warming the earth and screwing with natural weather patterns. Cruz, for his part, says he does not accept that science.

In the meantime, climate scientists across the country have been speaking out about the climate implications of the Texas floods. And on Friday, ThinkProgress asked several of those scientists to weigh in on Cruz’s comments.

The overwhelming response: Talking about climate change after a weather tragedy is not political. In fact, it’s necessary.

The science isn’t political. It’s the solutions that are political.

“As a scientist, I think it is essential to connect the dots between climate change and the increasing risk it poses to our families and communities,” said Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University. “Keeping our mouths shut on what the data is telling us, even if it’s in fear of vicious reprisals, is like a physician not telling a patient they have a dangerous condition just because they’re afraid of the patient’s reaction.”

What the data is telling us, Hayhoe said, is that climate change is altering the risk of many weather extremes, flooding chief among them. These extremes “have always occurred naturally,” she said, but today’s warming caused by carbon emissions is making those extremes more likely and more severe than they were in the past. (Hayhoe just recently did a TEDx Talk about how this works. It’s worth watching).

Talking about how the risks of extreme weather are increasing due to climate change isn’t political, Hayhoe said — that’s just science.

“The science isn’t political,” she said. “It’s the solutions that are political.”

As a scientist, Andrew Dessler — a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University — agreed with Hayhoe’s analysis of climate change’s role in the Texas flooding. While he noted that it will take about a year to conclusively determine if climate change worsened this event in particular, he said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if it did. “These are the kinds of changes we expect to see in a warming climate,” he said.

This is something he’s weak on and he knows he’s weak on.

As a citizen, Dessler thinks climate change is “absolutely a reasonable thing to talk about” following an extreme weather event. The only reason Ted Cruz doesn’t want to talk about it, he said, is because of his inability to talk about solutions. In other words, if Cruz really does think climate scientists are “the equivalent of flat-earthers,” then it’s unlikely he has any tricks up his sleeve to solve the problem.

“Clearly Ted Cruz doesn’t want to talk about this because it’s not something that he can talk about to his advantage,” Dessler said. “This is something he’s weak on and he knows he’s weak on.”

With that in mind, it’s reasonable to think that Cruz’s attempt to dodge the climate question was the real political maneuver. That’s at least according to Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

“The ones politicizing the matter are those like Cruz who coddle their fossil fuel funders by denying the science of climate change and smearing those who attempt to point out the very real and damaging impacts climate change is already having,” he said. “It is shameful and history will judge it as such.”

Climate science is a tool for making decisions, not a political football.

According to the Center for Responsible Politics, the oil and gas industry is the number two donor to Cruz’s presidential campaign so far, trailing only general Republican and conservative interest groups.

For their part, the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists wishes reporters would go beyond asking Cruz about his personal opinion on climate change, and start asking him about solutions, like whether Cruz would use climate science to inform disaster preparedness policies.

“Climate science is a tool for making decisions, not a political football,” said Aaron Huertas, a spokesperson for the group. “I wish journalists and citizens would ask politicians how they are using climate science to do their jobs — including protecting us from changes in some types of extreme weather — not for their personal opinions about scientific evidence.”

Cruz’s press office did not immediately respond to ThinkProgress’ request for comment.

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