Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 162

The Corrections: Jonathan Franzen’s Deeply Irresponsible Climate Change Article

CREDIT: National Audubon Society

The New Yorker has published one of the most bird-brained and hypocritical climate articles ever, “Carbon Capture: Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?” Quick answer: No!

Awareness of and action on climate change are entirely about conservation — conserving a livable climate for humans and all other species. Aggressive climate action now would be an immediate boon to the overwhelming majority of living things, although I do think some tropical diseases, jelly fish, pests and other invasive species might lose out.

But the New Yorker and the blinkered author of this piece, one Jonathan Franzen, actually would like to “preserve nature at potential human expense.” Franzen frames our choice this way: “The Earth as we now know it resembles a patient whose terminal cancer we can choose to treat either with disfiguring aggression or with palliation and sympathy.”

In the distorted “through the looking glass” view of this piece, sharply reducing most air pollution ASAP would be “disfiguring” while the most sympathetic approach is allowing us to destroy a livable climate capable of sustaining a multi-billion human population and most existing species! And yes, Franzen actually argues that destroying a livable climate irreversibly will allow us to focus on preserving nature temporarily.

There is zero chance the New Yorker would publish such easily-debunked nonsense if its author were anyone other than Jonathan Franzen, a fiction writer of some acclaim, with several popular books rated 3 stars on Amazon. But as I came to learn — and as the New Yorker should have known — his entire essay is a stunning exercise in hypocrisy.

Franzen is a bird lover, of sorts. A 2012 Slate headline explained, “Jonathan Franzen Is the World’s Most Annoying Bird-Watcher.”

How annoying? The New Yorker piece begins with an extended attack on the Audubon Society and its recent report on Climate Change. Franzen argues that somehow this is a distraction from Audubon’s main mission of bird conservation. Yet Franzen’s palliative “give up” approach to climate change would doom a large fraction of bird species to extinction. And, as we will see, Franzen is on the board of a different bird conservation group that argues climate action is essential to bird conservation.

David Yarnold, president and CEO of the National Audubon Society, called Franzen’s entire analysis “Woody Allen-esque” and “out of touch with reality.”

Franzen, we learn, “came to feel miserably conflicted about climate change.” Why? In part it was Audubon’s press release for their study, which said “nearly half” of North American bird species risked habitat loss by 2080, and that climate change poses “the greatest threat our birds face.”

The press release did warn that nearly half of species were at risk of losing much of their habitat. As an aside, I’m reasonably confident that the impact of climate change on birds would be far worse than that over the next hundred years if we adopted Franzen’s “it’s hopeless” posture. If coastal wetlands are inundated, and much of the best land in this country turns into a near-permanent dustbowl, and forest fires increase multi-fold, and temperatures rise some 9°F, I don’t see most birds doing very well. Humans won’t do well either, but that simply isn’t Franzen’s concern. I digress.

How did Audubon’s peer-reviewed report help make Franzen miserable?

“What upset me was how a dire prophecy like Audubon’s could lead to indifference toward birds in the present,” he wrote.

Seriously! This is NOT an April Fool’s piece. In his next piece, Franzen will argue the Surgeon General’s dire science-based prophecy that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health could lead smokers to indifference toward obeying traffic lights because, like, why bother?

Yarnold explained to me that Audubon — and its 1 million members and the 4 million people it reaches through its publications — were fully capable of helping birds in the short term and long term: “Audubon’s members can chew gum and walk at the same time.”

Indeed, Yarnold explains that the message of the report — and Audubon’s overall message — is “we have to protect the places birds need now and reduce the emissions causing climate change” that will destroy the places birds need in the future.

Yarnold explained that “our members say this report has energized them,” to work on both bird conservation and climate change. “Members say this has localized and personalized the issue” of climate change.

Certainly readers of Climate Progress understand that the key to real, sustained action on climate change is broadening the group of people who want to take action. There are, Yarnold tells me, 47 million birders in this country. That seems like a very important group to inform, to engage, and to energize.

Ironically or, rather, tragically, Franzen’s piece seems to be aimed at shrinking the group of people who want to take action on climate change, by arguing our situation is hopeless. Rather than the “disfiguring aggression” of cutting carbon pollution, Franzen offers up this option:

“… we can settle for a shorter life of higher quality, protecting the areas where wild animals and plants are hanging on, at the cost of slightly hastening the human catastrophe.”

Après nous, le déluge.

Yes, somehow eliminating the vast majority of air pollution would shorten our lives and reduce our quality of life. As readers know, that is the exact opposite of the truth — as countless studies make clear. Indeed, the health and productivity benefits alone of the switch to efficiency and carbon-free energy sources are larger than the energy savings, as a 2014 report by the International Energy Agency documents.

Yarnold was especially annoyed with the New Yorker for running this extended attack on Audubon supposedly neglecting bird conservation in favor of climate change without bothering to mention that Franzen sits on the fund-raising Board of Directors for the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), which Yarnold calls “a group that views itself as a competitor to Audubon.”

According to its website, “ABC is the only U.S.-based group with a major focus on bird habitat conservation throughout the entire Americas.” I know you probably thought the National Audubon Society — with its motto “Protecting Birds and Their Habitats” — did that, too. Such is avian eco-politics today.

In making his case that the National Audubon Society has lost its way, Franzen does explain that “I gave my support to the focused work of the American Bird Conservancy and local Audubon societies.”

Here is where things get very hypocritical — because there’s something much worse than the New Yorker not mentioning Franzen is on the board of ABC. Franzen never mentions that the conservation-focused bird group he is on the Board of … wait for it … also has a major effort to combat climate change! Indeed, ABC’s webpage devoted to “Threats to Birds – Global Warming” explains that “ABC has conducted research in conjunction with partners to ascertain what the ongoing and potential future threats are to birds from rising global temperatures, and has published reports detailing the concerns that have been revealed.”

So while Franzen trashes Audubon for supposedly focusing on climate change at the expense of focusing on conservation, ABC argues on its website that the two are inextricable: “Because of the complex and global nature of this phenomenon, it falls under all three aspects of ABC’s conservation framework: Safeguarding the Rarest, Conserving Habitats, and Eliminating Threats.”

Franzen attacks Audubon for offering a “Climate Action Pledge,” which he complains “was long and detailed and included things like replacing your incandescent light bulbs with lower-wattage alternatives.” That makes little sense to Franzen since according to him we’re doomed:

The dangers of carbon pollution today are far greater than those of DDT, and climate change may indeed be, as the National Audubon Society says, the foremost long-term threat to birds. But I already know that we can’t prevent global warming by changing our light bulbs. I still want to do something.

Let’s set aside the fact Franzen never says what he wants to do other than convince people there’s nothing anybody can do. The amazing thing is that the organization on whose board he sits, ABC, has a report on its website, “The Birdwatcher’s Guide to Global Warming,” which explains the solution to global warming is to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” It has a section explaining “10 Steps You Can Take To Combat Global Warming–Save Energy and Money While Protecting the Environment!” which helpfully points out: “When you need to replace the light bulbs in your home, buy compact fluorescent bulbs, which reduce energy use by up to 75%.”

Go figure.

While Franzen is a notable writer, he apparently isn’t much of a reader. As Yarnold notes, “Franzen clearly did not read our report.” I would add it’s even clearer that Franzen doesn’t read either the website or the reports of ABC, a group he in theory helps govern.

Finally, it’s dismaying to see Franzen whine that climate action requires we “blight every landscape with biofuel agriculture, solar farms, and wind turbines.” It’s climate inaction that will blight every landscape. And yes, Franzen brings up the hoary complaint about wind turbines killing birds. What about the vastly larger number of birds that are killed by fossil fuels?

How many birds are killed each year by different fuel sources.

CREDIT: U.S. News & World Report

In case you were wondering, Franzen does hate the greatest of all bird-killers. He has written that cats are “the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries.” No visits to “LOLCats.com” for him.

Franzen has birds on his brain. In the opening sentence, he describes himself as “someone who cares more about birds than the next man.” That turns out to be literally true. He apparently cares more about birds than homo sapiens.

As mentioned earlier, Franzen’s preferred solution is “we can settle for a shorter life of higher quality, protecting the areas where wild animals and plants are hanging on, at the cost of slightly hastening the human catastrophe.” Sure we are going to curtail human life and speed up the human catastrophe, but, hey, we may save some birds for a short while.

And to make sure you get his message, he immediately follows up by saying “Choosing to preserve nature at potential human expense would be morally more unsettling if nature still had the upper hand.” Actually, it still is morally very unsettling — but more to the point it is an utterly false choice.

We can’t preserve nature by failing to act to preserve a livable climate.

If Franzen wants to do something productive for birds and homo sapiens, he should spend some time talking to experts in climate science and climate solutions. Then he should use the platform his fame affords to urge people to action, not urge them to inaction.

The post The Corrections: Jonathan Franzen’s Deeply Irresponsible Climate Change Article appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Texas Lawmakers Want To Stop Towns From Banning Fracking

Patchwork of drilling over central Texas.

CREDIT: flickr/ Amy Youngs

Last November, residents of the North Texas town of Denton overwhelmingly voted to ban fracking within their city limits. This did not sit well with Texas lawmakers, and they have made it a top priority of this spring’s legislative session to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

On Monday, the Texas House Natural Resources Committee voted 10-1 to approve House Bill 40, which drastically curtails local governments’ abilities to say no to fracking within their communities. The Senate Natural Resources and Economic Development Committee passed a companion bill last week, SB 1165. Both bills will now head to the full House and Senate for votes.

This effort is the latest take on a style of preemption legislation that has been used across the country to bar cities from regulating everything from landlords to the minimum wage. As the New York Times recently reported, these preemption laws invoke “a paradox for conservatives who have long extolled the virtues of local control in some areas, like education, but now say uniform standards are necessary in others.”

In Texas, this hypocrisy is on full display when it comes to banning local control over fracking.

“These bills absolutely conflict with longstanding conservative principles of local control and self-determination,” Luke Metzger, the founder and director of Environment Texas, told ThinkProgress. “Many of these legislators are speaking out of both sides of their mouths, decrying federal preemption of state sovereignty on the one hand, while pushing one-size fits all mandates from Austin overriding local ordinances.”

Metzer said that the bills were primarily driven by Denton’s vote to ban drilling, and that while the House Bill was changed to be less severe, it could “still could undermine many city ordinances.”

The House bill would only allow ordinances that regulate aboveground activity related to oil and gas operations, such as things relating to traffic, noise, lights, or “reasonable setback requirements,” which dictate how far away drilling must be from buildings.

Currently, Fort Worth has a 600-foot drilling setback and Dallas has a 1500-foot drilling setback. Denton, a city of about 125,000 residents, is located 35 miles northwest of Dallas. All three of these cities sit atop the Barnett shale, a 5,000-square-mile geologic formation that is one of the largest natural gas fields in the U.S. It is unclear which setback rules would be considered “reasonable. ”

Lon Burnam, who served as the Fort Worth Congressman for 18 years until this January, and who is now working with Public Citizen to advocate for better environmental and ethical lawmaking, thinks the Dallas-Forth Worth setback ordinances are the other primary reason for the legislation. Burnam told ThinkProgress that these preemption bills are “crafted by an industry that doesn’t care about public health or welfare, only about maximizing profits.”

He said it sets a dangerous precedent not just for oil and gas extraction, but also for local control over other issues like plastic bag bans, maintaining trees of a certain size, and other local priorities that could now be pushed under the rug in the Texas Capitol. Having been affiliated with the Texas Legislature since 1973, Burnam said this session is the worst he’s seen for the environment and for anything that has to do with the public interest.

Burnam said that while he understands the need for drilling standards, after several terms in the Legislature trying to pass laws to protect local health and safety, he found it basically impossible.

“I would say it’s better to leave it up to local and municipal governments,” he said.

In Texas, surface rights and mineral rights have always been clearly delineated, which is why legislation separating who can regulate them is not surprising. Nor is the fact that it would give preference to mineral rights: the state has a long history of allowing mineral rights to supersede surface rights. When it comes to places where these two overlap, such as wastewater pits, the authority becomes murky. Currently there are no state regulations for these “frack ponds.”

Texas is the country’s biggest oil and gas producer, and what happens in the state can in many ways direct the national conversation. The Texas Oil & Gas Association supports the new legislation, with Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil & Gas Association saying the organization supports HB 40 and SB 1165 because local ordinances violate the Texas Constitution.

“Local ordinances that stop oil and gas production exceed the authority delegated to cities by the Legislature and result in the taking of property without compensation,” he said in a statement. “If cities are concerned about health and safety issues, why are they allowing houses right next to wells? … Extreme regulations are clearly unwarranted and undermine our state’s biggest job creating sector –- the oil and gas industry.”

The House bill basically sets up a four-level test cities must pass in order to impose a drilling ordinance: it must control only surface activity; it must be “commercially reasonable”; it can’t “effectively prohibit an oil and gas operation” by a “reasonable prudent operator;” and the ordinance can’t be already preempted by state or federal law.

According to the group Frack Free Denton, the legislation goes far beyond the bounds of reasonableness.

“HB 40 expressly preempts local control over oil and gas, effectively making the Railroad Commission the City Council of Texas,” states the group. “Armed with this new standard, the industry will be able to challenge a wide range of local protections, claiming now that they are illegal because they are not ‘commercially reasonable.’”

If the bills make it to Governor Abbott’s desk, they are all but certain to be signed into law. While local communities are worried about air and water pollution, earthquakes, noise, and fire dangers, Abbot is worried about that “Texas is being Californianized.”

“Texas is being Californianized and you may not even be noticing it,” Abbott said while speaking at the right-wing think tank the Texas Public Policy Foundation in January. “It’s being done at the city level with bag bans, fracking bans, tree-cutting bans. We’re forming a patchwork quilt of bans and rules and regulations that is eroding the Texas model.”

The post Texas Lawmakers Want To Stop Towns From Banning Fracking appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Mitch McConnell Undermines Obama’s Climate Plan With Other Countries

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), center.

CREDIT: AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster, File

In an effort to undermine international negotiations aimed at combating climate change, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is telling other countries not to trust President Obama’s promise to significantly reduce the United States’ carbon emissions.

In a statement released Tuesday, McConnell warned other countries to “proceed with caution” before pledging any carbon emissions reductions to the United Nations, saying the U.S. would likely not be able to meet its own climate goals. The statement came shortly after Obama announced the official U.S. plan to slash the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions as much as 28 percent as part of an international agreement brokered by the U.N.

“Even if the job-killing and likely illegal Clean Power Plan were fully implemented, the United States could not meet the targets laid out in this proposed new plan,” McConnell said, adding that “[O]ur international partners should proceed with caution before entering into a binding, unattainable deal.”

The Majority Leader’s tactic is similar to a recent and slightly more aggressive effort by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) to undermine international negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Earlier this month, Cotton and 46 other Republican senators wrote a letter to the Iranian government warning that it should not trust any deal it strikes with the United States and its international partners, saying that the deal likely would not last past the Obama administration.

“Mitch McConnell has evidently stolen Tom Cotton’s playbook for undermining American leadership in the face of international crises,” the Sierra Club’s director of climate programs John Coequyt said in a statement to the Hill.

This is not the first time McConnell has sought to prevent the United States’ efforts to fight climate change, a phenomenon which he refuses to say he accepts scientifically. Earlier this month, McConnell told individual states to openly defy the EPA’s proposed rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

As McConnell represents Kentucky, a coal-producing state, regulations to reduce emissions from coal have been personal for the Majority Leader. In January, when he took control of the Senate, he said he felt “deep responsibility” to stop climate regulation on coal, which has the highest carbon content of all fossil fuels and accounts for nearly a quarter of all U.S. carbon emissions.

The post Mitch McConnell Undermines Obama’s Climate Plan With Other Countries appeared first on ThinkProgress.

EPA To Place Restrictions On The World’s Most Widely Used Herbicide

Spraying herbicide on a farm

CREDIT: Shutterstock

The EPA will place restrictions on use of the world’s most popular herbicide glyphosate, amid growing concern that the chemical causes weed resistance detrimental to farm production. Glyphosate is the key ingredient in Roundup, a widely used weed-killer produced by Monsanto.

The announcement comes amid recent findings by the World Health Organization that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans,” a conclusion that Monsanto staunchly rebukes. The EPA’s restrictions, however, are not meant to address public health concerns, and instead focus on the herbicide’s contribution to weed resistance, which has been increasing since the late 1990s.

The EPA does not currently consider glyphosate carcinogenic. The agency’s official position is that “there is inadequate evidence to state whether or not glyphosate has the potential to cause cancer from a lifetime exposure in drinking water.”

Though the agency has yet to release specifics of the plan, an EPA spokeswomen told Reuters that restrictions will likely be similar to those already in place for Enlist Duo, a relatively new herbicide produced by Dow AgroSciences. Those restrictions — put in place in 2014 — require Dow to alert the EPA about any instance of weed resistance, and limit the use of the herbicide to certain states. They also include weed monitoring, education for farmers, and remediation plans for any discovered resistance. Plans for the glyphosate restrictions will be finalized after a conference call between the agency and a committee of the Weed Science Society of America next week.

According to the Reuters report, at least 14 species of weed in the United States have developed a resistance to glyphosate, affecting more than 60 million acres of farmland. Worldwide, 32 different weeds are glyphosate-resistant.

Though Roundup is the most famous glyphosate-based weed-killer, it’s not the only product that contains the herbicide: over 750 products that contain glyphosate are sold in the United States. In 2012, at least 283.5 million pounds of glyphosate were used in U.S. agriculture.

The post EPA To Place Restrictions On The World’s Most Widely Used Herbicide appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Here’s How China Is Planning To Curb Its Climate Impact

Beijing air pollution is some of the worst in China.

CREDIT: AP

With Tuesday’s news that the U.S. officially submitted commitments to the United Nations, pledging to significantly cut its carbon emissions to help flight climate change, it’s natural to wonder what China is up to. After all, China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and has seen its environmental legacy marred by stifling air pollution and a deep dependence on coal power.

Some of the news out of China isn’t so great. It missed the March 31 deadline for submitting plans to the U.N., and still gets 70 percent of its energy from coal, a fuel source whose emissions have been blamed for the premature deaths of more than a quarter million residents in 2011.

But there’s good news, too. In November, China made headlines when it signed a climate agreement with the United States, pledging to begin reducing its carbon emissions in 2030, the same year it promised to get one-fifth of its power from renewable sources. And now, it’s taking immediate steps to curb air pollution by shutting down coal plants and paring down on congestion in its capital city.

Here are a few positive steps the country has recently taken on the road to a more sustainable future.

It’s Actually Cutting Coal — Like, Really

Last week, Beijing announced that it would shutter the last of its four major coal-fired power plants in 2016, replacing the stations with gas-fired plants capable of producing 2.6 times more electricity.

This is good for Beijing’s air quality, which is even worse than the rest of the country. With pollution twice that of China’s national standard, the city has been forced to take an especially aggressive stance in curbing emissions from coal. Closing the coal plants will reduce the city’s coal use by 9.2 million metric tons, a move that will help the city reach their goal of cutting annual consumption by 13 million tons before 2017.

Workers load coal into a truck in Beijing

CREDIT: AP

The move reflects a marked — though still modest — turn away from coal power in China. In 2014, China cut its coal consumption by 2.9 percent, the first time in the 21st century that its coal consumption actually decreased. As part of the U.S.-China deal in November, China pledged to cap its coal consumption by 2020, but senior policy advisers in the country reportedly support a national cap on coal starting as soon as 2016.

While China’s coal consumption has been the fuel of its growing economy, transitioning to renewable energy could provide the country with a strong base of green jobs. A new study, released by the the China Coal Cap Project — a group of researchers from both public and private sectors — found that by 2020, a push for renewable energy would create 1.14 million jobs and support investments in clean energy that would benefit China’s service sectors, like finance, consulting, education, and even media.

It’s an investment that China is already making. According to a report released Tuesday by the United Nations Environment Progream (UNEP), China spent $83.3 billion on renewable energy in 2014, a 39 percent increase from 2013.

It’s Literally Banning Cars From The Road

Beijing’s poor air quality is not just an environmental problem. It’s a public health issue too, with rates of lung cancer among its 21 million inhabitants on the rise.

In an effort to improve air quality in the immediate future, officials in Beijing recently announced a new ban on vehicles during times of especially bad pollution. As reported by Reuters, the city will limit motorists to driving every other day in times of a “red alert,” issued when the city expects especially heavy pollution to persist for at least three days.

Heavy traffic outside of Beijing

CREDIT: AP

Heavy vehicles — like those used for construction — will be banned from the roads under both red alerts and orange alerts, the next level down in the city’s four-tiered measure of air quality.

This isn’t the first time that Beijing has sought to stifle air pollution by curbing vehicle use, though those bans have mainly come during times when Beijing has played host to important events, like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in 2014 or the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

According to Reuters, the city’s environmental protection agency admits that telling residents they can only drive on alternating days isn’t a viable long-term solution to Beijing’s pollution problem, saying that “in recent years, the city has continued to increase its air pollution prevention and control efforts by curbing coal and controlling the fuel emissions from cars.”

It’s Planting A Ridiculous Number Of Trees

In addition to greener energy policies, China is also working to make the world a greener place — literally.

Despite rampant deforestation in tropical places like Brazil and Indonesia and the continued fragmentation of forests elsewhere, the world’s vegetation has actually expanded in the past decade, thanks in large part to China.

Chinese schoolchildren planting trees

CREDIT: AP

Along with environmental factors — like increased rainfall stimulating the growth of more vegetation on the savannas of Africa, Australia, and South America — China’s massive tree planting projects helped the the world add nearly 4 billion tons of carbon to above-ground plants, according to a recent study published in Nature Climate Change. As Reuters points out, however, this amount pales in comparison to the 60 billion tons of carbon released over the same period of time from burning fossil fuels and producing cement.

But China isn’t just planting trees to sequester carbon — it’s hoping to stem the flow of desertification that is threatening its soil, agriculture, and cities. Due to years of development, only 2 percent of China’s original forests remain, leaving nearly a quarter of the country is covered in sand, according to the Economist.

In 1978, China kicked off the largest tree planting project in the world, known as the Three North Shelterbelt Project. Since it started, the Chinese citizens have planted over 66 billion trees — and before it ends, in 2050, the project aims to increase the world’s forests by more than a tenth. Critics of the project worry that planting trees in sandy areas won’t be a long-term fix, and that the trees will die before any kind of meaningful reforestation can occur. But a 2014 study conducted by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences concluded that it was able to shelter China from dust storms while successfully reintroducing vegetation to the country’s edges.

The post Here’s How China Is Planning To Curb Its Climate Impact appeared first on ThinkProgress.

New Bill Would Block Effort To Protect Streams From Mountaintop Removal Pollution

In this June 2010 aerial photo released Thursday, Aug. 29, 2013 by Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, mining equipment is seen on a mountain top near a cemetery is inside the forested area on that tiny knob of land in the middle of the mine complex.

CREDIT: AP/Maria Gunnoe, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition

A plan to protect some of the country’s rivers from mountaintop removal mining may be delayed if a new bill introduced by a West Virginia congressman is signed into law.

The STREAM Act was introduced this week by freshman Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) and seeks to postpone final rules on mountaintop removal mining — a process in which the summits of mountains are blown apart, exposing the coal underneath — from the Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM). Those rules, which are expected to be released this April, will eliminate 2008 regulations that allowed mountaintop removal mining in and within 100 feet of streams that only flow during parts of the year.

Mooney’s bill, according to a fact sheet from the representative, would require the OSM to conduct a study on the impact the rule would have on the coal industry, and would delay the implementation of new rules for one year after the study is completed. It would also prevent the OSM from “seizing duplicative regulatory jurisdiction from other agencies” — basically, from regulating things that the Environmental Protection Agency already regulates under the Clean Water Act. It would also force the OSM to “publically[sic] release all scientific data used in the drafting of any new rule.”

“In order to preempt the President from opening a new front in the War on Coal, I submitted the ‘STREAM Act’ this week,” Mooney said in a statement. “The bill would prevent the administration from implementing a new stream buffer zone rule intentionally designed to shut down all surface mining and a significant section of underground mining in the Appalachian region.”

Mountaintop removal is harmful to streams because the rock and soil that’s created through the removal process — which often contains toxic heavy metals — is dumped into streams and valleys, burying them and killing aquatic life. In the last 20 years, mountaintop removal mining has destroyed nearly 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams and damaged more than one million acres of Appalachian forest.

Chief U.S. District Judge Charles H. Haden II wrote about the environmental damage caused by the disposal of mountaintop removal waste in a 1999 ruling that concluded that “valley fills” violated the Clean Water Act.

“The normal flow and gradient of the stream is now buried under millions of cubic yards of excess spoil waste material, an extremely adverse effect,” the judge wrote. “If there are fish, they cannot migrate. If there is any life form that cannot acclimate to life deep in a rubble pile, it is eliminated. No effect on related environmental values is more adverse than obliteration.”

Janet Keating, executive director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC), told ThinkProgress that she didn’t buy claims from the coal industry — or Mooney — that regulations like the OSM’s were killing the coal industry.

“Quite frankly, the coal industry really needs to face the facts that there’s never going to be another boom in Appalachia,” she said. “It’s done. It’s over. It’s too hard to get to the coal at this point.”

The Central Appalachian coal industry has been in decline in recent decades, and coal jobs have been lost along with it. A main cause of the decline in coal jobs is the mechanization of the industry: methods like mountaintop removal don’t require workers to extract coal from mines. The coal industry is also suffering across the country from competition from cheap natural gas, and Appalachian coal is suffering from competition from cheaper coal out West.

Keating also isn’t a fan of Mooney himself, pointing to the fact that he was born outside the state and previously served as a representative in Maryland. She also noted that Mooney’s campaign committee accepted more than $108,000 from the mining industry from 2013 to 2014.

House Republicans have acted before to try to stop the Obama administration from rewriting rules on mountaintop removal and other coal operations. Last year, the House voted to prevent the administration from developing a new rule on mountaintop removal in and around streams, though the bill didn’t make it past the Senate.

Keating hopes the rule to be announced in April holds up to opposition, and that it’s well-enforced by officials.

“We should be doing everything we can to protect water,” she said. “Anything that we do in streams is going to impact us in the long haul — we all live downstream.”

The post New Bill Would Block Effort To Protect Streams From Mountaintop Removal Pollution appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Why Low Oil Prices Won’t Stop The Growth Of Renewable Energy

Low oil prices won’t pull investment from renewable energy.

CREDIT: AP/Matt Young

Oil prices might be very low, but that’s not going to take away from investments in renewable energy.

That’s at least the consensus from Citigroup, the latest investment researcher to say clean energy won’t be slowed by cheap oil, Bloomberg reported Monday. Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs have also predicted that the oil price slump won’t affect renewable energy growth.

There’s a simple reason for this: Oil and renewables aren’t really in competition. Oil powers cars and heaters, and renewable energy — by and large — powers the electricity grid. (As we get more electric cars, transportation could increasingly rely on renewable energy, but we’re still pretty far from widespread electric car adoption.)

The United States generated merely one percent of its electricity with oil in 2014, according to the Energy Information Administration. Globally, only 11 countries get more than 20 percent of their electric power from oil, Bloomberg reported.

Natural gas, not oil, is in competition with renewable energy. The fastest-growing source of energy, natural gas-powered plants now provide more than a quarter of the U.S. electricity supply. However, if low oil prices cause suppliers to limit production, natural gas prices could actually go up, making renewable energy even more cost effective.

Renewable sources, including hydropower, contributed about 12 percent of the U.S. electricity supply last year.

Citigroup’s optimistic prediction about renewables comes at a time when clean energy investment is growing across the globe. Worldwide, investment in renewable energy went up 17 percent last year, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.

“Once again in 2014, renewables made up nearly half of the net power capacity added worldwide,” Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNEP, said in a statement.

The cost-benefit analysis of renewable energy has been a huge debate in recent years. While conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity say we can’t afford to go renewable, others say we can’t afford not to. More than two-thirds of today’s proven fossil fuel reserves need to still be in the ground in 2050 in order to prevent catastrophic levels of climate change, according to the International Energy Agency.

Fortunately for clean energy proponents, prices for both wind and solar have fallen dramatically in recent years. The price of a residential solar system dropped by nearly half in the past five years, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Likewise, the cost of wind energy has dropped nearly 60 percent since 2009. Research shows during that same time period, jobs in the U.S. solar industry have grown by 85 percent.

In fact, the promise of job growth in the United States has been one of the strongest counterarguments to the perceived cost of renewable energy. As the United States and other countries announce carbon-cutting measures in advance of the U.N. climate talks in Paris later this year, it’s becoming clearer what clean energy job growth could look like on a global scale.

In “Assessing the Missed Benefits of Countries’ National Contributions,” also released Monday, scientists at the NewClimate Institute said that carbon-reduction commitments could create a million new “green jobs” in the United States, China, and the European Union by 2030.

“It is an economic incentive to act on climate for local benefits on fossil fuel imports, jobs and air pollution,” Niklas Höhne, one of the report’s authors, told ThinkProgress. “For many situations renewables are cost competitive with fossil fuel power plants. If then in addition the co-benefits are taken into account, they are often the preferred choice.”

The post Why Low Oil Prices Won’t Stop The Growth Of Renewable Energy appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Big Investment Firms Say Renewable Energy Will Thrive Despite Low Oil Prices

Low oil prices won’t pull investment from renewable energy.

CREDIT: AP/Matt Young

Oil prices might be very low, but that’s not going to take away from investments in renewable energy.

That’s at least the consensus from Citigroup, the latest investment researcher to say clean energy won’t be slowed by cheap oil, Bloomberg reported Monday. Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs have also predicted that the oil price slump won’t affect renewable energy growth.

There’s a simple reason for this: Oil and renewables aren’t really in competition. Oil powers cars and heaters, and renewable energy — by and large — powers the electricity grid. (As we get more electric cars, transportation could increasingly rely on renewable energy, but we’re still pretty far from widespread electric car adoption.)

The United States generated merely one percent of its electricity with oil in 2014, according to the Energy Information Administration. Globally, only 11 countries get more than 20 percent of their electric power from oil, Bloomberg reported.

Natural gas, not oil, is in competition with renewable energy. The fastest-growing source of energy, natural gas-powered plants now provide more than a quarter of the U.S. electricity supply. However, if low oil prices cause suppliers to limit production, natural gas prices could actually go up, making renewable energy even more cost effective.

Renewable sources, including hydropower, contributed about 12 percent of the U.S. electricity supply last year.

Citigroup’s optimistic prediction about renewables comes at a time when clean energy investment is growing across the globe. Worldwide, investment in renewable energy went up 17 percent last year, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.

“Once again in 2014, renewables made up nearly half of the net power capacity added worldwide,” Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNEP, said in a statement.

The cost-benefit analysis of renewable energy has been a huge debate in recent years. While conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity say we can’t afford to go renewable, others say we can’t afford not to. More than two-thirds of today’s proven fossil fuel reserves need to still be in the ground in 2050 in order to prevent catastrophic levels of climate change, according to the International Energy Agency.

Fortunately for clean energy proponents, prices for both wind and solar have fallen dramatically in recent years. The price of a residential solar system dropped by nearly half in the past five years, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Likewise, the cost of wind energy has dropped nearly 60 percent since 2009. Research shows during that same time period, jobs in the U.S. solar industry have grown by 85 percent.

In fact, the promise of job growth in the United States has been one of the strongest counterarguments to the perceived cost of renewable energy. As the United States and other countries announce carbon-cutting measures in advance of the U.N. climate talks in Paris later this year, it’s becoming clearer what clean energy job growth could look like on a global scale.

In “Assessing the Missed Benefits of Countries’ National Contributions,” also released Monday, scientists at the NewClimate Institute said that carbon-reduction commitments could create a million new “green jobs” in the United States, China, and the European Union by 2030.

“It is an economic incentive to act on climate for local benefits on fossil fuel imports, jobs and air pollution,” Niklas Höhne, one of the report’s authors, told ThinkProgress. “For many situations renewables are cost competitive with fossil fuel power plants. If then in addition the co-benefits are taken into account, they are often the preferred choice.”

The post Big Investment Firms Say Renewable Energy Will Thrive Despite Low Oil Prices appeared first on ThinkProgress.

March Sadness Animal Bracket, Round 9: Falcons vs. Butterflies

Click image to expand. Now updated with Monday’s winners: Elephant and Narwhal!

CREDIT: Dylan Petrohilos

Welcome to the last Sweet Sixteen round of March Sadness, our bracket tournament of animals impacted by climate change and other environmental threats. Again, for whichever animal wins, ClimateProgress will write a feature-length article exploring the story behind it, and who is working to save it. Read the rules here.

Last round saw Elephant triumph over Mountain Goat, and Moose get harpooned by Narhwal.

This round features our Wings and Shells division. Sea Turtle, the only aquatic member of the division, faces off against the migratory wonder Red Knot. And Butterfly, our only insectoid contender, goes head to head with bird of prey Peregrine Falcon. Your votes will decide who moves on to the next round for a chance at a feature story. Vote in the embedded tweets below, on Twitter with the hashtag #CPMarchSadness, or on our Facebook page.

Sea Turtle vs. Red Knot

CREDIT: Shutterstock

Sea Turtle:

Last round we told you about the problems sea turtles face when sea level rise shifts the location of the beaches on which they need to lay their eggs. And when the turtles do lay their eggs, they do so on warmer beaches, which actually causes more females to be born. This throws the reproductive future of the species into chaos.

Storm surge boosted by sea level rise, paired with more extreme weather events along coastlines, can also threaten sea turtle nests. Paired with human development on coastlines, turtles have even fewer options for nesting sites. Shifting ocean currents and rising acidity levels can threaten sea grasses and other turtle food sources.

Red Knot:

As we said last week, red knots are some of the migratory bird world’s most amazing fliers: they travel up to 18,000 miles every year. But climate change and other environmental threats could make that migration a lot more difficult. During their migration, red knots stop off at Delaware Bay in Maryland, and they depend on horseshoe crab eggs for sustenance while they’re there. But horseshoe crab eggs have declined in the past due to poor management by fishermen, and that decline led to a drop in red knot numbers too.

Horseshoe crabs are better managed today, but climate change still poses a risk to these birds. Climate change is contributing to increased storms in the Arctic, which puts young red knots at risk. In addition, changing temperatures could make a mismatch between the time that the birds show up in Delaware Bay and the time that the crabs lay their eggs more likely. “The peak of horseshoe crabs spawning in Delaware Bay has not always aligned itself with the migration of the red knots. That could be related to climate change,” said Gregory Breese, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s project leader for the Delaware Bay Estuary Project.

Will the winner be swimming or flying to the next round?

Who will you choose? RETWEET for Sea Turtle or FAVE for Red Knot #CPMarchSadness http://t.co/IObDWvTKkC pic.twitter.com/C8SCCOg5vI

— Climate Progress (@climateprogress) March 31, 2015

Butterfly vs. Peregrine Falcon

CREDIT: Shutterstock

Butterfly:

Warmer temperatures could already be messing up the flight season timing of multiple butterfly species, a 2013 study found. The study concluded that the butterflies’ flight seasons started an average of 2.4 days earlier for each degree Celsius in rise in temperature. “With warmer temperatures butterflies emerge earlier in the year, and their active flight season occurs earlier,” said Heather Kharouba, lead author of the paper published this week in Global Change Biology. “This could have several implications for butterflies. If they emerge too early, they could encounter frost and die. Or they might emerge before the food plants they rely on appear and starve.”

Some butterfly species are particularly at risk. Monarch butterflies, which are already facing threats from the destruction of their favorite crop — milkweed — and of the forests they rely on, are also at risk of having their migration altered due to climate change. One study found that monarchs needed a cold trigger in order to continue migrating south to Mexico in the fall, and without these cold conditions, monarchs can actually stop in the middle of their migration south and start migrating north. Extreme weather, which is expected to become more common as the earth warms, also poses a major threat to monarchs — in 2002, a severe storm in Mexico killed nearly 80 percent of the monarch butterfly population there.

Peregrine Falcon:

For peregrine falcon chicks, heavy rains exacerbated by climate change can be deadly. One 2013 study, conducted by researchers at the University of Alberta and the Université du Québec, found prolonged, heavy rains in the Arctic are causing peregrine chicks to drown or die of hypothermia. That kind of rain has become more frequent in the Canadian Arctic — according to the study, there’s been an uptick in the number of days with heavy rainfall in the region from 1981 to 2010, a trend that follows increasing temperatures in the region and that’s consistent with predictions of climate change’s effect on precipitation. That’s bad news for peregrine falcon chicks, which are vulnerable to the heavy rains.

“They’re completely covered in fluffy down,” study co-author Alastair Franke said of the chicks. “That down gets wet very quickly.”

Typically, a mother peregrine will cover her chicks with her wings when it rains, shielding them from getting wet. But the study found more frequent rain spells are forcing some mother peregrines to give up and leave their chicks exposed to the rain. In one case, a mother who left her chicks in the rain for several hours and returned to find them visibly weakened killed both of them — the first case of infanticide ever recorded in wild peregrine falcons.

Which one will wing it to the next round for a chance at a feature story?

Who will move on? RETWEET for Butterfly or FAVE for Peregrine Falcon #CPMarchSadness http://t.co/IObDWvTKkC pic.twitter.com/CZmBzLUEJi

— Climate Progress (@climateprogress) March 31, 2015

***

TOURNAMENT UPDATES:

Day 1 – 3/19: Paws and Claws pt. 1 — Polar Bear vs. Wombat; Tasmanian Devil vs. Pangolin; (voting closed) WINNERS: Polar Bear and Pangolin.

Day 2 – 3/20: Paws and Claws pt. 2 — Lemur vs. Koala; Panda vs. Wolverine (voting closed) WINNERS: Koala and Wolverine.

Day 3 – 3/23: Fins and Flippers — Sea Lion vs. Sea Horse; Penguin vs. Manatee; Walrus vs. Sea Otter; Whale vs. Salmon (voting closed) WINNERS: Sea Horse, Sea Otter, Whale, and Penguin.

Day 4 – 3/24: Horns and Hooves — Elephant vs. Horned Lizard; Rhino vs. Narwhal; Saola vs. Moose; Mountain Goat vs. Reindeer (voting closed) WINNERS: Elephant, Narwhal, Moose, and Mountain Goat.

Day 5 – 3/25: Shells and Wings — Sea Turtle vs. Pelican; Sage Grouse vs. Peregrine Falcon; Oyster vs. Butterfly; Lobster vs. Red Knot (voting closed) WINNERS: Sea Turtle, Falcon, Butterfly, Red Knot.

Day 6 – 3/26: Polar Bear vs. Pangolin; Koala vs. Wolverine (voting closed) WINNERS: Polar Bear, Wolverine.

Day 7 – 3/27: Sea Horse vs. Whale; Sea Otter vs. Penguin (voting closed) WINNERS: Sea Horse, Sea Otter.

Day 8 – 3/30: Elephant vs. Mountain Goat; Moose vs. Narwhal (voting closed) WINNERS: Elephant, Narwhal.

Day 9 – 3/31: Sea Turtle vs. Red Knot; Butterfly vs. Peregrine Falcon (voting NOW OPEN)

Day 10 – 4/1: TBD

Day 11 – 4/2: TBD

Day 12 – 4/3: THE FINAL FOUR: TBD

Day 13 – 4/6: THE CHAMPIONSHIP: TBD

PAST ROUNDS:

Round 8: Sweet Sixteen, part 3

Round 7: Sweet Sixteen, part 2

Round 6: Sweet Sixteen, part 1

Round 5: Shells and Wings

Round 4: Horns and Hooves

Round 3: Fins and Flippers

Round 2: Paws and Claws, part 2

Round 1: Paws and Claws, part 1

The post March Sadness Animal Bracket, Round 9: Falcons vs. Butterflies appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Study: Direct Evidence That Global Warming Causes More Global Warming

Data from Antarctic ice cores show global warming causes more global warming.

CREDIT: Andreea Dragomir / Shutterstock

Scientists agree that an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases causes the Earth’s temperature to rise, but they’ve also noticed that relationship seems to swing both ways: warmer temperatures also seem to correspond with an increase in greenhouse gases. But drawing conclusions about the nature of the relationship is tricky, because though scientists have seen a correlation, they haven’t been able to show causation.

Now, scientists believe they’ve untangled the relationship. In a paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change, researchers from the University of Exeter claim to have found direct evidence that as global temperatures rise, so does the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, creating a positive feedback that in turn warms the Earth even more — basically, global warming creates more global warming.

“We discovered that not only does thickening the blanket of heat-trapping gases around our planet cause it to get warmer, but also, crucially, when it gets warmer this increases thickens the blanket of heat-trapping gases,” Tim Lenton, the paper’s author, told ThinkProgress, “so we have a process called a ‘positive feedback’ that amplifies changes in the Earth’s temperature.”

This isn’t the first time this relationship has been suggested. Scientists have previously used data from Antarctic ice cores to show that historic temperature rises were accompanied by spikes in global carbon dioxide levels, but other studies cast doubt on that timing, showing a lag of some thousand years.

While several models suggest a correlation between warming temperatures and an increase in greenhouse gas, Lenton’s team is the first to prove the relationship using direct evidence, taken from ice cores nearly one million years old.

The team — comprised of scientists from the University of Exeter, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Wageningen University in the Netherlands — analyzed Antarctic ice core data from the end of ice age cycles 400,000 and 800,000 years ago. That ancient ice is important, because it offers an extremely large amount of historical global temperature and greenhouse gas concentration data, which the scientists were able to analyze to figure out how the two interact.

Combining historical data about temperature and greenhouse gas composition, the scientists used a mathematical approach known as Takens’ theorem to look at the relationship between the two. The approach, Lenton explained, is based on the idea that if one variable causes even a small change in the other, the more information you have about the first variable. The more information you have about the first variable, the better you should be able to predict the change in the second. Eventually the variables will converge, giving researchers an idea of how strong the first is in predicting change in the second.

“We find that if A and B are temperature and CO2 (or temperature and methane) we get strong reciprocal causality,” Lenton said, proving that warmer temperatures cause an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases.

The findings provide even more support to the overwhelming evidence that humans are causing global warming by pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The surprise, Lenton explained, is that the findings also show that increasing temperature eventually increases greenhouse gases.

“It implies that we should expect the ‘Earth system’ to respond to anthropogenic global warming by amplifying it with the release of additional greenhouse gases,” Lenton said.

Though the study looks at historical data, Lenton acknowledges that current implications can’t be overlooked. “The Earth is a complex system containing many feedbacks, and they are strong enough to swing the planet between the depths of an ice age and a warm ‘interglacial’,” Lenton said.

The Earth is currently warming at a much faster rate than previous warming events, roughly ten times faster than ice-age-recovery warming, according to NASA. In 2013, atmospheric greenhouse gas hit a record high, and scientists warned that the Earth’s ability to store and mediate gas, through plants and oceans, might been approaching its saturation point.

We’re already seeing unexpected changes in the climate: the West Antarctic ice shelves, for instance, is melting at a much faster rate than scientists predicted. “As we meddle with the climate system now, driving it to hotter temperatures, we should expect the Earth to reply by amplifying the changes we are causing,” Lenton said.

The post Study: Direct Evidence That Global Warming Causes More Global Warming appeared first on ThinkProgress.