Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 87

Pakistan Now Has A 21-Person ‘Climate Council,’ Thanks To A Judge’s Ruling

The high court of justice in Pakistan’s capital city, Lahore, recently ruled that the country must do more to protect its citizens from climate change, ordering the creation of a “climate council” to ensure that Pakistan’s climate commitments are followed. That makes Pakistan the second country in a matter of months to be compelled by a court to protect its citizens from the dangers of a warming climate.

The case was brought before the court by Asghar Leghari, a farmer who claimed that his “fundamental rights” had been violated by Pakistan’s lack of action on climate change. The country has suffered a series of extreme weather events in recent years, including three consecutive years of deadly floods and a heat wave this summer that claimed more than 800 lives. In a country where half of the population relies on agriculture for survival, extreme weather events, coupled with a shorter and more intense monsoon season, can quickly turn into large-scale disasters. According to the United Nations, Pakistan is one of countries most vulnerable to climate change.

In the ruling, judge Judge Syed Mansoor Ali Shah said that, “for Pakistan, climate change is no longer a distant threat — we are already feeling and experiencing its impacts across the country and the region.” The court ruled that the country had not taken sufficient steps to enact its national climate change policy, approved by the government in 2012.

To combat the “the delay and lethargy of the state in implementing the framework,” the court ordered the creation of a “climate council,” which would include representatives from various government ministries and departments overseen by an environmental lawyer. In a second ruling, the judge then named 21 people to the commission, according to the Toronto Star.

“Pakistan was nowhere in the list of my countries where I would have expected to see this kind of a ruling,” Michael Gerrard, an environmental lawyer and professor at Columbia Law School, told the Star. “To an American lawyer like me, that a court gave such specific direction to agencies and went as far as to establish the name and members of the commission — that was amazing.”

Whether the judge’s ruling will have any lasting impact on Pakistan’s climate policy is still unclear, however. As the Guardian points out, the country’s climate change action plan claims that Pakistan has “very low technical and financial capacity to adapt to [climate change’s] adverse impacts.” In addition to climate change, Pakistan faces issues like terrorism, government corruption, water shortages, and failing energy and health infrastructure.

Earlier this year, a Dutch court ruled that the country must cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent, compared to 1990 levels, by 2020. That ruling was the result of a lawsuit filed against the Dutch government by a coalition of more than 900 plaintiffs, who claimed that their government’s inaction on climate change was a human rights violation. Following the case in the Netherlands, which was hailed as a “landmark legal case” by the Dutch press, several other nations filed similar lawsuits hoping to compel their governments to act on climate change.

“We are seeing an increasing number of legal challenges because of a disappointment in the ineffectiveness of public and private commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Laurent Neyret, a specialist in environmental law and professor at the University of Versailles, told Le Monde.

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Illegal Fishing Costs Us Billions Every Year. The U.S. Is Finally About To Do Something About It.

On Monday, at the commencement of the second annual “Our Ocean” conference in Valparaiso, Chile, President Obama announced in a video new steps to combat illegal fishing and seafood fraud, which the federal government says causes as much as $23 billion in annual losses and widespread environmental harm.

“Building on our actions to keep illegally caught fish from coming into U.S. markets, today we’re announcing new partnerships to empower developing nations to fight illegal fishing in their own waters,” President Obama told Our Ocean attendees.

The newly-launched Sea Scout initiative will identify regional “hotspots” of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing activity. It will also coordinate the identification, interception, and prosecution of perpetrators with other countries’ governments using a combination of new and existing technologies.

The administration said it will continue to develop and enhance those technologies, including infrared imaging tools that can detect the lights and heat signatures of fishing vessels from space. This detection system will launch in several Southeast Asian nations next year, where illegal fishing has taken an outsized toll on small scale fishermen and regional fish stocks. Illegal fishing is increasingly implicated in human trafficking, which pirate fishing vessels engage in to minimize their labor costs.

The United States’ leadership in combating illegal fishing aims to improve the robustness of global fish stocks, 30 percent of which have been over-exploited, and 61 percent of which are fully fished with little capacity to sustain additional fishing pressure. Scientists point out that large and predatory fish like tunas and sharks that strongly influence the health of marine ecosystems have declined by as much as two thirds worldwide, since they are specifically targeted by both legal and illegal fishermen.

Fisheries experts point out that illegal fishing exacerbates the decline of fish stocks because the unreported take muddles fish stock assessments and interferes with the ability of fisheries management efforts to set meaningful catch limits or rebuild stocks. One third of the world population depends on seafood for nutrition, and global consumption has grown steadily since the 1950s.

Illegal fishing contributes to food insecurity, public health hazards, marine ecosystem degradation, and billions in losses from fishermen worldwide.

Even the United States, where fisheries management enforced by the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery and Conservation Act has improved the state of dozens of commercially important fish stocks, is impacted by seafood fraud. An estimated one third of seafood sold domestically is mislabeled, leading to consumption of seafood that may be tied to pirate fishing, or sourced from a country with weak or nonexistent inspection standards. For example, repeated DNA testing by Oceana revealed rampant mislabeling of fish throughout American restaurants and grocery stores. Seafood fraud is therefore thought to both encourage illegal and destructive fishing, and undercut the livelihoods of law-abiding fishermen.

The initiatives announced on Monday at “Our Ocean” follow the Administration’s December 2014 release of a final action plan outlining domestic efforts to tackle illegal fishing, including expanding partnerships to detect violations, improve enforcement, and better track seafood from “bait-to-plate.” A Task Force was convened by President Obama in June 2014 and issued recommendations in March 2015 to combat IUU Fishing and Seafood Fraud.

The 2015 Our Ocean conference concluded on Tuesday, October 6th.

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As Death Toll In South Carolina Rises, Senator Faces Criticism Over Opposition To Sandy Relief

Hurricane Joaquin missed making landfall on the U.S. mainland, but extreme rainfall caused a “thousand-year” flooding event in South Carolina.

However it’s the state’s senior senator, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has found himself in trouble after being accused of hypocrisy on disaster relief funding. Sen. Graham asked for federal aid — “whatever it costs” — to help his constituents cope with the historic flooding, yet in early 2013 was one of 36 Republican senators to vote against the long-delayed Hurricane Sandy relief package. When Wolf Blitzer asked him about it, he said he did not remember why he voted against it — though he later said it was because the package was not focused enough on those affected by the storm. On two prior occasions, Graham had asked for federal aid for South Carolinians impacted by extreme weather. Oddly, Sen. Graham has used the example of the lawlessness that followed Hurricane Katrina as a reason to oppose an assault weapons ban.

Graham was not alone in opposing Sandy relief — fellow Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) also voted no, as did a majority of the House delegation: Republican Reps. Joe Wilson, Jeff Duncan, Trey Gowdy, and Mick Mulvaney.

On Monday, Sen. Scott was in Columbia, surveying flood damage. “Certainly there will be FEMA money,” he said.

The state faces what will surely be billions of dollars in damages once the waters recede and it attempts to rebuild and replace lost property. President Obama declared a state of emergency in all 46 South Carolina counties on Saturday, which facilitates federal and state response efforts. North Carolina sent 70 members of its National Guard to aid in response efforts.

Burwell/Kilnourbe Intersection before/current photo… pic.twitter.com/47WnA1fxUW

— DrinkingTicket ® (@DrinkingTicket) October 4, 2015

The situation in the Palmetto State has somehow only gotten worse since the bulk of the rain hit the state over the weekend. As of Tuesday afternoon, 16 people had died in the floods, the first last week, and tens of thousands lost power. At least 18 dams breached or failed, causing thousands to have to evacuate their homes on short notice before millions of gallons of water burst out of lakes and holding ponds. This makes life even more perilous for a populace told by state officials to stay home and off the roads if their area is safe.

Breach on the Congaree. #sctweets #wis10 #FirstAlertWIS10 #scwx pic.twitter.com/nKV3K9XxiO

— Chad Mills (@ChadMillsWIS) October 5, 2015

Dam breaks will continue to happen even with the sun shining bright because the state received so much rainfall inland that is now gushing downstream into the ocean in a second wave of deadly water. First responders have had to stage dramatic rescues of people threatened by the initial flooding. Many have seen property get carried away by floodwaters, some lost everything.

The horrible irony of flooding like this is that even those who escaped being immediately impacted now face an indeterminate period of time without clean water — on Monday, some hospitals were preparing to evacuate over fears of water shortages. Population centers like the city of Columbia remain under a boil water alert, requiring residents to boil tap water for 60 seconds before drinking it over fears of contamination.

Local wildlife has also obviously been impacted, yet the animal that has received the most attention is the fire ant, some of which formed floating rafts to escape the floods.

Even #flooding can't stop Fire #Ants in South Carolina.. amazing creatures http://t.co/YAfoIviWI6 #SCFlood pic.twitter.com/7tTeqVgxWk

— Ari Sarsalari (@AriWeather) October 6, 2015

Maj. Gen. Robert Livingston, who heads the state’s National Guard, said it was a “Hugo-level event.” He was referring to the cataclysmic hurricane that caused $7 billion in damage in 1989 and killed 13 people in South Carolina.

In a Monday afternoon press conference, Governor Nikki Haley (R-SC) warned residents to stay inside where it’s safe and to refrain from going outside to take pictures of the water — and to rely on the photos available in the media.

BREAKING: A pastor from a church in Summerville pulls an unearthed casket out of the flood waters in Ridgeville pic.twitter.com/vtOYRUQMJo

— Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) October 5, 2015

Meteorologist Steve Bowen told USA Today that the fact that the flooding in South Carolina was the sixth “1-in-1,000 year” rain event since 2010 was unprecedented. That term means that the event had a 0.1 percent likelihood of occurring in any given year. “We have certainly had our fair share in the United States in recent years, and any increasing trend in these type of rainfall events is highly concerning,” said Bowen, who works for reinsurance firm Aon Benfield.

>325 roads & 163 bridges are still closed in SC…latest on the historic #flooding: http://t.co/IqqSNRiypy #SCFlood pic.twitter.com/3SNTy3BEtm

— The Weather Channel (@weatherchannel) October 6, 2015

The usual caveats about the fact that climate change does not surely cause a singular weather event aside, there are more and more of these events happening. Weather deals with specific weather events on specific days. Climate deals with trends over years and decades. As greenhouse gases trap more heat in the atmosphere, the earth warms up. Warmer water allows more moisture to evaporate, and warmer air can hold more moisture. This strengthens and intensifies rain events that likely would have happened anyways.

2015 is well on its way to being the hottest year on record. Hurricane Joaquin intensified in an Atlantic Ocean experiencing record sea surface temperatures.

“This is yet another example, like Sandy or Irene, of weather on ‘steroids’, another case where climate change worsened the effects of an already extreme meteorological event,” Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, said.

The trend of more intense precipitation events was on deadly display this week around the world.

Violent rainstorms on the French Riviera over the weekend killed 19 people and dumped 10 percent of the area’s average yearly rainfall in two days. At least 11 people died in China after Typhoon Mujigae made landfall on Sunday. CNN meteorologist Tom Sater said it intensified rapidly, much like Hurricane Joaquin. “Nobody expected this to get to Category 4 strength,” he said.

A particularly intense rainy season in Guatemala led to a deadly mudslide on Thursday that killed at least 161 people, with hundreds more missing.

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Congress Is Trying To Lift The Oil Export Ban. This Is Why They Will Fail.

This week, the House of Representatives will consider — and likely pass — a bill to repeal a 40-year-old ban on exporting crude oil.

But some environmental groups say the repeal is a giveaway to oil companies that will bolster production and increase carbon emissions worldwide.

“This is definitely heading in the wrong direction,” Radha Adhar, a federal policy representative for the Sierra Club, told ThinkProgress.

While it seems to have sprung from nowhere, the repeal is the product of heavy campaigning from the oil industry, low oil prices, and an American fracking boom. The crude oil export ban has its roots in oil prices. When it was enacted in the 1970s, America was reeling from an oil embargo, and protecting every drop of our precious fuel from the global market seemed like a good idea. Now, the global price of oil has plummeted — and economists don’t see it bouncing back anytime soon. Meanwhile, due to developments in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, oil producers have flooded the market, pushing U.S. prices even lower than the global price.

[image error]

World and U.S. prices of oil are expected to converge if the export ban is repealed.

The benefits of repeal are up for debate. Supporters, such as Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who co-sponsored the Senate bill and have ties to the oil industry, say it will lower prices for consumers and benefit the economy.

But that’s not quite what the federal Energy Information Administration found in its study on the ban released this month. According to EIA analysis, if the ban were repealed, petroleum prices for the general American public would either slightly decrease (at higher domestic production levels) or remain the same (at current levels).

The American public has some issues with the repeal. A poll from last year found that more than 80 percent of Americans thought we should use our oil here, not export it. This broad consensus could spell trouble for the senators trying to repeal the ban.

“They do not have the votes,” Adhar said. “The perception is that this will raise gas prices.”

American refineries would certainly suffer. Margins for domestic oil processing would decline, in the face of competition from overseas refineries. (The ban applies only to crude — i.e., unprocessed — oil, and the government has already loosened that restriction in some arenas, such as exports to Canada and product-swapping with Mexico. In addition, lightly processed petroleum can also be exported.) United Steelworkers, whose 1.2 million workers and retirees come largely from the metals, mining, and manufacturing industries, including refineries, strongly opposes the repeal, and said that not only would it stifle the American oil processing industry and move the country away from independence, it would also put American oil in the hands of less-regulated processors.

Processing oil overseas could have its own environmental consequences, Rory Houseman, a spokesman for the Steelworkers, told ThinkProgress.

“Our members have done everything they can to comply with federal regulations on clean air,” Houseman said. “One of the reasons they have been able to afford that is the oil export ban.”

But the greater environmental travesty might be simply moving in the wrong direction on carbon emissions. What everyone seems to agree on is that repealing the bill will lead to more drilling in the United States, and that would likely decrease oil prices globally.

This is definitely heading in the wrong direction

According to a report from the Center for American Progress, repealing the ban would result in an additional 515 million metric tons of carbon pollution each year — roughly equal to 108 million more passenger cars or 135 coal-fired power plants.

Decreasing oil prices may sound good to many consumers — but it doesn’t to most environmentalists. There is a clear link between oil (and gas) prices and consumption. The less fossil fuels cost, the more we use them.

A study out of University of California, Berkeley found that gas subsidies created economic inefficiencies. (Ironically, the researcher considered the United States an “outlier,” because subsidies here are on the production side, which benefits companies, not consumers. That is not necessarily an argument for continuing them.) Transportation makes up nearly a third of America’s carbon emissions, and natural gas — billed as a clean energy source by some — has been linked to massive amounts of methane added to the atmosphere, and has raised significant concerns about groundwater.

That is to say that, broadly, fossil fuel subsidies are not good for the climate. The International Monetary Fund found that worldwide, governments spend some $5.3 trillion a year in hidden costs for fossil fuels — including subsidies and transferred costs. Meanwhile, back in the United States, legislators are vehemently resisting attempts to estimate how much it actually costs us to ruin the planet.

Unnecessarily lowering the price of fossil fuels also has negative effects on developing clean energy.

One recent study found that adoption of energy storage — seen as a key piece in developing a renewable energy grid — is affected by natural gas prices. At low prices, storage suffers.

The big argument against wind and solar — that they are too expensive — has become less and less true. In many places, the cost of electricity from renewable resources equals or is even lower than the cost of fossil fuel.

It has been suggested that the oil industry will barter its support for an extension of renewable energy tax credits for a repeal of the ban, but opponents are skeptical that would be enough to garner the senate votes needed.

The Sierra Club, at least, isn’t taking the bait.

“Sierra Club is not engaging in conversation to negotiate the crude export ban for something we think congress has to do anyways,” Adhar said.

And if Heitkamp and Murkowski do manage to usher their bill through, it still might not become law. President Obama has already threatened to veto it.

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What Will A Global Agreement On Climate Change Look Like? The U.N. Just Gave Us A Clue.

With less than two months before the world’s leaders convene in Paris for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the U.N. has released a new preliminary draft of what an international climate agreement — the purpose of the two-week convention — might look like.

This draft is an improvement on previous versions…

While the new draft is sparse on specific details, it does include a commitment by the world’s governments to hold global warming at 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels, the threshold that scientists generally agree is required to stave off irreversible consequences of climate change. The new draft also stipulates that nations should readdress their limits on greenhouse gas emissions every five years, a requirement that environmentalists championed at negotiations in Bonn in early September.

“This draft is an improvement on previous versions,” Han Chen, international climate advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told ThinkProgress. “The text has been significantly shortened from 83 pages in September to 20 pages. This text is based on the conversations between negotiators at the spin-off discussions during the September negotiating session. So it’s clear that there were areas where countries found some compromise at the last session.”

Representatives from leading nations have just five days of negotiations left before the Paris talks begin — they’ll meet from October 19 to 23 in Bonn, Germany, to solidify as many details about an international agreement as possible before Paris.

There is some concern that current national pledges won’t be enough to stay under 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels, which is why environmentalists view a requirement that countries reevaluate their greenhouse gas emission targets every five years as crucial to a successful climate deal. And while the new draft does contain that provision, exactly how countries will be expected to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions is still a topic of negotiation. As it stands now, this is what the draft agreement has to say about climate mitigation:

1. Parties aim to reach by [X date] [a peaking of global greenhouse gas emissions][zero net greenhouse gas emissions][a[n] X per cent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions][global low-carbon transformation][global low-emission transformation][carbon neutrality][climate neutrality].

2. Each Party [shall][should][other] regularly communicate a nationally determined mitigation [contribution][commitment][other] that it [shall][should][other] implement.

3. Each Party’s nationally determined mitigation [contribution][commitment][other] [shall][should][other] reflect a progression beyond its previous efforts, noting that those Parties that have previously communicated economy-wide efforts should continue to do so in a manner that is progressively more ambitious and that all Parties should aim to do so over time. Each mitigation [contribution][commitment][other] [shall][should][other] reflect the Party’s highest

possible ambition, in light of its national circumstances, and:

(a) [Be quantified or quantifiable;]

(b) [Be unconditional, at least in part;]

(c) [Other].

The new draft is also vague on how much responsibility developed countries should bear in financing adaptation and mitigation efforts in developing countries, another contentious issue that some experts say is crucial for a successful international deal. As part of the international negotiations before Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries pledged to contribute $100 billion a year to developing nations starting in 2020 — but the new draft suggests that $100 billion might not be enough.

…it’s clear that there were areas where countries found some compromise at the last session

“The mobilization of climate finance [shall][should][other] be scaled up [from USD 100 billion per year] from 2020,” the draft reads. The draft doesn’t specify how the funds would be collected, though it does say that they would need to come from both public and private sources.

Greenpeace praised the new draft as a step in the right direction, though the group expressed disappointment in the fact that the draft didn’t get into specifics about how nations could mitigate their emissions.

“The long term goals being proposed ignore the options outlined by those heads of government invited to the climate lunch last week of September in New York — namely the de-carbonisation of the global economy and the goal of 100% renewable energy,” Martin Kaiser, head of international climate politics for Greenpeace, said in an emailed statement. “If we are to keep mean temperatures increases to below 2°C or even 1.5, the process must speed up. The only way to achieve that is through a transition to 100 percent renewable energy by mid-century.”

But while the new draft leaves much to be negotiated, Chen saw it as an important step forward in advance of the next round of Bonn talks and the Paris conference.

“The draft Agreement has really clarified the options on mitigation, adaptation, and finance,” she said. “A draft text that is only 20 pages long puts the Paris negotiations in a much better place than the talks in Copenhagen. It gives negotiators a much more manageable set of options to work with.”

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This Community In Alaska Is Relocating Because Of Climate Change

As erosion and rising seas destroy their land, residents of Newtok, Alaska, are hopeful that their community can be saved before the threats of climate change engulf their village.

About 500 miles west of Anchorage, the Yup’ik Eskimo community has begun the elaborate process of relocating their village nine miles away from its current location. The community has become a news centerpiece in recent years, commonly being referred to as “the sinking village.” The devastating effects of the world’s changing climate are predominately evident in Newtok, and it is being considered as a possible national model for moving entire communities that are facing the effects of climate change.

The State of Alaska is currently seeking a portion of a nearly $1 billion National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC) grant which helps to move and assist threatened villages and adapt to the threats posed by climate change. In the NDRC proposal released Friday, Alaska State officials are proposing $62.6 million of the NDRC grant money be used for relocating 62 families from Newtok to new homes in a town called Mertarvik. They are also seeking funding $162.4 million in relief for for three other vulnerable areas — Emmonak, Galena and Teller. Newtok is the only community that has begun a physical move thus far.

A 2011 state report quoted a Traditional Council member saying, “This will be our final move. Mertarvik is going to be a lifetime permanent location, higher ground with rock underneath.”

Though Newtok is the furthest along in the relocation process compared to other communities planning to follow their steps, it is still might not be far enough. Even the highest point in the village — a school that sits perched atop 20-foot pilings — could be underwater by 2017. It has been estimated that homes may not be able to move to the new location until 2018 or possibly later given the number of bureaucratic and economic setbacks.

[image error]

CREDIT: U.S. Global Change Research Program

It has been almost a decade since Newtok’s residents voted to relocate their villages to higher bedrock. Since then, the community has faced a number of obstacles, including internal political conflicts that have severely delayed the relocation process. The Newtok Village Council, formerly known as Newtok Traditional Council, went through a reformation process with the assistance of the Interior Board of Indian Appeals which began in 2012. The appeals board ruled to uphold the residents’ request for new leadership and the reformed council was finalized this past August. Last month Romy Cadiente, the Village Council’s tribal coordinator, told Alaska Public Media that they are currently re-establishing connections with state and federal agencies that were lost during that process.

Sitting on a permafrost, which has been rapidly melting due to rising temperatures, Newtok residents reported that 50 to 75 feet of land each year are being washed away. The village is also encircled by The Ninglick river, which has essentially been eating the land out from under the village. Alaska is warming at a rate two to three times faster than the rest of the United States and the average winter temperature has risen 6.3 degrees over the past 50 years, leaving very little time to spare.

The Government Accountability Office estimated that 31 villages in Alaska are in imminent danger from erosion and rising sea level caused by climate change. During Obama’s landmark visit to Alaska last month — making him the first U.S. President to travel above of the Arctic Circle — he traveled to two other communities both facing major threats from climate change, Kotzebue and Kivalian.

The national resilience competition will not be easy, with other devastated areas such as Hurricane Sandy victims and New Orleans also vying for relief. Funds will be granted to the most impacted, distressed, and needy eligible communities. Alaska is one of 40 finalists for the grant money. The public is invited to participate in the development for the second phase of the NDRC application for the state until October 17, with final submissions for competition due October 27. The village is also trying to obtain funding through the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Mertarvik, the new location for Newtok, currently has six houses built. Further plans include two intersecting airport runways, a wind farm, a water plant, a small boat harbor and a community garden.

This is not the first time a community has been displaced due to the impacts of climate change. Last year a small town on Taro Island, the capital of Choiseul Province in the Solomon Islands, became the first town in the Pacific Islands to plan to relocate their entire population of about 1,000 residents. Other island communities, such as Kiribati, one of the Pacific’s lowest-lying island nations, have also acknowledged that the relocation of their people may be inevitable.

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BP Comes To Record $20.8 Billion Settlement Agreement Over Gulf Oil Spill

The biggest environmental settlement in history is, it turns out, a little bigger than first thought.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and five Gulf Coast states announced a $20.8 billion settlement with BP Monday, an amount that at first glance looks like an increase over the $18.7 billion that was announced in July. However, the new amount, according to BP, includes money the company has already spent or disclosed on the spill, so it doesn’t mean the company will be spending $2 billion more than it agreed to in July.

“Taken as a whole, this resolution is both strong and fitting. BP is receiving the punishment it deserves,” Lynch said. “The steep penalty should inspire BP and its peers to take every measure necessary to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again.”

Of that $20.8 billion, more than $8 billion will go towards environmental restoration efforts in the Gulf region. About $5 billion of that will fund the restoration of Louisiana’s coastal marshes, according to the Draft Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan, which was also released Monday by the Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustees Council. Louisiana’s marshes were hit hard by the Gulf oil spill — a 2012 study found that the disaster, which smothered and killed wetland grasses, sped up the loss of Louisiana’s marshes.

The restoration plan outlines five broad goals: to “restore and conserve habitat; restore water quality; replenish and protect living coastal and marine resources; provide and enhance recreational opportunities; and provide for monitoring, adaptive management, and administrative oversight to support restoration implementation.” It also outlines 13 priorities for restoration, including wetlands, water quality, oysters, sturgeon, sea turtles, marine mammals, birds, and creatures that live on the sea floor.

Over the years, scientists have worked to determine just how much the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 men and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, has impacted the Gulf’s ecosystems. One scientist, who’s been studying the spill’s impact on coral reefs, said in 2014 that the “footprint of the impact of the spill on coral communities is both deeper and wider than previous data indicated.” A report earlier this year found that at least 20 animals in the Gulf are still being harmed by oil. And one researcher told ThinkProgress last year that the oil from the spill is becoming “part of the the geological record” of the sea floor.

Environmental groups praised the release of the draft restoration plan, and the analysis of how the spill affected the Gulf environment that came along with it.

“The oil disaster damaged hundreds of miles of shoreline (and) killed more than 1 million birds, mammals and other wildlife — and we will not know the full environmental effects of the spill for decades to come,” the Audubon Audubon Society, Environmental Defense Fund, and other groups said in a joint statement. “The (assessment) process will help bring the Gulf back to the state it was before the spill, and the release of this plan is a positive step toward that end.”

The groups also said they were pleased that the settlement, which still needs to be approved by a judge, is close to being finalized.

The rest of the settlement is divided among Clean Water Act penalties, which account for about $5.5 billion, and the $5 billion that will be given to Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. In addition, about $600 million will go towards other costs that arose from the spill, and up to $1 billion will go towards localities seeking economic damage from the spill.

“Today is a day of justice for every family and every Gulf community whose health, land, water and livelihoods were threatened by the Deepwater Horizon disaster,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a statement. “This settlement puts billions of dollars to work to help restore the gulf, and holds BP publicly accountable accountable for changes to its practices, to prevent this kind of disaster from happening again.”

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New Research Shows How Climate Change Will Influence Infant Health

The world has learned much in recent years about the harmful health effects of climate change, such as heat-related deaths, respiratory and heart problems caused by air pollution, and emotional disorders that result from the consequences of extreme weather.

Now researchers have found that it poses a surprising new danger: low birth weight.

In a first-of-a-kind study, scientists from the University of Utah spent two years examining the relationships between fetal development and pregnant women’s exposure to low precipitation and very hot days. The research, which looked at data from 19 African countries, found that reduced rainfall and high heat resulted in newborns who weighed less than 2,500 grams, or about 5.5 pounds.

“In the very early stages of intra-uterine development, climate change has the potential to significantly impact birth outcomes,” said Kathryn Grace, assistant professor of geography at the university and lead author of the study, which appeared in Global Environmental Change. “While the severity of that impact depends on where the pregnant woman lives, in this case the developing world, we can see the potential for similar outcomes everywhere,” including in the United States.

“Women who are pregnant are more sensitive to heat stress, dehydration, etc.,” although access to air conditioners in this country “would likely reduce the exposure and the stress,” she said.

Low birth weight already is a major global public health problem, associated with a number of both short- and long-term consequences, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO estimates that up to 20 percent of all births worldwide are low birth weight, representing more than 20 million births annually.

Low birth weight infants face the potential of multiple health issues, including infections, respiratory distress, heart problems, jaundice, anemia, and chronic lung conditions. Later in life, they are at increased risk for developmental and learning disorders, such as hyperactivity and cognitive deficits.

Because of this reliance on rainfall, this makes these communities particularly sensitive to climate change

As a result, the cost of caring for these infants can be considerable — newborn intensive care unit stays, for example — posing a significant financial burden in developing countries where such services are not always available, and where societies often stigmatize physical disabilities.

“For so long, scientists and researchers have not studied the uterine environment and the quality of life of pregnant women in detail, so thinking about these things in the developing world is a fairly new facet of maternal/child health studies,” Grace said.

The developing world, and many communities throughout Africa, are dependent on rainfall for agriculture, making them especially susceptible to the impacts of climate change, she said.

“People have to grow their own food a lot of the time, to sell or to eat, and they are often reliant on rainfall with only very limited access to irrigation technologies,” Grace said. “This dependence and vulnerability is especially important for poor people because they don’t have the food stores or financial savings to cope with a failed rainy season. Because of this reliance on rainfall, this makes these communities particularly sensitive to climate change.”

This also may have an influence on water quality.

“If there’s less precipitation and more dryness, are women reliant on less clean water sources?” Grace said. “Are they drinking enough if water is scarce? We don’t know the answer to these questions but staying hydrated during pregnancy is extremely important for the placenta and the developing neonate.”

The research team included Heidi Hanson, from the university’s family and preventative medicine department; Frank Davenport and Shraddhanand Shukla, of the University of California at Santa Barbara’s climate hazards group; and Christopher Funk of the U.S. Geological Survey and the climate hazards group.

[image error]

CREDIT: Global Environmental Change

In 2013, they merged health data from Demographic and Health Surveys, part of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with growing season data, and with temperature and rainfall data from a variety of sources.

Also, they collected information on growing and livelihood from USAID’s Famine Early Warning System, and precipitation data from the climate hazards group, the first time scientists have used fine-resolution precipitation and temperature data with birth statistics to determine whether and how climate affects birth weight.

The researchers examined nearly 70,000 births between 1986 and 2010, and coordinated them with seasonal rainfall and air temperatures, factoring in information about the mother and her household, such as education and whether the dwelling had electricity.

The team then calculated the average rainfall for a given month within 10 kilometers of the infant’s birth location, gathering data for each month up to one year before the baby was born, summing the values over each trimester. They did the same with temperature records, including the number of days in each birth month when the temperature exceeded 105F and 100F as the maximum daily temperature, again summing up the values over trimesters.

The researchers found that an increase of hot days higher than 100F during any trimester corresponded to a decrease in birth weight; just one such extra day during the second trimester matched a 0.9g weight drop. This same result held with an even larger effect when the temperature rose to 105 F.

Conversely, higher rainfall during any trimester was associated with larger birth weights. On average, a 10 mm rise in rain during a particular trimester corresponded to an increase of about 0.3 to 0.5 grams.

The scientists did not specifically look at the effects of high precipitation. “Mostly we looked at average precipitation,” Grace said. “Future work could be to look at high precipitation after we identified a causal link — maybe water borne illnesses are spread or food production fails as a result of flooding?

“Another thing to consider is that our sickest and or most stressed women may not survive their pregnancies or their pregnancies may end in still birth or in miscarriage,” she added. “Unfortunately, given the type of data that we have here and the stigma associated with infant and pregnancy loss, we do not have great information on these outcomes. This is definitely an area of study that I plan to pursue in the future.”

Marlene Cimons, a former Los Angeles Times Washington reporter, is a freelance writer who specializes in science, health, and the environment.

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Environmentalists: The Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement Is A Disaster For Climate Change

After years of meetings, months of Congressional debates, and days of around-the-clock negotiations, the United States and 11 other countries reached an agreement on the Trans-Pacific Trade agreement (TPP) on Monday.

If adopted, the TPP will eliminate or reduce tariffs between Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. But while it specifically addresses some environmental concerns — such as trade of illegally harvested resources or wildlife trafficking — climate change activists saw Monday’s announcement as the culmination of a long-watched train wreck.

“It’s still the same disaster for climate change it was three months ago,” 350.org’s Karthik Ganapathy told ThinkProgress.

His organization, as well as many others, say the TPP protects multinational corporations that profit from fossil fuels. Some have argued that under the TPP — as with the North American Free Trade Agreement — companies will be able to sue countries that enact laws to limit fossil fuel extraction or carbon emissions, if it interferes with profits. The deal also will lead to the rubber-stamping of export facilities for natural gas from fracking and will prevent the U.S. Trade Representative from ever including climate change action in trade deals, Ganapathy said.

But the White House has touted the deal’s potential for environmental conservation, calling it a “once-in-a-generation chance to protect our oceans, wildlife, and the environment.”

Environmentalists aren’t buying it.

“The White House seems intent on telling everyone environmentalists like this deal, but the truth is by handing even more power to Big Oil, letting massive corporations throw tantrum lawsuits at governments who dare to scale back emissions, and prolonging our reliance on fracked gas, there’s no question that the Transpacific Partnership is an absolute disaster for our climate,” Ganapathy said in an email.

Other environmentalists, including Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything, took to Twitter to register their outrage, especially after the World Wildlife Fundpraised the deal to the New York Times.

This is pathetic. A betrayal. For real, folks. Memories of how Big Green helped push through NAFTA. #NoTpp #TPP https://t.co/t5f4GiZW4o

— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) October 5, 2015

WWF told The Huffington Post that it did not endorse the dea.

Under NAFTA, there have been cases brought against countries that have enacted fossil fuel regulations.

“That’s why so many groups and organizations who care about climate change have repeatedly bashed this corporate giveaway — and suggesting otherwise is nothing short of misleading cynicism,” Ganapathy said. “Decision-makers should know better than to try and distort our movement’s position.”

According to a summary of the agreement provided by the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, there will be “opportunities for public input in implementation of the Environment chapter.”

“Congress and the American people will have months to read every word before I sign it,” President Obama said in a statement. “If we can get this agreement to my desk, then we can help our businesses sell more Made in America goods and services around the world, and we can help more American workers compete and win.”

Of course, the deal, reached in Atlanta, is not on his desk yet. Congress has 90 days to review the agreement, and it is expected that environmental groups will try to mobilize supporters to reach out to lawmakers.

“The compromises that [were] struck will further enrage environmentalists and other progressive opposition, and threatens to undermine the razor thin majority that gave President Obama Fast Track trade authority,” Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. “Friends of the Earth urges our members and members of Congress to oppose this bad deal.”

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Obama Just Announced Plans To Create The First Marine Sanctuaries In More Than A Decade

On Monday, President Obama announced plans to create two sanctuaries — one in Maryland’s Potomac River, and another in Lake Michigan — which would be the first new national marine sanctuaries designated since 2000.

The announcement came during the opening day of the second annual Our Ocean conference, held this year in Valparaiso, Chile. The conference brings together world leaders to discuss threats to marine ecosystems, including illegal fishing, plastic pollution, ocean acidification, and the creation of marine protected areas.

“Our economies, our livelihoods, and our food all depend on our oceans, and yet we know that our actions are changing them,” Obama said in a video announcing the marine sanctuaries. He cited greenhouse gas emissions contributing to ocean acidification, marine pollution, and illegal fishing as serious threats facing the oceans. The president and went on to tout both the United States’ efforts to curb carbon pollution and the creation of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, the largest marine reserve in the world, as actions meant to safeguard marine health.

“Today, I can announce we are taking steps to create two new marine sanctuaries,” Obama said. “These actions will protect waters of historic and national importance, and in the coming months, I will look for opportunities to protect even more of our waters.”

Together, the marine sanctuaries would protect nearly 900 square miles of water in the United States: one 875-square mile section of Lake Michigan, near Wisconsin, and a 14-square mile stretch of tidal waters in Maryland. Both are areas known for their collection of shipwrecks — the proposed site in Lake Michigan is home to 39 known shipwrecks, with 15 listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Marlow Bay, the proposed Maryland site, is home to the largest number of known shipwrecks in the Western Hemisphere, with nearly 200 vessels from the Revolutionary War to present day. The Maryland site is also an area of particular ecological importance, providing habitat for bald eagles, striped bass, osprey, herons, beavers, as well as other water fowl and fish. The proposed site in Lake Michigan also serves as an important stopover for migratory birds making the seasonal journey from Canada to Central and South America.

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The two planned marine sanctuary sites, along Lake Michigan (left) and in Maryland (right).

CREDIT: NOAA

Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reopened the public nomination process for marine sanctuaries for the first time in 20 years. Along with the two proposals announced today, five other sites from around the country were nominated. Both of the approved nominations were proposed by the state’s governor — Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and then-Maryland governor Martin O’Malley (D).

Defining an area as a marine sanctuary is basically the aquatic equivalent of designating an area as wilderness — it affords the area the most stringent protections available under the federal government. There are currently 14 marine sanctuaries designated throughout the United States, ranging from the Pacific Islands to the Florida Keys. Any activities, whether recreational or commercial, that are conducted within marine sanctuaries must be deemed compatible with resource protection by the Secretary of Commerce. Generally, when an area is designated as a marine sanctuary, it becomes off-limits to oil and gas drilling.

Conservation groups applauded today’s announcement, with the Chesapeake Conservancy calling it “a milestone in the designation process.”

“We’re thrilled to learn of NOAA’s Notice of Intent, as Mallows Bay-Potomac River is now a step closer toward becoming the first National Marine Sanctuary designated in more than 20 years and the first ever in the Chesapeake,” Joel Dunn, president and CEO of the Chesapeake Conservancy, said in a statement. “We’re now calling on the public for their help to make this dream a reality by attending the public meetings and telling NOAA officials why this designation is important. The public’s participation during this critical phase can help protect Mallows Bay for generations to come.”

The public can submit comments to NOAA about the sanctuaries through January 15, either online or through the mail. Following the public comment period, NOAA will draft an environmental impact statement, a management plan, and potential regulations for each site before making its final determination.

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