Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 90

Utah Congressman Vows To Kill America’s Top Parks Program

Barely 24 hours after Pope Francis appealed to U.S. lawmakers to help protect “our common home,” Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) announced that he intends this week to kill the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), which is known as America’s best parks program. The move — which is expected to succeed — places dozens of U.S. national parks at heightened risk of commercial development, including Grand Teton National Park and Gettysburg National Military Park.

The LWCF is a budget-neutral program that uses fees from offshore oil and gas development to fund national, state, and local conservation projects. Although the program enjoys widespread bipartisan support, it is scheduled to expire on Wednesday, September 30.

In a press release Friday, Bishop, who serves as chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, promised to block all attempts to save the program unless significant changes are made to its structure to prevent the federal government from protecting additional land. “Under my chairmanship, the status quo will be challenged,” said Bishop in the release.

In his statement Friday, Bishop did not outline what specific changes he would like to see. In July, 2014, however, Bishop wrote that the LWCF should be transformed into a program to pay for “the education of future American energy industry workers” and to “help local governments.”

In addition to helping create tens of thousands of local parks and outdoor recreation projects, LWCF is the only source of funding the U.S. government is able to use to purchase pockets of unprotected land within park borders, known as inholdings. Bishop has long been a vocal opponent of using LWCF funds to purchase inholdings, telling a reporter in March that “there’s no way in hell I am going to allow you just to spend that to buy the inholdings they’re talking about or to expand the footprint of the federal government.”

However, the practice of purchasing inholdings helps protect national parks from development, reduce maintenance costs and improve management. A recent analysis by the Center for Western Priorities found that LWCF has protected 2.2 million acres of America’s national parks since it was created. However, 43 percent of all national parks across 44 states are still at “potential risk of development because of unprotected private lands within park boundaries.” If LWCF is not renewed, plans to protect these national parks will be deferred, putting several iconic landscapes in danger of private development in the coming year.

At Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, for example, the National Park Service (NPS) is intending to protect an Underground Railroad site within the park’s boundaries. The NPS notes that LWCF funds are urgently needed to complete the purchase because there is “intense pressure to commercially develop privately owned lands in and around Gettysburg National Military Park.”

At Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, the NPS is scheduled to use LWCF funds to purchase 640 acres of state-owned land in 2016. According to the NPS, the area is at risk of “the development of these lands into further resort housing, or by individuals for trophy homes [which] will destroy the integrity of the open space, the wildlife habitat and the migration corridors of the landscape.”

Although the idea of building a mansion in the middle of a National Park seems farfetched, these inholdings of land within national parks have been developed into luxury homes in the past.

“If a willing property owner wants to sell his or her inholding to the National Park Service and protect the land for future generations, the only source of funding available to make the purchase is the Land and Water Conservation Fund,” the Center for Western Priorities wrote earlier this month. “Unless Congress acts, LWCF will expire on September 30, 2015, leaving no way for our national parks to continue to be made whole.”

Last week, 30 Republican members of Congress joined governors, mayors, administration officials and their colleagues in supporting reauthorization of LWCF. In a letter to Speaker John Boehner, the Republican representatives emphasized that the program “remains the premier federal program to conserve our nation’s land, water, historic, and recreation heritage,” and asked the Speaker for “help in identifying and securing a legislative path forward for LWCF.”

While there appears to be support for reauthorizing LWCF, Bishop’s statements make it unlikely that the program will be renewed by Wednesday as part of an agreement to prevent a government shutdown.

Claire Moser is the Research and Advocacy Associate with the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress. You can follow her on Twitter at @Claire_Moser. Matt Lee-Ashley is a Senior Fellow with the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress. Follow him on Twitter @MLeeAshley.

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Marco Rubio Questioned By Republican College Student On Climate And Energy Policy

DAVENPORT, IA — When Dan Herrera asked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) about the environment at a town hall meeting in Iowa last week, it almost seemed like a set-up.

After all, environmental groups have been known to plant their advocates among the crowds of Republican candidates’ events across the country, attempting to pressure them on issues like clean air and climate change. And Herrera’s question was framed the way any good environmentalist would ask it — first, an appeal to Rubio’s Catholic faith, and then, a direct question about specific policy.

“Pope Francis in the past couple days said a lot about the environment,” the 20-year-old Herrera said, smiling into the brightly lit stage where Rubio stood. “What environmental policies, if any, will you implement if you’re president?”

As it turned out, Herrera was not a member of 350.org or NextGen Climate Action, but a member of the Augustana College Republicans. Located at Augustana College just across the Missisippi River, the group was is dedicated “to promoting the ideals and candidates of their party.”

The Republican party — at least in Washington, D.C. — has been roundly accused of being anti-environment. More than 56 percent of current Congressional Republicans deny climate change, and the chairman of the House Environment committee is a coal-loving climate science denier. Week after week, congressional Republicans hold hearings to decry the EPA’s proposed regulations on smog, coal ash, and drinking water, while calling other hearings to promote fracking, offshore drilling, and crude oil exports.

But among young Republicans like Herrera, the climate tide seems to be changing.

Young Republicans are far more likely to support limiting greenhouse gas emissions than their older counterparts

CREDIT: Washington Post

“Look, we all live here,” Herrera told ThinkProgress after the town hall. “I don’t like waking up every morning knowing that I’m wrapping my hands around my nieces’ and nephews’ necks, choking them out with the exhaust that I’m emitting. … I want them to see the same things that I see when I go outside when they’re my age. And I think that in the current pathway we’re at, that’s not going to be a possibility.”

Young Republicans like Herrera are far more likely to support government action on climate and the environment than their older counterparts. A Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that, while fewer than half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents over age 50 support greenhouse gas regulations, approximately six in 10 of the same group under 50 do support those regulations — even if it means raising energy expenses.

In addition, more groups are forming and organizing to promote conservative clean energy and carbon-reducing policies. Before the first Republican debate, the groups Young Conservatives for Energy Reform and the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum gathered to promote their version of conservative environmentalism — “ending government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, boosting energy efficiency, advancing renewable sources like wind and solar power and moving away from the idea that ‘drill baby, drill’ is a solution.”

An invite to a watch party for the first Republican presidential debate, sent by conservative groups that support clean energy and environmental policies.

Herrera’s views largely aligned with that version. “Why are we still subsidizing oil? That shouldn’t be subsidized anymore. We should be supporting air and ethanol and solar,” he said.

“The amount of permanent jobs we can come up with in the clean energy industry is phenomenal,” he continued. “When I go to a wind farm, I see actual people working on [turbines] and talk to the designers — I see actual jobs out there. And I think that’s where the Republican solution comes in. It is very possible to stimulate the economy while continuing to produce jobs.”

As for his question for Rubio — what environmental policies would be support as president? — Herrera said he was satisfied with his answer, even though Rubio did not provide many specifics. Instead of saying what policies he would support, Rubio said he was in favor of clean air and water but “Here’s what I don’t support,” before explaining his opposition to EPA regulations.

Later, however, Rubio said he would was in favor of natural gas — which he called a “very clean fuel” — and other renewable sources. “But it has to be driven by markets, and it has to driven by innovation, not by by government mandates that pick winners and losers,” Rubio said.

That was the portion Herrera was impressed with. “The fact that he didn’t just shut it down and immediately say ‘we’re not going to do anything,’ that spoke volumes to me coming from a Republican standpoint,” he said.

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio speaks with voters after a town hall in Davenport, Iowa on Sept. 24, 2015.

CREDIT: Emily Atkin

Climate change, as it happened, was the one thing Herrera wanted Rubio to talk about more. In fact, Herrera criticized Rubio for not publicly accepting the science of climate change, which states that the phenomenon is caused by carbon emissions and will be catastrophic if those emissions are not reduced. Rubio has recently said he doesn’t think climate change is a problem.

“In the past he was a climate science supporter, and now he’s publicly a climate science denier,” Herrera said. “I didn’t feel comfortable calling him out on that in front of so many people, but I would love to understand the reason behind his change of views.”

Rubio isn’t the only Republican presidential candidate getting grilled about climate change and the environment on the campaign trail. At one of Carly Fiorina’s town hall events in Dubuque, Iowa, a young woman in red glasses stood up and asked what the former Hewlett-Packard CEO what she would do to help fix the problem. Fiorina, too, said she was opposed to EPA regulation.

Though it was unclear whether the woman was a Republican, Herrera thinks that presidential candidates will continue to face those kinds of questions from GOP Iowans.

“[Iowans] are so very intimately tied with the land, they’re recognizing that the climate is changing and that as a human race … we’ve been awful stewards of the land,” he said. “That should have changed years ago, but it didn’t. And we can’t change the past, so we need to act right now.”

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The EPA Is Set To Issue Rule Curbing A Dangerous Form Of Air Pollution

The United States is set to get a new rule on a dangerous form of air pollution this week.

The Environmental Protection Agency is scheduled to release its final rule on ozone levels by October 1, a regulation that will seek to reduce the amount of ozone in the air. Ozone is the main ingredient in smog and is created when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds — both of which can come from car exhaust, gasoline, and power plants — interact with sunlight. Right now, the EPA’s standard for ground-level ozone is set at 75 parts per billion (ppb). Last year, the agency proposed to lower this standard of acceptable ozone levels to somewhere between 65 and 70 ppb.

The EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, a group of scientists that advise the agency, said in a letter last year that setting the standard below 70 ppb — and, ideally, as low as 60 ppb — would be the best move the agency could make for public health. Breathing in ozone can contribute to a range of health impacts, including, according to the letter, “decrease in lung function, increase in respiratory symptoms, and increase in airway inflammation.”

60 ppb would certainly offer more public health protection than levels of 70 ppb or 65 ppb

“The recommended lower bound of 60 ppb would certainly offer more public health protection than levels of 70 ppb or 65 ppb and would provide an adequate margin of safety,” the letter states. “Thus, our policy advice is to set the level of the standard lower than 70 ppb within a range down to 60 ppb, taking into account your judgment regarding the desired margin of safety to protect public health, and taking into account that lower levels will provide incrementally greater margins of safety.”

The EPA itself said in 2010 that a standard of 60 ppb would help prevent 4,000 to 12,000 premature deaths and 21,000 hospital visits. It would also reduce the number of missed school and work days by 2.5 million. Ozone affects children, the elderly, and people with asthma most of all, but the current standard of 75 ppb leads to impacts for healthy adults who spend a significant chunk of their time outside as well.

The Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee states that a standard of 70 ppb provides “little margin of safety for the protection of public health, particularly for sensitive subpopulations.”

“Although a level of 70 ppb is more protective of public health than the current standard, it may not meet the statutory requirement to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety,” the letter reads.

But it’s not clear yet what the EPA will choose as its final standard. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, some say that the agency will likely choose 70 ppb, while others are more convinced that the agency will bring the standard down below 70 to 68 ppb.

Though the EPA’s science advisers make clear that anything closer to 60 ppb would be ideal, other interests have been lobbying the EPA to keep the new standard closer to the current standard. The National Association of Manufacturers has released ads against the administration’s push to change the standard, and the association claims that the new rule will “punish hardworking manufacturers” and cause job losses. Since ground-level ozone comes from a variety of industries — chemical manufacturers, power plants, autobody paint shops, print shops, agricultural operations, and even gas-powered lawn equipment — a range of different companies would be affected by the new rule. To comply with it, they might need to switch to a lower-emissions fuel source or shut down old plants.

The American Petroleum Institute has also fought against a new rule, claiming that a standard of 68 ppb would leave 1,433 counties out of compliance with ozone rules, putting an economic strain on those counties (the Sierra Club, however, found in its own analysis that that number was highly exaggerated).

CREDIT: Environmental Protection Agency

Industry opposition to a new ozone rule isn’t surprising: when the Bush administration brought the ozone standard down from approximately 84 ppb to 75 ppb, the outcry from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers was similar to what it is today.

Some lawmakers, too, have fought against a new ozone standard.

“Don’t you believe that having a good paying job with health benefits is also protective of human health?” Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) asked EPA Acting Assistant Administrator Janet McCabe during a hearing in June. “You’re not making those cost-benefit analyses.”

The EPA isn’t required to consider economic aspects of air quality regulations under the Clean Air Act. But according to EPA analysis, an ozone standard of 70 ppb would cost $3.9 billion each year, and a 65 ppb standard would cost $15 billion each year. A 70 ppb standard would also bring $6.4 to $13 billion in benefits, including “the value of preventing significant health effects in children and adults,” and a 65 ppb standard would bring benefits of $19 to $38 billion.

In the lead-up to the final rule, some have been pushing the EPA to issue a strong version of the regulation. Seventy mayors from around the U.S. signed on to a letter supporting the “strongest possible clean air protections against smog pollution, also known as ground-level ozone.” Multiple health groups also wrote a letter to President Obama last month, saying that a new rule will help protect all Americans, but especially those communities most at risk from pollution, including children, the elderly, and minorities.

“By adopting a truly protective ozone pollution limit, America will be closer to fulfilling the purpose of the Clean Air Act: to protect the health of all Americans from deadly dangers in the air we breathe,” the letter states. “The science clearly supports a much stronger ozone limit. Please, make the most of this opportunity, and give Americans the protection they deserve.”

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We May Have Just Bought Ourselves An Extra Decade To Avoid Catastrophic Climate Change

The world appears to have bought itself a little time in the fight to avoid climate catastrophe, according to a new analysis.

Virtually every major country has made pledges to limit or reduce carbon pollution in advance of the Paris climate talks this December. These pledges generally end in 2025 or 2030, and so they only matter if the world keeps ratcheting down its greenhouse gas emissions in future agreements until we get near zero by century’s end. Otherwise we will blow past the 2°C line of defense against very dangerous-to-catastrophic global warming, and hit 3.6°C warming by 2100.

That’s the key finding of a new analysis from Climate Interactive and the MIT Sloan School of Business, tallying up the global pledges to limit carbon pollution leading up to the big Paris climate talks later this year.

Those pledges, called intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs), include the European Union cutting total emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, the U.S. cutting net greenhouse gas emissions emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 (including land use change and forestry), and China’s peaking in CO2 by 2030.

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Impact of national climate pledges (aka INDCs) on world’s greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalents (CO2e).

The good news, as you can see, is that the INDCs have bought us another five to 10 years of staying close to the 2°C path. I asked Andrew Jones, one of the systems-thinking savants behind Climate Interactive, if that was correct and he said, “Yep, about seven years.” By “staying close” I mean staying close enough to the 2°C path that it remains plausibly achievable — though (obviously) politically still very, very challenging.

Of course, like all emissions models, the Climate Interactive model makes assumptions about what is a plausibly achievable 2°C path given how long we have delayed acting. And that involves deciding how fast the world could plausibly cut its greenhouse gas emissions each year — sustained for many decades. They use 3.5 to 4 percent a year. That is mostly a political-economic judgment, since there is no real way of knowing how fast humanity could act once we become truly desperate to avoid multiple simultaneous catastrophes that are irreversible on a timescale of many centuries.

The point is that a successful outcome of Paris will not “solve the climate problem” and indeed won’t give us a 2°C world, as anyone who is paying attention understands. (Sadly, a lot of folks in the media aren’t paying attention.)

The bad news, of course, is that since about 2007 leading climate experts have been explaining we only have five to 10 years to act. I debunked the myth that they’ve “always” been saying that in my May post, “The Really Awful Truth About Climate Change.”

So what Paris can accomplish is to give us another five to 10 years of … having five to 10 years to act!!! Woo-hoo.

In reality, international climate talks can never buy us more than five to 10 years at a time — until and unless countries are willing to make long-term multi-decade CO2 reduction commitments as the United States tried to do with the 2009 climate bill that was killed in the Senate. Stabilizing at 2°C requires taking global emissions down to near zero steadily by century’s end. Most Paris CO2 commitments are for 2025 or 2030.

Still, this would be an important accomplishment — and one that mirrors the incremental approach the world took to save the ozone layer. As NASA’s Gavin Schmidt told the New York Times, “By the time people get 10, 15 years of actually trying to do something, that’s going to lead to greater expertise, better technology, more experience.” Schmidt, who heads the same climate team James Hansen once did, added, “People will then say, ‘Oh, you know what? We can commit to do more.’”

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No More Arctic Drilling Attempts For Shell

The Arctic drilling season has come to an end, and with it, Shell’s hopes of striking oil in the Chukchi Sea. Royal Dutch Shell announced Monday it would stop oil exploration in the environmentally sensitive region, 140 miles off Alaska, for the “foreseeable future.”

The company received permits from the Obama Administration this year to conduct exploratory drilling, despite massive protests from environmentalists. The exploration has been unsuccessful, the company said.

“Shell continues to see important exploration potential in the basin, and the area is likely to ultimately be of strategic importance to Alaska and the US,” Marvin Odum, director of Shell Upstream Americas, said in a statement. “However, this is a clearly disappointing exploration outcome for this part of the basin.”

Disappointing, and expensive. Shell has invested $3 billion in development of the basin, with another $1.1 billion of “future contractual commitments,” the company said.

Environmental groups cheered Monday’s announcement.

“This is a victory for everyone who has stood up for the Arctic. Whether they took to kayaks or canoes, rappelled from bridges, or spread the news in their own communities, millions of people around the world have taken action against Arctic drilling,” Greenpeace USA executive director Annie Leonard said in a statement.

There are a number of concerns that go along with oil development in the Arctic, a region already considered “ground zero” for climate change. Pollution from boat traffic in the ecologically sensitive region can create a feedback loop of melting, and then more melting. In addition, the harsh environment makes it very difficult to respond to oil spills. In 2012, Shell lost control of an oil rig during a storm. The equipment, along with 150,000 gallons of fuel and drilling fluid, ended up washed up on an island.

Leonard took the opportunity to call on President Obama to prohibit any future drilling in the area.

“Today, President Obama can also make history by cancelling any future drilling and declaring the U.S. Arctic Ocean off limits to oil companies. There is no better time to keep fossil fuels like Arctic oil in the ground, bringing us one step closer to an energy revolution and sustainable future,” she said.

While the company will halt drilling for the “foreseeable future,” Monday’s announcement is not a guarantee that Shell won’t continue oil development in the Chukchi Sea later. According to the company’s statement, Shell owns all the “working interest” in 275 oil development blocks in the Chukchi Sea. The company cited the “challenging and unpredictable” regulatory environment for offshore drilling in Alaska as one reason it is discontinuing exploration.

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What Does A ‘Pre-Apocalyptic’ Future Look Like? This Book Will Show You.

Three years ago, author Claire Vaye Watkins burst onto the literary scene with her acclaimed short story collection, Battleborn. On September 29th, readers can finally get a copy of her much-anticipated first novel: Gold Fame Citrus, a blistering tour de force set in the drought-blighted California of a near future.

In Watkins’ future, the conditions of today have given way to a desertification so vast and powerful it’s almost sentient. The Sierra snowpack is depleted, the scant remaining water is protected by the National Guard and rationed by the Red Cross. A worst-case drought scenario has resulted in an unstoppable salt-sand dune sea, called the Amargosa after the first mountain range it subsumed. Despite the best efforts of technology, FEMA, and human stubbornness, the Amargosa is grinding away the inhabited Southwest in its wake.

In this near-future world, we meet Ray and Luz, two “mojavs” squatting in “Laurelless” Canyon. They are trapped inside withered California by closed borders, armed thugs, and above all, bureaucracy. After adopting a mysterious child named Ig, they attempt escape across the Amargosa. Their journey puts them directly in the path of the indifferent desert and its inhabitants: a colony led by a charismatic “dowser” with a miraculous ability to find water where none exists.

[image error]

Claire Vaye Watkins

CREDIT: Heike Steinweg

Though this setting has all the markers of dystopia — from the destructive Amargosa dune sea to Ray and Luz’s use of a starlet’s Hermes scarves as Ig’s diapers — it’s not an apocalyptic tale, according to its author, Claire Vaye Watkins, who spoke to ThinkProgress by phone from her backyard in Ann Arbor, where she’s an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.

Instead, Watkins prefers the term “pre-apocalyptic.”

“When you think about the apocalypse, we like to think of ourselves as the ones who lived beyond, because that means that you survived, that you’re the best human. What’s terrifying is that we’re going to die, we are the people who are going to perish, to go to dust. And that’s the reality. Apocalypse stories are escapist, you know, they’re not realistic.”

Apocalypse is also a term that implies an unavoidable act of God — if it’s an apocalypse, then it’s no one’s fault. And that’s not the reality that her book confronts.

Watkins was born in Bishop, California, near Owens Lake. Once a massive body of water, Owens Lake was drained by the Los Angeles Aqueduct in the early 1900s to provide water for burgeoning LA. The diversion turned the lake into a massive salt flat and the surrounding area into a dustbowl. According to reporting by NPR, it is “the largest single source of dust pollution in the nation.” The draining of the lake and desertification of the surrounding farmland sparked the California Water Wars, reverberations of which are still felt today.

“When you grow up in the Southwest, everyone thinks about water all the time, or tries not to think about water, and has these questions of, is my home going to be here in five years. So it was a very natural thing to write about California,” Watkins said. William Mulholland, architect of the aqueduct that turned the Owens Valley into a salt flat and L.A. into a city, appears in the book as a figure of myth and casual blame.

What she describes in the book is, as a result, “Mulholland’s America.”

Who had latticed the Southwest with a network of aqueducts? Who had drained first Owens Lake then Mono Lake, Mammoth Lake, Lake Havasu and so on, leaving behind wide white smears of dust? Who had diverted the coast’s rainwater and sapped the Great Basin of its groundwater? Who had tunneled beneath Lake Mead, installed a gaping outlet at its bottom-most point, and drained it like a sink? Who had sucked up the Ogallala Aquifer, the Rio Grande aquifer, the snowpack of the Sierras and the Cascades? If this was God he went by new names: Los Angeles City Council, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, City of San Diego, City of Phoenix, Arizona Water and Power, New Mexico Water Commission, Las Vegas Housing and Water Authority, Bureau of Land Management, United States Department of the Interior.

For a dystopia, Gold Fame Citrus is heavily rooted in reality. Ironically, said Watkins, it didn’t start that way.

“I set out to write a novel that would be dystopian, and futuristic, and fun,” she said. “And then every thing I set out to do, every crazy idea I could come up with, I found that people had already done.” As an example, she said she had the crazy idea of putting a giant plug at the bottom of a lake and sucking out the water “like a sink” — only to find they’re already doing that with Lake Mead.

So while Gold Fame Citrus may be dystopic, it’s not exactly “fun,” nor does it feel terribly futuristic. Indeed, for a book begun five years ago, it is eerily timely.

When considering emigration, Luz and Ray contemplate the reception that waits for them in the lusher areas of the country as “Mojavs.” They think of signs reading: “MOJAVS NOT WELCOME. NO WORK FOR MOJAVS. MOJAVS OUT.”

“Every thing I set out to do, every crazy idea I could come up with, I found that people had already done.”

As inspiration for the rest of the nation’s disdain, Watkins drew on the reception Okies received during the Great Depression, and on Japanese internment camps during WWII. But amidst the refugee crisis in Europe, where desperate migrants are met with barbed-wire and tear gas, and the anti-immigrant rhetoric spewed by Donald Trump and his supporters, the allusions feel far more current than historical.

“People who were once human and part of the nation are suddenly not human, excluded — which we saw with the Okies, and [now see] with the Syrians. So I didn’t really have to go to far,” Watkins said.

And then, of course, there is the book’s setting in drought-ridden California — a drought experts have linked to climate change, the real-life pre-apocalypse of our time.

Even at today’s levels, California’s drought threatens America’s food supply. In many ways, the West’s water problems are a national problem — because much of the water has been used to turn the arid environment into lush farmland in order to stock grocery aisles. One top of that, experts say that if carbon emissions continue at their current rate, California’s current unprecedented drought will become commonplace, resulting in a normal, nearly irrevocable climate akin to the 1930’s Dust Bowl. This map, generated by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, projects what North America will look like in 2095 if we don’t take action. The darkest areas — aka the Southwest — have soil moisture comparable to the Dust Bowl.

[image error]

Like Gold Fame Citrus, it’s a sobering look at our possible future.

“One of the reasons we have been so bad at dealing with climate change is that we have a crisis of imagination,” said Watkins. “We just can’t imagine the consequences, we can’t imagine what the world will be like. Which is something that IRA’s and life-insurance companies know and have been taking advantage of for years…we think of our future selves as another person, one for which we care less.”

Climate change, she reasons, is too large and cataclysmic — and a problem for the future, to be dealt with by our future selves.

Watkins is right about how we think of our future selves: fMRI research by social scientists at UCLA’s Anderson School has shown that different parts of our brains are activated when we think about our current and future selves. By comparing neural patterns of subjects describing their current selves, their future selves, and other people, researchers found that the patterns resulting from thinking about the future self most resembled what happened when participants thought about others.

“One of the reasons we have been so bad at dealing with climate change is that we have a crisis of imagination.

When we think about our future selves, our brains act as if we’re thinking about strangers. Consequently, we care more about our present happiness than that of our future selves. After all, at a neural level, that future self is a stranger — except, of course, they’re not.

This pattern of thinking underpins poor behavior from procrastination to financial mismanagement, but if Watkins’ logic is right, perhaps its most pernicious effect is inaction on climate change. If that’s the case, then books like Gold Fame Citrus may help: in a study published in Science, researchers at the New School found that readers of literary fiction have increased empathy — exactly that which research has shown we lack for our future selves.

As for being unable to imagine the cataclysm of a changed world — in fiction like Gold Fame Citrus, the hard work of imagination has already been done, with a masterful hand. Watkins once describes the Amargosa as, “A vast tooth-colored superdune in the forgotten crook of the wasted West.” Her prose is by turns gritty and fluid, vivid, and often darkly humorous.

This is not to say that Gold Fame Citrus is a moralistic lesson-book — indeed, in speaking to ThinkProgress, Watkins was clear she did not set out to write a didactic novel.

“I didn’t set out to write a novel that will tell a lesson… I set out to use this space and to make interesting characters and put them in an interesting situation and see what they did or said about it.” Nonetheless, it’s a work of imagination that extrapolates on current issues and anxieties, and like good dystopic fiction, it holds a warped mirror up to current times.

Yet despite her bleak imagined future, Watkins is optimistic concerning the water crisis in the real California.

“When I started writing this book, it was five years ago, and when I talked about the water crisis in the Southeast, people would sort of look at me blankly,” she said. “But now, as soon as I bring it up they sort of do my PR for me. They say, ‘This is an issue, this is something we have to deal with, this is something we have to fix, this is a problem we need to face’…It’s actually very interesting, that this is happening in California. This is another chance for California to show leadership and innovation and be politically engaged and do something about this.”

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House Votes To Keep EPA From Considering Costs Of Climate Change

Climate change costs an incredible amount of money. Whether it is deaths during heat waves, reconstruction after a superstorm, or even lost revenues at ski slopes, rising temperatures and increased extreme weather events are costing the economy. In fact, Citibank reported earlier this year that it will cost $44 trillion worldwide by 2060 to mitigate the costs of climate change under the business as usual scenario.

But efforts to include those costs in permitting projects just took another hit, when the House voted to pass the RAPID Act, a bill intended to streamline permitting processes. Tucked into the bill is language that will prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from considered the social cost of carbon during permitting.

The bill, which passed largely down party lines Friday afternoon, specifically prohibits federal agencies from following draft guidance from the White House Council on Environmental Quality for “consideration of greenhouse gas emissions and the effects of climate change” in environmental reviews. Further, under the RAPID Act, any permit request that is not addressed by the agency deadline will be automatically approved.

“Everybody agrees that approving critically important economic projects should be simple. This is exactly what my RAPID Act does,” Rep. Tom Marino (PA-10) said when he introduced the bill. “It streamlines, it eliminates duplicative processes, it rewards good environmental stewardship and it aids our economy.”

Republicans have widely criticized the White House guidelines for the social cost of carbon and questioned their accuracy.

But not everyone agrees it will be good for either the environment or the economy to take climate change out of the equation.

“The Social Cost of Carbon is an absolutely vital tool to ensure we are spending money wisely and preparing for the future; to stick our heads in the sand on this one is to ignore the facts before us,” Lowenthal said. “I’m glad to see that the two climate change-related amendments by myself and Mr. Peters today picked up a small handful of brave and honest Republicans, but it is not enough.”

Representatives Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), Chris Gibson (R-NY) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) supported the two proposed, failed amendments that would have directed agencies to consider climate change. Last week, all three were sponsors of an all-republican House resolution to act on climate change. (The Peters amendment sought to strike the language prohibiting agencies from considering the social cost of carbon.)

In the final tally, no Republicans voted against the bill. Democrats Brad Ashford (NE), Dixon Bishop (GA), Jim Costa (CA), Henry Cuellar (TX), Ruben Hinojosa (TX), Collin Peterson (MN), and Kurt Schrader (OR) voted for the bill.

The White House has said the president will veto the RAPID Act.

“Everyone knows that climate change is urgent,” Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA) told ThinkProgress in an email. “The Pope knows, our young people know, even China knows, but this House is unfortunately one of the last bastions of irresponsible inaction. The clock is ticking and too many in the majority don’t get it.”

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Despite All-Clear From EPA, New Studies Show Lingering Contamination After Animas River Spill

On September 2, the EPA released data showing that water and sediment samples taken from the San Juan River — whose largest tributary, the Animas River, was tainted with three million gallons of toxic wastewater from the Gold King Mine spill earlier this summer — had returned to pre-spill levels. On September 16, during a hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, EPA administrator Gina McCarthy reiterated those findings.

But a spate of recently released studies paint a less positive picture of the river’s return to health. According to Al Jazeera, a new report conducted by the nonprofit Water Defense shows elevated levels of nearly a dozen metals and chemicals still present in the San Juan River. Another study recently conducted along a 60-mile stretch of the Animas River itself by researches at Texas Tech University and New Mexico State University also found elevated levels of heavy metals in the river sediment.

“I would say at this point the water is unsafe to use until we have more testing completed,” Scott Smith, the chief scientist with Water Defense, told Al Jazeera. “We are dealing with known chemicals that are toxic and cancer causing, and we don’t know what’s happening to those chemicals and what’s going on in the crops.”

Water Defense’s tests showed levels of chromium at 4.7 parts per million in sediments affected by the spill, compared to levels of 3.7 parts per million in baseline sediments. According to EPA standards, levels at or below 0.01 parts per million are considered safe for drinking. The Water Defense tests also found concentrations of lead in the San Juan River had increased from 7.8 parts per million to 9.9 parts per million.

The tests also confirmed that the San Juan riverbed was likely contaminated before the spill, Smith told Al Jazeera.

“The sediment showed levels of contamination before, but now it’s a hell of a lot worse after this spill,” Smith said.

The EPA did not respond to ThinkProgress’ request for comment, though an agency spokesperson told Al Jazeera that the agency stands by its testing results. The agency has been harshly criticized for the spill — EPA workers accidentally caused the spill, and the agency initially grossly underestimated the amount of toxic water released by the spill.

The EPA has taken responsibility for its errors, with McCarthy telling the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs that “the EPA has and will continue to take responsibility to help ensure that the Gold King Mine release is cleaned up.”

While the EPA has shouldered responsibility for the spill, the event highlights larger issues with the an outdated law that dictates the regulation of old mines. Under the General Mining Law of 1872, companies are free to extract minerals from U.S. public lands without paying royalties, and are often not responsible for cleaning up those mines. That has left around 2,700 hard rock mines in the United States in need of cleanup.

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Somebody Tell Jeb Bush That The Pope Actually Is A Scientist

The day Pope Francis addressed Congress in Washington, D.C., Republican presidential candidate and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a Catholic, told reporters in Virginia that the pope’s opinion should not be taken too seriously.

The pope accepts the scientific consensus that human activity is contributing to climate change, and he has used his U.S. tour to advance the argument that environmentalism is a social justice issue, and that curbing climate change is necessary in order to lift up the poorest of the world’s population.

Bush took the directly opposing view.

“I oppose the president’s policy as it relates to climate change because it will destroy the ability to re-industrialize the country, to allow for people to get higher wage jobs, for people to rise up,” Bush said, according to the Huffington Post.

This is not the first time Bush has rejected the pope’s teachings on climate, but it may be the first time he has given the “not a scientist” reason.

“He’s not a scientist, he’s a religious leader,” Bush says in a video of the remarks.

In fact, the pope studied chemistry and worked as a chemist. However, why his status as a scientist is relevant is unclear. An overwhelming majority of scientists has already concluded that climate change is real and caused by human action. Many of those scientists have made their research and findings available in order to help shape policy decisions.

The pope’s argument — that humanity has a moral imperative to take care of the environment — is simply the religious conclusion. Bush, who frames the argument as an economic one, might consider asking whether economists should be listened to in shaping policy.

Most economists, incidentally, agree that the catastrophic effects of climate change are going to be very bad for the economy.

A poll from New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity conducted a full five years ago, found that 94 percent of economists believe the United States should join international agreements to limit climate change.

The costs of mitigating climate change are expected to balloon in coming years. An August report from Citibank estimated that doing nothing about climate change will cost $44 trillion worldwide through 2040. In contrast, the group found that investing in low-carbon energy would save the world $1.8 trillion during that timeframe.

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Pope Looks Towards Paris Climate Agreement, Says Unbridled Capitalism Damages Environment

When the pope took the podium Friday at the opening of the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly, most people expected that he would talk about the climate. They were not disappointed.

Because people are part of the physical, scientific, environmental world, “Any harm done to the environment, therefore, is harm done to humanity,” Pope Francis told the group of national leaders and U.N. ambassadors.

Notably, especially given the audience, the pope specifically referenced the promise of international climate and sustainability actions.

“The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the World Summit, which opens today, is an important sign of hope,” he said. “I am similarly confident that the Paris Conference on Climatic Change will secure fundamental and effective agreements.”

Reaching a strong climate treaty at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris in December is widely seen as a necessary step towards keeping emissions low enough to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

The pope uses moral and especially social justice arguments for protecting the environment. During the address, he specifically blamed environmental destruction on political and economic forces.

“The natural environment and the vast ranks of the excluded… are closely interconnected and made increasingly fragile by dominant political and economic relationships,” the pope said. “That is why their rights must be forcefully affirmed, by working to protect the environment and by putting an end to exclusion.”

He even took a step beyond systemic reasons, blaming the destruction of the environment on materialism and selfishness.

“In effect, a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged,” the pope said.

In fact, the pope tied nearly every aspect of society to the environment. He called war, for instance, “the negation of all rights and a dramatic assault on the environment.” Through its negative effect on social justice, the pope blamed abuse of the natural environment on nearly all social ills:

Our world demands of all government leaders a will which is effective, practical and constant, concrete steps and immediate measures for preserving and improving the natural environment and thus putting an end as quickly as possible to the phenomenon of social and economic exclusion, with its baneful consequences: human trafficking, the marketing of human organs and tissues, the sexual exploitation of boys and girls, slave labour, including prostitution, the drug and weapons trade, terrorism and international organized crime.

The pope has made clear that economic and environmental justice are key priorities for him. During his tenure, he has released two formal papal documents — one an exhortation on economic justice and one an encyclical on climate change.

New York is the last stop on the pope’s six-day U.S. tour, during which he also visited Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. He has been met with record crowds.

In his first U.S. speech, at the White House on Tuesday, the pope reiterated the importance of addressing climate change. The pope also mentioned climate change in his address to Congress, but several Republican members of that body have stated that they will not take the pope’s guidance on environmental issues.

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