Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 99

Trees Are Disappearing From The World At An Alarming Rate

Some tropical countries saw an “alarming” surge of tree cover loss in 2014, according to a new report.

The report, published Wednesday by the World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch, uses data on tree cover loss — a measure of the removal, natural or human-caused, of all kinds of trees, whether they’re in a forest or on a plantation — from the University of Maryland and Google. That data show that in 2014, the planet lost more than 45 million acres of tree cover, with tree cover loss in tropical countries accounting for more than half of that total. Tropical countries alone, the report found, lost nearly 25 million acres of tree cover in 2014, a chunk about the size of South Korea.

The data shows that tree cover loss in the tropics is speeding up. Brazil, which has reduced Amazon deforestation by 70 percent over the last 10 years, saw an increase in tree cover loss in 2014. Indonesia, too, experienced an uptick in tree loss after seeing a drop in 2013.

“This analysis identifies a truly alarming surge in forest loss in previously overlooked hotspots,” Nigel Sizer, global director of WRI’s Forests Program said in a statement. “In many of these countries, we’re seeing accelerating clearing associated with commodities such as rubber, beef, and soy, along with palm oil.”

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CREDIT: world resources institute

One of those hotspots identified by the report is Cambodia and the rest of the Mekong region, which includes Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and part of China. These countries — other than China — saw an increase in tree cover loss that was five times greater than rate increases in the rest of the tropics. But Cambodia in particular is seeing major surges in tree cover loss. The rate of tree cover loss in the country is rapidly increasing, and in 2014, Cambodia lost four times the amount of tree cover it did in 2001. In the Mekong region, rubber prices tend to pave the way for tree loss — as prices go up, more forests will likely be cleared.

The fact that Cambodia consistently came out on top for rate of deforestation from year to year surprised Rachael Petersen, research analyst for Global Forest Watch and co-author of the report.

“It’s not traditionally a country that many people would think of with crisis of deforestation,” she told ThinkProgress.

Petersen said the report looks at the broad category of tree cover loss because that’s what the satellites capture — they can’t differentiate between natural and human-caused tree removal. And trying to track deforestation, she said, has multiple challenges.

“Deforestation is a surprisingly controversial word and hard to monitor,” she said. “For some it’s permanent conversion of forest to non-forest,” while others have a much broader definition of the word. James Anderson, communications manager for WRI’s forests program, said that there are benefits to tracking tree cover loss versus deforestation, however, and differences in definition is one of them.

“Some countries may report deforestation very generously for themselves,” he said. For instance, the countries might say that deforestation only refers to the complete removal of forests, so clearing a large portion of native forest and replanting it with another type of trees wouldn’t count.

“The advantage of this data is that it’s sort of agnostic to this difference,” he said.

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CREDIT: world resources institute

Anderson noted that these results will be important to countries leading up to the U.N. climate talks in Paris.

“Paris is coming up very soon, and countries are thinking about their commitments — how are they going to reduce emissions and where,” he said. For these tropical countries, land use issues such as deforestation make up the bulk of their emissions. “They’re not heavily industrialized, and they don’t have massive electricity and transportation sectors — it’s land use, that’s where their emissions come from. Conserving and restoring forests are going to be their best bet for setting targets.”

One of the ways countries can start conserving their forestland is by identifying degraded land that’s suitable for growing crops like oil palm but that doesn’t harbor forests. Planting on that land, Petersen said, can help countries continue to produce income from these crops but do so on land “that isn’t as high in carbon value and biodiversity.”

WRI has been tracking forest and tree loss for the past several years. Earlier this year, the organization found that the planet’s boreal region has had the steepest loss of forest cover between 2011 and 2013, with Russia losing an average of 16,600 square miles of tree cover every year. And a mapping project put together by WRI and other groups in 2014 found that Canada leads the world in forest degradation.

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This Man Made $21 Million Last Year By Ignoring Climate Change

Could the global warming crisis be solved if fossil fuel executives were just paid less?

Well, sort of. A new study points out that not only do executives of the 30 largest fossil fuel companies make more than comparable CEOs, the system of buybacks, stock compensation, and bonus incentives all push company leadership to double down on carbon-heavy practices.

“One reason why our fossil fuel industries are so stuck and on this destructive path is because of the short-term and perverse executive pay structures,” Sarah Anderson, Global Economy Project director at the Institute for Policy Studies and an author of the report, told ThinkProgress. “All of the incentives are in place for them to think short-term and to stick with business as usual.”

All of the incentives are in place for them to think short-term and to stick with business as usual

Anderson argues that there is a parallel between the inflated compensation for fossil fuel executives and for banking heads, whose packages and incentives were tied to the housing bubble and subsequent economic recession. And, like the financial crisis, overpaying fossil fuel executives has major implications for taxpayers and policymakers, Anderson said.

“The more that I’ve been talking about it and thinking about it, the more parallels I see with the financial crisis,” Anderson said. “We are already seeing coal companies go into the ground and the same thing could happen with the oil and gas.”

When coal companies go out of business, taxpayers can be on the hook for retraining workers, paying for long-term health damage, and cleaning up environmental degradation. It is already happening. In the president’s proposed 2016 budget, he requested that Congress transfer federal funds to the United Mine Workers’ pension fund, which is in “critical status.” It was one of several coal-related budget items to help cushion the blow on workers in the flailing industry.

“These companies have been able to externalize a lot of these broader costs for a long time, and the executives have reaped the windfalls from that,” Anderson said.

The salary findings reported in “Money to Burn” are stunning.

For instance, while the stock value of the top 10 U.S. publicly held coal companies fell by 58 percent between 2010 and 2014, cash compensation of executives of these companies went up 8 percent. Executives at Peabody (which lost $1 billion in the second quarter of this year) and Alpha Natural Resources (which filed for bankruptcy this year) cashed in stock options worth $47 million and $33 million, respectively, over that four-year period.

The report looked at the compensation for CEOs, CFOs, and the next three highest-paid employees at the 30 biggest oil, gas, and coal firms in America and found that the top executives made a collective $6 billion in the past five years. For context, that’s enough to weatherize 3.3 million homes, the report states. It is also double the amount the United States pledged to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund, which offers aid to vulnerable nations for climate change mitigation and preparation.

In addition, these executives have amassed $1.2 billion in retirement packages. That is equal to “the entire flood control budget of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for nearly three years,” the report says.

The authors repeatedly give examples of executive compensation put in terms of investment in a clean economy. Anderson said this was one way to put the “overwhelming” costs of addressing climate change into a more meaningful context. “When you think about how ExxonMobil could have doubled the amount of global renewable energy research… it gives you a kind of a sense of how much resources these companies are sitting on and how much they could do help,” Anderson said.

They are rewarded for adding carbon reserves even when the reserves they are currently sitting on can’t be exploited without causing climate catastrophe

The top 10 publicly held U.S. coal companies have been increasing their cash-based executive pay as their share prices have been plummeting. When paychecks grow even as businesses sink, executives have little incentive to shift to a new energy future. The industry spends $600 billion a year developing new fossil fuel resources, the report found. But there is no reason executives wouldn’t pursue those developments: Fossil fuel executives generally receive bonuses for increasing their companies’ resource holdings.

“They are rewarded for adding carbon reserves even when the reserves they are currently sitting on can’t be exploited without causing climate catastrophe,” Anderson said.

CEO compensation has been a hot target in recent years, as the gap between wealthy and poor — or even middle class — grows. But these fossil fuel companies are especially egregious. CEOs averaged $14.7 million in compensation in 2014, 9 percent more than the S&P 500 average.

But perhaps more importantly, the entire system of compensation is skewed to reward executives for continuing business practices that add carbon to the atmosphere. None of the 30 companies have mechanisms that reward investment in renewable energy sources or other types of climate change action. According to the report, shareholders of ExxonMobil have introduced 62 climate-related resolutions over the past 25 years, and every single one has been opposed by management. Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil’s CEO who made $21.4 million in stock-based pay in 2014, mocked a shareholder who asked about investing in renewables, Anderson said.

This is even more ironic given the recent changes in the energy market: While fossil fuel stocks continue to fall, renewable energy sources are at grid-parity in many places. A report issued Monday from the International Energy Agency found that the cost of generating electricity from renewable sources is comparable to using fossil fuel.

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Not Satisfied With His War On Immigrants, Trump Picks A Fight With Native Americans

It was a show of respect to Native Americans when President Obama on Sunday , formerly called Mount McKinley, to Denali. So it makes a lot of sense that presidential candidate Donald Trump didn’t like it.

On Tuesday, the Republican front-runner promised that he would reverse Obama’s decision if elected president. Restoring the mountain’s name to Denali, he said, was a “great insult to Ohio,” because former President William McKinley was born there. To be clear, Denali is located in Alaska, about 3,000 miles away from Ohio.

It’s unsurprising that Trump did not express concern for insulting Alaska Natives, who have been calling the mountain Denali for thousands of years. The billionaire has a historically hostile relationship with Native Americans, largely stemming from the fact that his casino business competes with tribe-owned casinos. But it was never solely business dealings that soured the relationship — it was Trump’s willingness to invoke offensive, sometimes racially-charged language to come out of those dealings on top.

The most egregious example of this came in 2000 in upstate New York, when Trump began bankrolling an ad campaign to stop a casino from being built in the Catskills. As the New York Times reported last month, the local newspaper ads showed “hypodermic needles and drug paraphernalia … [and] warned in dire terms that violent criminals were coming to town.”

“Are these the kind of neighbors we want?” the ad asked, referring to the St. Regis Mohawks Tribe at Akwesasne, which was planning to build the casino. “The St. Regis Mohawk record of criminal activity is well-documented.”

When the ads came out, Akwesasne Mohwaks were incensed. The uproar was documented in a book called Enduring Legacies, which explains that while there was some illegal activity within the tribe, “implying that all Akwesasne Mohawks support such activities is something of a racial slur.” The advertising, it asserted, was “clearly informed by the racist attitudes prevailing in the area” at the time. Local tribal leaders also took out their own newspaper ads in response to Trump’s. “How dare they smear a nation and brand us all as criminals,” it read.

It’s also worth noting that Trump initially tried to conceal his involvement in those ads. At the time they were released, the anti-Mohawks ads were put forth by an anti-casino group called the New York Institute for Law and Society. It wasn’t until New York’s state lobbying commission began investigating Trump’s funding of the organization that he admitted he was its primary funder. According to the Times, Trump entered into a settlement with the commission in which he was forced to pay a fine and apologize — “not for the content of the anti-Mohawk ads, but for evading state disclosure rules related to lobbying and political advocacy.”

A spokesperson for Trump did not return ThinkProgress’ request for comment. But in that article, Trump maintained he didn’t mean to racially insult the tribe. “I wasn’t knocking the Mohawks; I was knocking their record,” he said. “That’s not because they’re Mohawks. That’s because their record is bad and was proved to be bad at the time.”

But it wasn’t the only time he had made inflammatory remarks about Native Americans.

Back in 1993, Trump gave testimony to the Congressional Subcommittee Native American Affairs. A casino in Connecticut, owned by the Pequot Indians, had just become the most popular one in America, surpassing Trump’s casino in Atlantic City. Trump was unhappy about this, and accused the casino owners of not being authentic Native Americans.

“‘They don’t look like Indians to me,” he said, “and they don’t look like Indians to Indians.” A Mediaite report noted that The Pequot have had centuries on interbreeding after being largely massacred by English settlers in the 1600s, so many have Caucasian features.

At the subcommittee hearing, Trump then began railing against the idea that Native Americans should be able to own casinos at all, due to organized crime. If they continued to be allowed, he said at the time, “you’re going to have the biggest organized crime problem in the history of this country. Al Capone is going to look like a baby.”

“It’s going to blow,” he continued. “It’s just a question of time, and when it blows you are going to have a lot of very embarrassed faces sitting right where you folks are sitting right now.”

Reporting from the hearing noted “gasps and puzzled looks of disbelief” from the mostly-Native American audience, and a rebuttal from an FBI official who said he had “found no evidence of skimming, money laundering, theft or any other criminal activity in Indian gaming.” To this day, the accusations haven’t panned out.

What also hasn’t panned out since then is a clear effort from Trump, now the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, to smooth or improve his relationship with Native Americans. And in that department, his decision to reverse Denali’s name back to McKinley surely won’t do him any favors.

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Not Satisfied With His War On Immigrants, Trump Picks A Fight With Naive Americans

It was a show of respect to Native Americans when President Obama on Sunday , formerly called Mount McKinley, to Denali. So it makes a lot of sense that presidential candidate Donald Trump didn’t like it.

On Tuesday, the Republican front-runner promised that he would reverse Obama’s decision if elected president. Restoring the mountain’s name to Denali, he said, was a “great insult to Ohio,” because former President William McKinley was born there. To be clear, Denali is located in Alaska, about 3,000 miles away from Ohio.

It’s unsurprising that Trump did not express concern for insulting Alaska Natives, who have been calling the mountain Denali for thousands of years. The billionaire has a historically hostile relationship with Native Americans, largely stemming from the fact that his casino business competes with tribe-owned casinos. But it was never solely business dealings that soured the relationship — it was Trump’s willingness to invoke offensive, sometimes racially-charged language to come out of those dealings on top.

The most egregious example of this came in 2000 in upstate New York, when Trump began bankrolling an ad campaign to stop a casino from being built in the Catskills. As the New York Times reported last month, the local newspaper ads showed “hypodermic needles and drug paraphernalia … [and] warned in dire terms that violent criminals were coming to town.”

“Are these the kind of neighbors we want?” the ad asked, referring to the St. Regis Mohawks Tribe at Akwesasne, which was planning to build the casino. “The St. Regis Mohawk record of criminal activity is well-documented.”

When the ads came out, Akwesasne Mohwaks were incensed. The uproar was documented in a book called Enduring Legacies, which explains that while there was some illegal activity within the tribe, “implying that all Akwesasne Mohawks support such activities is something of a racial slur.” The advertising, it asserted, was “clearly informed by the racist attitudes prevailing in the area” at the time. Local tribal leaders also took out their own newspaper ads in response to Trump’s. “How dare they smear a nation and brand us all as criminals,” it read.

It’s also worth noting that Trump initially tried to conceal his involvement in those ads. At the time they were released, the anti-Mohawks ads were put forth by an anti-casino group called the New York Institute for Law and Society. It wasn’t until New York’s state lobbying commission began investigating Trump’s funding of the organization that he admitted he was its primary funder. According to the Times, Trump entered into a settlement with the commission in which he was forced to pay a fine and apologize — “not for the content of the anti-Mohawk ads, but for evading state disclosure rules related to lobbying and political advocacy.”

A spokesperson for Trump did not return ThinkProgress’ request for comment. But in that article, Trump maintained he didn’t mean to racially insult the tribe. “I wasn’t knocking the Mohawks; I was knocking their record,” he said. “That’s not because they’re Mohawks. That’s because their record is bad and was proved to be bad at the time.”

But it wasn’t the only time he had made inflammatory remarks about Native Americans.

Back in 1993, Trump gave testimony to the Congressional Subcommittee Native American Affairs. A casino in Connecticut, owned by the Pequot Indians, had just become the most popular one in America, surpassing Trump’s casino in Atlantic City. Trump was unhappy about this, and accused the casino owners of not being authentic Native Americans.

“‘They don’t look like Indians to me,” he said, “and they don’t look like Indians to Indians.” A Mediaite report noted that The Pequot have had centuries on interbreeding after being largely massacred by English settlers in the 1600s, so many have Caucasian features.

At the subcommittee hearing, Trump then began railing against the idea that Native Americans should be able to own casinos at all, due to organized crime. If they continued to be allowed, he said at the time, “you’re going to have the biggest organized crime problem in the history of this country. Al Capone is going to look like a baby.”

“It’s going to blow,” he continued. “It’s just a question of time, and when it blows you are going to have a lot of very embarrassed faces sitting right where you folks are sitting right now.”

Reporting from the hearing noted “gasps and puzzled looks of disbelief” from the mostly-Native American audience, and a rebuttal from an FBI official who said he had “found no evidence of skimming, money laundering, theft or any other criminal activity in Indian gaming.” To this day, the accusations haven’t panned out.

What also hasn’t panned out since then is a clear effort from Trump, now the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, to smooth or improve his relationship with Native Americans. And in that department, his decision to reverse Denali’s name back to McKinley surely won’t do him any favors.

Tags

AlaskaDenaliDonald TrumpMcKinleyMount DenaliMount McKinley

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President Obama Calls For Faster Action To Curb Arctic Warming And Climate Change

ANCHORAGE, AK — President Obama arrived in Anchorage, Alaska Monday evening to start a three-day sojourn around the state dedicated to spotlighting the disruptive, and in some cases devastating, effects of climate change in Alaska and the Arctic. President Obama opened his visit with a forceful speech at a climate conference hosted by Secretary of State John Kerry for foreign ministers and other luminaries from 20 countries and the European Union, including members of the U.S. Congress, Native leaders, mayors, and experts.

Throughout his speech, the president repeated a cautionary refrain on global efforts to curb climate change: we are making progress but we are not moving fast enough.

The secretary convened the conference — Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience, or GLACIER — to shine a stark light on rapid warming-induced changes in the Arctic and strategies to curb them. This high-level climate change gathering was strategically scheduled just three months ahead of the U.N. climate negotiations in Paris this December, where world leaders are expected to lock in a new global climate agreement.

The near-Arctic venue selection for the conference was no accident. An avalanche of jarring news on climate change has tumbled from Alaska and the Arctic: shrinking sea ice, rising sea levels, higher and more damaging storm surges, thawing permafrost, imperiled communities, and raging wildfires.

At the conference, Secretary Kerry called climate change “a seismic challenge that is affecting millions of people today.” He described coastal Native Alaskan villages pummeled by more punishing weather as higher temperatures melt away protective sea ice and cause seas to rise. These changes, together with thawing permafrost accelerate erosion, and as a result, Secretary Kerry noted, that “houses and other buildings are literally collapsing into rubble.”

The secretary stressed the immediate need for nations to cut CO2 emissions and short-lived climate pollutants such as soot, or black carbon, and methane — both potent drivers of Arctic and global warming. Kerry urged leaders to use GLACIER as a “stepping stone” for Paris and beyond “to get the job done.”

During his powerful closing speech, President Obama described a worrying future for Alaska: temperature hikes of six to twelve degrees by the end of the century, which are expected to trigger “more melting, more fires, more thawing of the permafrost, a negative feedback loop, a cycle — warming leading to more warming — that we do not want to be a part of.”

The president pointed to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan — which aims to cut carbon pollution from power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 — as, “the single most important step America has ever taken on climate change.”

Obama noted that, “America’s economy has grown more than 60 percent over the last 20 years, but our carbon emissions are roughly back to where they were 20 years ago. So we know how to use less dirty fuel and grow our economy at the same time.”

The president made clear that, “the time to heed the critics and the cynics and the deniers is past… Those who want to ignore the science, they are increasingly alone. They’re on their own shrinking island.”

The president warned that if we allow climate change to continue unchecked, “entire nations will find themselves under severe, severe problems. More drought; more floods; rising sea levels; greater migration; more refugees; more scarcity; more conflict.” He said that, “any leader willing to take a gamble on a future like that — any so-called leader who does not take this issue seriously or treats it like a joke — is not fit to lead.”

At the GLACIER meeting, the United States, with the seven other Arctic nations, 10 additional countries, and the European Union issued a joint statement reaffirming their “commitment to take urgent action to slow the pace of warming in the Arctic” and to achieve an ambitious agreement at the December climate negotiations in Paris. Also in the statement, foreign ministers emphasized the need for nations to cut black carbon, or soot, and methane emissions.

While these joint commitments do not go nearly far enough to curb Arctic and global warming, they are promising steps designed to jumpstart the U.N climate negotiations this fall and help to secure a strong global climate agreement in Paris.

President Obama issued a call to action at the close of GLACIER: “On this issue, of all issues, there is such a thing as being too late. That moment is almost upon us. That’s why we’re here today. That’s what we have to convey to our people — tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. And that’s what we have to do when we meet in Paris later this year.”

The planet’s future and a livable climate for its residents depend on world leaders hearing the president’s call.

Cathleen Kelly is a Senior Fellow at American Progress specializing in international and U.S. climate mitigation and resilience.

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New Study Estimates As Much As 90 Percent of Seabird Have Ingested Plastic

The vast majority of seabirds likely have plastic in their guts, a new study estimates.

The study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at 186 species of pelagic seabirds. Pelagic birds, a group that includes albatrosses, puffins, and storm petrels, spend most of their lives on the open ocean, as opposed to birds like seagulls which spend a lot of time on land. The researchers looked at previous studies done on seabirds between 1962 and 2012, which found that 29 percent of birds studied had ingested plastic. Using models, the researchers determined that if those studies had been conducted today, as much as 90 percent of the seabirds looked at would have plastic in their guts — a figure study co-author Denise Hardesty called “astronomical.”

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This 2012 photo shows all of the pieces of plastic that were removed from the stomach of a single north fulmar, a seabird, during a necropsy at the National Wildlife Health Lab.

CREDIT: Carol Meteyer, USGS/Wikimedia commons

And, according to the study, that figure is set to increase. Right now, concentrations of plastic can be as high as 580,000 pieces per square kilometer (about .386 square miles) of ocean.

“Modeling studies, validated by global sampling efforts, demonstrate that plastics are ubiquitous, with high concentrations in all five subtropical convergence zones and along the coastal margins near human population centers,” the study states.

According to a study from earlier this year, 4 to 12 million metric tons of plastic washed out into the ocean in 2010 alone, a figure that represents up to 4.5 percent of the world’s total plastic production. And as plastic production around the world increases — “between 2015 and 2026, we will make as much plastic as has been made since production began,” Monday’s study states — concentrations in the ocean will also likely go up. Because of that, the researchers predict that, by 2050, 99 percent of all seabirds will have plastic in their guts.

Unsurprisingly, that’s not good news for seabird species. The study notes that there isn’t yet much data on population- and individual-level impacts for seabirds that have ingested plastic, but there is “basis for concern.” A bird that ingests a large piece of plastic can end up having its gut obstructed, which can lead to death. Ingesting plastic also means there’s less room in the bird’s gut for actual food, which means building up energy is harder for the bird. In fledglings, this can lead to low body weight, which can end up leading to death.

Birds, Hardesty told the AP, often eat tiny plastic pieces because they mistake them for fish eggs. But she said she’s found all sorts of things in bird’s guts.

“I have seen everything from cigarette lighters … to bottle caps to model cars. I’ve found toys,” she said.

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The unaltered stomach contents of a dead albatross chick photographed on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific in September 2009 include plastic marine debris fed the chick by its parents.

CREDIT: Chris Jordan/wikimedia commons

The study isn’t the first to examine plastic pollution’s impact on seabirds. A 2012 study looked at the stomach contents of 67 northern fulmars which had died recently along the Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia coasts. It found that almost 93 percent of the birds had plastic in their stomachs, and each bird had nearly 37 pieces of plastic in its gut on average. Most of the plastic — 96 percent — was in the form of consumer products like rope, Styrofoam, bottle caps, and wrappers.

The threats birds face from plastic are compounded by the material’s long life — water bottles take 450 years to decompose, while fishing lines and nets can take 600 years, according to International Bird Rescue. And birds aren’t just put in danger by eating plastic — discarded fishing lines and hooks can get wrapped around birds and other sea life, ultimately killing them. Plastic also affects other, tinier creatures in the ocean — zooplankton, which make up a base of the marine food chain, have been found to mistake tiny pieces of plastic for food.

Monday’s study does point to some positive developments — namely, that models can be used to determine how changes in how plastic is managed is affecting seabirds. Still, it notes that for some seriously impacted regions, including the northern line of the Southern Ocean, finding ways to reduce bird suffering may be difficult.

“Many seabird species in this region also suffer from other sources of mortality, including ongoing bycatch in fisheries and predation by invasive species on breeding colonies, and achieving effective management in these remote and often international regions is a significant challenge,” the study states.

Some cities and states are taking small steps to help prevent plastic pollution from ending up in the oceans. The tiny plastic microbeads that can be found in face wash and toothpaste are being banned in states across the country, and Canada also recently announced that it’s considering banning the beads, after a scientific review found that microbeads “may have long-term effects on biological diversity and ecosystems.” Cities have also implemented bans and fees on plastic bags, which, when they end up in the ocean, are often mistaken for food by turtles and other marine life. And on the consumer side, recycling and relying less on plastic can help keep it out of the ocean.

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What President Obama Will And Won’t See On His Trip To Alaska And The Arctic

Last week, the president went to Las Vegas to talk renewable energy, and then New Orleans to talk climate disaster recovery. On Monday, President Obama flew to Alaska for the first day of a three-day, climate-focused visit, a trip that makes him the first sitting president to travel to the Arctic.

On Monday, he stayed in Anchorage for the tail end of a conference about global leadership in the Arctic. On Tuesday, he will see the impacts of climate change firsthand in the Seward area, and the following day will bring him to the northwest villages of Dillingham and Kotzebue.

Climate change is at the top of his agenda. But what else will the president see, and perhaps just as importantly for Alaska and the rest of the world, what won’t he see?

Here are some of the things President Obama will see:
Attempts to make progress on international climate negotiations

This week, United Nations climate negotiators are meeting in Bonn, Germany to streamline the process the world will use to reach a final climate agreement this December in Paris. They could receive some help from Alaska. Along with Secretary of State John Kerry, President Obama will be in town for the Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience (GLACIER). Separate from the Arctic Council — which has vowed to fight climate change — the conference will allow foreign ministers of many Arctic nations to seize momentum for a strong global climate agreement in the run-up to the Paris U.N. talks in December. It could also allow the region to confront two particularly pernicious greenhouse gases — black carbon and methane — according to Cathleen Kelly, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Mt. Denali

Before he arrived, the White House announced the to the original moniker given to it by Native Americans: Mt. Denali. The mountain is the centerpiece of Denali National Park. A gold prospector suggested that the tallest mountain in the United States should be renamed to honor the 25th president, and he got his wish in 1917. Critics ranging from Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) to former Donald Rumsfeld staffers to Karl Rove the president for the move. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and many other Alaskans praised the decision. The president is not scheduled to visit the mountain, but he could see it on the horizon while flying north to Kotzebue.

Bear Grylls

While it is unclear exactly what the president will learn from Grylls, Obama will tape an episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls starring the survival expert and reality television veteran. They will reportedly discuss climate change on the show; it is unclear if the president will eat any grubs. Grylls has never brought his current show to Alaska, but he did undertake a trek through the melting Northwest Passage in 2010 to raise awareness about climate change.

Wildfires
[image error]

The red pegs are “very large fires.” (Click to see larger version.)

CREDIT: Alaska Interagency Coordination Center

Flying over Alaska this year, it is hard to miss the fact that much of it is on fire. 2015 has been a banner year for Alaskan wildfires, with over 5 million acres burned so far. As of Tuesday, there were 153 active fires, according to the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center. Roughly half of those were categorized as “very large fires” — meaning they spanned an area of more than 2,500 acres. While 2004 may may end up a worse year in terms of acreage (6.5 million), 2015 could still have a shot at the record. The smoke generated from these fires does not stay in Alaska; it drifts south into Canada and the mainland United States, bringing increased risk of heart disease. When ground burns in Alaska, the climate impacts can be much worse than normal wildfires because much of Alaska is made up of permafrost. With the insulating top layer of earth burned away, that permafrost, and the greenhouse gases normally embedded within, can much more easily leak into the atmosphere.

A bustling, but still unsatisfied, oil and gas sector

When the White House announced the president’s trip back in February, Sen. Lisa Murkowski attacked the president for trying to shut down the trans-Alaska pipeline through environmental regulations, opposing Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling, and pushing his climate agenda. The president said in his last weekly address that as long as the economy used oil and gas, “we should rely more on domestic production than on foreign imports.” Many Alaskans are dependent upon a bustling fossil fuel-based energy sector, and the state has received billions from oil and gas taxes. So it’s unsurprising Alaskans, even those at “ground zero for climate change,” often support drilling activities. In fact, Kotzebue, the town Obama will visit on Wednesday, is where some of Shell’s offshore drilling equipment is stored.

Locals and Alaskan native communities facing climate impacts

President Obama will meet with Alaskan natives, primarily on Wednesday during his trips to the northwestern towns of Koztebue and Dillingham. There he will see the rich and diverse cultures of these communities and their determination to maintain their way of life. He will also witness firsthand the potential for climate change to severely threaten that way of life. “In fact, Alaska’s governor recently told me that four villages are in ‘imminent danger’ and have to be relocated,” Obama said. “Already, rising sea levels are beginning to swallow one island community. Think about that. If another country threatened to wipe out an American town, we’d do everything in our power to protect ourselves. Climate change poses the same threat, right now.” Sure to come up are the ways that federal government can help these communities adapt.

Here are some of the things President Obama will not see:
Normal sea ice, coastlines, permafrost, and glaciers

All of Alaska is warming dramatically, and Mt. Denali is no different. Since around 1950, Denali glaciers have lost about 8 percent of their area. The National Park Service said in 2012 that “the evidence is clear that Denali’s glaciers are thinning and retreating.” President Obama will visit the Kenai fjords and will hike Exit Glacier near Seward, where he will witness retreating glaciers firsthand. He could see plenty of melting permafrost under the town of Kotzebue.

Whales
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Whale strandings over the last six years. (Click for larger version.)

CREDIT: NOAA

President Obama will be seeing fewer whales in the Gulf of Alaska than he otherwise would after an “unusual mortality event” hit the region this year. Since May 14, 30 whale carcasses have been found stranded on Alaskan shorelines, which is three times the normal rate. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration release said the mortality event “demands immediate response.” Researchers say it will take some time to make conclusions about the causes, but several point to the “blob” of unusually warm water sitting off Alaska, which has helped the spread of a massive toxic algae bloom that stretches from Alaska down to the mainland United States.

Praise from environmental groups

It’s putting it mildly to say that the Obama administration did not improve his standing with climate and environmental groups in deciding to approve Royal Dutch Shell’s permit to drill in the deep Arctic waters offshore Alaska. Credo Action called the president’s trip to Alaska his “Mission Accomplished” moment, hearkening back to President Bush’s premature aircraft carrier announcement of the end of the Iraq War. “There, he will discuss his administration’s climate legacy against a backdrop of melting glaciers, in the very place where he just gave Shell approval to drill into the vast carbon bomb of oil that lies beneath the Arctic ocean floor,” Credo Action’s Elijah Zarlin wrote.

Many other groups also criticized the decision in advance of the trip, with the Sierra Club’s Michael Brune saying the timing of the trip “could not be more ironic.” The administration makes the case that domestic oil is preferable to foreign oil, and the Bush-era permit was curtailed to be safer than it previously was. But carbon emissions associated with the prospect of offshore Arctic drilling, and the potential for a catastrophic spill that would be extremely difficult to clean up makes it a risky venture that threatens the president’s climate message.

Walrus’ sea ice

Just like last year, the dramatic disappearance of Arctic sea ice has caused thousands of walrus to crowd onto a barrier island in the Chukchi Sea this year. They normally follow the sea ice as it recedes north, but recently the ice has just disappeared. This has happened every year since 2007, except 2008, and threatens the walrus with injuries and deaths from stampeding. Human activity, especially aircraft, spook the walrus, so it is unlikely that Air Force One will do a fly-by.

Mt. McKinley
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Denali. The Mountain Formerly Known As McKinley.

CREDIT: National Park Service

See above.

Oil and gas drilling in Bristol Bay

Late last year, Obama announced he would be withdrawing Bristol Bay from any future oil and gas development. It was a relatively uncontroversial move given, as Sen. Lisa Murkowski noted, there was not significant industry interest in the ecologically rich waters. Attention quickly moved right back to the legal fight over Pebble Mine, which would be the largest copper and gold mine in North America if given final approval. Two-thirds of Alaskans voted to allow the state legislature to be an additional check on the proposed site by either halting or permitting the mine, which could seriously impact the salmon fishery. Yet the mine appears to have momentum in court, and could still eventually receive approval.

Alaska’s Clean Power Plan targets

The centerpiece of President Obama’s climate mitigation strategy, the Clean Power Plan, does not yet establish carbon emissions targets for Alaska or Hawaii. Both states have extremely isolated electric grids, and the concern was that they could not meet carbon pollution reduction targets without interconnected grids. Alaska Governor Bill Walker said he was “pleased that the EPA has recognized the unique circumstances Alaska is facing.” However, some local renewable energy advocates lament Alaska’s exclusion from the Clean Power Plan as a “missed opportunity.” Alaska, though remote, does have enormous renewable energy potential in geothermal, wind, biomass, and sustainable hydroelectric. Indeed, Hawaii’s grid is even more isolated than Alaska’s, and Gov. David Ige (D-HI) recently committed to achieving 100 percent renewable energy by 2045 without natural gas.

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Why The EPA’s Clean Drinking Water Rule Is So Controversial

Speaking generally, Americans really care about clean water. According to one Gallup poll, they care about it even more than clean air, and clean soil. And when it comes to water, Americans really care about clean drinking water — even more than clean rivers and lakes.

So it might be confusing that there’s been so much opposition to the EPA’s clean drinking water rule, known as the Waters of the United States rule, or WOTUS. Speaking privately, environmentalists generally agree that organized opposition to WOTUS has been more fierce and direct than it has been for other controversial Obama administration regulations — even the Clean Power Plan, which seeks to limit carbon emissions from existing coal-fired power plants.

Under WOTUS, 2 million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands that provide drinking water would be designated as protected under the Clean Water Act. This is necessary, the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers argue, because one-third of Americans get their drinking water from sources connected to these steams and wetlands.

But late last week, a federal judge halted the EPA from implementing it, just hours before it was scheduled to go into effect.

The decision, of course, was met with cheers from Republican lawmakers and the fossil fuel industry, both of which have staunchly opposed the rule. But it was also a huge win for small business groups, agriculture groups, and real estate developers, three groups you don’t normally see acting as fiercely as they currently are to fight an environmental regulation. In fact, a wide array of unlikely interest groups have been lobbying on the rule — as Politico reported earlier this year, they range from mining companies to pesticide manufacturers to golf course operators.

For them, the rule gives the federal government too much control over even the smallest bodies of water. Farmers, they argue, would have to worry about getting sued for diverting a small stream, and developers would worry the same if they filled in a wetland for a building.

This is what’s so different about WOTUS compared to other controversial environmental rules. Unlike the Clean Power Plan or the new ozone standards, the fossil fuel industry isn’t the main entity railing against it. Instead, it’s farm groups, small business groups, and realtors — and those people are just a little harder for the public to hate.

“What’s different is that on WOTUS, the opposition has been held largely by Big Ag, the Farm Bureau, and developers,” said Melinda Pierce, the legislative director for the Sierra Club, which is advocating for the rule. “Big Ag and the Farm Bureau and others aren’t as clearly black hats as the oil industry is, in terms of trying to influence swing members in Congress.”

In addition, the opposition from those broader ranges of groups seems almost universal. Whereas the Obama administration has been successful in finding some forward-thinking power utilities to actually support regulations on carbon emissions, it appears to have been less successful finding big agriculture groups to support WOTUS.

With the lack of support from so many industries, some Democratic lawmakers in Congress who have generally been environmental champions have refused to throw their support behind the rule. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), for example, has a near-perfect environmental voting record but has been wary of supporting WOTUS. The same goes for Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), though both lawmakers have less strong environmental voting records.

The big supporters of WOTUS, however, remain the people who just love clean water: outdoor enthusiasts. According to a recent National Wildlife Federation poll, Pennsylvania outdoor enthusiasts overwhelmingly support the tenets of WOTUS. Those enthusiasts, as it happens, are mostly conservative.

“It would be hard to find a more conservative group than the hunters and anglers we polled,” Lori Weigel, a partner at the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, told The Morning Call. “And yet their support of this policy is broad‐based and widespread, cutting across partisan and ideological divisions.”

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Big Bank Says It’s Going To Cost A Lot To Do Nothing On Global Warming

A new report from Citibank found that acting on climate change by investing in low-carbon energy would save the world $1.8 trillion through 2040, as compared to a business-as-usual scenario. In addition, not acting will cost an additional $44 trillion by 2060 from the “negative effects” of climate change.

The report, titled Energy Darwinism, looked at the predicted cost of energy over the coming decades, the costs of developing low carbon energy sources, and the implications of global energy choices.

“What we’re trying to do is to take an objective view at the economics of this situation and actually look at what the costs of not acting are, if the scientists are right,” Jason Channell, Global Head of Alternative Energy and Cleantech Research at Citi, told CNBC. “There is a cost to not doing this, and although there is a cost to acting, what we’re trying to do is to actually weigh up the different costs here.”

The report includes analysis of the cost of stranded assets — the idea that in order to prevent 2ºC of warming, a third of the world’s oil reserves, half of its gas reserves, and more than 80 percent of its coal reserves need to stay in the ground.

“Overall, we find that the incremental costs of action are limited (and indeed ultimately lead to savings), offer reasonable returns on investment, and should not have too detrimental an effect on global growth,” the report’s authors write. In fact, they found that the necessary investment, such as adding renewable energy sources and improving efficiency, might actually boost the global economy.

“We believe that that solution does exist,” the report states. “The incremental costs of following a low carbon path are in context limited and seem affordable, the ‘return’ on that investment is acceptable and moreover the likely avoided liabilities are enormous. Given that all things being equal cleaner air has to be preferable to pollution, a very strong ‘Why would you not?’ argument begins to develop.”

Indeed, Citibank is not the first organization to call attention to the fact that inaction on climate change comes with a big price tag.

The Obama administration has repeatedly recognized this. A report released earlier this summer by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers found that the longer the United States waits, the more expensive mitigation will be. In his first speech as the director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Shaun Donovan emphasized the budgetary importance of climate action.

“From where I sit, climate action is a must do; climate inaction is a can’t do; and climate denial scores – and I don’t mean scoring points on the board,” Donovan said. “I mean that it scores in the budget. Climate denial will cost us billions of dollars.”

Climate change has been tied to increased severe weather, such as droughts and floods. This extreme weather can be extremely expensive. Superstorm Sandy, for instance, caused $65 billion in damage.

It’s a common trope that environmental action — whether it’s reducing carbon, protecting water, or curbing smog — costs too much.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, finalized earlier this month, is one example of the false debate between economic benefits and addressing climate change. The EPA estimated that the plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent will result in $25 to 45 billion in climate and health benefits by 2030.

But several republicans said that the plan would be an economic disaster. “We’ll all be left to suffer while the President scrambles to carve out a legacy for himself, leaving a ruined economy in his wake,” said John Tidwell, director of the Oklahoma chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-funded action group. Even presidential contenders got in on the action, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), saying the plan “will cause Americans’ electricity costs to skyrocket at a time when we can least afford it.”

The Citi report was released in advance of December’s meeting of the United Nations Climate Conference on Climate Change in Paris. The conference is “the first real opportunity to reach a legally binding agreement to tackle emissions,” according to the report.

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5 Quotes From Teddy Roosevelt That Exemplify What It Means To Be A Progressive

“Conservation is a great moral issue for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.” On August 31, 1910, President Theodore Roosevelt uttered those words in his famous speech, “The New Nationalism.”

Certainly there are no greater preventable threats to the safety of the nation than unrestricted carbon pollution.

Because some in the media love nonsensical historical analogies, Donald Trump is somehow being compared to the guy on Mount Rushmore. Not.

Roosevelt defined what it was to be a progressive, and why the true nationalists and patriots were progressives — and environmentalists:

Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is a great moral issue for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.

Roosevelt then immediately pointed out, “Let me add that the health and vitality of our people are at least as well worth conserving as their forests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this great work the national government must bear a most important part.”

Yes, the famous Republican President Teddy Roosevelt would be what modern conservatives typically label a socialist tree-hugger. While Trump has espoused progressive ideas from time to time, his denial of climate science and of the urgent need for climate action by itself makes him the true radical.

“I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children,” Roosevelt explained in the speech. “That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.”

If Roosevelt’s view of conservation is socialist, then Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers were all socialists. As the Constitutional Law Foundation has explained, “the most succinct, systematic treatment of intergenerational principles left to us by the founders is that which was provided by Thomas Jefferson in his famous September 6, 1789 letter to James Madison.”

I summarized Jefferson’s position here. The key question for Jefferson was very simple: Must later generations “consider the preceding generation as having had a right to eat up the whole soil of their country, in the course of a life?”

The answer to Jefferson was another self-evident truth: “Every one will say no; that the soil is the gift of God to the living, as much as it had been to the deceased generation.”

It is immoral for one generation to destroy another generation’s vital soil — or its livable climate. Hence it is unimaginably immoral to Dustbowlify their soil and ruin their livable climate irreversibly for many centuries if not millennia, which would be the result of continuing to listen to those who preach climate inaction.

Indeed here is what NASA projected earlier this year what inaction would do to the normal climate of the entire country from a soil moisture perspective:

[image error]

Roosevelt was a true progressive, and he understood that progressivism was our country’s only hope, as he explained in his timeless 1910 speech: “The prime problem of our nation is to get the right type of good citizenship, and, to get it, we must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive.”

Few politicians before or since have ever spoken out as strongly against the danger of corporate special interests in politics. “I stand for the square deal,” Roosevelt said. “But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the games, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.” Roosevelt added, “Now, this means that our government, national and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests.”

And he was blunt about the solution:

There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done….

It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced.

Here are some more quotes that define progressivism and Teddy Roosevelt — and distinguish him from modern day wannabes:

The “greatest good for the greatest number” applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.
If in a given community unchecked popular rule means unlimited waste and destruction of the natural resources — soil, fertility, waterpower, forests, game, wild-life generally — which by right belong as much to subsequent generations as to the present generation, then it is sure proof that the present generation is not yet really fit for self-control, that it is not yet really fit to exercise the high and responsible privilege of a rule which shall be both by the people and for the people. The term “for the people” must always include the people unborn as well as the people now alive, or the democratic ideal is not realized.
The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.
The United States at this moment occupies a lamentable position as being perhaps the chief offender among civilized nations in permitting the destruction and pollution of nature. Our whole modern civilization is at fault in the matter. But we in America are probably most at fault … Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals’not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements.
To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them.

This is what it means to be a progressive in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt.

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