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January 22, 2019
The Massachusetts state legislature is considering options for putting a price on transportation carbon emissions. Photo courtesy of wikipedia.org.
An analysis of the Trump administration's replacement for the Clean Power Plan found that CO2 emissions would increase under the proposal by 8.7 percent in 18 states and Washington, DC by 2030 versus taking no action. The study by Harvard University's Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment found the new plan would allow carbon emissions to "rebound." Co-author Kathleen Lambert said, "[The proposal] will make it even harder for the United States to meet its emissions targets under the Paris accord and sets us in exactly the opposite direction we need to go in." Scientists have warned that global greenhouse gas emissions will need to be cut in half within 11 years and completely phased out by 2050 to have a chance at staving off some of the most severe global warming scenarios. With U.S. emissions rising in 2018, the Trump administration's proposed actions are widely viewed as making the situation worse. The new rule would decline to set any pollution limits for states, instead directing them to improve power plant efficiency. The Harvard study concluded that this arrangement would allow coal-fired plants to operate much longer and contribute to a growth in CO2 levels.
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Guardian
State legislators in Massachusetts are taking a serious look at establishing carbon fees for transportation, with many lawmakers optimistic that such a measure could get signed by the governor as soon as this year. A version of carbon pricing has been brought up in every Massachusetts legislative session since 2013. The gist of the measures is to reduce the use of fossil fuels, while raising funds to address the impacts of global warming. Electricity customers in the state already pay a carbon fee. Massachusetts is also a member of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a nine-state system that puts a cap on carbon emissions from the power sector. There is currently no such regulation on the transit sector, which makes up 43 percent of the state's overall carbon emissions, but Massachusetts has joined an eight-state coalition whose goal is to leverage market mechanisms to reduce transit emissions. At least 15 additional states are expected to consider some form of carbon pricing legislation in 2019.
Energy News Network
Alaska is home to 15 remote radar sites that allow the U.S. military to monitor airspace over a large portion of North America. The radar network dates back to the 1950s and was built in response to Cold War-era threats. Today, coastal erosion and melting permafrost brought about by global warming are forcing the Department of Defense to figure out how to keep these critical sites operational. One long-range radar station, located at the edge of the Seward Peninsula, can take hours to reach by plane from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Automation and improved technology has ratcheted the number of necessary personnel down to four civilian contractors from a peak of more than 100 service members. Coastal erosion has made it even more difficult to run the site as land surrounding key infrastructure degrades. Col. Daniel Lemon, the Air Force commander in charge of the site, told a reporter, "Climate change is happening and there is erosion going on on the North Slope of Alaska. That’s a fact. I don’t know what’s causing it, but we have to do something about it, because it’s impacting our mission.”
Alaska Public Media
In Bangladesh, the government is trying to help residents cope with the loss of land brought about by sea level rise and erosion. The Bangladesh Forest Department offered 45 households struggling with environmental threats a chance to relocate to new plots of land under a free ten-year lease. The families cannot live on the land, but they are free to use it for fishing and farming. The government also provided the displaced individuals agricultural training and saplings. Although her family had to abandon their home, Ferdousi Akter said, "I got a pond and a piece of land for 10 years. Now I am farming fish in the pond and cultivating vegetables on my land." Like many families, the Akters were repeatedly displaced from their old homes by heavy monsoon rains that worsened riverbank erosion. The Forest Department has plans to expand the program and expects the initial leases to be extended. They view the use of otherwise fallow land as a way to address poverty and the growing issue of internal displacement.
Reuters
On January 16, members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works made a point of pressing Andrew Wheeler, the Trump administration's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency on climate change issues. Wheeler is a former coal-industry lobbyist and the current Acting-Director following the ousting of Scott Pruitt in July. Observers expect Wheeler to continue rolling back a variety of regulations in accordance with the past priorities of the administration and Pruitt. Since July, Wheeler's EPA has proposed a significantly weaker replacement for the Clean Power Plan, loosened mercury pollution controls, and cut back restrictions on the construction of new coal-fired power plants. During the hearing, Wheeler said, "Through our deregulatory actions, the Trump Administration has proven that burdensome federal regulations are not necessary to drive environmental progress." When asked if he thought climate change was one of the greatest threats to the planet, Wheeler said he believed climate change was occurring and that humans play a role, but added "I would not call it the greatest crisis. I would call it a huge issue that has to be addressed globally.”
New York Times
Cities across the United States are pursuing policy updates on issues like zoning and transportation. Even though many governments are not explicitly considering the climate change implications of those policies, their actions are bringing significant benefits regardless. For instance, Utah State Senator Jake Anderegg, representing Salt Lake City and Provo, has advocated for a bill that would lead to denser urban areas and a reduced need for private vehicles, both of which can help lower greenhouse gas emissions. Anderegg admited, "I’m a conservative Republican from northern Utah County. [Climate change is] not really something my constituents care about.” In a lot of cities, such as Minneapolis, Austin, and San Francisco, the supporting arguments for new policies have been anchored to economics and social equity, rather than the environment. California State Senator Scott Wiener listed making housing more affordable and ending exclusionary zoning as the top two goals of a major transit and housing bill, but ranked reducing transit emissions in third place.
Wired
U.S. power-sector emissions rose for the first time in five years despite the steady retirement of coal-fired power plants. From 2005 to 2017, the U.S. utility sector's emissions fell 28 percent, while other economic sectors saw their emissions increase. Many utilities have pledged to cut emissions, with several targeting an 80 percent reduction by 2050. However, utilities aggressively replacing fossil fuel-based electricity with renewables remain the exception. Utilities have typically replaced aging coal facilities with natural gas plants. American power companies installed 46.3 gigawatts of natural gas capacity between 2013 and 2018, versus 33 GW of wind and 23 GW of solar during that period. While wind is projected to add the most capacity in 2019, natural gas is expected to move into the lead position in 2020. Professor Leah Stokes of UC-Santa Barbara said in order to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels, "You are going to need the federal government to do something like the Clean Power Plan. It is going too slow in the market, and the policies that exist are increasingly coming from Democratic states and not Republican states."
E&E News
On January 15, the medical journal The Lancet published findings from a commission it convened researching the need for a comprehensive reworking of global food systems. The report suggested that climate change and public health are connected through food production issues. The commission which authored the report consisted of 37 experts from 16 countries across a variety of disciplines. The commission proposed scientific targets around diets and food production to help reach the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. Recommendations included cutting meat consumption in half, greatly reducing food waste, and shifting the world's agricultural sector into a carbon sink by replacing resource-intensive farming methods with approaches that help regenerate soil and require less fertilizer. The report stated, "A transformation of the global food system should ultimately involve multiple stakeholders, from individual consumers to policy makers and all actors in the food supply chain. However, humanity has never aimed to change the global food system on the scale envisioned in this Commission." Food production currently accounts for about 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
InsideClimate News
According to a new study appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, higher global temperatures could result in significantly more than the 250,000 deaths predicted by the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2014, WHO estimated that climate change would bring more instances of malaria, diarrhea, heat stress, and malnutrition across the globe, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths between 2030 and 2050. However, study author Andrew Haines of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has pegged WHO's earlier estimate as "conservative." Haines said, "We think the impact is more difficult to quantify because there is also population displacement and a range of additional factors like food production and crop yield, and the increase in heat that will limit labor productivity from farmers in tropical regions that wasn't taken into account among other factors." He notes that while climate change is the leading environmental threat to humanity, problems such as freshwater resource depletion, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and deforestation also compound public health hazards. A companion editorial in the journal urges medical professionals to fully weigh the challenges described in the study.
CNN
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