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The Trump Administration approved the mining of copper within a Minnesota watershed despite many environmental concerns as the environmental repercussions due to habitat fragmentation, soil and water pollution and contamination, and the emission of air pollutants.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday renewed two mineral leases near the Boundary Waters Wilderness area in Minnesota, opening the popular wilderness and recreation area up to copper mining despite heavy opposition from local and national conservation groups.

The department's Bureau of Land Management granted the hardrock mineral leases inside the Superior National Forest to Twin Metals Minnesota LLC, a subsidiary of Chile's Antofagasta, with the aim of expanding domestic mining of "critical minerals" used in common appliances and products, saying it is beneficial to national security because it reduces foreign imports.

"Mining strategic metals in the United States is beneficial to national security, national and local economies, and job creation," the Interior Department's assistant secretary Joe Balash said in a statement.

The announcement riled conservation groups, who said the Trump administration conducted an insufficient environmental review process leading up to its approval.

The Obama administration in 2016 had implemented a moratorium on new mineral development in the area while it would conduct an extensive environmental impact statement (EIS) analysis to determine whether 234,000 acres of the watershed around Boundary Waters should be withdrawn from mining for up to 20 years.

But after President Donald Trump took office in 2017, he reversed course, cancelling the EIS in favor of a less-demanding and faster environmental assessment last January.

The BLM said it got more than 39,000 comments during the 41 day EA review, which informed its decision.

"The 'review' completed by the administration was wholly insufficient to determine the impact of sulfide-ore copper mining on land immediately adjacent to the Boundary Waters," said Tom Landwehr, Executive Director of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters.

Conservation and local groups have for years opposed the idea of opening up the area near the Boundary Waters to mining, because of the environmental risk it poses to the area's gray wolves, black bears, and moose and a variety of fish.

The site attracts more visitors than any other U.S. wilderness area.

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Trump administration opens up Minnesota wilderness area to copper...

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday renewed two mineral leases near the Boundary Waters Wilderness area in Minnesota, opening the popular wilderness and recreation area up to copper mining despite heavy opposition from local and national conservation groups.

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The UK, following much public pressure, have moved forward drafting legislation that will ban plastic cotton swabs, drink stirrers, and plastic straws as they are huge single-use plastic products used in the UK. Those with disabilities will be able to get these products, but they will no longer be readily handed out and available in an effort to reduce the generation of plastic pollution.

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Plastic straws, drink stirrers and cotton buds will be banned in the UK from next April, the government has confirmed in its latest attempt to stem the flow of waste and promote the use of recyclable materials.

The move comes amid a spate of targeted action on the use of single use plastic. On Monday, Amazon-owned retailer Whole Foods said it would remove all plastic straws from its stores in the US, UK and Canada by July of this year.

"Urgent and decisive action is needed to tackle plastic pollution and protect our environment," said Michael Gove, the environment secretary. "These items are often used for just a few minutes but take hundreds of years to break down, ending up in our seas and oceans and harming precious marine life."

The news follows a 13-month consultation on the proposed regulations during which concerns were raised that some people with medical needs and disabilities who rely on plastic straws will be put at risk by the regulation, prompting the government to include exemptions for these groups.

When the ban takes effect, shops will not be allowed to display or hand out plastic straws but they will be able to give them out on request. The government said this "strikes the right balance between reducing the environmental impact while protecting the rights of people with medical conditions and disabilities".

More than 80 per cent of people consulted by the government supported a ban on the sale and distribution of plastic straws while 90 per cent supported a ban on drinks stirrers and cotton buds.

Sam Chetan-Welsh, political campaigner for environment group Greenpeace UK, welcomed the move but said the moves "only scratch the surface".

He added: "To really tackle the plastic crisis we need bigger bolder action from this government - including targets to radically reduce the production of single-use plastics and an all-inclusive deposit return scheme for drinks containers."

Mr Gove is working to develop a scheme where consumers will have to pay a deposit when purchasing plastic bottles, though the proposal has come under criticism for its narrow scope.

Andrew Opie, food and sustainability director at the British Retail Consortium, said many retailers were working to identify how they can reduce reliance on plastics and increase recycling, including ambitions to make 100 per cent of plastic packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025.

Government research published last year found that in England, an estimated 4.7bn plastic straws, 316m plastic stirrers and 1.8bn plastic-stemmed cotton buds are used each year. About 10 per cent of cotton buds are believed to be flushed down toilets and often end up in waterways and oceans.

A global analysis, published in 2017, estimated that 8.3bn tonnes of plastics has been produced since the industry began to expand after the second world war and around four-fifths of this has been dumped as waste, often washing up on coastlines.

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UK presses ahead with ban on single-use plastics

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Plastic straws, drink stirrers and cotton buds will be banned in the UK from next April, the government has confirmed in its latest attempt to stem the flow of waste and promote the use of recyclable materials. The move comes amid a spate of targeted action on the use of single use plastic.

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In an effort to combat climate change, Maryland has committed to obtaining half of its electricity from renewables by 2030 under a new bill. Only Washington, D.C. and nine states have created such standards for renewable energy.

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Half of Maryland's electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030

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May 22 at 7:26 PM Maryland must get 50 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar by 2030 under a bill that will become law without Gov. Larry Hogan's signature. Only the District and nine states, including California, New Jersey and Hawaii, have renewable standards at 50 percent or higher, according to the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

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Battery prices are beginning to drop making them a viable option, replacing gas peakers in states. More states are investing in batteries an in effort to go climate neutral.

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Renewable energy sources like wind and solar have always had one big knock against them: They can only generate electricity when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

As a result, electric utilities - especially those that feature renewables - have for years relied on natural gas-fired "peaker" plants, which kick in with additional power when demand for energy is too high.

But a curious thing recently happened in Southern California. One of the largest utilities in the country scrapped a proposal to build a new peaker plant, opting instead to build a battery system that could store excess electricity from solar and wind when conditions are good and cleanly dispatch it when needed.

For years, batteries were too expensive to be deployed at a large enough scale to compete with other cheap energy sources - namely natural gas. Now the California move, which attracted relatively little attention outside industry circles, has quietly marked a crucial step toward putting more renewable energy sources on the grid and confronting climate change.

The move is part of an accelerating trend: In as soon as seven years, with no significant change to battery prices, close to a third of the market for new peakers will be threatened by batteries, consulting firm Wood Mackenzie found in an analysis. And if battery prices fall even modestly, as much as 82% of new peaker capacity could instead be replaced by batteries.

"Gas peakers only operate a few hours in a year," says Ravi Manghani, head of energy storage at Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables. "We've seen four to six hours of energy storage is technically sufficient to replace most of these peaking assets. As battery costs continue to fall, battery storage systems have become economically more attractive alternatives."

Peakers are an ideal entry point for large-scale battery storage: They're cheap to build but costly to run - more expensive than larger "baseload" gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric plants that handle day-to-day electricity demand. Peakers also generate far more carbon emissions when firing up compared to baseload gas plants.

"You ever see an 18-wheeler taking off from a dead stop and blowing off that black smoke?" says Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas-Austin. "It's just inefficient getting going."

Battery facilities, which generate no emissions, are the opposite: more expensive to install but less expensive to operate - and improvements and new efficiencies in manufacturing have slashed their initial price tag. A slowdown in growing consumer appetite for electricity, meanwhile, in part the result of state and federal efforts to improve energy efficiency, means demand isn't peaking quite so high as it used to.

When it comes to peakers, as a result, the crossover point between batteries and gas-fired generation has arrived.

"These peaker plants are the bridge to renewables," says Scott Smith, leader of the U.S. Power and Utilities National Sector at Deloitte. "'Should we build that new peaker?' The answer is going to be no, we have another option."

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The greatest market shift so far has occurred in Arizona, California, Hawaii and New York, where state legislators and policymakers have implemented measures to support the build-out of renewable energy, such as through standards that require utilities to generate a certain portion of their electricity from zero-emissions sources, or through strict mandates like in California, which is requiring its three investor-owned utilities to procure massive amounts of storage - some 1.8 gigawatts of energy storage by 2020.

Southern California Edison last month became the latest electricity provider to take strides toward that goal, scrapping plans for a 262 MW gas plant for instead a smaller 195 MW portfolio of batteries - reflecting not only the technological promise of batteries but also the success of efforts to reduce demand.

The environmental benefits, plus improvements to grid efficiency - batteries can dispatch electricity faster than even a gas peaker plant - are added bonuses, Manghani says.

This shift from peakers to batteries is not yet setting off alarm bells in the gas industry, experts say - but that may occur sooner than many expect. Peakers for now represent only a fraction of the electricity market, producing as little as 1-2% of the energy that plants of all types across the U.S. generate each year.

"Even if one did lose the peaker market, it's not an extremely significant amount of the natural gas market," says Rhodes, who is also an analyst at Vibrant Clean Energy, a software and services company in Boulder, Colorado, that supports wind, solar and battery projects.

Natural gas also isn't just used in electricity production, but as a feedstock in a host of products from plastics to fertilizer. Companies are also investing in liquefaction terminals to expand exports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to America's neighbors and overseas.

"There's a lot of demand for natural gas, there's a lot of uses for natural gas. ... We've got a couple LNG plants online that liquefy massive amounts of natural gas," Smith, of Deloitte, says. "So gas still has a robust future."

The same is true in the power sector: Amid such cheap and abundant supplies of natural gas, baseload power plants generally don't yet face a threat from batteries paired with renewables. Even if solar, on an average basis, is now cost-competitive with most gas plants, prices vary region-to-region. And projects paired with battery storage, crucial for providing round-the-clock electricity, are still too expensive. Peakers, though, are a critical stepping stone - one that's already leading the way to replacing baseload gas plants with renewables.

In a handful of states, including some that are perhaps unexpected - Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Minnesota, Nevada and Texas - new solar-plus-storage projects that are effectively replacing certain gas-fired baseload power plants.

"It's the camel's nose under the tent," Rhodes says. "In the peaker market, we can do some learning, get smarter about how we operate, figure out which battery chemistries ad technologies and control algorithms work the best, we can drive down the cost, and that makes it more economic to chase after bigger sectors of the market."

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Why Batteries to Store Solar, Wind Energy Are Replacing Power Plants

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Renewable energy sources like wind and solar have always had one big knock against them: They can only generate electricity when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. As a result, electric utilities - especially those that feature renewables - have for years relied on natural gas-fired "peaker" plants, which kick in with additional power when demand for energy is too high.

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The United Kingdom just experienced its first week without burning coal since the Industrial Revolution. Britain is moving towards generating zero carbon energy by 2025 in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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Britain has had its first week without using electricity from burning coal since the 1880s, according to the National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO).

Fintan Slye, director of ESO, said this would become the "new normal".

The world's first centralised public coal-fired generator opened in 1882 at Holborn Viaduct in London.

The government plans to phase out the UK's last coal-fired plants by 2025 to reduce carbon emissions.

Mr Slye said: "As more and more renewables come on to our energy system, coal-free runs like this are going to be a regular occurrence.

"We believe that by 2025, we will be able to fully operate Britain's electricity system with zero carbon."

National Grid ESO plans to have the systems and software in place by 2025 to be able to handle energy generated from renewables, which give a variable supply, plus nuclear energy, without coal and gas, if that mix is available from the market.

The coal-free week ran from 13:24 on Wednesday 1 May to 13:24 on Wednesday 8 May.

Burning question

The majority of the slack was taken up by burning natural gas instead, which made up 46% of the UK energy mix in that week.

The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is still produced when natural gas and biomass are burnt.

But coal plants emit almost twice as much carbon dioxide as gas-fired power plants.

Doug Parr, policy director at environmental activist group Greenpeace, said: "Just a few years ago, we were told Britain couldn't possibly keep the lights on without burning coal."

"Now coal is quickly becoming an irrelevance, much to the benefit of our climate and air quality, and we barely notice it."

Last week, government advisers the Committee on Climate Change said the UK should cut greenhouse gases to nearly zero by 2050.

This would need more renewable electricity production, an earlier phase-out of new petrol and diesel cars, and consumer changes such as turning central heating thermostats down and eating less red meat.

As part of efforts to meet its climate target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% compared with 1990 levels in the next three decades, the UK plans to wean itself completely off coal-fired power generation by 2025.

Decarbonisation

Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark said: "We lead the world when it comes to tackling climate change and we want to carry on breaking records, which is why we've put foundations in place to allow our renewables sector to thrive.

"We're now on a path to become the first major economy to legislate for net zero emissions."

A spokesman for industry body Energy UK said: "We need to ensure that the cheapest renewables can play a part in further decarbonising generation at least cost to customers, enable the transport and heating sectors to follow suit and get serious about making our homes and businesses energy-efficient."

The coal-free week follows on from the UK's record-breaking coal-free period of 90 hours in April.
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UK has first coal-free week for a century

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Britain has had its first week without using electricity from burning coal since the 1880s, according to the National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO). Fintan Slye, director of ESO, said this would become the "new normal". The world's first centralised public coal-fired generator opened in 1882 at Holborn Viaduct in London.

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For the first time, renewable energy was projected to generate more electricity than non-renewable sources in the United States. The energy sector is experiencing a lot of change and transformation as natural gas has become more widely used than coal and renewables are taking the lead overall.

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america's renewable energy set to surpass coal for the first month ever  - cnn

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America's renewable energy set to surpass coal for the first month ever

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America's clean energy revolution is on the verge of a tipping point.

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China is making progress towards meeting their renewable energy goals. The government is passing policy that incentivize the growth of the renewable energy sector, sparking mass growth.

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New policy initiatives in China will trigger an increase in the consumption of renewable energy and lower curtailment rates, while at the same time also create challenges for the country's coal-fired power producers, who will see utilization declines.

On May 15, China's National Energy Administration issued its final policy paper on the country's renewable portfolio standard (RPS); a benchmark standard that will become effective in 2020 for five years.

The RPS sets the foundation for Beijing's aim to increase the share of non-fossil fuels to 20% of primary energy consumption by 2030. The percentage stood at 14.3% in 2018, according to rating agency Moody's, approaching the country's medium-term target of 15% set in its 13th five-year plan for 2016-2020.

China is already the world's largest wind power producer, with 211,392MW of installed capacity, more than all of the European Union combined.

Moody's said that because the RPS sets minimum levels for the consumption of renewable energy for individual provinces, it should be deemed as credit positive for renewable energy companies.

Ivy Poon, Senior Analyst at Moody's, said: "The RPS should increase consumption of renewable energy and reduce curtailment rates, thus strengthening the operating environment for renewable energy companies."

Afterall, curtailment rates for wind and solar power dropped to 7% and 3% in 2018 on supportive government policies, and should in all likelihood fall further as consistency increases across Chinese provinces in their dispatch of renewable energy.

"The new policy will also incentivise companies to voluntarily purchase renewable energy through market-driven sales and green certificates, and should help increase investment returns for renewable energy companies through increased utilization," Poon added.

The other side of China's evolving energy mix is that as renewables thrive, the new policy creates challenges for coal-fired power producers, as intensifying competition from renewable energy companies will result in declining utilization, and ultimately lower average tariffs.
The author is an oil & gas analyst and market commentator. Follow him on Twitter @The_Oilholic

I am a UK-based oil & gas sector analyst and business news editor/writer with over 20 years of experience in the financial and trade press. I have worked on all majo...

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Policy Initiatives To Trigger Massive Growth Of Renewable Energy In China

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New policy initiatives in China will trigger an increase in the consumption of renewable energy and lower curtailment rates, while at the same time also create challenges for the country's coal-fired power producers, who will see utilization declines.

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New reports from the United Nations are emerging with damning results, illustrating a bleak reality concerning climate change as humans continue to drastically alter the environment and change the composition of ecosystems globally. As a result of anthropocentric forces, the climate is changing, ecosystems are collapsing, and extinction rates are at a high.

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Fishing nets and ropes are a frequent hazard for olive ridley sea turtles, seen on a beach in India's Kerala state in January. A new 1,500-page report by the United Nations is the most exhaustive look yet at the decline in biodiversity across the globe. Credit... Soren Andersson/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

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WASHINGTON - Humans are transforming Earth's natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.

The 1,500-page report, compiled by hundreds of international experts and based on thousands of scientific studies, is the most exhaustive look yet at the decline in biodiversity across the globe and the dangers that creates for human civilization. A summary of its findings, which was approved by representatives from the United States and 131 other countries, was released Monday in Paris. The full report is set to be published this year.

Its conclusions are stark. In most major land habitats, from the savannas of Africa to the rain forests of South America, the average abundance of native plant and animal life has fallen by 20 percent or more, mainly over the past century. With the human population passing 7 billion, activities like farming, logging, poaching, fishing and mining are altering the natural world at a rate "unprecedented in human history."

At the same time, a new threat has emerged: Global warming has become a major driver of wildlife decline, the assessment found, by shifting or shrinking the local climates that many mammals, birds, insects, fish and plants evolved to survive in. When combined with the other ways humans are damaging the environment, climate change is now pushing a growing number of species, such as the Bengal tiger, closer to extinction.

As a result, biodiversity loss is projected to accelerate through 2050, particularly in the tropics, unless countries drastically step up their conservation efforts.

The report is not the first to paint a grim portrait of Earth's ecosystems. But it goes further by detailing how closely human well-being is intertwined with the fate of other species.

"For a long time, people just thought of biodiversity as saving nature for its own sake," said Robert Watson, chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which conducted the assessment at the request of national governments. "But this report makes clear the links between biodiversity and nature and things like food security and clean water in both rich and poor countries."

A previous report by the group had estimated that, in the Americas, nature provides some $24 trillion of non-monetized benefits to humans each year. The Amazon rain forest absorbs immense quantities of carbon dioxide and helps slow the pace of global warming. Wetlands purify drinking water. Coral reefs sustain tourism and fisheries in the Caribbean. Exotic tropical plants form the basis of a variety of medicines.

But as these natural landscapes wither and become less biologically rich, the services they can provide to humans have been dwindling.

Humans are producing more food than ever, but land degradation is already harming agricultural productivity on 23 percent of the planet's land area, the new report said. The decline of wild bees and other insects that help pollinate fruits and vegetables is putting up to $577 billion in annual crop production at risk. The loss of mangrove forests and coral reefs along coasts could expose up to 300 million people to increased risk of flooding.

The authors note that the devastation of nature has become so severe that piecemeal efforts to protect individual species or to set up wildlife refuges will no longer be sufficient. Instead, they call for "transformative changes" that include curbing wasteful consumption, slimming down agriculture's environmental footprint and cracking down on illegal logging and fishing.

"It's no longer enough to focus just on environmental policy," said Sandra M. Díaz, a lead author of the study and an ecologist at the National University of Córdoba in Argentina. "We need to build biodiversity considerations into trade and infrastructure decisions, the way that health or human rights are built into every aspect of social and economic decision-making."

Scientists have cataloged only a fraction of living creatures, some 1.3 million; the report estimates there may be as many as 8 million plant and animal species on the planet, most of them insects. Since 1500, at least 680 species have blinked out of existence, including the Pinta giant tortoise of the Galápagos Islands and the Guam flying fox.

Though outside experts cautioned it could be difficult to make precise forecasts, the report warns of a looming extinction crisis, with extinction rates currently tens to hundreds of times higher than they have been in the past 10 million years.

"Human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before," the report concludes, estimating that "around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken."

Unless nations step up their efforts to protect what natural habitats are left, they could witness the disappearance of 40 percent of amphibian species, one-third of marine mammals and one-third of reef-forming corals. More than 500,000 land species, the report said, do not have enough natural habitat left to ensure their long-term survival.

Over the past 50 years, global biodiversity loss has primarily been driven by activities like the clearing of forests for farmland, the expansion of roads and cities, logging, hunting, overfishing, water pollution and the transport of invasive species around the globe.

In Indonesia, the replacement of rain forest with palm oil plantations has ravaged the habitat of critically endangered orangutans and Sumatran tigers. In Mozambique, ivory poachers helped kill off nearly 7,000 elephants between 2009 and 2011 alone. In Argentina and Chile, the introduction of the North American beaver in the 1940s has devastated native trees (though it has also helped other species thrive, including the Magellanic woodpecker).

All told, three-quarters of the world's land area has been significantly altered by people, the report found, and 85 percent of the world's wetlands have vanished since the 18th century.

And with humans continuing to burn fossil fuels for energy, global warming is expected to compound the damage. Roughly 5 percent of species worldwide are threatened with climate-related extinction if global average temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the report concluded. (The world has already warmed 1 degree.)

"If climate change were the only problem we were facing, a lot of species could probably move and adapt," Richard Pearson, an ecologist at the University College of London, said. "But when populations are already small and losing genetic diversity, when natural landscapes are already fragmented, when plants and animals can't move to find newly suitable habitats, then we have a real threat on our hands."

The dwindling number of species will not just make the world a less colorful or wondrous place, the report noted. It also poses risks to people.

Today, humans are relying on significantly fewer varieties of plants and animals to produce food. Of the 6,190 domesticated mammal breeds used in agriculture, more than 559 have gone extinct and 1,000 more are threatened. That means the food system is becoming less resilient against pests and diseases. And it could become harder in the future to breed new, hardier crops and livestock to cope with the extreme heat and drought that climate change will bring.

"Most of nature's contributions are not fully replaceable," the report said. Biodiversity loss "can permanently reduce future options, such as wild species that might be domesticated as new crops and be used for genetic improvement."

The report does contain glimmers of hope. When governments have acted forcefully to protect threatened species, such as the Arabian oryx or the Seychelles magpie robin, they have managed to fend off extinction in many cases. And nations have protected more than 15 percent of the world's land and 7 percent of its oceans by setting up nature reserves and wilderness areas.

Still, only a fraction of the most important areas for biodiversity have been protected, and many nature reserves poorly enforce prohibitions against poaching, logging or illegal fishing. Climate change could also undermine existing wildlife refuges by shifting the geographic ranges of species that currently live within them.

So, in addition to advocating the expansion of protected areas, the authors outline a vast array of changes aimed at limiting the drivers of biodiversity loss.

Farmers and ranchers would have to adopt new techniques to grow more food on less land. Consumers in wealthy countries would have to waste less food and become more efficient in their use of natural resources. Governments around the world would have to strengthen and enforce environmental laws, cracking down on illegal logging and fishing and reducing the flow of heavy metals and untreated wastewater into the environment.

The authors also note that efforts to limit global warming will be critical, although they caution that the development of biofuels to reduce emissions could end up harming biodiversity by further destroying forests.

None of this will be easy, especially since many developing countries face pressure to exploit their natural resources as they try to lift themselves out of poverty.

But, by detailing the benefits that nature can provide to people, and by trying to quantify what is lost when biodiversity plummets, the scientists behind the assessment are hoping to help governments strike a more careful balance between economic development and conservation.

"You can't just tell leaders in Africa that there can't be any development and that we should turn the whole continent into a national park," said Emma Archer, who led the group's earlier assessment of biodiversity in Africa. "But we can show that there are trade-offs, that if you don't take into account the value that nature provides, then ultimately human well-being will be compromised."

In the next two years, diplomats from around the world will gather for several meetings under the Convention on Biological Diversity, a global treaty, to discuss how they can step up their efforts at conservation. Yet even in the new report's most optimistic scenario, through 2050 the world's nations would only slow the decline of biodiversity - not stop it.

"At this point," said Jake Rice, a fisheries scientist who led an earlier report on biodiversity in the Americas, "our options are all about damage control."

For more news on climate and the environment, follow @NYTClimate on Twitter.

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Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an 'Unprecedented' Pace

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Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd: , our email newsletter. WASHINGTON - Humans are transforming Earth's natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.

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Cities around the world are taking progressive steps to combat climate change with ambitious goals to become carbon neutral in the near future.

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Climate change is disproportionately affecting islands as ocean levels are rising and ocean acidification is causing a collapse within the fishing industry which is essential to the economic stability of the islands. This is creating an existential crisis on islands around the world.

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grenada pm: climate change is an existential threat for us in the islands (opinion)  - cnn

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Grenada PM: Climate change is an existential threat for us in the islands

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Keith C. Mitchell writes that as Small Island Developing States leaders deal with the aftermath of hurricanes like Irma and Maria, they will not play a waiting game on doing something about climate change -- hoping major economies would come to our rescue.

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The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is in charge of making decisions about the construction of new pipelines. They receive very little attention from the public, making their role in shaping climate change and the United States's contribution rather quiet. Since the Trump administration came into office, FERC has been observed abandoning their obligations to consider the effects of their decisions on climate change, allowing for the construction of new and harmful lines.

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Some of the most consequential decisions about how the US government deals with climate change are being made by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), an agency few people are aware exists and even fewer people track closely.

But FERC sits at the heart of the clean energy transition, overseeing two key areas of frequent conflict. The first is bulk electricity - interstate transmission lines and regional wholesale power markets. The second is natural gas infrastructure; the agency licenses the siting and building of all new pipelines.

FERC is composed of five commissioners; by law, no more than three may be from one party. In a series of 3-2 decisions, the Trump-appointed Republican commissioners have effectively refused to take climate into account at all in pipeline decisions. This has prompted a series of scathing dissents from Commissioner Richard Glick, a former Democratic Senate aide whom President Trump appointed to the commission in 2017.

Now Glick has taken a step back and, along with his adviser Matthew Christiansen, gathered his thoughts into an academic article, just published in the Energy Law Review. It's called " FERC and climate change."

Their conclusion, in a nutshell, is that FERC doesn't need to reinvent the wheel to address climate change. It doesn't need a new regulatory regime or new authorities. It just needs to diligently obey its current mandates.

In electricity, it has no mandate to address climate directly, but it does have a mandate to maintain open, competitive markets - and these days, doing so has "the effect, if not the intent, of facilitating a cleaner, less GHG-intensive energy mix."

When it comes to pipelines, they argue, FERC does have a clear mandate to take climate effects into account. Such decisions are supposed to be guided by the "public interest," and, as they say, "it is hard to imagine a consideration more relevant to the 'public interest' than the existential threat posed by climate change." This conclusion has been confirmed by several recent federal court decisions instructing federal agencies, indeed FERC itself, to take climate into account.

The paper is a call for FERC to recommit to its existing obligations. Those obligations are, in some cases, fairly technical, but they have substantial greenhouse gas implications. So I called Commissioner Glick (Christiansen also sat in) to walk through some of his arguments. Among other things, we talked about FERC's mandates, the growth of distributed energy resources, the possibility of expanding wholesale electricity markets, his disagreement with his Republican chair over pipelines, and whether Trump will succeed in politicizing the agency.

It was a long, wonky, and, if you're interested in any of the issues under FERC's purview, fascinating conversation. It's been edited for length and clarity.

FERC's authority over electricity, and how it affects climate change

David Roberts

Do you think that FERC has been doing a good job so far dealing with climate change?

Richard Glick

We have a responsibility under NEPA [the National Environmental Policy Act] to examine whether environmental impacts associated with an infrastructure project are significant. And to me, one of the most significant environmental impacts out there is climate change.

With regard to pipelines, we've been doing a poor job. Not only are we not doing what's required by statute, we're not doing what the DC Circuit told us to do in the Sabal Trail case.

Even after being admonished by the DC Circuit, the commission has consistently been avoiding its responsibility to consider whether the climate change impacts of a natural gas facility - especially pipelines, the downstream impacts and even the direct impacts - are significant, whether the greenhouse gas emissions have a significant impact on the environment. We're just ignoring that. We're refusing to make that finding, one way or the other.

With regard to electricity, I think we're doing a better job of that. The commission over the last decade or so has been slowly trying to focus on getting rid of barriers to newer technologies - things like storage, wind, and solar.

Matthew Christiansen

The article doesn't confront the question of whether FERC could, in its authority on the electricity side, address climate directly. The argument the article makes is that even under a conventional understanding of FERC's responsibility, there are a number of things it can do that can have very large impacts for climate.

David Roberts

Why not address it directly on the electricity side? Are there legally defensible ways FERC could do so under the Federal Power Act? [The FPA defines FERC's authority.]

Richard Glick

The courts have been relatively clear that our jurisdiction is limited to matters directly affecting wholesale rates. It hasn't been litigated yet, but I'd be reluctant to suggest that we have the authority to more directly regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

But I would say that's not necessarily that significant. The fact is that consumers are demanding access to zero or lower emissions generation. And not just residential consumers; it's also commercial and industrial consumers. That's where demand is coming from these days.

Our role is to adapt, to make sure there's no undue discrimination, to make sure that rates and terms of service adjustments are reasonable.

But we can't directly regulate or limit greenhouse gas emissions through our Federal Power Act authority.

The uneasy relationship between FERC authority and state authority

David Roberts

One of the sources of conflict and controversy facing FERC these days, on the electricity side, has to do with the relationship between FERC authority and state authority. So let's start with the basics. The Federal Power Act sets up a relationship between FERC and the states known as "cooperative federalism." What does that mean?

Richard Glick

Congress gave FERC authority over wholesale electric markets and interstate transmission of electricity. But they explicitly said that states have authority over resource decision-making.

Things have gotten more blurred lately, just because of the nature of transactions and newer technologies. At times, our regulation of wholesale markets intersects with the states' interest in overseeing utilities' resource generation specs. Cooperative federalism, at least from a FERC perspective, means accommodating the state's statutory role, deferring to states in assessing how they want their electric resource mix to evolve, and ensuring that, however we regulate the wholesale electric markets, we don't directly or indirectly require the states to overturn the decisions they've made.

David Roberts

As you say, the lines between federal and state authority have been getting blurrier. States are passing energy policies that, for various reasons, advantage cleaner sources. Some [wholesale market managers] are saying, "FERC's job is to create a level playing field. It says so right there in the charter. These state policies have skewed the playing field and FERC needs to rebalance it." How do you resolve that tension?

Richard Glick

I would argue states have been skewing the playing field since the advent of government regulation of electricity.

The zero-emissions credit, the nuclear credit program, the renewable energy credit program, RPS programs - there are hundreds of these state programs. Some of them, in fact, encourage gas generation or coal generation. For instance, all the work the government has done on fracking has arguably had a dramatic impact on the price of natural gas.

If [FERC] tried to balance all that out, to create that level playing field - which is somewhat of a myth, because there's never going to be a complete level playing field - we're back to where we started. We just have to recognize that we don't have real, truly competitive markets out there; we have managed competition.

States have to recognize that we have authority over wholesale rates; for instance, the Supreme Court said a state can't take action that directly interferes with or sets wholesale rates. But at the same time, we can't then tell a state, "You can't do your zero-emissions credit program, even though you think greenhouse gas emissions are an issue you should address at the state level."

David Roberts

Right. So it's less like creating a level playing field and more like preserving the playing field that you inherit from states. [Laughter]

Matthew Christiansen

It goes to your question about cooperative federalism. There are some things the commission does and some things the states do. In order for those two sovereigns to cooperate, the commission has to respect what the states are doing.

But at the same time, the commission's core responsibility is to break down the barriers that exist within its jurisdiction - a market rule, for example, that prevents a battery from providing a service that a gas generator is allowed to provide, without any real rationale. That's the kind of thing we have in mind.

How FERC can (and should) deal with distributed energy resources

David Roberts

More and more distributed energy resources (DERs) are aggregating together and bidding into wholesale markets. [See this article for much more on that.] It seems to me that as DERs get more prevalent and more complicated, this line between state jurisdiction and federal jurisdiction is only going to get blurrier. Do you think the market construct we currently have - with DERs both serving reliability at the retail level and bidding into markets at the wholesale level - is going to hold up over the long term?

Richard Glick

First off, that's an excellent question. When Norman Bay was chair, just before he left, FERC proposed a combined rulemaking that would have required RTOs and ISOs to come up with rules to facilitate participation in their wholesale markets by both energy storage and by aggregated distributed energy resources. [After Bay left,] the commission split those proposals into two. We went forward with the storage rule, but the distributed energy resource rule is still pending. I am very interested in finalizing that rule so we can get the RTOs to come up with rules facilitating DER integration.

But to come back to your point, the lines that were drawn [between state and FERC jurisdiction] in 1935 when Congress enacted the Federal Power Act, and even subsequently, over time, like in 1992 when it made significant changes to the Federal Power Act, the times were a lot simpler. It was a lot easier to tell what a wholesale transaction was and a retail transaction was, and where distribution facilities stopped and transmission facilities began.

That's not the case today. You have distributed energy resources behind the meter, and they're capable of providing significant benefits to wholesale markets. And we have authority over wholesale transactions, but the states have a legitimate interest in ensuring that their distribution systems are operated reliably.

I think there are ways to accommodate both. People have suggested that maybe the Federal Power Act needs to be updated to address some of these concerns, to redraw the line. That's not necessarily a bad idea. I think it would be helpful for us. But that could take a long time, so FERC has to operate within the authorities we have today.

How FERC can best serve grid resilience and long-distance transmission

David Roberts

Recently, there have been a lot of debates about the resilience of the energy grid, its ability to stay functional during times of weather stress or attack. The Trump administration tried to bail out coal plants on the basis that they are "fuel secure," i.e., have giant piles of fuel on site, which is allegedly necessary for grid resilience. How do you see FERC's role in the resilience conversation?

Richard Glick

Several months after President Trump came into office, the Department of Energy proposed a rulemaking to FERC that would have required us to compensate generation facilities that have 90 days of fuel or more on hand. Somehow that was going to help the resiliency of the grid.

What's notable is that all five commissioners agreed there just wasn't anything in the record the Department of Energy provided to FERC to suggest there was a resilience problem that could be addressed through subsidizing coal and nuclear generation.

When we dismissed the DOE proposal, we created a new docket, asking several questions: 1) How do you define resilience? 2) Do we have a resilience problem? And 3), if we do have a problem, how should we fix it?

We've received an enormous number of comments. So far, from what I've seen of those comments, there really isn't a problem, at least in terms of grid resilience. There is no suggestion that more coal generation or more nuclear generation would make our grid any more secure.

To the extent we have problems, it's mostly on the transmission and distribution side. One example would be, as the impact of climate change continues to grow in your part of the country, wildfires have an impact on the transmission grid. So those are the kinds of things I'd like to see us address, not subsidizing generation with 90 days of supply.

Cold weather has an impact on all technology; there just isn't anything to suggest that we'll be free and easy if we figure out a way to keep coal plants and nuclear plans operating.

David Roberts

The long-distance transmission grid is a huge piece of the clean energy puzzle. FERC has a docket open reexamining its transmission authority. What would you like to see come out of that? Dynamic line ratings? An offshore wind spine? What would you like to see FERC do around transmission?

Richard Glick

We have a proceeding ongoing, examining our approach to granting incentives for transmission. Back in 2005, Congress gave FERC the authority to provide incentives for transmission and over time, FERC was first criticized for giving too many incentives, and then it revised its policy and was criticized for not giving enough incentives.

There are a few things I'd like to see come out of this proceeding.

First of all, I'd like to review our existing incentives to see whether they make sense now. There are some I don't believe actually encourage the development of transmission.

And there are other incentives we might want to put on the books to help utilities and other investors. You mentioned dynamic line ratings - I don't think there's enough incentive for utilities now to invest in making the existing grid more efficient. In most cases, they get a greater return when they invest significant capital in something. They're not encouraged to invest in little things like facilitating dynamic line ratings, which might greatly improve the efficiency of existing transmission assets. That's one thing I'd like to see us take a look at.

The other thing is whether we need to provide greater incentives to access remotely located resources, especially in terms of rightsizing transmission. If an area is very windy and you can build up to 10 200-megawatt wind farms, and we build a transmission line that's just going to satisfy the first 200-megawatt wind farm, is that the right thing to do? Or should we figure out a way to incentivize rightsizing transmission?

All of my colleagues agree that more needs to be done on transmission, especially to access remotely located renewables. We have to figure out whether our current incentives are the right approach or if we need to take a new approach.

Thumbs down to capacity markets and up to the possibility of a Western regional energy market

David Roberts

A recent paper co-authored by FERC's chief economist argued that mandatory capacity markets, by their structure, tend to favor natural gas. [Capacity markets pay power generators to be available, in reserve, as opposed to energy markets, which pay for electricity produced.] Do you think capacity markets are working?

Richard Glick

There are rules I can't talk about because they're still pending in front of the commission, but I have serious reservations about mandatory capacity markets, in large part because I don't think they work the way they're intended to. Capacity markets are supposed to be not only encouraging new generation to come in but also encouraging inefficient generation to retire. That's not happening very well. Some mandatory capacity markets are producing significantly greater amounts of capacity than needed to meet the reserve margin target.

What's interesting to me is that, now that we have low natural gas prices and much more zero-marginal-cost wind and solar on the grid, it's leading to reduced prices. So people are arguing that mandatory capacity markets need to be changed - a proposal not really aimed at making the market more efficient, but aimed at increasing the price. [laughter] They feel they're not being compensated sufficiently and want to increase the rate they get from capacity markets. I don't think that was the intent of the economist who came up with this concept.

Resource adequacy is an important issue. I just have strong reservations about whether mandatory capacity markets are the best way to achieve resource adequacy.

David Roberts

What thoughts, if any, do you have on the prospect of a regional Western [wholesale energy market]?

Richard Glick

I'm a big believer in regional coordination and regional efforts because, as we've seen in other parts of the country, they help to integrate variable generation, wind and solar, much more efficiently and much more economically. And they also provide greater reliability. If you didn't have 38 balancing authorities [in the West], you would have much less need for certain types of investments in generation. So I think regional coordination is much more efficient, and beneficial for consumers.

Having said that, I also recognize the long history of these efforts in the West, and the concerns that have been raised about governance, whether California might have too much influence over the other states.

So from FERC's perspective, the best thing we can do is encourage the parties to have discussions. The region has to come up with its own approach, organically, through discussions with member states and other stakeholders.

FERC's obligation to grapple with the climate effects of natural gas pipelines

David Roberts

Moving on to pipelines: Your paper argues that FERC has a direct, first-order responsibility to consider the environmental impacts of infrastructure projects, including the climate impacts. But your colleague [FERC Chair] Neil Chatterjee has argued that FERC does not have the authority or ability to consider climate impacts in permitting decisions. [In a 3-2 ruling, FERC recently adopted a policy sharply restricting consideration of climate impacts.] What's your argument for why FERC ought to consider those impacts?

Richard Glick

First of all, what the chairman said is wrong: There's nothing in the Natural Gas Act that prohibits [considering climate impacts]. As a matter of fact, the DC Circuit Court, in the Sabal Trail case, told us exactly the opposite, that we have a responsibility to examine greenhouse gas emissions to the extent that they're reasonably foreseeable.

Not only do we have a responsibility under NEPA, but also, under the Natural Gas Act, after we have performed NEPA analysis, we're supposed to determine whether the proposed project is in the public interest.

So we weigh the benefits of the project - say you're bringing gas into an area that needs more - against the adverse environmental impacts. There are other factors to balance, too, but for the most part, you balance those two factors.

The DC Circuit told us we have to do it. So I strongly disagree with Chairman Chatterjee. But to the extent he has legitimate misgivings about our authority, I've offered to work with him on a legislative proposal to Congress. We could get something up to Congress relatively quickly and ask them to pass it.

But to me it's very clear, based on the court decision in Sabal Trail, that we have that authority already.

David Roberts

You believe FERC has the statutory authority to consider both upstream and downstream effects? [Upstream effects happen prior to the pipeline, from natural gas production. Downstream impacts happen after the pipeline, for instance when the natural gas is burned in a power plant.]

Richard Glick

The NEPA standard is reasonable foreseeability. To the extent it's reasonably foreseeable that the addition of a pipeline will lead to more burning of natural gas downstream, or more production upstream, then I think we do.

In some cases, it may not be reasonably foreseeable, we can't figure it out, in which case, we don't have authority. But to the extent we can figure it out, we should - not only should, we have to.

David Roberts

Why not, when making these determinations, just use the social cost of carbon [the federal government's official estimate of the total cost of the impacts of a single ton of carbon emissions]?

Matthew Christiansen

Commissioner Glick has dissented several times on the basis of the commission's refusal to consider the social cost of carbon. With a problem as nebulous as climate change, it's hard to put it into concrete terms. Having a tool that puts it in discrete monetary terms that everyone can understand seems like the perfect way to contextualize the harm caused by CO2 emissions. We've been adamant about that; it's just no other offices are agreeing right now.

Look at the environmental impact statements associated with these projects that we have to prepare as part of the NEPA process. We consider a whole bunch of environmental impacts, and they're not all easy to measure, but we don't say, "Oh, this is too hard, we're not going to consider it." We consider those impacts, and in many cases, we mitigate those impacts. But the majority of the commission has chosen to stick a pin in this matter and not consider this particular environmental impact.

David Roberts

Say the majority of commissioners simply refuse to consider climate impacts in pipeline decisions. Is there any remedy? Could it go to the Supreme Court? Or are you just stuck?

Richard Glick

The court has already told them once to do it. The Sabal Trail case was very clear. It's just that the commission, in my opinion, intentionally misconstrued what the court told us to do.

So I think the court has to continue to tell them to do it. Some of these orders that get litigated, it takes a long time for them to get through the appellate process. Nonetheless, eventually some of these cases are going to get to the Circuit and maybe the Supreme Court. The courts will tell us what we have to do.

Maintaining FERC's independence in the face of Trump's pressure

David Roberts

When FERC rejected Trump's first attempt at a coal bailout, political observers celebrated the agency's independence. Currently, you only have four commissioners. LaFleur [the other Democrat] has announced that she's leaving. Trump will have two more appointments at least. Do you think he is trying to politicize FERC the way other federal agencies have been politicized? And if so, do you think he's going to succeed, or do you think FERC's independence is resilient against that kind of pressure?

Richard Glick

And that's no pun intended with "resilience"?

David Roberts

Right. Is FERC fuel-secure? [laughter]

Richard Glick

First of all, that's a totally legitimate question, because FERC has such a great reputation for being an independent agency, through many Democratic and Republican administrations. People are always concerned about that.

But I would just point again to the 5-0 decision on resilience. If the three Republican commissioners were puppets of the administration, they would have voted yes, but they did not. They all voted no.

David Roberts

I just worry that Trump saw that and thought, "Oh, I need better puppets."

Okay, as a final matter, several people on Twitter have demanded that I ask: Is there any possibility of updating eLibrary [FERC's database of dockets and legal filings] so that it performs with 21st-century speed and reliability?

Richard Glick

There are certain disadvantages to not being the chairman. One of the few advantages is I don't have authority over those kinds of issues.

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This federal agency is quietly, profoundly shaping climate policy

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Some of the most consequential decisions about how the US government deals with climate change are being made by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), an agency few people are aware exists and even fewer people track closely. But FERC sits at the heart of the clean energy transition, overseeing two key areas of frequent conflict.

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Politicians are working together with disregard to party to pass climate change policy with abundant support from the public in United Kingdom. Basic voluntary measures are finding great public support but it will not be enough and there is concern that there will not be enough support and bipartisan agreement to pass tough measures.

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Last week a small campaign group in the staunchly conservative town of Shrewsbury called a public meeting about climate change. The organisers were delighted when 150 people turned up. Even they were surprised, though, when people unanimously said they were prepared to give up flying, change their boilers and cars, eat less meat and even overthrow capitalism to get a grip on climate change.

But this was just a straw in the political wind whipping through middle England. Shrewsbury joins more than 100 other councils across the country in declaring a climate emergency, and has pledged that it will be carbon-neutral within 11 years, with more following every week.

The stakes get higher every day. In the past week, not only have the world's leading scientists dropped a bomb into the debate by stating, across 1,800 pages of detailed evidence, that our wholesale destruction of the biosphere threatens humanity just as much as climate change, but carbon levels in the atmosphere have reached their highest level in 800,000 years.
We are full of bright ideas to solve ecological problems. So let's act on them | Chris Packham
So, could this be the moment when politicians recognise they have both strong intellectual reason to act urgently on the environment as well as, finally, the public backing to do so? When, instead of trying to score marginal partisan points, they believe they have the legitimacy to be non-partisan, politically bold, and to together back transformative economic and social change in pursuit of the public good? Could politics indeed be changing with the climate?

The last few months have seen the debate shift. Put it down to David Attenborough's documentary, 1.5 million children on school strike, the charisma of Greta Thunberg, or sheer frustration with the political system, but increasing numbers of people now seem to recognise that nature's wellbeing is a national priority.

The UK government, keen to position itself as a world leader on climate, but still promoting flying and roads and less keen to act at home, recognises the moment. Cambridge development economist Sir Partha Dasgupta has been commissioned to conduct a major study on the case for acting on biodiversity, much as Lord Stern was asked to review the economics of climate change by Gordon Brown in 2006. Stern's 700-page report added greatly to the debate. But that was 13 years ago, since which time there have been many highly authoritative studies done on environmental economics. No new report is needed. They all argue roughly the same: that it will cost infinitely more for governments to do nothing about biodiversity and climate than to act decisively, and that to delay will increase costs further. Dasgupta can only argue that we must act soon.

Besides, while it sounds impressive to bring forward by 30 years the target for net-zero emissions, few countries think it will be too difficult. Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden have asked the EU to set 2050 as a target for being carbon-neutral, and want 25% of the EU budget to go to fighting climate change. For the moment, governments have little to lose. Most consumers would barely notice the changes needed to get to carbon neutrality in 30 years' time. Who noticed that Britain has just had the first week in more than 100 years of electricity without coal, or that divestment from fossil fuels has reached $8tn? People will have to buy electric cars, more efficient fridges and heating systems, and Britain will need vastly more solar capacity, bigger forests and better insulation, but these are mostly easy and popular changes.

A "new green deal" budget could be brought in to fund a massive push for nature conservation and energy change. The ban on new petrol and diesel cars and vans after 2040 could be brought forward to 2030 easily enough, and few people would object to penalties for climate polluters, higher taxes for companies that destroy nature and incentives for renewable energy and energy conservation. If Heathrow never got its new runway, or we did not build more roads, or we all ate less meat, it would not hurt that much.

Indeed, it's clear that protecting nature brings great collective rewards. Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels would clear up air pollution rapidly and save billions of pounds a year that the NHS must currently spend dealing with heart attacks, asthma, strokes and respiratory illnesses. Cities would become more liveable, the countryside more attractive. Instead of being regarded by government as a costly imposition, action on climate and nature regeneration could be easily recast as visionary politics offering huge public benefits.

But what happens when the voluntary measures run out and the warming is not seen to slow because greenhouse gases are so long-lasting? Really addressing climate and biodiversity collapse means rationing carbon. It means no more free ride for extractive industries such as mining, palm oil and forestry companies who profit from environmental destruction. It means heavy penalties for polluters, the axing of food and aviation subsidies, and taking a torch to vested interests. It means addressing the indirect causes of the crisis, such as population growth and consumerism, even rethinking the whole idea of progress and wealth.

Loss of biodiversity is just as catastrophic as climate change | Robert Watson

There are dangers in both action and inaction. How will rich countries react to mass migrations from poor climate-affected countries, or to the breakdown of the food system that might ensue when climate change leads to disastrous harvests in major rice- and wheat-producing countries? Already, the UN says, there are around 2,500 conflicts over fossil fuels, water, food and land. Climate change and biodiversity loss will only increase that number.

Then there is the risk that the climate crisis could foster a new generation of authoritarian, top-down rulers who will try bypassing consumers and institutions. This is because it necessitates a major shift from the kind of individual responsibility we have grown used to in the past 50 years, to greater state action. That could easily be exploited.

It also opens the door for rich governments to propose dangerous and ill-thought-through technological fixes as a substitute for mitigation. How much simpler for cash-strapped governments to ask a few billionaires to help slow warming in the US or Europe by funding a monstrously expensive plan to preserve the Arctic sea ice by covering it with a layer of reflective silica "microbubbles"; or to deflect the sun's rays in space; or to spray the oceans with iron filings?

But the risks of doing nothing far outweigh the possible pitfalls of really addressing climate change and biodiversity collapse. Of course there will be objections from diehard capitalists and liberals alike. But, to echo Margaret Thatcher as she pushed through the deregulation that has done so much to fuel the crisis: there really is no alternative.

* John Vidal is a former Guardian environment editor
Topics

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Has the politics of climate change finally reached a tipping point? | John Vidal

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Last week a small campaign group in the staunchly conservative town of Shrewsbury called a public meeting about climate change. The organisers were delighted when 150 people turned up. Even they were surprised, though, when people unanimously said they were prepared to give up flying, change their boilers and cars, eat less meat and even overthrow capitalism to get a grip on climate change.

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The House of Representatives Panel passed a bill that blocks the expansion of drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an action that was approved previously in the tax bill. The House itself still has to vote and it would then move to the Senate.

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A House panel approved a bill Wednesday that would block drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), advancing a key Democratic priority.

The bill approved by Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee repeals a controversial provision included in President Trump Donald John Trump Ireland Prime Minister says protests are 'allowed' and 'welcome' for Trump's visit Gabbard: US must not go to war with Iran Bullock opens Iowa bid pitching rural credentials MORE 's 2017 tax law.

The provision opened up the sought-after Alaskan land to oil and gas drilling, prompting backlash from environmentalists who have long used protecting the area as a rallying cry.

Republicans have hailed the passage of drilling in ANWR, saying it will significantly bolster economic prosperity and boost the nation's energy independence.

"In the face of climate change, let's not mess up one of the few good things that are still going."

The bill may now proceed to the House floor for a vote, though it is unclear if such a vote might take place.

If passed, the bill would face significant hurdles in the Republican-lead Senate, which committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said snuck drilling provisions into the tax bill.

"We have to provide the American people with a choice, a bet to save ANWR. I don't know how [Republicans] are going to defend it. They did it in the middle of the night; they stuck it to a bill it didn't belong in. No hearings, nothing," Grijalva said. "They did it in a very sneaky way, underhanded way, so what we did today was out in the open, we had a good debate about it."

Republicans have strongly pushed back on accusations they snuck the ANWR language in the tax measure.

Huffman's bill would revert the refuge to the protected status it had prior to 2017.

"It doesn't roll back oil and gas development elsewhere in the state, it doesn't shut down activities in the neighboring National Petroleum Reserve, it does nothing to go after the existing jobs in oil and gas," Huffman emphasized. "It simply says you can't expand into this one special place."

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House panel votes to stop oil drilling in Arctic refuge

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A House panel approved a bill Wednesday that would block drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), advancing a key Democratic priority.

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Consumers are beginning to push back on companies that are producing large amounts of plastic waste leading to many companies pledging and drafting plans to reduce their waste generation. Studies are showing recycling, especially in the U.S. is dropping as consumers are producing more plastic waste.

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A World Wildlife study finds the equivalent of a dump truck full of plastic waste is dumped into the water every minute.

So the WWF has launched an initiative to cut plastic waste by 10 million tons.

Coca-Cola, which has signed on to the program, produces 3 million tons of plastic waste.

Other big companies that are on board are McDonald's, Keurig Dr Pepper, Starbucks, P&G and Tetra Pak.

Days after a diver found a plastic bag in the deepest place on Earth, some of America's largest consumer companies are doubling down on promises to cut plastic pollution. Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Keurig Dr Pepper, Starbucks, P&G and Tetra Pak have signed onto an initiative led by the World Wildlife Fund that aims to cut plastic waste by 10 million tons.

Dubbed ReSource: Plastic, the plan's goal is to speed up companies' sustainability commitments by identifying solutions and putting them into place. "As few as 100 companies have the potential to prevent roughly 10 million metric tons of the world's plastic waste," the WWF said. Coca-Cola alone produces 3 million tons of plastic annually, a number it disclosed for the first time earlier this year.

The initiative piggybacks on a recent report from the WWF that shows the equivalent of a dump truck full of plastic waste is dumped into the water every minute. It aims to stop new plastic pollution in just over 10 years.

Companies should take a three-prong approach, starting with producing less single-use plastic, Alix Grabowski, WWF's deputy director of sustainability research and development, told CBS News. "There are things that we can do without, and we should start thinking about that," she said, citing plastic straws as one example.

Grabowski added that truly necessary plastic should be sourced "responsibly," either by recycling existing plastic or deriving it from biological materials. And after plastic is used, she said, we should "collect everything back and reuse as much as we can."

U.S. cities have nowhere to put their recycling

The last part is the trickiest. Americans have never recycled as much as other developed countries, with recycling rates peaking at about 35% of overall waste. That rate plummeted last year, according to environmentalists, after many countries where the U.S. once shipped its scrap stopped accepting it.

"We incinerated about six times as much plastic last year as we recycled. We're not really doing very well," said John Hocevar, oceans campaign director for Greenpeace USA.

A recent study found that just 9% of all the plastic that has ever been produced has been recycled. That's prompting some smaller retailers and manufacturers to avoid packaging altogether.

"What we're seeing right now is ... the rejection of the idea that everything is recyclable," Martin Bourque, executive director of the Ecology Center in Berkeley, California, recently told CBS News. "We can't recycle our way out of this problem."

Instead, consumers -- and a handful of retailers -- are moving toward avoiding plastic altogether. The Refill Shoppe in Los Angeles, for instance, sells only unpackaged bulk products. In Brooklyn, New York, bulk-product stores like Package Free, The Fillery and Precycle also ask customers to bring their own container.

Some stores say goodbye to packaging

Environmentalists hope this consumer demand will push large companies to make bigger plastic cuts. "Any serious effort to solve plastic pollution has to start with source reduction," Greenpeace's Hocevar said.

"I speak to corporate executives almost every day, and everybody agrees that this is a problem, everybody agrees that we have to change," he said. "We have a long way to go to see the level of ambition and urgency from these cos' that's needed, but they're increasingly hearing from their own customers, and that has some power."

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Coca-Cola and other major consumer brands vow to cut plastic pollution

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A World Wildlife study finds the equivalent of a dump truck full of plastic waste is dumped into the water every minute. So the WWF has launched an initiative to cut plastic waste by 10 million tons. Coca-Cola, which has signed on to the program, produces 3 million tons of plastic waste.

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New wells are being constructed for offshore oil drilling in California as the Bureau of Land Management has begun to approve large amounts of land to potential drilling, nearly doubling the approved area. Many environmentalists and residents are pushing back on the report, concerned about the possibility of oil leaks and contamination.

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The Trump administration brought its pro-drilling agenda to Northern California on Thursday, disclosing a plan to make more land available for oil and gas development, including parts of the Santa Cruz Mountains and East Bay hills.

Documents released by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management show the agency is looking to nearly double the amount of federal property and mineral deposits in its Central Coast region that can be leased by fossil fuel companies compared to what was proposed by the previous administration.

Roughly 725,000 acres across 11 counties will be opened up for new leasing, according to the bureau's preferred plan, including areas in or around Mount Diablo State Park near Walnut Creek and Butano State Park near Pescadero.

Industry experts say such spots, far beyond the major oil and gas fields in San Benito, Monterey and Fresno counties, are unlikely to attract interest from oil companies because of public outcry or engineering logistics - or because they don't find petroleum. But environmentalists aren't so sure.

"Many of these areas have drilling and active gas wells (nearby), so yes, there's a real risk that these places will be developed," said Clare Lakewood, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The federal government's new plan comes as part of an environmental report addressing a court ruling five years ago that essentially halted new drilling leases in California until the impacts of fracking were fully evaluated.

The Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club had brought suit against the Bureau of Land management in 2013, alleging the agency had not sufficiently analyzed fracking's toll.

Fracking is a method of extracting oil in rock with high-pressure water and chemicals. The practice has become an increasingly popular way to get at previously inaccessible mineral deposits, but it can tear up the landscape, pollute groundwater and trigger earthquakes.

While environmental groups say fracking's impacts have become increasingly evident since the lawsuit, the Bureau of Land Management report outlines ways in which it says the technology can be safely deployed.

The fossil fuel industry praised the agency Thursday for moving forward with a plan that embraces fracking and advances the extraction of oil and gas.

"We're pleased that after five years, the process worked and the federal government has reaffirmed that hydraulic fracturing is a safe method of production in California," said Kara Greene, spokeswoman for the trade group Western States Petroleum Association.

The Bureau of Land Management's new report comes in contrast to the agency's initial environmental report, prepared under President Barack Obama and released in early 2017. That document proposed leasing about 400,000 acres in the Central Coast region for oil and gas development.

"For the BLM, the oil and gas program needs to align with new secretarial orders," said agency spokeswoman Serena Baker, referring to the Trump administration's aggressive push to expand energy production.

In the bureau's Central Coast region, drilling operations are currently limited to Fresno, Monterey, San Benito, Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties.

Industry experts say that while leases may be offered in additional parts of the region, which include the counties of Merced, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Stanislaus, it's not likely.

"Drilling for oil is so expensive in California, it's hard for me to belive that anyone is doing it," said Amy Myers Jaffe, formerly with the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies and now a senior fellow at the nonprofit Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "There's only going to be new drilling if there's someone who has property nearby and they want to extend what they're doing on the federal pocket next door."

The Bureau of Land Management estimates that 37 new oil and gas wells will be drilled as a result of the new plan, a small fraction of the few thousand existing wells in the region.

Most of California's oil operations are on state and private property, with California regulators dictating if and where new drilling proceeds. Like the Trump administration, officials in Sacramento have been supportive of fossil fuel extraction.

Environmental groups have pressed the state to limit or halt new drilling, citing not only the local problems but the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming.

"There are hundreds of organizations that have been coming together for years" to pressure California officials, said Monica Embrey, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club. She's hoping the Newsom administration will finally act.

The Bureau of Land Management's new report is scheduled to be published Friday in the Federal Register, at which time a 30-day public comment period begins. The governor has 60 days to weigh in. After input is gathered, the agency will review any concerns and decide how to move forward.

Last month, the bureau released a similar document for Southern and Central California, clearing the way for new oil and gas development on more than 1 million acres of federal land and mineral deposits.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander

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New oil drilling in the Bay Area? Trump administration opens possibility

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The Trump administration brought its pro-drilling agenda to Northern California on Thursday, disclosing a plan to make more land available for oil and gas development, including parts of the Santa Cruz Mountains and East Bay hills. Documents released by the U.S.

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Decommissioned oil rigs are converted into artificial reefs where invertebrates take up residence leading to an influx of reef fish and other organisms. States around the country are weighing the idea of converting these rigs into reefs including in California but there is debate over the potential environmental impacts and whether the rigs continue to release toxic chemicals.

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Offshore oil and gas drilling has been a contentious issue in California for 50 years, ever since a rig ruptured and spilled 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil off Santa Barbara in 1969. Today it's spurring a new debate: whether to completely dismantle 27 oil and gas platforms scattered along the southern California coast as they end their working lives, or convert the underwater sections into permanent artificial reefs for marine life.

We know that here and elsewhere, many thousands of fishes and millions of invertebrates use offshore rigs as marine habitat. Working with state fisheries agencies, energy companies have converted decommissioned oil and gas platforms into manmade reefs in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, Brunei and Malaysia.

Californians prize their spectacular coastline, and there are disagreements over the rigs-to-reefs concept. Some conservation groups assert that abandoned oil rigs could release toxic chemicals into the water and create underwater hazards. In contrast, supporters say the submerged sections have become productive reefs that should be left in place.

We are a former research scientist for the U.S. Department of the Interior and a scholar focusing on the fishes of the Pacific coast. In a recent study, we reviewed the history of rigs-to-reefs conversions and decades of published scientific research monitoring the effects of these projects. Based on this record, we conclude that reefing the habitat under decommissioned oil and gas platforms is a viable option for California. It also could serve as a model for decommissioning some of the 7,500 other offshore platforms operating around the world.

Unplanned underwater communities

Offshore petroleum platforms are designed to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes, but not to be permanent. When they reach the end of their useful lives, typically after about 25 to 50 years of operation, federal and state law require energy companies to decommission them.

This usually means completely removing the platform and submerged supporting structure and returning the seafloor to an unobstructed condition. Only in certain cases does any part of the platform remain.

These rigs weren't designed with the intent of creating reefs, but their underwater steel pipe support systems - "jackets" in the oil business - attract vast numbers of invertebrates that settle on them. In turn, these creatures attract diverse fish species. Together these colonies create reef systems that can resist rusting away for several hundred years.

Off California, myriad invertebrates coat each platform jacket. Millions of mussels, sea stars and brightly colored anemones fight for space, creating a quilt of patterns and textures. Both large and small fishes are also abundant. In some years, clouds of hundreds of thousands of juvenile rockfishes school in the depths below operating oil platforms.

Creating new habitat

Humans have sought to enhance fisheries with artificial reefs for centuries, using materials ranging from wood, rock and concrete to decommissioned ships. The idea of reefing platform jackets developed after oil and gas companies started building platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in the late 1940s. Those steel-pipe structures provided rock-hard habitat for reef fishes on an otherwise smooth seafloor, and became highly popular fishing destinations.

Installing thousands of platforms catalyzed a basin-wide increase in available reef fish species, such as the highly prized red snapper. Reef fishes moved into areas where they previously had been scarce due to a lack of hard habitat (PDF).

In the mid-1980s Louisiana legislated the first U.S. reefing option for its offshore waters. This program was designed to take advantage of fishing opportunities provided by obsolete platforms and encourage energy companies to convert decommissioned platforms into reefs. Since then, over 500 submerged jackets in the Gulf, from Texas to Alabama, have been adapted into state artificial reef programs.

Platforms generally consist of two distinct parts: the topside, or operational facilities seen above water, and the substructure, or parts below the water. To make a reef, energy companies completely remove the topside and transfer it to shore for recycling or partial reuse. In the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, they may tow the underwater jacket to a new location; topple it onto the seabed; or cut off the top portion and place it on the seabed next to the lower portion.

California law only allows partial removal, or cutting off of the top portion. That way the underwater jacket remains intact and in place, the least destructive method for the reef.

Helping or hurting sea life?

Across the Gulf of Mexico, reefed oil platforms have significantly increased the amount of available reef fish. Many have become popular fishing and scuba diving sites. In California most operating platforms are not fished, so they have functioned for decades as de facto Marine Protected Areas, providing ecological benefits for severely overfished species.

For example, scientists have found greater numbers of adult fish of some species, such as cowcod and bocaccio rockfishes, under platforms than on natural reefs. More adults capable of spawning makes it likely that more larvae will be released into the ecosystem from species under platforms than from smaller numbers on nearby natural areas that are fished.

Although some platforms have been installed and removed off southern California, none have been reefed. Discussion of reefing, supported by many years of scientific studies in California waters, led to enactment of the 2010 Marine Resources Legacy Act, which authorized the rigs-to-reefs concept. Now Platform Holly in state waters and Platforms Grace, Gail, Hermosa, Hildago and Harvest in federal waters are undergoing initial steps for decommissioning.

This process is expensive, technically complex and lengthy. Because it requires intricate planning, oil companies are likely to consider decommissioning more platforms while they are already organizing equipment, engineering and infrastructure acquisition for the current set. Although industry will save money if a platform is reefed, the savings must be shared with the state. Reefing thus could generate funds for other marine conservation efforts.

Either total or partial decommissioning will have many environmental and socioeconomic impacts, both positive and negative. Californians have not had an opportunity to consider what should happen to decommissioned oil platforms since the mid-1990s. Now citizens have an opportunity to consider the issues again, and decide the fate of an unintended but biologically important resource.

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Retired oil rigs off the California coast could find new lives as artificial reefs

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Offshore oil and gas drilling has been a contentious issue in California for 50 years, ever since a rig ruptured and spilled 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil off Santa Barbara in 1969.

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Plastic is washing up on remote islands in droves. Studies are confirming that the pollution is from other places rather than those that live on islands. The estimates of the pieces plastic pollution in the ocean is said to be higher than the number of stars in our galaxy and is thought to be an underestimate. It highlights the pressing issue of single-use plastic consumption in industrialized nations.

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May 22 at 7:13 AM
When Jennifer Lavers first arrived to the remote collection of tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, she saw all the makings of a "quintessential tropical oasis."

Beneath the waves, abundant coral reefs teemed with marine life. Clear turquoise water lapped against pristine white sand beaches lined with palm trees. Home to roughly 600 people and located about 1,300 miles off the coast of Western Australia, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands are touted as the country's "last unspoilt paradise."

But upon further exploration during a 2017 trip, Lavers, a researcher with the University of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, and her fellow scientists came across a starkly different sight - stretches of beach littered with an estimated 414 million pieces of garbage, a majority of which was buried underneath the sand. Almost all of it consisted of plastic items such as straws, toothbrushes and shoes, according to a study published last week in the journal Scientific Reports.

"Cocos is literally drowning in plastic, which is really sad considering how incredibly remote these islands are," Lavers, the study's lead author, said in an interview released by the university. "Most of the beaches are inundated with plastic."

The study's findings come two years after Lavers discovered a similar problem on Henderson Island, a remote island in the South Pacific Ocean. Data from both Cocos and Henderson not only reflect the worrisome global consumption patterns of disposable plastics, but also suggest previous surveys that focused only on visible surface waste may have "drastically underestimated the scale of debris accumulation," researchers wrote.
[No one lives on this remote Pacific island - but it's covered in 38 million pieces of our trash]
The scientists studied more than two-dozen beaches across seven of the 27 islands that make up the Australian atolls, a process that included digging about four inches into the sand, where they continued to find bits of plastic trash.

"The quantity of debris buried below the surface was so significant," Lavers told The Washington Post. "It ended up accounting for more than 90 percent of the total debris on the island. That's really quite remarkable."

Researchers estimate that about 524,000 pounds, or 238 metric tons, of plastic washed up on beaches that are exposed to ocean currents, wind and waves. Remote islands are "extremely valuable" to scientists because they can provide "a complete picture of how much is out there, where it's coming from and the types of problematic items," Lavers said.

In evaluating the garbage, Lavers and her team found 373,000 toothbrushes and 977,000 shoes. It would take the population of Cocos 4,000 years to produce an equivalent amount of trash, the study said.

"They did not create this problem and they cannot undo it on their own," Lavers said.

In videos taken of the isolated beaches, hermit crabs could be seen scuttling among discarded flip-flops and crumpled bottles. Nearby, clumps of sun-bleached rope lay tangled in what appeared to be fishing nets.

"What the remote island data collection has shown us is that the quantity of plastics in the ocean is going up, and going up very rapidly," Lavers said.

According to a 2014 study, oceans contain an estimated 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic - an amount greater than the number of stars in the Milky Way. During the Ocean Conservancy's 2017 International Coastal Cleanup, the nonprofit environmental group reported that volunteers picked up enough plastic bottles to fill five standard swimming pools and enough straws to reach the height of more than 10,000 palm trees.

But those statistics aren't the full picture, Lavers said.

"What Cocos and Henderson show us is that however stunning those numbers are, how alarming they are, it's likely just the tip of the iceberg," she said. "None of those cleanups are digging below the surface."

Lavers added that the data gathered from the Cocos Islands also probably falls short of reality. During the trip, the researchers were unable to access two of the "known debris hot spots" and while the distance they dug was the standard, it was "not very deep," she said.

"The numbers I put forth . . . are undoubtedly underestimates of the true extent of the problem," she said.

Though the world may just be learning of the islands' plight, the Cocos Malay people have long been aware that formerly untouched parts of their home have gradually become dumping grounds, Lavers said. Rather than attempt to hide the pollution, they've been doing what they can to draw attention to it.

"They take their tourists directly to the accumulation zones, specifically so they can have meaningful and honest conversations," she said. "Every tourist leaves a better and changed person."

Residents have also attempted the Sisyphean task of trying to restore their beaches with cleanups. While the researchers were there, Lavers said 50 people "descended" on the islands, working with volunteers from the local school to tidy more than 12 miles of beach and remove tens of thousands of plastic items. Local artists have even taken some of the plastic and used it in their work, she said.

The buildup of garbage on islands like Cocos, however, is preventable if people are willing to change aspects of their daily life, Lavers said.

"I hope that these places provide them with the visual evidence that they need to be convinced to make better, more informed decisions," she said.

A number of these changes, which include shopping with reusable bags or no longer using plastic straws, are both easy and quick, Lavers said.

"They're not going to dig us out of this, but they're still worthwhile," she said. "So get the bamboo toothbrush and feel good about it."
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'Literally drowning in plastic': 414 million pieces of trash washed up on remote islands

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May 22 at 7:13 AM When Jennifer Lavers first arrived to the remote collection of tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, she saw all the makings of a "quintessential tropical oasis." Beneath the waves, abundant coral reefs teemed with marine life.

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When the ninth anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill passed, a study was conducted to evaluate if safety standards have really progressed in light of the spill. Since Trump has taken office, more regulations have been overturned making it easier for companies to create more drilling and extraction sites and it has become harder for states to stop these projects from coming into fruition. Even before the overturned regulations, a large amount of oil is spilled every day, causing harm to humans and the ecosystem.

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report finds 'alarming unaddressed deficiencies' in us offshore oil drilling - cnn

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Report finds 'alarming unaddressed deficiencies' in US offshore oil drilling

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Even as the Trump administration has taken steps to expand offshore oil drilling, a new report shows that thousands of oil spills are still happening and that workers in the oil and gas industry are still dying on the job.

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The production and use of plastics, particularly single-use plastics are a threat to the environment due to habitat degradation and the emissions of greenhouse gases through every step of the life cycle of plastics.

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Single-use plastics a serious climate change hazard, study warns

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Production must end now, says first ever estimate of plastic’s cradle-to-grave impact

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Protests have been occurring all over Australia over oil drilling in the Australian Bight, a unique and vast ecosystem. Both political parties have come together in response to concerns and have agreed to organize an independent study on the effects of drilling and a spill.

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Great Australian Bight: parties soften stance as voters protest over drilling

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With sitting Liberal MPs along coast under pressure from angry electorate, Coalition promises audit of regulator's decision