West Virginia is still not ready to embrace climate change

CURWOOD: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood.

[MUSIC: Miles Davis “Milestones” on Milestone, Sony Music Entertainment Inc.]

CURWOOD: Each Earth Day marks an important milestone for Living on Earth. In April of 1991 Living on Earth started broadcasting weekly on public radio, and we’ve been hitting the airwaves ever since. Biologist and Woods Hole Research Center founder George Woodwell helped inspire me to start this show when he told me that global warming from burning fossil fuels and forests would likely melt the Arctic. He explained that as the permafrost released its CO2 and methane, those added greenhouse gases would cause more warming and melt the arctic even more, which would add yet more carbon to the atmosphere. At some point these self-reinforcing reactions, this feedback loop, would be beyond human control.

CURWOOD: As a journalist it seemed to me that if what George described was allowed to get out of hand, little else would matter much for society. So I decided that climate change and so many other environmental stories needed reporting, and here we are. Now, many things have changed since 1991 and science has made some amazing advances. The human genome was sequenced, and gene therapy began. The Hubble telescope gave us fantastic views of deep space. Technology gave us the world wide web, which made e-commerce, Google and Facebook possible, and the invention of the smart phone put the world in our pocket. And in politics and society, South Africa ended apartheid and freed Mandela and the US elected its first president of direct African descent, Barack Obama.

But the numbers show we are still failing to preserve the climate. Over the last 30 years human-caused emissions have increased by 60 percent. Today the atmosphere holds the equivalent of about 500 parts per million of CO2. That is not good news. We began the industrial age in 1760 with concentrations of CO2 at about half those levels and we are now living through the hottest decade in modern human history.

As a result we are seeing record breaking heat waves and wildfires from California to Siberia, floods, rising sea levels and shrinking Arctic sea ice. Not to mention, record-breaking Atlantic hurricane seasons, searing droughts and massive tornado clusters. And all this climate disruption is a result of just a single degree centigrade rise in average earth surface temperatures since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

But our broadcast today is not simply a look back or lament. We are also looking ahead, to shine a light on some possibilities to head off climate disruption before civilization as we know it becomes untenable. We will consider the possibilities of economics, politics, applied science and technology to address climate disruption, though so far they have fallen short.

So, we will look to see what they may be missing. And since we humans have caused the climate emergency, we’ll also consider how we can think differently about our place on this planet. For some clues we’ll look to some ancient wisdoms and contemporary anthropology.

[MUSIC: Brian Rolland’s “Along the Amazon” on Dreams of Brazil, On The Full Moon Productions]

CURWOOD: Correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, but there are two striking trends that run parallel to the alarming rise in global warming gases. One is the astonishing growth of economic wealth, and in recent years that increase in wealth in the US has been confined to the very richest. In fact, most families in the US have seen little or no gain, with many losing economic power, as many young adults today can’t afford to buy homes like the ones they grew up in.

The other trend is the loss of confidence in government action at the national and local levels and the failure of international rules governing climate change emissions to go beyond the honor system. The concentration of economic and political power related to those trends has historically thrived on the extraction and burning of fossil resources. Climate policy critics including Van Jones, Kristina Karlsson and Bill McKibben say that has to change, if we are to halt our present march toward climate Armageddon.

Kristina Karlsson is a program manager for the climate and economic transformation team at the Roosevelt Institute.

JONES: The first industrial revolution hurt the people and the planet, too. And, the next industrial revolution has to help the people and the planet.
KARLSSON: Meaningfully addressing climate requires an economic transformation in basically all corners of our economy.
MCKIBBEN: I think we’re reaching a turning point. I think that the political power of the fossil fuel industry has begun to wane after a century or two of waxing. And our job is to accelerate that to push hard for really rapid, rapid change.

CURWOOD: But right now despite pledges and promises from businesses and governments the nascent momentum for rapid change has been put on ice with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The resulting spike in oil and natural gas prices now has the Biden Administration saying drill baby, drill.

ORESKES: The war should be a reminder to us of how many good reasons there are to act on climate besides just the climate system itself. Europe is essentially hostage to Russian gas. And this is one of those things that breaks my heart.

CURWOOD: Naomi Oreskes is a Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University.

ORESKES: Because if we had started the process of transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. If we started that process back in 88, when the IPCC was first gathered, or in 1990, when they first issued their report, or 1992, when the world’s nations signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, we could have made that transition by now 30 years is a long time in the history of technology. It’s enough time to build solar farms and wind farms, and improve your electricity grid. We could have fixed this problem.

Instead now we’re essentially hostage to the fossil fuel industry. So at this very moment of crisis, when we absolutely need to stop using fossil fuels. We’re in a situation where the Europeans are saying, well, well, we can’t live without fossil fuels. So this is really a kind of, it’s kind of a tragedy of historic proportions. I do think historians will be writing about this for years to come.

UNITED NATIONS has assembled the best scientists for long range studies

Essay by Randi Pokladnik, Environmental Scientist, Tappan Lake, OH, April 4, 2022

Dr. Svitlana Krakovska, a Ukrainian climate scientist and member of the International Panel on Climate Change recently said, “Human induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots, fossil fuels, and our dependence on them.” Europe’s dependence on fossil fuels from Russia is “funding the war” in Ukraine. Russia, the second largest producer of natural gas, has been accused of using the resource in a geopolitical way against European countries dependent on its gas.

Europe views the worsening situation in Ukraine as justification to double up its investments in renewable energy. The IEA and EU leaders announced a proposed series of steps to accelerate clean energy: fast-tracking permitting for wind and solar projects, revisiting decisions to phase out nuclear energy, and doubling the rate of conversions from natural gas boilers to electric heat pumps in buildings.” All of these would cut European natural gas demand.

However, oil and gas companies in the US, along with many politicians including Joe Manchin of West Virginia, are using the war to rationalize more drilling and fracking in the US. Manchin recently said, “Russia has weaponized energy and the thing I know about an adversary or a bullyis if they have a weapon, you better have one that will match it or be better than theirs”. However, Natural Resource Chair Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona) said in a recent op-ed, “Doubling down on fossil fuels is a false solution that only perpetuates the problems that got us here in the first place,” saying it is time to “cut the lifeline to fossil-fuel despots like Putin.”

The newly released UN Climate Report clearly shows we are losing the battle against climate change. UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteras said “the evidence detailed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is unlike anything he has ever seen, it is an “atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”

Damaging effects from human-induced (anthropogenic) climate change are happening at a much faster rate than previous modeling had predicted. At least 40% of the world’s population is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, and these impacts will be felt most in areas that have contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions. The report stresses that the window to act in a meaningful way and avoid major destruction will close by the end of this decade.

The “David and Goliath” battle environmental activists (especially activists in the Appalachian region) have waged against the fossil fuel industry often feels like a war. The Appalachian region has become a resource colony, the residents have become collateral damage, and the landscape often looks like a war zone after the extraction of coal, oil, and gas.

At one time, it was said that McDowell County, WV exported more coal than any other county in the USA. However, it now sits in poverty with the less than 20,000 residents who still call it home. Harry Caudill’s “Night Comes to the Cumberlands” details the story of broken miners living in a broken land as coal mining destroyed the landscape as well as the bodies of the miners.

Mountaintop coal removal (MTR) replaced long-wall mining in the 1970s. Often referred to as “strip mining on steroids,” this technique uses monstrous machinery rather than miners. Millions of pounds of explosives are used to blast off up to 1000 feet or more of the mountains’ elevation. Peaks that took millions of years to form are gone in a matter of days. Thousands of miles of streams are buried under the mine spoils, and what remains of the once diverse mesophytic forest ecosystem is a flattened sterile moonscape. MTR has destroyed over 500 mountains and flattened an area equivalent to Delaware.

John McQuaid, a writer for the Smithsonian Magazine, once said of MTR, “I’ve reported on devastation around the world, from natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, to wars in Central America and the Middle East, to coastlines in Asia degraded by fish farming. But in the sheer audacity of its destruction, mountaintop coal removal is the most shocking thing I’ve ever seen.”

As the coal industry slowly dies in the area, local, state, and federal politicians are touting new ways to extract wealth from the region: petrochemicals and plastics. Both require hydrocarbon gases obtained by using high pressure hydraulic fracking. This technique forces hydrocarbons from shale deposits under the region, and is as destructive and polluting as coal mining. It requires millions of gallons of freshwater, produces millions of gallons of toxic radioactive brine, releases volatile organic compounds and methane gas, and contaminates surface and ground water.

A study by Yale Public Health found that of the hundreds of chemicals used in fracking, over 80 percent have never been reviewed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Of the 119 that have been reviewed by IARC, 55 were found to be carcinogenic. Among the chemicals most frequently used in fracking, 24 are known to block hormone receptors in humans (according to a 2017 study published in Science Direct).

Make no mistake, we all are witnessing a war; a war waged on our planet by the fossil fuel industry and those who benefit financially from these industries.

Like most wars, money is needed to fund this endeavor. Federal taxpayer-funded grants, subsidies, and tax incentives help fuel the climate crisis by providing financial incentives for continued extraction. Pennsylvania lawmakers offered Royal Dutch Shell nearly $1.7 billion over 25 years to construct the plastics-making Shell Cracker Plant in Monaca, Pa.

“Conservative estimates put U.S. direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry at roughly $20 billion per year, with 20 percent currently allocated to coal and 80 percent to natural gas and crude oil. European Union subsidies are estimated to total 55 billion euros annually.”

Just like a conventional war, propaganda and lies are used to mold public opinion. “The fossil fuel industry has perpetrated a multi-decade, multibillion dollar disinformation propaganda and lobbying campaign to delay climate action by confusing the public and policymakers about the climate crisis and its solutions.”

The residents of Appalachia have learned that when it comes to extractive industries, rules and regulations for human health and the environment are more often than not watered down, ignored, unenforced, or non-existent. The oil and gas industries are exempt or excluded from certain sections of these federal environmental laws: Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and Emergency Planning and Community Right-to Know Act.

It is difficult to win a war when the cards are stacked against you, but the war for a livable planet is one we cannot afford to lose. We will have to make sacrifices but the people of Appalachia have sacrificed their health, lives, and land for decades to fuel the nation. It is time to demand renewable energy. It is time to stop subsidizing the companies responsible for the destruction of our planet. No more wars for fossil fuels.

As Dr. Svitlana Krakovska of Ukraine said, “We will not surrender in Ukraine, and we hope the world will not surrender in building a climate-resilient future.” Bill McKibben recently said that if the USA cannot choose renewable energy while watching the incredible courage of the people in Ukraine, then “I don’t know if we’re ever going to do it.”

>>> Dr. Randi Pokladnik was born and raised in Ohio. She earned an associate degree in Environmental Engineering, a BA in Chemistry, MA and PhD in Environmental Studies. She is certified in hazardous materials regulations and holds a teaching license in science and math. She worked as a research chemist for 12 years and now resides near Tappan Lake in Ohio’s Harrison County, near the Marcellus & Utica shale developments.

Plan to join in, become active, and make a difference

WVIPL is a group of West Virginians from various faith traditions who take seriously the threat of climate change to our communities and the environment. We heed the urgent call to care for creation by promoting energy efficiency, renewable energy, and sound policy that protects our people and communities from environmental (and intersecting) injustices.

With membership including both faith leaders and laypeople alike, we are a state affiliate of the national Interfaith Power and Light network. We welcome all who share in our mission to join us as a member or an ally.

Interested in our work? Want more information? Contact us!

SCOTUS heard this GHG case 2/28/22

From PRX at the University of Massachusetts, Boston this is Living on Earth.

CURWOOD: I’m Steve Curwood. Congress has yet to enact comprehensive climate legislation, so if the Biden administration wants to set America on track for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 it will have to rely on executive orders and regulations. According to a landmark ruling by the US Supreme Court in 2007 CO2 is an air pollutant that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate. But so far EPA efforts to actually curb the large amounts of global warming gases from power plants have gotten snarled in litigation. And just the other day a more conservative Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could tie the hands of the EPA, even though those rules don’t even exist. Joining me now to discuss is Pat Parenteau, Professor at the Vermont Law School and former EPA Regional Counsel. Welcome back to Living on Earth, Pat!
>>> PARENTEAU: Thanks, Steve, good to be with you.

CURWOOD: So, Pat, I’m confused. Conservatives have said for a long time that judges shouldn’t be activists. But to what extent is this so-called conservative Supreme Court changing along those lines?
>>> PARENTEAU: Oh, right. I mean, they’re reaching out for cases that in the past, the Supreme Court would never take. The big case on the calendar of the Supreme Court this year, the West Virginia versus EPA case involving regulation of greenhouse gases from power plants, for example, there is no rule on the books right now regulating these emissions. So the Supreme Court has taken review of an abstract question of what is EPA’s authority to regulate these plants before the Biden administration has even adopted a rule! It’s the very definition of an activist court.

CURWOOD: So West Virginia v. the Environmental Protection Agency, has been called by some as the biggest climate change case in a decade. What makes it such a big deal?
>>> PARENTEAU: Well, it certainly is since Massachusetts v. EPA. This decision, could you know, not only limit EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act. But one of the doctrines is something called the major question doctrine. It’s a rule that the court and the conservative members would view as kind of a new assertion of authority that an agency hasn’t previously used under a provision of a law like the Clean Air Act, that’s been on the books since 1970. But it’s never been used for anything as big as climate, of course, because we weren’t thinking about climate change in 1970, we should have been, but we weren’t. And this doctrine is so malleable, that you know, you can apply it to any environmental rule. I mean, most environmental rules, because they’re addressing big problems — air quality, water quality, loss of wetlands, loss of endangered species — they’re dealing with really big problems that do have large economic and social consequences. Some of those consequences are negative from the standpoint of if we don’t deal with the problems they’re gonna create, you know, economic harm, and other kinds of harm. And if we do deal with them, it’s going to cost money to deal with them. But if we don’t deal with them sooner rather than later, the cost could be much greater, and so on. The problem is when the court applies the major question doctrine, guess what? The result is almost every single time, in fact, all the cases that I’m aware of is the agency regulation is struck down. It’s a deregulatory doctrine. It’s used when the court believes the agency has exceeded its authority, and is gonna strike down the rule and require that Congress explicitly authorize the specific action that the agencies want to take. And that’s just a recipe for disaster, frankly, for environmental law. We have to be much more adaptive than that.

CURWOOD: This case that we’re talking about is called West Virginia v. the EPA. What’s the backstory of this case, and explain in some detail the EPA regulation that it’s talking about.
>>> PARENTEAU: After the Massachusetts v. EPA decision, EPA under the Obama administration adopted rules to regulate power plants under the Clean Air Act. And the plan that EPA came up with was a very flexible, sort of menu of options. Option one was make these plants run more efficiently and burn less coal or less gas. The second step of the Obama plan was use your ability to use more reliance on, on gas and certainly more reliance on wind and solar, use the flexibility the grid gives you to rely more on cleaner sources of energy. And then number three, put more investment in new renewable sources of energy and gradually bring more green energy onto the grid over time. That’s the Clean Power Plan. Now, that plan never took effect. The Supreme Court stayed it, even before the lower courts had ruled on whether it was lawful or not. And the Supreme Court in a unprecedented action, another activist step by the five conservatives that were on the court at that time, when Justice Scalia was there — this was his last vote before he passed away shortly thereafter. So the Clean Power Plan never took effect.

The Trump rule came on, they repealed the Obama plan. They replaced it with something called the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) plan, which wouldn’t have done very much at all to reduce emissions. The estimate was maybe it would reduce it by 1%. And it would rely strictly on efficiency measures, none of these other strategies of relying more on gas or bringing more green energy on, onto the grid. And not even allowing trading, emissions trading, the cap and trade approach. That ACE rule was struck down by the DC Circuit. And that decision by the DC Circuit is technically the one that has is now being, quote, “reviewed” by the Supreme Court. But the important point here is, there is no rule on the books. The ACE rule is not on the books. The Obama Clean Power Plan is not on the books. There’s no rule today, nobody’s required to do anything right now. And yet, the Supreme Court has said, we’re gonna to review whether the Clean Air Act gives EPA the authority to do all of the things that it might like to do to find ways to reduce these emissions in the most cost effective way possible.

CURWOOD: So I’m scratching my head about another thing involving this case, Pat, and that is that many constituents of the electric power industry have supported this approach. So why did West Virginia sue on this rule that doesn’t actually exist? And why did the high court take it up?
>>> PARENTEAU: I have to say, West Virginia has led the charge from day one against EPA’s authority. I mean, West Virginia, was even arguing EPA had no authority whatsoever to regulate emissions from coal fired power plants. And obviously, West Virginia is a major coal state, you get that. But it’s frankly more ideological than that. All of the challengers to the Clean Power Plan, and that have appealed to the Supreme Court, they all resent EPA giving them directions on how to transition the energy source. They’re not taking any actions on their own. They could be doing that, but they’re not. But they’re also not supporting what EPA is trying to do. So there’s no other way to describe this than that. It is a political fight. And it’s about states versus EPA, and who’s in charge, and so forth. And it’s not rational.

CURWOOD: So Pat, how do you read the justices? How do you think this is going to be decided based on what you heard during the oral arguments at the Supreme Court the other day?
>>> PARENTEAU: So it was a very active bench. The argument went well over the time that was allotted, almost all the justices participated. And the government, through the Solicitor General, made a very strong argument that the court really didn’t have jurisdiction over the case at all, partly because there’s no rule on the books to review. But even more importantly, because there was no injury to the petitioners: the states and some of the coal industry that were co-petitioners. And that’s because there’s no rule on the books, nobody has to do anything at this point. What they’re arguing, the petitioners, is, well, we can’t trust the Biden administration when they say they’re not going to revive the Clean Power Plan. They might. They just might do that. So because they might do that the case should stay alive. That’s a really weak, pitiful, frankly, argument. I mean, an environmental group making an argument like that would be tossed out on their ear. But this court, my first prediction is, they’re not going to dismiss the case. They’re not going to stay their hand the way they should and wait for EPA’s rule. They’re going to issue a decision. What’s the decision going to be? There’s several possibilities. For sure, I think, they’re going to say a lot of bad things about the Clean Power Plan. Justice Kavanaugh, when he was on the DC Circuit, heard arguments challenging the Clean Power Plan, and he showed his cards very clearly. He would use the major question doctrine to strike down the Clean Power Plan if in fact it was presented to the court. So we can be sure the court is going to be very negative about EPA’s authority to require shift to renewable energy, wind or solar or anything else. The real question for me is, are they going to buy into this argument that EPA can only regulate inside the fence line? What it means is, you can only regulate at individual sources. I’m not sure what the court’s going to do on that. Kavanaugh, you know, was asking a lot of hard questions about whether that made sense. The government, the Solicitor General, who was terrific, she pointed to the fact that the Clean Power Plan, not only was it never in effect, the goals of the Clean Power Plan have already been exceeded. The industry itself, because of the major transformations underway in the energy sector, have already exceeded the 30% reduction in emissions that the Clean Power Plan had established. So, you know, she made an incredibly powerful argument, I heard, that this major question doctrine, which a lot of us are really concerned about, really doesn’t apply here. She just might be able to get Justice Roberts, maybe Justice Barrett, even, and who knows, maybe even Justice Kavanaugh, at least to agree that the major question doctrine doesn’t oust EPA of authority to shape a rule. Maybe a rule that doesn’t require transition to renewable energy, but maybe a rule that at least allows things like emissions trading and averaging, which would still accomplish a lot of reduction.

CURWOOD: Pat Parenteau is a Professor of Environmental Law at the Vermont Law School and former EPA Regional Council. Pat, thanks so much today for our discussion.

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See Also: The Supreme Court Case That Could Upend Efforts to Protect the Environment Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker Magazine, January 10, 2022

The potential ramifications of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency are profound. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case involving an Obama-era power-plant rule that’s no longer in effect, and never really was. The Court has agreed to hear so many high-profile cases this term, on subjects ranging from abortion to gun rights to vaccine mandates, that this one — West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency — has received relatively little attention beyond legal circles. But its potential ramifications are profound. At a minimum, the Court’s ruling on the case is likely to make it difficult for the Biden Administration to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions. The ruling could also go much further and hobble the Administration’s efforts to protect the environment and public health.

West Virginia v. E.P.A. “could well become one of the most significant environmental law cases of all time,” Jonathan H. Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and a prominent conservative commentator, wrote on the legal blog the Volokh Conspiracy. Or, as Ian Millhiser put it, for Vox, “West Virginia is a monster of a case.”

SPECIAL REPORT of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, October 8, 2018

CURWOOD: Steve Curwood, the host of LOE on Public Radio International (PRI)

At the beginning of December UN negotiators will move to advance the Paris Climate Agreement in a meeting that was hastily shifted to Madrid, Spain in the face of civil unrest in its originally planned site, Santiago, Chile. Earlier this month President Trump officially set in motion the withdrawal of the United States from the accord, though it won’t take effect until the day after the 2020 US presidential elections. And though every other nation is still in the Paris agreement, less than a handful have made pledges that would have a chance of keeping the planet from catastrophically overheating. Alden Meyer, Director of Strategy and Policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, is here to explain. Welcome back to Living on Earth, Alden!

MEYER: Good to be with you again, Steve.

CURWOOD: In October 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Its dire warnings drew the world’s attention.

Alden, I keep hearing that the Paris process is far behind what’s needed. What exactly are the numbers at this point, what have nations committed to and what’s the gap for what many would say is necessary?

MEYER: Well, basically, you’ll recall that leaders set a goal of keeping the temperature increase above pre-industrial levels well below two degrees Celsius, that’s 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit for those keeping score at home, and trying to get as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible. Analyses vary a little bit, but they tend to say that we’re on track for around three degrees Celsius or more. That may not seem like a huge difference, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report last year on 1.5 degrees show that there’s a huge difference even between 1.5 and two degrees Celsius. Every 10th of a degree matters.

And to get on track to stay below two degrees analysis by the United Nations Environment Programme and others show that we would need to basically triple the level of ambition of commitments that countries have made under Paris. To have a chance of getting anywhere close to limiting temperature increase to 1.5 degrees, we would need to quintuple, in other words increase by five fold, the level of ambition in Paris. So what’s needed here is not incremental changes around the margins. It’s really a wholesale transformation, getting on the path to cutting emissions nearly in half by 2030 globally, and to net zero emissions no later than 2050. It basically involves remaking almost every sector of the modern economy.

CURWOOD: And, of course, the process, the UN negotiation process continues; the Conference of the Parties, the UN umbrella for the Paris accord, on December 2, the annual meeting of that starts in Madrid, what needs to be done at that session?

MEYER: Well, there’s a few issues on the formal negotiating table that have to be resolved. The one unfinished piece of business from the last climate summit in Poland last fall was completing the part of the Paris Agreement calling for collaborative approaches to emission reductions: emissions trading, cooperation between developed and developing countries. It’s the so-called Article Six of the Paris Agreement. It’s both a very political issue and very technical, and you put those two factors together, it makes it difficult for countries to resolve their differences.

The other major issue on the table is what’s known as loss and damage, which is the unavoidable impacts now of climate change on vulnerable countries around the world. After they’ve done everything they can to reduce their emissions, everything they can to build in resilience measures to their economy, there are still going to be sudden impacts such as typhoons and hurricanes and floods and what’s called slow-onset impacts such as sea level rise, desertification, drought, etc. They need help dealing with that. And the deal in Paris was to set up a program to help countries cope with those now unavoidable impacts. The missing piece so far has been any substantially ramped up finance and capacity-building support for those countries, that will be the issue debated in Madrid, whether there should be an effort to look at innovative sources of finance above and beyond the famous $100 billion pledge the developed countries made a decade ago in Copenhagen for developing country action.

Those are the two big negotiating issues. There’s some other ones on the table. But looming over it all is this gap that we talked about earlier between the commitments that countries have made under Paris to constrain their emissions, and what’s needed to meet the science-based temperature limitation targets. And that will be permeating the conversation; there will be a number of high level ministerial meetings, not just the usual environment ministers that come together at these things, but the Chileans are also convening meetings of science ministers, energy ministers, finance ministers, agriculture ministers, because this is going to take everyone in every sector of the economy pulling together. And they want to stimulate a race to the top and in terms of increasing ambition.

So that’ll be the sort of subtext of this meeting. And all of this is laying the groundwork for the climate summit next November, just after the US elections that the United Kingdom will be hosting in Glasgow, Scotland, which is the real deadline under Paris for countries to say, Is this your final answer? What you put forward five years ago in Paris and in terms of your level of ambition, or can you do more? That’s the real political deadline for countries to decide what to do on the ambition front. So in a sense, this COP in Madrid will just be sort of setting the table for that much deeper, more intense conversation over the course of 2020.

CURWOOD: So to what extent is the upcoming meeting providing a reality check to the world about the amount of money that is going to be required to make the kind of transformations that will, you know, keep the planet from becoming relatively uninhabitable?

MEYER: Well, that’s definitely part of the conversation. And as you know, huge sums of money are involved here, not only the public sector money, such as the hundred billion dollar commitment that was made, starting in 2020 per year from developed to developing countries, but the much larger trillions of dollars of investment per year that are being made in the private sector.

And there’s a whole movement called Shifting the Trillions, which says we have to redirect the money that’s now going into fossil fuel investments and coal and oil and natural gas infrastructure around the world, redirect that into efficiency, into renewable energy, into nature-based solutions like agriculture and wetlands and forest solutions if we’re going to have any hope of getting ahead of this curve.

The good news, of course, is that it’s much less costly to do that, than to sit by idly and watch climate impacts mount. I think it’s coming home to people that the cost of climate inaction is really the threat to well-being and global prosperity, not the cost of climate action.

CURWOOD: And remind us, Alden, of the We’re Still In movement in the United States that the governors, leaders of cities, and a number of companies have come together to come to the international meeting to say that, despite the reluctance of the White House to engage, that there are many other jurisdictions in the US that are.

MEYER: Well, this is a movement that was launched in the wake of the elections in 2016, actually had its origins in the Marrakech Climate Summit, which took place during the US elections. And as you said, a number of governors, mayors, business leaders, university presidents, investment leaders and others have come together to say to the world that President Trump does not equal America when it comes to climate change. That there are substantial elements of the US political system, US economy, that are committed to Paris, committed to do our share of reducing emissions.

With the election of a number of new governors last November, there are now, I believe, 25 or 26 states in the US climate Alliance, which is the state-based component of We Are Still In. And collectively the states and cities that are in the We Are Still In movement represent about two thirds of the American economy and the American population. So this is a big coalition of folks; they will have a presence in Madrid, there will be a US Climate Action Center, which will feature side events and press briefings, and exhibitions and talks by these leaders from around the United States, trying to show the rest of the world that despite what President Trump is doing, formally starting the withdrawal process from Paris, that most Americans and most sub-national leaders remain committed.

And of course they have the public behind their back, because all the public opinion polling shows a very substantial majority, not just of all Americans, but of Republicans as well support the US staying in Paris, support us being a leader on climate. So in a sense, they’re just trying to demonstrate that President Trump is an aberration.

CURWOOD: Alden Meyer is Director of Strategy and Policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Thanks so much, Alden.

MEYER: I enjoyed being with you, Steve.

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Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

From an Article by Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, October 22, 2018 Issue

Three years ago, when world leaders met in Paris to negotiate a treaty on climate change, one of the sticking points was where to set what might be called the Doomsday Thermometer. For reasons that had to do mostly with politics, rather than with geophysics, industrialized nations wanted to define “dangerous” warming as an average global-temperature increase of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). But island states, such as the Maldives and Mauritius, along with developing countries like Ethiopia and Cambodia, were resistant. Well before the world warmed by two degrees, their countries would be devastated—some of them underwater. Why should they endorse what amounted to a death sentence?

“We will not sign off on any agreement that represents a certain extinction of our people,” a delegate to the talks from Barbados told Politico. Together with a group of nearly fifty “climate vulnerable” countries, the island nations pressed for a limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). The compromise reached—more Monty Hall than Solomon—was to endorse both figures. The Paris agreement calls for “holding” warming below two degrees, while “pursuing efforts” to limit it to 1.5 degrees.

Last week, the United Nations’ scientific advisory board delivered its assessment of those numbers. The findings of the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, were almost universally—and justifiably—described as “dire.” Even 1.5 degrees’ worth of warming, the I.P.C.C. warned, is likely to be disastrous, with consequences that include, but are not limited to, the loss of most of the world’s coral reefs, the displacement of millions of people by sea-level rise, and a decline in global crop yields.

Meanwhile, at the current rate of emissions, the world will have run through the so-called carbon budget for 1.5 degrees within the next decade or so. “It’s like a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen,” Erik Solheim, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, told the Washington Post.

But, if a smoke alarm rings in the kitchen and everyone’s watching “Fox & Friends” in the den, does it make a sound? Asked about the report last week, Donald Trump said, “I want to look at who drew it—you know, which group drew it.” The answer seemed to indicate that the President had never heard of the I.P.C.C., a level of cluelessness that, while hardly a surprise, was nevertheless dismaying. The next day, as a devastating hurricane hit Florida—one made that much more destructive by the warming that’s already occurred—the President flew to Pennsylvania to campaign for Lou Barletta, a climate-change-denying Republican congressman running for the Senate.

Though the Administration often seems incapable of systematic action, it has spent the past eighteen months systematically targeting rules aimed at curbing greenhouse-gas emissions. One of these rules, which required greater fuel efficiency for cars and trucks, would have reduced CO2 emissions by an estimated six billion tons over the lifetime of the affected vehicles. In a recent filing intended to justify the rollback, the Administration predicted that, by the end of this century, global temperatures will have risen by almost four degrees Celsius (nearly seven degrees Fahrenheit). In this context, the Administration argued, why would anyone care about a mere six billion tons? Come the apocalypse, it seems, we’ll all want to be driving S.U.V.s.

The Supreme Court, for its part, appears unlikely to challenge the Administration’s baleful reasoning. Last week, it declined to hear an appeal to a lower-court ruling on hydrofluorocarbons, chemicals that are among the most potent greenhouse gases known. The lower court had struck down an Obama-era rule phasing out HFCs, which are used mostly as refrigerants. The author of the lower-court decision was, by the dystopian logic of our times, Brett Kavanaugh.

Even as the I.P.C.C. warned that 1.5 degrees of warming would be calamitous, it also indicated that, for all intents and purposes, such warming has become unavoidable. “There is no documented historical precedent” for the changes needed to prevent it, the group wrote. In addition to transforming the way that electricity is generated and distributed around the world, fundamental changes would be needed in transportation, agriculture, housing, and infrastructure. And much of this would have to be accomplished by the time today’s toddlers hit high school. To have a reasonable chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, the I.P.C.C. said, global CO2 emissions, now running about forty billion tons a year, would need to be halved by 2030 and reduced more or less to zero by 2050. And this would still not be enough.

All the scenarios that the I.P.C.C. could come up with to limit warming to 1.5 degrees rely on some kind of “carbon-dioxide removal”: essentially, technologies to suck CO2 out of the air. Such technologies exist, but so far only in the sense that flying cars exist—as expensive-to-produce prototypes. A leaked draft of the report noted that there was a “very high risk” of exceeding 1.5 degrees; although that phrase was removed from the final report, the message is clear.

Thus, it is tempting, following the Trump Administration’s lead, to simply give up. But, as Edgar puts it in “King Lear,” the “worst is not, so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’ ” Perhaps the most important takeaway from the report is that every extra half a degree is world-altering. According to the I.P.C.C., between 1.5 degrees and two degrees of warming, the rate of crop loss doubles. So does the decline in marine fisheries, while exposure to extreme heat waves almost triples. As always, it’s the poor who are apt to suffer most. Friederike Otto, the acting director of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, recently told the Web site Carbon Brief that “half a degree of additional warming makes a huge difference. For people who are already marginalised, this can be an existential difference.”

Meanwhile, two and a half degrees, three degrees, or even, per the Trump Administration, four degrees of warming are all realistic possibilities. Indeed, based on recent trends, the last figure seems the most likely. Globally, emissions rose last year, and they’re expected to rise still further this year. This disaster is going to be as bad—as very, very bad—as we make it. ♦

>>> Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History.”

NASA photo shows retreat of melting Arctic icecap

News Update by Glen Besa, Virginia Sierra Club, October 7, 2018

On this October 7th, it is anticipated that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue its Summary for Policymakers of its Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC.

This report should be a required reading for all of us, but especially for public officials, including Governor Ralph Northam, who have the authority to make policy that can reduce our carbon pollution emissions. ( Let’s add Governor Jim Justice of WV to this.)

Although the Paris Climate Accord set a goal of keeping the global average temperature increase below 2ºC, that agreement also acknowledged that countries should actually strive to limit that increase to 1.5ºC to minimize the harm done by global warming.

Climate science has advanced since the 2015 UN climate conference in Paris. Climate scientists realize that the 1.5ºC target should no longer be just aspirational if we are to avoid unacceptable consequences of a warming climate. Our own anecdotal experiences with extreme weather events, sea level rise and the shrinking arctic ice associated with the current 1ºC increase make it clear that we have no time to spare in moving away from fossil fuels and taking other bold action to reduce greenhouse gases.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the international body charged by the United Nations with assessing the science related to climate change. The IPCC was set up in 1988 to provide policymakers with regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation.

Vox recently reported on a leaked copy of the draft IPCC report’s findings “that it would take a massive global effort, far more aggressive than any we’ve seen to date, to keep warming in line with 1.5°C — in part because we are already en route to 3°C of warming. And even if we hit the 1.5°C goal, the planet will still face massive, devastating changes.”

In anticipation of the issuance of the IPCC report, Auden Schendler and Andrew P. Jones commented on the findings in a column this weekend in the New York Times entitled: Stopping Climate Change Is Hopeless. Let’s Do It. – It begins with how we live our lives every moment of every day.

The column is an answer to, albeit not a direct acknowledgement of, the news last week out of the Trump Administration justifying its abandoning climate protection measures. The draft statement by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration justifying President Trump’s decision to reverse federal fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks argued that with a 4ºC increase by 2100 already cooked into the climate, “the planet’s fate is… sealed.”

Rather than accept the hope-extinguishing approach of a cynical Trump Administration, Schendler and Jones issue a call to action for leaving most the remaining coal, gas and oil in the ground. Citing historical examples of humankind overcoming great odds, they quote journalist I.F. Stone who said: “The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins.” At this point, we have no more time to lose!

The immensity and immediacy of issues like the #metoo and #blacklivesmatter movements and the everyday mayhem emanating the Trump Administration make it hard to focus on problems, however important, that it would seem could be put off to another day. But after 30 years plus of opposition and obfuscation by the fossil fuel industry and its allies in both the Republican and Democratic parties, there is no more time for delay on efforts to address climate change.

While well intended, Governor Northam’s recently announced climate initiatives to look at possible actions to address climate polluting emissions from cars and trucks and fracked gas infrastructure are far too modest. The Governor’s directive to reduce emissions from fossil fuel power plants is more significant, yet will take decades to reverse the harm done to our climate by the two fracked-gas pipelines he supports.

Taking Governor Northam at his word that he sincerely wants to implement meaningful actions to address climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Summary for Policymakers of its Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC should be a call to action for real, immediate and significant efforts within the Governor’s authority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Those actions should start, but not end, with shutting down the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley Pipelines.

Here’s hoping that Governor Northam and everyone else take the time to read the IPCC’s new report and then do what is within their power to reduce the greenhouse gas pollution that is choking our planet Earth.

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IPCC climate change report calls for urgent action to phase out fossil fuels

UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says coal-fired electricity should end by 2050 if we are to limit global warming rises to 1.5C

Helen Davidson, The Guardian, 10/7/18

The science has simplified these issues

Climate negotiators rally to protect IPCC science funding

From an Article by Karl Mathiesen in Bonn, Climate Change News, May 12, 2017