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Earth Matters: Republicans seek to sabotage climate action as world burns through 'carbon budget' [1]

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Date: 2023-06-08  

Thanks to C-SPAN, I’ve watched numerous congressional hearings on energy and natural resources the past five months, including this week’s hearing on Republican energy bills. Yeah, that’s what I do in my golden years of retirement instead of parking myself on the beach with binoculars and a tequila or joint of Doña Juanita. Because I can’t stop thinking about the future. Near and distant.

And what the reactionary fools on these committees are saying and proposing is making me fear for both. For my kids and grandkids and everybody’s kids and grandkids. Look at all the stuff happening around the world these days that gets “unprecedented” or “record-breaking” or “climate change-induced” attached to it—the floods, the Phoenix-level Siberian temperatures, the growing methane emissions, the megadroughts, the extremification of storms, the wildfires and smoke-choked air, the disappearing birds and insects and frogs. Despite all that, we’ve still got members of Congress assigned to important committees singing one more chorus of the climate science rejection song that the profit-crazed powers-that-be have imposed on us through propaganda and shills for the past half-century.

There’s no point in going into details about the latest lunacy coming out the mouths of Republicans, and sadly, some Democrats on these committees. It’s the same-old, same old, but sometimes adorned in new tropes. It doesn’t matter whether the purveyors are beholden to the fossil fuel forces or just numbskulls. Their words—and votes—are intent on creating the last thing we need when it comes to addressing climate change: delay.

Many Democrats on these committees do a good job of challenging them and putting forth good or at least okay proposals for climate-related policies and programs. Not that there aren’t many more that ought to be forthcoming, but that’s a topic for another day. For now, I’d just like to see committee Democrats call it out every time one of delayers opens their yap with the usual scientifically or economically illiterate bullshit about climate change. I mean that literally. I want them to interrupt and say, “Bullshit.” Not once or twice. Every time.

Surely, surely, I can’t really being suggesting this, right? The horror. The unpoliticalness. The disrespect. The pettiness. Look, either we have an existential crisis on our hands or we don’t. If we don’t, then politeness and decorum with these honorable members of the nation’s most powerful legislature can rule the day and we can conceal honesty with euphemisms. But if the climate crisis is existential, then we don’t have time for bullshit and shouldn’t be calling bullshit something else. Delay is prime bullshit. Obviously, policy and programs are what matter. But since Republicans have us gridlocked on that score, at least tell like it is.

A study was published in the journal Earth System Science Data on Thursday. It has the unwieldy title of Indicators of Global Climate Change 2022: Annual update of large-scale indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence. Its conclusion: Greenhouse gas emissions have reached an unprecedented (there’s that word again) high. Meanwhile, we quickly are spending the world’s “carbon budget.” That’s the amount of greenhouse gases that scientists think we can add to the atmosphere and still keep temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1850-1900 average. We’re already at 1.2 degrees C (2.2 degrees F). Here’s Fiona Harvey at The Guardian:

Only about 250bn [metric] tonnes of carbon dioxide can now be emitted, to avoid the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere that would raise temperatures by 1.5C. That is down from 500bn tonnes just a few years ago, and at current annual rates of greenhouse gas emissions, of about 54bn tonnes a year over the past decade, it would run out well before the end of this decade. Prof Piers Forster, the director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds, and lead author of the paper, said: “This is the critical decade for climate change. Decisions made now will have an impact on how much temperatures will rise and the degree and severity of impacts we will see as a result.” He said the rate of annual increase in emissions had slowed down, but far stronger action was needed. “We need to change policy and approaches in light of the latest evidence about the state of the climate system. Time is no longer on our side,” he said. Governments are meeting in Bonn to prepare for a major UN summit on the climate, Cop28, this November in the United Arab Emirates. Cop28 is seen as one of the last opportunities for the world to get on track to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and stay within 1.5C.

Pretending no price will be paid for delay is bullshit.

WEEKLY ECO-VIDEO

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GREEN BRIEFs

In a peer-reviewed paper—Compensation for atmospheric appropriation—published Monday in Nature Sustainability, scientists Andrew Fanning and Jason Hickel concluded that to provide compensation for their greenhouse gas pollution, rich, high-emitting countries owe at least $192 trillion to low-emitting nations:

Here we develop a procedure to quantify the level of compensation owed in a ‘net zero’ scenario where all countries decarbonize by 2050, using carbon prices from IPCC scenarios that limit global warming to 1.5 °C and tracking cumulative emissions from 1960 across 168 countries. We find that even in this ambitious scenario, the global North would overshoot its collective equality-based share of the 1.5 °C carbon budget by a factor of three, appropriating half of the global South’s share in the process. We calculate that compensation of US$192 trillion would be owed to the undershooting countries of the global South for the appropriation of their atmospheric fair shares by 2050, with an average disbursement to those countries of US$940 per capita per year.

Said Fanning in a statement, “It is a matter of climate justice that if we are asking nations to rapidly decarbonize their economies, even though they hold no responsibility for the excess emissions that are destabilizing the climate, then they should be compensated for this unfair burden.”

Meanwhile, a new Oxfam analysis found that the world’s rich nations are on a path this year to spur $100 billion in climate finance for developing countries, finally reaching the annual goal the rich nations pledged 14 years ago. However, Oxfam discovered that more than half that funding comes in the form of loans that must be paid back instead of grants. And the grants that have been provided mostly come from already existing aid funds.

Wealthy nations mobilized $83.3 billion in climate finance in 2020. But only $24.5 billion of new donor aid went specifically to deal with the impacts of climate change. And of this, just $11.5 billion at most went to projects that would help poorer nations guard against worsening climate disasters.

Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International’s climate policy lead, said in a statement, “Don’t be fooled into thinking $11.5 billion is anywhere near enough for low- and middle-income countries to help their people cope with more and bigger floods, hurricanes, firestorms, droughts, and other terrible harms brought about by climate change. People in the U.S. spend four times more than that each year feeding their cats and dogs.”

One of the big obstacles in the path of rapidly installing utility-scale solar are people and local jurisdictions opposed to projects in their vicinity because of various impacts, including harm to sensitive ecological regions such as deserts, the need for new transmission lines, and the removal of land from agricultural production. Some opposition is purely NIMBYism, and much of it is based on misinformation or disinformation. This creates local political conflicts that have meant numerous proposed solar utility projects have been nixed by city councils, county boards, and occasionally state governments.

Techniques like agri-voltaics—mixing the raising of certain crops with the operation of raised solar panels—means land can perform double duty. But such projects are in their infancy and, despite their benefits, cannot guarantee opposition will melt away in every instance.

Alternatives to projects installed on agricultural or ecologically delicate land include putting them on industrial rooftops or placing floating arrays on reservoirs, lakes, and canals. Some of that is already happening. Many factories, as well as some big-box retail stores, have installed solar arrays of substantial size on their roofs. And parking lot canopies covered with solar panels are starting to be built.

The Environment America Research and Policy Center (EARPC) just published a report on another alternative—warehouse rooftops. Using data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s 2019 City and County Commercial Building Inventories, the EARPC concluded that using just those warehouses built around the United States before 2019 has the potential to generate 185.6 terawatt-hours of solar electricity each year. That’s enough to power almost 19.4 million average homes.

Kevin Borgia, vice president of external affairs for SunVest and board president of the Illinois Solar Energy Association, told Kari Lydersen at Energy News Network, “Owners of large rooftops should be examining the opportunity. They’re not getting any money for their rooftop right now. Generating their own power or leasing to a community solar developer is definitely a great opportunity for them, but it’s not without its challenges.”

The Biden-Harris administration on Friday ordered a 20-year ban on new drilling and mining around New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon, a desert landscape in the nation’s Four Corners region. The area is filled with cultural sites of the Ancestral Pueblo people who lived there as long as 9,000 years ago and whose modern descendants live in 19 Pueblos in the surrounding area. The All Pueblo Council of Governors has been calling for the withdrawal of federal lands in the Greater Chaco region for two decades. The ban covers all federally managed lands within a 10-mile radius of Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a 30,000-acre UNESCO World Heritage site. It does not affect existing oil and gas leases or mineral development on private, state, or tribal lands.

The great kiva in the plaza of Chetro Ketl in the Chaco Culture National Historical Park Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, herself a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo near Albuquerque, said in a statement, “Efforts to protect the Chaco landscape have been ongoing for decades, as Tribal communities have raised concerns about the impacts that new development would have on areas of deep cultural connection. Today marks an important step in fulfilling President Biden’s commitments to Indian Country by protecting Chaco Canyon, a sacred place that holds deep meaning for the Indigenous peoples whose ancestors have called this place home since time immemorial.” Not everyone is happy with the move. Some Navajo (Diné) residents who own land allotments in the region, along with the tribal government, oppose the ban on the grounds it could economically harm Navajos who are dependent on revenue from oil and gas operations. And while she called the limited protections for Chaco Canyon "a welcome first step," Soni Grant, New Mexico campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, noted that the Biden administration needs to follow up by ending all fossil fuel leasing on public lands and phasing out extraction. It's high time that Biden lives up to his promise to end the fossil fuel era, and it's critical that the entire Greater Chaco Landscape is protected. Today's decision just isn't enough to give our communities a fighting chance against the climate emergency." One of the more out-there of the 149 Republican climate science deniers in Congress, Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said, “The Biden regime’s ban on new oil and gas leasing in the Chaco region is the latest assault on domestic energy production while pushing the United States into further dependence on foreign countries to heat our homes and fill up our cars. Further, this action jeopardizes private mineral rights and completely ignores the many concerns and livelihoods of those affected by this decision." That’s the same guy who, at a 2016 event, replied to an audience member’s question about what he planned to do to curb greenhouse gas emissions, saying, “Unfortunately you haven’t been taught about photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is where plants take carbon dioxide to produce oxygen. That’s a problem in today’s world. We haven’t taught kids exactly what’s going on in America and in science.”

RESOURCES & ACTION

Global Monitoring Laboratory. The GML catalogues ongoing trends in atmospheric levels of four greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and s ulfur hexafluoride.

Climate change: How is my country doing on tackling it? An interactive chart.

Carbon Capture Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is designed to collect or “capture” carbon dioxide generated by high-emitting activities. It’s commonly proposed as a technology to help meet global energy and climate goals. However, CCS does not address the core drivers of the climate crisis nor is there available technology so far that would meaningfully reduce greenhouse emissions. The site posts a compilation of some of the most frequently asked questions related to CCS.

ECOPINION

Supreme Court undoing 50 years’ worth of environmental progress. By Peter Dystra at The Daily Climate. At the end of May, in its ruling on the case of Sackett v. EPA, the Supreme Court took a major bite out of the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to protect wetlands under the Clean Water Act. An Idaho couple initiated the case in 2007 when the Clean Water Act prevented them from building a home on a property that contained wetlands. Justice Elena Kagan has been a consistent voice of futile outrage over the court’s anti-regulatory turn. In a dissent to Sackett last week, she wrote that the court’s majority had its “thumb on the scale” of justice. With Trump’s three relatively young lifetime appointees, SCOTUS seems locked into a generation of anti-regulatory, pro-business judgment. Today’s court has a bizarre, mirror-image environmental twist of its own. Justice Neil Gorsuch was the first of Trump’s appointees. His mom, Anne Gorsuch Burford, was Ronald Reagan’s first EPA administrator. She openly expressed contempt for the agency’s mission and was forced out by scandal after two years. Now her son and other Trump appointees are taking up her cause—and it’s our planet that will suffer.

Duped by pro-EV claims?

Regardless of What Mr. Bean Says, EVs Are Much Better for the Environment than Gasoline Vehicles. By Dan Gearino at Inside Climate News. In an opinion piece in The Guardian, comedian and actor Rowan Atkinson wrote that he felt “duped” by the promise that electric vehicles are better for the environment. That sparked amplifiers among the usual suspects—Foxaganda and The New York Post among them—to spread the cherry-picked and long-debunked anti-EV tropes Rowan chose for his essay. It’s true that production of EVs generates more greenhouse gases than making internal combustion vehicles. But the true gauge comes from measuring life-cycle emissions, all the way from extracting raw materials to tossing whatever scrap cannot be recycled into the junkyard. Contrary to Rowan’s assertions, numerous studies have shown that EVs are significantly better than ICE cars for the environment. One example: The International Council on Clean Transportation published a paper in 2021 showing that EVs have life-cycle emissions that are 66% to 69% lower than those of comparable gasoline cars. This difference is going to grow as power grids reduce their use of fossil fuels.

Why we need to respect Earth’s last great wilderness—the ocean. By Helen Czerski at The Guardian. The real payoff from the Apollo missions had nothing to do with the moon. The prize was traveling far enough out into space to look back properly at planet Earth. Those two unforgettable images—Earthrise and Blue Marble—showed us our fragile and precious planet, defined by its blue. Since then, we’ve talked proudly about our “blue planet” but without thinking any further about what that blue actually is. We talk about fish and whales, plastic and pollution—the things that are in the water—but not the water itself. The great ocean engine has just kept turning while we scurry about near its surface, only caring when its churning causes something dramatic that we can see—an algal bloom or a giant swarm of jellyfish. More than 50 years after Apollo, the ocean is starting to get more attention, but a growing slice of the discussion is based on the assumption that it is there for us to use, a resource to be exploited, a great volume of “nothing” that human inventiveness is going to turn into “something.” And this is incredibly dangerous. Unless humanity starts to see the ocean for what it really is—a critical part of our planetary life support system—we risk sleepwalking into destruction.

Machine carbon capture a failure—so why subsidize it? By Richard Heinberg at the Independent Media Institute. There are two broad strategies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere: biological and mechanical. So which way is better? June Sekera, a carbon researcher and visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research in New York, was the lead author of a study published in the journal PLOS Climate in February. She concluded:

“Biological sequestration methods, including restoration of forests, grasslands, and wetlands and regenerative agriculture, are both more effective and more resource efficient in achieving a climate-relevant scale of CO2 removal than are techno-mechanical methods—which use machinery and chemicals to capture CO2. “Additionally, the co-impacts of biological methods are largely positive, while those of technical/mechanical methods are negative. Biological methods are also far less expensive.”

David Dayen

The Fix Was In With Biden’s Debt Ceiling Deal. David Sirota at The Lever conducts an interview with David Dayen, executive editor at The American Prospect. The country may have narrowly avoided a debt default catastrophe by passing a debt ceiling deal on June 3, but that doesn’t mean we should allow the fiasco to fall into the memory hole, according to Dayen. The two men dissect the event, discuss the political misuse of the debt limit, and explore what was traded away in this crisis. While the Biden-Harris administration is literally advertising the deal as a bipartisan triumph, the two scrutinize its controversial implications: slashed budgets, renewed student debt payments, and major fossil fuel concessions. Dayen, who covers the intersection of politics and economics, questions the acceptance of such outcomes by the Democrats: Are these political tradeoffs, or do they represent the party’s true goals? You can hear his take wherever you listen to podcasts or read a transcript here.

ECO-QUOTE

“Three corporations—John Deere, CNH, and Kubota—sell almost half the world’s farm machinery. Another four companies control 99 percent of of the global chicken-breeding market, and two supply almost all the ducks. Four firms run 75 percent of the world’s corporate abbatoirs and packing plants for beef; four others control 70% of of corporate pork slaughter. These firms too are integrating vertically, either buying up farms or contracting with farmers to supply their meat, under strict and unvarying conditions, often using the standardized feed and other products they supply. Traders take over the feed mills and refineries with which they once did business. Supermarkets dominate and control the growers who sell to them. Fast-food chains elbow out independent restaurants.”—George Monbiot in “Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet,” p.

half a dozen other things to read (and listen to)

Canoe Brook floating solar array

The largest floating solar farm in North America is officially online. By Michelle Lewis at Electrek. NJR Clean Energy Ventures and New Jersey American Water hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday for its new floating solar farm at the Canoe Brook reservoir in Short Hills, New Jersey. Consisting of 16,510 solar panels, the farm has a capacity of 8.9 megawatts. The electricity generated is enough to power 1,400 homes annually and will provide around 95% of the power needs for of the Canoe Brook Water Treatment Plant. The water keeps the solar panels cool, which increases efficiency, and the panels reduce water losses from evaporation to nearly zero. Said Robert Pohlman, vice president of NJR Clean Energy Ventures, “Floating solar technology creates new opportunities for underutilized bodies of water, allowing space that would otherwise sit vacant to enable large-scale renewable energy generation, which helps to bring the benefits of clean energy to even more customers.”

Related from March 31:: Earth Matters: Floating solar could provide 35% of world electricity.

Record Investment Merely Scratches the Surface of Fixing Black America’s Water Crisis. By Adam Mahoney and Aallyah Wright at Capital B. Poor and Black communities may be among the last to reap the benefits of the federal government’s record investment in repairing the nation’s aging water infrastructure. The Biden-Harris administration has earmarked more than $50 billion to replace lead pipes, build new water treatment plants, and regulate the industries contaminating waterways nationwide—but the expenditures are only a fraction of what’s needed. A 2018 federal report found that more than $470 billion is needed to maintain and improve the nation’s drinking water infrastructure over the next 20 years. “It is not by circumstance or coincidence that these instances of pollution and injustices are concentrated in historic and current majority Black communities,” says LaTricea Adams, the founder of Black Millennials 4 Flint and recent appointee to the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. “The intersection of racism, classism, self-hatred, and anti-Blackness perpetuates these issues.”

Patrick Moore, who gets the environmentalist label from Foxaganda, even though he has for two decades rejected the findings of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, is now denying that there is an extinction crisis.

Rise of the Extinction Deniers. By John R. Platt at The Revelator. Surprise. Some veteran climate science deniers claim the small number of confirmed extinctions is proof there’s no extinction crisis. They popped up after the recent Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report predicted the world faces up to one million extinctions in the coming decades due to human activity. Two of them appeared at the request of Republicans May 22 to testify about the IPBES report for the House Committee on Natural Resources. “Fewer than 900 extinctions have been documented in the 500 years since 1500 AD,” claimed Patrick Moore, a director of a pro-fossil fuels group called the CO2 Commission who always (incorrectly) identifies himself as a cofounder of Greenpeace. Moore, who has also been funded by the Koch brothers and others to spread climate denial tied the IPBES report to his previous rhetoric. “As with the manufactured ‘climate crisis’ they are using the specter of mass extinction as a fear tactic to scare the public into compliance,” he asserted. “The IBPES itself is an existential threat to sensible policy on biodiversity conservation.” Another testifier—former Jim Inhofe aide and perpetual climate denier Marc Morano—took this even further, calling the IPBES report “propaganda” and personally attacking IPBES chair Sir Robert Watson, who was also testifying.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman yuks it up with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 conference in Buenos Aires in November 2018.

The Saudis want the US to help build a ‘nuclear Aramco’. By Jay Solomon at Semafor. The Riyadh government has proposed a “nuclear Aramco” for Saudi Arabia, a joint U.S.-Saudi project to build the country a civilian nuclear energy program. This would bolster Saudi Arabia’s ambitions to produce, and potentially export, atomic energy, while addressing international concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology. The Biden-Harris administration has been holding discussions with the Saudis over defense and economic cooperation, as well as potentially normalizing diplomatic relations between the Saudis and Israel. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said he would consider the diplomatic ties with Israel if, in return, the U.S. offers to help Saudi Arabia develop its nuclear energy industry and okays new arms sales to Riyadh’s military. The Saudis have specifically cited their state oil company, Aramco, as a model for how civil nuclear cooperation with the U.S. could progress. The company started in the 1930s as a partnership with John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and was initially called the Arabian American Oil Co. Today it’s wholly Saudi-controlled and is among the world’s most profitable companies. Under this nuclear partnership, the Saudis have told interlocutors, an Arabian American Nuclear Power Co. could be formed that would give U.S. companies and entities a direct role in the development and oversight of nuclear power development in Saudi Arabia. But the enrichment of uranium would still occur inside its borders.

How chocolate could counter climate change. By Florian Cazeres at Phys Org. At a factory in Hamburg, Germany, cocoa beans shells go in one end, and out from the other comes a black powder with the potential to counter climate change. Called biochar, the substance is produced by heating the cocoa husks in an oxygen-free room to 600 degrees Celsius (1,112 degrees Fahrenheit). This locks in greenhouse gases and the final product can be used as fertilizer or to green the production of cement, which normally emits a significant amount of greenhouse gases. While the biochar industry is still in its infancy, the technology offers a novel way to remove carbon from the Earth's atmosphere, experts say. According to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, biochar could potentially be used to capture 2.6 billion of the 40 billion metric tons of CO 2 currently produced by humanity each year.But scaling up its use remains a challenge. The plant, one of the largest in Europe, takes delivery of the used cocoa shells via a network of gray pipes from a neighboring chocolate factory.

90% of Species in an Area Slated for Deep-Sea Mining Might Be Unknown to Science. By Lauren Leffer at Gizmodo. The U.N.-affiliated International Seabed Authority, the global body that oversees the international waters of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Pacific Ocean, says it will begin accepting applications from seabed mining companies in July. Thousands of feet below the waves of the CCZ is an abyssal plain covered with seamounts over an area of about 1.7 million square miles. No light reaches that deep and food is scarce. But there are potato-sized rocks—polymetallic nodules—that have accreted copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth metals, all needed for the green transition. But the region is barely explored and despite its reputation as a marine desert, it is filled with life. Said Adrian Glover, a deep-sea researcher at the United Kingdom’s Natural History Museum in London, the handful of sampling surveys that have been conducted have found there is never a dearth of unique creatures to see. We hardly know what’s there, but a renewed push for deep-sea mining could permanently harm the ecosystem before we even comprehend it.

GREEN LINKS

A shocking number of birds are in trouble • A Major Showdown Is Brewing Over What Counts as a Carbon Credit • Indigenous control of land leads to better reforestation outcomes • Honeybee health blooms at federal facilities across nation • New Jersey is teaching kids about climate. Opponents call it ‘indoctrination.’ • Animal waste and agrochemicals are leading cause of fish kills in Iowa waterways • How Land Swaps Turn Public Lands into Private Playgrounds • Dom Phillips: Fresh charges over murder of British journalist • World EV Sales Now 14% of World Auto Sales • Ice-free Arctic could arrive a decade sooner than expected • The high plains drought is so bad that Kansas is importing wheat from Europe

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/6/8/2173945/-Earth-Matters-Republicans-seek-to-sabotage-climate-action-as-world-burns-through-carbon-budget

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