Many have criticized 'non-evacuators' who haven't left their homes for Hurricane Ian — but some TikTokers say they can't afford to leave


Mara Leighton
Thu, September 29, 2022 

Downed palm fronds collect on an empty downtown intersection as Hurricane Ian approaches Florida’s Gulf Coast in Sarasota, Florida, U.S. September 28, 2022.

REUTERS/Steve Nesius

Hurricane Ian, a Category 4 storm, touched down in Florida on Wednesday.

Officials urged residents to evacuate from high-risk areas.

But many said they didn't have the money or resources to leave.

As Hurricane Ian battered parts of the Florida coast this week, some locals took to TikTok to share why they couldn't leave — despite officials urging evacuation.

The Category 4 storm made landfall in Florida on Wednesday after passing through Cuba, and many followed the storm's progression via the social platform. As of Thursday, the hashtag #HurricaneIan had over 1.1 billion views.

Among videos of people filling up their bathtubs with water and advising others on how to tell if food is good after power goes out, were videos from those who say they couldn't or wouldn't be evacuating.

Many satirized Floridians who didn't evacuate, joking that they'd remain as long as Waffle Houses remained open, and criticized "non-evacuaters" for their perceived foolishness. But, the reality is that leaving requires resources. Senior citizens or unhoused people and those with disabilities, language barriers, or a job that makes evacuation difficult or impossible — such as first responders, nurses, or animal shelter volunteers — are often among those left behind in a major weather event.

@shmacked7 people to this day still blame Katrina survivors for their own trauma, simply because they couldn’t evacuate. evacuating is a privilege #fyp #hurricaneian ♬ original sound - shmack

"Evacuating requires money. Evacuating likely requires a car or some mode of transportation. Evacuating requires people to leave their entire lives behind with the possibility of never coming back," said TikTok user @shmacked7 in a clip that's been viewed more than 70,000 times. "I would bet the majority of Americans, especially Black and brown Americans cannot afford to take that risk."

Economic circumstances and short notice left many stuck to ride the storm out at home.

TikToker @Jewelxcollazo, who lives in Temple Terrace, Florida, said the storm wasn't expected to hit her area, but she and her family received a mandatory evacuation notice on Tuesday. At the time, they didn't have the money to leave.

"DO NOT try and make it seem like I was participating in the yearly Floridian pissing match of who can withstand the weather the longest. If we could've, we would have," she wrote.

"We could not evacuate because we didn't have anywhere to go. Hotels were already booked up. Shelters were full. Gas prices were almost $4 at the nearest corner store," she added.



"Evacuation is not as easy as it may seem if you are outside of the evacuation area," Cara Cuite, an assistant extension specialist in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University, told NPR. Cuite studied evacuation decisions people made during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

For "people with disabilities, those with pets or simply [if] you don't have a car or enough money on hand to leave, that can make it really challenging," she added.

On TikTok and Twitter, people shared experiences of being unable to evacuate, asking for prayers and sharing the potentially prohibitive cost of gas needed to leave the state. Others considered leaving but missed their window of opportunity, while others worried about leaving only to get stuck in gridlock on the highway.

@mylifeandkids21

In the recenty predicted path daytona was/ could be in its path and im absolutely terrified. We can not afford to move and were right in beach side. Please way a prayer for us🤍🤞🏼. #HausLabsFoundation #hurricane #hurricaneian #hurricaneian2022 #storms #momof4 #daytonabeach #florida #fypシ #staysafe #stayaware♬ original sound - songs!🫶🏽🫶🏽

"In the recently predicted path… and I'm absolutely terrified," one TikToker captioned a video. "We can not afford to move and we're right in beach side. Please say a prayer for us."

Another TikToker, @this.is.meg2, said she was frustrated by claims that people who didn't evacuate were simply "poor planners."

"Before you decide that people should feel crappy because they didn't evacuate and now need help," said another TikToker. "Maybe have some compassion — some sympathy and some empathy for people."

The American Red Cross reported thousands of people had fled to evacuation centers. To find a local shelter, go to floridadisaster.org.

U$A

The climate future is now. Humans navigate a ‘Perilous Course’ on the East Coast.

LONG READ

Hadley Barndollar, USA TODAY NETWORK
Wed, September 28, 2022 

Waves lap on the sides of the dome homes on Cape Romano in Collier County, Florida, in late June 2022. The homes were built on the beach on dry land in the early 1980s. Without ever moving, they now find themselves several hundred feet offshore. Erosion, hurricanes and strong tropical weather have contributed to the demise of the homes. Climate change is causing sea-level rise. Planners say that the homes should have never been built in this location due the changing landscape of barrier islands.

After murky water from the Mamaroneck River gutted the sanctuary, the rotting pews in First Baptist Church sat empty for months.

When the faithful returned, they wore whatever remained of their Sunday best. A blush pink blazer. A dress shirt buttoned tight around an Adam's apple. Ladies white gloves.

Some parishioners were still displaced from their apartments and houses, lives scattered across hotel rooms, shelters, friends' couches.

It was catastrophic, the parade of flood water that had penetrated the cramped streets of a neighborhood called the Flats, a small working-class enclave in New York's Westchester County.

A harbinger of the ominous climate shift barreling down on the East Coast — already very much here for many and set to worsen in the future — the neighborhood's majority mixed-race and lower-income residents have been pounded by flooding for years, and the situation is getting worse.

For one witness to the fierce power of the climate crisis, The Rev. James E. Taylor, the Northeast remnants of Hurricane Ida last year were hollowing.

“This one was the killer,” he said.

The Rev. James E. Taylor, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Mamaroneck, stands in the church sanctuary March 9, 2022. The church was closed after being severely damaged by several feet of flooding caused by Hurricane Ida in 2021.

On the same night a deluge breached the church’s sacred chamber, a neighbor almost drowned in his basement apartment a few blocks away.

Randy Scott remembers the crushing pressure as he squeezed and squeezed his ribcage through a tiny above-ground window over his kitchen sink, narrowly escaping.

If he faced the same danger again, "I don’t know what I would do," said the renter whose family immigrated from Jamaica. “I may not be lucky this time.”

A team of USA TODAY Network reporters has been investigating how people up and down the East Coast are grappling with the climate crisis — from the natural disasters that grab headlines to the quieter forces gnawing at our personal stability, homes and livelihoods.

Journalists from more than 35 newsrooms from New Hampshire to Florida spoke with regular people this summer about real-life impacts, digging into the science and investigating government response, or lack of it.

Standing beside the window he escaped from, Randy Scott recounts how his block was flooded from Hurricane Ida in Mamaroneck's Flats neighborhood in New York state, May 3, 2022. Scott escaped through his kitchen window after three neighbors banged on his window to get him to leave his apartment.

Raisa Brown saw human-made global warming at work in the Flats as water bubbled up close to her bed. The flooding swelled, rising and filling the space between sections of a cast iron radiator. Atop the mattress with her fiancé and 3-year-old son, Brown considered using a Swiffer or mop to row away.

Denys Hernandez and her three children couldn’t return to their home nearby for months, after neck-high water inundated their one-story house last year. They lost back-to-school clothes and ultrasound photos. A bunkbed collapsed under the weight of water. They were later denied federal disaster assistance, Hernandez said.

Ida's winds and rain were a postcard from the future — a reality that's arrived and intensifying. Cataclysms disrupting daily life and taking life: sweltering solar rays, deluges of rain and waves of river and ocean floodwater.

Raisa Brown stands near the home she used to live in Mamaroneck, New York on July 5, 2022. Brown rented the entire first floor of the house, which was flooded during Hurricane Ida in 2021. Brown, who moved in to the home four months before Ida, says that she would not have rented the house had she known that it was in a flood prone area.

"We as a community, as a media, as policymakers and scientists, no longer need to refer to this in the future tense,” said climate expert Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd, a meteorologist and professor at the University of Georgia. “It’s here, it’s happening. We are living climate change."

As our team reported for "Perilous Course," we heard about hopeful innovations and collaborations in the face of these challenges. We also heard warnings from the people we visited. And in many cases, we heard a statement of defiance — individuals who refuse to simply be bystanders to the coming climate tragedy.

Much of the threat won’t be as instant as a hurricane, though those will certainly increase in intensity, experts say. Instead, it promises to be more insidious, gradually eroding lives.

A boat in the sea can change its course, depending on the will of those on board. But what if the boat is out deep, floating without much of a map? If the crew argues, more time is lost, and a consensus could come too late.

The ocean may not oblige an adjustment in direction.

East Coast faces sea-level rise, extreme heat and more

The East Coast is the legacy coast of the country. In the Northeastern region lived the Iroquois Confederacy — the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas and Tuscaroras — the oldest living participatory democracy on Earth, historians say. And then came the original 13 colonies of Great Britain, starting modern American civilization as we know it.

Today, the largest, highest-density and most diverse populations live in coastal cities. In a U.S. Supreme Court case this year, in her dissent to the West Virginia vs. EPA ruling, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that "parts of the Eastern seaboard (could be) swallowed by the ocean."

In the Chesapeake Bay region alone, more than 80,000 acres of forest have been turned into salt marsh in the last 150 years, according to research from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

Chief Donna Abbott poses beside the marsh in lower Dorchester County, Maryland, on May 11, 2022. The Nause Waiwash, a small indigenous band on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, is grappling with low participation and a rapidly changing environment. Today its ancestral lands, nestled against the Chesapeake Bay, are sinking.

Chief Donna Abbott of the Nause-Waiwash tribe sees striking reminders of once-abundant coastal landscapes on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Where lush green woodland areas once spread for miles, "ghost forests” have formed. Natural graveyards, ghost forests are created when trees and vegetation are killed by saltwater intrusion.

Abbott's cultural tradition of trapping muskrat has been curbed. “Mother Earth is in distress,” she said. “And I think we have abused her for so many years, she's not doing well by us right now.”

The states along the Atlantic Ocean will be an all-consuming battleground for much of the national climate crisis response, evidence indicates — rivaling the water scarcity, wildfires and heat spikes that will draw resources in the West.

The East Coast suffers the most frequent coastal flooding and has experienced the largest increase in the number of flood days overall, the EPA says. Places like Bar Harbor, Maine, and Boston and Sandy Hook, New Jersey, tell the story.

In a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration analysis of 33 coastal sites in the country, those three locations have flooded the most often since 2011.

A bicyclist splashes along a flooded parking lot in Florida on Saturday, June 4, 2022.

“On both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, what we considered extreme is going to become the new normal,” said Christopher Schwalm, risk director and senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts. “It’s going to become part of our daily vocabulary."

Stretch all the way down the Atlantic Coast to Florida. It's a place where the shift in climate is being felt palpably. The state could be the one most imperiled in this century by climate crisis.

While sea levels are rising, the land surface along both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of Florida is sinking. Scientists have predicted the southern third of the state could be underwater by 2100.

More: How a summer of extreme weather reveals a stunning shift in the way rain falls in America.

Compounding sea-level rise is the increase of extreme precipitation — dumps of rainfall that overwhelm infrastructure within short periods of time. Meanwhile, intense rain is expected to be punctuated by longer periods of drought.

We're entering a world of extremes.

Over the last 20 years, 10 states bordering the Atlantic Ocean have experienced five or more "wettest" or "driest" years on record, according to a USA TODAY analysis of records from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. Rhode Island saw five of its wettest years, while Georgia saw four of its driest years and three of its wettest years.

The East Coast is getting hotter, too.

Newark, New Jersey, and Philadelphia both saw their second-hottest July on record this year. Heat waves are forecast to increase in potency and duration because of climate change and temperatures in the U.S. could rise 3-12 degrees by the end of the century, scientists say.

More: We created scorching 'heat islands' in East Coast cities. Now they're becoming unlivable.

On a hot and humid June day, Somalia Mason stands outside her home, which is in an area marked as a "heat island" in Petersburg, Virginia. In the home's tight 1,200 square feet, Mason lives with her partner and five kids. They share the space with her sister's family — 11 people crammed together. They have three AC units in the house, but she and her family avoid being in the house when summer rolls around.

Flooding, heat waves, hurricanes

Perilous Course tells the stories of people grappling with climate change in real time.

In Petersburg, Virginia, Somalia Mason’s pandemic-era experience has been intertwined with suffering extreme heat in a little house passed down by her grandmother, and despairing over mounting, sometimes unpaid energy bills. The neighborhood is part of an urban heat island that has not been modified by local government to make it more livable.

Her 11-year-old son fainted because of the heat, and the family had to flee to a hotel once when the AC broke down.

Less than 300 miles south, but an entire world away economically, Glenda and Bill Browning huddled in 2020 on the top floor of Pelican Point, their beachfront home in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina.

While they clung to each other, a savage storm surge from Hurricane Isaias gushed through the house and decimated part of the downstairs.

Glenda and Bill Browning talk about their old beach home on East Third Street in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina. The Atlantic Ocean was coming for it, and they finally had had enough.

“Your windows are bowing, you hear crashing under your house, and you don't know if the pilings are going to hold you,” Glenda Browning said.

The Brownings later moved out of their dream home for good.

In Virginia, Mason wanted to move, but needed to find a new job first.

Americans' sense of place — the comfort, safety and history that keep people glued to their cities and small towns — will be tested by climate change.

Matthew Hauer, an assistant professor of sociology at Florida State University, projected that 13.1 million people could relocate because of sea-level rise alone by 2100, potentially reshaping the U.S. population distribution and stressing landlocked areas.

Climate migration is still a taboo topic for the country, but experts say it could play a major role in adapting to the environment in the future.

Many Americans couldn’t imagine leaving home, even if those homes were flooding. The thought of relocation is gutting, grinding deep at one of the most natural human longings — home. It’s why people don’t “just leave” when a Category 5 hurricane is headed for their town.

“People who live in a particular place have lots of reasons for why they want to stay there, despite hazards,” said Elizabeth Fussell, a professor at Brown University. “They’re invested in communities by owning property, by having businesses, attending churches... and of course their network of friends and family.”

Another thing that holds people where they are is the past. Their history.

Mary Nisula kneels in front of her family's graves at Cohasset Central Cemetery during the winter of 2020. The graves of her son, parents and sister were all being flooding before a seawall was constructed.

Up in Massachusetts, the climate crisis slammed Mary Nisula between the eyes when flooding hit the graves of her family.

The coastal cemetery chosen as their final resting place was being swallowed by sea-level rise — the ocean laying claim to beloved remains.

Nisula’s family plot is one of the closest to the shore, where her parents, sister and son are all buried under flat stones. Her son’s etched name was often underwater. He died unexpectedly in 2008, when he mixed alcohol and opioids after a bicycle accident.

“I just wished I was in my urn so when the waves took the rest of them out, they took me, too,” Nisula said.
'Warnings for the future': Inequity doesn’t bode well for climate resilience

Climate historian Dagomar Degroot studies how human populations have exhibited resilience, or not, in the face of climate changes over the course of time, specifically before instrumental records were kept.

In history lies “warnings for the future,” said Degroot, an associate professor of environmental history at Georgetown University, “when our societies begin to unravel as a result of climate change.”

His research focuses on people of the Dutch Republic in the 17th century and how they showed resilience, using changes in the environment to their benefit. Climate historians have also studied Indigenous people across the Americas and the 17th century Japanese in the same regard.

There’s a common thread. Societies that have exhibited the most resilience in a changing natural world had “low levels of social economic inequality or provided for their poor," Degroot said.

That finding doesn’t bode well for the United States.

Dagomar Degroot is a climate historian who studies how past societies have shown resilience in the face of changes in the environment.

In many places, people of color with low incomes are hit hardest by climate shocks and extremes. A 2021 report by the EPA

said Black people are most impacted by poor air quality, extreme temperatures and coastal and inland flooding.

There aren’t bars on Yolanda Lee’s windows at her public housing apartment in Yonkers, New York, but it still feels like a prison — as heat waves and rising temperatures have confined her indoors.

On hot days, the AC unit mounted in the 60-year-old’s living room window provides her only respite. She sits alone on her bed, watching CNN or making calls to family.

Outside, among the low-rise brick public housing building she’s lived in for six years, it’s empty in the courtyard and on crumbling sidewalks. There are no trees to break up heat-soaked asphalt and concrete. The benches meant for residents — who are typically Black, Latino, elderly and disabled — are exposed to the beating sun.

East Coast cities were shaped by federal redlining practices, when the government rated which neighborhoods were "risky" for mortgage lenders. The very communities outlined in red on the 1930s-era maps are the ones facing the worst climate and environmental hazards today. They're often the hottest, most flood-prone and most subjected to pollution.

Approximately 11 million Americans live in once-redlined areas, according 2017 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Experts have said the historic Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress in August, which includes billions in environmental justice investments, gives them hope. But society might start looking beyond mitigation, and perhaps to a conversation most people don’t want to have: How will we truly live with climate change?

"Popular discourse is all about mitigation, and that’s really important,” Degroot said. “But especially on the East Coast, we need this deep adaptation. Not just building resilient infrastructure, but thinking of how we can alter societies so that they are capable of weathering climate change.”
You can do more than howl into the winds

In Rhode Island, Kufa Castro is an everyday person who did something. The fruits of his labor will combat the climate crisis long after he's gone.

When she wanted some outdoor time for her sons, Castro's mother used to drive them to a wealthy side of Providence, where tall trees just seemed to multiply, burgeoning with shade and greenery.

There, Castro always felt like they were visitors. Where they'd settled nearby after moving from the Dominican Republic, his family looked out at sprawling 19th-century red-brick factories surrounded by double- and triple-decker houses. Not trees.

The 35-year-old knows that those who most feel the heat also look like him.

Kufa Castro in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, used his job to expand solutions in his town for a damaging situation — urban "heat island" effects — exacerbated by the climate crisis. Again and again, residents told him that heat was their top concern. Their No. 1 request: more trees.

During one of the many iterations of his career, Castro planted trees in areas that have seen disinvestment — trying to lift the gloom that he sees permeating neighborhoods like a specter. People are "screaming about how hot they are," he said.

The results of his effort can be seen in the many saplings around the cities of Pawtucket and Central Falls, almost 200 of them. They're identifiable by now-weathered yellow tags that announce: “NEW TREE IN TOWN.”

They were barely taller than a person when they were planted, a little scrawny and lonely looking at the edge of someone's lawn or a traffic island, with barely enough leaves to provide an umbrella's worth of shade. By the time the trees reach their canopy maturity in a few decades, though, they'll be providing these city streets with enough cooling shade to fill several football fields.

It may seem like a quiet act among a global calamity pulling efforts in countless directions, but it's one with tangible, long-term impacts. A child not yet born will one day find respite in the shade of Castro's trees.

The main USA TODAY Network reporters on Perilous Course include Hadley Barndollar, Eduardo Cuevas, Joyce Chu, Kelly Powers, Dinah Pulver, Matthew Prensky, Chad Gillis, Andrew West, Hannah Morse, Alex Kuffner, Kim Strong, Gareth McGrath, Megan Fernandes, Kimberly Miller, Ricardo Kaulessar, Marisa Mecke and Danielle Dreilinger. Monique Calello is the fact-checker, and Jeff Schwaner is the storytelling coach. William Ramsey is the project's editor.


This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: East Coast struggles as climate alters weather, neighborhoods, ocean

ECOCIDE

Baltic Sea pipeline leak damages marine life and climate




APTOPIX Europe Pipelines

A large disturbance in the sea can be observed off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022 following a series of unusual leaks on two natural gas pipelines running from Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany have triggered concerns about possible sabotage. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen says she "cannot rule out" sabotage after three leaks were detected on Nord Stream 1 and 2.

 (Danish Defence Command via AP)

CHRISTINA LARSON
Thu, September 29, 2022 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Methane escaping from the damaged Nord Stream pipelines that run between Russia and Europe is likely to result in the biggest known gas leak to take place over a short period of time and highlights the problem of large methane escapes elsewhere around the world, scientists say.

There is still uncertainty in estimating total damage, but researchers say vast plumes of this potent greenhouse gas will have significant detrimental impacts on the climate.

Immediate harm to marine life and fisheries in the Baltic Sea and to human health will also result because benzene and other trace chemicals are typically present in natural gas, researchers say.

“This will probably be the biggest gas leak ever, in terms of its rate,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson.

The velocity of the gas erupting from four documented leaks in the pipelines — which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has attributed to sabotage — is part of what makes the impacts severe.

When methane leaks naturally leaks from vents on the ocean floor, the quantities are usually small and the gas is mostly absorbed by seawater. “But this is not a normal situation for gas release,” said Jackson. “We're not talking about methane bubbling up to the surface like seltzer water, but a plume of rushing gas,” he said.

Jackson and other scientists estimate that between 50% and nearly 100% of total methane emitted from the pipeline will reach the atmosphere.

The Danish government issued a worst case scenario that assumed all the gas reached the air, and German officials Thursday issued a somewhat lower one.

In the meantime, it's nearly impossible for anyone to approach the highly flammable plume to attempt to curb the release of gas, which energy experts estimate may continue until Sunday.

“Methane is very flammable — if you go in there, you'd have a good chance of it being a funeral pyre,” said Ira Leifer, an atmospheric scientist. If the gas-air mix was within a certain range, an airplane could easily ignite travelling into the plume, for example.

Methane isn't the only risk. “Natural gas isn't refined to be super clean — there are trace elements of other compounds, like benzene,” a carcinogen, said Leifer.

“The amount of these trace elements cumulatively entering the environment is significant right now — this will cause issues for fisheries and marine ecosystems and people who potentially eat those fish," he said.

David Archer, a professor in the geophysical sciences department at University of Chicago who focuses on the global carbon cycle, said that escape of methane in the Baltic Sea is part of the much larger worldwide problem of methane emissions.

The gas is a major contributor to climate change, responsible for a significant share of the climate disruption people are already experiencing. That is because it is 82.5 times more potent than carbon dioxide at absorbing the sun’s heat and warming the Earth, over the short term.

Climate scientist have found that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry are far worse than what companies are reporting, despite claims by major companies that they’ve reduced their emissions.

Scientists measuring methane from satellites in space have found that emissions from oil and gas operations are usually at least twice as high as what the companies reported, said Thomas Lauvaux, climate scientist at University of Reims in France.

Many of those so-called leaks are not accidental. Companies release the gas during routine maintenance. Lauvaux and other scientists observed more than 1,500 major methane leaks globally, and potentially tens of thousands of smaller leaks, using satellites, he said.

—

AP reporters Patrick Whittle contributed from Portland, Maine, Seth Borenstein from Washington, DC., and Cathy Bussewitz from New York.

__

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Nord Stream pipeline methane gas leak could be one of the largest and pose a huge climate change risk, experts say

Marianne Guenot
Thu, September 29, 2022

Danish military video of bubbles in Baltic Sea where Nord Stream pipeline leaked.

Danish Defense Command

A natural gas pipeline, which may have been deliberately sabotaged, is spewing methane in the Baltic Sea.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and leaks have been prime targets to slow the rate of climate change.

It's unclear how much methane is reaching the atmosphere, but this could be "disastrous," an expert said.

Reports that a natural gas pipeline has ruptured in the Baltic Sea are causing fears that the methane leak could negatively impact climate change, experts said.

Experts told various news outlets though it is too early to say how much methane from the Nord Stream pipelines will reach the atmosphere, the leaks have the potential to have a substantial effect on climate change.

"There are a number of uncertainties, but if these pipelines fail, the impact to the climate will be disastrous and could even be unprecedented," atmospheric chemist David McCabe, senior scientist at the non-profit Clean Air Task Force, told Reuters.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas

Though carbon dioxide (CO2) remains the main long-term driver of the climate crisis, methane leaks have become a hot-button issue to help control the progression of the climate crisis in the short term.

That's because methane is a greenhouse gas — it very effectively traps heat from the planet in the atmosphere instead of letting it dissipate into space.

Though it is not as long-lived as CO2, which floats in the atmosphere for much longer after it is released, methane is much better at trapping heat: about 30 times better than CO2 over 100 years.

Because of this, sharp cuts to methane emissions are a vital lever to curb the rate of climate change in the short term.

If all of the methane contained in the pipelines were to reach the atmosphere, it could seriously set the world back.
The equivalent of a third of Denmark's yearly emissions are contained in both pipelines

Four leaks have now been found along the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that cross the Baltic Sea.

The leaks are thought to be the result of "deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage," NATO said in a statement Thursday.

Though the pipelines were not being used when they were breached, they were full of natural gas — about 778 million cubic meters in total, per The Danish Energy Agency.

Seventy to 90% of natural gas is methane.

If it were all released from the pipeline, that would be the equivalent of 32% of the Danish annual CO2 emissions in 2020.

But it's not clear how much of that methane will reach the atmosphere.
Potential to be the 'one of the biggest gas leak'

How much of the methane contained in the Nord Stream pipelines will reach the atmosphere is difficult to estimate, Cooper told Reuters.

The rate of emission depends on how big the breach is and other factors, Jasmin Cooper, a research associate at Imperial College London's department of chemical engineering, told The Guardian.

Even without the pipelines emptying completely, the emissions could be substantial.

Jean-Francois Gauthier, vice president of measurements at the commercial methane-measuring satellite firm GHGSat, provided Reuters with a "conservative estimate" of emissions at the time of the breach.

He thinks altogether, the leaks likely released about 500 metric tons of methane per hour into the sea at first and are releasing less over time.

By comparison, the 2015-2016 Aliso Canyon leak released 97,000 metric tons of methane into the air in total, CNN reported.

That doesn't mean all of that methane will reach the surface. For instance, microbes are known to absorb some of the methane as it passes through the water, McCabe told Reuters.

Grant Allen, a professor of Earth and environmental science at Manchester University, told the Guardian, however, this is likely to have little effect.

"My scientific experience is telling me that – with a big blow-up like this – methane will not have time to be attenuated by nature. So a significant proportion will be vented as methane gas," Allen said.

"It has the potential to be one of the biggest gas leaks," Cooper told The Guardian.

Record methane leak flows from damaged Baltic Sea pipelines


APTOPIX Europe Pipelines

A large disturbance in the sea can be observed off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022 following a series of unusual leaks on two natural gas pipelines running from Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany have triggered concerns about possible sabotage. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen says she "cannot rule out" sabotage after three leaks were detected on Nord Stream 1 and 2. 

(Danish Defence Command via AP)

JAN M. OLSEN and PATRICK WHITTLE
Wed, September 28, 2022 

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Methane leaking from the damaged Nord Stream pipelines is likely to be the biggest burst of the potent greenhouse gas on record, by far.

The Nord Stream pipeline leaks that were pumping huge volumes of methane into the Baltic Sea and atmosphere could discharge as much as five times as much of the potent greenhouse as was released by the Aliso Canyon disaster, the largest known terrestrial release of methane in U.S. history. It is also the equivalent of one third of Denmark’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions, a Danish official warned Wednesday.

“Whoever ordered this should be prosecuted for war crimes and go to jail,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist. Two scientists looked at the official worst case scenario estimates provided by the Danish government — 778 million cubic meters of gas — for The Associated Press. Jackson and David Hastings, a retired chemical oceanographer in Gainesville, Florida each calculated that would be an equivalent of roughly half a million metric tons of methane. The Aliso Canyon disaster released 90-100,000 metric tons.

Andrew Baxter, a chemical engineer who formerly worked in the offshore oil and gas industry, and is now at the environmental group EDF thought the Danish estimate was likely too high. He had a more conservative estimate. But it was still more than double the Aliso Canyon disaster.

“That's one thing that is consistent with these estimates," he said, “It's catastrophic for the climate.”

Kristoffer Böttzauw, head of the Danish Energy Agency, said emissions from the three leaks on the underwater Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines correspond to approximately 32% of annual Danish carbon dioxide emissions. Danish emissions in 2020 were approximately 45 million tonnes of CO2.

Sabotage was suspected to have caused the leaks, and seismologists said Tuesday that explosions rattled the Baltic Sea before they were discovered. Some European officials and energy experts have said Russia is likely to blame since it directly benefits from higher energy prices and economic anxiety across Europe. But others cautioned against pointing fingers until investigators are able to determine what happened.

Methane seen bubbling at the ocean surface was an indication of “a strong upward flow,” according to Paul Balcombe, a member of the engineering faculty at the department of chemical engineering at Imperial College London.

The loss of pressure in the pipe likely meant a large amount of gas was already lost, he said. The impacts of the gas leak are still coming into focus, Balcombe said, but are likely to be significant.

“It would have a very large environmental and climate impact indeed, even if it released a fraction of this," he said.

Methane is a major contributor to climate change, responsible for a significant share of the climate disruption people are already experiencing. That is because it is 82.5 times more potent than carbon dioxide at absorbing the sun’s heat and warming the Earth.

Böttzauw, told a press conference that the agency expects the gas to be out of the pipes, that run from Russia to Germany, by Sunday.

“We believe that half the gas is out by now of one of the two pipes,” Böttzauw said. “We are talking about a huge spill of several million cubic meters of gas.”

The Danish agency statement added that its calculation was based on information from operators Nord Stream AG and Nord Stream 2 AG about the content of natural gas in the three pipelines that are leaking.

The incidents come as the EU struggles to keep a lid on soaring gas and electricity prices.

“As long as there is gas, it dangerous to be there,” Böttzauw said, declining to say when experts would be able to go down and see the pipes, which he said was made of 12-centimeter (5-inch) thick steel coated with concrete. They lie on the seabed between 70 and 90 meters (230 feet and 295 feet) deep.

The leaks all were in international waters. Two were within the Danish exclusive economic zone while the third is in the Swedish equivalent.

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Whittle reported from Portland, Maine. Associated Press writer Seth Borenstein contributed from Washington, DC.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Fixing inefficient oil field flaring could drastically reduce methane emissions


Orjan F. Ellingvag/Corbis via Getty Images

Jon Fingas
·Reporter
Fri, September 30, 2022 

Oil and gas companies regularly use flaring (that is, burning unwanted methane) to limit the amount of natural gas escaping into the atmosphere, but the practice might not be as kind to the planet as previously thought. Scientists at the University of Michigan, Stanford and elsewhere have discovered that flaring is much less effective than the industry assumes, and puts out five times more methane (a strong greenhouse gas) than predicted.

Companies and governments act on the belief flares are always lit and burn off 98 percent of methane. However, aerial surveys of three US basins (where 80 percent of American flaring takes place) have revealed that the flares aren't lit up to 5 percent of the time, and operate inefficiently when they're active. In practice, the flaring efficiency is just 91 percent. That may not sound like a big dip, but it signifies that there's a large volume of unaccounted-for methane contributing to climate change.



There is an upside to the findings. Flaring's problems are "quite addressable" with better management, lead researcher Genevieve Plant said, and a solution would offer an equivalent emissions reduction to removing 3 million cars. To put it another way, this could be one of the easiest ways to keep methane in check and limit global warming. The challenge is to have companies and governments work in harmony — that's not guaranteed, even if the fix is relatively straightforward.

Methane blast in Baltic Sea highlights global problem

A flare burns at Venture Global LNG in Cameron, La., on Friday, April 21, 2022. Climate scientists have found that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry are far worse than what companies are reporting, despite claims by some major firms that they’ve reduced their emissions. (AP Photo/Martha Irvine, File)
9
CATHY BUSSEWITZ
Fri, September 30, 2022 at 1:02 AM·4 min read


NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists have been measuring the scale of the massive methane leak from damaged pipelines in the Baltic Sea, with the latest figures equating the levels of gas escaping to the annual emissions of some whole countries. It is believed to be the single biggest recorded gas leak over a short period of time.

But as serious as the methane escaping from ruptured pipelines may be, there are alarming incidents of massive methane releases around the world frequently.

Climate scientists have found that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry are far worse than what companies are reporting, despite claims by some major firms that they’ve reduced their emissions. That matters because natural gas, a fossil fuel widely used to heat homes and provide electricity, is made up of methane, a potent climate warming gas. It escapes into the atmosphere from well sites and across the natural gas distribution network, from pipelines and compressor stations, to the export terminals that liquefy gas to ship it overseas.

Scientists measuring methane from satellites in space have found that methane emissions from oil and gas operations are usually at least twice what companies reported, said Thomas Lauvaux, a scientist at University of Reims in France. In the Permian Basin, the largest oil and gas field in the United States, methane emissions were two to three times higher than what companies reported, he said.

“Everybody claims they have reduced their emissions, but it’s not true,” Lauvaux said.

Governments around the world, especially in the U.S., are also notorious for underestimating how much methane escapes into the air, said Cornell University ecology and biology professor Robert Howarth, who studies natural gas emissions.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uses voluntary self-reporting from industry instead of independent verification, which is what’s needed, Howarth said.

Globally, Turkmenistan is among the worst offenders for releasing methane into the atmosphere, while Saudi Arabia is among the best at capturing it based on satellite observations, Lauvaux said. The U.S. falls somewhere in the middle with some companies capturing methane pretty well and others performing terribly.

Lauvaux and other scientists have observed more than 1,500 major methane leaks globally, and potentially tens of thousands of smaller leaks, using satellites, he said.

Most of the oil and gas industry’s methane emissions come from pipelines and compressor stations, according to Kayrros, a company which analyzes satellite data.

Many of those so-called leaks are not accidental; they occur when companies perform routine maintenance. For example when a pipeline needs repair, operators need to bleed gas out so they can weld without an explosion. But instead of capturing the gas most companies just open the pipeline and release the methane into the air, a practice which is legal in the U.S. and elsewhere. Some companies do capture methane instead of just releasing it, but more could adopt the practice, scientists said.

One way the oil and gas industry tries to reduce methane emissions is by flaring, or burning off, what they consider excess gas. Companies might employ a flare when they’re drilling for oil, and gas comes up along with the oil. If they don't have the pipeline infrastructure to transport it to customers, or if they’ve decided that gas, which is generally cheaper than oil, isn’t worth the effort, they may send the gas up a flare stack to burn it off.

In Turkmenistan, scientists found flares malfunctioning for as long as three years. “This gas is just pouring into the atmosphere,” Lauvaux said.

A study released Thursday by scientists at the University of Michigan found that flaring releases five times more methane in the U.S. than previously thought. Flares, they found, are often unlit or not working, allowing gas to escape directly into the atmosphere.

Reducing flaring or making sure flares are working properly would go a long way, said Genevieve Plant, a lead author of the study and climate scientist at University of Michigan.

“If we take action soon, it will have a large climate impact,” Plant said.

Fossil fuels are by no means the only source of methane. The gas can come from decaying garbage in landfills and livestock agriculture, even plants breaking down in reservoir dams. Fossil methane may make up some 30% of the total.

David Archer is a professor in the geophysical sciences department at University of Chicago and focuses on the global carbon cycle. He thinks much of the methane that has escaped from the Baltic Sea pipelines dissolved in the water.

The leak is dramatic, but it doesn’t compare to the daily impact of methane emitters such as agricultural operations, Archer said.

The amounts "from oil wells and cattle are much larger, just harder to visualize. If the explosion in the Baltic looks large, it’s because it’s concentrated,” he said.

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AP reporters Patrick Whittle contributed from Portland, Maine, Seth Borenstein from Washington, DC., and Christina Larson from Washington, D.C.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

How methane leaks speed up global warming

Thu, September 29, 2022 at 4:29 PM


STORY: Methane leaks are speeding up global warming.

They've become a top threat to the global climate in recent years -

with the leaks at two Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea as the latest example.

Research has shown that reducing methane emissions is vital to averting the worst impacts of climate change -

and after decades of focusing on gas carbon dioxide -

policymakers are starting to recognize its threat.

“So there's urgent need to do something and there is a lot we can do...”

But what is methane?

It's the main component of natural gas

Some methane comes from natural sources like swamps but most comes from human activity

Source: Climate and Clean Air Coalition data

Two-thirds of those human-caused emissions come from livestock farming and fossil fuels

Much of the rest are from decomposing waste and rice cultivation.

Scientists say methane is much more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas in the short term

Methane breaks down in the atmosphere in a fraction of the time compared to CO2 - but it has a front-loaded impact

When you compare the effects of both over a century -

Research shows methane is 28 times worse

But over two decades - that figure jumps to 80

In 2021 over 100 nations signed a pledge to slash emissions from 2020 levels

"So, together, we're committed to collectively reduce our methane by thirty percent by 2030 and I think we could probably go beyond that."

World governments, including the United States, are introducing requirements that the oil and gas industry detect and repair leaks after studies showed leaks in the industry were a huge problem.

And the world is close to crossing a so-called 'tipping point' -

where climate feedback loops kick in to make global warming self-perpetuating.

One study says that events that could touch off those loops are imminent -

like the collapse of the Greenland Ice sheet - or the melting of Arctic permafrost.

CHASED TO DEATH

Palestinians mourn boy who died 'of fear' of Israeli troops









Israel Palestinian Mourners gather around the body of 7-year-old Palestinian boy Rayan Suleiman, during his funeral in the West Bank village of Tequa near Bethlehem Friday, Sept. 30, 2022. The U.S. State Department has called on Israel to open a "thorough" investigation into the mysterious death of the boy, who collapsed and died shortly after Israeli soldiers came to his home in the occupied West Bank. Relatives said he had no previous health problems and accused the army of scaring the child to death. The army called the death a tragedy and said its soldiers were not to blame. 

(AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)


Fri, September 30, 2022 

TEQUA, West Bank (AP) — A throng of men clutching the body of a 7-year-old Palestinian boy marched through a town in the occupied West Bank toward the child's final resting place on Friday, a day after his parents say he died from fear of Israeli soldiers.

Rayan Suleiman, with bright eyes and a backpack emblazoned with an animated race car, was walking home from school on Thursday when his family says he and his brothers were chased by Israeli soldiers. After the boys bolted home, the troops banged furiously on the door and threatened to arrest the children, their parents say. Just moments later, Rayan, the youngest of the three brothers, was dead.

The story shot across the occupied West Bank, providing an emotive focus for fury over Israel’s military tactics and what Palestinians contend is their victimization by the Israeli occupation.

The State Department demanded an investigation. The European Union said it was “shocked” by Rayan’s “tragic death.”

Photographs of Rayan’s tiny, lifeless body under a sheet in the hospital became a potent new symbol overnight, threatening to fuel already heightened tensions just a day after the deadliest Israeli raid since the military escalated its crackdown on the West Bank earlier this year.

Like many such incidents in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Rayan’s death has sparked contention. The Israeli military has denied any violence in the interaction with Rayan’s family, saying that just one officer came to the family’s house after spotting children throwing stones.

Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a military spokesman, said the officer spoke in a “very calm manner” with Rayan's father and left.

“There was no violence, no entry into the house,” Hecht said.

Yasser Suleiman, Rayan's father, told The Associated Press on Friday that Rayan collapsed after he saw the Israeli soldiers who chased him appear at his front door. Suleiman said he was trying to reason with the soldiers, who accused his children of throwing rocks. The soldiers threatened to return at night and arrest all three children, including Rayan's older brothers, ages 8 and 10, Suleiman said. Amid the chaos, Rayan fell on the floor, unconscious.

Doctors at a hospital in Beit Jala, a Palestinian town south of Jerusalem, could not resuscitate him. A pediatric specialist, Dr. Mohamed Ismail, said Rayan was healthy and had no previous medical conditions.

“The most probable scenario of what happened is that under stress, he had excess adrenaline secretion, which caused the increase of his heart beat,” Ismail said. “He developed cardiac arrest.”

A forensic doctor is currently conducting an autopsy on Rayan.

In the meantime on Friday, a crowd of mourners thronged his body outside his stone house in Tequa, a Palestinian town that borders an Israeli settlement with some 4,000 residents.

“God is great!” they shouted, some jogging to stay ahead of his small body on the wooden pallet. “Oh Rayan, light of the eye!"

Palestinians say boy dies of heart failure during chase by Israeli troops

Thu, September 29, 2022 

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -A Palestinian boy died of heart failure while being chased by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, his father said, an account disputed by the army while Washington voiced sorrow at the incident and encouraged an investigation.

Seven-year-old Rayyan Suleiman was coming home from school with other pupils in the village of Tuqu when troops gave chase, and he "died on the spot from fear," his father Yasser said in a video circulated on social media.

A medical official who inspected the body told Reuters that it bore no sign of physical trauma and that the death appeared consistent with heart failure. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the incident as "an ugly crime" by Israel.

An Israeli military spokesman said troops were in the vicinity at the time to search for Palestinians suspected of fleeing into the village after having thrown rocks at motorists.

"An initial inquiry shows no connection between the searches conducted by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in the area and the tragic death of the child," the spokesman said.

Palestinian residents said there was no stone-throwing at the time. The military spokesman added that "the details of the incident are under review."

In Washington, deputy State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said, "The U.S. is heartbroken to learn of the death of an innocent Palestinian child."

"We support a thorough and immediate investigation into the circumstances surrounding the child's death" alongside an Israeli military probe, he added.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Dan Williams and Simon Lewis; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Cynthia Osterman)

UN envoy: Israel defies UN resolution on halting settlements

EDITH M. LEDERER
Wed, September 28, 2022

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Israel continued its defiance of a 2016 U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate halt to all settlement activity in lands the Palestinians want for their future state, advancing plans for construction of nearly 2,000 housing units in the last three months, the U.N. Mideast envoy said Wednesday.

Tor Wennesland told the council that no progress was made by Israelis and Palestinians on other demands in the resolution -- preventing all violence against civilians, refraining from acts of provocation, incitement and inflammatory rhetoric, distinguishing between Israeli territory and territories occupied since the 1967 war, and exerting “collective efforts to launch credible negotiations.”

He did cite several positive steps during the three-month period ending Sept. 20 -- two contacts between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and high-level Israeli officials in July, Israel’s issuance of some 16,000 permits for workers and businesses for Palestinians in Gaza, and a 1.5% increase in imports and 54% increase in exports through the main Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza compared to the monthly average for the first two quarters of 2022.

But Wennesland said “We continue to see little progress” in implementing the resolution since its adoption in December 2016.

The resolution was approved by the Security Council when the United States, in the final weeks of the Obama administration, abstained rather than using its veto to support longtime ally Israel as it had done many times previously. The Trump administration strongly opposed the resolution.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the council Wednesday that from day one the Biden administration has supported a two-state solution, a position President Joe Biden reiterated to world leaders at last week’s high-level meeting at the General Assembly.

She said many leaders made similar calls, praising Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s "courageous and impassioned speech that articulated his vision of `two states for two peoples.’”

“The significance of his appeal for peace between Israelis and Palestinians should not be underestimated,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “And I also want to acknowledge president Abbas’ stated commitment to non-violence and reaffirmation of his support for a two-state solution.”

She said now it's time “to turn these words into action” and make real progress, stressing that “there are no short-cuts to statehood.”

Speaking to reporters afterward, Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, called for the Security Council to start implementing its resolutions.

It should now propose “practical steps” to open the doors “for a meaningful political process” to begin implementing the “global consensus” for a two-state solution, he said.

Wennesland warned that “the absence of a meaningful peace process to end the Israeli occupation and resolve the conflict is fueling a dangerous deterioration" across the Palestinian territories, particularly the West Bank, “and driving the perception that the conflict is unresolvable.”

“Israelis and Palestinians must determine how they envision the future,” he said. “Negotiations can no longer be pushed indefinitely.”

“The current course is leading us towards a perpetual state of violence and conflict,” The Mideast envoy warned, and “meaningful initiatives” are needed quickly to turn this trajectory around.

Industrial Farming Causes Climate Change. The ‘Slow Food’ Movement Wants to Stop It


Aryn Baker

TIME
Wed, September 28, 2022 

Soy beans being planted in a field on a farm in Balfour, South Africa, on Oct. 20, 2021. Regenerative agriculture is a simple idea, instead of using pesticides, irrigation systems, and heavy tilling machinery, cover crops are used during the off season to keep the moisture and nutrients in the soil and control weeds.

 Credit - PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP— Getty Images

A biennial celebration of international small-scale farmers, breeders, fishers, and food producers just wrapped up in Turin, Italy. Convened by the Slow Food movement, one phrase in particular dominated the Terra Madre Salone del Gusto festival’s long roster of panel discussions and workshops: “Food is the cause of the environmental crisis, but it can also be the solution.”

In a year that has seen few places on earth untouched by the climate crisis, it was an apt starting point. Farmers from the U.S. to Japan, Australia, Uganda, Italy, and everywhere in between, talked about how drought, flood, fire, storms, heatwaves and plagues of pests had destroyed their livelihoods. Some swore they would persevere despite the challenges; others wondered if they could afford to start over—or even if they should.

Food production contributes approximately 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions, making farmers both contributors to, and victims of, climate change. But it doesn’t have to be that way, say proponents of Slow Food, a movement started in Italy 36 years ago that promotes “good, clean and fair food” along with a stronger connection between people and the food they eat. Adopting climate-smart farming practices, and taking a more flexible approach to what is farmed where, will make food production more resilient in the face of climate change. But even then, it may not be enough—absent severe reductions in fossil fuel emissions, some places will likely have to give up farming entirely in the near future.

Improving Resilience

Conventional agriculture seeks to maximize production via large scale farms that rely on monocrops fed by greenhouse gas-emitting fertilizers, protected by biodiversity-damaging pesticides and harvested by fossil fuel-spewing combines and tractors. Industrial farming may be able to produce food cheaply, but it comes with a great environmental cost, says Edward Mukiibi, Slow Food’s new president. The pursuit of profit above all else has resulted in soils so stripped of their nutrients that farmers have no choice but to add increasing amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to maintain production in a downward spiral of additive addiction.

But by focusing on soil health—by letting fields lie fallow, rotating crops, planting hedgerows, or letting cattle churn up the earth and fertilize it with their droppings, among other practices—farmers can improve the quality of their crops, with the added benefit of increased biodiversity and carbon sequestration. That’s the way smallholders used to farm, back when crops were destined for the farmer’s kitchen as much as for the market. These days the practice is called agroecology or regenerative farming, but it’s what Slow Food has been advocating for decades.

Read More: The Ukraine Food Price Crisis is Just a Preview of What Could Happen as Climate Change Worsens

In addition, says Mukiibi, the movement’s promotion of heirloom seeds over commodity crops promotes biodiversity that serves as insurance against climate change. A harvest-time flood might wipe out a farmer’s entire monocrop as well as her yearly income, but if the farmer planted a diversity of seed types with different growth periods, she would likely be able to save a portion of her crops. Mukiibi, the son of a farmer and a trained agronomist, has seen this first hand in his native Uganda. “I’ve seen farmers lose everything. But I’ve also seen how biodiversity promotes resilience. And resilience is key for combating climate change.”

Climate ‘Whack-a-Mole’

But resilience is in increasingly short supply, and alone it may not be enough to protect farmers from the rapid onset of extreme weather caused by climate change. The past two years have battered farmers around the world with successive calamities that would have once been decades apart. The summer heatwave in the UK and France forced small-batch cheese makers to suspend production because their cows’ milk supplies dried up with the grass. In Japan, typhoon Nanmadol flattened Kyushu’s rice fields just before harvest, according to Megumi Watanabe, the head of Slow Food Japan. Meanwhile, warming ocean temperatures are driving fish stocks away, and even the seaweed harvest was low this year.

“Sometimes it feels like a whack-a-mole situation in which each season of the year requires more investment in time, energy, and supplies to get through,” says Adrianna Moreno, a first generation farmer and co-founder of Empowered Flowers, a woman-owned organic farm in Oregon. In 2021, she had to invest in shade cloth to protect her plants from sunburn through the unusually hot summer; this year she had to install greenhouses to help keep young seedlings dry in excessively wet conditions. She and her co-founder have no plans to throw in the towel, she says on the sidelines of the Terra Madre event, at least not “before we absolutely have to.”

Read More: The Cow That Could Feed the Planet

Others had it even tougher. Italy’s Po River Valley, a lush, well-watered plain that birthed ancient empires, succumbed to an unprecedented drought this summer. Starved by a dry winter that saw very little snowpack in the Alps, the Po dried up, along with a canal system that had irrigated the region’s rice paddies for centuries. Spring rains never arrived, compounding the problem. This is only the beginning, says Christina Brizzolari, an Italian rice farmer who converted conventional fields into a zero-waste, regenerative farm ten years ago. “Everyone is now saying that this summer will turn out to have been the best of the next ten years when it comes to weather.” Brizzolari lost 20% of her crop, and most of her neighbors lost everything. “This is a region that has been growing rice for hundreds of years. But tradition is no match for climate change. Without water, you can’t grow rice. What will we do, switch to soy?”

Preparing for the Future

The Slow Food movement promotes traditional crops wherever possible, but that ethos may soon have to give way to a climate that is changing too fast for tradition to keep up. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2019 report on land use and food security warns that if current greenhouse gas emission trends continue, agriculture that has been practiced for generations may no longer be possible in many parts of the world by 2050, and in some areas, like northern Africa or Southeast Asia, even sooner.

Australians are starting to get a glimpse of what that might look like. Amorelle Dempster, a Slow Food advocate and farm-to-table restaurateur, has been converting conventional farmers in her corner of Australia’s Hunter Valley to biodiverse and regenerative systems for the past 20 years. But a series of biblical-level and climate-change connected plagues over the past three years, from drought to bushfires, mouse infestations, and now floods, have tested even the most committed of farmers.

It’s hard to see how diversifying crops and healthy doses of cow manure will make a difference in the face of such climate change driven extremes. The most important lesson of Slow Food, says Dempster, is not how to farm as much as how to be flexible in the way you think about farming. Sometimes that means going back to old traditions, like crop rotations. Other times that means moving beyond the farm gate entirely. In the next couple of decades, she says, the Hunter Valley’s rich floodplain will become increasingly saline as rising ocean levels inundate the river mouth. Farmers could think about planting salt-tolerant plants in those areas. They could also start considering taking their crops to higher ground. “We know how to farm in a way that is good for us and good for the soil. But that is not always enough. We also have to adapt,” says Dempster. “Now is the time to start talking about relocating farms and protecting fertile areas from development.” Climate change is a threat, she says, “but in a way it’s helping us to realign what we know about farming with how the food system will work in the future.”

Read More: Massimo Bottura Wants You to Stop Wasting Your Food

Although regenerative farming can reduce carbon emissions while improving carbon sequestration, it is hard to see how it can be implemented on a scale large enough to truly reverse the effects of climate change on agriculture, all while feeding a growing global population. Slow food proponents say part of the solution lies in reducing food waste—a third of the world’s food production is either plowed under or thrown out every year—but the ability to maintain local food sources and food security well into the future requires substantial reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions that go far beyond the food system.

Slow Food evangelists like to say that change starts with individual choices: buying local, going organic, reducing meat consumption and avoiding food waste. “We are all just drops of water,” went another popular powerpoint slogan at the conference roundtables, “But together we make the ocean.” Actually, 7.98 billion drops barely fill a swimming pool. Slow Food alone won’t stop climate change. Ultimately the solution starts with eliminating fossil fuels. But at least we will eat better on the way.