EXPLAINER
Does Trudeau’s net-zero emissions legislation go far enough? Here’s what you need to know

Bill C-12 would make net-zero emissions by 2050 law and require government to legislate climate targets every five years starting in 2030 — but experts are concerned about its shortfall

The federal government has released new legally-binding legislation that commits Canada to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. However, experts are raising questions about the government's short-term goals and what accountability measures will be implemented. 

Photo: Justin Trudeau / Flickr

Ainslie Cruickshank Nov 20, 2020 THE NARWHAL

Environmental groups welcomed the introduction of climate accountability legislation in the House of Commons Thursday but warned the bill as written doesn’t have the teeth needed to ensure Canada meets its climate targets.

Bill C-12 requires the Minister of the Environment to set five-year emissions reductions targets starting in 2030 in order to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and to develop plans for meeting each goal.
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But if the government fails to meet one of its legislated targets, the minister is only required to explain why and describe the actions the government is taking or will take to meet it.

While the public reporting requirements could add pressure on the government to take needed climate action, “to be truly accountable, the bill needs to go one step further and actually require the minister to ensure that those plans will meet the specific targets,” said Anna Johnston, a staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law.
Lawyer wants legal requirement to meet targets made clear in legislation

Canada has so far failed to meet its international climate targets and the federal government’s own data shows the country is currently on track to miss its 2030 target as well.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reiterated his commitment Thursday that Canada would not only meet, but exceed its existing 2030 emissions reductions targets and said “ultimately the accountability for government’s actions or inaction is from Canadians themselves.”

Currently, Canada has failed to meet its international emissions target, and also appears to be on track to miss its 2030 target. In response to the federal government’s new net-zero emissions legislation, experts are calling for more near-term targets and accountability measures. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Johnston, however, said “Canadians shouldn’t bear the burden of making sure their elected representatives do what they say they will do.”

Accountability for establishing targets and meeting them should be enshrined in the legislation so the government can be held to account in the courts, she said.

As it stands, the proposed bill doesn’t quite meet the standards set by the United Kingdom’s climate accountability legislation, which, according to Johnston, sets clearer requirements for the government to follow expert advice, establish carbon budgets and achieve targeted emissions reductions.

“It is a good first step,” Johnston said, but she and others hope the legislation will be strengthened before it becomes law.

Environmental groups call for 2025 climate target

Catherine Abreu, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, was among those who called for the government to add a 2025 emissions reduction target to the bill and to set a more ambitious target for 2030.

“If this piece of legislation is going to drive climate ambition — and that’s what we need it to do — it needs to do that in the near-term, not just in the long-term,” she said.

If the bill passes as written, the federal government will have up to nine months after the legislation is enshrined to establish a 2030 target and to develop a plan to meet that goal.

But the Trudeau government would not have to report on its own progress toward meeting that goal during its current term, as the first progress report would only be required by the beginning of 2028.

The government’s plans to meet its emissions reductions goals will have to include a description of the key measures the government will undertake to reduce emissions and a description of relevant sector-specific strategies.

The bill also requires the government to report publicly on its progress towards each five-year target and further requires the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development to assess and report on the government’s progress at least once every five years.

The legislation will also establish an expert advisory body to advise the minister on measures to reach net zero emissions.

While Abreu is happy to see the creation of an expert committee included in the bill, she noted that expert advice is needed to inform the establishment of interim targets and development of plans to reach those targets as well as the government’s ultimate 2050 net-zero emissions goal.

Dale Marshall, national climate program manager at Environmental Defence, also raised concerns that the bill doesn’t require regular assessment of the government’s progress by independent experts.

“The climate accountability legislation introduced today unfortunately has major deficiencies that will, at best, hold future federal governments accountable for Canada’s climate commitments,” Marshall said in a statement. 

Meeting Canada’s climate targets requires support from provinces, territories

Experts say there is an urgent need to address the role provinces and territories have to play in meeting Canada’s legislated climate targets.

“That’s a big barrier to progress on climate change in this country and something that we are going to need to confront,” Abreu said.

She noted there’s a “huge variation” in the climate ambition of different provinces.

“Figuring out how we balance the level of effort fairly across the country is not an easy conversation to have but it is a conversation we are going to have to have if Canada is going to be a good global player,” she said.

But shifts in the global economy could make the prospect of major emissions reductions more palatable across the country.

According to the United Nations, 120 countries, more than 1,000 businesses and 45 of the largest investors have so far committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Sara Hastings-Simon, a research fellow at the University of Calgary’s school of public policy, said that reality could shift the tone of the conversation in Canada.

“If the world is net-zero in 2050, then it’s not a burden to have an economy that is aligned with that net-zero world,” she said.

“It’s really a requirement in order to have a successful, vibrant and prosperous economy.”

Gas flaring in Alberta. The new legislation would require support from all provinces and territories. However, there is currently a lot of variation between each jurisdiction’s climate ambitions. For instance, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario have long opposed the federal carbon tax. Photo: Jasonwoodhead23 / Flickr

In Alberta for instance, which accounts for the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions amongst the provinces, the conversation may shift from the need to reduce oil production to meet Canada’s climate targets because demand for the product may decline naturally as the world moves towards its 2050 target, Hastings-Simon explained.

Alberta, along with Saskatchewan and Ontario, have long resisted the federal carbon tax, one of Trudeau’s key climate measures. The provinces challenged the constitutionality of the tax in a legal battle that reached the Supreme Court of Canada in September. The court has yet to issue a ruling on the matter.

But Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has also recognized that climate action is becoming more important for oil and gas companies to access capital, The Western Producer and CBC reported in October.
Climate accountability legislation provides certainty for businesses

Canada’s climate accountability legislation will provide certainty for businesses that greenhouse gas emissions reductions will remain on the agenda in Ottawa regardless of a change in government, some observers said.

Isabelle Turcotte, the federal policy director at the Pembina Institute, said Bill C-12 will enable businesses “to confidently make investments needed today to create jobs in the competitive economy of tomorrow.”

“Nations are racing to attract billions of dollars in global capital that are being mobilized to generate a safe, low-carbon economy,” she said. “ [The] bill ensures that Canada will have a place at the starting line by eliminating business concern that policies put in place by a government today might be scrapped tomorrow.”

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem warned this week that Canada needs to move quickly to both minimize the threat climate change poses and to take hold of the business opportunities it presents.

Ainslie Cruickshank is a Vancouver-based journalist focused on stories about the environment. She has written for the the Toronto Star

Just north of the oilsands, the largest remote solar farm in Canada is about to power up

The Indigenous-owned project will supply a quarter of Fort Chipewyan’s electricity needs, helping to reduce the need for almost a million litres of diesel each year

Ainslie Cruickshank Nov 18, 2020 THE NARWAL

A remote community less than 200 kilometres north of Alberta’s oilsands will soon get a quarter of its annual electricity from solar power.

Three Nations Energy (3NE), a corporation owned by Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Mikisew Cree First Nation and Fort Chipewyan Metis Association, announced the completion of their 2.2-megawatt solar farm in Fort Chipewyan this week.

Electricity from the $7.76 million 3NE solar farm, in combination with power from a nearby 600-kilowatt solar farm owned by ATCO and a battery storage system, will reduce the need for more than 800,000 litres of diesel fuel each year and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2,250 tonnes — roughly the emissions from 486 cars over the course of a year.

Electricity from the solar projects, which together make up the largest remote solar farm in Canada, will begin flowing to the community grid in January.

“Our people have a proud tradition of making our livelihood from the sustainable use of local renewable resources,” Blue Eyes Simpson, vice president of Fort Chipewyan Metis Association and a 3NE director, said in a press release Wednesday.

“Reducing carbon emissions by replacing imported diesel with our locally owned solar farm uses new technology to act on these values in a way that will increase our energy security and self-sufficiency.” Simpson added.

Blue Eyes Simpson, vice president of Fort Chipewyan Metis Association, said the new solar farm will help reduce the community’s long reliance on diesel for electricity. The project will help reduce the community’s diesel consumption by nearly one million litres.

 Photo: Nick Kendrick / Greenplanet Energy Analytics

Renewables and the oilsands: ‘we can do both’

Fort Chipewyan, a remote community located on the northwest shore of Lake Athabasca and just outside of Wood Buffalo National Park, can only be accessed by plane or boat during the summer or by winter road for just a few months each year.

The community of roughly 1,000 people is not connected to Alberta’s main power grid and has relied on diesel that’s trucked in during the winter and stored in tanks to provide electricity throughout the year.

“We are already seeing the impacts of climate change on the Peace Athabasca Delta,” Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam said in the release. Research has long suggested the delta may be drying due to climate change.

But Adam doesn’t think the Nation needs to choose between the oilsands and renewables.

In a statement included in the press release, Adam said his nation may be dependent on the oilsands for jobs and investment revenue, but added “that doesn’t mean forcing us into a false choice between a strong fossil fuel industry and protecting climate and the environment.”

“We can do both,” he said.

“It all starts with what we do here at home, cleaning up our own emissions like this solar farm will do for electricity in Fort Chip,” Adam added.
Indigenous-led project a ‘model for Canada’s green energy future’

The project was hailed as another example of the importance of Indigenous involvement in the energy sector — both in fossil fuels and renewables.

Mikisew Cree First Nation Chief Peter Powder said in the release that the solar project helps build “the capacity of our own tradespeople, workers and contractors to participate in the emerging green energy sector — just as we now play a major role contributing to the success of the fossil fuel industry of Alberta.”

The importance of Indigenous involvement in resource projects was emphasized by Alberta’s Minister of Indigenous Relations Rick Wilson, who said in a video message: “Indigenous people must have an equity stake in resource projects if there’s going to be a healthy future for our vital resource industries and for communities to prosper.”

“Projects like this one will benefit generations to come,” he said.

Chief Peter Powder of the Mikisew Cree First Nation stands in front of the new solar farm. The project is located in Fort Chipewyan, just 200 kilometres north of Alberta’s oilsands.
Photo: Nick Kendrick / Greenplanet Energy Analytics

In his own video message, Natural Resources Canada Minister Seamus O’Regan commended the project as “a model for Canada’s green energy future — one that is Indigenous-led.”

“We welcome your determination in building the energy capacity to reduce the community’s reliance on diesel, to reduce pollution and to address a climate crisis that has taken a particularly heavy toll on your region,” he said.

In Canada’s north, communities have long relied on diesel for electricity. In Nunavut, for example, 55 million litres of diesel are burned each year to provide power to the territory’s 38,000 people.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged in his 2019 campaign platform to ensure Indigenous communities that rely on diesel are powered by renewable energy by 2030.
Renewable energy set to double in remote areas

According to a July 2020 report by the Pembina Institute, renewable energy projects in remote communities almost doubled between 2015 and 2020. However, there’s much more work to do to complete the transition to renewable energy in these areas.

The report notes population growth has increased annual diesel consumption in remote communities, alongside the gains in renewable energy.

Dave Lovekin, director of the Pembina Institute’s work on renewables in remote communities and co-author of the report, said “it’s a huge leap forward” to see a project the size of the Fort Chipewyan solar farm completed.

“It’s a testament to how quickly things are starting to happen,” he told The Narwhal.

“Comparatively when you look back over the past few decades, things are moving much more aggressively, bigger systems are being developed [and] lots of lessons are being learned.”

“All of that is really built on the leadership that’s being developed in First Nations and Indigenous communities across Canada,” he said.


Ainslie Cruickshank is a Vancouver-based journalist focused on stories about the environment. She has written for the the Toronto Star

Trump's Interior Department Pressures Employees to Approve Seismic Testing in ANWR

Fish and Wildlife Service employees say they’ve been ordered to fast-track a permit before year’s end, despite the potential risk to polar bears and the tundra.

BY SABRINA SHANKMAN
OCT 29, 2020

The Trump administration aims to have seismic testing permitted in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska by the end of the year. Credit: Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they are under pressure from the Trump Administration to deliver a permit that would clear the way for seismic testing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by the end of the year.

The permit, called an incidental harassment authorization, allows for a small number of marine mammals—in this case, polar bears—to be disturbed, and is one of at least a dozen permits that must be obtained before seismic testing can begin.

The permitting process normally takes as much as a year to complete.

But a week ago, employees in the Alaska regional office of the wildlife service were told their timeline had been dramatically shortened: They would have four months from start to finish, according to an agency official who requested anonymity because of efforts to crack down on employees who speak out publicly.

Aurelia Skipwith, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service and a Trump appointee, sent a directive instructing the regional office to get the permit to the agency's headquarters for the next step of the process by Friday, Oct. 30, according to the official, and to finalize it by the end of the year. The deadline left workers scrambling to complete a review based on an application for the seismic testing that isn't yet complete.

"This timing is completely arbitrary," the official said. 

At stake is whether the Trump administration will be able to plant a flag along the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before the end of the president's first term, and before a possible Biden Administration takes office. The seismic testing that is being proposed can cause lasting damage to the tundra in the process of trying to determine how much oil might be underground. It would be a significant first step toward oil development in the region.

"This seems like an effort to try to change the facts on the ground before a potential change in presidential power," said Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League. "But none of us can lose sight of the risks here. We're talking about a massive intrusion into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge at the height of polar bear denning season, which could leave scars on the tundra that are permanent."

InsideClimate News emailed detailed questions seeking comment to the Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday. By late Friday, no response had been provided. The public affairs office for the agency said that answers to the questions had been submitted to the Interior Department for approval, but that the department was unlikely to take action before Monday. The office offered to provide a response "post-publication." A call directly to Skipwith was referred back to the external affairs office.

Until the passage of the 2017 Tax Act, the 1.6 million acres of coastal plain that the administration has opened to oil exploration were off limits to drilling, much like the rest of the Refuge. The plain is considered the most important onshore denning area for the polar bears that live along the southern Beaufort Sea—a population that scientists have shown has fallen in numbers and suffered health impacts from the climate change-driven retreat of sea ice. The coastal plain is also home to nearly 200 wildlife species, including the Porcupine caribou herd, which holds a sacred place in the culture of the native Gwich'in people.

Since the beginning of the Trump administration, bringing oil development to the Arctic Refuge has been a top priority. The 2017 Tax Act included a provision that required a leasing sale to be held on the coastal plain to raise revenue, and with the Act's passage, decades of protections were removed.


Since then, federal agencies have been racing through the legally-mandated steps to hold a lease sale before the end of 2020. But a tumbling oil market and the coronavirus have made it unclear whether a sale will be held—or, if it is, whether companies will bid. And with the election looming, it seemed as if Trump might be unable to make good on his early promise to develop the Refuge.

That changed on Oct. 23, when the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service's parent agency, announced it was considering an application to conduct seismic testing across more than half-a-million acres of the coastal plain, beginning as soon as December.

The truncated timeline has left the Alaska regional office "scrambling to review it on short notice," according to a former member of the Fish and Wildlife Service polar bear program.

And it has alarmed the Gwich'in, who have been fighting to protect the coastal plain. "We felt that they were going to push this through, but this quickly? It's just really insulting to our people," said Bernadette Demientieff, the executive director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee.

To get the review done and still comply with a mandatory 30-day public comment period, the Fish and Wildlife Service employees in the Alaska office have to turn the polar bear permit around at break-neck speed.

A Grid Visible From Outer Space

The plan calls for a crew of 180 people to conduct the seismic survey, which is estimated to take till the end of May, and for the construction of temporary airstrips on the coastal plain. The survey would require 12 "thumper" trucks, which weigh 90,000 pounds each; more than 40 Tucker vehicles; and tractors and 50 camp trailers.

The area selected for the survey is known for a higher density of polar bear dens than other parts of the coastal plain.

"This is the core denning area for the southern Beaufort Sea stock of polar bears," said the Fish and Wildlife Service official.

Derrick Henry, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management, said the agency is working on completing an environmental assessment of the survey "to identify impacts and mitigation measures that may be needed to avoid or minimize impacts."

That assessment is based on an application for seismic testing that was filed by Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation (KIC), an Alaska Native corporation, and is not yet ready for review. The public has been given 14 days to comment on the survey, but they must do so based only on the original application from KIC, without input from experts on what the environmental impacts might be. That application is the only publicly available document. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service official, that means the public isn't commenting on the most up-to-date version of the survey plan because, as the agency has worked with the corporation on its application, changes have been made.

Matthew Rexford, president of Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation, said he is confident that through the permitting process they will be able to tailor the plan so it has minimal impacts on the tundra and the species that live there. "The Kaktovikmiut have been using the land known as the 1002 Area or Coastal Plain of ANWR for hundreds of years," Rexford said. "We know the land, the animals, and the environment.

He added, "We believe that through the stringent regulatory environment and the oversight of our Home-Rule borough, the North Slope Borough, all impacts from exploration and development can be mitigated to preserve the area."

The BLM opted to conduct an "environmental assessment," rather than a more rigorous "environmental impact statement" or EIS. That distinction is significant. An environmental assessment is a concise review, rather than the comprehensive dive into environmental impacts that an EIS entails. It also does not require a public comment period.

Ultimately, the public will get two public comment periods on the survey—on the application, and on the polar bear permit. But they will not have a chance to comment on the environmental impacts of the survey.

The administration recently completed an environmental impact statement for its proposed leasing plan in the refuge. That EIS sparked an immediate outcry from conservation groups, who filed a lawsuit claiming the assessment failed to take into account how development in the refuge would affect the environment and the climate.

The EIS for the leasing plan did not take an in-depth look at the impacts of seismic testing. But Henry, the BLM spokesman, said the bureau had received "more than one million comments on the Leasing EIS, some of which were related to seismic exploration." Comments on an earlier application for seismic exploration identified more than 130 issues for the bureau to consider, he added.

As a result, Henry said, "It is not expected that any additional public meetings would provide any new or relevant information to consider" in the development of the environmental assessment of the proposed seismic survey.

That decision does not sit well with environmental groups. "It is unacceptable that BLM is not preparing an environmental impact statement for this massive and damaging proposal," said Bridget Psarianos, a staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska, an environmental law firm. "Seismic exploration and its impacts were not properly considered in the agency's Leasing EIS; BLM kicked the can down the road. Now that we're down the road, the agency must consider the impacts to imperiled polar bears and fragile tundra rather than rush through on a politically motivated timeline."

A study published in the journal Ecological Applications earlier this year found that scars from past seismic surveys in the Arctic Refuge remained for decades, and noted that the methods used then were less intrusive than those being proposed now.

Niel Lawrence, the Alaska director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that for the government to say that a grid that spans "a third of the sensitive coastal plain—almost a half a million acres—a grid you can see from outer space, that cuts across waterways, that causes the melting of the permafrost" has no significant impact "does not pass the legal laugh test."

Although the application for the seismic survey was filed by the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation, an Alaska Native corporation, the work would be completed by SAExploration, a contractor that filed an earlier seismic survey application in 2018. That application failed—in part because Fish and Wildlife found it would be devastating to polar bears in the area.

Since then, SAExploration has filed for bankruptcy and now faces accusations of fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission over charges, filed in early October, that four former executives falsely inflated the company's revenue by roughly $100 million and concealed millions of dollars in theft.

A Different Way to Do It

The 2018 application for a seismic survey was larger in scope than the current application. It called for the survey to be conducted across the entire 1.6 million acres of the coastal plain.

"They were going to carpet bomb the Refuge with seismic lines from early in the year until the snow melted," said a former member of the Fish and Wildlife Service's polar bear program, who also requested anonymity because of not being authorized to discuss the issue. "Basically you'd nail or disturb every den in the Refuge with what they originally proposed."

Though polar bears are the rare bear that does not hibernate, pregnant female bears are in some ways an exception to that rule. In the winter, they enter dens in the snow and they stay there to gestate and birth their cubs. Once the cubs are born, they remain in the den a while longer, until the cubs are strong enough to survive the elements.

It's a crucial time in a polar bear's life, for both the mother and the cubs, and is especially fraught in the Arctic Refuge, according to a study released by the U.S. Geological Survey in October. Fish and Wildlife Service experts have found that because of the declining population rates in the region, the killing of even one polar bear could be detrimental to the species' survival.


A polar bear mother and two yearlings living in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Credit: Sylvain CORDIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Moreover, the technology used to locate the dens so that workers can avoid them—called forward-looking infrared systems, or FLIR—is successful less than half the time, according to a study published in 2019.

As the office weighed the 2018 application for the survey, two polar bear scientists—one from Fish and Wildlife and one from the U.S. Geological Survey—created a new model to project how seismic surveys might impact bears.

The model enabled the scientists to quantify how many bears could be affected by a specific project. They found that the plan proposed by SAExploration would be lethal to bears in the region.

"Basically they were inevitably going to run over polar bear dens and either directly kill bears— moms or cubs—or prematurely drive them out of the den, which would result in the cub mortality," said the former member of the agency's polar bear program. "That analysis really started a political firestorm."

The scientists wrote a paper based on their model, laying out a map for how seismic testing could be conducted in a way that would minimize impacts to polar bears, the former member of the Fish and Wildlife polar bear program said. That would require spreading testing out over two years, which could lengthen the time before companies could start drilling. But when the scientists decided to submit the paper to a peer reviewed journal, Interior Department officials denied permission to publish the findings. "Interior tried to squash it," the former agency employee said.

Members of the Alaska regional office pushed back, according to the former employee, and in December 2019, the article was published in the Journal of Wildlife Management.

A few months later, in February 2020, the Interior Department took an unusual step, the Fish and Wildlife official said. It posted the article—which had already been peer-reviewed—in the Federal Register, opening it up to public comment.

Joel Clement, a former Interior Department official who in 2017 blew the whistle on the Trump administration, saying that he was reassigned for speaking about climate change, wrote on a blog published by the Union of Concerned Scientists that the decision to post the article was a blatant violation of scientific integrity. "The only plausible reason for the agency to seek public comment on the study," he wrote, "would be to give agency leadership something to point to, on behalf of fossil fuel interests, if they don't like the scientific results.".

The Fish and Wildlife official who described the pressure on workers to finalize the seismic survey permit said that what happened with the paper was characteristic of how the Interior Department was being run under the Trump administration. "It's complete insanity," said the official, "I've never seen anything like this, and no one I know has seen anything like this at the agency. This administration is treating career employees with a level of contempt and disregard that is deeply disturbing and disappointing."

What's at Stake

The Alaska regional Fish and Wildlife Service office received the current seismic application in August. From the start, they were told to get the polar bear permit completed as soon as possible, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service employee. The employees there told their supervisors the earliest they could get it done was January 21, the day after the winner of the presidential election would be inaugurated.

But then last week, the orders changed, with the new timeline requiring that the permit be finalized by year's end. While the environmental assessment on the seismic program does not have a public comment period, the polar bear permit will have a 30-day comment period. In order to meet Skipwith's end of the year deadline and provide time for the federally-mandated comment period, the analysis is having to be inappropriately cut short, according to the agency.

Demientieff, the Gwich'in steering committee executive director, said that in the rush to plant a flag in the untouched reaches of the Refuge, what stands to be lost is incalculable.

"Protecting this place is very, very deeply important to the Gwich'in and to myself," she said. The coastal plain, which is the calving grounds for the Porcupine Caribou herd, is so sacred, she said, that even during times of food shortages and starvation the Gwich'in will not go there.

"We will never give up or stop protecting this area," she said.

What Has Trump Done to Alaska? Not as Much as He Wanted To

Six major projects to extract resources are in the initial stages, over the protest of Indigenous peoples. But so far, the damage has been mostly symbolic.

BY SABRINA SHANKMAN
AUG 30, 2020



The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of six major mining and drilling projects the Trump Administration aims to push forward in Alaska. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Getty Images


From the untouched far-reaches of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the sprawling old growth stands of the Tongass National Forest, the Trump administration has taken a shot-gun blast approach to pushing through extraction projects on federal lands in Alaska.

There are no fewer than six major projects in the inital stages on federal lands in the state—operations that indigenous groups say would dramatically alter their longstanding way of life, and that environmental groups say would have a devastating impact on the environment.

"This is a more concerted attack on Alaska natural resources than I've seen in more than 30 years of doing this work, and more than I've seen in any other state or region," said Niel Lawrence, the Alaska director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Each project comes with a parade of federally required regulatory steps, including environmental reviews, public comments periods, permitting and more. These steps have been underway since early in the Trump administration and many of them have been completed with break-neck speed.

Now, with just a few months left in President Donald Trump's first administration, and with a national election looming, the efforts to push through the projects are approaching the finish line. What remains to be seen is how much Trump will have actually accomplished, what could be undone by a possible Biden/Harris administration, and what would be harder to un-do.

As federal agencies weigh the impact of the projects, indigenous groups warn that the effects of even one of them on native communities could be staggering. "The people who are living in those communities understand the ecosystem, the relationship with the land and, as indigenous people, what the original instructions were and still are," said Shawna Larson, the deputy director of Native Movement, a group that supports grassroots-led projects for Indigenous rights. The term "original instructions" refers to teachings about living in harmony with the land that have been handed down over generations in indigenous communities.

These communities live off what they hunt, but it's not just their food source that's in danger. Larson and many native Alaskans say they are fighting for their right to continue their historical way of life in the place where their ancestors have always lived.

"English misses the essence of the relationship that we have with the land," Larson said, but she explains it this way: if a person's left hand represents the air, water, land and animals, and the right hand represents the people, when those two hands are clasped together, that's what's at risk.

In Alaska, a place on the leading edge of climate change, the expanded drilling and mining operations enabled by these projects would lead to additional greenhouse gas emissions, helping to hasten warming.

Here are the six major projects and where they stand:
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

The project: The Trump administration plans to hold the first-ever lease sale on the coastal plain of the refuge before the year's end, according to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. Earlier this month, the Interior Department completed the last regulatory hurdle—the publication of a "record of decision"—and now a lease sale can be held. The plan is to make available the entire coastal plain, 1.6 million acres along Alaska's north-eastern coast that are a home to the Porcupine caribou herd and a denning location for polar bears. The area is considered sacred to the native Gwich'in people.

What the Trump Administration has done: Back in 2017, the Trump administration tucked a provision into the tax bill that called for opening the coastal plain. It was the culmination of decades of effort by Republicans to start drilling there, and because it was passed by Congress, it carried special weight. Since then, the administration has completed what critics say has been a rushed environmental review process, and one they argue violated multiple federal laws as it prioritized drilling for oil over anything else. Those violations form the basis of lawsuits filed Monday by the Gwich'in tribe and environmental advocacy groups.

What the experts say: "Trump took the absolute maximalist approach to drilling," said Erik Grafe, deputy managing attorney of Earthjustice's Alaska office. The plan, he said, "runs roughshod over the other environmental laws that are designed to protect resources." Earthjustice is one of the groups that is suing the government over its plan to drill in the refuge. The goal is to stop the project entirely via the courts, but even slowing it down could be enough that, should Vice President Joseph Biden be elected president, he could reconsider the project.

But because opening the refuge was included in the 2017 tax bill, Congress must also be involved in undoing it. "Without Congress's help, I think there's less flexibility for a Biden administration to stop the project," said Laura Bloomer, a fellow at Harvard's Environmental and Energy Law Program, who has been tracking regulatory rollbacks. "But there's enormous flexibility for a Biden administration to change how they do it," she added, noting that they could apply more environmentally rigorous standards that might make drilling there even less appealing. (Industry experts say it remains to be seen just how appealing it will be, given the price of oil, and the technical challenges of drilling there).
National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska

The project: When it comes to drilling in a specific area, there's a lengthy document that regulators rely on to know which areas to allow leasing in. It's called an Integrated Activity Plan. In the NPR-A, the Obama administration spent three years writing a plan that identified some areas it said were okay to drill in and others that warranted protection. In November 2018, the Trump administration announced it was going to re-do the NPR-A plan, and a year later a new version was released.

The new plan would allow drilling on roughly 6.8 million acres of previously protected land, including the area around Teshekpuk Lake, an ecologically sensitive area that is the feeding and calving grounds for caribou, geese and fish that the Native Village of Nuiqsut rely on for survival.

What the Trump Administration has done: The final environmental review of the plan was released in June. Once a record of decision is published—something that could happen at any time—a lease sale can be announced.

Unlike the Arctic Refuge, there is a substantial web of oil infrastructure in parts of the NPR-A, as well as a proven record of oil reserves. "It's entirely possible that the Trump administration will hold a lease sale there and get it in during this administration," said Rebecca Noblin, a senior attorney at Earthjustice who specializes in the region. "It will be harder to claw back those leases once the companies have them."

What the experts say: The courts may ultimately be the decider. On Tuesday, a coalition of conservation groups sued the Trump administration over the plan, for its failure to address impacts to several species, including polar bears and caribou, and for opting for a final plan that had not been previously presented to the public or subjected to public review.

Should Biden be elected, his administration would have a lot of latitude to come up with its own plan. "Here there isn't a congressional directive," said Bloomer. "I do think a future administration would likely have more flexibility there."

But if a lease sale has already been held, there could be legal challenges in attempting to stop those leases from being developed.
Willow

The project: In 2017, ConocoPhillips announced a major discovery in the northeast portion of the NPR-A, which it called Willow. A year later, the company estimated that 400 to 750 million barrels of oil equivalent were in the ground there. According to the most recent estimates, the company could end up producing in excess of 160,000 barrels of oil per day (that's roughly 40 percent of what's currently being produced across Alaska's entire North Slope). Though ConocoPhillips already has a large footprint in that part of the NPR-A, the project would result in a big expansion—a new central processing facility, up to five drill pads with as many as 50 wells per pad, a gravel mine, and pipelines that would link to existing infrastructure. ConocoPhillips has proposed using "chillers" to keep the permafrost around the wells frozen—something that would be necessary because the area is projected to warm an average of 4 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of the 30-year project. The company hopes to see first oil in 2025 or 2026.

What the Trump Administration has done: In mid-August, the Trump administration released the final environmental review for the project. There's now a 30-day public comment period underway, after which the Bureau of Land Management will publish a Record of Decision.

This spring, critics of the project were up in arms at the Trump administration's decision to carry out a public comment period on the draft environmental review of the project during the pandemic. Public meetings that normally would have been held in person in remote locations like Nuiqsut, which is next door to the planned project, happened online instead. Requests from local Alaska Native leaders to suspend the public comment period until after the pandemic were denied. One vocal opponent of the project, Nuiqsut tribal administrator Martha Itta, said she was muted during one of the online public hearings.

What the experts say: Critics of the project say it's yet another example of the fast-tracking of environmental reviews, meaning it could be ripe for lawsuits. A lawsuit would have to wait until after the filing of the record of decision.

Should the project go forward, a possible Biden administration would have the ability to reverse it, according to Earthjustice attorney Jeremy Lieb. "In the NPR-A, the secretary of interior has the authority to suspend activity on leases, and there's no real limit to that authority," Lieb said. "So they could stop development on Willow while reevaluating the decision to approve the project."

In evaluating the project, it's important to look at the big picture, Lieb said. Willow is located near Teshekpuk Lake—the ecologically sensitive area that the Trump administration is trying to open up. "Willow will provide the infrastructure that will allow and facilitate expansion into those areas," he said.
Pebble Mine

The project: The Pebble Mine has been controversial from the start. The open-pit mine would be one of largest of its kind in the world, and could produce billions of dollars worth of metals. But it sits on Alaska's Bristol Bay, home to the world's largest salmon fishery and known as "America's Fish Basket" because it is one of the most productive marine ecosystems in the world. It's also home to the native Yup'ik and Dena'ina people.

What the Trump administration has done: Pebble Mine was blocked by the Obama administration in 2014, but the Trump administration brought it back—at least initially. After completing an environmental review and finding the project would not be harmful to the Bristol Bay fishery, the Trump administration back-tracked this week, seemingly in response to opposition from Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., and other high-profile Republicans.

Early this week, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that the project could not go forward as planned without risking "significant degradation to the environment," and imposed new conditions on the mine. Pebble Limited Partnership, the company behind the mine, now has 90 days to submit a plan that would address any potential impacts to the environment.

What the experts say: The vast majority of Alaskans opposed the mine, and Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan supported the decision to put a hold on the permit. The decision was celebrated by native and environmental groups.

But Pebble Limited Partnership said the project's not dead yet. "We are well into an effort to present a mitigation plan to the USACE that complies with the requirements of their letter," said CEO Tom Collier said in a written statement. Collier called the Army Corps' recent letter a normal step in the permitting process, and said he expects to see a record of decision soon.

Should that happen, and should the project be approved, it is likely that environmental groups would sue. And if Biden is elected, he has stated that he wants to block the project. "Under Biden, the EPA could determine that the environmental damage is too great," said Bloomer, of Harvard's Environmental and Energy Law Program. The EPA has authority under the Clean Water Act to block the project.
Tongass National Forest

The project: Since 2001, the Roadless Rule has prohibited road building and commercial logging in much of the Tongass National Forest—one of the nation's largest carbon sinks and the traditional homelands of Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people.

What the Trump administration has done: In 2019, Trump directed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt the Tongass from the Roadless Rule. The decision reportedly came after a private meeting between Trump and Alaska Gov. Michael Dunleavy aboard Air Force One. The USDA, which has jurisdiction over the Tongass, released a draft environmental review in October 2019, and a final EIS and record of decision are expected soon.

What the experts say: The Tongass has been subject to decades of litigation, and industry expects don't expect that to change now. In July, nine Alaskan tribes filed a petition calling for the USDA to stop its process. Once the review is completed and the record of decision is published, environmental and indigenous groups are likely to sue.

"For me, it's about what's sustainable," said Naawéiyaa Tagaban, an organizer with Native Movement in the area around the Tongass. "As a Tlingit whose ancestors lived on this land, we did practise forestry here. We harvested trees, but did it on a scale that was manageable." What the Trump administration is proposing—removing protections for 165,000 old-growth acres and 20,000 young-growth acres—is far from that, he said.
Ambler Road

The project: A 211-mile industrial road through the wilderness of Northwest Alaska that would provide access to an area the state says could support several mines. The $500 million gravel road would link the Dalton Highway north of Fairbanks to the Ambler Mining District by crossing through the Gates of the Arctic National Preserve, and would allow mining companies to access copper and other metals in the mining district and then truck the ore out.

What the Trump administration has done: The BLM approved the route on July 23, issuing a right-of-way permit to allow the road to pass through federally-managed lands.

What the experts say: Shortly after the plan got final approval, nine environmental groups sued, arguing that the federal agencies violated the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act as it pursued the project. Critics of the project say it would threaten subsistence hunting in the area.

For now, this project's fate sits in the hands of the U.S. District Court for Alaska.
A Biden Administration Could Undo Most of What's Been Done

The big take-away, experts say, is that little lasting damage has been done so far. "I think it's fair to say that this administration set out to leave its disastrous mark on Alaska public lands and waters and resources. Sometimes it has acted as if, if they can wreck Alaska, they can wreck anything," said Lawrence, of NRDC. "But so far, the vandalism that it is practicing and pursuing has done very little really lasting damage."

Between the lawsuits, and the ability of a possible Biden administration to undo some or most what has been done so far, Trump's pursuit of Alaskan resources may end up being more symbolic than successful. If he's re-elected, though, that could change.

"If they could get all of this done—over my dead body and those of my colleagues—the American people, the residents of the good state of Alaska, and the indigenous people who depend on natural values for food and their culture, would lose a tremendous amount," said Lawrence. "An incalculable amount."


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sabrina Shankman is a reporter for InsideClimate News focusing on the Arctic. She joined ICN in the fall of 2013, after helping produce documentaries and interactives for the PBS show "Frontline" since 2010 with 2over10 Media. She is the author of the ICN book "Meltdown: Terror at the Top of the World," and was named a finalist for the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists for that work. Shankman has a Masters in Journalism from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

Warm Arctic, Cold Continents? It Sounds Counterintuitive, but Research Suggests it’s a Thing

Scientists suspect that rapid warming in the Arctic is causing more climate extremes farther south, including bouts of severe cold and snow in the Northeast.

BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS
NOV 22, 2020

A satellite view of Northwestern Greenland in the Arctic Circle on Aug. 12, 2019. Credit: Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2019/Gallo Images via Getty Images)


By any measure, the Arctic has changed profoundly in the last 40 years, warming three times as fast as the global average, and losing half its summer sea ice, as well as billions of tons of land-based glacier ice. 

And even though the Arctic only encompasses about 6 percent of the Earth's surface area, the warming there has kicked off climate chain reactions that are disrupting weather and climate patterns across the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, including most major North American and European cities and agricultural areas. The abrupt and accelerating Arctic warming directly harms the communities, livelihoods and traditions of the 4 million people who live in the polar region.

Some scientists say a more frequently recurring cycle they refer to as "warm Arctic, cold continents," is a sign of that disruption. The pattern seemed to emerge as a global warming signal about 10 years ago, as researchers documented an increase of summer and winter extremes in parts of North America and Eurasia, including heat waves, killer blizzards, floods and cold snaps, occurring even as Arctic warming and ice loss accelerated.

A 2016 study in Nature looked at the link between Arctic warming and those extremes by comparing air pressure and temperature patterns with a winter severity index from a climate measurement network that stretched from the Pacific Northwest across the northern United States to Maine and down to Georgia. 

The authors said their research showed that, from 1990 to 2016, severe winter weather became more frequent in the Eastern United States "when the Arctic warming trend is greatest and extends into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere."

"In general we do see the tendency that, when the Arctic is very warm, you're displacing the cold air that is usually over the Arctic to somewhere else," said co-author Jennifer Francis, a climate researcher with the Woodwell Climate Research Center. "As the arctic warms faster we expect to see this more."

Still, there are geographic and seasonal nuances. And the patterns can also change depending on which slice of time is being studied. Pinpointing how Arctic warming affects other regions is a moving target, because the entire global climate system is swiftly moving into uncharted territory.

At the same time, Francis said, "You just can't lose 50 percent of sea ice extent and 70 percent of its volume without seeing an effect.

"We're seeing the Arctic heading off into a never-never land of conditions that we haven't seen before," she said. "As we go off into uncharted territories, you can't expect the models to see the extremes."
And There Are Caveats

Nobody is arguing that Arctic warming has no effect, said University of Exeter climate scientist James Screen, who has worked on several studies focusing on how the linkage manifests in different regions. But the climate models don't show the connection as strongly recorded observations, and it's important to remember that, overall, the entire planet is warming.

"One of the most robust effects of Arctic warming is the reduction of cold extremes," Screen said. "You get cold weather when wind is blowing from the north. Now those cold air outbreaks are less severe. You can see that effect in the observations and models. The bigger picture is, everything is going to get warmer, but the warming effects over continents might be slightly damped." 

In a Nov. 16 correspondence in the journal Nature Climate Change, Screen suggested that evidence for mid-latitude impacts of Arctic warming has weakened since 2016.

"The short-term tendencies from the late 1980s through to early 2010s that fueled the initial speculation of Arctic influence have not continued over the past decade," Screen and his co-author, Russell Blackport, with the University of Exeter, wrote. "Arctic amplification and sea-ice loss have indeed continued. But predictions of a more negative Arctic Oscillation, wavier jet stream, colder winters in mid-latitudes or, more specifically, in Eurasia, and more frequent and/or widespread cold extremes have not become reality."

Screen added that "what we're saying, really, is if you take the trends from the 1970s to the present, the trend lines are flat and the models show a muted response.To reconcile that, you have to say the models are wrong. And there is research suggesting that models are underestimating the predictability of things like changes to atmospheric circulation."

The variability of the past few decades, however, doesn't wipe out the previously observed correlation, Screen said. Low sea ice in the Chukchi Sea, north of Alaska, seems to match up with severe winter conditions in Eastern North America, and low sea ice in the Barents and Kara Seas, north of Siberia, match with cold winters over Asia.

The evidence is strongest for a link between sea ice loss and East Asian winter cold, but less robust for North America. And it's also a chicken-and-egg question at some level, with question marks about whether the warming Arctic causes extreme cold; if it does, what the mechanisms are; and whether there are other overriding factors that cause both the Arctic warming and cold outbreaks over the continents.

"What we've seen to date suggests what we could see in the future, and we want to be sure that is in our models, going into projections that people are using for their decisions," he said, adding that is leading a new research consortium called ArctiCONNECT that was set up specifically to explore how Arctic warming will affect the United Kingdom and Europe. The goals are to understand how large the impacts will be, and when and where they might happen.
Thoughts About a Mechanism

Marilena Oltmanns, a climate researcher with the National Oceanography Centre in the United Kingdom, said that one weakness in the models might be that they can't accurately show a specific mechanism that makes the warming Arctic affect the mid-latitudes. 

"But the fact that models don't show the mechanism doesn't mean it's not there," she said. "If we have a change in one part of the climate system, it has to affect the other parts, but it's hard to pin down the specific pathway."

One possible explanation is via the ocean, specifically the North Atlantic, where huge surface pools of fresh, cold water accumulating from melting Arctic ice perturb the exchange of heat between ocean and atmosphere. That can trigger cold outbreaks in the Northeast, as well as extreme rainfall and flooding in the UK and northwestern Europe. 

Oltmanns demonstrated that connection in a June 2020 study published in Geophysical Research Letters, and said that, when such mechanisms are included in new climate models, the effects of Arctic warming on the mid-latitudes would be easier to see. But she also said that even the best current studies only look at a relatively short time frame of several decades, so it's still hard to separate global warming effects from natural climate cycles.

MIT climatologist Judah Cohen, who is director of seasonal forecasting with Atmospheric and Environmental Research, a weather and climate-risk consulting firm, mentioned the historic October 2020 North American cold wave as a possible example of the links between a warming Arctic and cold extremes in North America.

The cold snap came after months of record-setting heat in the Arctic, including the first-ever 100 degrees Fahrenheit temperature in the Arctic, recorded last June in Siberia. 

Hundreds of monthly low temperature records were set, and the wave of polar air sent the national average temperature for the month plummeting to 1.77 degrees below average. Idaho reported its coldest October on record. Several other states, from Washington east to North Dakota and south to Oklahoma, experienced near record cold, and on Oct. 25, Potomac, Montana recorded minus 29 degrees Fahrenheit, the coldest October temperature ever recorded in the continental United States.

Cohen studies the link between Arctic warming and extremes of cold to make accurate seasonal forecasts for the winter that can help communities prepare for potentially unusual or unexpected conditions. He was a co-author of the 2018 paper with Jennifer Francis that documented the correlation and said the findings were statistically robust, but said it didn't prove a cause and effect.

He's convinced there is a connection, but fully understanding it will take more research and a longer period of observations. And Cohen acknowledged the geographical variations. From the 1980s through 2013, the warming Arctic correlated with cooling in Eurasia, but then the pattern flipped, with cooling in North America, he said. 

"I'm not arguing that winters are getting colder, I'm saying winters are colder than the models predict, and I think that will continue," he said. "The models are constantly being updated, every winter and the divergence between their projections and the observations is striking." By contrast, he added, the model predictions for summers are nearly perfect. 

Cohen said he considers complex atmospheric movements involving the polar vortex to be a key link between the warming Arctic and extreme cold events in North America and Eurasia. The polar vortex is a belt of winds around the Arctic that keeps cold air bottled up if it's tight, but spills frigid air masses southward when disrupted.

That disruption happens, he said, when the warm Arctic air works its way high into the upper atmosphere, where it crests like a wave to break through the vortex.

"It's getting increasingly difficult to get severe winter weather into the mid-latitudes without a polar vortex disruption," he said. "And amplified Arctic warming is favorable for disrupting the polar vortex."

Francis, of the Woodwell center, added that it's important to remember that the overall hypothesized impact of amplified Arctic warming is "to favor an increase in the persistence of weather conditions, including cold spells, heat waves, dry periods and storminess, all of which can be disruptive if they last long enough."

Those patterns, she said, can last a week to several weeks and they can flip suddenly: "The whiplash from a record-breaking heatwave to cold and snow that occurred in the western states (particularly Rockies) this fall was a great example."

Climate Change Is Releasing Frozen Microbes From the Arctic

There are a lot of reasons why that should worry you

Thawing permafrost in Herschel Island.
Boris Radosavljevic/Creative Commons

BY TOBIAS CARROLL

SCIENCE | NOVEMBER 22, 2020 

Besides rising sea levels, unpredictable weather and other catastrophic events, climate change has had a particular effect on some of the planet’s most northern regions. A 2019 National Geographic article noted that the planet’s permafrost is melting at a far faster rate than scientists had previously expected. That’s a cause for concern for a number of reasons, but given the pandemic that’s currently affecting nations across the globe, there’s one particular area of concern that seems especially resonant right now.

When permafrost thaws, the process can release microbes that were frozen many thousands of years ago. This can include diseases like smallpox, which popped up during an anthrax outbreak in Russia not long ago. A new article in Scientific American by Kimberley R. Miner, Arwyn Edwards and Charles Miller describes a number of areas of concern.

The authors cite the presence of smallpox in Russia as one particularly alarming incident. Another focuses on an ancient microbe returning to cause trouble in Alaska.

“Organisms that co-evolved within now-extinct ecosystems from the Cenozoic to the Pleistocene may also emerge and interact with our modern environment in entirely novel ways,” they write. “A potential example, the emerging Orthopoxvirus species Alaskapox causing skin lesions, has appeared and disappeared in Alaska twice in the last five years.”

Emerging microbes aren’t just a risk for disease, however; they can also further warm the globe. It’s yet another reason why climate change represents a significant threat to the planet — and why getting it under control now will prevent a host of problems in the future.

New Climate Warnings in Old Permafrost: 'It’s a Little Scary Because it’s Happening Under Our Feet.'

A new study shows a few degrees of warming can trigger abrupt thaws of vast frozen lands, releasing huge stores of greenhouse gases and collapsing landscapes.

BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS
OCT 16, 2020



Melting permafrost cliffs near Zyryanka, Russia are crumbling into the Kolyma River, unleashing tons of organic soil sediments that can release CO2 and methane to the atmosphere. Analyzing those sediments from deposits on the ocean floor helps show how fast permafrost melts in response to global warming. Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images


A dive deep into 27,000 years worth of muck piled up on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean has spurred researchers to renew warnings about a potential surge of greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost.

By tracking chemical and organic fingerprints in long-buried layers of sediments remaining from previously frozen ground, the scientists showed that ancient phases of rapid warming in the Arctic, such as occurred near the end of the last ice age, released carbon on a massive scale. Vast frozen landscapes collapsed, turned to mud and flowed into the sea, releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere along the way.

The study, published today in Science Advances, shows that only a few degrees of warming in the Arctic is enough "to abruptly activate large-scale permafrost thawing," suggesting a "sensitive trigger" for greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost. The results also support climate models that have shown "large injections of CO2 into the atmosphere" when glaciers, and the frozen lands beneath them, melted.

The vast permafrost regions of the Arctic hold more carbon than the Earth's atmosphere, and a rapid and a large release of CO2 that exceeds current projections would dangerously accelerate global warming. Understanding how that happened in the past helps researchers make more accurate projections for the future. In the Northern Hemisphere, permafrost spreads over about 9 million square miles—in total, an area nearly as big as the United States, China and Canada combined.

One of the three warming phases the researchers studied was about 14,700 years ago, when temperatures in the Arctic suddenly warmed by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, said lead author Jannik Martens, an Arctic researcher with the University of Stockholm. It was such a distinct climate disruption that scientists named it the Bölling-Alleröd warming for two sites where distinctive soil layers show the ancient warming.


"If we consider the magnitude and the speed of anthropogenic climate warming, by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) globally and 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) in the Arctic, during the past 150 years, and compare this with the first abrupt temperature increase of about 1 degree Celsius at the Bölling-Alleröd, it appears likely that large-scale permafrost thawing and carbon release is going to happen again," he said. "Our study indeed suggests that abrupt permafrost thawing represents a tipping point in the climate system."

Even with the new research, it's still hard to say exactly where that tipping point is, even though warming is already penetrating the upper layers of the frozen soils fast and cliffs of coastal permafrost are collapsing at an accelerating rate. There are still a lot of uncertainties, including how much carbon could be recaptured by expanding peatlands, which can also sequester huge quantities of greenhouse gases, and how much will be absorbed by the greening of Arctic tundra as shrubs and trees move north in the rapidly warming region. 

"The same uncertainties apply to our study," he said of the research into the ancient tipping point. "We can't resolve the effect of the northward shift of biomes at the end of the last ice age, or the large growth of peatlands ... both effects took up large amounts of carbon, while permafrost thawing released carbon at the same time." 

Extrapolating the new research to the vast regions where permafrost is prevalent presents other uncertainties. The new study looked only at ocean-bottom sediment cores from a limited area of Siberia, so they don't necessarily show regional variations in permafrost response to warming.


Cab driver Lars Thomsen stands above a gash in the permafrost in Ilulissat, Greenland, where global warming is damaging homes, roads and power lines by thawing ground and melting buried ice that's been deeply frozen for thousands of years. The thaw also releases large amounts of heat-trapping CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. Credit: Orjan F. Ellingvag/Corbis via Getty Images

That challenge, to some degree, has been resolved by other recent studies showing how permafrost is thawing at the global scale, and also how some parts of the Arctic are increasingly vulnerable to sudden and catastrophic permafrost collapse. The new research is yet more evidence that the amplified warming in the Arctic can release carbon at a massive scale, said UAF permafrost researcher Vladimir Romanovsky, who was not involved in the research.

"It's a very important paper. They did a really good job of looking at the fate of terrestrial carbon, and showing that huge amounts of terrestrial carbon were released," he said. Chemical analysis of the materials in the sediments using the latest instruments and methods and matched against other climate records like gas bubbles trapped in old ice helped paint a clearer picture of how much CO2 can be released. "That's what they calculated really well," he added.
Key to the Carbon Cycle?

The new study "supports the idea that permafrost is an important and significant source of carbon," Romanovsky said, alluding to ongoing research about the relative regional roles of permafrost and the oceans in the carbon cycle. "That permafrost is the main source, or one of the main sources. That's what they are trying to prove." 

Along with increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, thawing permafrost also has immediate effects on people living in the Arctic. Indigenous communities have been hardest hit; when frozen ground slumps and caves in, infrastructure they depend on fails. Roads collapse and power lines fall.

"It's a little scary because it's happening under our feet," said Romanovsky, who, while in Fairbanks this summer, observed signs that even permafrost that has survived thousands of years is starting to thaw. 

If Alaska continues warming at the same pace as the last five years, there will be widespread thawing of ancient permafrost, he warned. "We're very, very close, and when it does, a lot of dramatic things will happen to landscapes and infrastructure, including roads and oil and gas developments. We will see huge changes." 

The new research gives more detailed information of what happens to the carbon locked into permafrost when it thaws, said Merritt Turetsky, director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. 

"What is not clear to me is whether we fully understand how past cycles of permafrost thaw can be used to infer changes observed today," said Turetsky, who was not part of the study. 

Today's permafrost may hold more organic carbon that could be set free than in the past, but on the other hand, she said, the historic record shows that there were more hotspots in the past that released methane—a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so more study is needed to understand how the different processes interact and affect greenhouse gas releases.

But human-caused global warming has already triggered thawing that may be hard to stop, even if the climate cools.

"There is momentum in the climate system and also in permafrost thaw trajectories," she said. "Once permafrost begins to thaw in some settings, a number of self-organizing feedbacks kick in and that means that thaw may continue to occur even if the climate cooled again. We need to aim as a society to keep permafrost carbon in the ground and out of the atmosphere by keeping it frozen," she said.

A vicious cycle of cows, disease, and climate change
Livestock welfare will be key in helping us reign in emissions


DAILY SCIENCE

By Emma Bryce
October 16, 2020

Sicker livestock produce substantially more methane, a group of researchers has found. What’s more, their new study shows that warming temperatures are also increasing the spread of pathogens and the numbers of unwell livestock around the world.

This highlights a new angle on climate mitigation: while fewer cows are ultimately the better long-term solution for our planet, as livestock numbers inevitably rise to meet growing global appetites, we’re going to have to find better ways, in the meantime, to protect their health—and that of our planet, too.

Farmers are familiar with a whole host of diseases and infections that they have to battle in their livestock. Writing in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, the researchers’ focus was on some of the more widespread ailments among these—such as gastrointestinal worms, and bacterial infections like mastitis—that are also known to increase methane emissions.

Current estimates suggest that with livestock populations expected to increase by roughly 2.7% annually, that growing population will already cause a 20% leap in methane emissions by 2050. But when the researchers then factored the added effects of a common parasitic gastrointestinal worm into this equation, that figure jumped steeply, to 82%—a fourfold increase in expected emissions. And that was just to illustrate the effects of one type of disease.

There are complex and varied reasons why disease and infection have such severe impacts on emissions. For starters, gastrointestinal worm infections may disrupt the regular makeup of a cow’s gut microbiome, directly resulting in the production of more methane. But illness can also have more indirect effects by weakening animals, making them less productive, and causing them to grow more slowly. That means they take longer to reach farmers’ targets for dairy production, or weight gain for meat.

Often, this pushes farmers to keep animals around for longer in order to meet their targets, which consequently increases the amount of methane livestock pump out over the course of a lifetime. Alternatively, farmers might compensate for low productivity by increasing the numbers in their herd, which naturally drives more emissions.

The methane cost of illness in livestock is a trend that’s increasingly showing up in the literature—some of which the researchers on the current used to make their estimates. For instance, studies show that lambs infected with gastrointestinal worms produced 33% more methane per kilogram of feed, compared to uninfected lambs. Also in sheep, disease-related weight loss in females leads to slower milk production—resulting in an 11% increase in the methane emissions per kilogram of weight gain in their lambs, because with less milk, they take longer to grow. Meanwhile in cows mastitis, which affects udders and can slow milk production, causes an 8% increase in methane per kilogram of milk—because cows take longer to hit the farmers’ dairy-production targets.
Discover more: Should elephants be considered refugees?

These early studies underscore the fact that animal welfare is a key player in agricultural emissions, and that it deserves more attention. And to complicate this picture further, rising temperatures are increasing the prevalence of many diseases that plague livestock, because the warmth accelerates their breeding. What’s more, antibiotic resistance in some bacteria—like those that cause mastitis—is also growing under hotter conditions, making disease control a trickier pursuit.

To start addressing this challenge, we have to begin by more fully investigating the role of disease in enhancing emissions, which is currently so under-appreciated as a player in livestock’s planet-altering effects, the researchers say. Building on that, we need to develop more inclusive climate models that reflect these additional emissions, to give us a much more realistic picture of global climate.

We’ll also need to find new, creative ways to treat and reduce disease, to lessen the load on animals and the planet, and to free livestock from this destructive climate-and-disease feedback loop. As for consumers—the study’s revelations add significant weight to the argument for reducing our intake of dairy and meat (if that’s a dietary option).

Ultimately, making these long-term changes will come down to our ability to tie the welfare of the animals in our charge, to the climate changes that affect us all.

Source: Ezenwa, et. al. “Infectious Diseases, Livestock, and Climate: A Vicious Cycle?” Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 2020

Image: Pixabay