CALIFORNIA
Corporate growers' carrots are soaking up water. Locals are fighting back with a boycott

Ian James
Mon, November 13, 2023 

Carrots are grown in the Cuyama Valley, where residents have banded together in a boycott targeting large growers over water concerns. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)


In the Cuyama Valley north of Santa Barbara, lush green fields stretch across the desert. Sprinklers spray thousands of acres to grow a single thirsty crop: carrots.

Wells and pumps pull groundwater from as deep as 680 feet, and the aquifer’s levels are dropping.

As the valley’s only water source shrinks, a bitter legal battle over water rights has arisen between carrot growers and the community. Residents are fighting back with a campaign urging everyone to stop buying carrots.

Along the valley’s roads, in cattle pastures and outside homes and businesses, signs and banners have sprung up declaring “BOYCOTT CARROTS” and “STAND WITH CUYAMA AGAINST CORPORATE GREED.”

An old truck props up a sign promoting a boycott against two companies that farm carrots in the Cuyama Valley. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

The signs target two of the world’s largest carrot-growing companies, Grimmway Farms and Bolthouse Farms, which are the valley’s biggest water users.

The companies stirred outrage when they, along with several other allied entities, sued property owners throughout the valley, asking a court to determine how much water everyone can pump.

The lawsuit, filed in 2021, has left small farmers, ranchers and other property owners with staggering legal bills. Residents have accused the companies of going to court to try to secure as much water as possible, while forcing painful cuts on smaller farms.

“They're all for themselves. It's all about the money,” said Chris Wegis, who runs a family farm with her husband. “It's totally disheartening that somebody wants to come in and basically destroy you for their own personal gain.”

After many residents rallied around the carrot boycott, Bolthouse Farms and Grimmway Farms recently dropped out of the lawsuit, filing requests to remove themselves as plaintiffs. Other companies that lease farmland to the growers are staying on as plaintiffs and pressing ahead with the case.

A mechanical harvester collects carrots from a field near the town of New Cuyama. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Grimmway Farms, the largest carrot grower in the world, said in an email to The Times that the lawsuit was intended to “ensure an equitable allocation of water basin-wide to protect the groundwater rights of all users.”

“It has become clear, however, that many do not support the adjudication,” the company said. "Our relationships with the residents of Cuyama are more important and valuable to us than this court case."

Both Grimmway and Bolthouse said they are committed to reducing water use and taking part in the valley's groundwater management plan, which the state recently approved.

But residents and small farmers said they remain at odds with the carrot growers and will continue the boycott.

Records show the two carrot companies pumped more than 28,000 acre-feet of water last year, accounting for about 65% of all measured pumping reported to the local groundwater agency. Together, the companies used nearly three times the annual water use of the city of Santa Barbara.

Jim Wegis, left, and his wife, Chris, farm olives in the Cuyama Valley. The longtime residents are concerned about a legal fight over groundwater rights in the area. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Wegis and her husband, Jim, have been running their family farm since 1979 near lands where his ancestors homesteaded and ranched in the 1800s.

Five years ago, the Wegises stopped growing alfalfa, an especially water-intensive crop, and planted about 200 acres of olive trees, which require much less water. Chris Wegis said while they have made substantial investments to reduce water use, they have watched the carrot farms expand and drill more wells.

“They have come in and basically — excuse my language — raped our valley,” Wegis said. “They are the problem. They are the ones that are not sustainable."

Read more: Thousands of California wells are at risk of drying up despite landmark water law

Wegis spoke while picking olives to sample their oil content. She said the carrot growers’ tactics put local farms like hers in danger. Their family business is already in debt, and they are fighting to survive, she said.

“Our blood, sweat and tears are in this land,” Wegis said. “And for someone to come in and try to rob us of our livelihood and take it from us, for their own profit, it's unrighteous. I mean, it's just criminal.”

The conflict in the Cuyama Valley is one of several that have emerged in parts of California where farming communities are grappling with chronic groundwater depletion. Landowners have filed suit in four other similar cases, including in Ventura County and Ridgecrest, seeking court adjudications to determine how much groundwater they should be able to pump.

The cases often take years to reach a judgment.

The lawsuits are complicating California’s efforts to implement pumping limits and other requirements of the state’s landmark 2014 groundwater law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

In many areas of California and the Southwest, the depletion of groundwater has been worsening, outpacing efforts to impose regulation and threatening future water availability at a time when climate change is straining supplies. As aquifers are drained by excessive pumping, water reserves that seeped underground over thousands of years are being used up.

In one recent study, researchers found that California’s current plans for addressing overpumping aren’t nearly stringent enough, leaving thousands of wells at risk of running dry.

The Cuyama Valley is one of 21 groundwater basins that state officials have deemed “critically overdrafted.” The law requires local agencies in these areas to develop plans to halt overpumping and stabilize groundwater levels by 2040.

In the Cuyama Valley, achieving those goals is expected to require slashing water use by as much as two-thirds.

Charlie Bosma feeds cattle at his ranch in the Cuyama Valley. Bosma helped organize the boycott of carrots after carrot-growing companies sued other property owners asking a court to determine groundwater pumping rights. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

A group of residents launched the carrot boycott at a meeting in July, saying they are fed up with the companies’ lawsuit and excessive pumping. Organizers designed signs and bumper stickers, and began handing them out.

“The only way to get their attention is through boycotting their products so that they realize the pain that they're causing,” said Charlie Bosma, one of the organizers. He said the goal is to send a message that the community won't let the carrot companies “just destroy this valley.”

Bosma grew up in the Cuyama Valley and lives on a cattle ranch, where he uses his well to irrigate fruit trees and grapevines. He works as the high school’s athletic director and coaches the football team.

Bosma's legal bills have topped $11,000.

A sign promoting the carrot boycott hangs on a fence at Charlie Bosma's ranch in the Cuyama Valley. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

The local drinking water supplier in New Cuyama, the Cuyama Community Services District, is proposing to cover its legal costs by adding a $20-a-month surcharge to bills — a costly burden for many low-income residents.

Bosma said it’s especially galling that the school district has had to spend $15,000 so far to defend its interests.

“That's taking money out of what we could put into our kids,” Bosma said. “It's gouging our school. It's gouging our water district. It's gouging every landowner in this valley.”

The group began circulating an online petition calling for Grimmway and Bolthouse to halt their overpumping, end the lawsuit and reimburse residents for their legal fees.

Bosma said carrot cake happens to be his favorite dessert, but he has started eating zucchini cake instead.

“For our valley, this is the most important battle that we hopefully will ever face — because of how damaging it could be if we don't get it right,” he said.

Read more: California's epic rain year boosted groundwater levels, but not enough to recoup losses

In recent years, representatives of the Bakersfield-based carrot companies participated as the local groundwater agency developed its plan for reducing pumping.

Grimmway Farms said it’s not in favor of cutting the water rights of the local water district, the high school or small residential water users.

Bolthouse Farms said in an emailed statement that the company's decision to withdraw from the lawsuit was “driven by our commitment to sustainability.”

“We at Bolthouse Farms recognize the issue of groundwater depletion and take the matter very seriously,” the company said. “We are actively reducing water usage by 5% for two years and have committed to doing so by approximately 60% by 2040.”

Sprinklers irrigate a carrot field in the Cuyama Valley in October. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

One of the remaining plaintiffs is Bolthouse Land Co., a subsidiary of Bolthouse Properties, which split from Bolthouse Farms in 2005 and leases land to the farming company.

Daniel Clifford, vice president and general counsel for Bolthouse Properties, said the litigation will “allow for a collaborative process involving all parties, in conjunction with court oversight” and is intended to help the Cuyama Basin meet the objectives of the state’s groundwater law by establishing legally enforceable water allocations.

Read more: She was killed in a carrot field. With her body nearby, workers say, they were told to keep picking

“The only way the Cuyama Basin will achieve sustainability is if water cutbacks are shared equally among all groundwater users,” Clifford said in an email. “The fact that some significant groundwater users were unwilling to agree to a reduction in their groundwater usage necessitated the assistance of the Court.”

The legal fight has been complicated by disputes among agricultural landowners over how the cuts should be apportioned.

Some growers, including Jim and Chris Wegis, have argued the carrot growers created the problem and should deal with it. The Wegises have said water levels are relatively stable in their area, and they point to studies showing a fault separates the aquifer from the central portion of the basin where declines are occurring beneath the carrot farms.

Clifford blamed those who are trying to challenge the basin’s boundaries for “driving up the legal fees,” and said the solution must be a “basin-wide” approach with everyone shouldering equal cutbacks.

Bosma said the decisions by Grimmway and Bolthouse Farms to pull out of the lawsuit are a step in the right direction, but not nearly enough.

He said the boycott will continue “until they want to actually come to the table and fix it.”

The Cuyama River has been flowing after this year’s rains in parts of the valley. But large stretches of the riverbed usually sit parched beside the farmlands.

Water in the Cuyama Valley’s aquifer accumulated underground over millenniums. A large portion of that ancient water reserve has been depleted by decades of heavy pumping.

Older residents remember seeing wetlands where water once flowed from the aquifer and nourished cottonwood trees. But as water was pumped to irrigate alfalfa and other crops in the 1960s and '70s, some wetlands dried up and cottonwoods died as water levels declined.

Some of the first carrot growers arrived in the 1980s, buying alfalfa fields.

Read more: 'Full-on crisis': Groundwater in California's Central Valley disappearing at alarming rate

Over the past two decades, the carrot-growing operations have shifted from family-run companies to corporate giants, and have expanded to larger acreages.

As the boycott has grown, those who have joined the effort include farmers who grow pistachios, grapes and other crops.

Tristan Zannon, who manages his family’s pistachio farm, said he and many others were surprised when the companies decided on the “nuclear option” of suing.

Tristan Zannon stands beside a well at his family's organic pistachio farm in the Cuyama Valley. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

“I think some accountant decided that it was cheaper to fight through litigation,” Zannon said with a laugh.

As Zannon walked through his orchard, workers harvested pistachios with machinery, shaking the trees and sending nuts raining down.

Zannon said he has begun looking at areas where trees can be ripped out to reduce water use.

Meanwhile, declining water levels in wells near the carrot farms are bringing higher pumping costs, as well as worsening water quality with higher salinity, Zannon said. “We're scared to death that we won't have water in 10, 15 years.”

Zannon said it’s wrong that the carrot growers who have caused much of the overdraft problem are positioning themselves to get the largest water allocations.

The adjudication case has opened up a parallel path for fighting over water separate from state-mandated regulation, Zannon said, and the fact that several lawsuits have popped up in just a few years indicates California will probably see more such cases in the courts as scarcity continues to fan conflicts.

Jean Gaillard has a small farm in the Cuyama Valley. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

“It's a good time to be a water lawyer,” Zannon said. “This is the beginning of the water wars.”

Nearby, Jean Gaillard and Meg Brown run a small farm where they grow a variety of vegetables, including squash, cucumbers, spinach and onions. They pump a minimal amount of water to supply the farm, but the water level in their well has been dropping about a foot and a half per year.

Gaillard knelt at the edge of his field, where a white crust covered the ground. He took a pinch in his fingers and brought it to his tongue.

“There’s salt in there, and that’s never good for farming,” Gaillard said. “That has been worsening over the years.”

Sprinklers spray a carrot field in the Cuyama Valley. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Standing beside his home, Gaillard looked out over the vast carrot fields.

“They're hurting a lot of people by extracting all the water,” he said. “They are unsustainable.”

'We're not going to quit': Why a California community is boycotting carrots

Ian James
Mon, November 13, 2023 

Many people who live among the cattle ranches and farms in the Cuyama Valley have banded together in a campaign calling for a boycott of carrots.

The effort targets two large carrot growers, Grimmway Farms and Bolthouse Farms, which sued asking a court to determine groundwater allocations for property owners throughout the valley. The two companies have recently dropped out of the lawsuit, but other corporate entities that lease land to the growers remain in the water adjudication case as plaintiffs.

Residents in the rural community north of Santa Barbara say they plan to continue protesting the companies’ tactics by boycotting carrots. Here's what several people in the Cuyama Valley have to say about the current fight over water and their community’s future.

Jake Furstenfeld, a cattle rancher and boycott organizer

Jake Furstenfeld, a rancher, helped organize a protest campaign in the Cuyama Valley urging people to boycott carrots. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

"I’ve never seen our community more united on something"

Jake Furstenfeld has for years served on an advisory committee to the Cuyama Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency, discussing plans to reduce pumping alongside representatives of the carrot companies. In that process, he said, he felt everyone had a voice. But he’s now concerned the carrot growers, which have been overpumping water for years, might end up controlling a large share of the remaining water, to the community’s detriment.

“I’ve never seen our community more united on something,” Furstenfeld said. “I feel we have to get our word out in order for this valley to survive.”

Furstenfeld said he sees the boycott as an effort to defend the community’s water future for the next generation, including his 9-year-old daughter.

“We’ve got to fight,” he said. “We’re not going to quit.”

Steve Gliessman and Roberta Jaffe, owners of a 5-acre vineyard

Steve Gliessman and Roberta Jaffe run Condor's Hope Vineyard in the Cuyama Valley. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Steve Gliessman and Roberta Jaffe own Condor’s Hope Vineyard at the foot of the Sierra Madre Mountains, where they dry-farm wine grapes without irrigation, relying on the rains.

They have been involved in other debates over water, opposing a large vineyard company’s proposal to build three water storage reservoirs. That project, which Jaffe and Gliessman warned would drain an excessive amount of groundwater, was rejected in a vote last month by Santa Barbara County supervisors.

Jaffe said the community has come together to support the carrot boycott because “it's very much the small guys up against the very deep pockets.”

Gliessman, a retired agroecology professor at UC Santa Cruz, said the lawsuit led residents who were previously supportive of the carrot companies to see them in a new light.

“We said these guys aren't here for us. They're here for profit, and that's all,” Gliessman said. “Boy, did that ignite a level of anger and anxiety amongst the community that led them to put together the boycott.”

Rosalba Fonseca, community advocate

Rosalba Fonseca is a community advocate who works with farmworkers in the Cuyama Valley. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Rosalba Fonseca has lived here for much of her life and works as a community advocate helping farmworkers. She said while she supports the carrot boycott, the conflict over water has created divisions and she hopes the matter can be resolved.

“Since I've been here, everybody looks out for each other. So having this dilemma is heartbreaking,” Fonseca said.

She said many low-income families already struggle to pay their water bills, and they’re now facing a plan to raise rates, which includes a $20-a-month surcharge to offset the local utility's legal costs from the lawsuit.

“They're concerned about the prices. They're concerned about not having water in the future,” Fonseca said. But many laborers are also worried, she said, that speaking out might jeopardize their jobs.

"We need the companies," Fonseca said. "But we also have to make sure that they hear the voice of the community, and understand that the water is essential for us, to not take it away."

Pam Doiron, rancher

Pam Doiron raises cattle at the Spanish Ranch in the Cuyama Valley. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

"We live sustainability and we live stewardship.”

Pam Doiron lives in the western part of the valley on a cattle ranch called the Spanish Ranch, which was once part of a Mexican land grant dating to 1843. She and her family use minimal water on the ranch, where cattle graze in pastures beside the Cuyama River.

“We’ve tried to be cautious with our water use,” Doiron said. “We live sustainability and we live stewardship.”

The carrot companies have taken a different approach, she said, by expanding their operations, drilling more wells and pumping heavily.

Doiron said she worries about neighbors hit with legal bills they can’t afford, and about the court case’s potential to harm property values. She said carrots require too much water, and planting them on such a large scale is irresponsible.

“It's the wrong crop at the wrong place,” she said. “We all know, by living in this valley and taking care of it, that you can't do a major industrial farming operation and pump like they do — and sustain the lifestyle.”

Brenton Kelly, watershed advocate and community facilitator

Brenton Kelly is the director of watershed advocacy at Quail Springs Permaculture in the Cuyama Valley, where he and other residents pipe water from a spring to their farm. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Brenton Kelly helps run a small farm that is radically different from the carrot-growing operations. He lives and works at Quail Springs Permaculture, a nonprofit and off-grid community where he and others grow vegetables and nourish their goats and chickens using water piped from a natural spring.

The water, which emerges from the foothills of Mt. Pinos, is filtered in two tubs, and then piped with gravity to tanks that supply the farm. Kelly has worked for years to help the spring ecosystem recover after decades of intensive cattle grazing.

Kelly said he supports the carrot boycott because “we’re very much against corporate greed.”

“Ultimately, we have to find a way to say that the groundwater is not the corporates' privatized profit and property right. It just can't be,” Kelly said. “We have to learn to share these things.”

Kelly also chairs the advisory committee to the Cuyama Basin groundwater agency. He is concerned that with the slow implementation of pumping limits under the local groundwater plan, the area isn’t on track to addressing the overpumping problem, and in the meantime, large growers will continue to deplete the aquifer.

“They’re buying time,” Kelly said. “The sooner we turn down the pumps, the more will be left.”

Bonnie Goller, retired scientist and longtime resident

Bonnie Goller is a longtime resident of the Cuyama Valley who is taking part in the community's boycott of carrots. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

“I feel like our groundwater is under siege.”

Bonnie Goller has lived in the Cuyama Valley for 40 years. She has seen wetlands dry up in parts of the valley as groundwater levels have declined over the years. A creek still flows on her ranch, where she relies on a well for her home and occasionally for her olive trees.

Goller has a “BOYCOTT CARROTS” banner on her front gate. She said she fears the lawsuit could allow large growers to secure more water while placing limits on other landowners.

“I feel like our groundwater is under siege,” Goller said.

She said she worries that because she and her family use very little water, an eventual ruling in the case could prevent her adult sons from drilling a well to grow crops, limiting how the land could be used.

Goller and other residents were incensed when they saw the companies’ legal teams, seeking to notify all landowners, had delivered copies of the lawsuit in envelopes attached to dozens of wooden stakes, which they hammered into the ground along roads.

Goller collected more than two dozen envelopes that were posted on stakes by her gate and along nearby roads. She put the stack of envelopes in a box and mailed them back to the law office.

“This is vandalism!” she told the lawyers in a handwritten note. “Shame on you!”

Carrot companies respond

Sprinklers spray a carrot field in the Cuyama Valley. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Since the start of the carrot boycott in July, Grimmway Farms and Bolthouse Farms have both filed requests to withdraw from the lawsuit as plaintiffs. Other companies that lease land to the growers, among them Bolthouse Properties, remain in the case.

Grimmway Farms said in an email that its intention in filing the water adjudication lawsuit “was to ensure an equitable allocation of water basin-wide to protect the groundwater rights of all users.”

“It has become clear, however, that many do not support the adjudication,” the company said, “and the goodwill and cooperation that has defined our farming and relationships in the Cuyama Valley for so many years is significantly compromised.”

Grimmway Farms, which leases about 13,000 acres in the valley, said now that it is no longer a plaintiff, “we feel it more appropriate for the landowners to continue this discussion.”

Bolthouse Farms said in an email that the company had reevaluated its involvement in the case and “believe that, given our existing actions to reduce water, it no longer makes sense to continue as a plaintiff.”

Residents who are leading the carrot boycott say they plan to continue their campaign. In addition to seeking an end to the lawsuit, they have demanded the companies stop overpumping groundwater and reimburse residents for their legal fees.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

US climate assessment lays out growing threats, opportunities as temperatures rise

November 14, 2023



By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Climate change harms Americans physically, mentally and financially, often hitting those who have done the least to cause it, including Black people facing floods in the South and minorities enduring searing heat in cities, a federal report said on Tuesday.

More than a dozen U.S. agencies and about 500 scientists produced the National Climate Assessment, meant to crystallize the top science on the problem and communicate it to wide audiences.

This year set a record for extreme weather events that cost over $1 billion, with costly floods, fires and storms occurring roughly every three weeks. In the 1980s, by comparison, the United States experienced a billion-dollar disaster only once every four months.

Climate change is increasingly imposing costs on Americans, as prices rise for weather-related insurance or certain foods. Medical costs are also going up as more people struggle with climate consequences such as extreme heat, the report said.

The assessment marks the fifth such report released by the U.S. government since 2000. It was peer-reviewed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, a report coauthor since the second assessment, said the newest version reflects the latest in climate science and can help policymakers and companies working on emissions cuts and ways of adapting to the consequences of a warming world.

"Today, we can document the risks that we face, per degree of warming," Hayhoe told reporters on a call. "We can put a number on the extent to which climate change is fueling our record-breaking weather extremes, and we are starting to tap the interconnectivity and understand the vulnerability of our systems from socioeconomics to national security."

It was the first report produced since 2018, when the administration of then-President Donald Trump was dismantling rules meant to rein in climate-warming emissions. Trump, a Republican who denies the science of climate change, also dismissed the 2018 assessment.

Later on Tuesday President Joe Biden, a Democrat, will speak about the report, which a White House official said was the most comprehensive assessment yet on the state of climate change in the U.S. Biden will also announce more than $6 billion in funding for climate resilience projects including bolstering the power grid and reducing flood risks, the official said.

POVERTY LINE


For the first time, this year's assessment includes a chapter on economics that illustrates how costly damages are distributed unevenly across society, often amplifying existing inequalities.

Children are reporting mental-health distress due to climate anxiety. Outdoor workers suffering dehydration through extreme heat are suffering acute kidney illness after only one day of exposure to extreme temperatures, the report says.

"Families living below the poverty line often live where climatic changes are expected to be the most economically damaging, like the already-hot Southeast," the report says.

The report also said, referring to the U.S. Southeast, that slavery, segregation and housing discrimination have resulted in many Black and other minority communities living in neighborhoods exposed to environmental risks and with fewer resources to address them compared to white neighborhoods.

It was not all doom and gloom, though. With shuttered coal plants being replaced by natural gas and renewables, the country's energy-related greenhouse gas emissions fell some 12% between 2005 and 2019 - even as the economy and population both grew.

"We're pointing in the right direction, we just want to do more, faster," said Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at Northern Arizona University who was not involved in writing the report.

The study's findings could encourage local and state policymakers to consider ways of adapting to the coming climate disruption, such as redesigning sewer systems to better drain water from flood-prone city streets, creating cooling centers in heat-vulnerable cities or helping hospitals plan for likely increases in vector-borne diseases, as warming encourages mosquitoes and ticks to move north into new areas.

The report also discusses national security risks of climate change, as countries compete for resources needed in the energy transition. Competition with China for minerals, for example, will likely escalate tensions between the two countries in coming years.

Climate migration, meanwhile, is expected to become a high-security risk by 2030 as people living in climate-vulnerable nations seek to cross the border into the United States for safety, the report says.

The report will be translated into Spanish for the first time by early next year.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Katy Daigle and Matthew Lewis)



In fight to curb climate change, a grim report shows world is struggling to get on track

SETH BORENSTEIN
November 14, 2023 



The world is off track in its efforts to curb global warming in 41 of 42 important measurements and is even heading in the wrong direction in six crucial ways, a new international report calculates.

The only bright spot is that global sales of electric passenger vehicles are now on track to match what’s needed — along with many other changes — to limit future warming to just another couple tenths of a degree, according to the State of Climate Action report released Tuesday by the World Resources Institute, Climate Action Tracker, the Bezos Earth Fund and others.

On the flip side, public money spent to create more fossil fuel use is going in the wrong direction and faster than it has in the past, said study co-author Kelly Levin, science and data director at the Bezos Earth Fund.

“This is not the time for tinkering around the edges, but it’s instead the time for radical decarbonization of all sectors of the economy,” Levin said.

“We are woefully off track and we are seeing the impact of inaction unfold around the world from extensive wildfire fires in Canada, heat-related deaths across the Mediterranean, record high temperatures in South Asia and so on," she said.

Later this month, crucial international climate negotiations start in Dubai that include the first time world negotiators will do a global stocktake on how close society is to meeting its 2015 climate goals. In advance of the United Nations summit, numerous reports from experts are coming out assessing Earth’s progress or mostly the lack of it, including a United States national assessment with hundreds of indicators. Tuesday’s 42 indicators offers one of the grimmest report cards, detailing multiple failures of society.

The report looks at what’s needed in several sectors of the global economy — power, transportation, buildings, industry, finance and forestry — to fit in a world that limits warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times, the goal the world adopted at Paris in 2015. The globe has already warmed about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the mid 19th century.

Six categories — the carbon intensity of global steel production, how many miles passenger cars drive, electric buses sold, loss of mangrove forests, amount of food waste and public financing of fossil fuel use — are going in the wrong direction, the report said.

“Fossil fuel consumption subsidies in particular reached an all-time high last year, over $1 trillion, driven by the war in Ukraine and the resulting energy price spikes,” said report co-author Joe Thwaites of the Natural Resources Defense Council environmental group.

Another six categories were considered “off track” but going in the right direction, which is the closest to being on track and better than the 24 measurements that are “well off track.” Those merely off track include zero-carbon electricity generation, electric vehicles as percentage of the fleet, two- and three-wheel electric vehicle sales, grazing animal meat production, reforestation and share of greenhouse gas emissions with mandatory corporate climate risk reporting requirements.


People should be worried that this report is one of ’’too little, too late,” said University of Arizona climate scientist Katharine Jacobs, who wasn’t part of the report but praised it for being so comprehensive.

“I am not shocked that at a global scale we are not meeting expectations for reducing emissions,” Jacobs said in an email. “We cannot ignore the fact that global commitments to (greenhouse gas) reductions are essentially unenforceable and that a number of major setbacks have taken a toll on our progress.”

When trying to change an economy, the key is to start with “low-hanging fruit, i.e., the sectors of the economy that are easiest to transition and give a big bang for your buck,” said Dartmouth climate scientist Justin Mankin, who isn’t part of the report. But he said the report shows “we’re really struggling to pick the low-hanging fruit.”

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This story corrects Katharine Jacobs’ affiliation to University of Arizona, not Arizona State.

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Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment.

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Follow Seth Borenstein on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @borenbears

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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.

No place in the US is safe from the climate crisis, but a new report shows where it’s most severe

ELLA NILSEN, CNN
November 14, 2023 

The effects of a rapidly warming climate are being felt in every corner of the US and will worsen over the next 10 years with continued fossil fuel use , according to a stark new report from federal agencies.

The Fifth National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report due roughly every five years, warned that even though planet-warming pollution in the US is slowly decreasing, it is not happening nearly fast enough to meet the nation’s targets, nor is it in line with the UN-sanctioned goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius – a threshold beyond which scientists warn life on Earth will struggle to cope.

This year’s assessment reflects the reality that Americans can increasingly see and feel climate impacts in their own communities, said Katharine Hayhoe, a distinguished climate scientist at Texas Tech University and contributor to the report.

“Climate change is affecting every aspect of our lives,” Hayhoe told CNN.

Some of the report’s sweeping conclusions remain painfully familiar: No part of the US is truly safe from climate disasters; slashing fossil fuel use is critical to limit the consequences, but we’re not doing it fast enough; and every fraction of a degree of warming leads to more intense impacts.

But there are some important new additions: Scientists can now say with more confidence when the climate crisis has made rainstorms, hurricanes and wildfires stronger or more frequent, long-term drought more severe and heat more deadly.

Rick Curtis, right, pumps water out of his basement and onto the muddy street in front of his home in Barre, Vermont, in July 2023. - Hilary Swift/The New York Times/Redux

This summer alone, the Phoenix area baked through a record 31 consecutive days above 110 degrees, a shocking heatwave that was partly responsible for more than 500 heat-related deaths in Maricopa County in 2023 – its deadliest year for heat on record.

In July, a torrential rainstorm deluged parts of Vermont in deadly floodwaters. Then in August, Maui was devastated by a fast-moving wildfire and Florida’s Gulf Coast was slammed by its second major hurricane in two years.

President Joe Biden will deliver remarks on Tuesday and is expected to unveil more than $6 billion in funding to strengthen climate resilience “by bolstering America’s electric grid, investing in water infrastructure upgrades, reducing flood risk to communities, and advancing environmental justice for all,” an administration official said.

The US needs “a transformation of the global economy on a size and scale that’s never occurred in human history” to “create a livable future for ourselves and our children,” White House senior climate adviser John Podesta told reporters.

Here are five significant takeaways from the federal government’s sweeping climate report.
It’s easier to pinpoint which disasters were made worse by climate change

The latest report contains an important advancement in what’s called “attribution science” – scientists can more definitively show how climate change is affecting extreme events, like heatwaves, droughts to hurricanes and severe rainstorms.

Climate change doesn’t cause things like hurricanes or wildfires, but it can make them more intense or more frequent.

For instance, warmer oceans and air temperatures mean hurricanes are getting stronger faster and dumping more rainfall when they slam ashore. And hotter and drier conditions from climate change can help vegetation and trees become tinderboxes, turning wildfires into megafires that spin out of control.

“Now thanks to the field of attribution, we can make specific statements,” Hayhoe said, saying attribution can help pinpoint certain areas of a city that are now more likely to flood due to the effects of climate change. “The field of attribution has advanced significantly over the last five years, and that really helps people connect the dots.”

A structure is engulfed in flames as the Highland Fire burns in Aguanga, California, on Monday, October 30. - Ethan Swope/AP

All regions are feeling climate change, but some more severely

There is no place immune from climate change, Biden administration officials and the report’s scientists emphasized, and this summer’s extreme weather was a deadly reminder.

Some states – including California, Florida, Louisiana and Texas – are facing more significant storms and extreme swings in precipitation.

Landlocked states won’t have to adapt to sea level rise, though some – including Appalachian states like Kentucky and West Virginia – have seen devastating flooding from rainstorms.

And states in the north are grappling with an increase in tick-borne diseases, less snow, and stronger rainstorms.

“There is no place that is that that is not at risk, but there are some that are more or less at risk,” Hayhoe told CNN. “That is a factor of both the increasingly frequent and severe weather and climate extremes you’re exposed to, as well as how prepared (cities and states) are.”

Climate change is exacting a massive economic toll

Climate shocks on the economy are happening more frequently, the report said, evidenced by the new record this year for the number of extreme weather disasters costing at least $1 billion. And disaster experts have spent the last year warning the US is only beginning to see the economic fallout of the climate crisis.

Climate risks are hitting the housing market in the form of skyrocketing homeowners’ insurance rates. Some insurers have pulled out of high-risk states altogether.

Stronger storms wiping out certain crops or extreme heat killing livestock can send food prices soaring. And in the Southwest, the report’s researchers found that hotter temperatures in the future could lead to a 25% loss of physical work capacity for agricultural workers from July to September.
The US is cutting planet-warming pollution, but not nearly fast enough

Unlike the world’s other top polluters – China and India – planet-warming pollution in the US is declining. But it’s not happening nearly fast enough to stabilize the planet’s warming or meet the United States’ international climate commitments, the report explains.

The country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions fell 12% between 2005 and 2019, driven in large part by the electricity sector moving away from coal and toward renewable energy and methane gas, the latter of which is still a fossil fuel that has a significant global warming effect.

The decline is good news for the climate crisis, but look at the fine print and the picture is mixed.

The report finds US planet-warming emissions “remain substantial” and would have to sharply decline by 6% annually on average to be in line with the international 1.5-degree goal. To put that cut into perspective, US emissions decreased by less than 1% per year between 2005 and 2019 – a tiny annual drop.

Workers install steel shoring where submarine cables come onshore for the Vineyard Wind project in Barnstable, Massachusetts, in October 2022.

 - M. Scott Brauer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Water – too much and not enough – is a huge problem for the US

One of the report’s biggest takeaways centers on the precarious future of water in the US, and how parts of the country are facing a future with either extreme drought and water insecurity, or more flooding and sea level rise.

Drought and less snowpack are huge threats to Southwest communities in particular. The report’s Southwest chapter, let by Arizona State University climate scientist Dave White, found the region was significantly drier from 1991 to 2020 than the three decades before.

White said that’s an ominous sign as the planet continues to warm, with significant threats to snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains and the Rockies – both of which provide crucial freshwater in the West.

White added that a lack of freshwater in the region also has significant economic and agricultural impacts, as it supports cities, farms, and Native American tribes.

“Mountains are our natural reservoirs in the region,” White told CNN. “Climate impacts on that mountain snowpack have really significant negative effects for the way our infrastructure operates. It’s just critical for us to protect those resources.”

CNN’s Donald Judd contributed to this report.

Effects of climate change worsening in every part of the US, report says

STEPHANIE EBBS, JULIA JACOBO, KELLY LIVINGSTON, DANIEL MANZO and DANIEL PECK

GMA
Tue, November 14, 2023 


Climate change is making it harder to “maintain safe homes and healthy families” in the United States, according to an extensive report compiled by experts across the federal government and released Tuesday.

The report issues a stark warning that extreme events and harmful impacts of climate change that Americans are already experiencing, such as heat waves, wildfires, and extreme rainfall, will worsen as temperatures continue to rise.

The Fifth National Climate Assessment, issued every five years, is a definitive breakdown of the latest in climate science coming from 14 different federal agencies, including NOAA, NASA, the EPA, and the National Science Foundation.

This year's report is more comprehensive than in previous because climate modeling has improved, and the authors took a more holistic look at physical and social impacts of climate change.

MORE: Earth caps off its hottest 12-month period on record, report finds

"We also have a much more comprehensive understanding of how climate change disproportionately affects those who've done the least to cause the problem," Katherine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University and co-author of the report, said in a briefing with reporters.

Some communities are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, the report says, warning that Black, Hispanic, and indigenous communities are more likely to face challenges accessing water as droughts become more intense. Climate change also creates more health risks for marginalized communities, according to the report, which says that “systemic racism and discrimination exacerbate” the impacts.

The report lays out how every part of the US is being impacted by climate change and that some areas are facing multiple worsening impacts at the same time. For example, western states saw heat waves and wildfires during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which strained resources and added to the risk of severe illness.

In the same year, back-to-back storms during the record-breaking 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season are some examples of climate-driven compounding events that caused unprecedented demand on federal emergency response resources.

The report detailed some impacts of climate change that are being felt across the U.S., including increased risk of extreme heat and rainfall, among other weather-related events.

Other impacts cited were coastal erosion and threats to coastal communities from flooding; damage to land including wildfires and damage to forests; warming oceans and damage to ecosystems like coral reefs; risks from extreme events like fires; heatwaves and flooding, and increased inequality for minority or low-income communities.

PHOTO: Lake Mead, the country's largest man-made water reservoir, formed by Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in the Southwestern United States, has risen slowly to 47% capacity as viewed on Aug. 14, 2023 near Boulder City, Nev. (George Rose/Getty Images)

Some areas of the U.S. are also seeing more specific impacts, such as more intense droughts in the Southwest.

The assessment also notes changes in storm trends as a result of climate change. Heavy snowfall is becoming more common in the Northeast and hurricane trends are changing, with increases in North Atlantic hurricane activity and the intensification of tropical cyclones.

MORE: Increasingly warming planet jeopardizes human health, major report warns

2023 was a record setting year for billion-dollar climate disasters in the United States, officials noted in a White House briefing last week.

PHOTO: A resident, right, observes the remains of her home after it was destroyed during the Highland Fire in Aguanga, Calif., on Oct. 31, 2023. (Ethan Swope/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The report also highlights some areas of success, saying more action has been taken across the board to reduce emissions and address climate change since the last report in 2018.

Greenhouse gas emissions generated by the U.S. have been steadily decreasing since their peak in 2007, even as the energy demand goes up -- mainly due to a vast reduction in the use of coal, according to the report.

MORE: Climate scientists warn Earth systems heading for 'dangerous instability'

Efforts to adapt to and respond to climate change need to be more "transformative," the report found. This includes reducing the use of coal, building more wind turbines and electrifying buildings and making more efforts to protect people from the impacts of climate change.

PHOTO: Scenes from the flooded Foster Farms plant on Racine St. in Corcoran, Calif., on July 18, 2023. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Individuals and government leaders should look at the report as a way to help communities across the country mitigate, adapt and become more resilient to the effects of climate change, White House Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi said.

The assessment demonstrates "both a real and profound environmental risk, but also a real and profound economic opportunity," Zaidi said. The administration has also noted that adding clean energy jobs is a top priority.

MORE: Climate change, human activity causing global water cycles to become 'increasingly erratic': World Meteorological Organization

PHOTO: A plane drops fire retardant during the Highland Fire in Aguanga, Calif., on Oct. 31, 2023. (Ethan Swope/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The last time the National Climate Assessment was released, then-President Donald Trump said he did not believe the findings.

The 2018 report found that climate change could lead to massive economic loss, especially by vulnerable communities.

Effects of climate change worsening in every part of the US, report says originally appeared on abcnews.go.com


'Every sector of human and natural society': Federal report details climate change's impact

Dinah Voyles Pulver and Doyle Rice, USA TODAY
Tue, November 14, 2023 

Climate change is here and prompting unprecedented actions in every state to curb the greenhouse gas emissions fueling warming temperatures, but a new federal report out Tuesday says bigger, bolder steps are needed.

After several years of work by more than 500 authors from every state, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam, the White House released the massive Fifth National Climate Assessment. President Joe Biden is expected to announce more than $6 billion to bolster the electric grid, update water infrastructure, reduce flooding, and advance environmental justice.

The assessment includes more evidence than ever before to demonstrate the cause and effects of the changing climate, said L. Ruby Leung, one of its authors.

"It’s important for us to recognize that how much climate change we will be experiencing in the future depends on the choices that we make now," said Leung, a climate scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and lead author on the earth sciences chapter.

All of the impacts people are feeling, like sea level rise and extreme weather events, she said "are tied to the global warming level, to how warm the earth becomes," Leung said. "And that depends very much on the level of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere."
What is the National Climate Assessment?

The massive assessment describes the climate and economic impacts Americans will see if further action is not taken to address climate change. The report, issued roughly every four years, was mandated by Congress in the late 1980s and is meant as a reference for the president, Congress, and the public.

"Too many people still think of climate change as an issue that's distanced from us in space or time or relevance," said Katharine Hayhoe, an author of the report and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy.

The assessment “clearly explains how climate change is affecting us here in the places where we live, both now and in the future and across every sector of human and natural society,” Hayhoe said. It also shows that "the risks matter and so do our choices."

Climate Nexus, a non-profit communications organization, said the new report is "essential reading," because it highlights the seriousness of current impacts and shows the existing pace of adaptation isn't enough to keep pace with future changes in climate.

"Without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow," the report states. "Each additional increment of warming is expected to lead to more damage and greater economic losses."

However, greater reductions in carbon emissions could reduce the risks and impacts, and have immediate health and economic benefits, the report states.

The impacts of climate change are felt in every corner of the country, the latest National Climate Assessment finds

What are the effects of climate change?

Millions are experiencing more extreme heat waves, with warmer temperatures and longer-lasting heat waves, the report states. It adds changes in climate are apparent in every region of the country.

Among the noted effects:

The number of nights with minimum low temperatures at or above 70 degrees has increased compared to 1901-1960 in every corner of the country except the northern Great Plains and Alaska.

Average annual precipitation is increasing in most regions, except the Northwest, Southwest, and Hawaii.

Heavier precipitation events are increasing everywhere except Hawaii and the Caribbean.

Relative sea levels are increasing along much of the coast, with the exception of Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.

In the 1980s, the country experienced on average a $1 billion disaster every four months, but now experiences one every three weeks. This year, the country has set a new record with 25 billion-dollar disasters.

Fishers and the warming climate Climb aboard four fishing boats with us to see how America's warming waters are changing

Climate scientists around the world say 2023 is almost certain to be the globe's warmest year in recorded human history. The global mean temperature through October was 1.4 Celsius (more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average.

So far this year, the nation is experiencing its 11th warmest year on record through October, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. However, 12 states are experiencing their warmest or second warmest year on record.
Growing evidence that humans are changing the climate

This assessment is most notable for the certainty scientists have gained about warming and its impacts, said Leung, who served as the lead author for the report’s Earth Systems Processes chapter, which lays the scientific groundwork and is used to illustrate points throughout the report.

The chapter, a collaboration among more than a dozen authors, was intended to answer such questions as whether humans are causing global warming, whether warming is changing extreme weather and climate events and how much warming the planet might expect to see.

In prior reports, scientists often hedged their statements, for example saying they were 90% sure humans were responsible for the changes being seen," Leung said. “In this NCA 5 report, we are now saying that we are totally sure."

Starting from the 1900s, the observed warming has been caused by human activities, she said. "It’s definitive.”

Another key difference is scientists reduced by 50% the uncertainty in how much temperatures would warm if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles, she said. In previous assessments that number had hovered around a range from 2.7 degrees to 8 degrees. “It was a pretty big range,” she said. “Our goal has always been to narrow this down.”

Thanks to the increase in instrumental observations, satellite data, the study of the paleoclimate, and higher resolution computer modeling, scientists now have amassed more evidence than ever before, giving them more certainty, she said. “Now we can say that the global warming that is caused by a doubling of the CO2 in the atmosphere should be between 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions

Efforts to adapt to climate change, reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, and be more energy efficient are underway in every US region and have expanded since 2018, the report concludes.

Greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. fell 12% between 2005 and 2019, mostly driven by changes in the way electricity is produced, the assessment concluded. The nation burns less coal, but more natural gas, which is cleaner. Because of the electrical industry's 40% reduction in emissions, the transportation sector took the lead as the industry with the most emissions.

Growth in the capacity of wind, solar, and battery storage is supported by the falling costs of those technologies, and that ultimately means even more emissions reductions, the report states. For example, wind and solar energy costs have dropped 70% and 90%, respectively.

While the options for cleaner technologies and lower energy use have expanded, the authors found they aren't happening fast enough for the nation to meet the goal of achieving a carbon-neutral energy system.

Without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, the scientists found severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow. Each additional increment of warming is expected to lead to more damage and greater economic losses compared to previous increments of warming, and the risks of catastrophic consequences also increase.

But the report also finds that reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere can limit future warming and associated increases in many risks, and bring immediate health and economic benefits.
What others are saying about the report:

The scientific assessment is "the latest in a series of alarm bells and illustrates that the changes we’re living through are unprecedented in human history," said Kristina Dahl, a principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a contributor to the report. "The science is irrefutable: we must swiftly reduce heat-trapping emissions and enact transformational climate adaptation policies in every region of the country to limit the stampede of devastating events and the toll each one takes on our lives and the economy."

The report illustrates three things, said Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The events Americans have already experienced firsthand are "unfolding as predicted."the  Communities in every state and territory have taken action, People across the nation can use the assessment to take future actions.

For example, Prabhakar said the report could be used by a water utility manager in Chicago trying to understand extreme rainfall, an urban planner deciding where to locate cooling centers in Texas, or a manager of a Southeastern hospital trying to get ahead of the diseases ticks and mosquitoes are bringing into their region as a result of the changing climate.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: National Climate Assessment 2023: More action needed despite strides

Add another heat record to the pile: Earth is historically and alarmingly hot. Now what?

Dinah Voyles Pulver, USA TODAY
Updated Mon, November 13, 2023 


Global average temperatures reached new highs over the past 10-12 months, notching new records in the steady march of a warming climate, two national groups announced last week.

It's been warmer than at any time in recorded history and was likely warmer than any other time in 125,000 years, an analysis by Climate Central concluded. The Copernicus Climate Change said it's also "virtually certain" that 2023 will be the hottest year in recorded history.

If these and other announcements detailed below sound familiar, it’s because heat-related records are being set and broken, over and over again, month after month and year after year in cities, states and countries around the world.

None of this should be surprising, said Andrew Pershing, vice president for science at Climate Central, a nonprofit that reports climate change news. “We should expect to set records because we live on a warming planet. We have too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

Heat – and cold – records have been set since people first started keeping track of temperatures, but today warm records occur far more often than cold records, and in dizzying variety. Individually they're not always attention-grabbing, but considered en masse, they present a piercing look at how steadily rising temperatures affect how we live, work and play.

All of the warming is “in line with earlier predictions,” says Michael Mann, author of the new book “Our Fragile Moment” and a professor of Earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania. “Some of the impacts however, such as extreme weather events, are exceeding the predictions."

As exceptionally warm weather moves into the upper Midwest, a pedestrian walks at sunset in Oconomowoc, Wis., Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023.
Climate Central issues report

The global average temperature for November 2022 to October 2023 was 1.32 degrees Celsius above a preindustrial baseline, Climate Central reported last week, using a method it calls the Climate Shift Index to calculate the days of above-average temperatures that can be linked to climate change.

Here's what Climate Central says its findings mean for people:

◾ Over the 12 months, 7.3 billion people, 90% of the world's population, experienced at least 10 days of temperatures strongly affected by climate change.

◾ 5.8 billion people were exposed to more than 30 days of temperatures made more likely by climate change.

◾ An estimated 1.9 billion people experienced at least one five-day heat wave over the 12 months.
Warmest October on record

Average anomalies in global surface temperatures since 1980.

Copernicus, a weather and climate service for the European Union, also announced:

◾ October was the warmest October on record.

◾ The global temperature was the second highest of all months, behind September 2023.

◾ Year to date, the global mean temperature is the highest on record, 1.43 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial measure.

Visualizing the changing climate Global warming's impact on Earth explored
2023 one of the top two warmest so far in 10 states

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced new records this week:

◾ Four southern states – Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas – are seeing their warmest year on record.

◾ Six other states – Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Rhode Island – have seen their second warmest year to date.

◾ Burlington, Vermont, set a record high temperature for October after reaching 86 degrees on Oct. 4.

◾ The nation has seen a record 25 billion-dollar weather-related disasters in 2023.

Billion-dollar weather and climate related disasters in the U.S. in 2023.

Your life in data: Explore our comprehensive weather tracker that provides detailed county-level monthly precipitation and temperatures.

Other climate milestones this year, in descending order:

Oct. 16: September was the fourth month in a row of record-warm global temperatures, said Sara Kapnick, NOAA's chief scientist. The global surface temperature of 61.9 degrees was more than 2.5 degrees above the 20th-century average for September. NOAA reported it was the highest monthly global temperature anomaly of any month on record and the 535th consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th-century average.

Oct. 8: National Snow and Ice Data Center announces Antarctic sea ice reached a record wintertime low.

Sept. 14: NASA and NOAA announce Earth sweltered under its hottest summer on record.

Sept. 6: The World Meteorological Organization and the Copernicus Climate Change Service announce Earth saw its hottest June-August on record and August was the second hottest month ever, following July 2023.

Sept. 2: Officials say meteorological summer was the warmest on record in at least 20 cities, including Miami, Houston, New Orleans, Austin, Texas, and Phoenix.

Aug. 14: NOAA announces it was the warmest July globally in 174 years, "warmer than anything we'd ever seen," and probably the warmest month in history since at least 1850.

July 24: Water temperature at a buoy in a closed-in bay south of Miami reached 101.1 degrees after the city's head index topped 100 degrees for 43 consecutive days.

July 18: Phoenix endured 19 straight days of temperatures of 110 degrees or higher, breaking a record set in 1974. The summer 2023 streak kept going and lasted a full month.

July 3 - 6: Earth sets a new global daily heat record four days in a row, reaching a new high of 63 degrees on July 6.

June: Roughly 40% of the world's oceans experience marine heat waves, the most since satellite tracking began in 1991, NOAA reports.

May: Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere reached a record high, averaging 424 parts per million, according to scientists with NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. That's 51% higher than preindustrial levels and was the fourth-largest annual increase on record. NOAA reports the first four months of the year ranked record warmest in eight states along the Atlantic coast.

January: NOAA reports 18 billion-dollar disasters in 2022. It's the third highest, behind 2020 and 2021, since the agency started tracking the number. It was the third warmest year in the 128-year record and ocean heat reached a new record high.

Climate tracking: Following the changes in climate over time.

Is it too late to do anything about global warming?

No, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Record-breaking events will continue until carbon emissions are reduced to zero, said Mann and scientists with Climate Central. But the extreme weather events should stop getting worse once the surface warming stops, they said.

"The really good news is, if we stop burning fossil fuels, temperatures will stop rising," said Friederike Otto, a co-lead of World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists studying the footprint of climate change in world weather events. "And that has also immediate consequences for a lot of extreme weather events. But of course, as long as we keep burning fossil fuels they will keep rising, and extreme events are going to get worse.

“There is both urgency and agency," Mann said. "It is not too late to prevent truly catastrophic climate impacts.”

What will historians of the future say about 2023?

This year may be considered a cold year in a few years, Pershing said. "This is, this is as easy as it gets right? It's only going to get harder from here."

Otto said she hopes they'll be able to say it was "the year when it got finally so bad that people stopped playing culture wars and pretending that climate policy is a luxury topic." People should care about climate change not because they love polar bears, she said, but because "it's a massive violation of basic human rights."

Contributing: Doyle Rice, USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Will 2023 be Earth's hottest year? Climate change fuels heat records.

Finance may be junked from EU climate law, leaked memo shows. Critics say it could be unenforceable

ED DAVEY
November 14, 2023 



LONDON (AP) — A flagship EU law intended to push European companies toward net zero faces being seriously weakened by member states, a confidential document passed to The Associated Press reveals, with firms seemingly no longer forced to implement Paris Agreement goals.

The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive was designed to make companies eliminate environmental and human rights violations throughout all areas of their business. The legislation was meant to ensure firms’ operations were aligned with a global rise in temperatures of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).

But a Nov. 9 briefing obtained by The AP details a watered-down proposal that would drop the entire financial sector from the initial law.

Banks and insurers are among Europe’s biggest contributors to global warming, by financing or insuring new oil and gas projects, or agribusinesses that chop down tropical rainforests. Nonprofits also warn the new proposal would mean firms merely need to have plans to hit low carbon targets, not actually deliver them – a recipe for greenwashing.

When it was unveiled, environmentalists hailed the law. But there’s currently a standoff on the final text between the European Parliament, which wants tough legislation, and the Council of the European Union, formed of ministers from all 27 member countries.

Many of the latter want less onerous provisions, worried about the impact of stringent regulation on their economies.

Spain currently holds the council’s presidency, and is trying to get all the member states to agree on their desired version of the law. Its attempt at breaking the impasse was set out in the confidential briefing.

The proposed rules on the financial sector had led to “difficult problems to overcome in working out a reasonable landing zone” with the European Parliament, it said. As a solution, “the Presidency proposes … a possible exclusion of the financial sector which would delay the extension to the financial sector to a later stage.”

This came as a shock to campaigners, who warn if it’s kicked into the long grass, the inclusion of finance may never happen. The next European elections are due in June 2024, and many believe after that the chance to add to it will be gone.

As part of its plan to become climate neutral by 2050, the European Union has adopted a wide range of measures, from reducing energy consumption to sharply cutting transportation emissions and reforming the EU’s trading system for greenhouse gases. But with the elections looming, some leaders and lawmakers are concerned about antagonizing voters with binding legislation and restrictive requirements.

As recently as October, the council's proposal was to create laws for the financial sector that individual nation states could opt in or out of.

Richard Gardiner, head of EU policy at the World Benchmarking Alliance, a Dutch nonprofit that examines the sustainability of global companies, called the current approach a “massive rowback on the progress made.”

“When you exclude finance you exclude a major driver of change,” he said. “It goes against the majority views of the EU parliament, Commission and most member states,” he added, questioning the “undue influence" of large countries "willing to pander to the financial sector’s lobbying needs.”

René Repasi, lead negotiator on the law’s financial clauses, said in a phone interview that finance was the fuel of the world economy and fundamentally connected to the environment.

He laid the blame for the change firmly at the door of France, but said he was yet to hear a credible or convincing argument justifying their stance. A deal on finance was previously supported by all member states, he revealed. “And then in a last minute move, France said they will veto it.”

“France is the driving factor,” he said.

A document authored by French officials last November obtained by The AP shows it proposed removing legal obligations for the financial sector to address environmental harms linked to its financing activities. Meanwhile, minutes from an EU meeting this October also seen by AP show France “spoke out against the proposal and against all options” then proposed on finance.

A source in the French negotiation team said on the phone, “France supports the exclusion of the financial sector from the scope of the directive.

“But France supports a certain number of dispositions that reinforce obligations of the financial sector in the framework of this directive.”

“We know companies are responsible for the vast majority of climate-wrecking emissions,” said Alban Grosdidier, of Friends of the Earth Europe. He warned the proposed changes would make the new law “weak and unenforceable.”

And Grosdidier said another clause, forcing companies to adhere to the Paris Agreement, would be left toothless by the changes. The European Parliament wants member states to ensure their companies implement a plan to limit global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. But the council’s preferred version would merely order companies to “adopt a plan” aligned with the Paris Agreement, along with some actions.

They also want to amend the enforcement of the bill to make clear that nations need only police whether plans have been “adopted.” The implication, campaigners say, is that these plans wouldn’t necessarily need to be delivered.

The leaked briefing shows the EU Presidency now prefers the weaker regulation, nonprofits warn. As a “proposed solution” to the standoff, it said companies should show an “obligation of means” to align with the Paris Agreement.

In legal terms, an “obligation of results” would have been much stronger, said Marion Lupin, a lawyer and policy officer at the European Coalition for Corporate Justice.

“Use of the phrase ‘obligation of means’ here has the effect of meaning companies only need to have a plan for aligning with Paris, as opposed to actually implementing that plan,” said Romain Hubert, a research fellow at Paris-based analysts the Institute for Climate Economics.

Friends of the Earth’s Grosdidier said the new proposed could even be counterproductive, as the adoption of a plan with no duty to implement was a “license to greenwash.”

A spokesman for the Spanish presidency of the EU Council declined to comment.

Ambassadors of member countries are due to discuss the new proposals Wednesday. If they agree on them, they will form the basis for the final negotiation with the European Parliament. Once negotiators from all side will have brokered a compromise, it will need to get formal approval from both the parliament and council to become a law across the bloc with about 450 million citizens.

——

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.

At opposite ends of the US, advocates demonstrate for Israel, labor and the environment

MARC RAMIREZ, USA TODAY
November 14, 2023 

Massive demonstrations are ongoing or imminent on opposite sides of the country this week as the world’s business leaders convene in California and supporters of Israel take to the streets in the nation’s capital.

Here's what to know.

World's economic leaders convene in San Francisco

In San Francisco, demonstrations were planned around the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s 2023 Economic Leaders Week event, which started Saturday and runs through Nov. 17. Government leaders of APEC’s 21 global member economies, which account for nearly half of global trade, will gather to discuss policy priorities aimed at ensuring “an interconnected, innovative and inclusive” Asia-Pacific region.

A silk-screen poster collective offering free posters at a protest march and rally on Sunday, November 12, 2023 in San Francisco against the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. The event runs from November 11 through 17th and features leaders from 21 member economies discussing trade and business.

The event will include a much anticipated face-to-face between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden, and Biden will chair what has become one of the world’s most significant economic summits, with subgroups of finance ministers and foreign and trade representatives hosted by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Trade Representative Katherine Tai, respectively.

More than 20,000 attendees are expected, and the event is expected to disrupt traffic, parking and public transportation patterns throughout areas of the city where the venues are located. Most will take place at the Moscone Center downtown.

Sunday, the No to APEC coalition conducted a “people’s counter summit” and along with Oil and Gas Action Network has demonstrations planned throughout the week. Neither group responded to USA TODAY inquiries about the protests, but an Oil and Gas Action Network spokesman told NBC that about 200 organizations are expected to visit the city in support of causes ranging from climate justice to labor rights.

“We must continue to respond to the push for neoliberal globalization across the Global South, especially Asia and the Pacific,” No to APEC said on its Instagram account.

The group has criticized APEC member economies for trade practices that it says suppress wages, force migration, plunder natural resources and destroy the environment while maximizing corporate profit.

Security bolstered with federal designation

Last month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security designated the APEC summit a National Special Security Event based on its significance, size and attendees, ensuring considerable federal resources would be deployed to put in place a robust security plan.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen welcomes Treasurer of Australia Jim Chalmers at the start of a bilateral meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit on November 12, 2023 in San Francisco, California. The APEC Summit is currently taking place through November 17. (Photo by Loren Elliott / AFP) (Photo by LOREN ELLIOTT/AFP via Getty Images)

The U.S. Secret Service said local security measures have also been heightened for the duration of the gathering. The area around the Moscone Center, for instance, will be fully locked down.

“While an event of this size will undoubtedly impact the people of San Francisco, the goal of the Secret Service and our law enforcement and public safety partners is to provide a secure environment while minimizing impact and inconveniences to residents and businesses,” said Jeremy Brown, the Secret Service’s APEC Summit coordinator assistant special agent-in-charge.

San Francisco’s emergency operations center said city leaders have been cooperating with the Secret Service, U.S. State Department and the White House to minimize public impact as much as possible.

San Francisco police have established areas beyond the secure zones “to ensure balance between the rights of individuals to exercise their First Amendment rights with public safety and event security.”

William Scott, San Francisco’s chief of police, said the entire force has been mobilized for the summit.

“Our message is simply this,” Scott said. “People are welcome to exercise their constitutional rights in San Francisco, but we will not tolerate people committing acts of violence, property destruction or any other crimes.”

Israel supporters to gather in Washington

Meanwhile, at the National Mall in Washington demonstrators will assemble Tuesday afternoon in support of Israel at an event organized by the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

The March for Israel is described as a chance to gather in solidarity with the Israeli people and demonstrate commitment to “America’s most important ally in the Middle East” while condemning rising antisemitic violence and harassment and demanding the safe release of 240 hostages Israel says are being held by Hamas and other militant groups.

Members of the Jewish community and supporters of Israel attend a rally calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas, in Times Square, New York on October 19, 2023. The US intelligence community has estimated there were likely 100 to 300 people killed in the strike at the Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza, according to excerpts of a document seen October 19, 2023 by AFP -- far fewer than the nearly 500 deaths that health authorities in the Hamas-ruled enclave originally described.More

In response to queries about what preparations the department was making for the march, Sgt. Adrian Channer, a spokesperson for Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, issued a statement.

“The Metropolitan Police Department is working closely with our local and federal partners to ensure safety and security surrounding First Amendment activities planned for Tuesday,” it said. “MPD does not provide specifics on operations, tactics or staffing.”

The ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas was sparked when Hamas militants breached the border and killed more than 1,400 mostly civilian Israelis on Oct. 7, taking hostages. Israel has since refused requests for a humanitarian cease-fire until the hostages are released.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli offensives have killed more than 10,500 Palestinians.

“Israel must eliminate the terrorist threat on its border and restore safety and security to its people,” Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, said in a press release. “…. As patriotic Americans, we will gather on the National Mall to ensure that the entire world knows that America supports the people of Israel in its time of need.”

'We rely on other communities'

William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents, said the march represents an extension of the group’s work defending the interests of Jewish people in the U.S. and abroad.

“Hamas’ brutal and ongoing acts of terror have no place in a civilized world and directly undermine global efforts to seek just and lasting peace in the Middle East,” Daroff said. “It’s imperative that America sends a resounding message of support to our ally that we stand in solidarity with the victims, hostages and their families.”

Among the groups that will be participating in the march is Maccabi USA, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that promotes Jewish pride and community for Jewish youth and young adults through athletic and cultural enrichment opportunities.

An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man walks outside the walls of the old city of Jerusalem, on which are projected pictures of the hostages abducted by Palestinian militants on the October 7 attack and currently held in the Gaza Strip, on Nov. 6, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas.

Dan Kurtz, the group’s senior director of strategic initiatives, said Maccabi USA’s involvement reflects a Jewish tradition of standing up for disenfranchised and marginalized groups but is especially crucial given a recent spike in antisemitic incidents.

“It’s also important because the answer to combatting any bias, whether it’s antisemitism or racism or bias against sexual preference, is never solely within the community itself,” Kurtz said. “We rely on other communities. So the march is an opportunity to put names and faces to the problems that the Jewish community is facing now – and hopefully to win some allies.”

The event, he said, also offers an opportunity to reclaim a sense of community for Maccabi alumni who may reside in places where there are small Jewish populations.

“In moments like this, where the Jewish community feels by and large that we’ve been abandoned by allies and peers, that organizations we stood up and marched for and with have turned their backs on us, it can be isolating and scary and make young people feel very alone,” Kurtz said. “It’s important for us to be at the march to give our alumni the opportunity to connect with the larger Jewish community.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Across US, activists march for Israel, climate health and labor rights