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Red state coal towns still power the West Coast. We can't just let them die

Sammy Roth

 Los Angeles Times
Tue, April 16, 2024 

The Colstrip coal plant lights up the night, generating power mostly for Oregon and Washington. 

LONG READ

In the early mornng light, it's easy to mistake the towering gray mounds for an odd-looking mountain range — pale and dull and devoid of life, some pine trees and shrublands in the foreground with lazy blue skies extending up beyond the peaks.

But the mounds aren't mountains.

They're enormous piles of dirt, torn from the ground by crane-like machines called draglines to open paths to the rich coal seams beneath. And even though we're in rural southeastern Montana, more than 800 miles from the Pacific Ocean, West Coast cities are largely to blame for the destruction of this landscape.


Workers at the Rosebud Mine load coal onto a conveyor belt, which carries the planet-wrecking fuel to a power plant in the small town next door. Plant operators in Colstrip burn the coal to produce electricity, much of which is shipped by power line to homes and businesses in the Portland and Seattle areas. It's been that way for decades.

"The West Coast markets are what created this," Anne Hedges says, as we watch a dragline move dirt.

An aerial view of the coal mine outside Colstrip that feeds the town's power plant. 

She sounds frustrated, and with good reason.

Hedges and her fellow Montana environmentalists were happy when Oregon and Washington passed laws requiring 100% clean energy in the next two decades. But they're furious that electric utilities in those states are planning to stick with coal for as long as the laws allow, and in some cases making deals to give away their Colstrip shares to co-owners who seem determined to keep the plant running long into the future.

"Coal is not dead yet," Hedges says. "It's still alive and well."

That's an uncomfortable reality for West Coasters critical of red-state environmental policies but not in the habit of urging their politicians to work across state lines to change them — especially when doing so might involve compromise with Republicans.

One example: California lawmakers have refused to pass bills that would make it easier to share clean electricity across the West, passing up the chance to spur renewable energy development in windy red states such as Montana and Wyoming — and to show them it's possible to create construction jobs and tax revenues with renewable energy, not just fossil fuels.

Instead, California has prioritized in-state wind and solar farms, bowing to the will of labor unions that want those jobs.

It's hard to blame Golden State politicians, and voters, for taking the easy path.

But global warming is a global problem — and whether we like it or not, the electric grid is a giant, interconnected machine. Coal plants in conservative states help fuel the ever-deadlier heat waves, fires and storms battering California and other progressive bastions. The electrons generated by those plants flow into a network of wires that keep the lights on across the American West.

Also important: Montana and other sparsely populated conservative states control two U.S. Senate seats each, and at least three electoral votes apiece in presidential elections. Additional federal support for clean energy rests partly in their hands.

Those are the practical considerations. Then there are the ethical ones.

For years, the West's biggest cities exported their emissions, building distant coal generators to fuel their explosive growth. Los Angeles looked to Delta, Utah. Phoenix turned to the Navajo Nation. Albuquerque turned to the Four Corners region.

That wave of coal plants — some still standing, some demolished — created well-paying jobs, lots of tax payments and a thriving way of life for rural towns and Native American tribes. All are now struggling to map out a future without fossil fuels.

Mule deer roam through the town of Colstrip, not far from the power plant.

What do big cities owe those towns and tribes for producing our power and living with our air and water pollution? Can we get climate change under control without putting them out of business? What's their role in the clean energy transition?

If they refuse to join the transition, how should we respond?

A team of Los Angeles Times journalists spent a week in Montana trying to answer those questions.

We explored the town of Colstrip, hearing from residents about how the coal plant and mine have made their prosperous lives possible. We talked with environmental activists who detailed the damage coal has caused, and with a fourth-generation rancher whose father fought in vain to stop the power plant from getting built — and wrote poems about his struggle.

Coal is going to die, sooner or later. For the sake of myself and other young people, I hope it's sooner.

And for the sake of places like Colstrip, I hope it's the beginning of a new chapter, not the end of the story.

Coal pays the bills. For now

For a community of 2,000 people, Colstrip doesn't lack for nice things.

The city is home to 32 public parks and a gorgeous community center, complete with child care, gym, spin classes, tanning booth and water slide. The spacious health clinic employs three nurses and two physical therapists, with a doctor coming to visit once a week. There's an artificial lake filled with Yellowstone River water and circled by a three-mile walking and biking trail.

Everybody knows where the good fortune comes from.

The high school pays homage to the source of Colstrip's wealth with the hashtag #MTCOAL emblazoned on the basketball court's sparkling floor. A sign over the entrance to campus celebrates the town's 2023 centennial: "100 Years of Colstrip. Powered by Coal, Strengthened by People."

"We have nothing to hide," Jim Atchison tells me. "We just hope that you give us a fair shake."

Jim Atchison steps out of his office in Colstrip. 

I couldn't have asked for a better tour guide than Atchison, who for 22 years has lived in Colstrip and led the Southeast Montana Economic Development Corp. He's soft-spoken and meticulous, with a detailed itinerary for our day and a less ironclad allegiance to coal than many of the locals we'll meet.

They include Bill Neumiller, a former environmental engineer at the power plant. We start our day with him, watching the sun rise over the smokestacks across the lake. He moved to Colstrip 40 years ago, when the coal plant was being built. He enjoys fishing in the well-stocked lake and teaching kids about its history, in his role as president of the parks district.

The plant, he says, pays the vast majority of the city's property taxes.

"It's been a great place to raise a family," he says.

So many people have similar stories — the general manager of a local electrical contractor, the administrator of the health clinic. I especially enjoy chatting with Amber and Gary Ramsey, who have run a Subway sandwich shop here for 30 years.

"It takes us two to three hours to get through the grocery store, because you know everybody," Gary says.

He didn't plan to spend his life here. Sitting at a table at Subway, he tells us he grew up in South Dakota and went to college in North Dakota before taking a job teaching math and coaching wrestling in Colstrip. He planned to stay for a year or two.

Then he met Amber, who was working part-time as a bartender and doing payroll at the coal plant.

"Forty years later, I'm still here," he says. "We raised our kids here."

The power plant's smokestacks are visible from miles away in the town of Colstrip. 

John Williams was one of the first Montana Power Co. employees to move to Colstrip, as planning for the plant's construction got started. Today he's the mayor. He's well-versed in local history, from the first coal mining in the 1920s — which supplied railroads that later switched to diesel — to the economic revitalization when the Portland and Seattle areas came calling.

Unlike many of the other Colstrip lifers who share their stories, several of Williams' kids have left town. But one of his sons lives in a part of Washington where some of the electricity comes from Colstrip. Same for another son who lives in Idaho.

It's hard for Williams to imagine a viable future for his home without the power plant.

"I believe they are intimately tied together," he says.

And what about climate change, I ask?

Nearly everyone in Colstrip has a version of the same answer: Even if it's real, it's not nearly as bad as liberals claim. And without coal power, blackouts will reign. West Coast city-dwellers don't understand how badly they need us here in Montana.

Atchison is an exception.

Yes, he's dubious about climate science. And yes, he wants to save the mine and power plant. His office is plastered with pro-coal messages — a sign that says, "Coal Pays the Bills," a magnet reading, "Prove you're against coal mining: Turn off your electricity."

But he knows the market for coal is shrinking as the nation's most populous cities and most profitable companies increasingly demand climate-friendly energy. So he's preparing for a future in which Colstrip has no choice but to start providing it.

"We have one horse in the barn now," Atchison says. "We need to add two or three more horses to the barn."

A conveyor belts carries coal from the Rosebud Mine to the Colstrip power plant. 

Ever since President Obama started trying to tighten regulations on coal power, Atchison has been developing and implementing an economic diversification strategy for Colstrip. It involves expanding broadband capacity, building a business innovation center and broadening the local energy economy beyond coal. The transmission lines connecting Colstrip with the Pacific Northwest are an especially valuable asset, capable of sending huge amounts of clean electricity to the Pacific coast.

"Colstrip is evolving from a coal community into an energy community," Atchison says. "We're changing. We're not closing."

Already, Montana's biggest wind farm is shipping electricity west via the Colstrip lines. A Houston company is planning another power line that would run from Colstrip to North Dakota. Federal researchers are studying whether Colstrip's coal units could be replaced with advanced nuclear reactors, or with a gas-fired power plant capable of capturing and storing its climate pollution.

West Coast voters and politicians could speed up the evolution, for Colstrip and other coal towns. Instead of just congratulating themselves for getting out of coal, they could fund training programs and invest in clean energy projects in those towns.

They'll never fully replace the ample jobs, salaries and tax revenues currently provided by coal. But nothing lasts forever. One hundred years is a pretty good run.

Some inconvenient truths

"Great God, how we're doin'! We're rolling in dough,

As they tear and they ravage The Earth.

And nobody knows...or nobody cares...

About things of intrinsic worth."

—Wally McRae, "Things of Intrinsic Worth" (1989)

Growing up outside Colstrip in the 1970s could lead to strange moments for Clint McRae, the son of a cowboy poet.

He was a teenager then, and Montana Power Co. was working to build public support for Units 3 and 4 of the coal plant. One day his eighth-grade teacher instructed everyone who supported the new coal-fired generators to stand on one side of the classroom. Everyone opposed should stand on the other side.

McRae was the only student opposed.

"And then [the teacher] gave a lecture about how important the construction of these plants was and handed out bumper stickers that said, 'Support Colstrip Units 3 and 4,'" McRae tells me, shaking his head. "It was terribly uncomfortable."

Rancher Clint McRae was raised outside Colstrip and has followed in his father's footsteps. 

Later, his mom was doing laundry and found a pro-coal bumper sticker in his pants pocket. She showed it to his cattle rancher father, Wally, "and I guess he went over there [to the school] and kicked ass and took names," McRae says with a laugh.

Fifty years later, he's carrying on his dad's legacy.

We spend a morning in the Colstrip area on McRae's sprawling ranch, admiring sandstone rock formations and herds of black angus cows. The scenery is harsh but elegant, rolling hills and pale green grasses and pink-streaked horizon lines.

"This country has a sharp edge to it," McRae says, quoting a photographer who visited the property years ago.

The land has been in his family since the 1880s, when his great-grandfather immigrated from Scotland. He hopes his youngest daughter — who recently moved back home with her husband — will be the fifth generation to raise cattle here.

"And we just had a grandchild seven months ago, and she's the sixth," he says.

Rancher Clint McRae contemplates the environmental threats facing his family's land. 

McRae wears a cowboy hat and drives a pickup truck. He tells me right away that he's "not the kind of person who participates in government programs unless I absolutely have to." He's certainly got no qualms about making a living selling beef.

But McRae and his forebears defy stereotypes.

His father, Wally, not only raised cows but was also a celebrated poet, appointed by President Clinton to the National Council on the Arts. In the 1970s, he joined with other ranchers to help found Northern Plains Resource Council, an advocacy group. They were moved to act by a utility industry plan for nearly two dozen coal plants between Colstrip and Gillette, Wyo.

"I and others like me will not allow our land to be destroyed merely because it is convenient for the coal company to tear it up," Wally McRae said, as quoted in a 50th-anniversary book published by Northern Plains.

Now in his late 80s and retired from the ranch, Wally's got every reason to be proud of his son.

Clint has fought to limit pollution from the coal plant his dad couldn't stop — and to ensure the cleanup of dangerous chemicals already emitted by the plant and mine. He's written articles calling for stronger regulation of coal waste, and slamming laws that critics say would let coal companies pollute water with impunity. Like his father, he's a member of Northern Plains.

McRae wants me to know that even though he and his dad "damn sure have a difference of opinion" with many of the people who live in town, "it was never personal." The coal-plant employees are friends of his. He doesn't want them to lose their jobs.

"Our kids went to school together, played sports together," he says.

Rancher Clint McRae opens a gate on his family's land outside Colstrip.

But even though McRae believes "we can have it both ways" — coal generation coupled with environmental protection — he's not optimistic. And history suggests he's right to be skeptical. Various analyses have found rampant groundwater contamination from coal plants, including Colstrip. Air pollution is another deadly concern. A peer-reviewed study last year estimated that fine-particle emissions from coal plants killed 460,000 Americans between 1999 and 2020.

Then there's the climate crisis.

McRae doesn't want to talk about global warming — "that's not my bag," he says. But he's seen firsthand what it can look like.

In August 2021, the Richard Spring fire tore across 171,000 acres, devastating much of his ranch and nearly torching both of his family's houses. He was on the front lines of the fast-moving blaze as part of the local volunteer firefighting crew. Temperatures topped 100 degrees, adding to the strain of dry conditions and fierce winds. McRae had never seen anything like it.

Two and a half years later, he's still building back up his cattle numbers and letting the grass regrow.

"It burned all of our hay. It was awful," he says.

McRae has a strong sense of history. As we drive toward the Tongue River, which forms a boundary of his ranch, he points out where members of the Arapaho, Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne tribes camped before the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, a few years ahead of his great-grandfather's arrival in Montana. A few minutes later he stops to show off a series of tipi rings — artifacts of Indigenous life that he's promised local tribes he'll protect.

McRae is acutely aware that this wasn't always ranchland — and that it probably won't be forever.

"It's gonna change," he says. "Whether we embrace it or not."

The wind and the water

Sturgeon. Bubbles. Salamander. Jimmy Neutron.

Those are "call signs" for some of the 13 employees at the Clearwater wind farm, where 131 turbines are spread across 94 square miles of Montana ranchland a few hours north of Colstrip. The nicknames are scrawled on a whiteboard in the trailer office.

Raptor. Goose. Sandman.

Clearly, they have fun here. And it's an industry where you can make good money.

Turbines spin at sundown at NextEra Energy's Clearwater wind farm, which sends power from Montana to Oregon and Washington.

Clearwater's operator, Florida-based NextEra Energy, won't disclose a salary range. But as of 2022, the median annual wage for a U.S. wind turbine technician working in electric power was $59,890, compared with $46,310 for all occupations nationally.

"If someone wants to stay close to home and still have a good career, we provide them that opportunity," Alex Vineyard says.

Vineyard lives in nearby Miles City and manages Clearwater for NextEra, America's largest renewable energy company. Clad in a hard hat, sweater vest and orange work gloves, he drives to a nearby turbine and walks up a staircase to show us the machinery inside. The tower is 374 feet high, meaning the tips of the blades reach 582 feet into the air.

Not far from here, hundreds of construction laborers are finishing the next two phases of the Clearwater project.

Alex Vineyard manages the Clearwater wind farm for NextEra, America's largest renewable energy company.

"You can see where we build wind sites. It's not downtown L.A.," Vineyard says, the sunset casting a brilliant orange glow behind him. "Generally it's rural areas — and there are limited opportunities for kids in those areas. Not a lot of great careers."

Wind will never replace coal. The construction jobs are temporary, the permanent jobs far fewer.

But they're better than nothing. A lot better.

As much as West Coast megacities owe it to coal towns like Colstrip to bring them along for the clean energy ride, coal towns like Colstrip owe it to themselves to take what they can get — and not let stubbornness or politics condemn them to oblivion.

Fortunately, they've got the power grid on their side.

In today's highly regulated, thoroughly litigated world, long-distance power lines are incredibly hard to build. They can take years if not decades to secure all the necessary approvals — if they can get those approvals at all. As a result, wind and solar developers prize existing transmission lines, like those built to carry power from Colstrip and other coal plants to big cities.

The Clearwater wind farm offers a telling case study.

Two of Colstrip's four coal units shut down in 2020 due to poor economics, opening up precious space on the plant's power lines. That open space made it easier for NextEra to sign contracts to sell hundreds of megawatts of wind power to two of Colstrip's co-owners, Portland General Electric and Puget Sound Energy — and thus get Clearwater built.

An electrical substation flanks the Colstrip power plant. 

Montana wind is especially useful for Oregon and Washington because it blows strongest during winter, when those states need lots of energy to stay warm. On that front, Clearwater has been a huge success. During its first winter, it had a capacity factor of 60%, meaning it produced 60% of all the power it could possibly produce, if there were enough wind 24/7.

Sixty percent is a lot — "like a home run," Puget Sound Energy executive Ron Roberts says.

He and his colleagues want more. Puget Sound plans to build more Montana wind turbines to serve its Washington customers — again taking advantage of the Colstrip power lines.

West Coast states need to keep investing in exactly this type of project if they hope to persuade their conservative neighbors to stop fighting to save coal. The more they can bring the benefits of wind and solar power to the rest of the West, the better.

And what about those low-wind, cloudy days when wind turbines and solar panels aren't enough to avoid blackouts?

Carl Borgquist has a plan for that.

I meet up with him near Gordon Butte — a flat-topped landmass that juts up 1,025 feet from the floor of Montana's Musselshell River valley, four hours west of Colstrip but just over five miles from the coal plant's power lines. There are already wind turbines atop the butte, built by the landowning Galt family with Borgquist's help.

Borgquist assures me as we drive to the top that I'll soon understand why this steep butte is perfect for energy storage.

"It will intuitively make sense, the elegance and simplicity of gravity as a storage medium," he says.

Carl Borgquist admires the views from atop Gordon Butte, where he's got plans for a pumped storage project to augment Montana wind power. 

There will be two reservoirs — one up on the butte, another 1,000 feet below. They'll be filled with water from a nearby creek.

During times of day when there's extra power on the Western electric grid — maybe temperatures are moderate in Portland and Seattle, but Montana winds are blowing strong — the Gordon Butte project will use that extra juice to pump water uphill, from the lower reservoir to the upper reservoir. During times of day when the grid needs more power — maybe there's a record heat wave, and not enough wind to go around — Gordon Butte will let water flow downhill, generating electricity.

It's called pumped storage, and it's not a new concept. But compared with other proposals across the parched West, this one is almost miraculously noncontroversial. No environmentalists making hay over water use. No nearby residents crying foul.

Borgquist still needs to sign up a utility customer, or he would have already flipped Gordon Butte to a developer better suited to build the $1.5-billion project, which will employ 300 to 500 people during construction. But Borgquist is confident that before too long, one or two of the Pacific Northwest electric utilities preparing to ditch Colstrip will see the light.

"I've been waiting for the market to catch up to me," he says.

Let's hope it catches up soon. Because even though pumped storage won't keep us heated and cooled and well-lit every hour of every day, neither will wind, or solar, or batteries, or anything else. No one technology will solve all our climate problems.

The sooner we learn that lesson, the sooner we can move on to the hard part.

The Colstrip power lines run near Gordon Butte, carrying coal-fired electricity — and increasingly wind energy — from Montana to Oregon and Washington.

The art of the deal

I find myself wandering the halls of the state Capitol in Helena. Christmas is a few weeks away, and there's a spectacular tree beneath the massive dome, flanked by murals of white settlers and Indigenous Americans.

On a whim, I step into Gov. Greg Gianforte's office and ask if he's in. Gianforte has fought to keep the Colstrip plant open, and I want to ask him about it. I'm also curious to meet a man who easily won election despite having assaulted a journalist.

One of his representatives takes down my contact info. I never get an interview.

Despite the state's deep-red turn in recent years, Montanans have a history of environmental consciousness, owing to their love of fishing, hunting and the great outdoors (as seen in the film "A River Runs Through It"). They approved a new state constitution in 1972 that enshrined the right to a "clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations."

To the frustration of Gianforte and his supporters, that right may include a stable climate.

This time last year, a Montana judge revoked the permit for a gas-fired power plant being built by the state's largest electric utility, NorthWestern Energy, along the banks of the Yellowstone River. The judge ruled that the state agency charged with approving the gas plant had failed to consider how the facility's heat-trapping carbon emissions would contribute to the climate crisis.

NorthWestern Energy says this gas-fired power plant on the Yellowstone River is needed to help keep the lights on for homes and businesses. 

Legislators responded by rushing to pass a law that barred state agencies from considering climate impacts.

The Yellowstone River gas plant moved forward, but the law didn't last long. A few months after it passed, another judge ruled in favor of 16 young people suing the state over global warming, agreeing that the legislation violated their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.

"This is such a solvable problem," says Hedges, the Montana environmentalist critical of coal mining. "It's just that nobody wants to solve it."

Hedges is a leader of the Montana Environmental Information Center, where she's spent three decades battling for clean air, clean water and a healthy climate. It was her advocacy group, along with the Sierra Club, that sued Montana over the state's approval of the Yellowstone River gas plant, setting off the chain of increasingly consequential court rulings.

But as mad as she is at Gianforte — and at the local utility company executives who insist they need coal to keep the lights on in Montana — Hedges is at her most caustic when discussing the Pacific Northwest environmentalists who, in her view, have failed to do everything they can to get the Colstrip power plant shut down.

That includes the Sierra Club, which, Hedges says, has shifted its focus too quickly from shutting down coal plants to blocking the construction of new gas plants — even in places such as Montana, where coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, isn't dead yet.

Hedges' frustration also includes the Washington state lawmakers who passed a much-lauded bill, signed by Gov. Jay Inslee, requiring electric utilities to stop buying coal power by 2025 — only to sit idly by as some of those utilities then made arrangements to give away their shares in the Colstrip plant to coal-friendly co-owners rather than negotiate agreements to shut the coal units.

"So they're not actually decreasing carbon dioxide emissions even a little tiny bit. They are allowing this plant to continue, instead of using their vote to close this source of pollution. It's maddening," Hedges says.

A lone tumbleweed blows through piles of coal at the Rosebud Mine outside Colstrip, a few miles from the power plant. Coal is prepped for transport at the mine. Coal is transferred to a truck at the mine. 

Washington officials say they tried to get Colstrip shut down but were stymied by the plant's complicated six-company ownership structure, and by the Montana Legislature's staunch support for coal. Sierra Club activists, meanwhile, say they're still pushing for Colstrip's closure, and for coal shutdowns across the country — even as they also oppose the construction of gas plants.

"From a climate perspective, gas is just as bad as coal," says Laurie Williams, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign.

To avoid a future of ever-more-dangerous fires, floods and heat, we need to ditch both fossil fuels — fast.

This is the hard part. This is the part that will require compromise — for conservatives who believe anything smacking of climate change is woke liberal propaganda, and for liberals who want nothing to do with conservatives spouting that belief.

So how do we do it? How do we stop clashing and start cooperating?

First off, West Coasters need to engage in good faith with the people who have supplied their power for decades — and strike deals that might persuade those red staters to move on from coal. Deals like building more wind farms in Montana and not as many back home, even if that means fewer union jobs and lower tax revenues for California, Oregon and Washington.

It's great that the coastal states are targeting 100% clean energy, but it's not enough. They must bring the rest of the West along for the ride, or it won't matter. Every solar farm in California is undermined by every ton of coal burned at Colstrip.

The lesson for folks who live in Colstrip and other Western coal towns, might be even more difficult to swallow.

L.A. and Phoenix and Portland have funded your comfortable lifestyles a long time. Now they want something different.


If Colstrip wants to stick around, it needs to start offering something different.

Climate activist Anne Hedges stands in a public park near the Colstrip power plant. 

It's easy to see why that's a scary prospect. After we finish exploring the coal mine with Hedges, we drive into town and stop at one of the immaculately maintained public parks. The power plant's two active smokestacks aren't far, looming 692 feet over a swing set and red-and-blue bench with the letters "USA" carved into the backing.

"The climate doesn't care who owns the power plant," Hedges says, as steam and carbon and soot spew from the stacks.

The climate won't care any more when Houston-based Talen Energy — which operates the plant, and which didn't respond to requests for a tour or interview — becomes the facility's largest owner next year, acquiring Puget Sound Energy's shares.

Our ability to solve this problem doesn't depend on which company is profiting off all that coal.

What it does depend on is our willingness to make hard choices, ranchers and miners and activists setting aside their differences and writing the West's next chapter together, rather than fighting so long and so hard that the tale ends badly for everyone.

Change is scary. But it's inevitable. Cowboy poet Wally McRae learned that the hard way.

Maybe 50 years from now, his great-grandchildren will wax poetic about the beauty of Colstrip without coal.

The early-morning sky glows red over the town of Colstrip. 

(PHOTOS: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

US Supreme Court makes it easier to sue for job discrimination over forced transfers

MARK SHERMAN
Updated Wed, April 17, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it easier for workers who are transferred from one job to another against their will to pursue job discrimination claims under federal civil rights law, even when they are not demoted or docked pay.

Workers only have to show that the transfer resulted in some, but not necessarily significant, harm to prove their claims, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court.

The justices unanimously revived a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by a St. Louis police sergeant after she was forcibly transferred, but retained her rank and pay.

Sgt. Jaytonya Muldrow had worked for nine years in a plainclothes position in the department's intelligence division before a new commander reassigned her to a uniformed position in which she supervised patrol officers. The new commander wanted a male officer in the intelligence job and sometimes called Muldrow “Mrs.” instead of “sergeant,” Kagan wrote.

Muldrow sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin. Lower courts had dismissed Muldrow's claim, concluding that she had not suffered a significant job disadvantage.

“Today, we disapprove that approach,” Kagan wrote. “Although an employee must show some harm from a forced transfer to prevail in a Title VII suit, she need not show that the injury satisfies a significance test.”

Kagan noted that many cases will come out differently under the lower bar the Supreme Court adopted Wednesday. She pointed to cases in which people lost discrimination suits, including those of an engineer whose new job site was a 14-by-22-foot wind tunnel, a shipping worker reassigned to exclusively nighttime work and a school principal who was forced into a new administrative role that was not based in a school.

Although the outcome was unanimous, Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas each wrote separate opinions noting some level of disagreement with the majority's rationale in ruling for Muldrow.

Madeline Meth, a lawyer for Muldrow, said her client will be thrilled with the outcome. Meth, who teaches at Boston University's law school, said the decision is a big win for workers because the court made "clear that employers can’t decide the who, what, when, where and why of a job based on race and gender.”

The decision revives Muldrow's lawsuit, which now returns to lower courts. Muldrow contends that, because of sex discrimination, she was moved to a less prestigious job, which was primarily administrative and often required weekend work, and she lost her take-home city car.

“If those allegations are proved,” Kagan wrote, “she was left worse off several times over.”

The case is Muldrow v. St.Louis, 22-193.

___

Associated Press writer Alexandra Olson contributed to this article from New York.

Leafhopper Swarms Threaten Argentina Crops and Economic Recovery

Jonathan Gilbert
Wed, Apr 17, 2024


(Bloomberg) -- Argentina corn farmers had high hopes for this season’s harvest after near-perfect weather conditions ended years of drought. A record crop would also bode well for President Javier Milei’s plan to turn around the nation’s embattled economy

Now a bug is getting in the way.

Corn farmers are seeing their fields ravaged by a plague of leafhopper insects. The infestation is slashing production potential for the world’s third-largest exporter of corn just as harvesting gathers speed.

Swarms of the tiny insects — spreading a disease on plants called spiroplasma — have grown so vast across the Pampas crop belt that analysts at the Rosario Board of Trade will likely continue to trim their output estimate.

“There’s concern that the damage will keep increasing as the crop cycle progresses,” they wrote in a report, after calling the widespread impact of the pest “unprecedented.”

It’s a severe setback for a country still recovering from the worst drought in living memory. Farming is a huge component of Argentina’s economic activity, and its central bank desperately needs crop export dollars in the second quarter to boost its reserves of hard currency in order to scrap money controls.

The controls were designed to protect the peso, but they’re counterproductive for the broader economy. Milei, who’s served as president since December, has vowed to ditch them as he moves to free up business and lure investment.

Argentina’s corn and soybean harvests are just getting started. Prospects earlier in the year were for a record corn crop of 56.5 million metric tons, but that forecast has since plunged 12% to 49.5 million, according to the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange.

There are also some problems for soy: Rains have been hampering field work, and delays to the harvest could reduce the quality of the crop, with subsequent discounts to prices paid by traders.

“If the forecast for more rains is right, the harvest pace will slow,” said Bruno Ferrari, a researcher at the Rosario bourse. “We’ll see damage from excess moisture, affecting quality, and potentially a cut to our national production estimate.”

Argentina is the world’s biggest supplier of soy meal and soy oil.

Deformed Corn

Meanwhile, attacks by leafhoppers are choking the internal workings of corn plants, causing deformities and ultimately reducing the number and size of corn kernels that farmers truck to ports.

In the prime swath of farmland, known as zona nucleo, average corn yields are expected to plunge by roughly a third, to six metric tons a hectare. Before the leafhopper plague, they were due to be around nine tons.

In powerhouse farming province Cordoba, production is now seen 26% lower than last month and is expected to keep falling, with month-on-month cash losses exceeding $1.1 billion, according to the regional grain exchange.

In the northern province of Santiago del Estero, German Esponda, an agronomist from the town of Bandera, said the full extent of the damage hasn’t been computed. “This movie isn’t over yet,” he said.

Late-planted corn, which isn’t yet ready for harvest, is most affected. That’s bad news since two thirds of Argentine corn acreage is now late-planted, a strategy that’s developed to combat drier weather.

“My latest corn, planted in January, was younger and weaker when the leafhoppers came, so those yields could fall by half,” said Daniel Calaon, a farmer in Serodino in the zona nucelo.

Calaon is also struggling to collect his soybeans because of the rains. “It’s too wet to get tractors in the field,” he said. “We may lose some acreage and it’s very likely we’ll see quality losses.”

For Argentina, these curbs to production are compounding low global prices for both corn and soy. The combination will be detrimental to export revenue, with $4.5 billion wiped from the estimated value of Argentine crop shipments from December to March, according to Rosario. The revenue losses have grown in recent weeks as the leafhopper swarms intensified, said researcher Ferrari.

To be sure, smaller corn harvests in Argentina and neighboring Brazil haven’t yet been fully factored in at the US Department of Agriculture. When they are, it could fuel an uptick in corn prices that are trading at three-year lows, although demand is soft.

Further out, Milei’s plans to open up the economy could see headwinds from a La Nina climate pattern that’s forming in the Pacific Ocean. La Nina usually brings drought to Argentina and could shrink the 2025 harvest.

 Bloomberg Businessweek

Humans Sheltered in This Lava Tube for Thousands of Years

Isaac Schultz

GIZMONDO
Wed, April 17, 2024 

The mouth of the Umm Jirsan lava tube. - Photo: Green Arabia Project


Three needs are famously fundamental to survival: food, water, and shelter. According to new research, ancient humans had at least two of those three needs met by a nearly mile-long lava tube about 77 miles (125 kilometers) north of Medina, Saudi Arabia, for at least 7,000 years.

The lava tube in question is named Umm Jirsan, the longest of the lava tubes in Saudi Arabia’s volcanic field, Harrat Khaybar. Today, wolves, foxes, and snakes inhabit the cave, but it was once a popular spot forhuman pastoralists and their domesticated animals. The new study, published today in the journal PLoS One, examined faunal remains and rock art in the region and adds to a growing body of research into the system.

“The findings at Umm Jirsan provide a new type of archaeological site in the region, and one where organic material like bone and deeply layered sediments are much better preserved,” said Mathew Stewart, a zooarchaeologist at Griffith University in Australia and the study’s lead author, in an email to Gizmodo. “We had no expectations to find archaeology at Umm Jirsan. In fact, we were mostly interested in seeing the large caches of bones that had been previously reported.”


Indeed, a team that included Stewart found evidence in 2021 that striped hyenas were creating bone caches in the back of the cave. There are hundreds of thousands of bones in Umm Jirsan, the team found, belonging to at least 40 species and dating from the Neolithic to as recently as the Victorian Era.

Though the oldest dated faunal remains in the cave are about 7,000 years old, Stewart told Gizmodo that animals have likely used the lava tubes since they formed, millions of years ago. Seven of the lava flows in Harrat Khaybar are less than 1,500 years old, according to the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program, and the region still has the potential for activity, according to a 2022 study.

The interior of the lava tube. - Photo: Green Arabia Project

In their new paper, the researchers reported evidence for human occupation of the lava tube between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age—in other words, humans made use of the tube for millennia. Isotopic analysis of the human remains in the cave revealed an increase of foods in their diet that had high levels of a certain isotope of carbon associated with oasis agriculture.

But the team concluded that Umm Jirsan was probably not permanently occupied. Rather, they think it was a convenient spot for herders to stop and provide their flocks with shade and water. Based on human use of the surrounding area—evinced by nearby rock art and other faunal records—the team posited that the lava tube “was situated along a pastoral route linking key oases.” So you can think of Umm Jirsan more as an ancient truck stop than a place of residence.

The rock art described by the team was found at a nearby collapsed lava tube northeast of Umm Jirsan. The researchers reported 16 rock art panels depicting cattle, sheep, goats, and possibly ibexes.

Even though humans didn’t have a permanent presence in the lava tube, the natural structure provided shelter for people and their herds for thousands of years. In the harsh desert environment, the promise of a break from the sun, wind, and heat would’ve made Umm Jirsan a perfect prehistoric pit stop.

Humans were living in a lava tube 7,000 years ago on the Arabian Peninsula

Owen Jarus

LIVE SCIENCE
Wed, April 17, 202

A large cave-like lava tube that is dark and underground. We see a researcher with a light in the corner

Archaeologists in Saudi Arabia have discovered that humans were living in a lava tube at least 7,000 years ago and possibly earlier, a new study finds.

The lava tube, called Umm Jirsan, is located in a volcanic field called Harrat Khaybar, approximately 78 miles (125 kilometers) north of Medina, researchers said in a statement.

"Umm Jirsan is currently the longest reported lava tube in Arabia in terms of the horizontal length of passages, at 1481 metres [4,859 feet]," the scientists wrote in the paper published Wednesday (April 17) in the journal PLOS One.

Although ancient humans are known to have lived on the Arabian Peninsula during prehistoric times, organic remains are scant due to poor preservation in the arid region. So the researchers looked for areas that would have preserved artifacts because they were sheltered from the sun, wind and wild temperature changes over the past millennia. Umm Jirsan met these criteria, so the team decided to look there.

Their hunch turned out to be good. They found artifacts such as fragments of cloth and worked wood; rock art of domesticated animals; and the skeletal remains of nine human bones. These finds suggest that people occupied the lava tuba for at least the past 7,000 years and possibly as far back as 10,000 years, according to radiocarbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence dating, which examines when the last time certain minerals were exposed to heat or sunlight. Some of the dates are relatively recent and the tube appears to have been used into modern times, Stewart said.

The humans who used the lava tube left a few clues about their lives. These include bones of domesticated sheep and goats, as well as rock art depicting these animals, suggesting that these creatures were key to the humans' survival. A chemical analysis of the human remains showed an increase in certain plants, like cereals and fruits, over time — possibly because of a rise in oasis agriculture in the Bronze Age, the team said in the statement.

The analysis suggested that humans weren't living in the lava tube for long periods at a time, however. "The lava tube does not appear to have served as a permanent habitation location, but rather as a site that likely lay on herding routes and that allowed access to shade and water for passing herders and their animals," the authors wrote in the study. "Prior to this, as well as during pastoral periods, the lava tube was likely also linked with hunting activities, which probably remained a cornerstone of local economies into the Bronze Age."

Lava tubes form when lava creates underground passages that can transport large quantities of molten rock; when the lava supply ends or if the lava is diverted elsewhere, the empty tube is left behind, according to the National Park Service. And while they may sound inhospitable, they can be a good source of shelter. For instance, scientists at JAXA, Japan's space agency, have suggested that future humans could live in lava tubes on the moon.

Study co-author Mathew Stewart, a research fellow at the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University in Australia, said lava tubes like this one continue to be used by modern-day people in the region "whether it be for corralling animals, accessing water resources, or simply for leisure," Stewart told Live Science in an email.

Related: 4,000-year-old wall found around oasis in Saudi Arabia likely defended 'against raids from nomads'


We see 8 square images. The top four are of rock art of sheep, goats, people, long-horned cattle and an ibex. The bottom four are digital enhancements of the top four.

It's difficult to say when Umm Jirsan was last filled with lava, Stewart said, although volcanic activity has occurred intermittently in the region. "There have been some 1500 volcanic eruptions in Arabia over the past 1500 years, and many more in antiquity," Stewart said.

Scholars not involved with the research spoke positively of the team's work. It is "wonderful work by this team that has made a strong reputation for excellent fieldwork and interpretation," Gary Rollefson, a professor emeritus of anthropology at Whitman College and San Diego State University, told Live Science in an email. "Although the excavation produced relatively little in the way of artifacts and faunal remains, the material nevertheless reveals strong connections of material recovered in other parts of northern Saudi Arabia," Rollefson said, noting that there are similarities with material excavated in parts of Jordan.

Anthony Sinclair, a professor of archaeological theory and method at the University of Liverpool in the U.K., said in an email that in addition to providing shelter, the lava tube also would have been a "defendable position — in terms of allowing the pastoralists to safeguard their flocks at night against local predators. There would have been wolves, hyena and quite possibly lion and leopard across Arabia." Today, some of these animals are endangered or no longer present in Arabia.

FRACKING BY ANY OTHER NAME...

US Geothermal Sector Gears Up for Commercial Liftoff

Velda Addison
Wed, Apr 17, 2024

What’s green, present just about everywhere —but has a small footprint and must be scaled with existing technology– a built-in workforce and an attractive value proposition?

 The Earth’s crust.

More specifically, it’s geothermal energy—and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) says the nation is positioned to produce up to 5 gigawatts (GW) of the clean energy power source across a handful of states. But it will take between $20 billion and $25 billion in investment to get reached that power threshold by 2030. To produce an additional 90 GW to 130 GW across more states by 2050 could require up to another $250 billion.

DOE experts say it’s possible. They discussed the potential for next-generation geothermal power and the department’s pathways to commercial liftoff report on a recent webinar.

“We think this is absolutely feasible because next gen geothermal has some unique and really significant starting advantages,” said Vanessa Chan, chief commercialization officer and director of the DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions.

For starters, there’s a secure and established supply chain not impacted by geopolitics and pandemics, she said. Plus, oil and gas sector employees are equipped with skillsets to build and operate geothermal systems, and the technology already exists to make it happen.

“We’re pretty much ready to roll and scale as quickly as investment dollars are ready, and that is not the case for all the different clean energy technologies,” Chan said. “And when we say next-gen geothermal is clean, we mean it’s really, really squeaky clean. Once the well is drilled, no additional energy is required. That means there are no fuel costs or emissions. And most next-generation projects will have no secondary emissions of any kind.”

Geothermal energy harnesses heat belowground using wells to drill into reservoirs. The heat extracted can be used to heat or cool homes and buildings via direct use heat, or to generate electricity with higher temperature geothermal resources.

Besides being a renewable energy source, geothermal power plants provide baseload power —meaning they consistently produce electricity—regardless of weather conditions. Plus, their footprints are relatively small compared to other forms of renewable energy such as solar and wind.

Targeting next-gen

Unlike conventional geothermal, which doesn’t need much engineering to produce power by harnessing heat from naturally-occurring fractures in hot rock, next-generation geothermal energy uses existing oil and gas technologies (enhanced geothermal) or closed loop systems (advanced geothermal) to generate electricity from anywhere.

“A lot of people are familiar with conventional geothermal, where we tap the reservoirs of steam and hot water that occur naturally beneath the Earth’s surface. These energy resources are great, but geographically limited and hard to find,” said Jigar Shah, director of the DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO). “That’s why while we have the largest geothermal industry in the world, the U.S. currently only gets about 4 gigawatts of energy from conventional geothermal today. Instead of hunting for naturally occurring reservoirs in just a few locations, next-gen geothermal technologies make their own reservoirs using the hot rock that’s everywhere beneath the Earth’s surface.”

Enhanced geothermal systems require no new technology, considering hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling already exist. Modular deployment of multi-well pairs enables this model to scale, Shah said.

With closed-loop systems, fluids circulate through a series of closed wellbore loops, scalable through module deployment and increased wellbore length, he added.

Both have resource potential of more than 5 terawatts of energy.

The good news is that the industry is seeing progress in both.

(Source: U.S. Department of Energy’s Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Next-Generation Geothermal Power)
Making progress

The DOE-sponsored Utah FORGE project, an international field laboratory managed by the Energy & Geoscience Institute at the University of Utah, is among those moving the sector forward.

Melissa Klembara, director of portfolio strategy for the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, pointed out how Utah FORGE’s work has enabled improvements in costs, well stimulation and drilling times—all among the areas that have challenged geothermal’s growth in the past.

“These commercial demonstration projects out there now are now matching FORGE’s drilling speeds, which is really great news to see,” she said.

Earlier this year, Fervo Energy said it reduced its drilling time by 70% with its Cape Station drilling campaign compared to its Project Red campaign in 2022. The reduced drilling time can be attributed to the use of modern oil and gas drilling equipment, including polycrystalline diamond compact drill bits.

The company also said costs for the first four wells in a six-well drilling program dropped by about 50% to $4.8 million per well from $9.4 million per well. The campaign, which included one vertical well, reached depths as great as 14,000 ft amid high temperatures.

RELATED

Oil, Gas Drilling Tech Transfer Boosts Fervo’s Geothermal Prowess

Advanced geothermal company Eavor Technologies is also making notable progress. The Canada-based company’s technology operates on a closed-loop system, so it doesn’t require fracking or water consumption. The DOE singled out Eavor’s successes, including a pilot loop in Alberta and a deep drilling demonstration in New Mexico, in the liftoff report.

“Success at this stage has enabled Eavor Technologies to develop the first ever large-scale demonstration of closed loop geothermal, in Geretsried, Germany, which is scheduled to produce about 8 MW of power from four loops drilled to about 3 miles’ depth in 2027,” according to the report. “Eavor anticipates drilling over 220 miles of borehole in total for the Geretsried, Germany, demonstration project.”
Bridging the gap

Liftoff analysis shows that next generation technologies could expand geothermal power by more than a factor of 20, Shah said. That would provide 90 GW or more that are clean and firm to the grid by 2050 across the U.S.

Shah said the $20 billion to $25 billion in investment needed to reach between 2 GW and 5 GW of geothermal energy in the U.S. is actually low compared to other technologies trying to become bankable, thanks to a mature oil and gas drilling industry.

“Once banks know what to expect from next-generation geothermal projects, they can start providing financing earlier and earlier in project development, which can really change the economics and help this industry start to get real scale,” he said. “We know firsthand at LPO how catalytic early financing can be in projects, and we’re actively looking for next-generation projects with innovative and exciting technologies to apply for LPO loans to bridge this gap.”

Becca Jones-Albertus, the DOE’s acting deputy assistant secretary for renewable energy, said the transition to clean energy and a net-zero economy will be “private-sector led, but government-enabled.”

“There's a big role for government to play, for instance, providing top notch market based research like the liftoff series, but it's definitely a supporting role,” she said. “The private sector has to lead the way.”

Geothermal technology overview across conventional (left) and next-generation (right) designs. (Source: U.S. Department of Energy’s Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Next-Generation Geothermal Power)

A Radical Experiment Shows Cloud Brightening May Be Our Climate’s White Knight

Darren Orf
Tue, April 16, 2024 


Humans are not doing a great job lowering carbon emissions, so scientists are searching for ways to buy the world time to kick its nasty fossil fuel habit.


One idea is marine cloud brightening (MCB), and a new study says that MCB could also create cloud cover, making it an even better ‘painkiller’ for climate change that previously thought.


However, there’s a lot scientists still don’t know about MCB, including how it could affect ocean circulation patterns and rainfall on land.

Coming as a surprise to no one, 2023 was the warmest year on record. And that’s just another step in an already disturbing trend that sparked the creation of the Paris Climate Accord in 2015. There’s just one problem: the world is falling behind its emission-reducing commitments.

The world is currently on track for 4.8 degrees Celsius warming by the end of the century, which is far above the 2.7 degree Celsius goal. To realize that less-apocalyptic goal, the world needs to cut 28 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that it’s currently on track to produce, according to NPR. It’s undeniable that the world is in a bit of a time crunch, so some scientists are pursuing a Plan B—solar geoengineering. If successful, it could buy humanity time to fully kick our addiction to fossil fuels and embrace the green energy revolution.


Now, a new study by scientists at the University of Birmingham (in collaboration with other U.S. and European universities) discovered that one of these geoengineering techniques—a technology known as marine cloud brightening (MCB)—could be a more effective “painkiller” for climate change than previously realized. The researchers created a “natural experiment” by closely analyzing cloud behavior as related to the periodic eruptions of Mount Kilauea volcano in Hawaii.

These natural injections of aerosols into the atmosphere mimic the overall goal of marine cloud brightening, which (in simple terms) also injects aerosols—in the case of MCB, hyperfine sea salt particles—into clouds to increase their brightness and reflectiveness. However, the team found that MCB actually gets most of its cooling effect from creating cloud cover. The results were published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Thursday.

“Our findings show that marine cloud brightening could be more effective as a climate intervention than climate models have suggested previously,” University of Birmingham’s Ying Chen, the study’s lead author, said in a press statement. “We must continue to improve fundamental understanding of aerosol’s impacts on clouds, further research on global impacts and risks of MCB, and search for ways to decarbonize human activities.”

Using machine learning to pore over historical satellite and meteorological data, the team created a predictor that showed cloud behavior during inactive volcano periods. Then, the researchers could easily identify how the volcano directly impacted clouds. Turns out, natural aerosols increased cloud cover by 50 percent during volcanic activity, with a cooling effect of -10 watts per square meter (negative is a good thing).

“Our findings suggest that MCB may be quite effective for alleviating climate warming, although it would probably manifest as an increase in cloud cover rather than cloud opacity, as the MCB terminology implies,” the paper reads. “This best practice would be particularly effective in tropical oceans where incoming solar radiation is strong and background environment is clean (that is, clouds are more ‘pristine’).”

While MCB has been around since the 1990s, the idea has been grabbing more headlines as the world continues to warm. The New York Times reported just last week that the University of Washington conducted its first MCB experiment off the coast of Alameda, California.

However, any kind of climate tool under the tech umbrella of “geoengineering” will draw some suspicion. Scientists, for example, aren’t sure how MCB could affect ocean circulation patterns, or if it could increase rainfall in some places while reducing it in others. But proponents emphasize that the world is already being geoengineered by human-created greenhouse gasses, and that the side effects of MCB could potentially be preferable to the the devastating costs of climate change.

There is one area of agreement between both camps—MCB isn’t a solution to climate change—but evidence is growing that it could be one way to lower the planet’s symptomatic fever while we attempt to treat the carbon-induced disease.

Costs of burning fossil fuels dwarf costs of energy transition: Report

Saul Elbein

THE HILL
Wed, April 17, 2024 

Climate action is costly, but inaction could be far more expensive, according to a new report.


© AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel

The costs of enduring climate change are already six times higher than those for implementing measures to prevent it, a study published in Nature on Wednesday reveals.

The researchers projected an average total cost of $38 trillion by 2050 — and that’s the best-case scenario.

No matter what actions world governments and businesses take, by mid-century, per-capita global incomes will be 19 percent lower than they would have been in a world unaffected by climate change.

This cost could double if the world does not aggressively reduce fossil fuel consumption.

“Climate change will cause massive economic damages within the next 25 years in almost all countries around the world, also in highly-developed ones such as Germany, France and the United States,” lead author Leonie Wenz of the Potsdam Institute said in a statement.

Those shorter-term damages come from historic burning of fossil fuels, Wenz emphasized. If current burning isn’t rapidly cut down, “economic losses will become even bigger in the second half of the century.”

This question of cost is timely: on Tuesday, the Vermont Senate passed legislation that would require the oil industry to help pay for the cost of climate adaptation.

“Big Oil knew decades ago that their products would cause this damage,” state Sen. Anne Watson told reporters at the press conference advancing the bill. “It is only right that they pay a share of the costs to clean up this mess.”

Meanwhile, in Congress, GOP members are pushing forward legislation to bar the federal government from requiring big companies from reporting their carbon emissions — a pitch they make based on the idea that such a retreat is too expensive for consumers.

Many Republican-controlled state legislatures are also pushing to ban the public sector from doing business with banks that have long-term plans to reduce their fossil fuel footprint.

Last week, the U.N. climate chief said that rising temperatures and oil use meant that the world had just two years to make the financial and regulatory changes “essential in saving our planet.”

Despite growing global concern around climate change, oil and gas burning is now at record levels.

To compile their forecast, the authors analyzed data from 1,600 regions worldwide, assessing the impacts of rising average temperatures, fluctuations between day and night temperatures, and the frequency of extreme weather events.

The results highlight a stark injustice: countries with fewer resources, which have contributed the least to global warming, will suffer the most from declining incomes.

Nations at higher latitudes—such as Russia, Scandinavia, and Canada — might see some economic benefits from climate change, as milder winters reduce heating costs and extend growing seasons.

By contrast, countries closer to the equator — including India, Brazil, Nigeria, and much of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia — will face disproportionately more significant economic damages.

Those countries will face costs 60 percent greater than the high-income countries — and 40 percent above high emitters like the U.S. and China.

But that doesn’t mean the global North will be immune — either from the direct impacts of climate change or the indirect costs.

The paper found that even in the best-case scenario, incomes in the U.S. and Europe will face ” a permanent income reduction” of 11 percent by midcentury.

In part, this comes from the direct impacts of climate change. Worsening drought, floods and storms will ravage U.S. and European farming regions, and more frequent and intense heat waves will drive up health care costs, as extreme weather spikes the price of insurance.

In an interconnected world, impacts on one part of the globe will pull on the rest. U.S. markets and supply chains draw from resources — from chocolate and coffee to wood and minerals — from more afflicted regions. Climate change is reducing both harvests and people’s ability to work outside in ways that will stunt the economies of more prosperous trading partners.

Then there is the political impact of what happens as people desert regions that can no longer support them, leading to a boost in humanitarian crises and migration that has already become a potent and divisive issue in the U.S. and European political systems.

Finally, the researchers note the disquieting possibility that they have underestimated the costs the world faces: climate predictions, they said, tend to be conservative.

And even where they are accurate, changes in average heat or rainfall often conceal an even starker increase in the size and power of extreme events, from hurricanes to heat waves.

“Staying on the path we are currently on will lead to catastrophic consequences,” Anders Levermann, study coauthor and a researcher at the Potsdam Institute said in a statement.

“The temperature of the planet can only be stabilized if we stop burning oil, gas and coal,” Levermann added.”

Welcome to The Hill’s Sustainability newsletter, I’m Saul Elbein — every week we follow the latest moves in the growing battle over sustainability in the U.S. and around the world.

Scotland to ditch key climate change target

Kevin Keane - BBC Scotland's environment correspondent
Wed, April 17, 2024 

Scotland was aiming to cut emissions by 75% by the end of the decade [PA Media

The Scottish government is to ditch its flagship target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030.

The final goal of reaching "net-zero" by 2045 will remain, but BBC Scotland News understands the government's annual climate targets could also go.

Ministers have missed eight of the last 12 annual targets and have been told that reaching the 75% milestone by the end of the decade is unachievable.


A statement is expected at Holyrood on Thursday afternoon.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) - which provides independent advice to ministers - warned back in 2022 that Scotland had lost its lead over the rest of the UK in tackling the issue.

Last year ministers failed to publish a plan it promised - required under the act - detailing how they were going to meet the targets.

Scottish government climate targets unachievable, says watchdog


Scotland's climate 'changing faster than expected'


Scotland loses climate change lead, advisers warn

Then in March of this year the CCC said for the first time that the 2030 target was unreachable.

Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon saw her SNP administration as world leaders on climate change when the targets were introduced in 2019, often asserting that Scotland had the "most stretching targets in the world."

Hers was the first government in the world to declare a climate emergency and Glasgow hosted the COP26 climate summit in 2021, yet environmentalists believe the emergency response never came.

So scrapping the targets will be seen as an embarrassing retreat for the SNP and the Scottish Greens, their partners in the Scottish government.

Scotland's emissions reduction target for 2030 was tougher than for the UK as a whole, which was for a reduction of 68% by the same date.
Where did the targets come from?

There was a febrile atmosphere around back in 2019 when the Scottish Parliament passed its landmark legislation to speed up the rate of decarbonisation

It was the height of the school climate strikes and just a few days earlier thousands had taken to the streets in support of Greta Thunberg's calls for more action.

Nicola Sturgeon - pictured here with Greta Thunberg and climate activist Vanessa Nakate - portrayed her government as being climate leaders at COP26 in Glasgow

 [PA Media]

At Holyrood, parties were trying to outbid each other on how quickly the country could go, eventually settling on a pace far beyond what experts had planned for.

The Scottish Greens - who are now in government with the SNP - proposed aiming to cut emissions by a whopping 80% compared with the baseline year of 1990.

But parliament settled on 75% - still 5% more than recommended - and the Climate Change Bill was agreed by all parties except the Greens, who abstained.

One former minister told me there was a "lack of realism" at the time.
What went wrong?

The new legislation required ministers to set annual targets for reducing emissions.

In a sense it was a hostage to fortune with the yearly totals heavily influenced by the winter weather which determines how much gas we use to heat up our homes.

But the trend was clear as eight out of 12 of the targets were missed.

Protestors marched to a rally in Holyrood Park in Edinburgh in the days before the climate targets were set [Getty Images]

With the closure of Scotland's last coal-fired power station at Longannet in 2016, politicians conceded that the low-hanging fruit had all been picked and any future progress would require big changes to how we live our lives.

But the Greens believe the current system has fundamentally failed with too much emphasis placed on targets rather than policies.

That might be how the Greens try to convince their voters that scrapping the targets will be the right decision.

Scottish Greens climate spokesman Mark Ruskell said the party was "absolutely determined to accelerate the urgent and substantial action needed to tackle the climate crisis as laid out by the CCC recently, and fully expect the Scottish government to respond to that challenge".

Have emissions been falling?

The short answer is yes, but not by enough.

By 2021 greenhouse gas emissions had fallen by 49.2% compared with the baseline level in 1990.

That's a massive half of our planet warming gases which have already been eradicated from the economy.

But the law required a 51.1% fall by that date to keep on track.

Some industries have seen huge changes that have driven down emissions like the energy and waste sectors.

Others have remained stubbornly unmoved such as transport and agriculture.
What would scrapping the targets mean?

It is likely the Scottish government would replicate the system of "carbon budgets" used by both the UK and Welsh governments.

Rather than annual targets, ministers would be told how much greenhouse gas could "safely" be emitted during a parliamentary term and have to come up with a plan to achieve that.

It would mean an end to the legal requirement of successive environment secretaries having to explain to parliament why the targets have been missed.

There is an argument that the annual targets are a distraction because emissions are influenced by many factors including the weather and that the overall trend is more important.

Having been the first government in the world to declare a climate emergency, scrapping targets will be an embarrassing retreat.
What will the Scottish government do now?

Ministers have a conundrum; they are legally required to produce a "climate change plan" which details how they will achieve their targets.

That plan is now long delayed and the Climate Change Committee confirmed last month that the flagship 2030 target was now beyond reach.

So, it is just not possible to produce that plan any more.

An option would be to set new targets within the existing legislation and then produce a plan.

But one official described those annual targets as nothing more meaningful than a straight line on a graph.

So abolishing them altogether - and perhaps setting a lower 2030 target - seems the most likely course of action available.


Yousaf ‘will ditch Sturgeon’s pledge to cut Scotland’s greenhouse gases’

Simon Johnson
Wed, April 17, 2024 

Humza Yousaf and his Government were accused of over-promising and under-delivering - Michael McGurk


Humza Yousaf will dump Nicola Sturgeon’s flagship pledge of cutting Scotland’s greenhouse gases by 75 per cent by the end of the decade, it has been reported.

Ms Sturgeon said her SNP administration was a global leader on climate change when the target was introduced in 2019, calling it the “most stretching” in the world.

But in an embarrassing climbdown, Mr Yousaf’s SNP-Green government is expected to use a ministerial statement at Holyrood on Thursday to confirm that the 2030 target has been ditched. Harmful emissions were supposed to have been cut by three-quarters compared to 1990 levels.

BBC Scotland reported that a final goal of Scotland being net zero by 2045 – five years ahead of the rest of the UK – would remain, but that annual climate targets covering emissions from sectors such as transport and heating could also be scrapped.
‘Succession of missed targets’

The expected announcement comes after the UK’s official climate watchdog said last month that the current rate of progress in cutting greenhouse gases would have to be increased by a factor of nine for the 2030 target to be met.

In a damning report, the Climate Change Committee said this level of increase was “beyond what is credible” and was double the most ambitious scenario it had modelled if stringent measures were introduced.

The assessment found that Scotland’s annual target for cutting emissions was missed again in 2021 – for the eighth time in the last 12 years – after greenhouse gas levels rose by 2.4 per cent as the economy rebounded from the Covid pandemic.

The Tories said ditching the 2030 target would be an “abject humiliation” for the SNP and its Green coalition partners.

Douglas Lumsden, the Scottish Tories’ shadow net zero secretary, said: “For all the boasting about their supposed environmental credentials, the reality is a succession of missed targets – and being forced to throw in the towel on this flagship pledge represents the biggest failure of the lot.

“This climbdown is not a surprise, given the damning report from the Climate Change Committee, but it is symptomatic of a nationalist coalition that routinely over-promises and under-delivers.”
‘Scotland deserves better’

Michael Shanks, a Scottish Labour MP, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Defending the profits of oil and gas giants, now binning their key climate target. Clearly the Greens are having a strong influence in government. Scotland deserves better than this lot.”

The Scottish Government refused to confirm or deny whether the 2030 report would be scrapped, saying the details would be announced in the statement by Mairi McAllan, the SNP’s Net Zero Secretary.

The Climate Change Committee is an independent statutory body that advises the UK Government and devolved administrations on their emissions targets.

Just over 6,000 heat pumps were installed in Scottish homes last year, it said in last month’s report, but this “needs to increase to more than 80,000 per year by the end of the decade”.

The committee also noted that publication of the Scottish Government’s new draft climate change plan, which was supposed to have happened late last year, had been delayed. This meant there was “no comprehensive delivery strategy for meeting future emissions targets and actions continue to fall far short of what is legally required”.