Toxic smog which shrouds Lahore poses cross-border challenge in South Asia

Experts estimate more than 1.5 billion people are exposed to high concentrations of air pollution in Pakistan and India alone.

Published 11 hours ago

The air smells burnt in Lahore, a city in Pakistan’s east that used to be famous for its gardens but has become infamous for its terrible air quality.

Toxic smog has caused ill health among tens of thousands of people in recent months as Lahore sits in an airshed – an area where pollutants from industry, transport and other human activities get trapped because of local weather and topography so they cannot disperse easily.

Artificial rain was deployed in December to battle the smog – a national first for the technique – but nothing seems to be working.

Airsheds also contribute to cross-border pollution. Under certain wind conditions, 30% of pollution in the Indian capital New Delhi can come from Pakistan’s Punjab province, where Lahore is the capital.

There are six major airsheds in South Asia, home to many of the world’s worst polluted cities.

Emissions from industry are a key part of the problem (KM Chaudary/AP)

But that is a tall order when political relations in the region are fraught.

Ties between India and Pakistan are broken, their interactions riddled with animosity and suspicion.

Travel restrictions and hostile bureaucracies largely keep people from crossing the border for leisure, study and work, although the countries make exceptions for religious pilgrimages.

Pakistani analyst Abid Suleri, from the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, said: “There’s a recognition among the technical and scientific community that air pollution doesn’t need a visa to travel across borders.”

The culprits and problems are the same on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, he said, so it makes no sense for one province to implement measures if a neighbouring province across the border is not adopting the same practices.

A sweeper wears a scarf over his face as smog envelops Lahore (KM Chaudary/AP)

“Airshed management needs a regional plan,” he said. “But 2024 is an election year in India and Pakistan, and government-to-government co-operation hasn’t reached that level.”

Pakistan is weeks away from voting in national parliamentary elections. So far, only the former foreign minister and political party leader Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has pledged heavy investment in climate adaptability, following record-breaking floods that killed more than 1,700 people.

In India, air pollution does not figure as a core issue that people would vote on, said Bhargav Krishna, a fellow at the New Delhi-based Sustainable Futures Collaborative think-tank.

But the experience or impact of climate change could make people think about how they vote.

Mr Krishna said regional elections sometimes see air pollution-related promises. “It was a feature of every party’s election manifesto in the New Delhi elections in 2020,” he noted.

Pollution is a major problem too in India, with thick smog surrounding the Akshardham temple in New Delhi (Altaf Qadri/AP)

The global body said almost 93% of Pakistanis are exposed to severe pollution levels. In India, it is 96% of the population. That means more than 1.5 billion people are exposed to high concentrations of air pollution in these two countries alone. It estimates around 220,000 deaths a year in Pakistan’s Punjab can be attributed to causes related to poor air.

Gray haze hangs pall-like over Punjab’s homes, mosques, schools, streets and farmland. There are 6.7 million vehicles on Lahore’s roads every day, and construction, emissions and waste are rife. There is scant visibility at major road junctions after dark, and smog shrouds landmarks like the Mughal-era Badshahi Mosque.

Pulmonologist Dr Khawar Abbas Chaudhry laments the deterioration of Lahore, which he describes as a “once beautiful” city. The hospital where he works is part of the Bill Gates-backed Evercare Group that has hospitals in the region, including India and Bangladesh, and in east Africa.

Syed Naseem Ur Rehman Shah, director of Punjab’s Environment Protection Department, said efforts are under way to clean up the air, but it will take time (KM Chaudary/AP)

There are forums within Evercare to discuss issues like air pollution, and he and colleagues, including those from India, talk about the health impact of smog. But this dialogue is only happening within one institution.

“Countries, governments, departments need to be involved,” said Dr Chaudhry. “They need to meet regularly. Ultimately, people need to reach out and that could put some pressure on movers and shakers on both sides of the border.”

The director of Punjab’s Environment Protection Department, Syed Naseem Ur Rehman Shah, is proud of local achievements to fight air pollution.

He said emissions from industry and brick kilns are under control, farmers can soon buy subsidised machinery to end the menace of crop stubble burning, and there is a drive towards getting electric three-wheeled tuk-tuks, motorbikes and buses on the roads.

But although things are getting better, Mr Shah said it will take time.

That is of little consolation to Pakistani poet and former ambassador Ata ul Haq Qasmi, who is in Evercare for respiratory issues exacerbated by air pollution.

“If my friends aren’t in hospital, they should be,” he said. “You only have to step outside for it (the smog) to grab you.”

Earth Matters: Endangering the Endangered Species Act; 'new denial' on climate change at YouTube

by Meteor Blades for Daily KosDaily Kos Staff Emeritus
Sunday, January 21, 2024 

Scientists are bracing for what that scary top red line showing average global temperatures in 2023 will look like in 2024.


Half a century ago last month, President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act, which, in a move that would be unthinkable today, the Senate had passed unanimously and the House of Representatives approved in a 390-12 vote. As President Joe Biden noted in his ESA proclamation three weeks ago, he voted for the law as a freshman senator in 1973. The legislation was approved against a backdrop of fear that animals such as the gray wolf, grizzly bear, whooping crane, and bald eagle, as well as plants like the Virginia Round-Leaf Birch, Miccosukee Gooseberry, and Sulphur Hot Springs Buckwheat would vanish forever.

The law makes it a federal crime to harm species appearing on the government’s endangered and threatened lists and requires federal agencies to undertake their tasks with an eye toward avoiding threats to such species or their habitat. It is widely considered to be one of the best and most comprehensive conservation measures on the planet. Republicans have nonetheless spent years trying to eviscerate it, and they’ve recently stepped up their efforts. The Center for Biological Diversity on Tuesday released its report,—Paving the Road to Extinction—blasting Republicans for adding a record 27 anti-wildlife riders to appropriations bills. Most likely will not pass, but it only takes a few wins to cause serious harm.

Among the riders are ones to prevent the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from finalizing a rule to protect the estimated 350 North Atlantic right whales from ship strikes and the 50 remaining Rice’s whales from ship strikes and gas and oil activity. Other riders seek to remove gray wolves in the continguous 48 states from the endangered and threatened lists and eliminate protections for grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with the proviso that courts be barred from intervening. Another rider would eliminate funding to protect the northern long-eared bat recently added to the endangered list. White-nose syndrome has wiped out 99% of the species in the past two decades. During a July hearing, South Carolina Republican Rep. Ralph Norman said, "I hope the white-nose syndrome wipes all of them out. We won't have to worry about it." That’s a perspective a lot of Republicans would happily apply to many species.

Since 1973, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service has listed 1,780 species as either “endangered”—that is, on the brink of extinction—or the less imperiled category of “threatened.” Of those species, the populations of 64 have grown enough that they’ve been removed (delisted) and another 64 have improved enough to be down-listed from endangered to threatened. Of the total on the two lists, 99% still survive, though many are barely hanging on. In the same period, 11 species have been declared extinct and 23 other species haven’t been seen for so long that they have been proposed for designation as extinct. Currently, the act protects 1,662 U.S. species and 638 foreign species. However, scientists say there are as many as 12,000 other species that need conservation attention.

In an Associated Press interview last summer, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said, “The Endangered Species Act has been very successful. And I believe very strongly that we’re in a better place for it.” Conservationists agree.

But that near congressional unanimity of 50 years ago has long since disappeared. As scientists and activists ponder the actual and potential impacts of what many call Earth’s sixth extinction, with massive losses of ecosystems and biodiversity, Republicans are continuing to sabotage the ESA. Among their key complaints is that the act doesn’t take into consideration the economic impacts, including job losses, caused by shielding certain “obscure” species like the snail darter of Tennessee and the spotted owl of Oregon.

Some critics argue the act hasn’t been as big a success as its advocates assert because if it had been far more species would by now have been delisted. Such a critique ought to presage a call for more funding of studies and a strengthening of the law. After all, a peer-reviewed study published in September 2023 found that vertebrate species are dying off at 35 times the rate they would be without human pressures.




The need for more funding is obvious. Last March, more than 120 environmental organizations sent a letter to Congress seeking hundreds of millions more budget dollars because the Fish & Wildlife Service “only receives around 50% of the funding required to properly implement the Act.” Jamie Rappaport Clark, CEO and president of the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife and formerly head of the FWS, told Benji Jones at Vox, “[The ESA] isn’t broken, it’s starving. It can do its job if it’s supported. But it’s not.” More money is the opposite of what Republicans want.

Said House Natural Resources Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva in December, “This year, as we celebrate 50 years of the Endangered Species Act, we know its role in maintaining biodiversity is more important now than ever, especially as we face a worsening climate crisis and mass extinction. From protecting critical habitat to creating recovery plans, the Endangered Species Act has facilitated the recovery of species like the humpback whale and bald eagle, while also protecting iconic species like grizzly bears, sea turtles, and jaguars. We know this milestone is also a time to reinvigorate our defense of Endangered Species Act protections. Each year, Republicans ramp up their attacks to undermine science-based decisions about listing, de-listing, habitat protections and recovery, so they can more easily dole out favors for polluters. We stand ready to continue our fight for species and their habitats over the next 50 years and beyond.”

It definitely will be a fight. Of those 27 anti-wildlife “poison pills” attached to appropriations bills, 26 were added by Republicans, with one from a Democrat seeking to maintain preexisting conditions.

In a statement accompanying the release of the report, Center for Biological Diversity Senior Policy Specialist Stephanie Kurose said, "Republicans have weaponized the appropriations process to launch a full-blown assault on our natural heritage. These heartless attacks would strip away lifesaving protections from our most imperiled creatures—from wolves to whales to freshwater mussels. If passed, these bills would put multiple species on a direct path to extinction."


Even the most avid ESA advocate will concede that the act has its flaws. But, as the world passes ever more deeply into the challenges and complexities of the biodiversity crisis compounded by the climate crisis, the act should be strengthened and its activities better funded.

One step in this direction is S. 1129, the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. It would go far to extend ESA’s efforts by appropriating $1.397 billion for local and state efforts to help recover endangered species and to prevent other species from becoming endangered in the first place. The bill was introduced in March but has yet to have a hearing. Thirty years ago, the non-binding Convention on Biological Diversity that some call a “Paris Agreement for nature” was agreed to. Two hundred countries have since ratified it. The United States has not. Although President Bill Clinton signed it in 1994, the Senate wouldn’t ratify it then or since. And, of course, the U.S. has also not signed onto a key conventon document—the Global Biodiversity Framework—that was the work of many years and agreed to at the December 2022 U.N. Biodiversity Conference in Montreal.

The biodiversity crisis is the evil twin of the climate crisis. The two are inextricably entangled. They need equal attention at a level neither is yet receiving.

Related Stories: The ESA is 50 years old—here are 50 species that are recovering and Just 18% of Land Needed to Meet Biodiversity Goals Is Adequately Protected, Study Finds


WEEKLY ECO-VIDEO



RESOURCES & ACTIONLaundry is a top source of microplastic pollution – here’s how to clean your clothes more sustainably
The IRA turns two this year. What’s working and what isn’t?
The U.S. Wind Turbine Database
The Real Free Speech Threat. A multimedia, cross-border investigation by Drilled into the global effort to criminalize environmental and climate protest
Global Environmental Crime Tracker
GREEN BRIEFS
HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO KICK FOSSIL FUELS OUT OF THEIR HOMES

Phasing out fossil fuels is perceived by too many who favor it as solely a project for government mandates and corporate metamorphosis. But neither of those can be counted on to accomplish all that must be done if we are to have any chance of mitigating the worst impacts of the climate emergency. Household action is also crucial. Because, like it or not, this effort is of necessity a collaborative project.

Some household action is easy and cheap and has beneficial environmental, health, and financial impacts beyond reducing carbon emissions. Eating less meat, growing vegetables, turning down the thermostat, switching on lights only when needed, unplugging the dryer and using an indoor or outdoor clothesline, unplugging other “vampire” devices when not in use to avoid small power drains that add up, aggregating shopping trips and taking reusuable bags when you go, using public transit or commuting by bicycle, and convincing your employer to let you work remotely at least some of the time can all add up. The list of such possibles is long and mostly a matter of habit and choice.

But some alterations, including ones that make the biggest difference, aren’t cheap. Upfront costs for electric stoves, heat pumps, solar panels, and electric vehicles are daunting even for more well-off households, much less the 60% of the U.S. population that lives paycheck to paycheck. Renters, even those who aren’t hampered by low incomes, are at an even greater disadvantage since they are dependent on often reluctant landlords to invest in such additions. A new study conducted by researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and published in the peer-reviewed Energy Policy journal shows those upfront costs are the major obstacle to a speedier residential uptake of green technology. 

The Inflation Reduction Act’s $8.8 billion in rebates for weatherizing homes and installing efficient electric heating and appliances ought to reduce that reluctance. The problem is that, even though the IRA is 17 months old, how the rebates are administered is a state matter, and most of them still have not set up a process to achieve this.

The study—Regional assessment of household energy decision-making and technology adoption in the United States—surveyed nearly 10,000 U.S. residents with the object of determining precisely why consumer adoption is so slow and figure out how to make heat-pumps and all the rest of these subsidy-boosted technologies as widely popular as, say, flat-screen TVs.

Alison F. Takemura at Canary Media reports:


The analysis [...] reveals the key factors residents weigh, from cost to comfort, when considering home energy upgrades. The team analyzed responses from participants who’ve made decarbonizing changes (like installing a heat-pump system) and those who’ve made non-decarbonizing changes (like installing a new gas stove), because if policymakers and program administrators can tap into all residents’ motivations around home energy updates, they stand a better chance of getting more people to embrace energy-efficient, electric equipment, according to the researchers.

So what’s the biggest barrier people face to making home energy upgrades?

By far, it’s the upfront cost. About 65 percent of all respondents had concerns about the expense, more than double the 29 percent of households that stumbled over the next most identified hurdle: unclear costs and benefits. The researchers say that the cost barrier underscores how important it is to publicize and develop programs, like those in the IRA, that help people pay for decarbonizing tech.

The researchers found differences in attitudes among the five regions of the U.S. they divided their survey into. As a consequence, their primary recommendations are that the messaging about electrifying and decarbonizing programs, including the IRA rebates, be designed with those regional differences in mind. From the study:

We found regional variation in a limited set of motivation and preference variables (Table 3, Appendix B), suggesting that U.S. residents generally have similar motivations for making home energy technology changes and that their preferences for using their domestic spaces are similar, except in a few key areas. Of regional differences found, many resulted from higher ratings in the West: for reducing harmful impacts (health and environment) and for desiring more at home working spaces (home office, chef's kitchen, craft space, shop space). The West had lower ratings of repairing broken technology (compared to the Midwest) and wanting safe space (compared to Midwest and Northeast) as household decision motivators.

Takemura reported nearly half the survey participants said it matters to them that these green tech products be available at big box stores like Lowe’s, Home Depot, Best Buy, and the like. Report co-author Tracy Fuentes said visibility is crucial. The research team recommended that programs that promote zero-carbon appliances make sure to include these retailers in the process.

Although the rebates come from the federal government, states are tasked with administering them. Florida is the only state that has indicated it won’t be accepting the federal money, but most states have not yet determined the details of how they will handle this and have not submitted their proposals to the Department of Energy. The deadline is January 2025. If state officials really want to make the rebate program a big success, their proposals should include serious efforts to inform people about. Webinars, face-to-face public forums, mainstream and social media are all venues to harness for conveying that information. And they can’t just be one-offs but a continuing endeavor that lasts as long as the rebates do.

NEW CLIMATE DENIAL AT YOUTUBE

Whether it’s a video about an ancient civilization that flourished in Antarctica before the southern continent was covered in ice 34 million years ago or somebody pretending to be fluent in six languages, YouTube is obviously not fact-check central. As regards the climate emergency, the video platform has long been problematic, with people repeating debunked claims that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax and climatologists are spreading alarm because it brings in the grant money. But, as Kate Yoder at Grist writes:


A new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit based in London and Washington, D.C., working to stop the spread of disinformation, analyzed 12,000 videos from channels that promoted lies about climate change on YouTube over the last six years. Over that time, the reality of climate change long predicted by scientists has become increasingly difficult to dismiss. The report, released on Tuesday, found a dramatic shift from “old denial” arguments — that global warming isn’t real and isn’t caused by humans — to new arguments bent on undermining trust in climate solutions. [...]

One popular source is the channel of Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist and culture warrior with 7 million followers. In an interview with Alex Epstein, the author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Epstein makes the case that climate advocates can’t be trusted. “Listening to a modern environmentalist is like listening to a doctor who’s on the side of the germs, somebody who doesn’t have your best interests at heart,” Epstein says in a video entitled “The Great Climate Con” that’s been viewed a million times, reiterating a point once made in the 1990s by the economist George Reisman in an article titled “The Toxicity of Environmentalism.”

From the CCDH report:


Climate deniers have shifted to a New Denial of climate impacts, solutions and advocates

• Climate experts have noted a change in climate deniers’ tactics over recent years. • Our analysis shows that climate deniers have shifted from Old Denial to New Denial: ° Global warming is not happening ° Human-generated greenhouse gasses are not causing global warming ° The impacts of global warming are beneficial or harmless ° Climate solutions won’t work ° Climate science and the climate movement are unreliable

• New Denial constitutes 70% of denialist claims in 2023, up from 35% in 2018. • This is driven by attacks on climate solutions, scientists and the climate movement. • Influential deniers including Jordan Peterson and Blaze TV followed this trend.

Climate deniers have shifted away from an Old Denial of warming and its human causes • Old Denial constitutes 30% of denialist claims in 2023, down from 65% in 2018 • This is driven by a sharp fall in denialist claims that the climate is actually cooling. • Experts suggest climate deniers have changed tactics because the results of global warmingand climate change are evident to the public.

YouTube continues to profit from ads served on Old Denial and New Denial content • YouTube is making up to $13.4 million a year from ads on the channels we studied. • YouTube’s policies bar monetization of Old Denial, but do not cover New Denial. • We collected evidence that YouTube is still serving ads on both forms of denial

A study published in November at Nature Human Behavior found that to some people disinformation on climate is more compelling than scientific facts. In their study, researchers sought to inoculate study participants in 12 countries against disinformation with a brief collection of accurate facts about climate, reminding people of the scientific consensus that humans are the main cause of the current changes. Then they doused them with 20 real tweets that blamed the sun for global warming or said “the climate hoax devised by the U.N.” or warned that elites “want us to eat bugs.”

They found this “pre-bunking” didn’t immunize participants from buying into climate science denial. The tweets made people less likely to believe that climate change is happening, and lowered their support for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and their willingness to take individual action to deal with it.

Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, told Yoder, “The key right now is ensuring that we aren’t flooding our information ecosystem with nonsense and lies that make it more difficult for people to work out what’s true or not.” The CCDH report shows that this flooding is exactly what’s going on at YouTube. Channels that the center scrutinized got 3.4 billion views in 2023 and that YouTube is potentially making up to $13.4 million a year in ad revenue from channels upload climate disinformation.

CCDH’s recommendation for combatting this malicious fakery is to for YouTube owner Google to ban advertisements attached to videos pushing lies about climate fixes. “If it wasn’t profitable, would so many people see it as being a business to produce bullshit?” Ahmed said. “We’re asking platforms to not reward liars with money and attention.”
ECO-QUOTE

“We climate scientists used to always be arguing with the climate skeptics. Nowadays I feel like we’re just as likely to be arguing with someone who says civilization is going to collapse in the next 30 years. Climate change is bad enough that we don’t need to exaggerate it. [...] Whenever I tell people I’m a climate scientist, the most common question is, ‘so we’re all screwed, aren’t we?’ And I have to say, ‘Well, no, it depends what we do’.” —Zeke Hausfather


HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)

Tribal Nations Play a Growing Role in Addressing the Biodiversity Crisis by Lindsay Botts at Sierra magazine. For most wildlife biologists, monitoring the health of animals consists of tracking wild creatures' whereabouts, radio-collaring them when necessary, and taking blood samples and weight measurements. For Mike Schrage, a biologist with the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, gray wolf conservation work comes with something extra: tobacco. Like many Ojibwe nations, the Fond du Lac uses tobacco during spiritual and cultural practices. When it comes to the band's wolf research program, tobacco is routinely used as a token of respect and reciprocity. Whenever a pup is weighed and measured, tobacco is placed near the den. When a necropsy is conducted in the field, tobacco is set on the ground near the body. These gestures reflect the band's reverence for the wolf, an animal that Fond du Lac members consider a brother. In the Ojibwe creation story, a wolf accompanied the first person who walked the earth. Across the United States, tribal nations play a vital—if often unheralded—role in species conservation. In the Lower 48, tribes manage roughly 45 million acres, an area about the size of North Dakota. This relatively undeveloped land combined with Indigenous people's traditional ecological knowledge of wildlife populations mean that tribes are uniquely positioned to help recover threatened and endangered species.

Related Story: Valuing Indigenous Knowledge in Permafrost Research

A huge battery has replaced Hawaii’s last coal plant by Julian Spector at Canary Media. Hawaii shut down its last coal plant on September 1, 2022, eliminating 180 megawatts of fossil-fueled baseload power from the grid on Oahu — a crucial step in the state’s first-in-the-nation commitment to cease burning fossil fuels for electricity by 2045. But the move posed a question that’s becoming increasingly urgent as clean energy surges across the United States: How do you maintain a reliable grid while switching from familiar fossil plants to a portfolio of small and large renewables that run off the vagaries of the weather? Now Hawaii has an answer: It’s a gigantic battery, unlike the gigantic batteries that have been built before. The Kapolei Energy Storage system’s 158 Tesla Megapacks are charging and discharging based on signals from utility Hawaiian Electric. The plant’s 185 megawatts of instantaneous discharge capacity match what the old coal plant could inject into the grid, though the batteries react far more quickly, with a 250-millisecond response time. Instead of generating power, they absorb it from the grid, ideally when it’s flush with renewable generation, and deliver that cheap, clean power back in the evening hours when it’s desperately needed.

One of four new documentaries on food and agriculture that are making the rounds or soon will.

The Food System Is Having a Big-Screen Moment by Lisa Held at Civil Eats. In Warsaw, North Carolina, René Miller’s great-great nephews are playing basketball in the yard. The gregarious little boys take a break and begin talking to the crew filming them about the breathing machine Miller uses, especially in the summer when farmers spray the crop fields directly across the street with waste from the surrounding industrial hog farms and her asthma attacks increase. Then, the older boy, Mari, has a question. “What is this movie even called?” he asks. Off screen, writer-producer Jamie Berger says, with amusement in her voice, that the team hasn’t decided yet. Does he have any ideas? “Yup,” he says, without missing a beat. “How about, ‘The Hog Farm Stinks?’” It’s a moment Berger now points to as one of her favorites in the documentary set in the country’s top hog-producing counties—although ultimately the filmmakers went with The Smell of Money. And it’s a prime example of how the filmmakers gave new, vibrant life to an environmental justice story that had been chronicled by national news organizations—including this one—for years. In the film, Berger and director-producer Shawn Bannon focus on the day-to-day struggles of a group of Black families who are engaged in a lawsuit against Smithfield, one of the biggest industrial pork companies in the world, for polluting their communities in ways that they say have devastated their health, property values, and quality of life.

ZeroAvia is exploring cryo-compressed hydrogen to produce longer-range planes by Scooter Doll at Electrek. Hydrogen-electric plane aviation technology developer ZeroAvia is exploring a form of energy-dense fuel to develop aircraft that can refuel faster and potentially fly farther. The company has signed a memorandum of understanding with hydrogen tech startup Verne to co-develop the plane integrations. Following a series of milestones in the past decade, ZeroAvia sits closer than ever to delivering commercial operations of hydrogen-electric planes en route to its goal of achieving a 40- to 80-seat aircraft with up to 700 miles of range by 2027. We’ve already seen the company achieve experimental flight certificates from the CAA in the UK and the FAA in the U.S., and it’s been one year since it completed its first flight with a 19-passenger hydrogen-electric plane. As more and more airlines take notice of the viable solutions hydrogen and electric planes can provide, ZeroAvia is now optimizing its technology to provide aircraft that can refuel faster, cheaper, and fly farther. To do so, it has enlisted the help of hydrogen fuel specialist Verne. Verne specializes in cryo-compressed hydrogen, which stores gaseous hydrogen at cold temperatures, thus increasing the fuel’s energy density. Through its research, Verne states CcH2 can deliver 40% greater usable hydrogen density compared to liquid hydrogen and 200% percent more usable hydrogen density than (350 bar) gaseous hydrogen.
ZeroAvia is currently testing a prototype of its ZA600 hydrogen-electric engine aboard this 19-passenger Dornier 228 turboprop plane.

Inside the last-ditch effort to stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline by Katie Myers at Grist. The Mountain Valley Pipeline company estimates that it is 94 percent complete and will be wrapped up before summer. With the approximately 303-mile pipeline approaching the final stretch after almost a decade’s work, it might seem hardly worth fighting at this point. A large contingent of steadfast opposition begs to differ — and will enthusiastically explain why. The pipeline is six years behind schedule, about half a billion dollars over budget, and, despite promises that it would be done by the end of last year, delayed once again. The remaining construction is over rugged terrain, with hundreds of water crossings left to bridge. The company recently postponed, shortened, and rerouted its planned extension into North Carolina, a proposal long stymied by permitting problems with the main line. And, just last month, Equitrans, which owns the pipeline and many others across the country, was said to be considering selling itself. The road to the pipeline’s completion remains rocky, its opponents argue, with many opportunities to make finishing it as difficult as possible. “We cannot let them destroy our land and water,” said a young woman named Ericka. Like many interviewed for this story, she gave only her first name out of fear of reprisal from Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, which has begun suing protesters in a bid to silence them. She had brought her three children to occupy the land that day. “What are we going to drink? Where are we going to live? People have to come here and stop this.”
A stretch of the Mountain Valley Pipeline under construction in 2021.

Grizzly Bear Poachers Flout the Endangered Species Act — and Get Away With It by Ryan Devereaux and Jimmy Tobias at The Intercept. Despite the Endangered Species Act’s fearsome reputation as a powerful tool for securing environmental protection, an Intercept investigation drawn from nearly 4,000 pages of Fish and Wildlife Service case files reveals that when it comes to grizzly bears, federal prosecutors rarely bring criminal charges under the landmark law. (The accounts of grizzly bear killings in this article are drawn from those case files, which The Intercept obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.) The Endangered Species Act turns 50 years old this year amid a growing global crisis of biodiversity loss and increasing attacks by right-wing lawmakers who see predator control as a front in the battle over states’ rights. In theory, a law that the Supreme Court has called “the most comprehensive legislation for the preservation of endangered species enacted by any nation” would serve as a critical bulwark against further ecological damage. Under Section 9 of the statute, Congress declared it illegal to kill, harm, harass, or otherwise “take” protected species; prohibited the transport or possession of such animals or their body parts; and established civil and criminal penalties for violators, including imprisonment of up to a year. Investigations into suspected ESA crimes fall to special agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which sits within the Department of the Interior. The investigators hand their files off to Justice Department prosecutors, who make the final call on whether to bring a case. The factors that shape those decisions, however, reveal the limits of the country’s most famous conservation law.

A grizzly crosses a road near LeHardys Rapids in Yellowstone National Park.

ECO-TWXXT

ECOPINION

The Chevron Doctrine: what it is and why it matters that the Supreme Court might kill it. An interview conducted by David Roberts at his Volts substack with David Doniger at the Natural Resources Defense Council. In 1984, in a ruling on the case Chevron USA v. NRDC, the Supreme Court formalized what came to be known as the Chevron Doctrine. In essence, it says that courts should give administrative agencies wide latitude in how they interpret their legislative instructions. So for instance, if Congress says in the Clean Air Act that air pollution should be reduced with the “best system of emission reductions,” it is up to the EPA, which is charged with implementing the law, to determine what the best system is. Doniger explains what the Chevron Doctrine is, why the federal judiciary has traditionally been deferential to agencies’ regulatory reasoning, and the potential fallout in the very real chance that the current Supreme Court does away with the doctrine entirely.

Friction is growing: We're reaching the point where the climate crisis slows the machine by Bill McKibben at his substack The Crucial Years. The economy of the rich world is a massive, geological force—it plows onward with glacial power, pushing through obstacles like global pandemics; if it stalls, it’s usually only momentarily before it picks up speed again. Or perhaps to use a better, internal-combustion-era metaphor, it’s a speeding tractor-trailer on a downhill run, barely able to brake even if it wanted to. But I think we’re very near the point where—thanks to the climate crisis—the economy encounters sufficient friction to slow it, and maybe even to send it in a careening spin. Last week The Wall Street Journal (whose news columns are as useful as their editorial pages are obtuse) published a long piece of reporting with a stark headline: “Buying Home and Auto Insurance Is Becoming Impossible.” The essay began by describing the way that Allstate—after suffering billions of dollars in losses last year—threatened to stop writing policies in New York, New Jersey, and California. Regulators in all three states, terrified of that possibility, let them raise rates by preposterous amounts.Jonathan P. Thompson

Yes, Biden broke a promise. And it's okay by Jonathan P. Thompson at The Land Desk. A few weeks ago, for my monthly High Country News column, I tried to unravel the puzzle posed by wildly divergent interpretations of President Biden’s record on climate, fossil fuels, and public lands. On the one hand, the Republican National Committee whined about how the administration is waging a war on energy, particularly fossil fuels. On the other, the college arm of the Democratic National Committee was accusing Biden of “climate indifference.” My conclusion was more or less this: Biden has been good — maybe the best president — when it comes to protecting certain public lands from fossil fuel energy development, even though he has made some questionable decisions. That’s hardly climate indifference. And yet, during his watch, the U.S. oil industry has produced more crude and exported more natural gas than ever before, mostly on the strength of a drilling frenzy in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico. If Biden’s waging a war on energy, his side is losing.

Mind the Gaps: How the UN Climate Plan Fails to Follow the Science by Fred Pearce at Yale Environment 360. A study headed by Matthew Gidden, a climate modeler at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, found that the rules governing how countries can declare they have reached net-zero emissions are fixed so that governments will be able to claim compliance years ahead of scientific reality.These critical technical issues have been largely under the radar until now — in part, say concerned researchers, because scientists have not wanted to confuse or naysay policymakers looking to build public support for climate action. But the discrepancies raise serious questions about whether governments are truly committed to abiding by the science. “Politicians are trying to find an easy way to meet their pledges,” said IIASA forest ecologist Dmitry Shchepashchenko. Yet the urgency for resolving the uncertainties is growing. The past year has seen the climate system enter what researchers are calling “uncharted territory.”

To Prevent Climate Chaos, We May Have to Forsake Economic Growth by Bob Berwyn at Inside Climate News. In a recent study in Environmental Research Letters, an international team of scientists wrote that reaching global goals could require focusing on ways to drive rapid changes in the way people live, move, work and eat; on making sure that global wealth is distributed more equitably; and on restoring and protecting biodiversity and ecosystems like forests, oceans, fields and rivers that are critical to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The restorative approach should be considered soon because the pace of climate impacts to ecosystems and communities is speeding up, the authors said. Climate extremes are outpacing decades of efforts to cap global warming with tools like carbon trading and offsets. Those are hallmarks of the green growth path mapped out by various United Nations-sponsored climate pacts like the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, as well other ancillary agreements. They all aim to keep growing the global economy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050—partly based on assuming that large quantities of carbon dioxide will be directly removed from the air and stored by giant machines by then.

Big Oil Is Weaponizing The First Amendment by Emily Sanders at The Lever. Fossil fuel’s favorite law firm is using the concept of free speech to legally defend the industry’s misleading climate claims as well as silence its critics. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher represents oil giant Chevron in lawsuits brought by dozens of state and local governments to hold the company accountable for deceiving consumers and the public about its products’ central role in climate change. As the evidence of Big Oil’s long-standing campaigns of climate denial piles up, and the cases inch closer to trial, the firm is deploying a defense that seeks to protect its clients’ ability to mislead the public. Chevron and other oil companies’ statements about climate change, Gibson Dunn has argued, constitute First Amendment protected “political speech” — or speech concerning public opinion and policy. “The First Amendment bars tort liability based on speech attempting to influence public support for climate policies,” reads one motion, authored by Gibson Dunn and local counsel in October 2023, to dismiss a case that the state of New Jersey brought against Chevron and other oil majors. “Under that logic, companies could lie to us about anything, and just say ‘because we think it’s political, because we think it’s important to policy, then we get to lie about it,’” said Amanda Shanor, an assistant professor and First Amendment scholar at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

What we know about toxic chemicals and children’s mental health by Ashley James at Environmental Health News. Evidence suggests chemical exposures are altering children’s brains. We need to tackle this interconnected crisis. A growing body of evidence connecting increased exposure to chemicals in the environment, such as lead, PFAS and BPA, to increased child mental health symptoms like anxiety and depression. The Covid-19 pandemic heightened an already alarming rate of youth mental health challenges. For example, between 2011 and 2021, the percentage of high school students who reported seriously considering suicide rose from 16% to 22%. Meanwhile, from 2011 to 2020, youth mental health emergency visits nearly doubled.These trends led the nation's leading pediatric health practitioners to declare a national child and adolescent mental health emergency in 2021. Across the country, this crisis impacts the lives of children and caregivers, and strains our healthcare system. At the same time, we’ve known for almost two decades that babies are exposed to hundreds of chemicals in the womb. After birth, they can be exposed to even more chemicals in food, drinking water, air, consumer goods and more. Throughout childhood, but especially in utero and during early years, children are vulnerable to these chemicals, which can disrupt important processes in brain development, including processes related to mood and emotion regulation.

GREEN LINKS

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Fell in Half Last Year • As Biden awards nearly $1 billion for electric school buses, can utilities keep up? • A small Texas town is home to the state’s first all-EV school bus fleet • More & More U.S. Homes Facing Flood Risk • EPA proposes methane emission fees • Interior releases review of building 1,000 wind turbines off NY coast • California water managers worried by early snowpack estimates • Third of UK teenagers believe climate change exaggerated, report shows • Homeowner’s insurance is going up in smoke • Mass Layoffs At Pioneering Nuclear Startup • Kazakhstan’s drying Aral Sea carries a message for those worried about the Great Salt Lake • This Houston Museum Teaches About Climate Change

Warfare in the Red Sea: What about nature?

As warfare escalates in the Red Sea, humanity’s most cherished ally ¬—nature—faces severe danger; an onslaught for which they have no possible defence.


BYELIZABETH BOULTON, PHD
JANUARY 21, 2024

Endangered Dugongs in a warzone?

 Image credit: Chander Cruttenden and Franceso Ungaro, Unsplash

As warfare escalates in the Red Sea, humanity’s most cherished ally ­—nature—faces severe danger; an onslaught for which they have no possible defence.

“The Red Sea’s underwater eco-system is home to over 300 species of coral and 2,100 species of fish, 10% of which are found nowhere else in the world. Spinner dolphins, dugongs, turtles, mantas, and sharks are just some of the marine species that calls these waters home…” [Living Oceans Foundation]

What effect would major warfare; with its missiles; drone attacks; electronic warfare; sea-mines; helicopter ship gunfire; and other assorted weaponry have upon the marine life in the Red Sea? What would happen if a ship oil tanker is bombed and an oil spill invades the Red Sea’s famous coral reefs and fish nurseries? For many species whose existence hangs by a thread, the short answer is that the thread would be severed. As the 21st Century progresses, increasingly, major warfare most likely means ecocide.

Oceanus nullius?

Nature is silent in warfare. It can’t speak. Strangely, this well-known characteristic of nature is rarely accounted for by humans. In diplomatic discourse; intelligence assessments; strategic policy planning or military operational planning, the creatures of the oceans, the skies, the forests, the wetlands, or the plains get scant regard.

Most war journalists don’t report on nature’s casualties either. There are few questions: “Jim, you’re on the frontline, can you tell us, how is nature getting on?”

Nature cannot speak in war. Image credit: Freddy Kearney, Unsplash.

The lack of optics – investigations; reporting; multi-media imagery (such as the iconic Vietnam War photos) – means that the broader global population, watching wars on their devices, are denied capacity to see the truth: the full-spectrum truth of war’s violence.

It also means that security strategists are proceeding with blinkers on. Akin to 15th to 17th century sea explorers, today’s western leaders remain gripped by a Terra Nullius or Oceanus Nullius mentality. It is a world view where nature’s creature’s lives mean nothing, where it as though they don’t even exist.

Lessons from history have not been heeded. We now know that Colonialism devasted local flora and fauna populations. As merely one example, bird species were decimated because people wanted beautiful feathers on their hats. We tut-tut such past errors, shake our heads at the ignorance and brutality, “how could they be so stupid?” yet repeat the same behaviour.

2024 ecological context

Lessons from modern ecological research have not been absorbed either. There have been decades of books, reports, global protests, and high-profile conferences on the worsening and extraordinary fragile state of earth’s ecology, climate and especially its oceans and marine life. Nature faces multi-pronged attacks, such as from habitat loss; harm from toxic waste dumping, litter and microplastics; global warming and the associated de-oxygenation of oceans; the illegal wildlife trade; over-fishing and more. Let me highlight merely a few factors that should be considered in any strategic planning in relation to the Red Sea.
Biodiversity in crisis

The 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Report told us that Earth’s biodiversity was ‘declining faster than at any time in human history’ and required ‘transformational’ change to halt or slow its deterioration.
Ocean heat

2024 begins with the scientific journal Nature reporting on the extraordinary heating of the world’s oceans. 2023 saw oceans absorb the largest amount of heat on record. Ocean heat records have been broken five years in a row. Pertinent to geopolitical tensions, the article notes how separate Chinese and US research reaches the same conclusions. Continued ocean heat increases will decimate marine life.
Red Sea Coral – of Global significance

The coral in the Red Sea has been found to be scientifically significant because of its capacity to endure warmer waters. It’s worth sharing the researchers’ key findings:

This uniquely resilient reef employs biological mechanisms which are likely to be important for coral survival as the planet’s oceans warm. The Gulf of Aqaba could potentially be one of the planet’s largest marine refuges from climate change. However, this unique portion of the Red Sea’s reef will only survive and flourish if serious regional environmental challenges are addressed. Localized anthropogenic stressors compound the effects of warming seawater to damage corals and should be mitigated immediately…. The countries bordering the entire Red Sea will need to cooperate to enable effective scientific research and conservation.
Who lives in the Red Sea?

For nature to have a voice in policy and security strategy, it is important to get away from statistics which remove nature’s significance as a magnificent expression of life and beauty. WE must remember that nature is not an inert ‘resource.’ Nature refers to non-human creatures who feel pain and fear, who have family and community connections and their own ways of communicating—which modern humans are only beginning to understand.

One way to help nature be seen in war is to simply to learn the names of species who live in the ‘battlefield’ and find out a bit about them, (see Table 1). It is sickening to think of the 4,000 remaining Dugong, currently on the ‘red list for threatened species,’ swimming in what could become a major war zone.

Table 1: Who lives in the Red Sea? A sample
WHO LIVES IN THE RED SEA?
▶ 10 x Shark Species Oceanic White Tip Shark Hammerhead Shark Tiger Shark Grey Reef Shark Thresher Shark Silky Shark Nurse Shark Black Tip Reef Shark White Tip Reef Shark Whale Shark
▶ 4,000 x Dugong Dugongs spend most of their life in the shallow coastal areas grazing on sea grass beds. These sea grass beds are of enormous ecological importance and sustain an overwhelming amount of marine life. ⚠ Dugongs are on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. ⚠ Dugongs have been steadily retreating from their Red Sea coast because of tourist development. Eutrophication from industrial run-off and habitat destruction constitute the greatest threats to the Dugongs of the Red Sea.
▶ 5 x Turtle species Critically endangered: Hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) Leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), called the gentle giant by some, rarely seen nowadays. Endangered: Loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta), known for its big head, can usually be spotted in the Gulf of Aden but rarely reaches the Egyptian Red Sea. Green turtle (Chelonia mydas) Vulnerable: Olive-ridley turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea), the smallest of the turtle species and which prefers to stay far from the coast and, like the leatherback, is only rarely seen. (Drawn from the Living Oceans Foundation website)


What happens if the Red Sea ecosystem collapses?

Aside from the likely far-reaching negative impacts upon Earth’s wider oceans and ecological systems, destruction of Red Sea marine life would have layered local impacts for humans in terms of food security and lost livelihoods in fishing and tourism. A major war in the region would inevitably impact all array of Red Sea coastal settlements, businesses, and agriculture. Taken together, less food, less income, less safe places to live creates more people in a state of desperation. Greater strain is placed upon governance. People may seek other options: immigration? Crime? Ransack remaining ecological habitats, such as Marine Protected Areas? Join a terror group?

Sporadic, but ongoing conflict in the Red Sea, a lower intensity but longer drawn-out affair, (the type of long war that certain business entities appreciate), might mute the severity of impacts and pace of decline, but it would also erode capacity to undertake the restorative actions that are needed to save marine life in the longer term.

We need full-spectrum security strategy

In general, any security strategy, today, that ignores the perilous state of the planet is too blinkered; too short-sighted; too dated and too dangerous to be tolerated.

All the consequences that arise from not finding political solutions to conflict, need to be weighed up in any credible strategic analysis.

A revolution in military affairs

If current day security strategy has lost its bearings, the good news is that humanity has options.

There is an alternate security strategy designed to suit the nature of the 21st Century – to suit a time of ecological and climate crisis; of escalating and wide-ranging human security problems; of a security context where corporations can constitute a new type of threat actor; and in which a multi-polar world is coming into being.

The new approach is called PLAN E. PLAN E proposes that the number one security priority is a habitable planet: protecting life in all its multi-faceted forms. It also takes an ‘entangled security’ approach whereby it considers planetary, human, and state security all at once. This new way of thinking regards that the security of non-human life, such as that of the Red Sea’s dugongs, sharks, and turtles, is as important as the security of human beings. The ethical foundations of security strategy are re-laid.

Further elaboration on PLAN E and why it is time for western security strategy to make a bold pivot are further made in the recently published book Hot War (2024, Chapter 15).


Elizabeth Boulton, PhD is an eco-military theorist with Destination Safe Earth, and a research affiliate with Oxford University’s “Climate Change & (In)Security Project." Her doctoral research developed the idea that climate and environmental change constitutes a new form of threat – a hyperthreat. She then applied modified military threat analysis and strategic planning tools to investigate options for a hyper-response. This led to ‘PLAN E’ – the world’s first climate and eco-centred security strategy, published by the US Marine Corps University Press in 2022.

Environmentalists say federal tracking of forest health replete with ‘spin’

By Simon Little & Paul Johnson  Global News

Posted January 19, 2024 

Canada’s Forests Annual Report puts a positive “spin” on the logging industry and forest health, through selected statistics and the omission of key information.

The groups, which include Stand.Earth, The Sierra Club Canada, the David Suzuki Foundation and the Natural Resource Defence Council, among others, has produced a report of its own, challenging the government’s forestry accounting.

2:07B.C. forest plan draft hailed by conservationists

That report claims Ottawa’s annual review fails to account for logging in old-growth and primary forests, forest degradation, deforestation due to logging infrastructure, declining biodiversity and climate impacts.

Natural Resources Canada’s “information is incredibly biased, it omits key facts, and it really doesn’t give people in Canada an accurate representation of what is happening in forests, which is in effect a dire crisis,” Stand.Earth forests campaigner Tegan Hansen said.

“The government of Canada and provincial governments put forward this idea that forestry in Canada is somehow sustainable and world leading by saying we have such a low amount of deforestation, when in reality we are seeing every year 10s of thousands or more hectares of at risk old growth forest and natural forests in other parts of the country being permanently destroyed.”

Hansen cited the way Ottawa’s reporting accounts for clear-cut logging as a key example.

2:02Environmental group claims ‘data errors’ putting old growth at risk

Because forest companies are required to re-plant cutblocks with new trees, the NRCan annual report considers clear-cut areas to still be forests, she said.

“I think anyone in Canada could walk into a clear-cut and then walk into an old-growth forest and be able to tell you that there is a difference,” she said.

“The government of Canada doesn’t distinguish between an area that’s been logged and maybe turned into a plantation and a standing old-growth of primary forest, so what we get is a really skewed image of how much forest is there in Canada and how healthy is it, how resilient is it to the kind of mega-fires we are seeing.”

Hansen said failing to account for the cumulative impacts on Canada’s forests both threatens their long-term health and biodiversity, while leaving communities at risk from floods and fires due to weakened forest resilience.

At the same time, she said, the federal government has used its own accounting to promote Canada internationally as a leader in forest protection and a source of sustainable forest products.

0:50Thirtieth anniversary of Clayoquot Sound protests

In a statement, Natural Resources Canada said it and the provinces are “continually discussing new indicators and areas where those indicators can be improved.”

But it stood by its reporting, which it said uses “internationally agreed-upon indicators of sustainable forest management to report on forest sustainability.”

“Forest degradation is a complex issue, affecting multiple forest values, attributes, services, and species. There is no universal definition or reporting framework for forest degradation,” NRCan said.

“However, recognizing the need for a deeper understanding of the conditions impacting Canada’s forests, the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers (CCFM) … is actively working to define and report on forest degradation in Canada. CCFM’s priority is to work towards a definition framework that is scientifically credible, internationally acceptable, culturally sensitive, objectively measurable, and transparent.”

The coalition of environmental groups is calling on the federal government to improve transparency in its accounting to include details on the effects of large-scale logging, including rates of forest degradation, impacts on old-growth forests, regeneration failures and governments’ performance on respecting Indigenous rights.