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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.

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”.

CTHULHU STUDIES

Oldest known sex chromosome emerged 248 million years ago in an octopus ancestor

The oldest-known sex chromosome emerged in octopus and squid between 455 million and 248 million years ago — 180 million years earlier than the previous record-holder, scientists have discovered.

Octopus and squid appear to have evolved sex chromosomes at least 248 million years ago.

 (Image credit: Olga Visavi/Shutterstock)


The oldest known sex chromosome in animals has been discovered, pushing back the date for the evolution of sex chromosomes to between 248 million and 455 million years ago.

The ancient chromosome was found in octopus and squid, suggesting that these may have been among the first animals to determine their sex via genetic blueprint, instead of environmental cues.

Sex chromosomes are standard in mammals. In humans, the sex chromosomes are X and Y. Males usually have an X and a Y chromosome, while females have two Xs, although there are some variations, such as XXX or XXY, which can have a wide range of impacts from no effect at all to certain learning disabilities or neurological differences.

For a long time, researchers weren't sure whether cephalopods, the soft-bodied mollusks that include squid and octopuses, determined their sex with chromosomes. Mollusks have a variety of ways to handle reproduction, including hermaphroditism or sequential hermaphroditism, in which individuals swap sexes over time.

Octopuses stick to one sex, but it wasn't clear whether genes or environmental cues determined what sex that would be. In some reptiles and fish, factors like temperature decide the sex of offspring.

Related: Octopuses torture and eat themselves after mating. Science finally knows why.

In 2015, researchers completed the first full gene sequence of a cephalopod, the California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides). That sequence still included gaps, though, so a team led by Andrew Kern, a biologist at the University of Oregon, set about filling them in with high-fidelity sequencing.


Researchers discovered the chromosome after completing the full gene sequence of the California two-spot octopus. (Image credit: Brent Durand/Getty Images)

They soon noticed that one chromosome, chromosome 17, seemed less filled-out with genes than the other chromosomes in their sequence. Because they had sequenced a female octopus, they compared their results to the earlier individual, a male. In the case of the male, chromosome 17 looked no less populated than other chromosomes in the octopus.

This was a clue that chromosome 17 might have something to do with sex differences. To confirm, the team sequenced four more octopuses, two male and two female, and confirmed that females have just one copy of chromosome 17, while males have two. Thus, they represent the octopus sex chromosomes not as XY and XX as in humans, but as ZZ and Z0.

The researchers then compared their octopus genomes to the genomes of three other octopus species, three species of squid, and the chambered nautilus (Nautilus pompilius).

They found the ZZ/Z0 pattern in the squid and the octopus, but not in the nautilus, a more distantly related species. This showed that the sex chromosomes evolved after the split between the nautilus line and the line leading to modern squid and octopus, which occurred between 455 million and 248 million years ago.

"This is an astoundingly long time for a sex chromosome to be preserved," the researchers wrote in their paper, which is now available pre-peer review on the preprint website BioArxiv.

Prior to this research, the oldest confirmed sex chromosome was in sturgeon fish, according to Nature News, with an age of about 180 million years.

Octopuses Might Have The Oldest Sex Chromosomes in The Animal Kingdom

NATURE09 March 2024

ByCARLY CASSELLA

(Judit Pungor/CC By 4.0)

Cephalopods may have the oldest sex chromosomes of any animal, according to a recent discovery in the octopus genome.

That's a big deal given that scientists didn't know until now that these oddball creatures even had a form of sex determination written into their genes. To determine if an octopus is male or female, biologists have relied purely on observation, differentiating between which individuals lay eggs versus which produce sperm.

Searching the octopus genome had shown no clear sign of a sex chromosome system. Scientists were beginning to wonder if perhaps cephalopods were like some fish and reptiles, with sex determined through environmental factors such as the temperature at which eggs are kept rather than the inheritance of distinct chromosome.

At last, researchers at the University of Oregon claim to have solved the mystery.

Their pre-print study, which is currently under peer review, provides the first evidence of genetic sex determination among octopuses.

Examining the genes of the California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) – the first cephalopod to have its whole genome sequenced – researchers have finally found a unique chromosome pair.

They discovered it on chromosome number 17, and it only stood out to researchers when they compared the male octopus genome that had been fully sequenced to a female one. The female octopus seemed to be missing one of their two copies.

Digging further, researchers say they found clear signatures of a ZW sex-determination system, which is seen in birds, crustaceans, and some insects,

We humans rely on an XY system, wherein two X chromosomes create the default female body plan, while the presence of a Y chromosome generally triggers the development of male characteristics.

Octopuses have an opposite system. It is the males that typically have a double-Z pair and females that have only one Z chromosome.

To see if this system was present in other cephalopods, researchers compared the genomes of three octopus species, three squid species, and a nautilus.

They concluded that the Z chromosome is an "evolutionary outlier" that stands apart from similar chromosomes in close relatives.

Only the genomes of the bobtail squid (Euprymna scolopes) and the East Asian common octopus (Octopus sinensis) had similar outlier signatures, but because these creatures are from different lineages, it suggests the Z chromosome originated before their split.

As such, researchers at the University of Oregon argue that the Z chromosome is "of an ancient, unique origin" that probably arose between 455 and 248 million years ago. If the chromosome appeared towards the earlier end of that timeline, the octopus could have the oldest animal chromosome yet found, beating even some insects which are thought to have sex chromosomes that date back 450 million years.

Compared to those of octopuses, however, these arthropod sex chromosomes are poorly conserved across species.

For comparisons, the oldest accepted vertebrate chromosome is that of a sturgeon fish, which is thought to be about 180 million years old. Sturgeon fish females have a ZW sex chromosome set pair as opposed to the female octopus's 'hemizygous' Z chromosome. It's possible the octopus's corresponding W chromosome may have been lost over time in a manner similar to the ill-fated trajectory of the Y chromosome in humans.

The story behind sex chromosomes has changed a lot in recent years. Once, they were thought to be intrinsic features of sex determination in animals. But biological research tends to be biased towards mammals. As it turns out, some fish and reptiles, like crocodiles, don't have sex chromosomes at all. The sex of their offspring is instead determined by other, external factors through epigenetic regulations.

Clearly, there is still much to be learned about how sex chromosome evolved, and why. Octopuses, with their deep evolutionary roots could be fascinating models for future research.

"The data presented in this paper definitely suggests that cephalopods have among the oldest sex chromosomes in both animals and plants," independent evolutionary scientist, Sarah Carey, told Carissa Wong at Nature.

"This is such a cool time to be working on the genetics of sex chromosomes."

The preprint was published in bioRxiv.

Oldest known animal sex chromosome

evolved in octopuses 380 million years ago


Result reveals for the first time how some cephalopods determine sex.

By Carissa Wong
04 March 2024

The California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) has one or two copies of chromosome 17, depending on its sex.Credit: Norbert Wu/Minden Pictures via Alamy

Researchers have found the oldest known sex chromosome in animals — the octopus Z chromosome — which first evolved in an ancient ancestor of octopuses around 380 million years ago. The findings1 answer a long-standing question about how sexual development is directed in the group of sea creatures that includes octopuses and squid.

“We stumbled upon probably the oldest animal sex chromosome known to date,” says evolutionary geneticist Andrew Kern at the University of Oregon in Eugene. “Sex determination in cephalopods, such as squids and octopi, was a mystery — we found the first evidence that genes are in any way involved.”

How does it feel to have an octopus arm? This robo-tentacle lets people find out

In many animals, including most mammals and some insects, sex chromosomes determine whether an individual becomes male or female. In humans, females usually have two X sex chromosomes, and males typically have one X and one Y sex chromosome. But for some animal groups, such as cephalopods — which include soft-bodied animals such as squids and octopuses, as well as hard-shelled creatures called nautiluses — researchers have been unsure about how individuals become male or female. Scientists generally thought that environmental factors such as temperature play a part — as they do for some reptiles and fish.

Catching Zs

In 2015, researchers reported2 sequencing a cephalopod genome for the first time — that of a male California two-spot octopus, Octopus bimaculoides. In the latest study1, Kern and his colleagues mapped the genome of a female California two-spot octopus. They discovered 29 pairs of chromosomes and one single chromosome, called chromosome 17. By contrast, the male octopus genome had two copies of chromosome 17. That difference led the researchers to hypothesize that chromosome 17 was a sex chromosome.

Sequencing the DNA of other O. bimaculoides octopuses confirmed the idea. Males always had two copies of chromosome 17, whereas females had one copy. Chromosome 17 also contained several genes similar to those that encode proteins in human reproductive tissues, including a protein found in sperm. In animals including birds and butterflies, males similarly have two Z sex chromosomes, whereas females have one Z and one W sex chromosome.

“It very much looked like we were looking at a Z chromosome in O. bimaculoides,” says Kern. But the researchers failed to find a W chromosome in the female octopuses. That suggested that males have ZZ sex chromosomes, whereas females are ZO, with the O denoting the lack of a W chromosome.

Well conserved

The team also found Z chromosomes in some other octopus and squid species — but not in a nautilus.

“This pattern suggests that the Z chromosome evolved once in the lineage that led to modern squid and octopuses — after this lineage split off from hard-shelled nautiloids,” says Kern. This means the Z chromosome first appeared between 450 million and 250 million years ago and has been retained to the present day, he says. Previously, the oldest known animal sex chromosome was thought to have evolved in sturgeon fish about 180 million years ago3.

This chromosome is profoundly evolutionarily conserved, says Matthias Stöck, an evolutionary geneticist at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin.

“The data presented in this paper definitely suggests that cephalopods have among the oldest sex chromosomes in both animals and plants,” says Sarah Carey, who studies the evolution of sex chromosomes at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama. “This is such a cool time to be working on the genetics of sex chromosomes.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00637-0

References

1. Coffing., G. C. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.02.21.581452 (2024).

2. Albertin, C. B. et al. Nature 524, 220–224 (2015).

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3. Kuhl, H. et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 376, 20200089 (2021).