“The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs, one step at a time.” Joe Girard
Oceans
Yesterday was World Ocean Day which supports collaborative conservation, working with its global network of youth and organizational leaders in >140 countries, and providing free and customizable promotional and actionable resources.
Here are some ways you can take action to support the oceans today:
Sign the 30x30 petition that aims to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and ocean by 2030. It takes 30 seconds (I timed it!)
Share graphics, badges, and posters with everyone you know and social media. You can download them
here
.Support them by donating to the cause.
Did you know?
Around 265 million years ago, much of modern-day Texas was underwater, and the vast region known as the Permian Basin was a flourishing coral reef.
Today, the organisms that once thrived there have been transformed into enormous deposits of fossil fuels — and they have made the area one of the most treacherous front lines in President Joe Biden’s domestic fight against climate change.
The US oil and gas industry has pinned much of its future hopes on the region, especially in the next decade: If it gets its way, the Permian Basin will still grow through 2029, outranking every country except for Saudi Arabia in liquid fuel production, according to one analysis from Oil Change International. At this rate, by 2050, it would account for 39 percent of the world’s new oil and gas emissions.
Politics & Environment
On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced it was suspending oil and gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), protecting, at least for the time being, one of the nation’s few remaining untouched ecosystems from the energy development that President Donald Trump sought to initiate on the coastal plain.
In 2017, Republicans in control of both houses of Congress pushed through a tax bill that allowed sales of up to 1.5 million acres of the refuge. However, the sale received little interest from the oil and gas industry. Companies said they were focusing their spending on renewable energy, amid a huge slump in oil prices. Several large US banks said they would not fund exploration in the area.
Environmentalists show concern over the administration’s decision to advance a massive oil project a few hundred miles to the west of ANWR: ConocoPhillips’ so-called “Willow” project in the National Petroleum Reserve, a $2 billion plan that got the go-ahead from Trump last fall.
The seemingly contradictory back-to-back decisions on Alaska oil reflect the difficult path ahead for the Biden administration as it seeks to enact an historically ambitious U.S. climate policy with the help of a narrowly-divided Congress.
By defending the ConocoPhillips project, the administration was aligning itself with the project’s chief Congressional champion, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who happens to be one of the few Republicans who have expressed willingness to work with the White House toward an infrastructure deal.
Daily ED: United States
The world can still reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 — but only if governments redouble their efforts, all fossil fuel investment is halted, and renewable energy capacity and and infrastructure are added at unprecedented scale, according to a first-of-its-kind report from the International Energy Agency.
Climate activists won yet another victory against Exxon Mobil on Wednesday after a new member was elected to the oil giant’s board, raising the stakes for the company amid criticism it has done little to address the growing threat of climate change. Alexander Karsner who has experience in renewable energy fields brought deep environmental credentials to the fossil fuel producer.
Wracked by drought, climate change and overuse, a key reservoir on the Colorado River could sink to historically low levels later this year, new US government projections show, potentially triggering significant water cutbacks in some states as early as next year.
Environment & Justice
Environmentalists say it is unconscionable for Congress and the Army Corps to be backing Houston-based Max Midstream’s oil export plans when climate change is threatening the planet and the Biden administration has proposed reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030.
A 2020 report by Greenpeace and Oil Change International estimates that U.S. oil exports have increased by 750% since the export ban was lifted in 2015, peaking at approximately 3.4 million barrels per day in 2019. As of October 2019, 24% of all crude extracted in the United States was exported.
The dredging would also roil mercury-laced sediment in one of the nation’s largest, most beautiful and toxic Superfund sites, Lavaca Bay, poisoned by a now-idled Alcoa aluminum refinery that spewed an estimated 1.2 million pounds of mercury into its azure waters from 1966 to 1979. Long term fishermen are hurt by these new developements.
Echoing these concerns, over 80 community groups and environmental organizations sent a letter to President Biden in April asking the administration to revoke the project’s authorization and reinstate the crude export ban.
Daily ED: International
In an analysis, published in Nature Climate Change, out of almost 30 million deaths in 43 countries, with data from 1991 to 2018, the study found that 37% of the deaths on average were the result of human-induced global warming, with the proportion rising to more than 75% in some places.
The Bank of England will examine the risks rising temperatures and sea levels could pose for the UK's big banks and insurers. It will put 19 firms through stress tests involving three climate scenarios projected over the next 30 years.
A UN panel found in March that climate change, mostly draught, is already affecting the global agriculture. Food experts predict that grain prices might double by 2050.
Climate & Science
Even before climate change, bouncing between drought and severe floods was routine in the Central Valley, the California’s richest farming region. Humans have amplified these natural cycles by pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, studies show, creating a future filled with what scientists recently dubbed “whiplash events.”
California got a taste of whiplash four years ago, when one of its wettest winters immediately followed one of its deepest, longest droughts. Heavy runoff from rivers in the Sierra Nevada damaged the main spillway of the Oroville Dam, the largest in the nation, forcing more than 180,000 people to evacuate.
However, this brings an interesting opportunity. In a recent study, published in Science Advances, researchers provided the first statewide analysis of the floodwater potentially available to restore depleted groundwater basins under future climate change scenarios.
The increase in floodwater available to replenish over-drafted aquifers over the next 30 years, they found, would be enough to fill 192,000 Olympic swimming pools each year under an intermediate-emissions scenario, and 232,000 pools under a high-emissions scenario.
Sustainability
After more than a decade of controversy, a move to force the closing of a Southern Illinois coal plant owned by municipal utilities across eight states is one of the final sticking points in the Illinois Legislature over a major energy bill.
If the Prairie State plant is forced to shut down by 2035, as legislators have proposed, it would begin the final chapter of a saga that led to the construction of one of the country’s last new coal plants, one that became a major source of air pollution.
If the plant is forced to close, they, as owners, will have to continue repaying the debt even as they have to find and pay for replacement sources of electricity that could lead to much higher electricity bills, a scenario that is fueling reluctance by some to pass the bill.
Environmental advocates say the state can’t afford to let the plant continue to operate if Illinois is to meet its climate goals. Lawmakers backed by environmental groups also are considering a state bailout of more than $600 million of three Exelon nuclear plants.