Earth Matters is a Daily Kos compendium of wonderful, disturbing, and hideous news briefs about the environment.
• Voters gave a thumbs up to two environment-related state ballot initiatives Tuesday: This year there were 129 state measures on the ballot nationwide, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That’s the lowest since 1980. The high point was 1998, with 272 measures. Some 51 of the 2020 measures were designed at least in part to have a direct effect on the environment.
Nevada Question 6, an amendment to the state constitution, requires that utilities must obtain 50% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030. It passed with nearly 60% of the vote. Nevadans already passed the identical amendment in 2018, but amendments in the state must be passed twice to become law. Nevada now has both an amendment and a statute signed in April 2019 mandating the 50% level, although the two measures have different timelines for specific renewable increments. Advocates wanted an amendment so that a future legislature couldn’t weaken the requirement. Some climate hawks weren’t happy because they feel the amendment doesn’t go far enough fast enough.
By an extremely narrow margin, voters approved Colorado Proposition 114 that mandates Colorado Parks and Wildlife to come up with a plan to reintroduce gray wolves onto public lands. Backed by the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund, the reintroduction, advocates say, is needed to rebalance ecosystems harmed by the eradication of wolves in the 1920s and ‘30s when government bounties were paid for their pelts. Federal reintroduction of gray wolves in next-door Yellowstone National Park and Idaho 25 years ago encountered vigorous organized opposition, and that was reflected in the closeness of the Colorado vote. Foes of the proposition included ranchers, farmers, sportsmen, the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, Colorado Farm Bureau, and Coloradans Protecting Wildlife, as well as some counties. Some critics say the law is unnecessary because wolves have already returned to Colorado. But wildlife experts say the animals are unlikely to sustain a permanent presence without more wolves being reintroduced into the state. The last wolves in Colorado were killed in the 1940s. On Oct. 29, the Department of Interior removed the gray wolf from the roster of endangered species it had been added to in 1975. There are today perhaps 11,000 gray wolves in Alaska, the only state where they were not extirpated. An estimated 6,000 now live in the lower 48 states.
• Across the nation, voters approved $3.7 billion in new funding for parks, public lands, and climate resilience: In its survey of voting results, the Trust for Public Land found that there were 49 conservation-oriented ballot measures in 19 states. The trust had endorsed 26 of these in 11 states, all of which gained majority voter approval. Some examples of what passed:
- Oakland, California: a $735 million school bond that will, among other things, fund green or "living" schoolyards throughout the school district.
- Portland, Oregon: A five-year property tax levy authorities hope will bring in $293 million in investments in parks to "increase access in recreation opportunities for communities of color, refugees and immigrants, and families experiencing poverty.”
- Denver: A quarter-cent "climate sales tax" to generate $800 million over the next 20 years for climate-related programs, with a mandate that "funding should maximize investments in communities of color, under resourced communities, and communities most vulnerable to climate change."
- Michigan: Constitutional amendment lifts the cap on how much revenue the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund can take in to allow for an increase in oil, gas, and mining industry royalties used to create and protect state parks.
- Montana: Two measures legalizing and taxing recreational marijuana are anticipated to generate $360 million for land conservation over the next 20 years.
• Denmark will kill all 17 million of its farmed mink because of coronavirus mutation: The mutated virus has spread from five minks to 12 humans, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced Wednesday. Authorities found new strains were less susceptible to antibodies, causing worries the new mutation could make any future vaccine less effective. Denmark is the world’s number one supplier of farmed mink. The Netherlands, Spain, and Utah have all culled thousands of their own mink because the virus had spread to farmed populations. But these were not mutated versions. Dr. Joanna Swabe, the Humane Society International/Europe's senior director of public affairs, praised Denmark's decision. "Denmark is one of the largest fur producers on the planet, so a total shutdown of all Danish mink fur farms amid spiraling COVID-19 infections is a significant development," Swabe told The Guardian. "Although not a ban on fur farming, this move signals the end of suffering for millions of animals confined to small wire cages on Danish fur farms solely for the purposes of a trivial fur fashion that no one needs."
• Biden will, if elected, move to rejoin the Paris climate agreement early on in his administration: But fulfilling any pledge to cut emissions likely will encounter trouble at home. Biden has vowed that he would move immediately to rejoin the Paris Agreement officially abandoned with a sneer by the Trump regime Wednesday. Biden said he will "use every tool of American foreign policy to push the rest of the world to raise their ambitions alongside with the United States." “Being out formally obviously hurts the U.S. reputation,” former Obama administration climate official Andrew Light told BBC News. “This will be the second time that the United States has been the primary force behind negotiating a new climate deal—with the Kyoto Protocol we never ratified it, in the case of the Paris Agreement, we left it. So, I think it's obviously a problem.” To rejoin, the United States must come up with a credible pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in what are called nationally determined contributions. Expectations of other world leaders as well as climate hawks at home are that the U.S. must make an ambitious NDC pledge. But while Biden can make such a pledge, obstacles to making it happen are rife. Among them, of course, is Congress, where the Democratic House majority will be smaller in 2021 and Republicans may still dominate the Senate. Even if Democrats manage to win the Senate majority, the Supreme Court, with three Donald Trump-appointed justices since Biden was vice president, will undoubtedly be less friendly to climate-related regulations. "I think that the Supreme Court, even with [Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg was going to be a pretty tough place for EPA," Jeffrey Holmstead, a partner at Bracewell LLP, told Jean Chemnick at E&E News. "But I think that's even more clear now." Not everyone is pessmistic. Said Light, "I think that [Biden] will dig in deep, learn the lessons of what the Obama crew learned from trying to get these existing authority measures through and the legal hurdles they encountered, and he goes full bore."
• Variability of renewable energy sources means managing them on the electric grid, and because that’s challenging, there are costs to that: But how much? Philip Heptonstall and Robert Gross of Imperial College London decided to find the answer. They dug into hundreds of studies. Their key conclusion: even at the high end of the estimates, the added costs of renewables still leave them competitive with carbon-emitting sources. Those extra costs vary tremendously depending on location and other factors.
• Clean energy companies spoke out against racism after the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd: Now, to turn words into action, they have to figure out how to actually combat racism inside and outside company ranks. Emma Foehringer Merchant at Green Tech Media writes:
So far, the clean energy industry has largely embraced a "rising tide lifts all boats" approach: If renewables companies help clean up the grid, that will naturally reduce pollution for the communities of color who experience it most acutely. But data on the industry — such as the number of opportunities for Black employees in the industry and the availability of rooftop solar to majority-nonwhite neighborhoods — shows that that approach has fallen flat in challenging the legacy of systemic racism within clean energy.
“At its core, the idea of moving forward clean energy, whether it’s solar or wind, has been good,” said Jacqui Patterson, director of the NAACP’s Environmental and Climate Justice Program. But overall, Patterson said, the industry’s approach to anti-racism efforts has been lackluster, even after she’s advised companies on best practices.
• Six House Democrats oppose Forest Service plan to relax oil and gas drilling regulations in national forests: Democratic Rep. Mike Levin of California and five other House Democrats sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen Monday objecting to a proposed Forest Service rule, according to E&E News. The deadline for public comment on the proposal passed Monday."If this proposal is adopted, oil and gas developers would be gifted lax rules in our National Forests while transparency and critical environmental reviews would be curtailed," the lawmakers wrote. If approved, the proposed rule would allow the Forest Service to rubber-stamp surface-use plans for oil and gas drilling without public notice or environmental review. This is part of the Trump regime’s effort to boost resource extraction from public lands by streamlining rule changes. The Environmental Protection Network blasted streamlining and made recommendations about it this summer.
Source: Daily Kos
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