Tropical Storm Hilary made landfall in Mexico and crossed into California over the weekend, knocking out power and drenching wide swaths of southern California. Parts of the desert terrain in the region, which typically receives less than a quarter inch of rainfall a year, received between two and four inches of rain. According to the National Weather Service, downtown Los Angeles received 2.48 inches of rain on Sunday, breaking a single-day record from 1906 of 0.03 inches.
The downpour felled trees, caused mudslides, and closed roads. East of Los Angeles, in San Bernardino, police ordered evacuations in several communities. More than 35,000 Californians are out of power as of Monday, and several school districts canceled classes to assess the damage of the storm. Major sporting events including a Major League Soccer match and several Major League Baseball games over the weekend were also rescheduled.
The storm made landfall as the rest of the country was grappling with other climate-fueled disasters. Devastating wildfires in Lahaina, a historic town in Maui, Hawai’i, killed more than 110 people and caused billions in damage. Across the country, dangerous heat conditions persisted, with the National Weather Service warning that a heat dome will “consume” the Plains and Mississippi Valley into the South this week. Two major fires burning in Spokane, Washington, have also torched a combined 20,000 acres, leading officials to order the evacuation of the nearby town of Medical Lake. On the East Coast, meteorologists are tracking two storms brewing in the Atlantic.
Hilary strengthened in a hurry last week. On Thursday, the National Weather Service reported that it was a Category 3 hurricane with wind speeds of 120 miles per hour, and by Friday, it had strengthened into a powerful Category 4 storm. The center warned that Hilary would bring “life-threatening and potentially catastrophic flooding” over the weekend. The forecasts triggered California’s first-ever tropical storm warning. But as the hurricane crossed cooler waters off the coast of southern California, it lost its strength and was downgraded to a tropical storm.
Still, Tropical Storm Hilary “really did produce all-time, record-breaking summer rainfall across most of the region,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “In terms of the incredible frenetic pace of global extremes we’re seeing this summer, that is only going to get worse as the climate continues to warm.”
Tropical storms and hurricanes rarely make landfall in California. That’s because powerful storms need warm waters to gather moisture and energy, and the eastern Pacific Ocean is generally much cooler than the western Pacific or the Gulf of Mexico — typically as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit.
This year, however, after record heat in July, the waters in the Pacific are not as cold. In fact, temperatures off the coast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico are about the same as the waters around Key West, Florida, which helped Hilary intensify rapidly before reaching California waters.
El Niño, a weather pattern that also leads to warmer Pacific temperatures, appears to have played a role in Hilary’s formation. The climate phenomenon affects a hurricane’s wind shear, a term used to describe the change in wind speed at a given height. If a hurricane has high wind shear, it will dissipate quickly. El Niño creates the conditions in the Pacific for low wind shear, which aids in the formation of stable hurricanes.
The weather pattern “tends to decrease vertical wind shear in the eastern Pacific off the coast of California and so allows more hurricanes to develop,” said Ned Kleiner, an atmospheric scientist at the risk assessment firm Verisk. “And so we’ve seen a series of hurricanes in the eastern Pacific, including Hurricane Dora, which is partially responsible for the really damaging winds which fueled the wildfires in Maui.”
While the exact role that climate change played in Tropical Storm Hilary’s formation is not yet fully known, Kleiner said climate scientists are confident that rising temperatures are leading to the formation of more intense hurricanes. After all, oceans have absorbed 90 percent of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases. As hurricanes pass over these warmer waters, they pick up more moisture, which leads to more intense rainfall. Research also shows that hurricanes are stalling more often, giving them more time to drop rain over an area. Forward motion speeds of Atlantic hurricanes have decreased 17 percent compared to previous decades.
The science for hurricanes in the eastern Pacific is less clear. Since few storms develop off the West Coast in the first place, scientists have less data to work with. “There are certainly theories that there will be more intense landfalling storms on the West Coast, but it’s just a very difficult thing to be confident in because it’s so rare,” said Kleiner.
Hilary is likely to bring more rainfall and flooding as it makes its way across Nevada on Monday. The storm is expected to bring between 1 to 3 inches of rainfall in Idaho and Oregon through Tuesday morning.
“Across the Southwestern United States, the ongoing and historic amount of rainfall is expected to cause life-threatening flash, urban, and arroyo flooding including landslides, mudslides, and debris flows today,” the National Hurricane Center warned on Monday.
In a historic referendum held over the weekend, Ecuadorian voters said no to oil drilling in a swath of Yasuní National Park, a protected part of the Amazon rainforest that’s home to at least two self-isolated Indigenous tribes.
“Yasuní gives life to our world, and Ecuadorian society has finally woken up to this,” Nemonte Nenquimo, an Indigenous Waorani activist and winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, said in a statement. “People are now realizing the crises we face aren’t going to be solved by exploiting more oil.”
Yasuní National Park is a sprawling, 3,800-square-mile reserve in the Ecuadorian section of the Amazon rainforest, in the northeastern part of the country. It’s home to the Tagaeri and Taromenane, tribes that choose to live without contact with the outside world. Declared a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1989, the park is also a hotspot for biodiversity, boasting hundreds of distinct bird, reptile, and amphibian species. Scientists say that just one hectare (2.47 acres) of Yasuní land boasts more tree species than there are in all of North America. The park is also home to Ecuador’s largest reserve of crude oil.
This weekend’s referendum follows more than decade of organizing from green groups and environmental advocates who wanted to keep that oil in the ground — including former President Rafael Correa, who in 2007 asked developed countries for $3.6 billion to keep the Yasuní free from oil exploration. That funding never materialized, however, and Petroecuador, the state-owned oil company, began drilling in the park in 2016. Today, the company produces some 55,000 barrels of oil a day in a relatively small swath of the park called Block 43.
The drilling ban, which drew support from about 60 percent of Ecuadorian voters, will now require Petroecuador to dismantle its operations in Block 43, preventing the extraction of some 726 million barrels of oil worth an estimated $1.2 billion. (The vote does not ban drilling in two other Yasuní blocks, although activists have made inroads against oil extraction in one of them.)
Critics said Ecuador was “shooting itself in the foot” by stopping drilling, because it will lose revenue and have to buy more oil from other countries. Ecuador’s central bank said a ban on drilling in Block 43 would cause a 1.9 percent reduction in economic growth between 2023 and 2026.
Environmental advocates, however, said the move will nudge Ecuador away from resource extraction and toward more sustainable economic activity, like ecotourism. They celebrated the outcome as a victory for democracy; it’s the first time citizens have had a direct say in the future of Amazonian oil exploration.
“The outcome of this referendum is a victory for all Ecuadorians,” Pedro Bermo, a spokesperson for the environmental collective Yasunidos, said in a statement. “It shows us that the greatest national consensus at this time is in the defense of nature, the defense of Indigenous peoples and nationalities, the defense of life.” Voters also approved a separate ban on mining in the Choco Andino forest, in the north of Ecuador.
The referendum marked a bright spot for many in Ecuador, which was rattled earlier this month when a presidential candidate was assassinated while leaving a campaign rally. Voters on Sunday also cast ballots for president in a snap election to decide who will succeed President Guillermo Lasso, an oil-drilling proponent. The race, which has been dominated by concerns over safety and drug-trafficking, will likely be decided in an October 15 runoff between the leftist candidate Luisa González or the right-wing candidate Daniel Noboa.
Researchers from Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom have recently found that more than 60 percent of the 142 largest gas, oil and coal companies are not on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, wrote two of the researchers from The University of Queensland, Saphira Rekker and Belinda Wade, in The Conversation.
The research team used a new method to determine if fossil fuel companies were in line with the 1.5 degrees Celsius target that used production budgets rather than complicated calculations of greenhouse gas emissions.
They found that between 2014 and 2020, all fossil fuel sectors went over their production budgets by more than half: gas by 63 percent, oil by 64 percent and coal by 70 percent.
“Limiting the global average temperature rise to 1.5 °C requires an unprecedented reduction in fossil fuel use, along with large-scale deployment of CO2 capture and storage,” the authors of the study wrote. “To track the fossil fuel industry and companies against 1.5 °C-consistent pathways, we propose a new methodology that complements existing methodologies in four main ways: (1) it uses publicly available data; (2) focuses on absolute fossil fuel production (as a proxy for embedded emissions) rather than carbon intensities associated with their use; (3) includes coal that is commonly excluded; and (4) is applicable regardless of whether the company has set a target.”
The study, “Evaluating fossil fuel companies’ alignment with 1.5 °C climate pathways,” was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The fossil fuel producers’ budgets are the production levels that are necessary to limit planetary warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius under the “middle-of-the-road scenario” of the Paris Agreement.
In The Conversation, Rekker and Wade wrote that freely available information is needed in order to understand the climate impact companies are having so they can be held accountable. The results of their research are available here: Are you Paris compliant?.
The conditions of compliance with the Paris Agreement were laid out by the researchers in an earlier paper. They include the base year of an entity’s measure of progress being identical to the year the decarbonization scenario begins. The pathway must also either be consistent with 1.5 degrees Celsius or “well below” a two degrees Celsius limit, as the Paris Agreement states.
Also, the only pathways that should be used are those that begin in or before 2015.
In The Conversation, Rekker and Wade said that, in order to keep within their budgets, action deficits that have occurred since the base year should be made up for by companies.
“The not-for-profit SBTi is the primary point of call for companies wanting to develop emission reduction targets. It’s a partnership between CDP (which runs the global system of environmental impact disclosures), UN Global Compact, World Wildlife Fund and World Resources Institute,” Rekker and Wade said. “We have now applied our more rigorous approach to fossil fuel companies. Using publicly available production data from the Climate Accountability Institute allows us to assess a large number of companies.”
The researchers used four pathways to limit the average global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, including the 2020 Net Zero Emissions pathway from the International Energy Agency, as well as three that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change set in 2014.
“Not only did we find the majority of these companies are not currently aligned, but the outlook is also troubling. If recent trends (2010-2018) continue, the companies would produce up to 68% (coal), 42% (oil) and 53% (gas) more than their cumulative production budgets by 2050,” Rekker and Wade wrote. “Companies can use our method to see how much they need to reduce production to be aligned. They can also see how much carbon capture and storage is required under a certain 1.5℃ pathway.”
Rekker and Wade’s method provides relatively straightforward information to enable everyone to know how well or poorly companies are doing at meeting climate goals.
“Tracking how companies are performing empowers all stakeholders – including governments, investors and individuals like you and me – to advocate for climate action and make climate-safe decisions. For example, investors can use this information to decide which companies to invest in and advocate for change where required. Governments can integrate this information into corporate guidelines for climate action,” Rekker and Wade said in The Conversation.
The first tropical storm to hit California since 1939, Hilary, which initially began in the Pacific Ocean as a hurricane reaching Category 4 strength, brought a deluge of rain followed by flash flooding to the Los Angeles area on Sunday. The storm hit Mexico’s Baja California first, turning roads into rivers and killing one person.
A state of emergency was declared by Governor Gavin Newsom for a large swath of Southern California, as the drought-parched region was under flash flood warnings into at least early Monday morning.
“It’s quite amazing. I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Sean Julian, a resident of Rancho Mirage, as Reuters reported. “I’m seeing a lot more trees down. And there’s a big tree that just fell over there, and I probably shouldn’t be out here.”
Minimal damage and no fatalities had been reported in the Los Angeles area as the Los Angeles River, normally more of a thin stream, rushed through its concrete banks.
“For most cities, Los Angeles was tested but we came through it, and we came through it with minimal impacts,” said Paul Krekorian, president of the Los Angeles City Council, as reported by The New York Times. “For most cities, a tropical storm combined with a hurricane would be a catastrophic event. For Los Angeles and for our first responders, it’s just another day at the office.”
The desert resort town of Palm Springs was still under a flood watch through early Tuesday morning, its roads impassable.
“There is no way in or out of Palm Springs,” Mayor of Palm Springs Grace Garner said in a CNN interview on Monday morning, as The New York Times reported.
Forecasters said desert and mountain areas could see five to 10 inches of rain, as much as the drier regions get in an entire year, reported Reuters.
Evacuations were ordered in San Bernardino County in the midst of trees, rock and mud giving way to gushing water.
Parts of Ventura County were hit by as much as two inches of rain in a span of two hours, with water rescues carried out by firefighters in the Spanish Hills community.
President Joe Biden ordered federal aid to be sent to the region.
In Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, low-income communities with homes not up to building codes were especially vulnerable. Almost 1,900 people were evacuated in the area.
“We’ve always been aware that it’s a risky area. A lot of water runs (nearby) but what are we going to do? It’s the only place we have to live,” said Yolanda Contreras, who lives in a flood-prone area of Rosarito, Mexico, as Reuters reported.
Now post-tropical storm Hilary is still bringing rain to California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and Idaho, where flood watches were in effect, reported CBS News.
“Post-Tropical Hilary is expected to produce additional rainfall amounts of 2 to 4 inches, with isolated storm total amounts to 12 inches, across portions of Southern California and Southern Nevada through today. Continued flash and urban flooding, locally catastrophic, is expected,” the National Weather Service said on Monday.
According to a new study, the U.S. has the potential to drastically reduce building emissions in order to meet its goals to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. These emissions-cutting scenarios, such as making changes to energy use in buildings, could reduce building emissions by 91% compared to the 2005 peak and even save over $100 billion per year.
Researchers published their findings in the journal One Earth and used computational modeling to determine how different scenarios could impact building emissions. They found that scenarios such as switching to cleaner energy sources, like renewables, improving building efficiency with features like high-performance windows or smart thermostats, and switching to low-carbon equipment like heat pumps could all help contribute to reduced emissions.
“Meeting the U.S. 2050 net-zero emissions target requires a rapid and cost-effective low-carbon transition across the entire energy system,” the study authors wrote. “Commercial and residential buildings are a primary source of emissions and are key to this transition.”
As ScienceDaily reported, the U.S. building sector contributed 2,327 megatons of carbon dioxide in 2005, a record high level. While building emissions have declined about 25% since then, drastic cuts are still necessary to help meet the country’s goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. According to the National Building Performance Standards Coalition, buildings currently make up about 35% of total energy-related emissions.
The researchers noted that energy-efficient buildings, low-energy carbon sources, and a more reliable and flexible power grid were all important to achieving the highest reduction in emissions. They used modeling to show low, moderate and aggressive scenarios, and cutting emissions by 91% will require the aggressive scenario.
But this quick transition could pay off. According to the authors, deploying the aggressive scenario could also lead to annual energy cost savings of around $107 billion by 2050, which could also help balance out the cost to decarbonize the electrical grid.
The authors noted that policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law support actions to decarbonize buildings, but at only a fraction of what is necessary to reduce emissions to meet net-zero goals by 2050.
“The U.S. transition to a low-carbon energy system is well underway, with energy-related CO2 emissions having fallen steadily over the past decade. But achieving the deeper levels of emissions reductions targeted by economy-wide decarbonization plans will require a comprehensive mix of solutions addressing both the generation and end uses of energy,” the authors concluded.
Electric vehicles are becoming more and more commonplace on the nation’s roadways.
The federal government wants nearly two-thirds of all cars in the United States to be EVs within the next decade. All the while, EVs are breaking sales records, and manufacturers are building charging stations and production plants to incentivize a shift away from fossil fuels in the transportation sector.
With EVs taking the streets by storm, an unlikely industry now wants a piece of the pie.
Trade associations, fuel producers, and bipartisan lawmakers are pushing for biogas, fuel made from animal and food waste, to start receiving federal credits meant for powering electric vehicles.
The push for biogas-powered EVs would be a boon for the energy sector, according to biogas industry leaders. Environmental groups and researchers, however, say the fuel has yet to prove itself as a truly clean energy source. Biogas created from agriculture has been linked to an increase in waterway pollution and public health concerns that have disproportionately exposed low-income communities and communities of color to toxic byproducts of animal waste.
With the nation needing more ways to power fleets of Teslas and Chevy Bolts, the use of livestock manure to power EVs is still in limbo.
For biogas, there are, broadly speaking, three sources of waste from which to produce fuel: human waste, animal waste, and food waste. The source of this fuel input can be found at wastewater treatment plants, farms, and landfills.
At these locations, organic waste is deprived of oxygen, and a natural process known as anaerobic digestion occurs. Bacteria consume the waste products and eventually release methane, the main ingredient of natural gas. The gas is then captured, piped to a utility, turned into electricity, and distributed to customers.
Fuel created from animal waste isn’t a new concept. Farms around the country have been cashing in on biogas for decades, with a boom in production facilities known as anaerobic digesters expected after funding for their construction made it into the Inflation Reduction Act.
A man demonstrates a model anaerobic digester in 2003 in Burlington, Vermont, where one of the nation’s largest dairy-farm cooperatives announced plans to use manure from its thousands of cows to power a new fleet of milk-delivery trucks. Toby Talbot / AP Photo
At the end of June, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized its Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, which outlines how much renewable fuels — products like corn-based ethanol, manure-based biogas, and wood pellets — are used to cut greenhouse gas emissions, as well as reduce the use of petroleum-based transportation fuel, heating oil, or jet fuel.
Under this program, petroleum-based fuels must blend renewable fuels into their supply. For example, each time the RFS is updated, a new goal for how much corn-based ethanol is mixed into the nation’s fuel supply is set. This prediction is based on gas and renewable-fuel-industry market projections.
These gas companies and refineries purchase credits from renewable-fuel makers to comply with the mandated amount of renewable fuel that needs to be mixed into their supply.
An ethanol plant stands next to a cornfield near Nevada, Iowa, in 2013.
Charlie Riedel / AP Photo
A currency system tracks which renewable fuels are being produced and where they end up under the RFS. This system uses credits known as RINs, or Renewable Identification Numbers. According to the EPA, a single RIN is the energy equivalent of one gallon of ethanol, and the prices of the credits will fluctuate over time, just as gas prices do.
Oil companies and refineries purchase credits from renewable-fuel makers to comply with the mandated amount of renewable fuel that needs to be mixed into their supply. The unique RIN credit proves that an oil seller has purchased, blended, and sold renewable fuel.
Currently, the biogas industry can only use its RIN credits when the fuel source is blended with ethanol or a particular type of diesel fuel. Outside of the federal program, biogas producers have been cashing in on low-carbon fuel programs in both California and Oregon.
With the boom in demand for renewable electricity, biogas producers want more opportunities to sell their waste-based fuels. EVs might get them there.
During recent RFS negotiations, the biogas industry urged the EPA to create a pathway for a new type of credit known as eRINs, or electric RINs. This pathway would allow the biogas and biomass industry to power the nation’s EVs directly. While the industry applauded the recent expansion of mandatory volumes of renewable fuels, the EPA did not decide on finalizing eRIN credits.
Patrick Serfass is the executive director of the American Biogas Council. He said the EPA could approve projects that would support eRINs for years, but has yet to approve the pathway for biogas-fuel producers.
“It doesn’t matter which administration,” Serfass said. “The Obama administration didn’t do it. The Trump administration didn’t do it. The Biden administration so far hasn’t done it. EPA, do your job.”
Late last year, the EPA initially included approval of eRINs in the RFS proposal. Republican members of Congress who sit on the Energy & Commerce Committee sent a letter to the EPA, saying that the RFS is not meant to be a tool to electrify transportation.
“Our goal is to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable, available, reliable, and secure energy,” the committee members wrote. “The final design of the eRINs program under the RFS inserts uncertainty into the transportation fuels market.”
The RFS has traditionally supported liquid fuels that the EPA considers renewable, the main of which is ethanol. Stakeholders in ethanol production see the inclusion of eRINs as an overstep.
In May, Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, introduced legislation that would outlaw EVs from getting credits from the renewable-fuels program. Grassley has been a longtime supporter of the ethanol industry; Iowa alone makes up nearly a third of the nation’s ethanol production, according to the economic growth organization Iowa Area Development Group.
Serfass said biogas is a way to offset the nation’s waste and make small and midsize farms economically sustainable, as well as local governments operating waste treatment plants and landfills. When it comes to animal waste, he said the eRIN program would allow farmers to make money off their waste by selling captured biogas to the grid to power EVs.
Buildings housing generators and an anaerobic digester are seen at Homestead Dairy in Plymouth, Indiana, on July 13, 2015. The family-run farm invested in a biogas recovery system to transform cow manure and other waste into electricity. MIRA OBERMAN / AFP via Getty Images
“There’s a lot of folks that don’t like large farms, and the reason that large farms exist is that as a society, we’re not always willing to pay $6 to $9 for a gallon of milk,” Serfass said. “You have farm consolidation so that farmers can just make a living.”
Initially, digesters were thought of as a climate solution and an economic boon for farmers, but in recent years, farms have stopped digester operations because of the hefty price tag to run them and their modest revenue. Biogas digesters are still operated by large operations, often with the help of fossil fuel companies, such as BP.
In addition to farms, Serfass said biogas production from food waste and municipal wastewater treatment plants would also be able to cash in on the eRIN program.
Dodge City, Kansas, a city of 30,000 in the western part of the state, is an example of a local government using biogas as a source of revenue. In 2018, the city began capturing methane from its sewage treatment and has since been able to generate an estimated $3 million a year by selling the fuel to the transportation sector.
Serfass said the city would be able to sell the fuel to power the nation’s EV charging grid if the eRIN program was approved.
The EPA’s decision-making will direct the next three years of renewable-fuel production in the country. The program is often a battleground for different industry groups, from biogas producers to ethanol refineries, as they fight over their fuel’s market share.
Of note, the biomass industry, which creates fuel from wood pellets, forestry waste, and other detritus of the nation’s lumber supply and forests, also wants to be approved for future eRIN opportunities.
This fuel source has a questionable track record of being a climate solution: The industry has been linked to deforestation in the American South, and has falsely claimed they don’t use whole trees to produce electricity, according to a industry whistleblower.
The EPA did not answer questions from Grist as to why eRINs were not approved in its recent announcement.
“The EPA will continue to work on potential paths forward for the eRIN program, while further reviewing the comments received on the proposal and seeking additional input from stakeholders to inform potential next steps on the eRIN program,” the agency wrote in a statement.
An employee checks pressure vessels containing biomethane for electric buses at the Rostocker Straßenbah depot in Germany.
Jens Büttner / picture alliance via Getty Images
Ben Lilliston is the director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. He said he supported the EPA’s decision to not approve biogas-created electricity for EVs.
“I think the jury is still out around biogas from large-scale animal operations about how effective they are,” Lilliston said.
He wants more independent studies to determine what a growing biogas sector under the eRIN program would mean for the rural areas and communities of color that surround these facilities.
Predominantly Black and low-income communities in southeastern North Carolina have been exposed to decades of polluted waters and increased respiratory and heart disease rates related to the state’s hog industry, which has recently cashed in on the biogas sector.
In Delaware, residents of the largely rural Delmarva peninsula have become accustomed to the stench of the region’s massive poultry farms. These operations now want to cash in on their waste with the implementation of more biogas systems in a community where many residents are Black or immigrants from Haiti and Latin America who speak limited English, according to the Guardian.
“I think that our concern, and many others’, is that this is actually going to increase emissions and waste and pollution,” Lilliston said.
Aaron Smith, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis, said electricity produced from biogas could be a red herring when it comes to cheap, clean energy.
“There’s often a tendency to say, ‘We have this pollutant like methane gas that escapes from a landfill or a dairy manure lagoon, and if we can capture that and stop it from escaping into the atmosphere, that’s a win for the climate,’” Smith said. “But once we’ve captured it, should we do something useful with it? And the answer is maybe, but sometimes it’s more expensive to do something useful with it than it would be to go and generate that energy from a different source.”
Smith’s past research has found that the revenue procured by digesters has not been equal to the amount of methane captured by these systems. In a blog post earlier this year, Smith wrote that taxpayers and consumers are overpaying for the price of methane reduction. He found that the gasoline producers have essentially subsidized digester operations by way of the state’s low-carbon transportation standards. To pay for this, the gasoline industry offloads its increased costs by raising the price of gas for consumers.
“I think we do need to be wary about over-incentivizing these very expensive sources of electricity generation under the guise of climate games,” Smith told Grist.
This story was co-published with Rappler, a Philippines-based online news publication.
On a sunny June morning, Marilyn Lopez Capentes and Maylen Lopez push a metal cart through a narrow alleyway between modest homes in the Filipino city of Malabon, part of Metro Manila. Passing doorways adorned with plants growing out of plastic soda bottles, they stop at each household to gather waste, which they deposit into separate sacks for trash, recyclables, and organics, before rolling on.
All the corn cobs, egg shells, and mango peels Lopez and Capentes collect are destined for a nearby materials-recovery facility. There, the food scraps will be composted in towers of colorfully painted stacked tires and upright pipes, or fed into a blue plastic biodigester that powers a small gas burner nearby, on which the workers cook the rice for their lunch.
Stacks of tires contain compost made from food scraps. Whitney Bauck
“In a waste-management scenario, once you address the organics, most likely you’re already addressing 50 to 60 percent of the waste problem,” explained Rap Villavicencio, a program manager at Mother Earth Foundation, the nonprofit that spearheaded the system at play.
Another 12 to 20 percent is recyclables, he said, which means this deceptively simple approach can keep up to 80 percent of waste out of landfills. And it comes with tangible benefits for Malabon residents: Less trash in the streets and gutters means less flooding and fewer odors, and the program has created local green jobs to boot.
It’s the success of this model that inspired GAIA, a nonprofit focused on alternatives to waste incineration, to connect Mother Earth Foundation with the Breathe Free Detroit campaign in Detroit, Michigan, which was established in 2015 to fight a nearby waste incinerator.
Though the groups have different primary focuses, they’re both fighting pollution that harms their communities. Mother Earth Foundation created a grassroots waste-management solution so effective it influenced the local government. That experience positioned it to offer guidance to Breathe Free Detroit, which is advocating for the community it represents to have more agency over how their waste is managed, too.
Workers harvest vegetables grown with compost from organic waste at a community garden at the San Agustin materials-recovery facility. Aaron Favila / AP Photo
For more than two years now, representatives from each have been meeting regularly via Zoom to encourage one another, share best practices for countering neglect and fighting bad actors, and glean new ideas from what’s worked for their peers on the other side of the globe in a unique cross-cultural exchange.
“Looking at the success of the Mother Earth Foundation’s efforts in creating a decentralized multiscale composting system, we wanted to make that work here in the city of Detroit,” said KT Andresky, the campaign organizer at Breathe Free Detroit.
Leadership from the Philippines
Founded in 1998, Mother Earth Foundation was started by a group of mothers in Quezon City, seven miles from Malabon, who were frustrated by delayed garbage collection in their neighborhood.
Over the next 25 years, the nonprofit lobbied for the 1999 Clean Air Act, which regulates activities that cause air pollution, and the 2000 Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, mandating the adoption of systematic waste management. The nonprofit soon emerged as a leader in zero-waste practices in the Philippines and the Asia Pacific region more broadly.
In 2013, the organization turned its attention to San Agustin, a barangay — the smallest political unit in the Philippines, analogous to a ward or district — in Malabon. The barangay had insufficient infrastructure in place to deal with residents’ waste, and as a result, most household trash was taken to an open dump site in a nearby empty lot or left to fester in the streets.
Besides being unsanitary and unpleasant to live around, all that trash posed a flood risk. As a low-lying barangay near Manila Bay flanked by the Navotas River on one side and the Tullahan River on the other, the area has long been prone to inundation during typhoon season, which is intensifying in the Philippines, one of the nations most vulnerable to climate change. But the trash problem in San Agustin compounded flooding even further, clogging the drains and gutters that would’ve allowed some of the water to drain off the streets.
The entrance to the San Agustin materials-recovery facility in Malabon. Whitney Bauck
The community-led waste-management program Mother Earth Foundation helped implement, wherein local waste workers walk the alleys with a cart every day to collect household waste and bring it to a facility where the majority of it can be composted or recycled, has made a noticeable difference.
“They no longer have to put their waste in the street,” said Ranz Lebria, a program officer at Mother Earth.
It was hard at first to convince the community to separate out their organic waste for collection when there wasn’t a clear financial return, the way there is for sorting out recyclables like plastic.
But 10 years into the program, San Agustin residents “have a positive outlook,” she said, and are proud of how clean the system keeps their community. While the foundation funded the early efforts, barangay leaders have seen the benefits clearly enough that they now contribute local government funding to maintain the facilities and pay the waste workers.
Fighting incinerator pollution in Detroit
Breathe Free Detroit is a campaign that was created in 2015 by a handful of Detroit-based environmental organizations to join the long fight against the euphemistically named Detroit Renewable Power. The waste incinerator spewed toxic particulate matter, including cancer-causing dioxins, into the nearby East Side, a primarily Black community, for decades.
“Having a facility like that running for 33 years completely devastated the neighborhood that I live in,” said Andresky. “A lot of businesses and families left. Many schools shut down.”
She recounted hearing of a family whose athlete kids were plagued by asthma once they moved to the neighborhood, and whose symptoms resolved once they moved away. “There was huge disinvestment in this neighborhood, because it pretty much was a toxic place to live,” she added.
After years of campaigning from Breathe Free and other advocacy groups, the incinerator finally shut down in 2019, which many counted as a win. But residents are still living with the health consequences in the form of “rare cancers” and genetic disorders, she said.
“We lost a lot of neighbors to COVID because of the preexisting condition. We still live with those toxins in our bodies and our lungs and our blood.”
Some East Side residents began composting “as an act of resistance” while the incinerator was still up and running, and Andresky said that interest has increased since its shutdown, as residents are “really protective” of their clean air. By composting locally in backyards and vacant lots, she said, they can reduce the number of exhaust-spewing garbage trucks passing through the neighborhood, which will save the city money and keep the air cleaner.
Breathe Free Detroit’s compost bin training on Detroit’s East Side in 2022. Garrett MacLean
That’s where Mother Earth Foundation comes in. The two organizations were introduced in 2020 via GAIA, a global nonprofit network they’re both members of. GAIA also connected them to an opportunity through C40 Cities, a global network of mayors working on climate solutions, to receive stipends for their time and participation in the partnership.
Breathe Free Detroit’s members were eager to learn from Mother Earth’s expertise with composting in a mix of rural and urban settings, which Andresky said parallels Detroit’s landscape dotted with urban farms. Leaders from both groups began meeting regularly on Zoom to talk about multiscale composting efforts as Breathe Free Detroit began its own compost pilot. And after two years of Zoom calls, the two organizations finally got to visit each other in person — reps from Breathe Free came to the Philippines in January, and Mother Earth leaders traveled to Detroit in April.
Andresky’s main takeaways from the relationship have been about how to get “multiscale, decentralized composting” up and running.
She wants to see systems like the one in San Agustin that make use of hyperlocal composting sites rather than relying on a big industrial operation, especially since there are so many urban farms in Detroit that could benefit from keeping those nutrients cycling in local soil. To that end, Breathe Free Detroit is currently working on a composting pilot, in the hopes that it will prove to the city that backyard and community composting are worth investing in.
“A municipal pickup of food waste that is trucked in and trucked out hundreds of miles is not the best zero-waste system,” she said, “and if we’re starting from scratch here in Detroit, we should really establish the best system.”
Breathe Free Detroit’s compost bin training on Detroit’s East Side in 2022. Garrett MacLean
A true exchange
Breathe Free Detroit is returning the favor and offering lessons from its community experience, too. Though the Philippines was the first nation in the world to ban waste incinerators outright as part of the country’s Clean Air Act, companies from Europe and Japan have used alternate terms like “waste to energy” or “gasification” when describing their facilities to exploit loopholes in the law and build plants in the country anyway.
The same companies are also pushing to amend the law in question, which Villavicencio sees as tantamount to an admission of guilt — if what these facilities are doing really isn’t incineration, he argues, there would be no push to change the law in the first place.
“It’s a human rights issue. Incinerators are placed mostly in marginalized communities,” he said. “In our case in the Philippines, it’s in the areas of Indigenous people. It’s environmental discrimination.”
On her trip to Manila, Andresky took a detour with Mother Earth representatives to the city of Dumaguete, where a new “gasification” facility recently opened, to try to communicate the urgency of the negative health impacts that accompany living near an incinerator. Her message was very different from the ones locals had been hearing on the radio from politicians, who promised that having an incinerator nearby would be harmless.
“What we’ve learned from Detroit is that it’s hard to stop the incinerator once it’s built already,” said Villavicencio. “And the consequences really are worse [than you’d think], especially when you see it in person.”
Workers sort through scraps collected from the community in Malabon. Whitney Bauck
The work is far from done, either in the cities Mother Earth works with in the Philippines or in Breathe Free’s part of Detroit. In the former, there’s a long road ahead to push back against the weakening of the incinerator law, and to bring the composting and waste-management systems that have been working well in San Agustin to more barangays. And in Detroit, more organizing is needed to ensure a “just transition for residents” so that the shutdown of the incinerator doesn’t lead to gentrification that pushes original residents out.
Through it all, though, both communities know that they have solidarity from their colleagues on the other side of the globe. Though the formal program that brought them together has officially ended, Villavicencio and Andresky expect their organizations to stay in touch.
“It’s been a great experience, and hopefully there’ll be more international collaborations like this,” said Villavicencio.
The whole thing has assured him that it’s not just “Western countries who provide technologies or tools to the developing countries,” he adds. “It should be a two-way knowledge exchange.”
This story was originally published by Borderless.
The day before Independence Day, the summer sun beat down on dozens of clothes and shoes strewn across the backyard and fence of the Cicero, Illinois, home where Delia and Ramon Vasquez have lived for over 20 years.
A nearly nine-inch deluge of rain that fell on Chicago and its suburbs the night before had flooded their basement where the items were stored in plastic bins. Among the casualties of the flood were their washer, dryer, water heater and basement cable setup. The rain left them with a basement’s worth of things to dry, appliances and keepsakes to trash, and mounting bills.
The July flood was one of the worst storms the Chicago region has seen in recent years and over a month later many families like the Vasquezes are still scrambling for solutions. Without immediate access to flood insurance, the couple was left on their own to deal with the costs of repairing the damage and subsequent mold, Delia said. The costs of the recent flood come as the Vasquez family is still repaying an $8,000 loan they got to cover damages to their house from a flood in 2009.
Delia and Ramon Vasquez discover that a storage cabinet in their basement remains flooded over 24 hours after a storm that caused significant flooding in Cicero, Ill., July 3, 2023. The couple was still evaluating the extent of the damage and were wary of checking for water and mold in their crawlspace and under the carpet because of the potential dangers to their health.
Efrain Soriano/Borderless Magazine
Aggravated by climate change, flooding problems are intensifying in the Chicago region because of aging infrastructure, increased rainfall and rising lake levels. An analysis by Borderless Magazine found that in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, extreme weather events and heavy rainfall disproportionately affect people of color and those from immigrant backgrounds. These same communities often face barriers to receiving funding for flood damage or prevention due to their immigration status – many undocumented people cannot get FEMA assistance – as well as language or political barriers.
“You feel hopeless because you think the government is going to help you, and they don’t,” Delia said. “You’re on your own.”
The lack of a political voice and access to public services has been a common complaint in Cicero, a western suburb of Chicago where Latinos account for more than four out of five residents, the highest such percentage among Illinois communities.
One potential solution for communities like Cicero could come from Cook County and the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) in the form of their RainReady program, which links community input with funding for flood prevention. The program has already been tried out in a handful of suburbs and is now being implemented in the Calumet region, a historically industrial area connected by the Little Calumet River on the southern end of Cook County. The RainReady Calumet Corridor project would provide towns with customized programs and resources to avoid flooding. Like previous RainReady projects, it relies on nature-based solutions, such as planting flora and using soil to hold water better.
Fourteen Dolton residents raise their hands to vote on various flood mitigation projects proposed by the Center for Neighborhood Technology as part of the first RainReady steering committee meeting in Dolton, Ill., Aug. 3, 2023. The committee ultimately voted to prioritize projects that would directly aid residential areas with personal rain gardens and grants for homeowners dealing with flooding damage. Efrain Soriano/Borderless Magazine
CNT received $6 million from Cook County as part of the county’s $100 million investment in sustainability efforts and climate change mitigation. Once launched, six Illinois communities — Blue Island, Calumet City, Calumet Park, Dolton, Riverdale and Robbins — would establish the RainReady Calumet Corridor.
At least three of the six communities are holding steering committee meetings as part of the ongoing RainReady Calumet process that will continue through 2026. Some participants hope it could be a solution for residents experiencing chronic flooding issues who have been left out of past discussions about flooding.
“We really need this stuff done and the infrastructure is crumbling,” longtime Dolton resident Sherry Hatcher-Britton said after the town’s first RainReady steering committee meeting. “It’s almost like our village will be going underwater because nobody is even thinking about it. They might say it in a campaign but nobody is putting any effort into it. So I feel anything to slow [the flooding] — when you’re working with very limited funds — that’s just what you have to do.”
The basement apartment that Marisol Nuñez shares with her mother and their dog, Princess, was flooded with about three and a half feet of water during the storm in Cicero, Ill. July 2, 2023.
Photo courtesy of Marisol Nuñez
Where’s the money?
In Cicero and other low-income and minority communities in the Chicago region where floods prevail, the key problem is a lack of flood prevention resources, experts and community activists say.
Amalia Nieto-Gomez, executive director of Alliance of the Southeast, a multicultural activist coalition that serves Chicago’s Southeast Side — another area with flooding woes — laments the disparity between the places where flooding is most devastating and the funds the communities receive to deal with it.
“Looking at this with a racial equity lens … the solutions to climate change have not been located in minority communities,” Nieto-Gomez said.
The alley behind Juan Jose Avila’s home is full of garbage bags of clothes and torn-up couches damaged by flooding in Cicero, Ill., July 3, 2023. Avila says this photo represents a fraction of the estimated $10,000 in damages in the family’s house caused by the flooding. Efrain Soriano/Borderless Magazine
Efrain Soriano/Borderless Magazine
CNT’s Flood Equity Map, which shows racial disparities in flooding by Chicago ZIP codes, found that 87 percent of flood damage insurance claims were paid in communities of color from 2007 to 2016. Additionally, three-fourths of flood damage claims in Chicago during that time came from only 13 ZIP codes, areas where more than nine out of 10 residents are people of color.
Despite the money flowing to these communities through insurance payouts, community members living in impacted regions say they are not seeing enough of that funding. Flood insurance may be in the name of landlords who may not pass payouts on to tenants, for example, explains Debra Kutska of the Cook County Department of Environment and Sustainability, which is partnering with CNT on the RainReady effort.
Those who do receive money often get it in the form of loans that require repayment and don’t always cover the total damages, aggravating their post-flood financial difficulties. More than half of the households in flood-impacted communities had an income of less than $50,000 and more than a quarter were below the poverty line, according to CNT.
Listening to community members
CNT and Cook County are looking at ways to make the region’s flooding mitigation efforts more targeted by using demographic and flood data on the communities to understand what projects would be most accessible and suitable for them. At the same time, they are trying to engage often-overlooked community voices in creating plans to address the flooding, by using community input to inform the building of rain gardens, bioswales, natural detention basins, green alleys and permeable pavers.
One improvement that came out of the RainReady plan was the town’s Natalie Creek Flood Control Project to reduce overbank flooding by widening the channel and creating a new stormwater storage basin. Midlothian also installed a rain garden and parking lot with permeable pavers not far from its Veterans of Foreign Wars building, and is working to address drainage issues at Kostner Park.
The stormwater storage basin alongside Natalie Creek in Midlothian, Ill., Aug. 5, 2023. During heavy storms, this 1.8-million-gallon detention basin fills up like a pond to mitigate flooding along the creek. Efrain Soriano/Borderless Magazine
Efrain Soriano/Borderless Magazine
Kathy Caveney, a Midlothian village trustee, said the RainReady project is important to the town’s ongoing efforts to manage its flood-prone creeks and waterways. Such management, she says, helps “people to stop losing personal effects, and furnaces, and water heaters and freezers full of food every time it rains.”
Like in the Midlothian project, CNT is working with residents in the Calumet region through steering committees that collect information on the flood solutions community members prefer, said Brandon Evans, an outreach and engagement associate at CNT. As a result, much of the green infrastructure CNT hopes to establish throughout the Calumet Corridor was recommended by its own community members, he said.
“We’ve got recommendations from the plans, and a part of the conversation with those residents and committee members is input on what are the issues that you guys see, and then how does that, in turn, turn into what you guys want in the community,” Evans said.
The progress of the RainReady Calumet Corridor project varies across the six communities involved, but final implementation for each area is expected to begin between fall 2023 and spring 2025, Evans said. If the plan is successful, CNT hopes to replicate it in other parts of Cook County and nationwide, he said.
Despite efforts like these, Kevin Fitzpatrick of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District argues that the scale of the flooding problem in the Chicago region is so large that a foolproof solution would be “prohibitively expensive.” Instead, communities should work toward flood mitigation with the understanding that the region will continue to flood for years to come with climate change. And because mitigation efforts will need to be different in each community, community members should be the ones who decide what’s best for them, says Fitzpatrick.
In communities like Cicero, which has yet to see a RainReady project, local groups have often filled in the gaps left by the government. Cicero community groups like the Cicero Community Collaborative, for example, have started their own flood relief fund for residents impacted by the early July storm, through a gift from the Healthy Communities Foundation.
Meanwhile, the Vasquez family will seek financial assistance from the town of Cicero, which was declared a disaster area by town president Larry Dominick and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker after the July storm. The governor’s declaration enables Cicero to request assistance for affected families from FEMA.
But the flooding dangers persist.
The day after her home flooded, a neighbor suggested to Delia Vasquez that she move to a flood-free area. Despite loving her house, she has had such a thought. But like many neighbors, she also knows she can’t afford to move. She worries about where she can go.
“If water comes in here,” Vasquez said, “what tells me that if I move somewhere else, it’s not going to be the same, right?”
Efrain Soriano contributed reporting to this story.
This piece is part of a collaboration that includes the Institute for Nonprofit News, Borderless, Ensia, Grist, Planet Detroit, Sahan Journal and Wisconsin Watch, as well as the Guardian and Inside Climate News. The project was supported by the Joyce Foundation.
Editor’s Note: As noted above both this project and the Center for Neighborhood Technology receive funding from Joyce Foundation. Borderless also receives funding from the Healthy Communities Foundation. Our news judgments are made independently — not based on or influenced by donors.
This story was produced by the nonprofit journalism publication Capital and Main and is republished with permission.
Environmental groups, faculty associations, and others seeking to slow climate change are pushing California to cut its investments in fossil fuels. Divestment supporters point to the state’s massive economy — the largest in the country — as evidence that divesting here could help kick off a nationwide trend by hurting fossil fuel companies and accelerating the transition to clean energy.
They’ve had little success. A recent divestment bill that would have directed managers of California’s public pension and teachers’ retirement funds to stop investing in the 200 largest oil, gas, and coal companies failed in the Legislature for the second year in a row. State pension funds have an estimated $14.8 billion invested in fossil fuel companies that are driving the climate crisis.
SB 252 would require the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) to sell their remaining fossil fuel investments by the 2030s.
Supporters of divestment say their goal is to “delegitimize fossil fuel companies as political players.”
For the second time in two years, the bill was blocked by a single legislator heading the Assembly’s Committee on Public Employment and Retirement. It will be up for reconsideration next year.
In a statement to Capital & Main, Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood), the committee chair who blocked the bill, said she wanted to learn more about how divestment could affect pensioners in the state. In her campaign for office last year, labor unions were her largest supporters, contributing at least $358,900. She also benefited from more than $100,000 put up by a political action committee funded by oil and gas companies.
“Before making a decision on this policy, I have asked CalPERS and CalSTRS members, beneficiaries, and their labor representatives to share their opinion on this legislation. These funds pay for their retirement and I welcome their voices before considering SB 252 in 2024,” McKinnor said.
The bill was carried, once again, by Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach). Her press secretary, Leoda Valenzuela, said that McKinnor agreed to hold an “informational hearing” in early 2024.
Board members and staff from CalPERS met with lawmakers to lobby against it. A CalSTRS spokesperson said the fund’s staff expressed their opposition to McKinnor and other legislators.
California’s pensions are holding onto fossil fuel investments just as the severe effects of the climate crisis bear down on the world. The previous months were Earth’s hottest in perhaps 125,000 years, a direct result of interactions between global warming and the cyclical warm-weather pattern called El Niño. Other effects linked to rising heat, like disastrous wildfires, downpours, and drought, are occurring at an overwhelming pace across the U.S. and the world.
The window to meet the target for international climate emissions cuts is shrinking, raising the likelihood of a worsening crisis now and in the future. Scientists say that to limit damage, fossil fuels must be phased out as fast as possible while the world transitions to renewable forms of energy such as solar, wind, geothermal, and other less-polluting sources.
Divesting California’s pensions would be a small hit to an industry worth trillions, but the actions could reverberate around the globe and inspire similar actions elsewhere. Other institutions, worth $40.51 trillion in total, have divested or pledged to divest from oil, gas and coal.
They include Harvard University and pension funds outside the U.S. A majority of those that have divested or pledged to divest are faith-based organizations, philanthropic groups, and universities. More than two dozen American cities, mostly in California, have sold their fossil fuel assets and committed to not buying any more. The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a coalition of asset owners and banks that supports decarbonization, has said that divestment should accompany policies to fight climate change.
California’s state pension funds warn that divestment could result in some short-term hits to workers’ retirement funds. They’ve argued the losses for CalPERS pensions could amount to more than $300 million a year. The funds have already divested from other securities related to tobacco, private prisons, some forms of coal and regimes in Iran and Sudan, resulting in a $9.55 billion loss for pensions for CalSTRs alone.
In response, supporters cite an analysis that found the funds lost almost $10 billion due to poorly performing fossil fuel holdings over the last decade. Losses may accelerate if companies start abandoning assets, like refineries and millions of wells. In addition, both pension funds rely on investmentmodels that are likely underestimating the costs of climate damage on pensioners’ portfolios, according to a report from Carbon Tracker.
The pension funds have said that instead of divesting, they can use their leverage as investors to nudge companies toward renewable energy. CalPERS also recently committed to increasing its investments in renewable energy compared to fossil fuels. Another concern expressed by opponents of the tactic is that it’s possible and even plausible that divesting would hand off the assets to others who have less stringent policies on emissions.
So far, oil majors haven’t promised to end fossil fuel production, a key requirement if they want to help the world halt global warming. And sometimes they’ve resisted pressure from investors. For example, after CalSTRS joined other investors to elect climate-conscious board directors at ExxonMobil, the company fought against efforts to create change.
Dan Cohn, global energy transition researcher at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said there’s little evidence to back up the idea that investors can steer fossil fuel companies onto the right path.
“The pensions say if they don’t invest in these assets, unscrupulous people will have a seat at the table and that will be bad,” Cohn said. “What is the evidence that having a seat at the table has any perceptible impact on a company’s trajectory as a main source of fossil fuels in the world?”
Other states where pensions divested have faced political backlash.
A lawsuit, filed in May by a group that opposes public sector unions, alleges that three New York City pension funds are engaged in a “misguided and ineffectual gesture to address climate change” after they sold polluting assets worth about $3 billion.
And Maine’s law requiring its pensions funds to divest allows them to hold fossil fuels if doing otherwise would result in losses. Even so, it became a political lightning rod. A Republican candidate for governor bashed the policy repeatedly while campaigning last year.
Besides McKinnor’s refusal to hear the bill, there are signs that California’s political leadership fears a similar backlash.
Before SB 252 passed the State Senate, six Democratic senators had “no vote recorded” on the bill. This is a tactic some lawmakers use to avoid upsetting powerful interests without sullying their record on the environment and climate.
But with the reality of climate change now clear, divestment could grow as a tactic. Even the United Nations’ leading architect of the Paris Agreement, the 2015 global plan to cut emissions, recently admitted that fossil fuel companies cannot be trusted to help the world fight the crisis — a major about-face.
Young people staring down a hotter, water-scarce future where catastrophes are the norm have long been a driving force behind divestment.
Anaya Sayal, a 16-year-old member of Youth vs. Apocalypse, said in a statement the bill “brings us one step closer to living in a world where we don’t have to live in a constant state of apprehension regarding health conditions, and issues we face because of climate chaos; that future generations will also face as a result of the climate catastrophe.”
