In 2019, Southern California Gas Company painted a rosy picture of the natural gas it was selling to its customers. On its website, in online ads, and on giveaway swag like hats and T-shirts, the utility described natural gas as “affordable, clean, and renewable.”
Now, SoCalGas will likely pay tens of thousands of dollars in penalties over those claims, according to a settlement agreement announced this week by California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
“SoCalGas should have known better than to broadcast unqualified claims suggesting that all natural gas is ‘renewable,’” Bonta said in a statement.
Most natural gas — including the vast majority of the gas that SoCalGas sells to its customers — is a type of fossil fuel composed primarily of methane. Burning it releases planet-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A similar fuel called biomethane, which can be harnessed from landfills and agricultural operations, is generally considered to be renewable, although some sources of biomethane present environmental justice concerns.
Renewable natural gas accounted for less than 0.2 percent of the U.S.’s total natural gas production last year, and less than 5 percent of the gas SoCalGas delivered to customers as of the end of 2022. At most, experts say renewable natural gas will only ever be able to displace 16 percent of current natural gas consumption.
SoCalGas’s statements “may have misled consumers into thinking that SoCalGas’s natural gas is superior to environmentally harmful fossil fuels,” read a complaint from the attorney general’s office, filed last week on behalf of California residents. The complaint also flagged marketing materials describing natural gas as “safe,” “clean,” and “good for the economy.”
In reality, natural gas may be even worse for the climate than other fuels, thanks to leaking methane throughout its supply chain. Methane, a greenhouse gas 84 to 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide over its first 20 years in the atmosphere, is constantly seeping into the atmosphere from natural gas pipelines, compressor stations, and other infrastructure. It’s also released through venting and flaring, which is when oil and gas extractors intentionally release unwanted fuel from their production sites.
According to an analysis from the environmental think tank RMI, a methane leakage rate as low as 0.2 percent can put natural gas’s climate impact on par with that of coal. Globally, experts estimate the methane leakage rate to be about 1.7 percent, although in some places it can be as high as 3.7 percent.
The proposed settlement, which is still pending court approval, would resolve allegations that SoCalGas violated California consumer protection laws. If approved, it would requireSoCalGas to pay $175,000 in penalties, half of which will be directed to a small grants program of the California Environmental Protection Agency. The utility would be prohibited from making “similar unqualified statements” that natural gas is renewable, and it would have to publish a “corrective statement” on its website clarifying that most of its portfolio is “comprised of nonrenewable natural gas derived from fossil fuels.”.
In response to Grist’s request for comment, SoCalGas said it was “committed to delivering increasingly renewable natural gas and other clean fuels to its customers.” A spokesperson noted that the utility aims to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions “in our operations and delivery of energy” by 2045, including emissions from the fuel SoCalGas sells.
Activists, regulators, and policymakers in other jurisdictions have also recently sought to stop natural gas-related greenwashing. In Seattle earlier this year, for example, advocacy groups successfully lobbied the waste hauler WM to remove branding from its trucks saying they were “powered by renewable natural gas.” Lawmakers in Oregon have called for the state Department of Justice to investigate a regional utility’s claims about “renewable natural gas,” and in Washington, D.C., a first-of-its-kind lawsuit filed last year said it was “greenwashing” for the utility Washington Gas to call its natural gas “clean and efficient.”
Some experts and environmental groups are also leery of the term “natural gas” itself: The word “natural” is a misnomer that, according to RMI, “suggests its alignment with sustainability goals.” Many advocacy groups prefer to use the term “methane gas,” or “fossil gas.”
Nihal Shrinath, an associate attorney for the Sierra Club, said it was “encouraging” to see SoCalGas being held accountable. “There is a disturbing pattern coming to light,” he told Grist. “While SoCalGas faces fines for obvious greenwashing, it continues to mislead customers with greenwashing projects, by pushing ‘renewable’ natural gas and dubious hydrogen projects.”
The $175,000 fine, he added, “pales in comparison to the environmental and public health costs of burning and transporting gas, processes that are promoted by SoCalGas’s false advertising and propaganda.”
Editor’s note: Sierra Club is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
More than 230 fires are burning in the Northwest Territories of Canada, scorching over 8,000 miles of forest, and displacing hundreds of Indigenous and First Nations peoples. The population of the Northwest Territories is nearly 50 percent Indigenous.
“It’s all just really terrifying,” said Morgan Tsetta, a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation in a TikTok video she released Tuesday. Tsetta lives in Yellowknife, the region’s capital city, which she said was at risk of evacuation and that residents were preparing go bags in case they had to flee.
With the only road leading out of Yellowknife blocked due to the fires, Tsetta said alternate routes could take hours.
“There is little relief to the 20,000 residents of the capital of the Northwest Territories as three wildfires surround us and there is no feasible way for us to leave,” she said in the video.
Amidst the chaos, First Nations residents in the Northwest Territories are checking in online via Facebook and sharing support sources.
This season, wildfires have spread across Canada with greater intensity than ever before with more than 1,000 fires occurring since the start of the year. On June 25, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre declared that the 2023 wildfire season had burned the largest area in Canada’s recorded history: nearly 52,000 miles. Canadian fires in June sent massive smoke clouds to the East Coast of the United States, endangering the health of millions of residents. The air quality in some areas got as high as 486, nearing the top of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 500-point air quality scale, meaning the air was dangerous to breathe.
The fires in the Northwest Territories started over the weekend due to lightning strikes and extreme winds that pushed the flames throughout the region. On Monday, local officials issued warnings which advised residents in multiple towns and hamlets to evacuate as wildfires spread near the communities some of which reached a level 3 threat, which is the highest on the scale meaning imminent danger.
By Monday evening, the biggest rescue operation in Northwest Territories history was underway as stranded residents were airlifted to safety by the Canadian armed forces. By Tuesday morning, more than 200 people had been evacuated, and the number is still rising. As of publication, two fatalities have been reported.
On Tuesday, the Northwest Territories declared a state of emergency and sought help from the Canadian government and military for aid. Members of the Canadian Armed Forces, including 124 soldiers have been dispatched to the Northwest Territories, and an additional 100 soldiers are set to help with firefighting logistics, like dousing hot spots and clearing areas. According to the Associated Press, hundreds of civilians wait to be airlifted to safety.
“The decision to declare a territory-wide State of Emergency allows the Government of the Northwest Territories and our partners to access and deploy resources,” said Northwest Territories Municipal and Community Affairs Minister Shane Thompson in a notice sent out yesterday. “We find ourselves in a crisis situation and our government is using every tool available to assist.”
Reports from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service showed that from January 1 to July 31 of this year, carbon emissions from wildfires across Canada total 290 megatons, which represents over 25 percent of the global total for the year so far.
A ruling in favor of a group of young plaintiffs who had claimed Montana state officials had violated their right to a healthy environment has received a “sweeping win” that gives more ammunition to tackling the climate crisis.
One of the lawyers for the 16 plaintiffs, who are five to 22 years of age, called the ruling a “game-changer.”
“As fires rage in the West, fueled by fossil fuel pollution, today’s ruling in Montana is a game-changer that marks a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos,” said Julia Olson, the founder of legal nonprofit Our Children’s Trust, which brought the case on behalf of the young challengers, reported The New York Times.
In the case, the plaintiffs claimed Montana’s fossil fuel policies contributed to climate change in a way that directly affected their lives. By doing so, they also violated state constitutional provisions that guarantee a “clean and healthful environment” to the citizens of the state.
“I’m so speechless right now,” said Eva, a plaintiff who was 14 at the time of the filing of the suit, as The Guardian reported. “I’m really just excited and elated and thrilled.”
Judge Kathy Seeley who decided the case said that the state of Montana was contributing to climate change by prohibiting government agencies from taking climate impacts into consideration when deciding whether to approve energy projects.
Olson brought the suit along with McGarvey Law and Western Environmental Law Center in the trial that ended on June 20.
“In a sweeping win for our clients, the Honorable Judge Kathy Seeley declared Montana’s fossil fuel-promoting laws unconstitutional and enjoined their implementation,” said Melissa Hornbein, an attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center, as reported by The Guardian.
The ruling will not stop the state from burning fossil fuels or prevent mining, but it will result in the reversal of the recently passed Montana law prohibiting state agencies from considering fossil fuel pollution that contributes to climate change, CNN reported.
“Plaintiffs have a fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which includes climate as part of the environmental life support system,” Seeley’s order said, as reported by CNN.
Young people in the U.S. had previously filed climate crisis cases, but none had made it to trial.
“Today, for the first time in U.S. history, a court ruled on the merits of a case that the government violated the constitutional rights of children through laws and actions that promote fossil fuels, ignore climate change, and disproportionately imperil young people,” Olson said, as CNN reported. “This is a huge win for Montana, for youth, for democracy, and for our climate. More rulings like this will certainly come.”
“Plaintiffs have a fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which includes climate as part of the environmental life-support system.”
As part of our series on personal climate action earlier this summer, we interviewed Claire Vlases, a young plaintiff in the Held v. Montana climate lawsuit, about her experience taking what some would consider an extreme action for the climate: suing her state government.
At the time, she told us: “I think taking a drastic measure of action is the only way that we’re going to get heard. I think young people across the state are interested in knowing what we can actually do, and what lengths people will go to feel heard. And we’re excited to see the result of the trial.”
On Monday, a verdict was handed down in the case. Judge Kathy Seeley sided with Vlases and her 15 compatriots, ruling that the state’s fossil fuel policies violated the youths’ constitutionally protected right in Montana to a clean and healthful environment.
As Grist’s climate solutions fellow Katie Myers wrote earlier this week, the decision could create a precedent for future lawsuits and could also impact current climate lawsuits across the country. This case was the first of its kind to go to trial — but Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit law firm that represented the youth plaintiffs, has youth-led climate lawsuits pending in four other states, as well as a federal case.
Seeley, the judge, found that “every additional ton of greenhouse gas emissions exacerbates Plaintiffs’ injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries.” Her ruling cited multiple and specific ways climate change has already impacted each of the plaintiffs.
“The legal community has been fearful that judges won’t understand these cases, and she blew that out of the water,” Julia Olson, the founder of Our Children’s Trust, told the New York Times. “It was digestible, she understood it, and the findings were beautiful.”
We caught up briefly with Claire Vlases to hear her thoughts on the results of the lawsuit. Her responses have been lightly edited for clarity.
Q. How are you feeling now that the verdict has arrived?
A. This is a life-changing decision, and not just for me and the other plaintiffs. It will affect all of Montana because now we know that the state must not continue “business as usual.” The decision has validated the challenges in my life that are due to climate change, and for the first time in my life, my government has said: “We hear you, and we will protect your rights.” As a young person, it often feels like what I say or do does not matter when it comes to policymaking or any actual change. Now, I feel hope for the future in a way I never had before. I hope that the decision inspires other young people around the world to stand up for their rights, even in the face of adversity.
Q. What takeaways do you have from being a part of this historic trial?
A. This trial will set a precedent for the future. Young people matter. Environmental protection matters. Our rights matter. It makes me have faith in our democratic system, and that it’s OK to speak up when your government has not been respecting the rights you are guaranteed. We are heard.
Although the ruling will almost certainly be appealed, the timing of this decision is poignant. Many of the young Montana plaintiffs testified to the ways that climate change has impacted their lives, from oppressive summer heat to wildfires that creep ever close to their homes. The summer of 2023 has been a record-setter for those deadly climate impacts.
Hawaiʻi has its own youth-led climate lawsuit, which will see its day in court next summer. Although the cases are different, they have some fundamental things in common. Similar to Montana, Hawai‘i’s state constitution guarantees that “Each person has the right to a clean and healthful environment, as defined by laws relating to environmental quality, including control of pollution and conservation, protection and enhancement of natural resources.”
The Hawai‘i suit, brought by 14 young plaintiffs who are also represented by Our Children’s Trust, focuses less on energy development and more on projects like highway expansion — the plaintiffs are suing the state’s Department of Transportation for its role in promoting a polluting system that will “lock in and escalate the use of fossil fuels, rather than projects that mitigate and reduce emissions.”
— Claire Elise Thompson
Akielly Hu contributed reporting to this newsletter
Grist will be continuing to cover the Montana case and other climate lawsuits, as well as recovery efforts on Maui, so follow along for our daily news.
See for yourself
Our Children’s Trust has brought legal actions in all 50 states, including lawsuits and petitions — check out this list to learn about the status of their efforts in your home state (if you live in the U.S.).
A parting shot
The youth plaintiffs smiled for a group photo in front of Montana’s First District Judicial Court on June 12, ready to begin the trial. They ranged in age from 6 to 22.
Amid 2023’s summer of climate discontent, the nation’s grandest plan yet to rein in runaway greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change is turning one: the Inflation Reduction Act.
“This bill is the biggest step forward on climate ever,” said President Biden, one year ago today, just before signing the legislation, abbreviated the IRA. That White House celebration came after months of negotiation, and the President’s supporters greeted him with cheers, music and pomp.
President Joe Biden, center, flanked by Senator Joe Manchin, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, Representative Frank Pallone, and Representative Kathy Castor, signs the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 into law on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022.
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Wide-ranging in scope, the Inflation Reduction Act included changes such as allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices and raise taxes on corporations, but at its heart, the IRA is a climate bill. Inside the 730 page bill are close to $369 billion in spending and tax credits designed to move the United States toward a cleaner energy future. A recent report from the Rhodium Group, an analytics firm that tracks greenhouse gas emissions, estimates that the IRA will reduce national greenhouse gas emissions to 29 to 42 percent of 2005 levels by 2030.
Compared to the fanfare that occurred at signing, the year since the IRA was enacted has been outwardly much quieter — with a recent Washington Post and University of Maryland poll finding that 7 out of 10 Americans had heard little to nothing about the measure since it passed. But, largely behind the scenes, experts say that the Biden administration has been implementing the IRA at a scorching pace.
Experts caution against reaching conclusions after the first year of a plan that is meant to span a decade. But they say there are both achievements worth marking — such as the torrent of private-sector investment the bill spurred and the impact it’s already had on Colorado river conservations — as well as future challenges to stay focused on, specifically whether projects can be permitted quickly enough. All the while, the Biden administration must battle not only a divided-Congress, but public disconnect from the bill.
Popular and legislative support for further climate action will be key to meeting the White House’s goal of an at least 50 percent emissions cut by the end of the decade. Public ambivalence toward the IRA could be a good thing if the bill falters because it may avoid souring Americans on climate policy writ large, says critic Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. However, IRA supporters conversely fear that a lack of public awareness about the impacts of the IRA could make passing future climate legislation more difficult.
For now, the administration’s focus has been on making the IRA a success.
“One doesn’t expect the federal government to move quickly, but they have,” said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president of energy and innovation at the University of Houston. After passing the IRA, he doubted the administration could stand up such a massive piece of legislation in such a short period of time. “I was extremely skeptical that they would actually be where they are today.”
Activists hold signs ahead of the vote on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 in the House of Representatives on August 12, 2022.
OLIVIER DOULIERY / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY / AFP via Getty Images
The government has spent much of the last year laying the groundwork for dispersing IRA funding and enacting its tax incentives. That has required the government to both revamp old programs, such as the electric vehicle tax credits, and build entirely new ones. Columbia University and the Environmental Defense Fund have so far logged 150 IRA-related actions that the federal government has taken, ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency awarding climate pollution reduction grants, to the Department of Agriculture opening applications for its rural energy in America program.
“We’ve been thinking about year one as phase one of the IRA,” said Holly Bender, chief energy officer at the Sierra Club. She said the government has had to stand up hundreds of new funding streams, programs and teams within federal agencies. That effort, she said, has been “incredibly successful” and puts the government in a position to “have the money start flowing out the door.”
But Holtz-Eakin doesn’t see the administration’s ability to distribute IRA funding as an inherent measure of effectiveness. “It’s easy to shovel money out the door,” he said. “They’re far from done.”
There have, however, been some more immediate, tangible results of the legislation.
On a pragmatic level, the federal government has been adding staff in order to implement the legislation. This is true at climate-facing entities such as the Department of Energy, but also agencies that are less-often linked to climate policy, including the treasury, which is charged with outlining the rules for the litany of tax incentives that the law called for.
Krishnamoorti also highlighted another overlooked aspect of the IRA: its impact on the Colorado river. The IRA included $4 billion for water management and conservation efforts in the Colorado River Basin, which has already helped states settle long-fought negotiations over how to reduce water use in the river. The agreement reached this May allocated $1.2 billion to cities and irrigation districts in Lower Basin states in exchange for them using less water.
“The agreement that the states came to was in large part because they anticipate this funding coming,” said Krishnamoorti.
The remains of an old stairway stand above the drought-stricken Elephant Butte Reservoir, where a ‘bathtub ring’ of mineral deposits left by higher water levels is visible, on August 16, 2022 near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Mario Tama / Getty Images
But experts agree that perhaps the most pronounced first-year effects of the IRA has been a deluge of investment announcements from the private sector. Just last week, for instance, Maxeon Solar Technologies publicized a $1 billion plan to manufacture solar cells and panels in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Overall, companies have trumpeted more than $86 billion in IRA-related investments since the bill was passed, according to E2, an organization that has been tracking businesses’ response to the legislation. The White House puts that number even higher, at $236 billion of planned investments in the electric vehicle, battery and clean energy sectors, where the commitments have been particularly pronounced.
“The responsiveness of industry to these new incentives and financial support I think demonstrates the depth of the appetite for an American manufacturing renaissance,” said Trevor Higgins, senior vice president at the Center for American Progress think-tank. He was previously a member of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) staff and helped shape the IRA.
To a certain extent, companies were already moving toward a lower-emissions future, so it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how much of the IRA is driving the investment decisions. But, many businesses and politicians have specifically cited the legislation as motivation. In West Virginia, companies have broken ground at two major battery manufacturing sites.
“These types of investments are exactly what I had in mind when I wrote the IRA,” Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), a key swing-vote on the legislation, said in a statement. He also vowed to “continue to fight the Biden Administration’s unrelenting efforts to manipulate the law to push their radical climate agenda.”
Manchin’s home state of West Virginia is set to see some $1.3 billion in private-sector dollars from the IRA, according to E2 data, and four of the top five states where investments are planned have Republican governors. Supporters of the IRA say that projects in Republican-led states will at least partially insulate the bill from politically motivated rollbacks.
Grist / Clayton Aldern / Unsplash / American Public Power Association
“Any administration that comes in and reverses IRA provisions will lead to a lot of job destruction, primarily in red states,” said Anand Gopal, executive director of policy research at Energy Innovation Policy & Technology, a energy and climate think tank.
Republicans have nonetheless tried to dismantle aspects of the IRA since taking control of the house this year. According to Roll Call, at least four house bills have taken aim at the IRA, especially the EPA’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. And until projects are fully funded and physically built, many of the first-year impacts of the IRA remain vulnerable to a shift in political winds.
In some ways, the IRA could also prove to be a victim of its own progress. Bender, with the Sierra Club, says that the sheer number of new programs has been difficult for eligible entities to navigate. There’s a big capacity gap she said, especially for smaller nonprofits or companies.
“It’s [difficult] to find a person who can understand the programs, read the eligibility criteria, check the application dates, and then apply for funding,” she said, adding that the Sierra Club is working with its partners to “make sure that anyone who wants to access IRA programs is able to do so without a huge administrative burden.”
Then there’s the actual, physical building that needs to happen. Once a project is approved for funding or credits, worries shift to whether it will run into regulatory snags such as permitting. Easing that process is an area experts say the administration has not made much headway on in the first year of the IRA.
“The most likely bottleneck going forward is going to be permitting,” said John Coeqyut, the federal policy team director at RMI, a nonprofit working to accelerate the clean energy transition. “We are concerned that not enough will be done to clear the way for the transition.”
John Podesta, who President Biden tapped to lead the administration’s IRA efforts, addressed so-called permitting reform in remarks this May. “We’ve seen some recent wins,” he said, pointing to the Department of Energy’s move toward accelerating electricity transmission line permitting. But he also called on Congress to pass reforms that have been hung up for months.
“This administration is doing all we can with the tools we have,” said Podesta. “But frankly, we could use more tools to go even further and faster.”
As far as getting more legislation passed, the administration is up against both a divided-Congress and limited public awareness about the effects of the IRA. Less than a third of Americans say they’ve heard of the bill since it passed and even President Biden acknowledges that the IRA has thus far failed to grab people’s attention.
“I wish I hadn’t called it that,” he said at a fundraiser in Utah last week. “It has less to do with reducing inflation than it has to do with providing alternatives that generate economic growth.”
Critiques from environmentalists about the bill’s concessions to fossil fuel interests also remain unresolved after year one. There are, for instance, outstanding questions on issues such as hydrogen tax credits, the wording of which could affect the climate-impacts of the IRA because it could encourage investment in fuels that are derived from natural gas versus renewable energy. “That one is taking a little bit more time,” said Gopal. “But I think rightfully so.”
WASHINGTON, DC – Appalachian and Indigenous climate advocates demonstrate against the Mountain Valley Pipeline project approved as part of the Inflation Reduction Act in Washington, DC on September 08, 2022.
Craig Hudson / The Washington Post via Getty Images
That said, there ishope among advocates that Americans will begin to feel the impacts of the IRA more directly in year two. Perhaps most notably, the Department of Energy has issued guidance for a range of home energy rebates that states are expected to begin dolling out over the coming year.
“These rebate programs are really important because they are a way for low and moderate income households to be part of this transition,” said Ari Matusiak, the CEO of Rewiring America, an electrification nonprofit. “We want to make sure those programs are being stood up and well utilized by the people who can most benefit from them.”
The ultimate test of the IRA, though, will be how quickly and how deeply it reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Holtz-Eakin says he’ll be watching the Energy Information Administration’s annual release of data as a gauge for the amount of renewable energy being brought to homes and businesses across the country. “If that hasn’t moved by year three, the advocates are going to start getting nervous,” he said. “How quickly can you move the needle, and as a result retain the support you have.”
Anand Gopal, with the Energy Innovation Policy & Technology, says the IRA remains on track to meet his organization’s projection that the bill will cut emissions by 37 to 41 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Nothing in the first year of the IRA, he says, has changed that trend toward a cleaner energy future.
Former Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC) was once a climate change skeptic and is now a champion of climate solutions. To him, whether the IRA gets credit for the transition or not doesn’t detract from the progress it will likely lead to.
“When people start seeing it roll out in projects, they won’t know that it came from the IRA,” Inglis said. “[But] the IRA is going to deploy a lot of wind and solar and that’s an accomplishment that people are going to look back and be proud of.”
In July, a historic marine heat wave descended upon the Florida Keys. Unprecedented coral bleaching ensued within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS), which boasts the largest coral barrier reef within the continental United States. With high temperatures predicted to persist until October, scientists worry about potential harm to the entire ecosystem.
Beginning in mid-July, sea temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea were up to 3.5°F warmer than usual, noted a Mission: Iconic Reefs (MIR) fact sheet emailed to EcoWatch. In South Florida, the marine heatwave hit a record-breaking 95˚F – the warmest ever since recording began. One water temperature buoy, in nearby Everglades National Park, even hit a “hot tub temperature of 101.19°F” with other triple-digit reads nearby.
“The level of warmth we are seeing today is only possible because of the warming over the past 150 years due to human activity,” said Dr. Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at nonprofit research institute Berkeley Earth, The New York Times reported.
As the planet’s largest heat sink, the ocean has absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat generated by human activities like deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. “The more we burn fossil fuels, the more excess heat will be taken out by the oceans, which means the longer it will take to stabilise them and get them back to where they were,” Copernicus climate scientist Dr. Samantha Burgess told BBC News.
2023’s Early and Widespread Bleaching
Notably, average sea temperatures for this time of year should range between 73°F to 88°F, the fact sheet said. Critically, 23°F to 84°F is optimal for reef-building corals, the coral restoration team noted, and even a 1.8°F rise in temperature can cause coral bleaching.
Corals are colonial animals that contain symbiotic algae within their tissues called zooxanthellae. The latter provides corals with their namesake color and over 85% of their energetic needs by photosynthesizing. After several weeks of adverse ocean conditions – such as during the current marine heat wave – corals will expel their symbiotic algae to conserve energy. This causes the corals to appear whitish, or “bleach,” and struggle to meet their energetic needs.
An endangered elkhorn coral on Sombrero Reef died from the extreme heat. White areas are bleached while orange are tissue sloughing off. Coral Restoration Foundation.
According to NOAA, this year’s bleaching event in FKNMS is considered a “mass bleaching” because it covers hundreds of kilometers or more and was driven by prolonged anomalously warm ocean temperatures. While patchy and site-specific, bleaching was reported throughout the Florida Keys – in both wild and restored corals, as well as within in situ restoration nurseries. The Coral Restoration Foundation reported the “unimaginable – 100% coral mortality” of restored corals on Sombrero Reef, a restoration site they’ve been working on for over a decade, and the loss of almost all the corals in their Looe Key Nursery in the Lower Keys.
“It’s honestly really depressing–gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, soul-breaking kinda stuff,” said Andrew Ibarra, a NOAA-Affiliate MIR marine stewardship and monitoring specialist. Ibarra found iconic Cheeca Rocks, his favorite reef, “completely bleached out.” He reported only one species of coral not completely stark white. Additionally, snorkeling during the height of the heatwave, he witnessed “all the brain corals, boulder corals, staghorn – all outplanted, all recently dead.”
A large boulder brain coral at Cheeca Rocks was alive this year on June 10 (top) and dead and covered in algae by July 23 (bottom). Andrew Ibarra
While the Florida Reef Tract has bleached mildly annually since 2011, paling and bleaching in FKNMS to this degree occurred weeks earlier than usual. Bleaching doesn’t always lead to death, but can if conditions don’t improve quickly enough. “The coral is essentially starving until temperatures lower and symbionts recolonize” within coral tissues, the MIR fact sheet said. Furthermore, heat stress makes corals more susceptible to coral diseases, and MIR partners have observed “high levels of disease at many reefs.”
Heat and Hypoxia
High temperatures aren’t the only worry. “Heat does a lot of things besides causing fish to overheat and die,” explained Ross Boucek, Florida Keys initiative manager at Florida Keys’ nonprofit Bonefish and Tarpon Trust (BTT).
Warm water holds less oxygen than cool water, and this year’s extreme temperatures have led to “hypoxic” water conditions in many areas. According to NOAA, “hypoxia” refers to low or depleted oxygen in a water body.
Small and tropical fish died from overheating and/or hypoxic conditions. Will Benson / Bonefish and Tarpon Trust
“All plants and animals need oxygen to live,” said Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute program manager Tom Matthews. Therefore, hypoxic areas become “dead zones” when oxygen levels decline below the levels needed by species to live. In these areas, life cannot be sustained.
The hot water also promotes the growth of phytoplankton and algae that deplete the water’s oxygen levels at night and smother corals and sponges, he added. Finally, heat can also kick bacteria and other microbes into overdrive. This increases the nutrient load in the water, which then causes algae blooms that further decrease oxygen, Matthews added.
Devastating Effects on Other Marine Life
Other marine species have shown signs of heat stress and suffocation due to hypoxia. Matthews explained, “The hot still waters cause a cascade of disturbances that harm numerous species in the nearshore hardbottom habitat.”
In mid-July, paddle boarders and boat captains reported dead fish and disintegrating sponges floating inshore and offshore – presumably overheated or suffocating in deoxygenated water. Seagrasses are stressed, conchs are dying, soft corals (gorgonians) are disintegrating and harmful algae blooms are becoming more frequent, local scientists reported.
“The giant barrel sponges that are so iconic on Florida reefs are one of the species that are susceptible to bleaching and could experience fatal losses of their symbiotic algae during this heat event,” said Bobbie Renfro, a Florida State University Ph.D. candidate studying sponges in the Florida Keys and Panama. The latter is currently also in a catastrophic bleaching event, and Renfro observed “whole populations of sponges [there] that are bleaching right alongside the corals and then proceeding to disintegrate.”
A finger sponge secretes a thick mucus as a last defense against the heat. Tom Matthews / Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
Sponges are the “unrecognized water pumps and super filters of our marine ecosystem,” added Matthews. They, along with corals and seagrasses, also serve as critical nursery habitats for many important fish and marine life species. Therefore, catastrophic losses of these could cause a cascade of ecological harm.
“In a nutshell, it isn’t just the heat, but the combination of all of these things that dictate what species die, and where mortalities are most intense. It is hard to say what the worst-case scenario is because we haven’t ever had anything like this,” Boucek said.
The Fall Forecast: Continued Heat
Scientists hope that the worst of the heat peaked in July but are still concerned about how long it will last. In fact, this is the longest-lasting marine heatwave in the region since 1991, the MIR fact sheet reported. It called the heat “remarkably persistent,” with a 70-80% chance that extreme ocean temperatures will continue until October.
The El Niño will also continue to bolster the extreme ocean heat.
If the heat drives coral, sponge and other ecosystem mortality, the coral reef habitat in the Florida Keys could begin to erode. This would mean the loss of ecosystem services upon which humans rely: food, storm protection, tourism and biodiversity.
“The biggest unknown from this heatwave is what it could do to our habitats,” said Boucek. “We are in uncharted territory with this heat, so it is hard to predict what our systems will look like on the back end of this.”
Heat can cause sea turtle nests to all hatch female, which is devastating for the continuation of the endangered species. The Turtle Hospital
Inside the Hawaiian Canoe Club hale, or house, volunteers set out boxes filled with donated diapers, toiletries, and clothes for families to pick up. Against a backdrop of the bright blue waters of Kahului Harbor and the cloud-covered West Maui mountains, they filled trucks with gasoline cans, propane tanks, and coolers of ice behind a sign reading “Donate — We have convoy to Lahaina.”
A mile away, outside the entrance to the shelter at War Memorial Gym, a steady stream of cars pulled up along pallets stacked high with supplies. Drivers called out through their windows how many people they were delivering to, their ages and needs. An assembly line of volunteers led by Kanaka Maoli, or Native Hawaiians, stuffed each vehicle with donations before moving on to the next.
And on a corner lot in a neighborhood near Maui High School, a Hawaiian family turned their front yard into a distribution center, collecting necessities for the dozens of people crammed into the homes of family or friends or living in their cars nearby. The family had taken to affectionately calling a large trailer in front of the house, where people could sift through carefully organized boxes of clothing, the “walk-in closet.”
Across Maui, community hubs like these have cropped up with dizzying speed in the days since wildfires swept through Maui on August 8, killing at least 99 (with the death toll expected to rise), destroying more than 2,200 buildings, and displacing thousands. They are led by the community, and grounded in the deeply held Hawaiian values of caring for, and sharing with, one another. But they are also driven by a growing concern that the people still in their homes around Lahaina and displaced across Maui are not getting enough help from authorities.
Volunteers distributed supplies to a line of cars outside oft he War Memorial shelter in Kahului on Saturday.
Gabriela Aoun / Grist
“A lot of people are mobilizing,” Leo Nahenahemailani Smith, one of the volunteers at the canoe club, said Sunday. “With aloha, you give whether people ask or not, it’s in our nature.”
In Wisconsin on Tuesday, President Joe Biden, noting that the wildfire was the deadliest the nation has seen in more than a century, vowed that the people of Maui will get all the help they need. “Every asset, every asset they need will be there for them, and we’ll be there on Maui as long as it takes, as long as it takes and I mean that sincerely.”
But in the week since the fires ravaged West Maui, much of the burden of helping survivors has fallen on local volunteers, with government assistance noticeably absent in some places.
On Sunday, volunteers arrived at the canoe club at 7:30 a.m. to put out boxes of donations. Others made calls to area shelters to see what they needed, then dispatched drivers with supplies. Most had been working for five days straight, sometimes 12-hour shifts. A few had set to work after helping neighbors and relatives fend off the fires that burned upcountry Maui.
A steady flow of people passed through the hale dropping off donations. A family from Hana, a two-hour drive away, stopped by on their way to Costco, asking what they could provide. They returned a couple hours later with propane and ice. A young man offered some two-way radios. A group of firefighters from Honolulu filled a truck with cases of water before heading off to a shelter. A couple with a baby strapped into the back seat of their car dropped off gas cans they’d filled themselves.
Members of the Honolulu Fire Department picked up donated water from the canoe club to take to a shelter in Napili.
Gabriela Aoun / Grist
Others came seeking items for themselves or for those they were caring for. A woman asked about baby wipes, which she hadn’t been able to find. A man who lost his home picked out a few shirts and shorts. A couple whose house had been spared in the upcountry fires filled their truck with supplies for their neighbors, all of whom had lost their homes.
Sunday afternoon, volunteers cooked and packed up hot meals before a convoy of pickup trucks arrived to transport food, gasoline, propane, and coolers of ice to Lahaina and the surrounding areas.
It is unclear how many people remain in Lahaina, but two sources estimated the number might exceed 1,000. Access to West Maui remains restricted, and the few entry points have at times been chaotic and tense. At first, residents were told they would not be allowed back if they left, so many chose to stay. Some had no other choice.
“They have nowhere else to go,” said Tiare Lawrence, one of the volunteers at the Hawaiian Canoe Club. Many of her relatives lost their houses, including one that had been in the family for four generations.
Others have been afraid to leave their homes for fear of looters and thieves. “A lot of people are hunkering down just to protect their homes,” Lawrence said.
Supplies are being taken into West Maui by people who can prove they live there or who have special passes. Those without them are finding workarounds. In the first days of the recovery, brigades of boats and jet skis ferried supplies.
So many deliveries of clothes and household goods have arrived that some are being turned away. But with power still out in portions of West Maui, volunteers have shifted their focus to the supplies needed to sustain residents in the long-term, like fuel for generators, ice, solar lamps, batteries, and water. West Maui residents have been warned against drinking the water even if it’s boiled because of wildfire contaminants. “That’s the hardest stuff to find right now, and it’s the stuff we most need,” said Chase Pico, a volunteer at the distribution site outside the War Memorial shelter.
Donation centers have shifted focus from clothing and food and are keeping families stocked with baby products, toiletries, and longer-term needs like fuel for generators and coolers of ice. Gabriela Aoun / Grist
Community members dropped off gas cans and propane tanks at the Hawaiian Canoe Club in Kahului to be delivered to families without power in Lahaina. Gabriela Aoun / Grist
Hubs inside the restricted zone offer food, water and other essentials, but volunteers worry they are not reaching people who can’t leave their homes or who live in more remote areas. They’re driving on back roads, going neighborhood by neighborhood to find people who aren’t being reached by state and federal authorities. Many told Grist they’re not seeing any indications of government aid around Lahaina beyond the disaster area.
“I haven’t seen people in uniform, only locals in trucks [making deliveries],” said Cheyanne Kaawa, who has spent days shuttling supplies into Lahaina and couldnʻt understand why Governor Josh Green had not yet requested U.S. military assistance. The Hawaii National Guard is on the ground on Maui, but the governor has not yet requested active-duty troops. The governor’s office did not return two requests for comment.
With multiple storms forecast to hit the area this week, Kaawa worried that the prolonged wait is endangering survivors, especially ones that lost their roofs. “Today is day eight, three fires are still going, our water is contaminated, and a lot of people still have no power or ways to communicate,” she said. “Vulnerable homes and lives that were spared in the first fire might not make it through the next storm.”
Paul Kaʻuhane Luʻuwai, head coach of the canoe club and one of the convoy drivers who had made multiple delivery trips, said on Sunday that he also had not seen anyone from FEMA in the neighborhoods. His family lost seven houses in the fire. “I want to know where the hell is the government,” he said. “Yes, theyʻre looking for remains, but it’s been five days. Where are they?”
A FEMA spokesperson said that the agency was providing the services that the state had requested of them, including registering residents at shelters so that they can receive aid, and that it has urban search and rescue teams in Lahaina focused on the disaster site.
Asked why the Red Cross had not yet gone into the restricted area to distribute aid and check on residents, a spokesperson for the agency, which is managing several shelters, also said they needed permission from state officials to do so.
After being turned away because there were too many volunteers at War Memorial shelter, a girls’ basketball team came to fold donations at a distribution center set up on a family’s front yard.
Gabriela Aoun / Grist
The need for aid extends well beyond those who remain in Lahaina. Around 2,100 people entered shelters after the fire, but countless evacuees remain dispersed across the island, staying with loved ones, in their cars, or even in tents in yards. Those who are hosting them are straining to support the displaced in addition to their own families.
Kekane and Josh Kuloloio set up a distribution center in their front yard after realizing that many people had taken shelter in homes and in parked cars around their neighborhood. Kekane said she knew of one house hosting 24 people. Theyʻd also met a man who was living in his car with his son.
The situation has put stress on the Kuloloios too, who have five children, two of them younger than 3. It’s been hard to find diapers because of the concentrated demand. “Itʻs an island-wide crisis,” said Josh Kuloloio.
He’s also frustrated by how difficult the government had made it to bring help or to even volunteer at official shelters.
Guided by the clothing sizes sheʻd written on her hand, a young volunteer rummaged through boxes at the Hawaiian Canoe Club to find clothes for a displaced family. Gabriela Aoun / Grist
“FEMA knows nothing about our culture of taking care of everybody, of nobody left behind,” he said. “They’re butting up against who we are.”
Similar frustrations came up at the canoe club. A woman appeared with boxes of homemade fruit cups that she tried to donate at the War Memorial Gym shelter but had been turned away. “The aunties in there are tired of eating canned food, but they won’t even let me give them fruit,” she said.
A jeep with “Pray for West Side” written on its back window waited at a shelter to gather supplies to shuttle into Lahaina. Gabriela Aoun / Grist
Despite restrictions that many residents say limit them from caring for their own, community volunteers continue finding ways to offer whatever solace they can. When a little boy arrived at the canoe club missing the toy trucks he’d lost in the fire, volunteers rummaged through donations until they found a Hot Wheels car for him.
“Itʻs just a little bit of normalcy, a tad of comfort,” said Tahina Kinores, one of the coordinators. That evening, she stayed three hours past when the hub was scheduled to close, so that families who didn’t want to be seen asking for help could come get supplies in private.
Around 8:30 p.m. Kinores and some close friends who had been there for 13 hours moved all the boxes back into the hale. Someone turned on a reggae song, they opened beers, and swayed to the music. It was only a brief reprieve. The next morning, they’d do it all over again.
Grist senior staff writer Anita Hofschneider contributed reporting to this story.
This story has been updated after FEMA clarified that it has urban search and rescue teams at the disaster site.
The water shortage crisis on the Colorado River is improving, but it’s far from over.
That was the message from the Biden administration on Tuesday, as officials announced they would loosen water restrictions on the river in 2024. Thanks to robust winter snowpack that provided about 33 percent more moisture than the average year, the water levels in the riverʻs two main reservoirs have begun to stabilize after plummeting over three years. This has lessened the need for states in the Southwest to cut their water usage.
The total cuts will be about 20 percent lighter than they were last year, requiring three Southwest states and Mexico to save around 600,000 acre-feet of water — enough to supply roughly 1.2 million homes.
Even so, the administration left some mandatory restrictions in place to account for the fact that the reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are still emptier than they have been at almost any point in history. That’s due in large part to a millennium-scale drought that researchers believe was made much more likely by climate change. And even as federal officials eased up on mandatory restrictions, they were also preparing to dole out billions of dollars to the region’s farmers and cities in an effort to further reduce water usage on the river.
“The above-average precipitation this year was a welcome relief,” said Camille Camimlim Touton, the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that oversees the river, in a press release. “We have the time to focus on the long-term sustainability solutions needed in the Colorado River Basin.”
During the past three years, as the Colorado River has dried up, the federal government has used the elevation of Lake Mead as a benchmark to determine what restrictions it needs to impose on Arizona, Nevada, and California, the three states in what’s known as the riverʻs “Lower Basin,” as well as Mexico. In practice, the state that has suffered the most under this system is Arizona, which has junior rights to the river as a result of a compromise it made in the 1960s to secure funding for canal infrastructure; it has borne almost all the early cuts.
The Biden administrationʻs announcement this week, which will move the river from a “Tier 2a” shortage back down to a “Tier 1” shortage, should give Arizona cotton farmers and Phoenix-area cities a little more breathing room next year. But the river’s long-term prognosis means that it may not be wise for farmers to start planting more fields, or for cities to keep adding new golf courses and lawns.
“I’d say it’s probably not going to help that situation much,” said Paco Ollerton, a farmer who grows cotton and other crops outside the city of Casa Grande, south of Phoenix. “The acreage has dropped quite a bit. We’re probably about 25 percent fallow in the district this year.” The easing of drought restrictions might help some farmers increase their acreage, Ollerton added, but many will hold off on replanting because they’re wary of future cuts.
Even as the Biden administration sets a more relaxed standard for 2024, officials are preparing to roll out a larger series of water cuts that will last for the next three years. These bigger cuts, which the administration hopes will lift the river out of the drought-induced crisis of the past few years, were the result of a hard-fought compromise between the seven states that use the river — and in particular between the two largest users, Arizona and California.
The announcement of the compromise plan in May brought an end to a year of tense negotiations between the states and the Biden administration, triggered by unprecedented fears that Lake Powell and Lake Mead would bottom out altogether. In that doomsday scenario, hydroelectric plants that provide power to millions of people would have shut down, and water might not have been able to move past the reservoirs at all. The compromise plan uses about $1.5 billion in drought funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to compensate farmers and cities for using less water over the next three years.
This was a welcome outcome for farmers in places like Imperial County, California, who had expected to take uncompensated water cuts for the first time in history, as well as for city leaders in Arizona, who had stood to lose a huge share of their Colorado River water during the negotiations. The compromise was only possible because of this year’s wet winter, which deposited enough snow to prop up water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. With reservoirs recovering, the states could get away with more modest cuts — and pay for them with money that Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona secured within the Inflation Reduction Act last year.
Even so, the compromise leaves several questions unanswered. The biggest question is how the states can reduce usage over the long term to account for the gradual aridification of the river. Farmers and cities can save water through techniques like drip irrigation or wastewater recycling, but these technologies are expensive to implement. In all likelihood, some places will have to farm less or build fewer houses. Furthermore, many tribal nations along the river still can’t access the water to which they have legal rights, and satisfying those rights could mean taking water away from other non-tribal users.
The federal government needs to hash out answers to these questions with states and tribes by the end of 2026, when the current operating guidelines for the river will expire. The Biden administration already kicked off that process last month when it asked stakeholders to weigh in on the river’s future. The negotiations won’t kick off in earnest for months or even years, but the administration’s goal is clear: avoid a repeat of the past yearʻs crisis at all costs.
