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A choking layer of pollution-laced fog settled over Minneapolis last month, blanketing the city in its worst air quality since 2005. A temperature inversion acted like a ceiling, trapping small particles emitted from sluggish engines and overworked heaters in a gauze that shrouded the skyline. That haze arrived amid the hottest winter on record for the Midwest. Warmer temperatures melted what little snow had fallen, releasing moisture that helped further trap pollution.
Though summertime pollution from wildfire smoke and ozone receives more attention, climate change is making these kinds of winter inversions increasingly common — with troubling results. One in 4 Americans are now exposed to unhealthy air, according to a report by First Street Foundation.
Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications research at the nonprofit climate research firm, calls this increase in air pollution a “climate penalty,” rolling back improvements made over four decades. On the West Coast, this inflection point was passed about 10 years ago; air quality across the region has consistently worsened since 2010. Now, a broader swath of the country is starting to see deteriorating conditions. During Canada’s boreal wildfires last summer, for example, millions of people from Chicago to New York experienced some of the worst air pollution in the world. It was a precedent-breaking spate that saw the average person exposed to more small particulate matter than at any time since tracking began in 2006.
It’s a preview of more to come.
Since Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, federal law has regulated all sources of emissions, successfully reducing pollution. Between 1990 and 2017, the number of particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers, known as PM2.5, fell 41 percent. These particulates pose a significant threat because they can burrow into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. Exposure can cause heart disease, strokes, respiratory diseases like lung cancer, and premature death. Such concerns prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to toughen pollution limits for the first time in a decade, lowering the limit from 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 9 earlier this month.
But a stricter standard isn’t likely to resolve the problem, said Marissa Childs, a post-doctoral researcher at Harvard University’s Center for the Environment. That’s because the agency considers wildfires an “exceptional event,” and therefore exempt from the regulation. Yet about one-third of all particulate matter pollution in the United States now comes from wildfire smoke. “The Clean Air Act is challenged by smoke,” she said, both because wildfires defy the EPA’s traditional enforcement mechanisms, and because of its capacity to travel long distances. “Are we going to start saying that New York is out of compliance because California had a fire burning?”
To get a better sense of how a growing exposure to air pollution might impact the public, First Street used wildfire and climate models to estimate what the skies might look like in the future. (Though its researchers relied on Childs’ national database of PM2.5 concentrations, she was not otherwise involved with First Street’s report.) They found that by 2054, 50 percent more people, or 125 million in all, will experience at least one day of “red” air quality with an Air Quality Index from 151-200, a level considered risky enough that everyone should minimize their exposure. “We’re essentially adding back additional premature deaths, adding back additional heart attacks,” Porter said at a meeting about the report. “We’re losing productivity in the economic markets by additionally losing outdoor job work days.”
First Street has now added its air quality predictions to an online tool that allows anyone to search for climate risks by home address. As extreme heat increases ozone and changing conditions intensify wildfires, it shows just how unequal the impacts will be. While New York City is projected to see eight days a year with the Air Quality Index at an unhealthy orange, meaning an in the range of 101 to 150, an increase of two days, the Seattle metropolitan area is expected to see almost two additional weeks of poor air. “That’s two more weeks out of only 52,” said Ed Kearns, First Street’s chief science officer. “Twelve more days of being trapped in your house, not being able to go outside — worrying about the health consequences.”
Just as the sources of pollution are unevenly distributed, so too is people’s ability to respond. “People across the board are seeking information about air quality,” Childs said, for example, searching online about pollution levels on particularly smoky days. But not everyone has the same ability to make choices to protect themselves. Childs cowrote a 2022 Nature Human Behavior paper that found behavioral responses to smoke — staying indoors, for example, or driving to work rather than waiting for the bus — are strongly correlated with income. If left to individuals, she says, “the people who have the most resources are going to be the most protected, and we’re going to leave a lot of people behind.”
In a collaboration with real estate company Redfin, First Street found early signals that suggest people are already leaving areas with poor air quality. Tarik Benmarhnia, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of California, San Diego, quibbles with those conclusions, however, saying many variables influence both air quality and residential mobility, like income and housing prices. Air pollution is a notoriously complex subject — difficult to predict even a week out, much less speculate on what might happen in three decades. “I think the most critical problem is a total absence of any discussion of uncertainty,” he said.
He also worries that First Street’s risk index could unintentionally magnify these distinctions of privilege. If potential homeowners use the database to avoid areas based on the report’s predictions, property values in those regions could fall accordingly, reducing tax bases and decreasing the ability to provide services like community clean air rooms during smoke events. “It may act like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Benmarhnia notes that traditional sources of air pollution, like factory emissions, show a very consistent relationship between socio-economic status, race, and higher pollution levels, a pattern that repeats across the country. Smoke and ozone don’t tend to follow these social gradients because they disperse so widely. “But wildfire smoke doesn’t come on top of nothing, it’s on top of existing inequities” like access to health care, or jobs that increase outdoor exposures, he said. “Not everybody is starting from the same place.” Benmarhnia recently published a paper finding that wildfires, in concert with extreme heat, compound the risk to cardiovascular systems. But the people most likely to be harmed by these synergies live in low-income communities of color.
“The thing about air pollution is there’s only so much you can do at individual or civil society level,” said Christa Hasenkopf, the director of the Clean Air Program at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. “It’s a political and social issue that has to be tackled at a national level.” The university’s Air Quality Life Index measures how air pollution is contributing to early deaths around the world, aiming to provide a clearer image of the health gaps. “The size of the impact on life expectancy in two relatively geographically nearby areas can be surprising,” she says, like between eastern and western Europe.
For her part, Hasenkopf is enthusiastic about First Street’s air quality report, hoping it will help highlight some of these inequities. Though 13 people die every minute from air pollution, funding for cleaner air solutions remains limited. “That disconnect between the size of the air pollution issue, and what resources we are devoting to it is quite startling,” Hasenkopf said.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate change is undoing decades of progress on air quality on Feb 22, 2024.
The trouble with air pollution is that it tends to travel — blowing downwind for hundreds of miles, entering the lungs of people living far from its source. Nitrogen oxides emitted by coal-fired power plants, for example, can waft across state lines and react with other chemicals in the atmosphere to form ozone, a potent pollutant and the main ingredient in smog. Last March, the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule to rein in those downwind ozone pollutants in 23 states. But in the months since, states and fossil fuel industry groups have filed dozens of lawsuits to block the plan. As a result of this ongoing litigation, the agency’s ozone pollution reduction rule, dubbed the “Good Neighbor” plan, has been put on hold in 12 states, including Kentucky, Texas, and Utah.
Those legal battles have now reached the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, as supporters of the rule demonstrated outside, attorneys representing the state of Ohio, the oil and gas pipeline company Kinder Morgan, the American Forest and Paper Association, and the manufacturing company U.S. Steel, among others, presented oral arguments before the Supreme Court. The groups want the court to grant what’s called an “emergency stay,” which would halt the Good Neighbor plan entirely — even in the 11 states already implementing the rule — while lawsuits in lower courts play out.
The justices wouldn’t have a final say on the legitimacy of the EPA’s rule — that’s up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is currently wrangling with 18 related lawsuits on that question. But legal experts say that Wednesday’s oral arguments seem to indicate that the Supreme Court could end up wading into the validity of the Good Neighbor plan in its decision anyway, with untold public health consequences for residents of downwind states.
“The applicants are trying to get the Supreme Court to weigh in on the merits through this procedural stay application,” Zachary Fabish, senior attorney at the Sierra Club, told Grist based on what he heard at the court on Wednesday. “And the downwind folks in those states are paying the public health price.”
A few justices commented on the plaintiffs’ unusual choice to argue in front of the Supreme Court before their pending litigation has been decided by the D.C. Circuit. The groups even admitted during oral arguments that they had requested a delayed briefing at the lower court so they could present their case to the Supreme Court first.
“It’s fairly extraordinary, I think, to be asking the court to decide this matter when you haven’t even lost below in terms of what is before the D.C. Circuit,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told the plaintiffs. “So I’m trying to understand what the emergency is that warrants Supreme Court intervention at this point.”
That emergency, the state and industry plaintiffs argue, mostly boils down to the costs of complying with the EPA’s ozone reduction plan. In 2015, the EPA updated the federal air quality standard for ozone, which sets strict limits for that pollutant nationwide. According to federal law, each state was required to submit a plan within three years of the updated standard describing how it would reduce the amount of ozone pollution blowing downwind to other states. If they failed to do so, or submitted inadequate plans, the EPA was obligated under the Clean Air Act to enforce the Good Neighbor rule to reduce downwind pollution in those states. By February 2023, the EPA had rejected 21 states’ plans; another two, Pennsylvania and Virginia, did not submit one.
In March, the agency issued the Good Neighbor plan for those 23 states, a rule that plaintiffs argued levies an unfair burden on states like Ohio and Indiana; oil and gas companies; and heavy industry. “In order to get into compliance with an unlawful federal rule, we are spending immense sums, both the states as well as our industries,” argued Ohio Deputy Solicitor General Mathura Sridharan.
But Judith Vale, a deputy solicitor general for New York who argued in favor of the Good Neighbor plan, noted that the EPA’s rule helps address inherent cost imbalances between upwind and downwind states. In many cases, power plants and industrial facilities in upwind states in the South and Midwest would simply need to turn on existing pollution controls to come into compliance. Downwind states like Connecticut and Wisconsin, on the other hand, need to reduce their own pollution while also compensating for pollutants blowing into their jurisdiction.
Often, those states have “already exhausted a lot of the less expensive strategies,” Vale said. “So they need to turn to more and more expensive strategies to find any further cuts.”
While Jackson and other liberal justices seemed to question challenges against the Good Neighbor plan, conservative justices like Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared more sympathetic. In response to a point raised by Malcolm Stewart, a deputy solicitor general at the U.S. Department of Justice, that pausing the air pollution plan would disproportionately harm downwind states, Kavanaugh agreed but added that “there’s also the equities of the upwind states and the industry,” concluding that both sides had experienced irreparable harm.
Fabish noted that the court’s decision to even schedule oral arguments for this case is highly unusual. The request for the emergency stay arrived on the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” a lineup of cases that, until recently, involved less consequential matters and got decided on without oral arguments, extensive hearings, or even explanations from the judges. But by asking for briefings and an oral argument, the court has created a kind of “process conundrum” for themselves, Fabish said. While the justices have some materials to base a judgment on, he noted they lack most of the evidence used in a typical case, such as extensive briefs, documents, and arguments. The justices also lack detailed opinions from a lower court, since the D.C. Circuit has yet to issue a decision.
All those factors, in addition to dozens of pending lawsuits related to the Good Neighbor rule in courts across the country, create a great deal of uncertainty around how and when the Supreme Court will rule on this application, Fabish said. Richard Lazarus, an environmental law professor at Harvard Law School, told Harvard Law Today that anywhere from four to six justices could agree to halt the rule, pointing to Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito as likely votes to do just that. Meanwhile, other justices worried aloud whether this case could encourage future plaintiffs to use the shadow docket as a venue to challenge environmental regulations.
“I mean, surely, the Supreme Court’s emergency docket is not a viable alternative for every party that believes they have a meritorious claim against the government and doesn’t want to have to comply with a rule while they’re challenging it,” Justice Jackson said.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Supreme Court weighs blocking a federal plan to cut smog pollution on Feb 22, 2024.
The University of Florida (UF) Student Senate on Tuesday became the first student government at a public university to pass Green New Deal (GND) legislation, according to The Guardian.
The new mandate calls for complete fossil fuel divestment, a just transition, a ban on fossil fuel-funded research and disclosure of UF’s financial affiliations with the private sector.
“This is a momentous milestone for the climate movement. The unanimous passage of a first of its kind GND resolution by UF’s elected student government has now placed even more pressure on public universities to meet the moment by taking action on the greatest crisis of our time,” said UF student Cameron Driggers, Youth Action Fund’s executive director, as The Hill reported.
Climate denialism has been an ongoing issue in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis has demonstrated support for fossil fuels, reported The Guardian. An energy resources bill has also been moving through the state legislature that would eliminate references to climate change.
“Seeing a huge campus in a red state adopt a ‘green new deal’ is hopefully a sign that this movement is spreading to other universities around the country, and start treating this climate crisis like a crisis that it is,” Driggers said, as The Guardian reported.
Driggers pointed out that UF had received a total of $2.3 billion in a private endowment fund as of June of 2022, but how the funds had been invested were not made public. The university’s students have hopes that the new plan will lead to more transparency.
“It’s a public university, public money, and we don’t even know what it’s being spent on,” Driggers noted, as reported by The Guardian.
On March 7, UF’s board of trustees will decide whether to approve the financial section of the GND.
The mandate — drafted by UF’s office of sustainability — calls for the university to immediately implement its Climate Action Plan, which includes a call for reduced emissions from campus traffic and buildings.
“Science has said for decades that climate change is human caused. This is not even a debate any more,” said Sofia Aviles, a third-year UF student and president of Sunrise Movement Gainesville, as The Guardian reported. “And we’re showing the government that we’re going to follow science, and not necessarily what they think should be or should not be in our curriculums or our state laws.”
Other universities across the country have been divesting from fossil fuels — including New York University and the University of Massachusetts — and striving for climate accountability in recent years.
“The student body at the University of Florida has proven that bold climate solutions [are] not only possible at private institutions in liberal states, and it has also sharply rebuked the climate denialism of the DeSantis administration,” Driggers stated, as reported by The Hill.
The post ‘Showing the Government That We’re Going to Follow Science’: University of Florida Student Senate Adopts Green New Deal appeared first on EcoWatch.
The City of Chicago is suing five of the planet’s biggest oil and gas companies and a trade group over their contributions to climate change, saying they misled the public about how their fossil fuel products contribute to extreme heat, flooding and other impacts on residents of the Windy City.
On Tuesday, the administration of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson filed a lawsuit against Chevron, BP, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Shell, saying the oil giants not only deceived the public, but discredited science as the climate crisis escalated, reported the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Evidence shows that these Defendants intentionally misled Chicago residents about the climate change-related dangers associated with their oil and gas products. If unabated, climate change could result in catastrophic impacts on our city,” said Mary Richardson-Lowry, corporation counsel for the City of Chicago, in a press release from the Office of the Mayor. “We bring this lawsuit to ensure that the Defendants who have profited from the deception campaign bear responsibility for their conduct.”
The suit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, also named the American Petroleum Institute as a defendant. The city accused the trade group of conspiring with oil companies in promoting disinformation campaigns, while at the same time having knowledge of the realities of climate change, said the Chicago Sun-Times.
“There is no justice without accountability,” Johnson said in the press release. “From the unprecedented poor air quality that we experienced last summer to the basement floodings that our residents on the West Side experienced, the consequences of this crisis are severe, as are the costs of surviving them. That is why we are seeking to hold these Defendants accountable.”
The complaint alleges ten causes of action in the defendants’ role in contributing to climate change, including negligence, failure to warn, public nuisance, civil conspiracy and unjust enrichment.
The city is asking that the oil companies be held responsible for the costs of infrastructure needed to adapt to climate change, as well as damage to property, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
“These companies knowingly deceived Chicago consumers in their endless pursuit of profits,” said Chicao Alderman Matt Martin in the press release from the mayor’s office. “As a result of their conduct, Chicago is enduring extreme heat and precipitation, flooding, sewage flows into Lake Michigan, damage to city infrastructure, and more. That all comes with enormous costs. But both the facts, and the law, are on our side, and we intend to shift those costs back where they belong: on the companies whose deceptive conduct brought us the climate crisis.”
Since 2017, cities in Colorado, California, New York, Oregon, Mayland, South Carolina, Hawaii and Puerto Rico have brought similar suits, a press release from the Center for Climate Integrity said, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.
Residents of Chicago have dealt with heat waves, warmer winters with less snow, increased heavy rain and less ice on Lake Michigan since 1980.
In order to fix existing damage and build the new infrastructure that will stand up to more extreme weather, the lawsuit said the city is planning nearly $200 million in investments to safeguard its most vulnerable areas.
“The climate change impacts that Chicago has faced and will continue to face — including more frequent and intense storms, flooding, droughts, extreme heat events, and shoreline erosion — are felt throughout every part of the city and disproportionately in low-income communities,” the lawsuit states, as Common Dreams reported.
The suit referred to the finding that last year was the hottest on record and that extremely hot days were predicted to increase, according to the Chicago Tribune.
“Big Oil has lied to the American people for decades about the catastrophic climate risks of their products, and now Chicago and communities across the country are rightfully insisting they pay for the damage they’ve caused,” said President of the Center for Climate Integrity Richard Wiles in a statement. “With Chicago, the nation’s third largest city, joining the fray, there is no doubt that we are witnessing a historic wave of lawsuits that could finally hold Big Oil accountable for the climate crisis they knowingly caused.”
The post Chicago, Nation’s Third Largest City, Joins ‘Historic Wave’ of Climate Lawsuits Against Big Oil appeared first on EcoWatch.
Some grocery chains are moving to help protect pollinators by requiring their suppliers to stop using nitroguanidine neonicotinoids, or neonics.
Chains including Whole Foods and Kroger have recently outlined policies that will ban the use of neonics in crop production. Whole Foods’ policy also applies to its floral department.
According to the Whole Foods policy, announced in 2023, fresh produce and floral supplies will be required to use integrated pest management (IPM) to reduce chemical pesticide use starting in 2025. The company said it is also encouraging suppliers to phase out neonics, and neonics will be banned by suppliers of potted plants in the store.
Kroger’s policy, announced in 2024, will also require suppliers to use an IPM system with tiered deadlines based on farm size. Growers with mid- to large-sized farms will need to meet a 2028 deadline, while small farms have until 2030 to make the change.
“We depend on a healthy and resilient agriculture supply chain to keep bringing fresh, affordable food to more of America,” Lisa Zwack, head of sustainability for Kroger, said in a press release. “This new goal reflects Kroger’s evolving approach to sustainability and resource conservation, including setting clear expectations with growers to support the transition to more sustainable fresh food production.”
Nitroguanidine neonicotinoids include chemicals such as clothianidin, dinotefuran, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, and neonics are the most popular insecticide used in the U.S., according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). While neonics may be used to target certain insects that can destroy crops, they can become present on plants, including in their pollen and nectar. From there, pollinators like bees and butterflies are exposed to the neonics.
They work by attacking the nervous system in insects, leading to paralysis and death in higher doses. At smaller doses, NRDC reported that these pesticides can still weaken the immune system, memory, stamina and reproduction of insects and keep pollinators from pollinating crops.
“Every single piece of fruit we grow requires pollination,” said Mark Zirkle, president of Rainier Fruit, which supplies food to Whole Foods, as reported by GreenBiz. “We wouldn’t have a crop without honeybees, so pollinator health is of utmost importance to us as farmers.”
Because neonics remain in the soil for a long time after application, they can affect other wildlife and can run off, leading to widespread contamination.
Both Whole Foods and Kroger have outlined several certifications that growers can earn to comply with the new policies. Some of these certifications include Biodynamic, Fair Trade International, Fair Trade USA, Rainforest Alliance, Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) and USDA Organic (or international equivalents). Whole Foods specifically recommends Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) and Bee Better certifications for their “strong IPM and neonicotinoid restrictions.”
As Friends of the Earth reported, thirteen grocery chains and food retailers in the U.S. have developed pollinator policies since 2018. Walmart has a policy requiring third-party verification of IPM practices for suppliers to take effect in 2025, Giant Eagle will ban the use of neonics by its fresh produce suppliers starting 2025, and the Albertsons policy recommends, but doesn’t require, suppliers to limit or phase-out pesticides, including neonics.
“We now understand that biodiversity collapse is as pressing a threat to planetary health and our food supply as climate change. And the over 1 billion pounds of pesticides used annually in U.S. agriculture are drivers of both,” said Kendra Klein, deputy director of science at Friends of the Earth. “It’s past time for U.S. food retailers to take swift action to eliminate the use of toxic pesticides in their supply chains and speed the transition to organic and other ecologically regenerative approaches to agriculture. Despite this promising industry trend, efforts fall far short of what is needed to protect pollinators, people, and the planet from toxic pesticides.”
The post Grocery Chains to Ban Use of Neonics by Suppliers, in Move to Protect Pollinators appeared first on EcoWatch.
It’s a five-minute bike ride to the train station. On brisk mornings like this, I wear gloves and pack a warm coffee for the commute. My work buddy Lucy gets on two stops down, always with a pair of scones, wheeling her bike next to mine in the locker downstairs before joining me in the sunny coach section. Half an hour later, we unload the bikes and race each other along the greenway to our office. Twice a week, this; twice a week, we co-work from a cafe in the suburbs. The rest of the week is ours to enjoy.
— a drabble from Looking Forward reader Betsy Ruckman
If you like the idea of a perpetual three-day weekend, you might be one of a growing cadre that supports the concept of degrowth: a school of thought aimed at shrinking economies and moving away from GDP growth as a metric of success, while instead emphasizing universal basic services and social well-being. The idea is gaining followers, especially in Europe and especially among young people. But it’s not just a fringe theory. A Beyond Growth conference hosted by the European Parliament last May saw 7,000 attendees, including the president of the European Commission.
Akielly Hu, Grist’s news and politics fellow, discussed the growing popularity of degrowth with Kohei Saito — a Marxist author whose 2020 degrowth manifesto quickly turned into a bestseller in Japan and beyond. (The English translation, called Slow Down, was just released last month.)
“I think one of the reasons why people like the idea so much is because, in a capitalist economy, people work a lot,” Hu said. “And one of the central ideas of degrowth is shorter working hours.” We covered this in a previous newsletter about the four-day workweek — one of the first degrowth-esque policies that we’re beginning to see implemented in some places. (The idea of a future where work is deemphasized also inspired Betsy Ruckman to submit the drabble above, which shows two colleagues enjoying a four-day week and basic services like accessible public transport.)
Hu was also inspired by Looking Forward’s drabbles in writing the lede of her piece, which paints an image of a degrowth future:
Imagine a world where you work three or four days a week. In your free time, you play sports, spend time with loved ones, garden, and engage with local politics. Overnight shipping, advertising, and private jets no longer exist, but health care, education, and clean electricity are free and available to all.
It’s a vision that’s pretty hard to argue with — especially, as Hu pointed out, the idea of working less and having more time for activities that are about joy, not money. But there’s another aspect of degrowth that lends itself to a vision of a clean, green, just future: It’s inherently about producing and consuming less, and that means less carbon.
“We’re hurtling toward these major climate deadlines,” Hu said. “And I think there’s this deep sense of disconnect between what we say we’re going to do about climate change and what’s actually happening. And one of the things that’s actually happening is that there are all these blatant, unnecessary, and unhelpful ways that massive amounts of carbon are still being consumed.” She offers private jets as a common example highlighted by degrowth advocates. Taking a private plane (ahem, Taylor Swift) creates an absurd amount of emissions proportionate to the number of people it benefits. “It’s a form of consumption that contributes to economic growth, but it’s not accessible to 99.99 percent of people,” Hu said. “So why are we spending so much of the remaining carbon budget on private jets?”
Even though the theoretical future of degrowth may sound appealing, critics still say it’s a political nonstarter. “If you tell people to shrink economies, it’s kind of focusing on scarcity. And that’s a little bit unpalatable in a world where we’re already facing so much scarcity,” Hu said. But, she added, the original goal of the degrowth movement was to be a “shit disturber” — to provoke thought, and cause people to question the way economic growth is prioritized in our society and embedded in our policies.
Saito admits the idea of widespread degrowth is “in some sense utopian.” But, he adds, “believing that capitalism will prosper in the decades to come is utopian, too.”
We’ve excerpted Hu’s Q&A with Saito below. Find the full piece on the Grist site.
— Claire Elise Thompson
Q. Why do you think we’re seeing a growing interest in critiquing capitalism, and degrowth in general?
A. Looking at previous decades, neoliberal reforms really destabilized our society all over the world. And there are a lot of discussions about how we can solve the climate crisis, and how we can solve economic inequality. But these measures are not properly working, and the climate crisis has been accelerating. People are suffering from precarious jobs, low wages, and a lot of competition. And people are indeed unhappy.
Degrowth and the idea of post-capitalism are of course in some sense utopian at the moment. But at the same time, people who are really looking for an alternative — people who really care about the crisis — can’t find the answer within the existing framework. I don’t claim that my answer is definitive and comprehensive, but it resonates with the general atmosphere of dissatisfaction and discontent, especially among younger generations.
Q. I want to dig into your critiques of capitalism as laid out in Slow Down. Could you talk about why you think capitalism drives global inequality and climate change?
A. Karl Marx famously demonstrated that capitalism has the tendency to enlarge economic inequality because capitalism exploits workers so that the capital is accumulated in the hands of the few. And Marx also said that in such a system where people are exploited, nature is also exploited. We didn’t really recognize this tendency for many years because affluent countries, like the U.S. and Japan, and the E.U., were able to externalize a lot of costs to somewhere else.
That means that our affluent lives are often supported by cheap products and cheap resources based on the exploitation of nature and humans in the Global South.
Capitalism has subsumed the entire planet now because of globalization. That means we externalized all the costs. Now, we don’t have any more space to externalize because China is expanding, Brazil is expanding, India is expanding: Everyone tries to be a capitalist and it doesn’t work anymore. We are encountering the global ecological crisis, the pandemic, the climate crisis, competition for resources — and these things are closely related to capitalism and the tendency to constantly expand.
Q. Many climate policies today, like Green New Deal proposals, are focused on expanding renewable energy and clean technology, while creating new jobs and continuing to grow the economy. In your view, why are these measures insufficient for tackling the climate crisis?
A. First of all, I’m not against technology. We need renewable energy. We need electric vehicles and so on. I’m for inventing new technologies and investing more in developing cheaper, sustainable energy. I’m not an advocate of “going back to nature.”
The problem is that when we try to grow, we sell more products and bigger products. The most representative case is SUVs. Even if we transition to electric vehicles, if we keep building bigger cars, we still use a lot of energy and resources that come mainly from the Global South. So there will be a continuation of the robbing of land and resources, exploitation of mining workers and the destruction of Indigenous life, deforestation, and so on.
I think what’s necessary is: Invest in those green technologies. But at the same time, we should start talking about the need to reduce the number of cars, for example, or industrial meat consumption, or frequency of flying. Maybe we should ban private jets. Maybe we should ban domestic short-distance flights because we can take trains. These things must be also prioritized.
The problem with the existing mainstream green capitalism discourse is they never talk about reducing our excessive consumption and production, because that’s not something capitalism can accept. For everyone to live a decent life on this planet, the Global North needs to give up what is unnecessary. That’s not something capitalism can do.
Q. You write in the book about how a degrowth transition doesn’t have to happen all at once, and that in fact, it’s already happening. Could you talk about a few examples you see today that represent a step toward degrowth?
A. France has banned short-distance domestic flights — that is one important step. Some European societies are now experimenting with shorter working hours, like a four-day workweek. Free education and free medical care are other examples. We should expand these to free internet, which is something [former U.K. Labour Party leader] Jeremy Corbyn put forward during his electoral campaign a couple years ago.
We should also introduce maximum limits on annual incomes, worker cooperatives, and social ownership of companies, including water companies and electricity companies. These are some of the basic countermeasures that we can introduce within capitalism.
A woman poses with a sign, in French, reading “Only degrowth is green,” as part of a climate protest in Toulouse in 2021.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The growing popularity of degrowth on Feb 21, 2024.
In cities across the country, people of color, many of them low income, live in neighborhoods criss-crossed by major thoroughfares and highways. The housing there is often cheaper — it’s not considered particularly desirable to wake up amid traffic fumes and fall asleep to the rumble of vehicles over asphalt. But the price of living there is steep: Exhaust from all those cars and trucks leads to higher rates of childhood asthma, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and pulmonary ailments. Many people die younger than they otherwise would have, and the medical costs and time lost to illness contributes to their poverty.
Imagine if none of those cars and trucks emitted any fumes at all, running instead on an electric charge. That would make a staggering difference in the trajectory, quality, and length of millions of lives, particularly those of young people growing up near freeways and other sources of air pollution, according to a study from the American Lung Association.
The study, released today, found that a widespread transition to EVs could avoid nearly 3 million asthma attacks and hundreds of infant deaths, in addition to millions of lower and upper respiratory ailments. Children, being particularly vulnerable to air pollution, would benefit most, said study author William Barret, the association’s national director on advocacy and clean air. “Children are smaller, they’re breathing more air pound for pound than an adult,” Barret said. “The risk can be immediate, but it’s also long lasting.”
Some 27 million children live in communities affected by high levels of air pollution, the study found. Their vulnerability begins in the womb, where vehicle exhaust, factory smoke, and other pollutants can jump-start inflammation in a fetus and its mother, causing health problems for both and leading to preterm birth and congenital issues that can continue for a lifetime.
Prior research by the American Lung Association found that 120 million people in the U.S. breathe unhealthy air daily, and 72 million live near a major trucking route — though, Barret added, there’s no safe threshold for air pollution. It affects everyone.
Bipartisan efforts to strengthen clean air standards have already made a difference across the country. In California, which, under the Clean Air Act, can set state rules stronger than national standards, 100 percent of new cars sold there must be zero emission by 2035. Truck manufacturers are, according to the state’s Air Resources Board, already exceeding anticipated zero-emissions truck sales, putting them two years ahead of schedule. All that’s needed is for the EPA to grant California the waivers required to implement these standards.
Other states have begun to take action, too, often reaching across partisan lines to do so. Maryland, Colorado, New Mexico, and Rhode Island adopted zero-emissions standards as of the end of 2023. The Biden administration is taking similar steps, though it has slowed its progress after automakers and United Auto Workers pressured the administration to relax some of its more stringent EV transition requirements.
While Barret finds efforts to support the electrification of passenger vehicles exciting, he said the greatest culprits are diesel trucks. “These are 5 to 10 percent of the vehicles on the road, but they’re generating the majority of smog-forming emissions of ozone and nitrogen,” Barret said. Ozone is especially harmful. When ozone makes its way inside the human body, it causes what amounts to a sunburn, inflaming and degrading respiratory tissues.
Lately, there’s been significant progress on truck decarbonization. The Biden administration has made promises to ensure that 30 percent of all big rigs sold are electric by 2030. California has moved aggressively to curb truck emissions, aiming to make medium- and heavy-duty vehicles zero-emission “where possible” by 2035, while heavily regulating certain kinds of freight trucks.
Though legislative mandates and tax incentives like those in the Inflation Reduction Act go a long way toward getting EVs on the road, they don’t remove internal combustion trucks and cars, which pose enough of a health threat that advocates are urging immediate change.
Ideally, Barret said, the Biden administration would immediately roll out clear-cut standards to slash emissions. It is considering truck standards that would by 2032 reduce emissions from heavy-duty vehicles 29 percent below 2021 levels using battery-electric and hybrid vehicles. The current standard only explicitly calls for the use of advanced diesel engines. The study’s authors also strongly recommend that the EPA finalize multi-pollutant regulations for light and medium-duty vehicles, which are currently under consideration. Such measures, combined with an increase in public EV charging stations, vehicle tax credits, and other incentives, could change American highways, not to mention health, for good.
“We just need to see more and more of that given the growing urgency of the climate crisis,” Barret said.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The EV shift could prevent millions of childhood asthma attacks on Feb 21, 2024.
When households in the United States pay their gas and electric bills, they’re paying for energy, the wires and pipelines it takes to get that energy into their home, and the costs of maintaining that infrastructure. But those monthly payments could also be funding efforts by utilities to lobby against climate policies.
While federal law prohibits utilities from recovering lobbying expenses from customers, consumer advocates say that those rules lack teeth and aren’t sufficiently enforced. Now, states are taking the lead to ban the practice. According to the utility watchdog group Energy and Policy Institute, lawmakers in eight states, including California and Maryland, have introduced bills this year that would block utilities from charging customers for the costs of lobbying, advertising, trade association dues, and other political activities. The measures build on a growing trend in state policy: Last year, Colorado, Connecticut, and Maine became the first states in the nation to pass comprehensive laws preventing utilities from passing on the costs of lobbying to ratepayers.
“There is a lot of recent success that states can look to for inspiration,” said Charles Harper, power sector policy lead at the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action. “People are starting to pay attention because they’re realizing that they’re paying for climate denial in their bills every month.”
Over the years, utility companies have come under fire for lobbying to stall climate policies and keep fossil fuel plants running. In several high-profile instances, governments have discovered that those lobbying campaigns were funded in part by consumers. In one particularly brazen example, the Ohio utility company FirstEnergy admitted in 2021 to wire fraud after using millions of ratepayer dollars to bribe the then-speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Larry Householder, to pass legislation bailing out FirstEnergy’s nuclear and coal power plants and rolling back renewable power standards.
Meanwhile, in California, the state’s Public Advocates Office found last year that the gas utility SoCalGas had charged ratepayers a total of $29.1 million between 2019 and 2023 to fund lobbying efforts against building electrification policies, which reduce the use of oil- and gas-powered appliances in buildings.
Many of the bills introduced this year, including ones in California, Maryland, and Utah, broadly define lobbying as any activity meant to influence political outcomes. This includes advertising to boost a company’s image, as well as dues paid to utility trade associations, which routinely lobby at the federal level. The Edison Electric Institute, an industry group representing investor-owned electric utilities, has advocated against rooftop solar programs and stricter federal carbon emissions standards at power plants, for example. Another trade group representing natural gas utilities, the American Gas Association, has petitioned against more stringent federal energy efficiency standards and advertised the benefits of cooking with natural gas for decades.
“Any claim that we have not been a leader in advancing environmental goals is simply not accurate,” Karen Harbert, president and CEO of the American Gas Association, told Grist in an email. Harbert also noted that the gas industry “has long committed to collaboration with policymakers and regulators to help achieve our nation’s ambitious climate and energy goals.” Sarah Durdaller, director of media relations at the Edison Electric Institute, told Grist that the trade group engages in lobbying and advocacy “to ensure that electricity customers have the affordable, reliable, and resilient clean energy they want and need.” Durdaller noted that the institute complies with federal disclosure requirements and voluntarily provides an annual report on lobbying expenditures.
In Maryland, the utility Potomac Edison, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy, admitted to state regulators last year that it had improperly charged customers nearly $1.7 million in lobbying costs, including some related to Ohio’s FirstEnergy bribery scandal. Maryland’s bill, which has been introduced in both chambers, would prevent utilities from charging customers for investor relations, and travel, lodging, and entertainment for a utility’s board of directors or parent company. The bill, along with similar ones introduced in states like Ohio, Utah and Arizona, would require utilities to submit an annual report that itemizes all the costs associated with lobbying and advertising. In Maryland’s proposal, those costs would include the salaries and job descriptions of any staff engaged in lobbying.
Legislation introduced in California would also require utilities to submit itemized reports on all lobbying activities and clarify that they were funded by shareholders — not customers. California’s bill, like measures introduced in Ohio and Utah, goes further than Maryland’s bill by also requiring state utility commissioners to impose fines on utilities that fail to comply with the rules. Under the California bill, three-quarters of those fines would go toward a fund to help low-income households transition to electric appliances. The other quarter would help fund enforcement of the law.
It’s not uncommon for state regulators to fine utility companies for charging ratepayers for lobbying efforts. In 2022, for instance, the California Public Utilities Commission fined SoCalGas $10 million for using ratepayer money to lobby against local gas bans, federal energy efficiency standards, and building electrification policies. But according to Katy Morsony, a staff attorney at the consumer advocacy group The Utility Reform Network, writing those penalties and detailed annual reporting into law will make it much easier to hold utilities accountable.
Morsony also clarified that the bills wouldn’t prevent utilities from engaging in lobbying — they would simply be forced to fund that advocacy work exclusively with money from shareholders. But as households face rising energy costs, she added that any policy to prevent utilities from unlawfully extracting more money from consumers will make a tangible difference.
“It’s common sense ratepayer protections,” Morsony said. “When you’re in the energy affordability crisis that we’re in, every dollar counts.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 8 states move to ban utilities from using customer money for lobbying on Feb 21, 2024.
