The13-year-old is one of 14 Hawaiʻi youth suing the state Department of Transportation over its role in promoting greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet. A circuit court judge ruled Thursday that the trial will start June 24 in Honolulu’s environmental court.
“I can see every day how climate change is affecting everyone’s life and has significantly affected mine as well,” Kaliko said in an interview Monday. She is identified by her first name only in court documents due to her age.
Kaliko was calling from her home in west Maui, where she was holding two ice packs on her head to keep cool in Monday’s sweltering heat as her chickens hid in the shade of a pine tree. The teenager worried how a hotter world will make it harder for her to do the things she loves, like biking, surfing, and gardening.
“I joined this case so nobody would have to experience what I have experienced and so I can make the world a better place,” she said.
Five years ago, her family lost its home in Hurricane Olivia. The winds had weakened to a tropical storm by the time they hit her home island of Maui, but the storm still downed power lines and flooded houses. It was the first tropical storm to hit the island in recorded history.
Climate change is not only expected to lead to hotter weather but also more frequent and more powerful storms globally. Children born in 2020 are between two and seven times as likely to experience an extreme weather event compared to people born in 1960.
Like most of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Kaliko is Native Hawaiian. A warming world threatens Indigenous cultural practices, like growing taro, that Hawaiians have engaged in for generations. Increasingly scarce water has forced Kaliko’s family to change how it grows the crop so it has enough to make poi, a traditional starch.
Their lawsuit, Nawahine v. the Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, filed in English and the Hawaiian language, argues that the agency prioritizes transportation projects like highway construction that, according to the suit, “lock in and escalate the use of fossil fuels, rather than projects that mitigate and reduce emissions.”
The Department of Transportation declined to comment.
The case is part of a broader youth-led push to hold governments legally accountable for their role in exacerbating the climate crisis.
A state judge in Montana is expected to rule any day now in Held v. Montana, in which 16 young Montana residents call out the state’s role in promoting the fossil fuel industry. It is the first lawsuit of its kind to reach a trial. The youth argue that the state’s support of fossil fuels violates their right, enshrined in Article II of the state constitution, to a “clean and healthful environment.”
The plaintiffs in both cases are represented by Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit founded 13 years ago in Oregon to sue on behalf of children’s right to a safe climate. It has filed cases in all 50 states and at the federal level, most without success.
What’s significant about the Hawaiʻi and Montana cases is how far they’ve gotten, said Dan Farber, a law professor and expert in climate litigation at the University of California at Berkeley. The Hawaiʻi case would be only the second to see a trial.
“These cases are really good choices to establish precedents that can be built upon later,” Farber said, adding that the fact the Hawaiʻi case is going to trial could encourage judges in states to allow similar cases to proceed.
Both cases hinge on the right, written into each state’s constitution, to a clean and healthful environment. They also accuse state officials of neglecting their duty to preserve and protect the environment for future generations. But where youth in Montana are calling out their stateʻs enthusiastic promotion of the fossil fuel industry, their peers in Hawaiʻi are zeroing in on car-related emissions because the state has set a goal of achieving net-negative carbon emissions by 2045.
Kylie Wagner Cruz, an attorney at the legal nonprofit Earthjustice, is representing the youth plaintiffs along with Our Children’s Trust. She said she’s confident about her clients’ chances, particularly since the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court has already ruled that the state constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment includes the “right to a life-sustaining climate system.”“We have an opportunity with this case to transform Hawaiʻi’s transportation system to benefit all of Hawaiʻi’s people,” Cruz said.
It’s winter in South America, but the temperatures don’t feel like it.
In northern Argentina and Chile, it has felt more like summer, with towns in the Andes mountains heating up to more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, reported The Conversation.
“South America is living one of the [most] extreme events the world has ever seen,” tweeted weather historian Maximiliano Herrera. “Unbelievable temperatures up to 38.9C in the Chilean Andine areas in mid winter! Much more than what Southern Europe just had in mid summer at the same elevation: This event is rewriting all climatic books.”
The heat wave in the Chilean Andes has been causing snow melt below 9,840 feet, which will be felt in the spring and summer by valley residents downstream, The Guardian reported.
“The main problem is how the high temperatures exacerbate droughts (in eastern Argentina and Uruguay) and accelerate snow melting,” said Raul Cordero, a climatologist at the Netherlands’ University of Groningen, as reported by The Guardian.
Local climate scientists have said the combination of El Niño and human-caused climate change could bring more hot temperatures and extreme weather.
The period from January to July of this year has been one of the warmest ever recorded in South America.
“Tuesday was likely the warmest winter day in northern Chile in 72 years,” Cordero told CNN.
According to Marcos Andrade, director of atmospheric physics at Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, Peru and Bolivia’s Andean plateau has been having “unusual” weather since the beginning of 2023, The Guardian reported.
Cities in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil have broken heat records.
“With the arrival of the El Niño phenomenon, it is expected that in the coming years this region will suffer an increase in the already high temperatures, making it necessary to take adaptation measures to avoid deaths and greater disasters,” said Karla Beltrán, an environmental consultant, as reported by The Guardian.
Beltrán said the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report indicated that the southern portion of South America was especially susceptible to heat waves. Periods of abnormally high temperatures are expected to occur more often in the Amazon and other northern parts of the continent, according to some studies.
“Without a doubt, the maximum temperature records in winter in Chile and, to a certain extent, in South America are atypical. High pressure systems are more intense and persistent anomalies in the southern hemisphere, inducing hot air advection and/or directly generating temperature extremes. This high pressure will tend to remain and intensify in the coming decades with climate change,” said Chico Geleira, deputy director of Brazil’s Polar and Climatic Center and a professor of climatology and oceanography at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, as The Guardian reported.
Africa, Australia and some archipelagos have also been experiencing unseasonably warm temperatures, reported The Washington Post. “Overall, this heatwave is a startling reminder of how humans are changing Earth’s climate. We will continue to see such unprecedented extremes until we stop burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” Matthew Patterson, postdoctoral research assistant in atmospheric physics at the University of Oxford, wrote in The Conversation.
The Open Water Swimming World Cup was canceled in Paris on Sunday after heavy rainfall caused water quality in the Seine to fall below minimum health standards.
“World Aquatics is disappointed that water quality in the Seine has resulted in the cancellation of the World Aquatics Open Water Swimming World Cup, but the health of our athletes must always be our top priority,” said World Aquatics President Husain Al-Musallam, as Swimming World reported.
Swimming events for the 2024 Olympic Games are scheduled to be held in the iconic river, but “extra work” will be needed to make sure alternative arrangements are established, according to the World Aquatics international swimming federation, reported Reuters.
“Disappointed is the right word,” said President of the French Swimming Federation Gilles Sezionale, as Reuters reported. “First and foremost disappointed for the athletes, who were dreaming of competing in one of the most beautiful locations in the world.”
For the past decade, the City of Light has been working to clean up the Seine in order to make it swimmable in time for the Olympics, as well as for the public.
According to the Olympics committee, there will be new infrastructure in place by summer 2024 to improve the river’s water quality, and construction on an $88 billion overflow basin should be finished before the Olympic Games.
“World Aquatics remains excited at the prospect of city-centre Olympic racing for the world’s best open-water swimmers next summer. However, this weekend has demonstrated it is absolutely imperative robust contingency plans are put in place,” al-Musallam said, as reported by The Guardian.
Athletes are still scheduled to compete in the Olympic and Paralympic triathlon test event for the 2024 Olympics in the Seine from August 17 to 20, according to World Triathlon, as Reuters reported.
“In the unlikely event that water quality does not meet the requirement of World Triathlon and public health authorities, a contingency plan is in place which would see the race(s) shifted to a duathlon format,” a statement from World Triathlon said, as reported by Inside the Games. “With a year to go before the Games, the efforts to make the Seine swimmable, led by the State and the City of Paris, continue to significantly improve the quality of the water in the Seine.”
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo recently announced that public bathing will be allowed in three places along the Seine beginning in 2025, as Time Out reported.
Hopefully the river will also be ready for next year’s Olympic swimming events.
“[I]n recent weeks, water quality in the Seine has regularly reached the levels required for competitions to be held on the dedicated site, demonstrating the significant progress made,” city authorities and Paris 2024 organizers said in a joint statement, reported The Guardian.
According to Paris 2024, water quality in the Seine will be “carefully” monitored leading up to the Olympics, CNN reported.
“One year before the Games, the sanitation dynamic continues with the completion of the most significant work to improve water quality in the coming months, in particular to deal with these exceptional weather events,” Paris 2024 said, as reported by CNN.
E-bikes have beeninthenews recently for a reason nobody wants: Their batteries are sparking dangerous fires. One conflagration burned down homes and businesses in the Bronx in New York City in March, and another blaze at an e-bike store in Manhattan killed four people in June. Those fires are bringing additional scrutiny and regulation to a mode of transportation that’s been hailed as a promising climate solution. But they are also having an unexpected impact on conversations about the right to repair a bicycle, something generations of bicycle owners have taken for granted.
In recent months, People for Bikes, the national trade organization representing bicycle manufacturers, has reached out to lawmakers and officials in several states to request that e-bikes be exempted from right-to-repair bills. Those bills aim to make it easier for members of the public to access the parts, tools, and information they need to fix their stuff. The industry claims it’s a matter of safety, and that people without the proper training should not attempt to repair e-bikes — especially not the batteries. Instead, manufacturers want to see dead and broken batteries recycled, which is why they recently launched a public education campaign encouraging consumers to do so.
Recycling is a crucial step for dealing with battery waste sustainably. It keeps batteries out of landfills, and it can reduce the need for additional mining of critical battery metals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel. But for the e-bike industry to be sustainable over the long term, e-bikes also need to be repairable, since repair prevents waste and conserves the resources that go into making new stuff. To right-to-repair advocates, the claim that it’s unsafe for consumers to fix them is familiar: Consumer tech companies like Apple have said the same thing about repairing smartphones for years. When it comes to e-bikes, advocates worry that safe battery handling is being used to distract from another problem they say right-to-repair would help solve: Cheap, hard-to-repair e-bikes are flooding into cities around the country. These are the same bikes that sometimes have substandard batteries that experts suspectare at the root of the fire crisis.
“I too want people to go to safe repairers,” Nathan Proctor, who heads the national right-to-repair campaign at the US Public Research Interest Group, told Grist in an email. “But I don’t think monopolizing access helps at all.”
E-bikes are soaring in popularity, and for good reason. These battery-powered bicycles allow people to travel farther and faster than they can using an analog bike. They cost less than cars to buy and to own, take up far less space, and can be parked for free. Compared with gas-powered cars, e-bikes are incredibly climate-friendly: A recent analysis by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that the typical e-bike rider emits zero to three grams of carbon dioxide per mile pedaled, compared with 350 grams per mile driven in a crossover SUV. E-bikes also have sustainability and safety advantages over EVs, including smaller batteries that require less lithium mining and pose less of a danger to pedestrians.
An e-bike being prepared for display at the Eurobike bicycle trade show in Frankfurt, Germany, in June.
Andreas Arnold / picture alliance via Getty Images
But while e-bikes are clearly a sustainable choice compared with driving, many e-bike advocates want to see the industry become a model of affordable, accessible, and environmentally friendly transit. For that to happen, consumers need to be able to repair their e-bikes to ensure they last a long time. In addition to a bicycle frame, wheels, and a battery, e-bikes include various electronic displays and sensors, as well as a motor that powers the pedal-assist system. All of these components can break down and require repairs or replacement.
On battery recycling, the U.S. e-bike industry has made good progress. About five years back, a group of bicycle manufacturers came together to lay the groundwork for an industry-wide battery-recycling program. That program was launched on a pilot scale in late 2021. Less than two years later, it has 54 participating bicycle brands and more than 1,800 retail stores serving as drop-off locations for end-of-life batteries nationwide. (An e-bike battery is considered at the “end of its life” when it no longer holds a charge well, which might occur after as few as two or as many as 10 years of use.)
The e-bike battery-recycling initiative is funded like an escrow program, according to Eric Frederickson of Call2Recycle, the recycling logistics nonprofit that runs it. Participating brands pay a fee into a fund for every e-bike battery they import. Call2Recycle uses those funds to administer the collection, transportation, and recycling of e-bike batteries at several locations around the country. Recycling partners include Canada-based Li-Cycle, which has a battery-recycling hub in Rochester, New York; Redwood Materials, headquartered in northern Nevada; and Cirba Solutions, a battery-logistics company that is expanding into lithium-ion battery recycling. Call2Recycle also trains participating retail shops on how to safely handle the batteries, including identifying any damaged batteries to pack in secure containers.
To date, Frederickson said, the program has recycled nearly 6,000 e-bike batteries, or 37,000 pounds of them. Ash Lovell, the electric bicycle policy and campaign director for People for Bikes, which endorses the program, hopes to see that number grow. In May, People for Bikes launched Hungry for Batteries, a new public education campaign that seeks to raise awareness of how to properly recycle e-bike batteries.
While the recycling program started out with a sustainability focus, as e-bike battery fires in New York City and elsewhere started making national headlines, it became “very much a safety-focused campaign,” Lovell said. “That’s been People for Bikes’ big push over the last few months.”
Firefighters respond after e-bike batteries sparked a fire in New York City’s Chinatown in June. Gardiner Anderson for NY Daily News via Getty Images
But those same battery safety concerns are now placing bicycle manufacturers at loggerheads with advocates for independent repair.
In a letter sent to New York Governor Kathy Hochul in December, People for Bikes asked that e-bikes be excluded from the state’s forthcoming digital right-to-repair law, which granted consumers the right to fix a wide range of electronic devices. The letter cited “an unfortunate increase in fires, injuries and deaths attributable to personal e-mobility devices” including e-bikes. Many of these fires, People for Bikes claimed in the letter, “appear to be caused by consumers and others attempting to service these devices themselves,” including tinkering with the batteries at home. Before Hochul signed the right-to-repair bill, it was revised to exempt e-bikes.
Asked for data to back up the claim that e-bike fires were being caused by unauthorized repairs, Lovell said that it was “anecdotal, from folks that are on the ground in New York.” A spokesperson for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, or CPSC, told Grist that battery fires can be the result of physical, electrical, or thermal damage to the battery, as well as “manufacturing defects.” Last December, the CPSC sent a letter to numerous e-bike manufacturers calling on them to ensure their products comply with voluntary industry safety standards for batteries and other electronic systems.
The CPSC spokesperson declined to comment on the role that e-bike, or e-bike battery, repair might be playing in the recent fires. The New York City Fire Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Though People for Bikes’ letter implied otherwise, the intent of New York’s right-to-repair law was not to give people special tools to pry open their batteries at home. The law stipulates that manufacturers must give independent shops and device owners access to the same parts, tools, and documentation they provide to their authorized repair partners. And when there’s a problem with an e-bike battery, most manufacturers offer consumers one option: replacing it.
“There’s no training on battery repair, that I know of, within the bike industry,” said Ryan Waddell, who recently worked as a lead mechanic at the nonprofit e-bike shop GoodTurnCycles, based in Colorado. “If something happens with a name-brand manufacturer [battery], they’ll usually want the battery shipped back” so it can be replaced.
What New York’s right-to-repair law would have done is increase access to parts, tools, and information that manufacturers only make available to select e-bike dealers. For example, e-bike component manufacturer Bosch produces a diagnostic reader that helps identify components that require a reset or replacement, but you have to be a Bosch-certified repair shop to purchase it. Some manufacturers also offer authorized shops, but not consumers, the ability to do major software updates on their systems. And e-bike brands often only sell components, like the motor controller that manages the amount of voltage going to the motor, to dealers of their choosing.
“There’s huge interest” in fixing e-bikes, said Kyle Wiens, CEO of the online repair guide site iFixit. But outside of manufacturers and specialized shops, “no one knows how.”
Wiens said that in addition to making spare parts and repair guides available, the e-bike industry needs to do a better job designing its products to be repairable. Across the industry, he says, there’s very little standardization in terms of parts. Waddell agreed.
“With e-bikes, nothing’s really standardized,” he said. That means that when a crucial component, like the controller, breaks down, it can be tough to find replacements — especially if that model of e-bike is no longer made.
An employee works on an electric bicycle at a workshop in Jakarta, Indonesia, in October 2022.
Garry Lotulung / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Right-to-repair laws could also help remediate what several industry observers described as a dismal repair scene for the direct-to-consumer e-bikes being sold online. These bikes tend to be cheaper than those made by industry leading brands like Trek and Rad Power Bikes, and they tend to break down more quickly. These are often the same bikes whose batteries don’t meet industry safety standards and may pose a greater fire risk. John Mathna, who runs the e-bike repair shop Chattanooga Electric Bike Co., says that many online e-bike companies offer “virtually no support” when there’s a problem.
“I’ve never seen a repair manual for any online bike,” Mathna said. “Many independent repair shops won’t touch them.”
Right-to-repair bills won’t solve all of the e-bike industry’s repairability issues, and they won’t end the debate over safe battery repair. But Wiens believes these bills would be a “big help” in terms of forcing out information the public needs to repair their e-bikes.
E-bike riders in Minnesota may soon find out if that’s true: In May, Governor Tim Waltz signed the nation’s broadest right-to-repair bill yet. Unlike in New York, Minnesota’s version of the law, which goes into effect in 2024, does not exempt e-bikes.
Lovell, of People for Bikes, said she believes the bill’s sponsors “weren’t totally aware of the issues of including e-bikes in right to repair,” and that the organization is “speaking to some of the legislators about the issue currently.” Minnesota Representative and bill sponsor Peter Fischer confirmed in an email to Grist that industry advocates reached out to him after the bill became law “asking for an exemption for e-bikes.”
“I did tell the folks I am open to meeting with them and hearing what they had to say,” Fischer said. “This does not mean I would support an exemption for them.”
Wiens, from iFixit, had a stern warning for e-bike manufacturers about attempting to evade compliance with the bill. “If they get a carveout in Minnesota,” he said, “we’ll introduce five bills next year targeting them specifically. It’s unacceptable.”
This story is part of Record High, a Grist series examining extreme heat and its impact on how — and where — we live.
For four out of five people on the planet, climate change made July, the globe’s hottest month on record, even hotter. And in the United States, nowhere has been more consistently hot this summer than Phoenix, which endured 31 consecutive days at 110 degrees Fahrenheit or above — the hottest month, on average, in any U.S. city on record. For 16 days, nighttime temperatures in the metropolis of 1.6 million people didn’t dip below 90 degrees, a telltale sign of climate change.
Extreme heat comes with serious public health consequences. Heat causes more deaths in America than any other weather-associated hazard. More than 11,000 people have died from heat since 1979, which is almost certainly an underestimate. Officials suspect seven people may have died due to heat in state and national parks in the Southwest this summer — an unusually high number for June and July.
In Arizona, one of the states where heat-related deaths are most common, the number of fatalities in metro-area Phoenix — 39 deaths connected to heat so far — could surpass last year’s total, potentially by a large margin. The Maricopa County Department of Public Health reported that there may have been 312 more deaths connected to heat in the county this year, all of which are under investigation.
The emergency in Arizona is a harbinger of crises to come: Climate-fueled heat is quickly becoming an omnipresent killer.
Cue Ball (left) and Roni (center), who are both homeless, make their way toward a market amid the Phoenix’s worst heat wave on record on July 24, 2023. Mario Tama / Staff/Getty Images
Emergency room doctors in Phoenix are on the front lines of this challenge. This summer, physicians in Arizona have been inundated with patients suffering from heat-related illnesses, but they’ve also been seeing higher volumes of patients with chronic diseases exacerbated by heat. And burn units in the state are tending to people with severe contact burns from blazing asphalt and other hot surfaces.
All summer, Kara Geren and Frank Lovecchio, two emergency medicine physicians in Phoenix, have noticed that no matter what a patient comes in for — whether it’s chest pain or a chronic health condition such as diabetes — they also likely need fluids. “What surprised us is, even people that came in for completely unrelated things are dehydrated,” said Geren, who works at Valleywise Health Medical Center in central Phoenix. “It’s just so hard to stay hydrated.”
The patients presenting with dehydration add to the considerable number of people coming to the ER with symptoms consistent with heat-related illness: heat rashes, cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, and the most severe form of heat sickness, heat stroke.
Loveccio, who is affiliated with Valleywise and also works in a few free-standing emergency departments in the city, has been immersing patients in large tubs of cold water and even zipping them into body bags filled with ice to cool them down. Chilling intravenous fluids and oxygen before administering them to patients also helps, he said.
Dr. Frank Lovecchio demonstrates an inflatable pool-like device that can be filled with ice, used in the emergency medicine unit at Valleywise Hospital during extreme heat. The Washington Post / Contributor/Getty Images
But heat leaves an impact on the body no matter what, especially if the person is elderly, works outside, or uses drugs like opioids.
“A very large percentage of our population has issues with mental illness, drugs, and alcohol,” Geren said. “Once you put those into the mix, people’s sensation of, ‘It’s hot — I need to get out of the heat’” is affected, she noted. Part of the problem is the heat hasn’t been dissipating at night, which would give people, particularly Maricopa County’s approximately 9,600 people without housing, a reprieve.
“It’s just never cool,” Geren said. “This is by far the worst year that we’ve ever seen.”
On a 100-degree Fahrenheit day, asphalt in direct sunlight will heat up to 160 degrees — more than hot enough to give someone a bad burn. Geren recently treated an elderly woman who fell on the pavement outside her house and couldn’t get up. She was found hours later and rushed to the emergency room with severe burns. “Our burn unit is very, very busy,” Lovecchio said. “If you walk across the street barefoot, there is no doubt that you would get at least a second degree, if not a third degree, burn to your feet.”
Both doctors worry about what the future might hold for Phoenix and whether they can continue to live in the state.
“This is my home, it’s been so for 30 years or so, and I hope I live here forever,” Lovecchio said. “But a lot of people have that billion-dollar question: Is it going to become unlivable? I think it’s pretty close this summer.”
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a regional collaboration of NPR stations, and Climate Central, a nonadvocacy science and news group. It is republished with permission.
In northern Nevada, east of Reno, a mountainous desert unfolds like a pop-up book. Wild horses on hillsides stand still as toys. Green-grey sagebrush paints the sandy land, which is baking under the summer sun.
On a 10-acre slice of this desert, people are working to turn this sunshine into paychecks. As society phases out fossil fuels and builds huge new solar energy plants, this region is grabbing a share of that green gold rush by retraining workers for work that is spreading across the West.
At this training center for the Reno branch of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, Francisco Valenzuela uses a wrench to secure brackets to a long steel tube on posts about four feet off the ground. What looks like the start of a giant erector set is the support structure common on large-scale solar farms.
“The brackets, they hold the panels and we set it up,” said Valenzuela.
A few years ago, Valenzuela did electrical work for a solar project not far from here – the 60-megawatt Turquoise Solar Farm. Now, he’s gaining more skills so he can land more jobs. The 43-year-old is originally from Sonora, Mexico, but lives in Reno for trade jobs in northern Nevada. He has two kids in Las Vegas and visits when work is slow.
“You stay busy the whole year working,” he said.
It’s good pay, too, he added, with some companies paying $20 to $30 an hour, or more.
These days, clean energy infrastructure construction is booming and with that, so are solar industry jobs. Nevada has jumped to the forefront in retraining workers for jobs at large-scale solar plants, so much so that now, workers from other states are coming here for guidance.
Francisco Valenzuela works on installing a support structure common on large-scale solar farms during training at the Northern Nevada Laborers Training Center in Storey County, Nev., on June 23, 2023.
Kaleb Roedel / Mountain West News Bureau
This year, more than half of all new power generation nationwide will be solar. Developers plan to install roughly 29 gigawatts of solar power – more than double the current record. In Nevada, planned projects this year could increase solar power by almost 1,600 megawatts.
The Solar Energy Industries Association says about 800,000 new workers will be needed in less than a decade. That’s to push the nation’s electricity generation from solar to 30 percent by 2030. Solar accounted for less than 4 percent last year.
“Employers have a need, and they’re hiring, and the pace with which we are hiring and growing is fast,” said Cynthia Finley, who leads workforce strategies for the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, or IREC. The organization says there were more than a quarter million solar workers across the country last year.
But nearly half of the industry’s employers said it was “very difficult” to find qualified applicants.
“The biggest challenge, I think, for everyone is finding those connections to where the jobs are,” Finley said, as well as “finding the training to give you those skills and qualifications to do that job.”
Nevada is taking the lead in developing that workforce for its residents. The state has the nation’s largest solar workforce on a per capita basis and ranks eighth in solar jobs, with more than 7,500 people working. That workforce grew 5 percent last year alone, the energy council says.
Many of those workers are working in the deserts surrounding Las Vegas, says Guy Snow. He trains electricians with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for solar jobs.
“I think we’re ahead of the game as far as being able to build large utility scale plants,” Snow said. “We have some of the largest plants being built around Vegas.”
That includes the $1.2 billion Gemini project. The 690-megawatt solar plant is being built on roughly 7,000 acres, making it the nation’s biggest. Gemini is expected to be completed by the end of the year and generate enough electricity to power 260,000 homes.
“We have 300 electricians out there right now working on that solar plant,” Snow said.“I’m pretty confident we’re going to be able to handle the entire needs of the state of Nevada, for solar and storage.”
Despite the economic and renewable energy benefits, projects like Gemini also can damage the environment.
“We are very much in support of solar as a key to our renewable energy transition,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “What we do have concerns with is the current push toward developing these projects largely in intact desert habitats and undeveloped landscapes.”
Donnelly says developers should build in locations that humans have already disturbed, like abandoned mines or agricultural lands. But, he adds, the biggest threat to biodiversity is climate change – and the main cause is burning fossil fuels.
That means more solar farms, and a growing workforce, at least for now.
Although solar jobs soar when installations are underway, at some point, those jobs will run out. Last year, almost 172,000 solar jobs were with project installation and development firms, and only around 16,000 were in operations and maintenance, according to the latest National Solar Jobs Census.
The electrical workers union is addressing that issue by making sure trainees are qualified, not just for big solar projects, but to work as general electricians on the steady stream of construction jobs around Vegas.
But there have been other hiccups in the growth of solar employment. Supply chain concerns and the specter of new tariffs on solar panels temporarily slowed large-scale installations last year. The Solar Jobs Census reported a decline in utility-scale jobs, even as residential installation jobs increased.
Over the longer term, however, the trend is strongly upward. If projects move ahead as planned in Nevada, solar capacity in the state will double by 2029.
Back in northern Nevada, Paige Den-dekker is also getting trained on solar work. The 57-year-old journeywoman is from Montana and used to be a flagger for mining operations. But she’s seeing more and more solar opportunities, especially in Nevada.
“You make better money. It’s better for the environment,” she said. “And it also creates a lot of jobs for our apprentices and everybody that’s in the laborers’ union.”
The Reno branch of the laborers’ union readies an average of 25 people a month for solar assembly and installation. And sometimes a lot more, says Al DeVita, the center’s director.
“Lately, a lot of people have been coming in for the solar training that we’ve been providing – and it’s a big hit,” DeVita said. “We invested a lot of money in this training because we know there’s a lot of work, and our piece of it is to try and provide a skilled workforce.”
And the union is helping provide more skilled instructors nationwide. This year, laborer trainers from across the country have been coming to the Reno desert to learn the tricks of the trade.
“I would say we’re way ahead of the curve,” DeVita said. “Close to 50 instructors from all around the country are coming in here to see what this site is – lots of people taking pictures, there’s a guy out there with a drone – and they’re trying to figure out how to implement it at their site.”
In the meantime, trainers in the Nevada desert will keep preparing workers to power the green gold rush in the West.
Climate Central’s Joseph Giguerecontributed data reporting.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a non-profit news publication investigating how power works in New York state. Sign up for their newsletter here.
It takes about an hour to drive to the Canadian border from the tiny town of Croghan, New York. The area is heavily forested, on the edge of the sprawling Adirondack Park, and in the event of a wildfire, local volunteers bear responsibility for controlling and containing the blaze — even if it’s on state land. So far, they’ve had success.
“We’re lucky up here,” retired firefighter Steve Monnat told New York Focus. “When it gets dry, it doesn’t last very long.”
In his nearly five decades with the Croghan Volunteer Fire Department, Monnat never encountered a wildfire larger than a few acres. Few in New York have. But with the climate, that may change.
As heatwaves intensify and weather patterns swing between periods of heavy precipitation and prolonged drought, New York’s favorable, wildfire-stifling conditions may soon turn. Some argue that the present lack of fire increases the risk of deadly blazes in the future, and that intentional controlled burns are the best preparation. Others find the prospect too destructive, too risky.
“It is very likely that fire frequency and fire regimes are going to change here in the northeast, and that the chances of wildfire are going to increase,” said Andrew Vander Yacht, an ecologist at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. Extensive droughts and rising temperatures may dry forest fuels, he said, increasing the likelihood and severity of wildfires — unless New York burns the fuels first.
A fallen tree in the Adirondacks, where ranger Art Perryman finds climate parallels to Nova Scotia troubling.
Nathan Porceng / NY Focus
The state boasts 18.6 million acres of forested land, much of it publicly owned or constitutionally protected. Though many states perform extensive controlled burns to mitigate the risk of wildfires, New York prohibits the practice in its two largest forested regions. One of them, the Catskill Park, is nearly the size of Rhode Island. The other, the Adirondack Park, is larger than the Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier, and Grand Canyon national parks combined. And unlike in those national parks — or the forested regions now burning in Canada — hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers live in and around state-protected woodlands.
Relatively few are on staff to manage them. New York employs about 130 forest rangers to cover 4.9 million acres of land — over 36,000 acres per ranger. They don’t just care for the state’s forests; their duties include law enforcement and search and rescue. Forest ranger attrition has plagued the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation for years, and some fear these personnel strains could inhibit the agency from carrying out a more involved fire management strategy.
In Croghan, about 50 volunteer firefighters put out the flames in town and on dec land alike. They range from high school students to senior citizens, some of whom maintain their membership solely to participate in the department’s social functions and no longer respond to emergencies. In the event of a major forest fire, they would need to call for additional help from downstate.
Fortunately, the department has not faced a major forest fire in living memory. “Never happened,” said Monnat. “Hopefully it never does.”
Firefighters walk through a wildfire in Nova Scotia. New York forest rangers who helped fight fires in Canada plan to lobby the DEC advocating for prescribed burns.
Art Perryman / NY Focus
Not only does New York have a wetter climate than wildfire-prone regions of Canada and the American West, but the state’s tree species tend to be less susceptible to fire.
“Canada has large remote tracts of spruce, fir boreal forest,” dec spokesperson Jeff Wernick told New York Focus. “New York has some boreal forest in the Adirondacks, but it is segmented. New York has more temperate hardwood forests, which are a lot less susceptible to the types of fire Canada is having, especially after the spring green-up.”
Art Perryman, a longtime ranger who recently returned from fighting forest fires in Nova Scotia, is less sanguine. This summer, unprecedented wildfires in the historically wet Canadian province burned over 58,000 acres of land and displaced over 6,000 people. Perryman said that the similarities between Nova Scotia and the Adirondacks disturbed him.
“They have a very similar climate to us in terms of rainfall,” Perryman told New York Focus. “They’re essentially at the same latitude as us here in the Adirondacks and the fuel type is not all that different.”
Without consensus on whether proactive wildfire prevention measures — like underbrush-clearing burns — are prudent or feasible, the state’s plan is unchanged: Keep suppressing the blazes as they come.
Before Canada’s wildfire smoke started to blow down this summer, forest fires rarely troubled New Yorkers. Wildfires seldom burn more than 3,000 acres in New York per year, passing mostly unnoticed by the state’s population.
That wasn’t always the case. In the early 20th century, upstate wildfires decimated hundreds of thousands of acres every year, poisoned waterways, and blanketed New York City in ash. Rampant logging littered forests with fuel, and the state’s booming railway industry provided ample sparks. In 1903, New York suffered 643 wildfires that together burned over 450,000 acres of land.
Prior to the arrival of European settlers, New York’s indigenous inhabitants used prescribed burns to clear underbrush. According to Les Benedict and Jessica Raspitha of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe Environment Division, which manages the reservation’s 6,800 acres of forested land along the Canadian border, controlled burns aren’t just part of their people’s past. Soon, they may use them again to clear invasive phragmites — a common type of dry, grassy reed — that have spread throughout their tribal forests.
a dead tree once struck by lighting stands in the Adirondacks.
Nathan Porceng / NY Focus
“The reeds grow very close together,” Raspitha told New York Focus. “They push out all the native vegetation that would grow around it.” If left undisturbed, phragmites multiply and accumulate from year to year — providing rich fuel for fires.
Forest managers like Benedict and Raspitha see controlled burns as a useful tool, yet they remain off limits in the Catskills and Adirondacks.
“We are so ignorant when it comes to fire management in New York state,” Ryan Trapani, director of forest services for the nonprofit Catskill Forest Association, told New York Focus. “I wish we were burning more.”
Not all environmentalists agree. For John Sheehan, director of communications for the conservationist nonprofit Adirondack Council, wildfires do not, and will not, pose a significant enough threat to justify controlled burns.
“We had 60 wildfires last year that burned almost a thousand acres in the Adirondacks,” Sheehan told New York Focus. “You double that you’re still not talking even a tiny fraction of the 6 million [acres] we have inside the park.”
Mismanaged, controlled burns can have devastating effects. In 2022, the us Forest Service lost control of a fire it’d set in New Mexico, accidentally destroying over 300,000 acres of land and displacing tens of thousands of people.
Benedict and Raspitha understand the risks and said their division will not perform any controlled burns without proper authorization, training, and preparation. “You need trained experts,” Benedict said.
A single controlled burn requires at least three people to perform. New York may not have the staff. The state’s forest rangers have expressed concerns that they do not have enough personnel to perform their existing duties, let alone any new ones.
“There’s not enough rangers,” said Dave Holden, an environmental activist and longtime resident of the Catskills region. “They’re underfunded for regular operations.”
But if you ask Perryman, the state has the money. He estimates that New York receives about $7,500 each time a ranger deploys out of state to fight wildfires, which he believes should finance a dedicated wildfire protection fund.
“It’s a pittance for New York state,” Perryman said. “But it’s very important … for our program and being ready for these large, destructive wildfires.”
Vander Yacht, who runs suny’s Applied Forest and Fire Ecology Lab, is also in favor of controlled burns. He points to a 2021 study that predicts the frequency of wildfires in New York will more than double by the end of this century.
The Catskills’s oak forests pose the greatest risk of burning in the near future, Vander Yacht said, and a major forest fire in the Adirondacks is less likely. But a blaze in that region could wreak immense destruction due to dense growth and underbrush accumulation — made possible by decades without fires.
Other states, including California, Florida, Vermont, and Pennsylvania, liberally employ prescribed burns to mitigate the risk of wildfires. In New York, they’re far less common, but not unheard of.
Sheehan lives in Albany, and he acknowledges the regular use of controlled burns near his home to mitigate the risk of wildfires in the Albany Pine Barren. But he worries that human intervention in New York’s protected forests could disturb the natural conditions that have long suppressed wildfires.
“Really the only period of time that we had major wildfire problems inside the [Adirondack] park was after a period of long deforestation,” Sheehan said, pointing to the dark history of exploitative logging in the 19th and early 20th centuries. “The forest floor got exposed to sunlight in ways that had never happened before, not because trees fell down or something in a storm, but because they were hauled away.”
In 1885 — spurred by the rapid decimation of the state’s woodlands — the New York state legislature established the Forest Preserve, which grew to include millions of acres in the Catskills and Adirondacks. Nine years later, at the 1894 constitutional convention, the Forest Preserve gained even stronger protections.
Article xiv of the New York state constitution states that the Forest Preserve “shall be forever kept as wild forest lands.” Sheehan believes the “forever wild” clause prohibits controlled burns in the Catskills and Adirondacks. Vander Yacht and Trapani also expressed doubts that the state constitution allows such measures in protected forests. But in a 1930 case, the state’s top court found that the “forever wild” clause exists to protect state forests, and therefore permits “all things necessary” to preserve those forests, including “measures to prevent forest fires.”
The “forever wild” clause permits “all things necessary” to preserve state forests.
Nathan Porceng / NY Focus
Wernick, the dec spokesperson, said state environmental conservation law grants the agency “broad statutory authority” to suppress fires on state lands, and that the dec may determine which fire suppression strategies — including controlled burns — are appropriate and warranted.
The dec does not currently allow prescribed burns in the Catskills and Adirondacks, and it hasn’t shown any inclination to use them in the future.
Some of the agency’s frontline staff are pushing to change that. Leading a group of rangers who helped fight this summer’s Canadian wildfires, Perryman plans on lobbying dec leadership to revamp the agency’s wildfire prevention policies — advocating for the use of prescribed burns, additional training for rangers and firefighters, and an update for the state’s aging inventory of forest firefighting equipment.
Perryman told New York Focus he reached out to dec Commissioner Basil Seggos, but he has yet to receive a direct response.
Even absent major forest fires, volunteering with a rural fire department is “a busy little way of life,” according to Monnat. Holden worries that unless New York revamps its wildfire management policies, the state’s firefighters may find themselves much busier.
Holden acknowledges that many voters and policymakers remain unconvinced that New York needs to do more to mitigate the risk of wildfires in the state’s protected forests. His pitch is short and to the point.
“What would you rather have?” Holden asks. “Us clearing your property, preventing it from burning up? [Or] would you rather have firefighters coming on your property, whether you want them or not, because it’s burning up?”
Hundreds of wildfires originating in Canada descended over the midwest and eastern U.S. this June. While some regions in the west and in the south of the country are more accustomed to smoke, orange skies and ash are a new sight for others.
Besides destruction to infrastructure and the natural world, wildfire smoke also poses a major health risk. It contains gaseous pollutants like carbon monoxide, as well as extremely small particles that easily enter lungs and airways. Many of these particles are so small, they can be seen only with an electron microscope. Exposure to pollutants may cause airways to become inflamed, constricted, or otherwise irritated, and cause other physical symptoms like itchy or stinging eyes, a scratchy throat, headaches, runny noses, chest tightness, fatigue, and coughing, or aggravate chronic cardiovascular conditions like heart disease. Some groups are especially at risk, including children, pregnant people, adults over 65, and those with pre-existing lung conditions like asthma and COPD.
If wildfire smoke begins to impact your community, there are a few things you can do to keep yourself healthy and safe.
Monitor Air Quality
Air Now / Facebook
The severity of polluted air isn’t always visible, so stay informed by checking the Air Quality Index at AirNow.gov, which is run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and provides air quality data by region. The AQI measures the density of five major air pollutants: carbon monoxide, ground-level ozone, nitrogen dioxide, particulates, and sulfur dioxide. During the wildfire season, the measurement called PM 2.5 (which stands for particulate matter) is especially important. This number indicates the concentration of particles in the atmosphere that are smaller than 2.5 micrometers — like those from soot, ash, and dust — which are easy to inhale.
Air quality is determined by the pollutant with the highest concentration at a given moment (which is usually particulates during wildfires), and is given a rating from 0-500: 0-50 (green) indicates little or no risk; 51-100 (yellow) means that air quality is acceptable, but there is some risk for people who are sensitive; 101-150 (orange) indicates that sensitive groups may experience health effects, but the general public is less likely to be impacted; 151-200 (red) is considered unhealthy, and the general public may have health effects; above 201-300 is unhealthy for everyone, especially people with heart and lung disease; and 301-500 is very hazardous for all people.
Shutting off your home from outside air is one of the most effective ways to keep indoor air quality safe. Close all doors and windows to prevent particulates from entering the house. If windows or doors are drafty or have gaps around the edges, use painter’s tape or tuck towels (preferably damp ones) to create a seal. Consider installing weather stripping around these gaps to protect against future smoke as well.
Avoid Going Outdoors
Stay inside as much as possible during smokey conditions. Work from home if you can, or drive/take public transportation to work instead of walking to minimize time outdoors. If you must go outdoors, avoid strenuous activities like exercising or mowing the lawn. In general — even apart from wildfire smoke — it’s unsafe to exercise outdoors if the AQI is higher than 150.
A Los Angeles resident exercises outdoors while smoke from wildfires fills the L.A. Basin on Sept. 17, 2020. Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Wear a Mask or Respirator
If you have to go outside, wear a suitable mask or respirator to protect yourself from harmful gases and airborne particles. A scarf or cloth mask — even a surgical mask — won’t offer much protection, so use a close-fitting respirator mask that completely covers your nose and mouth. Respirators differ from other masks in that they are meant to filter out very small airborne particles. N95s and KN95s are respirator masks — which you might already have on hand as a method of COVID protection — and while they’re very effective at protecting wearers from airborne particulates (as much as 95%), they don’t protect much against gases like carbon monoxide that are present in the smoke. If you must go outside (especially if your job requires you to work outdoors for a long period of time), a NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) Approved respirator is the best option for protection.
Use Air Conditioning
It’s safe to run air conditioners during smoky weather, as long as you take a few precautions. Especially in the summer with all of the windows and doors closed, it can get very hot. If you don’t have air conditioning, seek a community center or household that does.
For central HVAC systems, change the filter as often as recommended by the manufacturer, and close the fresh/outdoor air intake (which might allow smoke to get into your house). Some of these systems allow for high-efficiency air filters. If so, install one that’s classified as MERV 13 or higher. Most window air conditioners have an outdoor air damper near the top, which prevents rain or snow from entering. Close this before running to block any outside air from being sucked in. Portable air conditioners with hoses work slightly differently and might pull in smoke, so check the details for your specific model before turning it on.
Use Air Purifiers
Keep indoor air clean with a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) purifier. Air purifiers can reduce particles indoors by as much as 85%, according to the EPA. They can, however, be very expensive, ranging in price from $50 to $1,000 for a single unit.
If you only purchase one machine, choose one room as a “clean room” to set it up in, paying attention to the space requirements listed on the product. Consumer Reports recommends getting a purifier that’s marketed for larger spaces of at least 350 square feet, claiming they operate better. Close all windows and doors — including those that lead to other rooms — and sleep there if possible.
Keep the Indoors Clean, and Avoid Smoke- or Particle-Producing Activities
Maintain high air quality inside even without an air purifier by avoiding certain activities. Refrain from using aerosol sprays and candles, or gas, propane, and wood-burning stoves. Avoid cooking if you can, as frying and broiling foods can create smoke or particles that get trapped indoors.
When you go outdoors into polluted air, particles can quickly settle on your body and clothing. Change clothes and shower when you come in from outside to avoid spreading the particles around your home. Vacuuming can disturb pollutants and release them into the air, so it’s better to wipe surfaces and floors with damp cloth.
Drink Water
Staying well hydrated is important for kidney and liver function, which help remove toxins from the body and reduce inflammation. Drinking water also reduces some physical symptoms from smoke exposure, like coughing and scratchy throats.
