When Mike Quigley heard about a new energy transmission line the federal government was considering from Arizona to California in 2018, his feelings were mixed. Quigley serves as the Arizona state director of the conservation organization The Wilderness Society, and supports looking to public lands for the multiple roles they can play in addressing climate change. So in 2018, he supported a shift toward renewables to fight climate change. But the proposed transmission route bisected a wildlife refuge that offered important habitat to several desert species, and also threatened a beloved canyon.

This was a problem. To him, the role of public lands in the climate fight goes beyond their renewable energy potential, or reducing the oil, gas and coal emissions that stem from them. Quigley says healthy public lands naturally clean air and water, support natural carbon storage, and help buffer communities against both the physical and emotional impacts of living with climate change. 

And he wasn’t the only one concerned. Officials said the 500kV powerline was needed to connect substations in Tonopah, Arizona, and Blythe, California, in order to provide more renewable energy in the Southwest. But the 125-mile Ten West Link electrical transmission line initially faced significant opposition because of its preliminary proposed route, which cut through Johnson Canyon and the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge near Yuma, Arizona. 

The 665,400-acre refuge offered crucial habitat for endangered species between the Kofa Mountains and Castle Dome Mountains. Among them were the Sonoran pronghorn antelope. In the early 2000s, “you could count on both hands the number of Sonoran pronghorn left in the United States,” Quigley says. 

Since then a successful breeding program had built the population back up. It worked particularly well in the Kofa refuge, where mountain lions were a less prevalent predator than in other areas. Other wildlife, like the desert horned lizard, red-spotted toad, desert iguana, chuckwalla, the elusive Gila monster, and the western diamondback rattlesnake, were among the 702 different species of animals and plants officially found within Kofa. Migratory birds such as white-winged doves, cactus wrens, northern flickers, canyon towhees, Gambel’s quails, and golden eagles would also pass through the refuge in significant numbers in spring and fall. 

Hikers and birdwatchers came out in force to see the migrations. The local community worried that the project would harm tourism to the desert region. JC Sanders, a retiree and off-highway vehicle enthusiast, was among those concerned. Sanders particularly loved taking his all-terrain vehicle on Kofa’s open travel routes and through the nearby Johnson Canyon. “It gives populations like me, the elderly, an opportunity to see isolated areas and the animals,” he says. “Bighorn sheep have very little fear of vehicles out there in the wilderness.”

A series of public meetings revealed deep community opposition to the project. Sanders is vice-chair of the Arizona Peace Trail, a coalition of 14 Southwestern off-highway vehicle groups advocating for a 675-mile trail from Bullhead City to Yuma. He and his counterparts met multiple times with the project engineers, even taking them to the prized Johnson Canyon site. 

To overcome the impasse, The Wilderness Society, federal agencies, and locals worked together to identify an alternative route for the transmission line along Interstate 10. A conservation nonprofit called the Sonoran Institute, which had been trying to identify promising energy corridors, had previously studied this route. It runs parallel with I-10 along the West-wide Energy Corridor to avoid Kofa, then joins an existing power line route once it gets west of the wildlife refuge.

This new path avoids environmentally sensitive areas like the Kofa refuge, recreation areas, populated regions, significant cultural resources, and the Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation. As an added bonus, it utilizes existing infrastructure, minimizing the project’s environmental impact. “It fulfills its primary purpose of taking non-carbon-emitting energy to market, and it does it in the least environmentally damaging way possible,” Quigley says. “This is an example of how that can work in practice.”

The project broke ground this spring, with Vice President Kamala Harris and other federal officials in attendance. Power is expected down the line by 2024. 

While the new route may be slightly less direct, it will likely save money by avoiding litigation when a project is publicly opposed, says Justin Meuse, The Wilderness Society’s director of government relations for climate and energy. He says the Ten West Link project shows it is possible to responsibly develop renewable energy projects and transmission on public lands by ensuring meaningful public participation from the outset. 

Sanders, a retired civil engineer himself, says maintaining good relationships between officials, groups, and members of the public is key to working out mutually agreeable solutions. “Rather than standing up and opposing a proposal, get to know the people and let them know what your specific concerns are,” he says. “Work on alternatives — help them out. Help them achieve the ultimate goal. Public involvement is critical on any project like this.”

The ultimate goal, environmental experts explain, is to bring more decarbonized energy online— without replicating some of the environmental injustices practiced by the fossil fuel industries. “We want to reach our clean energy future, but we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past,” Meuse says, particularly when it comes to community involvement. 

That means providing sufficient time for public comment periods for proposed projects, Meuse says. In his experience, a standard 45-day public comment period often passes without communities or neighborhoods even knowing it has opened. 

Longer response times are “worth it in the long run,” he says. “You see a lot of the discourse about community opposition to wind and solar site location that could be addressed with more time to comment—and early and effective outreach—rather than just jamming the project through.”

Advocates believe that the positive solutions found for Ten West Link can be replicated elsewhere. The Biden administration, for instance, is currently updating and expanding a plan for solar in the western United States that was developed in 2012. When complete, the plan could incorporate an additional five states, and focus on identifying low-conflict areas for development based on wildlife habitat, distance from cultural resources, and proximity to existing infrastructure. 

The 200-megawatt Dry Lake Solar Energy Project in Nevada is another example of this success. The area to be developed—some 1,635 acres of public land near Las Vegas—was pre-screened by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management as a low-conflict area. Meuse says that, as a result, the project’s permitting time has been about half its typical length. 

Ensuring that federal agencies have enough resources will facilitate these kinds of community-oriented approaches. While the Inflation Reduction Act included $1 billion for conducting national environmental policy analyses, more is needed on a regular basis for historically underfunded agencies, Meuse says. 

“It’s the kind of model that takes investment, time, and engagement,” he says. “That’s what we prioritize — ensuring that nobody’s getting steamrolled in the name of our clean energy future.”

The Wilderness Society has been working since 1935 on uniting people to protect America’s wild places. With more than one million members and supporters, The Wilderness Society has led the effort to permanently protect nearly 112 million acres of wilderness in 44 states and ensure sound management of public lands. We believe that public lands can and should be a critical part of the solution to the climate crisis and a healthy future for all. We work to rapidly and fairly phase out fossil fuel development, responsibly ramp up renewable energy development, and protect and restore natural carbon sinks – like old-growth forests – on public lands and waters.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How community feedback can improve the green energy transition on Sep 12, 2023.

Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of Record High. I’m Jake Bittle, and today we’re going to talk about not having fun in the sun.

We recently asked Record High readers to tell us about how extreme heat has changed the way they approach travel, outdoor sports, and other recreation. For many of us, these experiences are deeply important for our own health and our relationships with loved ones. One reader wrote back with a response that stuck with me.   

“Our favorite vacation spot is Disneyland, California,” they said. “In the 1970s through 1990s, we were able to go there in the summer, but not now. It’s too hot and the air conditioning in the park makes the outdoor walkways even hotter. It’s also hotter in Phoenix where our daughter lives, so we see her and her family less often.”

Thousands of people in the United States and globally have had to make similar adjustments as the world endures its hottest summer on record. Travelers have canceled trips to places like Italy and Greece as triple-digit temperatures scorch Southern Europe, organizers have called off concerts and sporting events from Arizona to Long Island, and hikers have collapsed or even died on trails like those in Utah’s Mount Olympus, where officials had to conduct an emergency heat rescue back in July.

In sunny states like California and Florida, many of the most popular recreational activities take place outdoors, fueling a booming tourism industry. A few decades ago, summer was the best time of year to go on a hike, take out your boat, or visit a theme park, but now it’s almost unbearable.

Disney’s iconic theme parks have taken this shift on the chin. The entertainment giant saw overall attendance numbers at its Florida theme park slump this summer during a period when the heat index at the park reached an astonishing 112 degrees Fahrenheit. That was in line with a broader slowdown in central Florida tourism that affected SeaWorld and Six Flags as well. 

Even blogs that are devoted to the company’s attractions published articles about crowds waiting in the hot sun for rides and offered “Tips for Surviving Disneyland When it’s Super Hot.” Part of the problem, as our reader pointed out, is that the company runs huge AC units to keep its indoor offerings cool, and these units leak heat exhaust into outdoor areas, making it even more unpleasant to walk around.

At least you can go inside at Disney World. Other forms of outdoor recreation, such as running and hiking, are even more dangerous when the temperature gets high because the body never gets a respite from the heat of the sun. By this July, at least seven people had died in national parks while hiking outdoors, according to data CNN obtained from the National Park Service. Most of these deaths were in the dry Southwest where the unrelenting sun can cause heatstroke in a matter of hours. 

This heat can sneak up fast on people who aren’t prepared for it. Jessica Lindstrom, a 34-year-old nurse and mother of four, was visiting Phoenix from Oregon last month when she went for a hike in the Deem Hills Recreation Area in the city’s northern suburbs. Lindstrom was reported missing at around 8:30 a.m., and Phoenix police found her dead about nine hours later. She had grown up in Arizona, but the local fire chief attributed her death to a shock of extreme heat.

“Unfortunately, Ms. Lindstrom was in town from Oregon, where it doesn’t get this hot,” Scott Douglas, the captain of the Phoenix Fire Department, said in a press conference at the time. The temperature in Phoenix that day reached a high of 113 degrees.

In theory, it’s incumbent on theme park owners and local government agencies to communicate with visitors about the risks of extreme heat, and shut down facilities when necessary, but doing so can put them in an economic bind. A city like Orlando nets about $31 billion from tourism every year, equivalent to 20 percent of its total economic output, and shareholder-driven companies like Disney have every financial incentive to keep parks open even if attendance numbers are low.

In the meantime, more families will likely do what our reader’s family did, and just stay home.

By the numbers

Data from the city of Phoenix shows that average foot traffic on the city’s trails tends to plummet during the summer months as temperatures reach triple digits and officials shut down city parks. This data is from 2020 and 2021, so they don’t reflect trends from this year’s killer summer.

Data Visualization by Clayton Aldern

What we’re reading

The limits of survival: A new study in the journal Science Advances found that parts of the world have already become too hot for human health as heat and humidity in the Persian Gulf and South Asia cross critical thresholds. My colleague Zoya Teirstein breaks down the study and what it means for the future toll of extreme heat.

Read more

Threats to rainforest photosynthesis: In additional research news, scientists have found that plants in the Amazon rainforest cannot perform photosynthesis at temperatures above 116 degrees Fahrenheit. As my colleague Katie Myers reports, if the Amazon reaches that temperature on a continuous basis, its lush, biodiverse jungle could collapse and give way to a drier, savannah-like environment.

Read more 

Students get “heat days”: As the Northeast faced down a grueling heat wave last week, some school districts let students stay home until temperatures abated. CNN’s Rachel Ramirez wrote about the rise in “heat days,” a climate-fueled mirror image of the beloved Northeast snow day, and examined how heat disrupts childhood learning.

Read more 

States withhold cooling money: While the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program has almost always been used to help households pay for heating costs, the money can technically also help pay for air conditioning. But as Thomas Frank of E&E News reports, the states that administer the program haven’t caught up with the new reality of climate change, and most haven’t released any money for that purpose.

Read more 

Heat wave roasts the U.S. Open: The world’s greatest tennis players had to play through humid, 90-degree conditions during the later rounds of last week’s U.S. Open in New York City. The muggy weather made it difficult to hit big serves and forced players to change sweaty shirts several times. Players had a range of responses to the heat. Serbian great Novak Djokovic, who ended up winning the men’s tournament, said it was “not easy, but you’ve got to fight.” Russian phenom Daniil Medvedev, who played Djokovic in the final match, issued a more serious warning, saying that “one player is going to die and you are going to see.”

Read more 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The end of summer vacation on Sep 12, 2023.

Whenever Ram Amar explains his idea for mitigating climate change, people usually look at him strangely and ask if he’s crazy. It’s easy to see why. 

His startup, Rewind, wants to sequester a gigaton of carbon each year — about 10 percent of what climate scientists deem necessary each year to reach net zero by 2050 — in a remarkably simple way. The elevator pitch goes like this: Gather millions of tons of agricultural waste and send it to the bottom of the Black Sea, where it won’t decay. Wilder still, an ancient Greek ship that sank 2,400 years ago helped inspire the idea.

At first glance, the proposal might seem counterintuitive. The carbon that plants absorb from the atmosphere through photosynthesis is released when they decompose (or, alas, are compressed over eons to make fossil fuels). This is where the Black Sea comes in. Unlike most other large bodies of water, it is mostly anoxic, meaning there is precious little oxygen — and almost none at all at depths beyond 300 feet or so. It takes a long time for anything to biodegrade down there, which explains why dozens of intact shipwrecks litter its floor.

After selling his software company to Google in 2019, Amar pondered growing seaweed to sequester carbon, but realized that anything it captured would eventually return to the atmosphere. He put the sequestration idea aside until he met Peter Kroust, a German marine biologist who suggested stashing carbon in the Black Sea — something that occurred to him after cycling along the Danube and seeing tons of agricultural waste headed downriver. “And at that point, it was just like a click,” Amar said with a laugh. After getting initial funding (he wouldn’t say how much), they launched Rewind in Tel Aviv last year. 

It’s an intriguing idea, and Rewind, which employs 12 people, just wrapped up a yearlong experiment in the Black Sea and the Sea of Galilee (portions of which are anoxic) that suggests it could work. The research team left a bit more than 650 pounds of hardwood submerged in a linen bag at a depth of 820 feet. The material retained 97 percent of its biomass over the 12 months that followed. “We saw that there is some degradation over the first three months, and then from three months on it stayed mostly consistent,” Amar said. “That’s really great.” 

In their control of pine submerged in normal water, the researchers recorded 10 percent degradation in six months. The reduced rate of decay in anoxic water can be attributed to lignin, a key organic polymer, found in the tissue of most plants, that does not break down without oxygen. Amar’s team plans further experiments at depths of 3,200 feet, followed by two deposits to be made more than a mile down.

Similar tests with wheat stalk, corn stover, and grapevines revealed varying levels of decay, but Amar said this small amount of degradation won’t be a problem 7,200 feet beneath the surface. “Whatever does break down will stay in the deep Black Sea and will not mix and float back up into shallower layers where it can come in contact with the air,” he said.

According to Amar, carbon dating shows that the deepest parts of the Black Sea haven’t had contact with the air in two millennia, making it an excellent carbon (and methane) sink. The company is confident the science stacks up, but because Rewind hopes to fund the project by selling carbon credits, its process must be vetted by independent experts to ensure it works.

There are several potential pitfalls, the biggest of which is carbon sequestration being difficult to measure. There also is little recourse should something go wrong. “Once you put material in the deep sea, it is almost impossible to get it back again without a huge expense,” said Martin Palmer, a geochemistry professor at the National Oceanography Center in South Hampton, England. “So you need to be 100 percent confident that the process is safe.”

Palmer also notes that although organic matter is better preserved in anoxic environments, it still undergoes degradation that results in some level of methane production. “You would need to be very sure that you would not exceed the methane solubility in the Black Sea waters, or there could be problems,” particularly in an area that is seismically active, Palmer told Grist.

And then there are the logistical challenges, including where to source so much biomass. However, the Black Sea is bordered by six agriculturally productive countries that generate a lot of waste. Much of it is usually burned, or shipped down the Danube and dumped into the sea at depths above the anoxic zone, where it degrades and releases carbon. Given the existing infrastructure for moving all that material, Rewind calculates that the carbon needed to transport it far from shore to dump it at an appropriate depth would amount to no more than 3 percent of the carbon that could be sequestered. With a volume of more than 131,000 cubic miles, there is plenty of space to do the job.

However, stashing a gigaton of carbon a year will require such large quantities of biomass that it will demand geopolitical coordination. That means convincing politicians, policymakers, and the public. Communicating the idea that his startup isn’t simply dumping waste in the sea — something Amar calls the “understanding gap” — won’t be easy, especially in such a politically tense region. Rewind remains in the early phases of those discussions with government agencies and officials, but is confident it can sell them on the idea.

“As humanity, we’re a huge intervention to the planet,” he said. “So we’re trying to fix the biggest intervention we’ve made, with a smaller intervention.”

His idea, though perhaps counterintuitive, may not be as crazy as it first sounds.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A look inside the plan to store carbon at the bottom of the Black Sea on Sep 12, 2023.

Four months before the close of 2023, the United States has already broken its record for the number of weather and climate disasters with damages exceeding $1 billion in a calendar year.

There have been 23 “billion-dollar disasters” to date this year, according to a monthly report issued Monday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, or NOAA. The last calendar-year record was set in 2020, with 22 disasters costing $1 billion. (NOAA adjusts its count of past years’ billion-dollar disasters to account for inflation.) This year’s 23 disasters have cost Americans a total of nearly $58 billion and caused at least 253 deaths. 

The events include Hurricane Idalia, the strongest hurricane to hit Florida’s Big Bend region in 125 years, and the Lahaina fire storm, the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in more than a century. A winter storm in the Northeast, flooding in California and Vermont, and 18 severe storm events — including thunderstorms, tornado outbreaks, and hail storms — also contributed to the record.

With 12 weeks remaining in the Atlantic hurricane season and autumn wildfires common in the West, the U.S. is likely to end the year with an even higher number of billion-dollar disasters. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, much of the country faces above-normal risk of significant wildfires in September, though parts of southern California are expected to have below-normal potential.

In a statement released Monday, Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the NOAA report “sobering,” and “the latest confirmation of a worsening trend in costly disasters, many of which bear the undeniable fingerprints of climate change.”

Cleetus said the staggering financial losses underscored the need for more funding and attention toward climate resilience and adaptation. “It’s imperative that U.S. policymakers invest much more in getting out ahead of disasters before they strike rather than forcing communities to just pick up the pieces after the fact,” she said. 

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included nearly $50 billion for climate resilience projects and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act added several billion more, including $2.6 billion for coastal communities, $235 million for tribes, and $25 million for Native Hawaiians.

It will be years before the country sees the possible benefits of those investments. In the meantime, the federal government is struggling to keep up with the immediate impacts of natural disasters.

As part of a supplemental funding request that Congress is currently considering, the Biden administration requested $16 billion dollars in additional funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to get the agency’s disaster relief fund through the fiscal year, which closes at the end of September. 

As climate change contributes to more intense storms and larger and more frequent fires, the price of adaptation and recovery efforts will only grow.

“The science is clear that adapting to runaway climate change is an impossible feat,” said Cleetus, “so we must also sharply curtail the use of fossil fuels that are driving the climate crisis.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 2023 has already broken the US record for billion-dollar climate disasters on Sep 11, 2023.