Last July, heavy storms lashed Vermont with record rain, leaving roads torn asunder, communities submerged, and farms washed out. In response, state legislators made a historic move by introducing the Climate Superfund Act to hold Big Oil accountable for the damages spurred by the emissions generated by the extraction and combustion of its products.

The bill has finally wound its way through the legislature, backed by tremendous support in both chambers. It now heads to Republican Governor Phil Scott for his signature, which he has suggested he will not provide. But with two-thirds of the House of Representatives and 26 of 30 Senators supporting the law, the Vermont General Assembly could achieve an easy override should the governor choose to exercise his right to veto. Once the bill takes effect, Vermont will be the first state to make Big Oil pay for the impacts of climate disasters.

“The sad truth is we have had multiple devastating climate events in the past year leading up to the legislative session that really drove home the need for this kind of action with Vermont legislators,” said Ben Edgerly Walsh, who helped champion the bill as the climate and energy program director at the nonprofit Vermont Public Interest Research Group. Politicians of every description received the message of the moment, giving the bill strong support across the state’s Democratic, Republican, and Progressive parties.

The law, which faces an almost certain legal challenge, builds on the polluter-pays principle that guides existing hazardous waste remediation laws, and it will mandate that the largest extractors and refiners of fossil fuels contribute — with amounts relative to the emissions they expelled between 1995 and 2025 — to a fund established by the state treasurer. This Climate Superfund will have a two-fold goal: recoup the costs incurred in responding to and recovering from climate-amplified disasters, and dedicate revenues toward resilient infrastructure better equipped to withstand the storms to come.

Once the bill becomes law, a lot of work remains before Vermont sees even a cent. The biggest task falls on the scientists and government officials who will have to determine what big oil companies must pay into the fund and how much they owe. Attribution science provides the backbone for these calculations and for the Climate Superfund Act as a whole by building quantitative links between extreme weather and the emissions of major polluters. By running models that compare scenarios with and without human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, scientists can determine the degree to which climate change shaped a given bout of extreme weather. This method provides a robust basis for calculating the so-called social cost of carbon, and the financial responsibility of major emitters.

“Obviously, this is about these companies paying their fair share, not more than that,” said Edgerly Walsh. “We know that in any world, Vermonters are going to wind up paying significantly for the climate crisis, but these companies should pay their fair proportional share of these costs.”

The Environmental Protection Agency currently places the social cost of carbon at $51 per ton, a rate that Vermont’s treasurer can use to calculate how much fossil fuel companies owe the state based on what they’ve emitted. The money is certainly needed. A 2021 report projected that flooding alone could cost Vermont $5.2 billion over the course of the century. Already, the state has spent more per capita on climate disasters than all but four other states, according to the Vermont Atlas of Disaster.

To determine which businesses to levy the costs upon, the bill outlines a “nexus” of association with Vermont. Any fossil fuel company that has conducted business — such as marketing or selling their gas or coal products — in the Green Mountain State can be subject to the law. But the bill sets a high threshold for inclusion by targeting companies responsible for 1 billion metric tons or more of greenhouse gas emissions. This selective approach ensures that accountability falls on the worst offenders, those who have pumped excessive emissions in the atmosphere since the first United Nations climate conference in 1995. But trying to get the biggest fish on the hook in this way also comes with the greatest risk, and this bill will doubtless face legal pushback.

“The Vermont legislature has understood from the get-go that the fossil fuel industry would very likely use all the tools at its disposal to shirk accountability,” said Anthony Iarrapino, a lawyer who was consulted on the legal framework of the bill. The precedent set by other superfund laws and the expertise behind the scientific testimony have, according to Iarrapino, made the legislation robust enough to withstand challenge in the courts. “They have been very thorough in their analysis,” he said. The attribution method outlined within the bill is also understood to be quite conservative and will almost certainly underestimate how much Big Oil owes, which should further defend the law from claims of excessive burden.

Should the bill survive the legal challenges as expected, Vermont will be the first state in the nation to force Big Oil to pay for the climate disasters caused by its products, succeeding where New York, Maryland, and Massachusetts haven’t. Each has introduced similar legislation, but their efforts have stalled or failed. Last month, however, California joined the mix, introducing its own superfund bill that is currently maneuvering through committees. Such bills demonstrate how states and the nation can conjure creative solutions to the challenges ahead — including the ever-salient question: how to make polluters pay.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Vermont passed a bill making Big Oil pay. Now comes the hard part. on May 17, 2024.

As the planet grapples with the ever-starker consequences of climate change, a debut book by Lumbee citizen and Duke University scientist Ryan Emanuel makes a convincing argument that climate change isn’t the problem — it’s a symptom. The problem, Emanuel explains in On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice, is settler colonialism and its extractive mindset, which for centuries have threatened and reshaped landscapes including Emanuel’s ancestral homeland in what today is eastern North Carolina. Real environmental solutions, Emanuel writes, require consulting with the Indigenous peoples who have both millennia of experience caring for specific places, and the foresight to avoid long-term disasters that can result from short-term material gain. 

Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1977, Emanuel was one of a handful of Native students at school. He spent summers visiting family in Robeson County, North Carolina, the cultural center of the Lumbee Tribe, or People of the Dark Water, where he played outside with other children, occasionally exploring a nearby swamp, one of the many lush waterways that slowly wind through the region, with a cousin. Today, Emanuel visits those swamps to conduct research. He describes them with an abiding, sometimes poetic affection, such as one spring day when he stands calf-deep in swamp water, admiring white dogwood flowers floating on the dark surface as tadpoles dart underneath. 

But that affection lives with tension. Emanuel describes trying to collect “reeking” floodwater samples from a ditch after 2018’s Hurricane Florence. In Emanuel’s retelling, a nearby landowner — a white farmer who uses poultry waste as fertilizer — threatens to shoot Emanuel. The sampling, the man believes, would threaten his livelihood, which is wrapped up in North Carolina’s extractive animal farming industry — a system of giant, polluting “concentrated animal feed operations” overwhelmingly owned and operated by white people, and exposing mainly racial minorities to dirty air and water. They are a sharp contrast to the small backyard farms and truck crops grown by Emanuel’s aunties and uncles back in Robeson County a generation ago. As the man holds his gun and lectures about environmental monitoring, Emanuel reflects silently that they are standing on his ancestors’ land. Ever the researcher, he later finds deed books from around the Revolutionary War showing Emanuels once owned more than a hundred acres of land in the vicinity. Still, he holds a wry sympathy for the man, who, he notes, is worried that environmental data will jeopardize his way of life in a place his family has lived for generations. 

Eastern North Carolina is a landscape of sandy fields interwoven with lush riverways and swamplands, shaded by knobby-kneed bald cypress trees and soaked with gently-moving waterways the deep brown of “richly steeped tea,” Emanuel writes. In addition to water, the region oozes history: It includes Warren County, known as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement, where local and national civil rights leaders, protesting North Carolina’s decision to dump toxic, PCB-laden soil in a new landfill in a predominantly-Black community, coined the term “environmental racism.” It’s also the mythological birthplace of English colonialism, Roanoke Island. On the Swamp draws a through line from early colonization of the continent to ongoing fights against environmental racism and for climate justice, with detailed stops along the way: Emanuel’s meticulous research illustrates how the white supremacism that settlers used to justify colonialism still harms marginalized communities — both directly, through polluting industries, and indirectly, through climate change — today. 

With convoluted waterways accessible only by small boats, and hidden hillocks of high ground where people could camp and grow crops, the swamplands of eastern North Carolina protected Emanuel’s ancestors, along with many other Indigenous peoples, from genocide and enslavement by settlers. Today, with climate change alternately drying out swamplands or flooding them with polluted water from swine and poultry operations, it’s the swamps that need protection, both as a geographic place, and an idea of home. The Lumbee nation is the largest Indigenous nation in the eastern United States, but because the Lumbee Tribe gained only limited federal recognition during the 1950s Termination Era, its sovereignty is still challenged by the federal government and other Indigenous nations. Today, federal and state governments have no legal obligation to consult with the Lumbee Tribe when permitting industry or development, although the federal government does with Indigenous nations that have full federal recognition, and many industrial projects get built in Robeson County. 

In writing that’s both affectionate and candid, On the Swamp is a warning about, and a celebration of, eastern North Carolina. Though the region seems besieged by environmental threats, Indigenous nations including the Lumbee are fighting for anticolonial climate justice. 

Grist recently spoke with Emanuel about On the Swamp.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

---

Q. What motivated you to write this book? 

A. Many years ago, I thought that I wanted to write a feel-good book about celebrating the Lumbee River and the Lumbee Tribe’s connection with it, and talking about all the reasons why it’s beautiful, and amazing, and important to us. So I thought that I would write this essentially nature story, right? But as my work evolved, and as I started thinking more critically about what I actually should be writing, I realized that I couldn’t tell that love story about the river without talking about difficult issues around pollution, climate change, and sustainability, and broader themes of environmental justice and Indigenous rights. 

Q. Could you tell me about your connection to place?

A. I have a relationship to Robeson County that’s complicated by the fact that my family lived in Charlotte, and I went to school in Charlotte, and we went to church in Charlotte. But two weekends every month, and every major holiday, we were in Robeson County. And so I’m an insider, but I’m also not an insider. I’ve got a different lens through which I look at Robeson County because of my urban upbringing, but it doesn’t diminish the love that I have for that place, and it doesn’t keep me from calling it my home. I’ve always called it home. Charlotte was the place where we stayed. And Robeson County was home. 

I can’t see the Lumbee River without thinking about the fact that it is physically integrating all of these different landscapes that I care about, [and] a truly beautiful place. 

Q. In 2020, after years of protests and legal battles, Dominion Energy and Duke Energy canceled the Atlantic Coast pipeline, which would have carried natural gas 600 miles from West Virginia to Robeson County. In On the Swamp, you note that a quarter of Native Americans in North Carolina lived along the proposed route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. What was the meaning of the Atlantic Coast pipeline project for Lumbee people?

A. That was an issue very few Lumbee people paid attention to, until they saw the broader context to the project and realized that such an outsized portion of the people who would be affected by the construction and operation of that pipeline were not only Native American, but were specifically Lumbee. I think that’s what generated a lot of outrage, because for better or for worse, we’re used to being treated like a sacrifice zone. 

The Atlantic Coast pipeline gave us an easy way to zoom out and ask questions like, “OK, who is going to be affected by this project? Who’s making money off of this project?”

It was also a way to engage with larger questions about things like energy policy in the face of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. [It] brought up philosophical questions of how we feel about the continued use of fossil fuels and the investment in brand new fossil fuel infrastructure that’s going to last 30, 40, or 50 years, at a time when everybody knows we shouldn’t be doing that. 

Q. At the end of the day, the Atlantic Coast pipeline didn’t happen. What do you think is the main reason?

A. The collective resistance of all of these organizations — tribal nations, committed individuals, grassroots organizations — was enough to stall this project, until the developers realized that they had fallen into the Concorde fallacy. Basically, they got to the point where they realized that spending more money was not going to get them out of the hole they had dug in terms of opposition to this project. 

But as long as [developers] hold on to those [property] easements, there’s certainly a threat of future development.

Q. You write that people can physically stay on their ancestral land and still have the place taken away by climate change, or by development projects. Can you talk a little bit about still having the land but somehow losing the place?

A. The place is not a set of geographic coordinates. It’s an integration of all the natural and built aspects of the environment. And so climate change, deforestation, these other types of industrialized activities, they have the potential to sweep that place out from under you, like having the rug pulled out. All of the things that make a set of geographic coordinates a beloved place can become unraveled, by these unsustainable processes of climate change and unsustainable development. I think that the case studies in [On the Swamp] show some of the specific ways that that can happen. 

Q. Could you talk about your experiences as a researcher going out in the field, navigating modern land ownership systems, and how that connects to climate change?

A. I don’t know if it’s fair to say that I have to bite my tongue a lot, but I kind of feel that way. When I hear people talk about their ownership of our ancestral lands — I’m a mix of an optimist and a realist, and I understand that we’re not going to turn back the clock. And frankly, I’m not sure I want to, because Lumbee people are ourselves a product of colonial conflict, and we wouldn’t exist as the distinct nation that we are today, if it were not for the colonial violence that we survived. We might exist as our ancestral nations and communities, but we definitely wouldn’t be Lumbee people. So this is a complicated issue for me. 

When we think about the front lines of climate change, we don’t often think about Robeson County, North Carolina. But because our community is so attuned to that specific place, we’re not going to pick up and move if the summers get too hot, or if the droughts are too severe. That’s not an option for us. So I think that some of the urgency that I feel is not too different from the urgency that you hear from other [Indigenous] people who are similarly situated on the front lines of climate change.

Q. Something else that you make a really strong point about in this book is that something can be a “solution” to climate change, but not sustainable, such as energy companies trying to capture methane at giant hog farms in Robeson County. How should people think about climate solutions, in order to also take into account their negatives?

A. The reason why people latch onto this swine biogas capture scheme is if you simply run the numbers, based on the methane and the carbon dioxide budgets, it looks pretty good. 

But a swine facility is a lot more than just a source of methane to the atmosphere, right? It’s all these other things in terms of water pollution, and aerosols, and even things like labor issues and animal rights. There are all these other things that are attached to that kind of facility. If you make a decision that means that facility will persist for decades into the future operating basically as-is, that has serious implications for specific people who live nearby, and for society more broadly. We don’t tend to think through all those contingencies when we make decisions about greenhouse gas budgets. 

Q. What are some ways that the Lumbee tribe is proactively trying to adapt to climate change?

A. Climate change is not an explicit motivation [for the Lumbee Tribe]. If you go and read on the Lumbee Tribe’s housing programs website, I don’t think you’re going to find any rationale that says, “We’re [building housing] to address climate change.” But they are.

Getting people into higher-quality, well-insulated and energy-efficient houses is a big deal when it comes to addressing climate change, because we have a lot of people who live in mobile homes, and those are some of the most poorly insulated and least efficient places that you could be. And maybe 40 years ago, when our extreme summer heat wasn’t so bad, that wasn’t such a huge deal. But it’s a huge deal now. 

Q. What is the connection between colonialism and climate change for eastern North Carolina, and why is drawing that line necessary? 

A. The one sentence answer is, “You reap what you sow.” 

The longer answer is, the beginning of making things right is telling the truth about how things became wrong in the first place. And so I really want this book to start conversations on solving these issues. We really can’t solve them in meaningful ways unless we not only acknowledge, but also fully understand, how we got to this point. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In a debut book, a love letter to eastern North Carolina — and an indictment of colonialism as a driver of climate change on May 17, 2024.

A new World Weather Attribution (WWA) study has found that the sweltering late-April heat wave across Southeast Asia and the Middle East was 45 times more likely due to human-caused climate change.

For many days, temperatures above 104 degrees Fahrenheit scorched large portions of the continent, from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Israel to Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar and Thailand.

“From Gaza to Delhi to Manila, people suffered and died when April temperatures soared in Asia,” said Dr. Friederike Otto, a member of the WWA study team and a senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in London, as The Guardian reported. “The additional heat, driven by emissions from oil, gas and coal, is resulting in death for many people.”

The study said global heating increased temperatures by nearly two degrees Celsius in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel. In the Philippines, thousands of schools were shuttered amid soaring temperatures.

“In terms of intensity, we estimate that a heatwave such as this one in West Asia is today about 1.7°C warmer than it would have been without the burning of fossil fuels. In the Philippines the intensity increase due to human-induced climate change is about 1.2°C,” WWA said.

In India, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Bangladesh, Thailand and Cambodia, temperatures reached 114.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Climate change is an absolute gamechanger when it comes to extreme heat,” Otto said.

The heat wave was especially hard for outdoor workers and those living in informal housing and refugee camps.

“Heat impacts certain groups like construction workers, transport drivers, farmers, fishermen etc. disproportionately. It both impacts their livelihoods and causes a reduction in income, and results in personal health risks,” WWA said. “The heatwave added pressure to the many challenges already faced by people in refugee camps and conflict zones, such as water shortages, difficulties to access medicines and poor living conditions for the large population that lives in makeshift tents that trap heat. With limited institutional support and options to adapt, the heat increases health risks and hardship.”

The research team combined climate models and weather data to compare how likely heat waves would be in the current climate and in one without human-caused global heating.

They found that El Niño had little effect on a higher chance of heat waves.

“Heatwaves are arguably the deadliest type of extreme weather event and while the death toll is often underreported, hundreds of deaths have been reported already in most of the affected countries, including Palestine, Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and the Philippines,” WWA said. “The heat also had a large impact on agriculture, causing crop damage and reduced yields, as well as on education, with holidays having to be extended and schools closed in several countries, affecting millions of students.”

The team said South Asia’s heat is becoming more frequent during the pre-monsoon season.

They examined how human-caused climate change affected the intensity and likelihood of the 15-day heat wave in the Philippines and the three-day West Asia.

“The observational data for the whole month of April confirmed that the role of climate change is likely of similar magnitude to the heatwaves studied in 2022 and 2023, and the results of a full attribution analysis would not be significantly different,” WWA said.

In Gaza, the hot temperatures made living conditions more dire for 1.7 million displaced people.

The study said that, if the planet reaches warming of two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the probability of extreme heat rises significantly.

“If the world warms to 2°C above pre-industrial global mean temperatures, in both regions the likelihood of the extreme heat would increase further, by a factor of 2 in West Asia and 5 over the Philippines, while the temperatures will become another 1°C hotter in West Asia and 0.7°C hotter in the Philippines,” WWA said.

The study’s findings in South Asia were based on observations.

“Similarly to what we found in previous studies, we observe a strong climate change signal in the 2024 April mean temperature. We find that these extreme temperatures are now about 45 times more likely and 0.85ºC hotter. These results align with our previous studies, where we found that climate change made the extreme heat about 30 times more likely and 1ºC hotter,” WWA explained.

The findings suggest that strategies and action plans to combat existing heat waves face challenges due to rapidly growing cities, exposed populations, an increase in informal settlements, a rise in energy demands and a reduction of green spaces.

“While many cities have been implementing solutions like cool roofs, nature based infrastructure design, and adherence to climate risk informed building codes, there is limited focus on retrofitting and upgrading of existing buildings and settlements, with infrastructure deficits (e.g. asbestos roofs), to make them more liveable,” WWA emphasized. “Some countries such as India have comprehensive heat action plans in place, yet to protect some of the most vulnerable people, these must be expanded with mandatory regulations, such as workplace interventions for all workers to address heat stress.”

The post Southeast Asia’s Deadly Heat Wave in April Was 45x More Likely Due to Climate Change, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

South Florida suffered through brutal heat and humidity this week when the heat index (the “feels like” temperature) in Key West reached 115 degrees F — matching the record for any time of year. With rising temperatures, flooding on sunny days, and toxic algae blooms, Floridians recognize that something’s amiss. Ninety percent of residents accept that climate change is happening, according to a new survey from Florida Atlantic University, and two-thirds want their state government to do more to address the problem. 

But Governor Ron DeSantis, the former Republican presidential hopeful, is moving in the opposite direction. On Wednesday, as heat records fell, he signed legislation deleting most references to the words “climate change” from the state’s laws and removing emissions reductions as a priority for energy policy. It also bans the construction of offshore wind turbines off Florida’s coasts, weakens regulations on natural gas pipelines, and prevents cities from banning appliances like gas stoves. 

Along with two other bills DeSantis signed on Wednesday, the new law “will keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state,” he wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”

The phrase “climate change” has been swept up into America’s culture wars, viewed as a “Democrat” issue that Republicans like DeSantis want to distance themselves from. “I think a lot of it is messaging and rhetoric,” said Yoca Arditi-Rocha, the executive director of the CLEO Institute, a climate education and advocacy nonprofit in Florida. But at the same time, the law will have a real impact, she said. “This is a really good opportunity for the gas industry to push out more infrastructure and boost more expansion.”

The measure, which goes into effect July 1, will remove eight references to climate change from the state’s laws, leaving seven intact. It swaps language in a 2008 policy prioritizing the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions as a goal for the state’s energy policy with the new aim of making energy “cost-effective” and “reliable.” Arditi-Rocha questioned whether the new law would fit that objective, arguing that investing in renewable sources would better diversify the state’s energy mix. The Sunshine State already relies heavily on gas, which supplies 74 percent of Florida’s electricity. Solar provides about 5 percent.

The law also removes a requirement that government agencies purchase fuel-efficient vehicles and strips away a clause that gave state officials the authority to set renewable energy targets for Florida.

Eliminating climate-related language could send a signal to green entrepreneurs that their industries are not welcome in Florida. “I just think it puts us at a disadvantage to other states,” Greg Knecht, the executive director of The Nature Conservancy in Florida, told Grist in March. Even though Florida isn’t particularly windy, with no wind farms in operation, it’s possible that as offshore wind technology improves, it would make sense someday, had the state not banned it this week.

DeSantis is well aware of the consequences of climate change. In recent years, he’s poured money into adapting to sea level rise, signing legislation that awards $640 million for resilience projects to respond to coastal threats and $28 million for flooding vulnerability studies for every county. But some threats get a different treatment. Last month, DeSantis signed legislation that blocks cities from making local rules to protect outdoor workers from extreme heat.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline DeSantis says he’s ‘restoring sanity’ by erasing climate change from Florida laws on May 16, 2024.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation on Wednesday that eliminates climate change as a priority in state policymaking, as well as most references to it in state law. Florida is known as one of the most climate-vulnerable states in the country due to its susceptibility to sea level rise, hurricanes and flooding.

The new legislation, which will take effect on July 1, also weakens natural gas pipeline regulations and bans offshore wind turbines off the Florida coast, reported The Washington Post.

“The legislation I signed today — HB 1645, HB 7071, and HB 1331 — will keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state,” DeSantis said in a social media post on Wednesday. “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”

With solar energy thriving in the state, some climate advocates have said the new law would not have much impact on Florida’s transition toward renewable energy, The Washington Post reported. It also isn’t a big target of the wind industry due to its generally low winds.

Environmentalists said the new regulations dismissed the many climate-related threats facing the state, reported The Hill.

“It is extremely alarming that leaders in Tallahassee have eliminated statutory language that recognized the dangers of climate pollution, the importance of energy efficiency, and realities of increasing extreme weather events due to a warming planet,” Yoca Arditi-Rocha, executive director of the Miami-based climate advocacy organization CLEO Institute, said in a statement, as The Hill reported.

In a recent survey conducted by Florida Atlantic University, 90 percent of the state’s residents said they accepted the reality of climate change, while 69 percent supported the state taking action to address the crisis.

Greg Knecht, Florida’s Nature Conservancy director, commented that the legislation “is very much out of line with public opinion,” reported The Washington Post.

Knect said that, while Republicans have directed millions of dollars toward flood control projects, they also portray the reduction of carbon pollution as radical.

“On one hand, we recognize that we’re seeing flooding and we’re seeing property damage and we’re seeing hurricanes, and we’re conveying to the public that we can build our way out of these problems,” Knecht said. “And then on the other hand, we’re turning around and saying, ‘Yeah, but climate change isn’t really real, and we don’t need to do anything about it.’”

In addition to eliminating “climate change” from state policy, the regulations took away language that gave state officials the power to set targets for increasing green energy.

“What Florida is really doing is saying we’re going to deemphasize any policies that would help mitigate climate change,” said Emily Hammond, a George Washington University professor of law, as CNN reported.

Government agencies are also no longer required to consult a list of “climate-friendly” products, hold meetings in “green lodging” hotels or make fuel efficiency a priority in the purchase of new vehicles, reported The Washington Post.

“Floridians are on the frontlines of rising sea levels, rising extreme heat, rising property insurance prices, more frequent flooding, and more severe storms. This purposeful act of cognitive dissonance is proof that the Governor and the State Legislature are not acting in the best interests of Floridians, but rather to protect profits for the fossil fuel industry,” Arditi-Rocha said, as The Hill reported.

The post Florida’s DeSantis Signs Law Removing Most References to Climate Change, Banning Offshore Wind appeared first on EcoWatch.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.

Wildfires in western and central Canada spread rapidly this week, forcing thousands of people to evacuate, with smoke sweeping into the Midwest and triggering air quality alerts in several states, a reminder of last year’s smoky conditions.

“You looked outside and buildings more than a couple blocks away were starting to look smoky,” said Matt Taraldsen, the supervisory meteorologist at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency based in St. Paul. “You could definitely see the smoke outside, you could smell it, you could even taste it in the morning. It was really gross.” 

Climate change is a major contributor to longer and more frequent wildfire seasons and worsening air pollution due to smoke. 

Dry conditions and high winds are driving these fires, following Canada’s warmest winter on record. Some are “zombie fires” that began last season and smoldered underground during the winter, reigniting this spring.

“It is so crispy out there,” said Jennifer Smith, the national warning preparedness meteorologist for the Meteorological Service of Canada.  

Last year, Canada saw its worst wildfire season on record; around 45 million acres burned and over 235,000 people were forced to evacuate. This month, Canada rolled out a new marker on its air quality index specifically for wildfires — until now, the scale has been one through 10, but now, there’s a 10-plus, indicating extremely poor air quality. 

“We issue this particular advisory when it’s at a 10-plus, and it is due to wildfire smoke,” Smith said. “So it’s really just to emphasize how hazardous the situation is.”

In 2023, parts of the Midwest and Northeast United States saw some of the worst air quality in the world. Taraldsen said checking the air quality index became part of many people’s daily routines.

“They would basically use our forecasts to kind of structure their day, which was unusual,” he said. “There seemed to be a paradigm shift where people were acutely aware that air quality is important, and it can impact your life, and that you can get forecasts for it just like you can for any other weather.”

Improving indoor air quality through purifiers, filtration, and more basic techniques is an important way to address exposure to wildfire smoke — something that’s gaining steam on the federal level as well. 

Forecasting air quality can be tricky; it deals with weather, atmospheric chemistry, and human activity. And while the movement of wildfire smoke is difficult to predict, the location of the fires is an important factor.  

“Basically all of the air quality impacts we’ve had the past couple of years have been due to remote fires,” Taraldsen said. “Once you pull people out in the fields, it’s hard for them to get back.”

Generally, agencies prioritize responding to fires that threaten human life and infrastructure. Because there are limited resources, those in more remote areas are sometimes left to burn out. 

“It’s probably not going to get as many resources as quickly as a city that’s being evacuated, for example,” said Alexandria Jones, the communications manager at the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, a government agency that coordinates resources like aircraft and firefighters. 

Last summer, some of the wildfire smoke that blanketed much of the Midwest and Northeast U.S. came from areas that were hard to reach, according to Alec Kownacki, a meteorologist with Michigan’s Air Quality Division.

“A lot of wildfires that were causing the smoke were in very remote areas to where they couldn’t get any access to,” he said. “So they literally just said, ‘We just have to let it burn out because it’s in the middle of woods. There’s no access roads.’” 

In Canada, fires are initially managed by local governments in partnership with provinces and territories. As the intensity ramps up, the interagency center works to manage resources across the country, and sometimes internationally. Last year, Canada brought in 5,500 firefighters from other countries and also sent its own firefighters to Australia — a kind of firefighter exchange. 

Indigenous communities disproportionately bear the brunt of wildfires and the smoke they produce. Of the nearly 300 evacuation orders issued in Canada by September 2023, more than 95 were for Indigenous communities — a drastic increase from previous years. 

The Assembly of First Nations worked with Indigenous Services Canada to update its fire protection strategy last May, focusing on both wildfires and building fires.

Cindy Woodhouse, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations said in a 2023 statement that the strategy is a critical step in ensuring the safety and well-being of their communities.

“Every year, First Nations communities experience fires that could have been prevented or mitigated with adequate infrastructure, resources, and support,” Woodhouse said. “Fire services in First Nations communities are frequently faced with insufficient resources and inadequate funding to meet the needs of our populations.” 

Last week, the prime minister’s office emphasized millions of dollars in additional funding for wildfire response in its budget.  

Jones, with the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, said most wildfire response is currently going to the provinces of Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia.

The government also gave up to $1.2 million Canadian dollars ($881,200) in funding for the center to help with wildfire prevention and mitigation and bolster the FireSmart Canada program, which aims to help people prepare for and prevent wildfires through efforts like removing flammable vegetation around homes. 

“Wildfire season likely isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but there are things people can do to protect their properties and their communities,” she said. “Focusing on the prevention piece is imperative to preparing people and making them more resilient to wildfire.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Canadian wildfire smoke just blanketed the Midwest — again on May 16, 2024.

Industrial processes like smelting metals or manufacturing cement can be carbon-intensive, as they typically rely on fossil fuels to generate enough energy to produce high temperatures. But researchers have found a way to use solar thermal trapping, rather than fossil fuels, to reduce the emissions of some industrial processes.

“To tackle climate change, we need to decarbonize energy in general,” said corresponding author Emiliano Casati, of ETH Zurich, Switzerland, as reported by Science Daily. “People tend to only think about electricity as energy, but in fact, about half of the energy is used in the form of heat.”

Scientists used semitransparent materials, including synthetic quartz, to capture sunlight with a thermal trapping effect. The team connected a synthetic quartz rod, partially lined with platinum, to an opaque silicon carbide disk, which would absorb the sunlight, and exposed one end of the quartz rod to concentrated solar radiation.

After exposing one end of the rod to the concentrated solar radiation, the silicon carbide disk reached 1,050 degrees Celsius (1,922 degrees Fahrenheit), hot enough for smelting metal or cooking cement, among other industrial processes. While that end reached over 1,000 degrees Celsius, the other end of the quartz rod stayed at a temperature of 600 degrees Celsius (1,112 degrees Fahrenheit). The researchers published their findings in the journal Device.

Thermal trapping is not a new concept, but it is typically considered only viable at lower temperatures, Clean Technica reported. The new study’s findings reveal the potential for solar-trapping devices to generate enough heat to power even some of the most carbon-intensive industry processes.

“Previous research has only managed to demonstrate the thermal-trap effect up to 170°C (338°F),” Casati said in a statement. “Our research showed that solar thermal trapping works not just at low temperatures, but well above 1,000°C. This is crucial to show its potential for real-world industrial applications.”

As reported in the study, heat generation makes up about half of final energy consumption, with 25% of total energy consumption used for industrial processes. Most of this energy consumption for industrial processes relies on power from fossil fuels. By using solar thermal trapping instead to generate high temperatures, industries could reduce their emissions.

“Energy issue is a cornerstone to the survival of our society,” Casati said. “Solar energy is readily available, and the technology is already here. To really motivate industry adoption, we need to demonstrate the economic viability and advantages of this technology at scale.”

The solar-trapping device is currently just a proof-of-concept and is not yet ready to scale. The team will continue their research to make their device more efficient and effective, including through testing different materials that can absorb the solar radiation and generate higher temperatures. They also noted that further testing is needed for different coatings or applied surface patterns to reduce reflections.

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