climate change

July 27, 2023

An old battle over fur farming heats up with new environmental twist

By Shannon Kelleher

Wearing fur has long been a controversial choice in the United States, with a large roster of fashion brands embracing bans on fur garments on the grounds that the practice is cruel to the animals farmed for their pelts. But a new twist on the issue has been gaining momentum and spurring debate over the impacts of mink farming on human and environmental health.

Earlier this year, California implemented the first state ban on the sale and manufacturing of fur products, including coats, trim on hooded jackets, and pompoms for hats and gloves. Many US cities and towns have banned fur sales, and in June, US Rep Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat from New York, introduced a bill that that would pay mink farmers to shutter their operations and create a nationwide ban on farming the small animals whose silky, sleek coats are coveted for use in high-end attire.

The aim of the federal bill is to reduce the chances that mink farming could trigger outbreaks of viruses that harm humans, an issue that triggered international concerns during the Covid-19 pandemic. Proponents of the measure say they hope it will be included in the upcoming Farm Bill.

Fur farming has also become a subject of intense debate over its environmental impact, with opponents arguing its practices contribute to water pollution and harmful climate change.

Fur farming takes “a huge toll on the environment as well as animals and public health,” said PJ Smith, director of fashion policy for the Humane Society of the United States.

July 25, 2023

Farmers face steep crop losses in US Northeast amid summer storms

By Grace van Deelen

While much of the country suffers from extreme heat this summer, the US Northeast has seen excessive rains and extreme flooding, conditions that have decimated crops, drowned livestock, and left farmers struggling.

July has been especially wet for Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Hartford, Connecticut, for instance, has seen over 400% more rainfall than the historical average. After an already wetter-than average summer, a series of strong storms have overwhelmed rivers, causing them to jump their banks and flood farm fields across the region.

“It is certainly the worst flooding we’ve had in the last century,” said Scott Waterman, a spokesperson for the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets. “The revenue losses are looking like they’re going to be incredibly high.

At least 7,000 acres of farmland in Vermont alone have been lost, according to Waterman.

Farmers are now working on cleaning up destroyed farm fields, replanting some crops, and repairing damaged equipment with an eye towards a wetter, more weather-extreme future as climate change worsens. Crops grown in the Northeast at the time floodwaters rose included tomatoes, squash, salad greens, cucumbers, corn, herbs, cabbage, onions, and feed for livestock.

July 21, 2023

Effects of “unprecedented” marine heat waves may be irreversible

By Grace van Deelen

Tens of thousands of dead fish are washing up on the Texas Gulf Coast, unprecedented numbers of seabird carcasses are showing up on beaches, and toxic algal blooms are growing in size and frequency – all signs of the calamitous impacts of warming trends for ocean waters that some scientists say may be irreversible.

July marked Earth’s hottest temperatures ever, and heat waves are currently affecting over 44% of ocean area, marking marine heat wave that is the most widespread ever recorded. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expect that number to rise to over 50% by this fall. Usually, about 10% of the world’s oceans experience a heatwave at any given time.

The levels of marine heat waves this year are “unprecedented,” said Dillon Amaya, a scientist who studies climate extremes at the NOAA.

The marine heat wave could lead to a redistribution of ocean species that may then also destabilize additional ecosystems, according to Jenn Caselle, a research biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute.

“These marine communities that are reshuffling right now could stay in those reshuffled states and become our new normal,” said Caselle.

July 11, 2023

EPA acts to phase out “super pollutants” used in refrigerators

By Shannon Kelleher

US regulators issued a final rule on Tuesday aimed at slashing the use of a highly potent greenhouse gas found in refrigerators and air conditioners.

The move by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which will take effect next year, marks the agency’s latest move towards phasing down production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by 2028.

“This rulemaking is a critical next step in the Biden-Harris Administration’s ambitious plans to phase down climate super-pollutants and ensure the United States leads the way as countries around the world implement the Kigali Amendment,” Joe Goffman, Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator of EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said in a press release.

Research suggests rapidly transitioning away from HFCs could help prevent up to 0.5°C of warming by 2100.

The EPA action marks a step towards cutting HFC use to 15% of baseline levels by 2036, as directed under the 2020 American Innovation and Manufacturing Act. The agency’s baseline levels for production and consumption are mostly based on average values from 2011 to 2013. The US goals mirror international ambitions to reduce HFCs laid out by the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol.

The US began curtailing its reliance on HFCs in 2022, when it reduced production and imports to 10% below baseline levels. The EPA plans to announce two additional regulatory actions later this year.

July 7, 2023

As climate change threatens farming, incentives for cover crops could help

Once a farmer understands how ecosystems function, planting cover crops is an obvious choice. At least, that’s what North Dakota farmer Gabe Brown believes. For nearly three decades, Brown has been planting his cash crops (barley, oats, wheat, rye, and others) alongside cover crops—plants that are not for sale but instead are planted among cash crops to help retain water, prevent erosion, and increase soil fertility.

“The reason we made the decision is simple—it’s profitable,” said Brown. Since planting cover crops, Brown’s farm has saved a fortune on fertilizer and water, and Brown said he has seen an increase in yield, too.

But in addition to boosting some farms’ profits, many climate and agriculture experts say that cover crops may help farms withstand the effects of weather extremes driven by climate change. As crops across the country suffer dramatic losses, less than a quarter of US farms currently use cover crops, leading some to call for federal farm programs to incentivize the practice more strongly. Yet other experts are less enthusiastic about cover crops’ potential, saying bigger solutions are needed to transform the farming system as climate change advances.

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June 27, 2023

Postcard from California: The climate crisis has become a home insurance crisis

By Bill Walker

It’s an ominous sign of how the climate crisis is hitting ever closer to home: Because of the heightened risk of catastrophic wildfires, the two leading U.S. homeowners insurance companies no longer offer new policies in California.

Last month, State Farm, which insures 1 in 5 California homes, announced it would immediately stop selling new home and business property and casualty policies to avoid “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.” Days later, Allstate, the fourth-largest insurer in the state, confirmed it had quietly stopped writing new California policies last year, because wildfires had driven the cost of insuring and rebuilding homes “far higher” than it could recoup from customers.

Current State Farm and Allstate policyholders are still covered – at least for now. State data show that since 2017, insurers have cancelled or declined to renew almost 1 million homeowner policies, most in areas at high risk of wildfire. Some companies that specialize in insurance for high-end, multimillion-dollar homes have pulled out of the California market altogether.

Californians have always lived with the ever-present threat of wildfire, but the eight worst wildfires in the state’s history have all burned in the last five years. In that period, wildfires have burned more than 11 million acres in California, destroying or damaging more than 50,000 homes and other buildings. Insurance industry researchers say that in 2017 and 2018, two of the worst fire years, combined insured property losses totaled $33 billion.

The risk is only going to get worse.

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June 11, 2023

As wildfire smoke clears, scientists warn air quality impacts aren’t over

By Shannon Kelleher

On Tuesday morning, Austin Channell was starting his day at home in Hudson, New York when he discovered the rays of sunlight on his wall were an odd orangey pink. As the day progressed, the sky grew stranger.

“By the afternoon we couldn’t see the sun at all,” said Channell, who works as the events director for an aviation museum.

The rest of the week, Channell described feeling a sense of helplessness as smoke from Canadian wildfires enveloped the northeastern US, bringing hazardously high air pollution levels to millions of people. On Wednesday, New York City’s air quality index (AQI) reached a staggering 460 – the highest level of air pollution recorded in the city since measurements began in 1999 and more than an order of magnitude higher than the safe daily average of 35 set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Dangerous air pollution levels were also detected in Philadelphia and Washington, DC.

Channell mostly stayed indoors, making coffee and sending emails under an Armageddon orange sky, his air purifier running nonstop. When he tried to go for a walk, he quickly found it hard to breathe.

As the smoke blotted out the sun in Brooklyn, Jes Lyons, a publicist who suffers from asthma, decided to wear a mask even while in her apartment. She feared her drafty apartment windows would not provide sufficient protection from the toxins wafting through the air.

June 8, 2023

Human-caused warming to surpass Paris Agreement limit by 2037, analysis finds

Human-caused global warming is set to surpass 2.7° Fahrenheit (1.5° Celsius) by the year 2037, overshooting an international goal beyond which severe climate disruptions may become the norm, according to a new analysis from 50 climate scientists. If humans continue to emit carbon dioxide at the current rate, the study determined that the planet may reach that warming threshold by 2037.

“This is unprecedented in anything we have seen historically,” said Piers Forster, a professor at the University of Leeds and an author on the paper. Forster has also authored multiple climate reports with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), widely regarded as the international authority on climate science.

The 2016 Paris Agreement, which has been signed by nearly every country in the world, set an international goal to halt warming at 2.7° Fahrenheit. Beyond this point, scientists believe the effects of climate change will escalate, with widespread die-offs of coral reefs, common extreme heat waves, and destructive flooding of coastal cities. The study found that the global increase in temperatures has reached 2.05° Fahrenheit over the past decade.

The planet is also warming increasingly faster, with temperatures rising by an unprecedented 0.36° Fahrenheit since 2013, according to the new paper, published today in the journal Earth Systems Science Data.

May 19, 2023

Vast majority of global methane emissions go unregulated, says new study

By Grace van Deelen

Governments around the world are failing to effectively regulate and mitigate harmful emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas with a climate warming potential more than 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide, according to research published Friday.

Only 13% of global emissions from methane are covered by existing public mitigation policies, the researchers reported in the journal One Earth.

“Significant and underexplored [methane] mitigation opportunities exist,” the authors wrote.

The research comes on the heels of a report issued Thursday from the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) showing that methane emissions from just 1,100 US landfills have a climate-warming effect equivalent to the yearly emissions of 66 million gas-powered vehicles.

Methane makes up about 12% of US greenhouse gas emissions stemming from human activities, including agricultural operations, fossil fuel extraction and use, waste management practices, and decay of organic waste in municipal solid waste landfills. Agriculture is the largest single US source of methane emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Global methane emissions are currently rising faster than at any point since the 1980s. To try to keep global warming from exceeding the warming limit of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit set by the Paris Agreement, global methane emissions must be reduced by at least 40-45% of 2020 levels by 2030, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

May 12, 2023

Flaws in carbon credit programs for farms draw concerns

As fears about climate change grow, a new “gold rush” of carbon credit programs are incentivizing US farmers to slash greenhouse gas emissions generated by the practices they use growing crops and raising livestock. But experts say the programs face difficulty in ensuring that the credits provided truly match emission cuts.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that agriculture accounted for 11.2% of US greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. Greenhouse gases trap heat from the sun in the atmosphere, triggering harmful climate changes and increasing temperatures worldwide. Carbon dioxide is released when farmers till their fields, for instance, and nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas with almost 300 times more warming potential than carbon dioxide, is released when farmers spread fertilizer or manure on their fields.

In one increasingly popular mitigation strategy, private carbon programs pay farmers for implementing practices known to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, generating credits that can then be sold to large corporations wanting to use the credits to offset their own emissions. One tradable carbon credit equals one ton of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent amount of a different greenhouse gas reduced, sequestered or avoided.

Many programs pay farmers for planting cover crops — a practice shown to limit the amount of carbon dioxide that soils release into the air. But few offer any incentives for farmers to reduce nitrous oxide emissions, though nitrous oxide is a highly potent greenhouse gas. A 2021 report estimated nitrous oxide made up for 2.4% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, while the EPA estimates nitrous oxide makes up over half of all greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.

As the popularity of carbon credit programs grows, concerns and questions about the validity of the programs to truly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farms are also emerging. Carbon credit schemes have been criticized for a lack of rigorous accounting of the amount of carbon dioxide lost from soils. Additionally, the difficulty of measuring nitrous oxide emissions could mean some businesses are paying for carbon credits that don’t really reduce emissions as much as promised.

That’s the “worst-case scenario,” said Eric Slessarev, a biogeochemist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “We better hope we’re right, on average, because if we’re not right, then we’re in trouble,” he said.