The latest edition of an annual report was published earlier this month by the Forest Declaration Assessment, which tracks pledges of forest conservation made by countries and private companies. The researchers found that 16.3 million acres of forest were cleared worldwide in 2022—an area the size of New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Delaware combined. That’s a 4% increase over the 2018-2020 baseline. And a big disappointment after a slight decrease in 2021.
Calling the this trajectory “off-track,” the report said the data makes it unlikely that the 145 nations who agreed at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021 to end deforestation across the planet by 2030 will meet that goal. In addition to the overall losses, the report noted that 10.1 million acres of tropical forests were lost, a level 33% higher than what is needed to stop losses by the turn of the decade. Research in 2021 found that tropical deforestation had doubled in two decades, and this is accelerating carbon emissions.
Most clearance is undertaken to grow crops to feed people and cattle, and for mining, much of it illegal. In Brazil and Peru, Indigenous lands are particularly at risk. Rival Brazilian leaders, including the two most recent presidents, have engaged in protection vs. exploitation battles for decades, with Indigenous people often subjected to environmental degradation and violence, including forcible removal and murder, all to get at commodities the non-Indigenous world hungers for.
As Georgina Gustin writes at Inside Climate News:
Developed economies in Europe and the U.S. and some emerging economies, including China, also “import” deforestation by buying vast quantities of soy, timber, beef and palm oil from countries, especially in the tropics, where those industries are continuing to drive the loss of forests. […]
A separate global analysis found that private financial institutions loaned or invested $6.1 trillion in “forest-risk” companies—largely agricultural companies that depend on forests and forested land to make their products.
In the overall picture we’re moving “in the wrong direction,” said Erin Matson, one of the lead authors of the assessment answering questions on an October 19 press call that was reported by John Cannon at Mongabay:
“The question that comes to mind is why?” said Matson. “The answer becomes obvious when you look at what we invest in. We are investing in activities that are harmful for forests at far higher rates than we are investing in activities that are beneficial for forests.”
From the report:
Several regions continue to lose high integrity forests at alarming rates. These include non-tropical and tropical Latin America, non-tropical Africa, as well as boreal and temperate forests in North America and Europe. Comprehensive data on forest degradation, especially in many northern forests, remains insufficient to adequately assess progress and inform needed action.
Following the money makes it painfully clear that forest goals are still given low priority. Globally, only [$2.2 billion] in public funds are channeled to forests every year—a negligible fraction compared to other global investments. In fact, it would not even cover the cost of two football stadiums: Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London cost about [$1.1 billion] to complete; and the budget for the ongoing renovation of Camp Noustadium in Barcelona comes to [$1.6 billion].
Developed countries have announced dozens of initiatives to support ending tropical deforestation—yet the incentives provided by these programs are not nearly enough to overcome the challenges of reaching forest goals. Most developing countries still need significant support to initiate the bold reforms required to reconcile their development pathways with forest goals.
At the same time, many developed countries also struggle to adequately protect their forests at home. Subsidies and regulations allow, and even encourage, forest management and extraction that degrades forest quality even in irreplaceable primary and old-growth forests.
The researchers calculated that those $2.2 billion in public dollars going to green forest initiatives annually compares with at least $500 billion a year that goes to investments in activities that harm or destroy forests. And based on other research, that’s probably a serious undercount. Matson said that stopping deforestation by 2030 will take annual green financing of $460 billion. That would seem a tall order. But, though they didn’t even reach their $100 billion goal set in 2009 for helping developing nations pay for climate mitigation, the wealthy nations are now talking about a trillion dollars a year for that. So maybe $100 billion for forests isn’t out of the question.
It’s important not to get totally caught up, as some do, solely in the climate benefits of the planet’s remaining great forests. In them live most of the world’s largest collections of unidentified land species and endangered species that we do know. We humans came from the trees. Nowadays we shrink, shrink, shrink the forests to make room for palm trees and their valuable oil or soy to feed cattle to feed us cheap burgers. Not actually cheap, of course, according to Mother Nature’s accounting department. But just like neo- and paleo-Keynesian economists, we ignore “externalities” when we cannot see them. Individually and as a society we try hard not to.
The 152 pages of the Forest Declaration Assessment contain something all too often forgotten when important information about serious topics is concerned: thoughtful design and formatting and use of graphics. It makes a positive difference to those of us who read five or six such presentations every month or so. The assessment text points to the many pieces making up the hidden toll on the broader environment and on indigenous species, including Indigenous humans, living in the forests. Just as with past research into forests, this one provides a devastating look. “We” try not to see because it raises some troubling questions. Like, what’s the endgame? We know the answer. That’s why we try not to see.
Matson noted that this year’s assessment took more note of forests outside the tropics than previous reports have done. Degradation caused by logging and wildfire is a much bigger problem than deforestation in the temperate and boreal forests of the north. “Where they’re still standing, they’re losing carbon, losing their structural integrity, losing biodiversity year after year. We never talk about [degradation], but it’s hugely important.”
The Forest Declaration Assessment authors were careful to include a hopeful note. They found that 50 of the nations who signed onto the deforestation pledge are headed down the right path. Cannon reports:
Indonesia and Malaysia, for instance, have managed to cut deforestation across several years, which has helped the Asia region remain closest to staying on track.
Brazil, with more tropical forest than any other country on Earth, has ramped up enforcement to address its rising deforestation rates, spurred in part by a change in the country’s leadership, said Darragh Conway, lead on rights and governance for the Forest Declaration Assessment, at the briefing.
“The renewed investment in implementation of forest laws and respecting Indigenous rights since President [Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva] returned to power in Brazil has led to sharp drops in Amazon deforestation,” Conway said. “This showcases what could happen when countries with good laws on the books actually invest in enforcing them.”
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IEA SAYS RENEWABLES WILL GENERATE 50% OF ENERGY BY 2030
The International Energy Agency’s 2023 World Energy Outlook released Tuesday predicts that by 2030 there will be 10 times as many electric vehicles on the road around the world than there are now, electricity generated by renewables will rise from today’s 30% to 50%, and the share of fossil fuels in the global energy supply will fall to 73% from 80% now. The report also says that carbon emissions from the energy sector could peak by 2025. But even if they do, they will still be too high to keep global warming at 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit). Many scientists think that ship has already sailed.
Said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in a statement: “The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it’s unstoppable. It’s not a question of ‘if’, it’s just a matter of ‘how soon’— and the sooner the better for all of us, Governments, companies and investors need to get behind clean energy transitions rather than hindering them.”
Unfortunately, despite their greenwashing ads, the giant oil and gas companies have are still investing heavily in new fossil fuel extraction. Exxon and Chevron, for example, recently gave a big thumbs-up to U.S. shale production—which means doubling down on fracking, with its health and environmental impacts—by buying Pioneer and Hess for $60 billion and $53 billion respectively.
The report notes the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) plans to put up trillions of dollars of new oil and gas investment between now and 2045. According to OPEC’s secretary-general, Haitham Al Ghais, a total global investment of at least $12 trillion is needed in the next two decades to prevent a spike in energy prices,
On the contrary, the IEA report states: “The end of the growth era for fossil fuels does not mean an end to fossil fuel investment, but it undercuts the rationale for any increase in spending. Based on today’s policy settings, global emissions would remain high enough to push up global average temperatures by around 2.4° Celsius (4.3°F) this century.” That, as scientists have repeatedly said, would be catastrophic. The report isn’t the first time the IEA has warned that no new oil, gas, or coal fields are compatible with reaching the 1.5ºC goal.
Birol pointed to “immense benefits” of switching to clean energy. “Taking into account the ongoing strains and volatility in traditional energy markets today, claims that oil and gas represent safe or secure choices for the world’s energy and climate future look weaker than ever.”
The IEA set forth three scenarios in its analysis: 1) one based continuing with current energy and climate policies; 2) one based on government-set energy and climate targets; and 3) one based on net-zero emissions by 2050. Even under the scenario where current policies remain the same, the agency predicts that renewables will provide 80% of new energy systems by 2030, with solar photovoltaic systems provide more than half of that. In the United States, EVs will make up 50% of new car registrations by 2030. In the IEA’s 2021 outlook, the EV prediction was just 12%.
Loren McDonald, CEO of EVAdoption, which performs data analysis of EVs, told Abby Shepherd at E&E News that EV adoption will be quite different from state to state. To meet IEA’s prediction, states with high adoption rates already—such as California, Oregon and Washington—new registrations of EVs would need to reach around 80% to reach the 50% threshold, he said. That’s because at least 20 other states will adopt EVs at a much slower pace, reaching at best 20% of new car registrations by the turn of decade.
There is another “if” involved in IEA’s predictions. Birol says clean energy progress “could be put in jeopardy if governments and businesses do not come together to ensure the world’s electricity grids are ready for the new global energy economy that is rapidly emerging.” Investment in grids needs to double to $600 billion annually by 2030, according to another IEA report, Electricity Grids and Secure Energy Transitions. Governments, including the U.S. and state governments have sought to relax permitting rules for grid power lines but many local communities have fought against such projects but also utility-scale solar and wind operations.
ECO-TWXXT
ECOPINIONS
The Major Questions Doctrine is a Fundamental Threat to Environmental Protection. Should Congress Respond? By Michael Burger and Cynthia Hanawalt at Climate Law: A Sabin Center Blog. In its June 2022 decision in West Virginia v. Env’t Prot. Agency, the Supreme Court formally announced its embrace of the “major questions doctrine,” holding that the Environmental Protection Agencydid not have authority to issue a greenhouse gas emissions rule that shifted electricity generation away from coal. The West Virginia majority opinion suggests a two-prong framework for the major questions doctrine. To determine whether the MQD applies, a court must ask if it is faced with an “extraordinary case[]…of vast economic and political significance,” if the agency action at issue is “unheralded,” and whether it represents a “transformative” change in the agency’s authority – or perhaps some combination of those attributes. If the doctrine is found to apply, West Virginia then directs the reviewing court to examine the agency’s assertion of authority with “skepticism,” although the agency can overcome that skepticism by identifying “clear congressional authorization” for its action. Parties eager to challenge regulations have sought to characterize a wide range of agency decisions as “major,” and therefore invalid under West Virginia. Agency rulemaking across the federal government—from fiduciary duties and antitrust enforcement, to telecommunications and the authority of the FDA, to immigration policy and nuclear waste storage, among many other issues—has been challenged as unlawful under the principles of the MQD. Seemingly any subject that can be deemed important enough to regulate cannot actually be regulated without precise authorizing language from Congress (at least according to the challengers.
In Exxon’s Orwellian World, Lower Emissions Means More Oil Production by Brad Swanson at The Nation. In the corporation’s version of Newspeak, “carbon emissions” means whatever it wants—and any investment in renewables is just a facade. In climate science, emissions are sorted into three buckets: Scope 1 are emissions from a company’s own operations, such as its factories, stores, and vehicles; Scope 2 are emissions from the production of electricity that a company purchases. Reducing this means buying (or generating) power from renewable sources like solar and wind; Scope 3 are emissions from the production of goods that companies buy from suppliers (“upstream”) and from customer use of products (“downstream”). In the fossil fuel industry, Scope 3 emissions account for about 90% of the total, as burning oil produces much more carbon than drilling for it. But Exxon’s net zero pledge is carefully worded to avoid any mention of Scope 3 emissions. Exxon is promising only to make its own operations carbon neutral, including buying electricity, or generating its own, from renewable sources. Exxon apparently sees a future where the company’s drill rigs will run on clean solar power while pulling up ever more oil and gas, which will dump ever more carbon into the atmosphere when burned for fuel. This is what “net zero” means in Exxon language.
The U.S. Is Spending a Fortune on War and a Pittance on the Climate Crisis by Kate Aronoff at The New Republic. In the Middle East this week, world leaders have tensely debated who bears responsibility for the mounting destruction that could claim countless more lives. I’m referring not (at least exclusively) to the escalating war between Israel and Hamas, but a meeting in Aswan, Egypt. Some 700 miles from the Gaza border, United Nations negotiators have been wrestling over how best to finance the rebuilding of countries where lives and livelihoods are being destroyed by the climate crisis—and the United States is playing a familiarly troubling role. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Sky News earlier this week that the U.S. could “absolutely” afford to support the war efforts of both Ukraine and Israel simultaneously. “America can certainly afford to stand with Israel and to support Israel’s military needs, and we also can and must support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia,” she said. That’s not exactly new information: The $3.8 billion of military aid that the U.S. furnishes to Israel each year well outpaces America’s initial $3 billion commitment to the Global Climate Fund. So far, it has given just $2 billion. The administration has struck a very different tone on climate finance. There is “not enough money in any country in the world to actually solve this problem,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told reporters during last year’s U.N. climate talks in Egypt. “We’re not going to get that kind of money out of any country,” he argued in a separate interview that fall with Bill McKibben. “I was convinced, and I remain convinced, no government is going to solve this problem,” Kerry told an international finance conference in Washington the year before that.This Is What Keeps My Eco-Anxiety in Check by Ron Currie Jr. at The New York Times.
From spring until late fall, when winter weather drives me indoors to the treadmill, I spend 20 minutes each morning after my run around the Back Cove in Portland, Maine, walking the shoreline, picking up garbage. Every day is Groundhog Day — I gather plastic cups, syringes, food containers and cigarette butts the same as the morning before, and the same as the morning before that. I should almost certainly feel despair battling the daily fallout as late capitalism enters hospice care. But instead I get a base, primal satisfaction from actually just doing something, no matter how insignificant. We’ve forgotten, maybe, as the virtual world has slowly co-opted our lives, that we are meant by nature to move through and manipulate, to lift and carry and sort and transfer. Simple acts, I’ve found, have an outsized effect on the worrying over abstractions that otherwise takes up so much of my time.
It’s Long Past Time to Rewrite Outdated US Mining Laws. The White House and some legislators have a plan to reform the General Mining Act by Jeremy Miller. Today, over half a million abandoned hardrock mine sites litter the landscape of the United States, poisoning ecosystems, blighting public lands, and threatening human health. From the mountaintop coalfields of Appalachia to the uranium quarries of the Four Corners, the scale of the ecological devastation is massive—and so are the projected costs of fixing it. A 1993 report from the Mineral Policy Center estimated that reclaiming more than 350,000 of the most polluted and hazardous sites would cost between $32 billion and $72 billion at that time—or between $67 and $152 billion today. The problem, critics say, can be traced largely to a single piece of antiquated and ineffective legislation, the General Mining Act of 1872. The law, adopted in response to the extractive free-for-all that defined the Gold Rush era, has changed little since its passage during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant. The law allows a host of players, from multinational companies to individual prospectors, to stake placer mining claims on public lands without environmental review or public hearings. The process requires little more than a small bit of paperwork, a nominal processing cost and an annual fee on par with an average trip to the grocery store.
Subsidizing Ourselves to Death: Green energy can’t save us unless we stop burning fossil fuels by Cover Climate Now. It’s indisputably good news that solar, wind, batteries, and other climate-friendly energy sources have been plummeting in cost and gaining market share, because this can reduce demand for fossil fuels. But reducing the supply of fossil fuels is the true measure of successful climate policy, because global temperatures will keep rising until the world stops burning those fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry has no intention of letting that happen. ExxonMobil just announced a $60 billion purchase of a rival oil and gas producer, signaling that Exxon plans to sell vast amounts of fossil fuel for decades. The United Arab Emirates is expanding its production capacity by 7.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent, even as Sultan Al Jaber, who heads UAE’s state-owned oil company while also presiding over next month’s COP28 summit, insists that he favors a net-zero future. The contradiction at the heart of the climate fight, as Paris Agreement architect Christiana Figueres told the recent “Climate Changes Everything” conference, is that climate-friendly technologies are accelerating even as fossil fuel industry intransigence keeps greenhouse gas emissions climbing. This is the contradiction that journalists need to spotlight and explain to audiences.
ECO-QUOTE
“Pollution and climate change by excessive burning of fossil fuels are real threats, not the people who warn that we must take these threats seriously.”—David Suzuki
HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)
Oregon wolves could be headed for Rocky Mountains by Kendra Chamberlain at the Columbia Insight. In 2020, in a ballot measure, Colorado voters gave a thumbs-up to reintroducing wolves to the state with a deadline of the end of 2023. But it’s been tough going for wildlife officials finding wolves that are suitable and available. They got no cooperation from authorities in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, where wolves were first reintroduced 30 years ago to the howls of ranchers that have not let up ever since. But early this month, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) announced that the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife will provide 10 gray wolves for the reintroduction effort. State biologists will capture the wolves in Oregon and hope to relocate them to the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains between December and March. “CPW plans to capture wolves through March of 2024, if necessary, to acquire 10 wolves,” CPW spokesperson Travis Duncan said in an email. “That does not mean we will secure all 10 at first release or even this year.” In Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, state legislatures have relaxed laws on hunting and trapping of the animals.Said wildlife manager Matt Yamashita, “Wolves are a species that like to travel. So where we release them, they’re going to go where they want to go and they’re going to kind of define their own boundaries and kind of create their own subset of suitable habitat.”
Battery storage boost to Texas reliability is an example for the whole country by Patrick Meyer at Utility Dive. Texans endured months of extreme heat this past summer and set new records for electric demand in the process. But unlike extreme weather events in the past, the state has been able to avoid the power shortages and brownouts that Texas Public Utility Commission Chairman Peter Lake had warned of. The rapid buildout of battery storage has played a key role in keeping Texas’s lights on. In 2021, historic winter storms in Texas turned fatal in part because they created widespread power outages. Four million people lost heat and access when the grid failed. To avoid a repeat of this tragedy, Texas needed to add additional electric capacity that could deliver on a moment’s notice and stabilize the grid. That’s what batteries do best. In less than 3 years, energy storage capacity in Texas has increased roughly tenfold and the grid held up throughout this past summer’s heatwave. With more than 3,000 MW of battery storage online, ERCOT was able to call on batteries to keep the lights on when power plants tripped offline or forecasts went wrong. And this grid stability meant that major price spikes were less common and shorter lived, making it easier for Texans to pay their electricity bills. For example, in mid-August, a 1.8 GW discharge from batteries into the grid quickly reduced wholesale electricity prices from $5,000 to $2,700 per megawatt hour. Without energy storage, that kind of generation loss would have likely caused outages to spread across the region and kept prices maxed out for much longer.
Western States Opposed Tribes’ Access to the Colorado River 70 Years Ago. History Is Repeating Itself. By Mark Olalde at ProPublica, and Anna V. Smith at High Country News. In 1953, after a Supreme Court ruling gave a chance for American Indian tribes to gain their share of water. But they were dependent on the Department of Justice for legal representation. A lawyer named T.J. Neighbors helped prepare the department’s legal strategy, writing in a memo to the assistant attorney general, “When an economy has grown up premised upon the use of Indian waters, the Indians are confronted with the virtual impossibility of having awarded to them the waters of which they had been illegally deprived.” And that impossibility played out repeatedly. States successfully opposed most tribes’ attempts to have their water rights recognized through the landmark case, and tribes have spent the decades that followed fighting to get what’s owed to them under a 1908 Supreme Court ruling and long-standing treaties. Many of the 30 federally recognized tribes in the Colorado River Basin still have been unable to access water to which they’re entitled. And Arizona for years has taken a uniquely aggressive stance against tribes’ attempts to use their water, a recent ProPublica and High Country News investigation found. “It’s very much a repeat of the same problems we have today,” Andrew Curley, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Arizona and member of the Navajo Nation, said of the records. Tribes’ ambitions to access water are approached as “this fantastical apocalyptic scenario” that would hurt states’ economies, he said.
Study: The best way to restore ecosystems is to listen to Indigenous peoples By Lyric Aquino at Grist. Indigenous food systems and traditional land management techniques are the best options for tackling ecological restoration. However, outdated scientific models and conservative views on environmentalism have led many researchers to overlook and discount traditional ecological knowledge held by Indigenous peoples. That’s according to a new study in Frontiers. Researchers from the Indigenous Ecology Laboratory at the University of British Columbia and the Historical-Ecological Research Laboratory at Simon Fraser University looked at two restoration efforts in St’at’imc and Quw’utsun territories and outlined a method known as “pop-up restoration” employed by environmental NGOs, extraction industries, and government agencies that offers prescriptive techniques to restore and heal land without considering local Indigenous scientific practices. Pop-up restoration, the authors suggest, comes from deeply rooted misconceptions of Indigenous livelihoods and knowledge due to long-standing, deeply ingrained prejudices and racist ideas. According to the researchers, pop-up restoration, or restoration initiatives that don’t make their restoration goals and impose inequities on unceded and stolen lands, often overlooks traditional food systems and Indigenous histories.
Carbon Capture Desperately Needs a Reality Check After Lost Decade by Akshat Rathi at Bloomberg Green In recent years energy modelers like the International Energy Agency have added increasing amounts of carbon capture and energy storage to their medium-term scenarios because countries and companies are moving too slowly on reducing emissions. If the world is going to have any shot of reaching the climate goals laid out in the Paris Agreement, it’s going to need more and more CCS. And such has been the delay, that carbon capture technologies will also have to be deployed to remove CO2 directly from the air to undo some of the damage already caused. At the upcoming COP28 climate summit in Dubai, organized by the oil-exporting United Arab Emirates, there’s widespread expectation that the global oil industry will be encouraged to double down on deployment. But what’s happening with prior buildouts contradicts the forecasters’ increasingly hopeful reliance on CCS as a climate tool. A new Bloomberg Green investigation reveals that the world’s largest carbon capture plant, built in Texas by Occidental Petroleum Corp., never operated at more than a third of its capacity in more than a decade of operation. Getting the tech to work wasn’t the problem at the plant, known as Century, meaning that it avoided the fate of many other failed CCS projects. The big problem instead stemmed from botched economics. Century’s operation is inextricably tied to natural gas prices. When commodity prices cratered, Occidental had little use for its expensive asset and eventually sold it off. Century is but one of many CCS failures that have come to light.
California proposes “blatant seizure of property” in solar ruling by Ryan Kennedy at PV magazine. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) will soon vote on a proposal that could play havoc with rooftop solar for renters in multifamily housing, farms, and schools. Commission approves would prohibit residents of multi-meter properties from consuming their own rooftop solar production, even if they own the solar array. First, customers have to sell the electricity from their solar array to the utility and then buy it back at higher rates. “The CPUC is proposing a blatant seizure of property,” said the Solar Rights Alliance. California’s existing Virtual Net Metering and Net Energy Metering Aggregation programs allow properties with multiple meters to install a single solar array for the entire property, sharing one system’s electricity and associated net metering credits with all customers and meters on the property. The proposed decision would limit how much of their own solar production they can use, even if it is stored in their own battery. “It would force customers in multi-meter properties—such as renters, small farmers, schools, and colleges—to sell all of their generation to the utility at low rates and buy it back at full retail rates,” said the California Solar and Storage Association (CALSSA). “Under this scheme, [multi-meter customers] would lose all of the savings that single-family homeowners get,” said Solar Rights Alliance.
GREEN LINKS
New York Awards Contracts for Three Offshore Wind Projects • “Forever chemicals” in Pennsylvania fracking wells could impact health of surrounding communities: Report • Virginia solar program delivers clean energy to elderly, low-income households • Why Native Women’s Voices Are Crucial to Saving Brazil’s Forests • Shock of the old: the amazing, infuriating history of the electric car—in pictures • Northern Wilderness Could Turn to Farmland as Climate Warms
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